GOOD GIRL

All night angels rain curses on a woman who refuses her husband’s advances,
my Islamic teacher at elementary school said.

Did your wife refuse your advances last night? I wanted to ask.

But good girls don’t challenge their teachers. Good girls do as they’re told. Good
girls pray five times a day and read the Quran daily.

Eliza is such a good girl, she’s our favorite grandchild. She’s our favorite niece.

MATH

Growing up, my role model was Aunt T. She was the only woman among ten
siblings who earned a university degree, drove her own car, and she achieved
her dreams of becoming an ambassador. Moreover, whereas my father blew up
and made everyone stressed whenever we were stuck in traffic, Aunt T. told
jokes, played games, and made the best of the gridlock. I wanted to grow up just
like her.

After she’d returned from her diplomatic post in Paris, I stayed over at her house.
In her bedroom I saw on the wall a painting of a naked woman on a pink sofa.

Nude paintings are a sin, I’d often heard.

I didn’t know how to tell her. I didn’t want her to go to hell.

If you pray using someone else’s praying mat, you are giving that person this
much pahala – which is the points you need to get into heaven.

Nine-year-old me did the math – how often I needed to pray using her mat to
offset her having the painting. From then on I’d spend my weekends at her place,
I promised myself. I’d read from her Quran. I’d pray behind her as often as
possible, multiplying her pahala by 27 each time.

As I lay down to sleep, the naked woman’s eyes gleamed like my blue-furred
owl’s. 

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

I asked Mama why another one of my aunts wore hijab.

‘She believes that hair is part of her aurat and she shouldn’t show it to just
anyone,’ she said.

‘And we don’t believe that?’

‘No, we don’t.’

I asked her why an uncle kept having children after already having four
daughters.

‘He believes birth control brings more harm than good,’ she said.

‘And we don’t?’

‘Birth control has brought our family so much good.’

From her, I learned that even within our family, there are different ways to
practice Islam and still get along fine; that it’s all right to have a Christian best
friend; that you can’t judge someone based on their religion or their clothes. I’d
learned these values before I understood the meaning of my prayers or the
Quranic verses that I read. Yet we credit religion for shaping our morality and
everything that’s good in us.