Read Online The Taqwacores by Michael Knight - Free Book Online

guess.”
    “Some people would say punk is all about disseminating your own culture, shunning mass media conglomerates and never selling out; but the bands we look to as spiritual forbears—the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones and so forth—were all on major labels. And some people would say punk is only about loud, aggressive music; but death metal’s loud and aggressive. Is that punk? What about loud, aggressive rap? Or is punk supposed to be
destroying social mores and manners and taboos? If so, where are the bands doing that today?”
    “So what do you think it is?” I asked.
    “I think it’s just about being ugly.” I laughed and then realized he wasn’t joking. “That’s why you can’t be punk,” he continued. “You look good and you dress good and you’ll make a great engineer someday.” I thought Jehangir Tabari was an inherently handsome young man, though he deliberately rendered himself ugly with the mohawk and gear. He had the face if he wanted to sing in emo pop Newfound Glory bands but he snarled too much and never had his teeth fixed—to spot the real punks, he used to say, examine their teeth. “But yeah, man... I think that’s where it’s at... ugly...”
    “What’s taqwacore then? Ugly Muslims?”
    “Kind of.”
    I stayed plopped on the porch, Jehangir stayed stretched out on the sidewalk and we went awhile without speaking. In the silence I lost myself daydreaming of an Ugly Muslim Parade marching single-file down our street with every Ugly Muslim included: the women who traveled without their walis, the painters who painted people, beardless qazis, the dog owners in their angel-free houses, hashishiyyuns like Fasiq Abasa, liwats and sihaqs, Ahmadiyyas, believers who stopped reading in Arabic because they didn’t know what it said, the left-handers, the beer swillers, the Kuwaiti sentenced to death for singing Qur’an, the guys who snuck off with girls to make out and undo generations of cerebral clitorectomy, the girls who stopped blaming themselves every time a man had dirty thoughts, the mumins who stopped their clock-punching, the kids who had pepperoni on their pizzas, on and on down the line.
    So many failed believers, I nearly suspected they were the majority.

    “Taqwacore,” I said for no reason.
    “The irresistible force against the immovable object,” Jehangir replied.
    “What?”
    “The irresistible force against the immovable object. That’s what they always used to say on the Saturday-morning wrestling shows.”
    “Oh.”
    “So who wins it, Captain Physics?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It’s like a NASCAR driver going three hundred miles an hour and just crashing head-on into the Ka’ba.”
    “Okay.”
    “Irresistible force against immovable object.”
    “Well, in that case,” I replied, “before the NASCAR driver hit the Bayt, birds would come and drop clay on him.” We both laughed.
     
     
    A week later we were driving around Buffalo yelling things at pedestrians, just stupid nonsense stuff that seemed somehow funny to us.
    “HELP ME!” yelled Jehangir in his goofiest voice while stopped at a red light. The couple walking nearby looked at him without stopping. “HELP ME!” he repeated. “HELP ME! I HAVE LOST MY BANANA!” They looked away and kept going. The light turned green and I saw an old man on my side of the street.
    “GIVE ME BACK MY SHIRT!” I screamed. Jehangir laughed so hard I thought he’d die.
    “What’d the guy do?” he asked.

    “I don’t think he understood me.”
    “HEY!” shouted Jehangir with his head lunged out the window. I looked to see the mother of two on his side. “YOU ARE FRIGHTENING ME!” And just as soon as he said it we were half a mile down the street, all those characters gone and forgotten, new ones on the way.
    “ROWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR!” I yelled at some trench-coat wearing winner. “I’M A LION, ROWWWWRRRRRR!” He just looked at me.
    “Look in the back seat,” Jehangir commanded. “Behind