Days of Ignorance

By Zack Miller

My older sister had become crazy religious after she started dating her boyfriend Aasif and hanging around his conservative family. She started wearing the hijab and attending mosque.

My mother turned to me in the kitchen. “Ahmed, how could my daughter turn out this way? Didn’t I teach her values?”

“I don’t know, Mom.” In fact, she hadn’t taught her values. We were plopped in this suburb and expected to absorb the American way.  But into a vacuum anything can enter. For my sister, it was religion.

***

It was the summer after my junior year of high school.

I pulled up to the convenience store where Jamal worked with his dad. TJ waited in the car. TJ and Jamal and me met during sophomore year because we had common interests. TJ was light-skinned and spoke like a white kid, which meant he could get away with a lot.

The store was a cramped space with narrow aisles and shelves that reached the low ceiling. Jamal’s father, a barrel-chested black man, stood behind the counter wearing jeans and a purple Vikings T-shirt. I greeted the man, “Hi, Mr. Williams.”

“I told you call me Big Dave.”

“Okay, Big Dave.”

He laughed like a viking. The man was intimidating.

Jamal was much skinnier than his father, but muscular still like a college basketball player. Jamal’s mother was Egyptian, and he exaggerated his Arab ethnicity to an absurd degree. That day he wore combat boots, camo pants, a black tank top, and a necklace with a pendant in the shape of Israel painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag. As we left, his father yelled after him, “Don’t go bombin’ no buildings now.”

As we climbed into the car, Jamal said, “I made it to one hundred last night.” He was a ladies’ man, always bragging that he’d had sex with almost one hundred girls.

TJ lit a joint. We passed it around as I pulled away from the store.

I had been with three girls and considered myself lucky; they were all nice girls and gave me all the sex I needed. Why one hundred girls?

“Who’s the girl?” I asked.

“Her name’s Christa. She’s a skinny little white girl. You’ll meet her this Saturday if you come.”

I must have hit a piece of stem because it burned and made me cough.

“They’re having a cookout at her house,” Jamal said, still holding his breath.

I’m sure we’ll be real welcome, I thought, two black guys and an Arab at a white family’s cookout. I’d been called “sand nigger” enough times to avoid redneck gatherings like auto races and cookouts.

We went shopping at JC Penney. Jamal and I started grabbing small items like jewelry and gloves, and TJ said to pick him up outside the beauty salon. It didn’t take long, maybe ten minutes, and we were out in the car.

We pulled around the corner to see TJ standing there with his arms loaded with shirts and khakis. All we’d gotten was what we could stick down our pants, but TJ was a shoplifting genius. He got in the car and told us, “I took all these clothes and walked right up to the lady in the salon. I asked, ‘Have you seen my mom?’ When she said no, I said, ‘I’ll just wait here then.’ After about ten minutes, I stood up and walked out the street side exit.”

We lit another joint and passed it around. On the way out the parking lot, we passed a kid I recognized from theater class. Jamal stuck his head and shoulders outside the window and shouted, “Hey, faggot!”

I said, “Cut that shit out, that’s how we’ll get pulled over.”

As I was changing through the radio stations, a country song came on. TJ shouted from the backseat, “Turn that back. I love white people music!” We all sang along. After the song ended, TJ leaned in between the seats and asked, “When the Rapture comes, can I stay with you guys? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure my mom’s gonna get taken.”

We took TJ home to Claiborne Tower. It’s dangerous to pull into the projects. Even Jamal’s dark skin was no protection. The black residents of Claiborne Tower are racist against whites, but they’re hostile toward all outsiders. TJ was like our access badge; nobody hassled us when we were with him.

I met TJ’s mom once. She didn’t seem like the type of lady to live in the projects. She wore skirt suits and worked as a secretary. It’s sad that a pretty woman with a job has to live that way. TJ claimed his father was a doctor and that he was going to go live with him soon, but nobody believed him.

I took Jamal home to his Section Eight apartment where he and his parents lived; a step above TJ’s, but still there were guys just sitting around on the sidewalk.

***

Christa lived in one of a row of little ranch-style houses facing a busy street. There was a muscle car in the driveway and an air compressor in the garage.

At the cookout, I felt surprisingly welcome. Christa’s father served up hamburgers and hotdogs from the grill. I loaded a small paper plate with carrot sticks, celery, olives, and ranch dressing. Her father said, “You Arabs all vegetarians?”

I said, “No, I just don’t eat pork.”

“Well these hamburgers are all-beef patties,” he said, scooping one up on his spatula.

“Okay, sure,” I said.

So many little kids ran around, they must have invited the whole neighborhood. But the main attraction was Christa. She wore a string bikini and played in the sprinkler—the water hitting her right at breast level—seemingly oblivious to what she was doing to us. Then she asked TJ, “Want some sweet tea?” The way she said it, it sounded like a come-on. I saw a devious look in his eye as he took her up on her offer and followed her into the house. While they were inside, I ate my hamburger and watched Jamal play tag with the kids.

***

In front of my house that night, I heard a car revving its engine and went out the front door to see TJ walking backward on the street as Jamal punched him in the head and Christa followed them in her car, shouting Jamal on: “Hit him! Beat his ass, Jamal!”

I was impressed by TJ; because Jamal was a Golden Gloves boxer, he could hit hard. We’d fought twice before. The first time, Jamal knocked me to one knee and came in for the finishing blow while I was down. The second time, I punched Jamal in the throat. Jamal wasn’t pissed about getting punched in the throat but about my leaving him there without calling an ambulance—he said you could choke to death from a punch to the throat.

Then other kids start showing up. Some idiot sent me the text: “Jihadi Jamal is beating TJ’s ass.” The text gave my address. Soon the street in front of my house was filled with teenagers. They’d turned my front yard into Thunder Dome. But they didn’t get the show they expected. TJ refused to hit back, and Jamal stopped when TJ hugged him and said, “I forgive you.”

I waved my arms and shouted, “Everybody has to leave before the cops show up. Let’s meet up at the spot.” The spot was a vacant parking lot where teens parked, drank, and smoked weed.

I got in my car, picked up TJ, and followed them out. I wanted to hurt Jamal’s pride. I was pissed about the disrespect of bringing all those kids to my house, and for what he did to TJ. I said, “Fuck Jamal, I’m taking that girl.”

***

I went over to Christa’s house and she let me in. Her little sister and brother were playing Playstation in the front room. She gestured to the couch, and I said we need to talk in private. We went into her bedroom, which was decorated all in pink. I put a hand on Christa’s hip. Then Jamal called. With Jamal on the phone, I lifted up Christa’s shirt and unclasped her bra, kissing and sucking on her breasts. She giggled and continued the conversation with Jamal as if nothing was happening. “No, nothing,” she said. “I know. I want you, too. Okay.” After the phone call, I led her to the bed and unbuttoned her jeans. She stopped me and said she was on her period. She giggled again and said, “I’ve never dated two guys at the same time.”

***

Jamal called, furious, saying Christa said I had raped her.

“What? Raped her? All I did was play with her titties!”

“She was scared, Ahmed.”

“No, she wasn’t. She was laughing and said she’d never had two guys before.”

“I’m driving,” he said. “Let me call you back.” Then he pulled up outside my house, driving Christa’s car. Did he date so many girls just so he could drive different cars? I walked out to meet him in the grass in the middle of my front yard. I thought I was about to get my ass kicked. I got my hands on Jamal, though. Grappling was my advantage. I flipped Jamal over my back in a hip toss and landed on top of him. Then I had him in a choke hold and could have killed him if I wanted. I choked until he tapped out. Jamal said, “We’re even this time.”

“So you’re okay about me and the girl?”

“She won’t go near you, man. She made up her story and has to stick to it. Just like I had to fight you even though I knew she was lying.” Jamal said, “What do you want to do tonight?”

“I don’t know. Hang out, I guess.”

“No, I mean what do you want to do?”

“I’d like to do some acid, but on short notice it’s gotta be Robo.”

We pulled up to the Shop ’N Save in my car and argued over whether we’d extract the active ingredient. “We can shoplift lighter fluid and lemon juice, but we can’t shoplift ammonia,” I said.

“So we buy the ammonia.”

“I don’t want to go through checkout with my pants full of stolen shit.”

We decided to just chug it straight and stole a 12 oz. bottle of Robitussin Maximum Strength each.

We had a ritual. We held a glass of water in the left hand at chest level, a glass of Robo in the right held out like a torch–it was held out like that to avoid the smell making us sick. Then we queued up the song. It had to be the same song every time: “Gonna Fly Now” from Rocky. We double-checked to make sure the crackers were open and ready. Then I hit “play” on the song. We chugged the Robo and swished with water two or three times, ate a few saltine crackers, and sat comfortably while we waited for the nausea to set in, which took about 30 minutes. I had a kind of meditation where I thought, I’m not gonna puke, I’m not gonna puke. . . .

We tripped balls. I only got closed eye visuals. I seemed to have a high tolerance to any kind of drugs. I closed my eyes and it looked like I was inside a giant dome covered from floor to ceiling in Oriental rug patterns. It looked like a giant mosque. I felt myself floating up and down. Jamal saw things. He kept telling me, “Your face keeps changing. The posters keep changing.” Jamal kept getting loud and I’d whisper, “Shh! Baby sleeping!” pointing up to my parents’ bedroom above us.

Then Jamal started making a creaky sound with his throat as he talked, as if he was possessed. He said, “Bobby Mason. . . . He was my father’s friend. Child molester. . . . For three years, I sucked that guy’s dick.” He punched his fist into his palm. “Now every day I think about killing him.” His face showed no emotion. It’s crazy, but I know now that dissociative drugs can act like a truth serum. Afterwards, it was all I could think about, but Jamal said nothing. He called for a ride early in the morning and I went to sleep.

I awoke to my sister standing in my room, tipping over the trash can for me to see the Robo bottles inside. She said, “I know what you do with these. You can outsmart Mom and Dad, but there’s one person you can’t outsmart.”

At least she wasn’t shouting at me in Arabic, a language I hadn’t spoken since I was a little kid. I was still feeling the Robo hangover, which is like living in the back of your skull, watching everything through your eyes as if it’s a movie, disconnected from you. I asked, “You?”

“No, it isn’t me either.” Then she quoted the Quran: “Does he not know that Allah sees everything?”

Sometimes she talked like a crazy person from a cult. Of course, I wouldn’t always think that way about my sister, but that wasn’t until years later when I came to Islam.

***

Several days later, I was hanging out with TJ and he told me how Christa had taken him back to her bedroom where they kissed. Everything seemed cool. That night, Jamal picked him up and said they were going to my house. Then Christa told Jamal that TJ had attacked her. “I figured it was something like that,” I said. “She did the same thing to me.”

We smoked a joint, and I bought a quarter bag off TJ before taking him home. He was turning into a real drug dealer.

What Jamal said was still getting to me. I couldn’t imagine—sucking a guy’s dick? It was disgusting. Jamal was just a kid, too. I was more angry than high at that point. I called Jamal and asked if he wanted to go kill that guy. There was a long pause and Jamal said, “Where did you hear that?”

“You told me, when we were on Robo.”

Jamal said, “I just made that up. Nothing like that ever happened to me. You understand?” Then he hung up on me. I only saw him one or two times after that before I went to college. We went from best friends to nothing.

***

After college I got a job installing networks for office buildings, mainly call centers. My sister worked on me little by little, but it wasn’t until I met my wife that I committed. She said she could only date a Muslim man, so I pretended to be devout. Something about it felt right, and it stuck. I think the groundwork was laid when I was a little kid and so wanted to live in the Muslim community in the city.

My sister comes over all the time now with her husband and kids, Mohammed and Raya. Our parents are disappointed in both of us.

***

Jamal still works at the convenience store, where he’s manager now (he beat his own dad for the promotion), and he has three kids from three different wives. The store’s been remodeled and employees wear uniforms. Jamal added a Middle Eastern foods section. He wears a button-up shirt and a tie.

I went in there once with my daughter. He looked up and said, “As-salam alaykum.”

I said, “Alaykum salam,” and I did my shopping.

 

Zack Miller is a returning student in the Creative Writing program at University of Louisville.  He’s interested in comparative religion and in stories about alienated youth in the American South.