An American Family by Khizr Khan

Author:Khizr Khan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

ALREADY AMERICAN

In the mosque one Friday afternoon, Ghazala finished her prayers by touching her hands and head to the floor a final time, then straightening but remaining on her knees. She turned her head toward her right shoulder, where the angel who records one’s good deeds is believed to perch, and whispered, “As salam alaykum was rahmatullahi was baakatuhu”—May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be with you. She turned toward her left shoulder, where the angel who records one’s misdeeds sits, and softly repeated the same phrase, ending her prayer ritual.

“Allah will not accept your prayers.”

Ghazala looked to her right. A woman, older, Pakistani, was staring at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Allah,” the woman repeated, “will not accept your prayers.”

Ghazala gave her a confused look. “What do you mean? Why do you say that?”

“I mean Allah will not accept your prayers.”

Now Ghazala was somewhat offended, this stranger pontificating on Allah’s intentions and her worthiness in His eyes. “Well,” she countered, “how do you know He will accept your prayers?”

“I don’t,” the woman said. “But I know he will not accept yours.”

As she spoke, she shifted her eyes to Ghazala’s forehead and raised her own eyebrows in a self-satisfied way. Ghazala reached up, felt her scarf. It had slipped while she was praying, exposing a bit of her fine chestnut hair. Her head had not been properly covered as she finished salaat.

Ghazala was still bothered by that conversation when she recalled it for me later in the day. She wasn’t concerned that her scarf had slipped. Her thoughts were on her prayers, not on a minor cosmetic malfunction, a consequence of the physics of bowing her head to the floor. She was upset, instead, that a person had taken it upon herself to interpret and declare the will of the Creator, that someone would be so arrogant as to presume Allah’s will and condemn another human for a perceived failing.

It reminded us both of what we had left behind in Pakistan, or, rather, what Pakistan had become.

We already had been thinking of living permanently in America. We spoke openly of it in front of the boys, of the trade-offs and choices. We had friends and family in Pakistan. Generations of our ancestors were buried in its soil. There was a primal pull of home, as if our roots had stretched but not been completely severed from the other side of the earth. We could probably do fairly well for ourselves in Pakistan, too. If I bent myself to the system, or at least did not push too hard against it, I would in time be a successful attorney. Ghazala, whose Durrani lineage still carried some weight, would be an exceptional professor.

Without fail, however, those possibilities were dismissed. We agreed that we were in a better place in our brick house on Little River Road with the used Impala in the driveway. We just knew it. Sometimes, even if you can’t say why, you know when you’re home.

We kept up with the troubling news from Pakistan.

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