Excerpt from the Short Story - The Salvatore Effect
An excerpt from:
A short story by Janie St. Clair
“Listen up boys,” Mr. Nasir had
told Zahid and his brothers when they prepared for their first day at their new
school. “We may be in America now, but we
still have our traditions. You will not be dating any girls, do you understand?
So get that notion out of your mind right now. Unless your teacher tells you,
you shall not touch a girl, you shall not speak to a girl, you shall not look
at a girl!”
His father’s advice rang in his ears as
Zahid struggled with his response to Gina’s offer on the last day of his eighth
grade year. She was blocking the door – his only exit – and holding out a small
piece of paper that could get him in so much trouble at home.
“Come on, you know you want it,” she
goaded with a quirking eyebrow.
He looked over her shoulder. Freedom was
just beyond her. Aside from Peter, school had been a constant stress and
struggle for him. He was always confused about American culture and he was
always playing catch-up with the schoolwork. He just wanted to go home, work in
the family restaurant, be with his siblings, and maybe hang out with Peter. But between all this comfort and himself lay one immovable
obstacle: Gina Salvatore.
“I don’t have a cell phone,” he said,
thinking the answer would save him.
“It’s okay. My email’s on there, too.”
He hesitated. Both his father’s rule and
his culture dictated that he shouldn’t date before he was ready to marry. Accepting
Gina’s contact information might be immodest, or, at least, it would make her
think he intended to use it.
“Come on, it’s the summer,” she urged. “We
won’t be able to see each other anymore and there’s no telling if we’ll run
into each other in high school. This is the only way we’ll be able to keep in
touch.” When he still hesitated, she thrust her hand forward impatiently. “Just
take it already. You don’t want to be rude, right?”
Zahid hadn’t realized that it was rude not
to take the number. Now he didn’t know which culture’s norms to follow. He
gulped, prayed that he was making the right choice, and reached out to take the
slip of paper.
Gina squealed. “Yay! Now you have to call
or email, like, once a week. Okay, handsome?”
Zahid didn’t know how to answer that. He
had planned on throwing the paper away without using it. So he simply forced his
mouth to make what ended up being something between a grimace and a smile. She
seemed to take that as a yes and skipped joyously away.
In a struggle to appease the norms of two
cultures, he was afraid he had violated both. He felt like he had lied to her
and simultaneously misrepresented his faith. Living in America as an Arabian
Muslim had caused him many such stressful moments.
***
“Okay,
Zahid, that’s the fifth time you’ve sighed,” his mother commented that evening
as he helped her wash the dishes after dinner. “Is there something you want to
tell me?”
He glanced at her. Her dark hair was
uncovered tonight, as they weren’t expecting company. Her features were
weathered by wrinkles of their troubled past, but every day here had her
looking younger.
He had a lot to thank America for, if only
for the lightening of his mother’s spiritual and emotional burdens. He needed
to remember that gratitude when the culture also confused and stressed him.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” he assured
her. “It’s only this girl from class who always tries to talk to me. She
definitely wants a friendship, if not a deeper relationship. I didn’t know how
to turn her away without hurting her feelings and being rude. But at the same
time, all I want is for her to stop talking to me.”
His mother considered his dilemma while
she dried a dish, and Zahid watched her as he waited patiently. Before the war,
his mother had avidly studied their faith and the Sufi mystics. He knew her
words would bring great comfort and wisdom.
“That is a messy situation,” she said at
last. “Well, we do need to be kind. You remember, I’m sure, the hadith that
says, ‘If kindness were a visible
creation, nothing that Allah has created would be more beautiful than it.’
Even if this girl annoys you, you must always be kind to her.”
“Wait,” Zahid nearly dropped the pot he
was scrubbing. “Are you saying you’d be okay with me talking to girls? I don’t
think Dad would be happy about that.”
She got a mischievous smile on her face
that Zahid didn’t know how to interpret. “My dear son, I am your mother. I
don’t want any girl to talk to you or steal you away from me. Whether you’re in
high school or you’re forty-five!” Zahid chuckled. “So I’d say I don’t want you
talking to girls even more than your father. However, this is not about what he
wants or what I want. It’s about what Allah wants. Do you know what the Qur’an
says on these matters?”
Of course he remembered. There were two
specific verses that his father had repeatedly urged them to remember. Every
good Muslim boy and girl knew those verses.
“I remember Allah says to lower our gaze
when looking at each other and that when a boy and a girl are alone, there is
always a third: the shayateen, or devil.”
She nodded. “Specifically, Allah tells us
to lower our gaze and conduct ourselves with modesty. It doesn’t mean we
shouldn’t talk to each other or look at each other. It just means we shouldn’t
look at each other as objects instead of people. Did you know the Sufi Master
Rabia Basri used to sit and talk with male Sufis? They would spend hours talking
of Allah and it would never even lead to thoughts of temptation. And yes, the
Qur’an does say that there can be temptation when you’re alone with a member of
the opposite gender. All of this means not to look at each other lustfully. So
tell me, are you looking at this girl lustfully?”
“No,” he shook his head emphatically,
thinking of her metal-filled mouth that often had food stuck in it. “Honestly, I
think she’s a little strange.”
“Good,” his mother smiled and winked. “But
regardless, I’m sure she has things she can teach you.”
“But I feel like anytime I give her the
slightest kindness or respect, she interprets it as me flirting. And when that
happens, she’s even more… friendly.”
“That reminds me of another hadith where Allah
says, ‘O, My servant, if you take one
step toward Me, I take ten toward you.’ Maybe Allah placed her in your life
to serve as a living example of His love for you.”
“Maybe. But still, how am I supposed to
react to her? I don’t know how to live in two different cultures, Mama. If I live
like a Muslim, I’m rude and unkind. But if I live like an American, I go
against our traditions. Which one is right?”
His mom considered the question a while
then pointed out the window. “Tell me, what do you see there?” she asked.
“A tree,” he answered.
“You see a tree, but you know what I see?
I see a collection of countless leaves, all swaying in their own way to the
movements of one breeze, and all connected together by the roots. That is how
Allah made all of us. He made many different people with many ways of doing
things. Perhaps we can come to a greater knowledge of the truth by
understanding other people and their ways.”
Zahid thought that was a beautiful idea, but
it gave him no solution. He laughed internally when he thought of how different
his parents were.
When he asked his father a question, he
received a strict, black-and-white, yes-or-no answer. But when he asked his
mother the same question, she provided lilting philosophy and theology that
left him with more queries than answers.
He didn’t know how to apply his mother’s
advice, but at least he had the entire summer to consider it. He pulled the
slip of paper from his pocket and threw it into the trashcan, grateful that he
wouldn’t be seeing Gina Salvatore anytime soon.
Make sure to follow or subscribe to this blog for more short stories and information on future releases. Or like our Facebook page.
Check out more short stories from Book 1.5:
or buy the book here!
© 2017 Janie St. Clair.
All Rights Reserved
Comments
Post a Comment