I figured Sudana was about fifteen. Back home, she and I could get married any day now, unless we chose to delay our family life and work by attending college. The thought made me smile. Seconds later, reality dropped on my head. We were all here in the U.S. and every single familiar thing we did and believe would be considered wrong and outrageous.
After serving me, the guest, and her brothers and father, she left the room.
We enjoyed our cold drinks, Mr. Ghazzali enjoyed his tea and we all ate the small homemade pastries. Conversations ranged from the high price of American living, to first encounters with Americans, the horror stories all taking place in Mr. Ghazzali’s taxi cab. He spoke of meeting weird passengers such as women dressed like men, with male mannerisms and yet the breasts and hands of a woman.
He spoke of cursing, angry mothers and females who smoked outdoors and did everything else outdoors for that matter, which none of us had ever witnessed in the Sudan.
He spoke also of male passengers who were dressed like women, or dressed like men except for some strange feminine behavior or things like wearing two earrings and lipstick or eye makeup and sometimes even wigs. He tried but could not really imitate or begin to capture the way the men spoke and altered their deep voices as if they were the same as women. Or the way they giggled and blushed. After his first couple of fares with such “men,” he admitted pressing on the gas pedal and speeding off whenever he saw such bizarre men hailing his cab. He’d rather lose the money than have them as passengers. “The American she-men are the greatest disgrace against everything we have ever known. And the Black ones in particular are most embarrassing,” he said.
Growing more grim, he spoke of the African cabbie who got murdered by a shameless Black American drug addict who got away with twenty-seven dollars and robbed a father and husband of at least twenty-seven more years of life and love.
He spoke of monster mothers who threw their kids into his backseat and dragged them out when it was time to go. Also, mothers who screamed and cursed at even their youngest children and had no patience, and not even one trace of love.
His sons must have felt as bad as I was feeling now. The older one introduced the topic of the World Cup, which he must have known would excite his father, the soccer fan, and ease the melancholy mood he was falling into on that Sunday afternoon.
After a full hour, I saw the father check his watch. I assumed it was because of the upcoming afternoon Asr prayer.
“Yes, in America, I have to use the clock for prayer times.” He laughed a little. “Back home, the call to prayer surrounded us all, didn’t it?”
He stood up and made the call to prayer. We all washed our hands, face, and feet, which is required before prayer.
For the first time on American soil, I performed the salat standing and then kneeling beside Muslim men, three of them and myself. Seven women prayed behind us, his wife and four daughters, plus Umma and Naja.
I felt filled with emotion as we recited our prayers and did our rakas. To look to my left seeing the other Sudanese men, and then to my right reminded me of being with my father, brothers, and friends. I did not dare turn around and look at Umma. I knew somehow, she must be back there spilling two or three tears.
Mr. Salim Ahmed Amin Ghazzali and I wrote up a contract. It was nothing complicated, just a simple agreement using simple words. When it was complete, both he and Umma placed their signatures at the end of the document.
With no hesitation, he paid me the five-thousand-dollar deposit on Umma’s services. He even made a joke.
“It’s so much easier to part with my brother’s money than with my own. Your Umma must be the best! For me, this amount of cash represents more than five hundred passengers, five hundred trips around New York, half of them just stuck in traffic. But my brother is a big man! For the wedding of his only son, he can give anything. All the best!”
Their son closed and then locked the gate behind us. We walked down the block toward the station.
“Did they ask you a lot of questions?” Umma asked me on the walk to the train.
“Not too many,” I answered. “I took care of our business.”
This time though, I was certain that she was not focused on the money. I believe she was thinking about how incredible her life was, everything she possessed, and the prominent and royal position that she had once enjoyed. Perhaps she thought about how back home working was a joy and a hobby for her, an option, not a requirement. Her money was just something on the side that belonged only to her, not to be touched or mentioned by my father who earned so much more. Probably she was dreaming about the thick love that she received each day and the friendships she shared and the beauty and pace of life compared to the one that she is living right now. I didn’t say anything. I was just hoping that under these circumstances, my love and complete devotion to her could be enough.
Early Sunday evening, back in Brooklyn, we saw that the front entrance of our building was blocked off. There were police cars, a paddy wagon, and once again, the yellow tape. We had to enter our building from the back. We stepped through the gray metal utility door into a dark stairwell, our feet crunching on glass with each step we took. Someone had busted all the light bulbs.
Back upstairs in our little Sudan I was feeling tight that from time to time my mother had to go through these fucked-up living situations. If anything was wrong by way of her, I knew I was responsible for it.
“Let me move us out of here now,” I said solemnly to Umma.
“Before we are ready? In the middle of everything?” she said doubtfully.
“I’ll do the work, find the new place, everything,” I assured her.
She answered, “Sometimes I want to do just that. But the truth is we are less than six months away from our financial goal, alhamdulillah. With the blessing of this one wedding, we will be able to purchase our property and own it completely by this summer. Why should we spoil or delay what we have worked so hard to gain? Why should we throw our money into a realtor and new apartment that is not ours to keep? We should stick with our plan, inshallah, if we please Allah, everything will go fine.”
It felt good to make those bank deposits on Monday morning. The usual teller stamped our passbook with the new numbers, representing our new balance. I held it in my hands and stared at it for a few.
I spent Monday afternoon working for Umma Designs, shopping for the supplies that Umma requested for this grand wedding. I was in and out of stores in both Brooklyn and Manhattan with a swiftness. I had been at it so long now that the vendors knew me by the name I gave them and by my reputation. When there was a good deal they would put things that I would usually order to the side and hold it for me. Sometimes if I had too many shopping bags to move around with, there were a couple of businesses where I was so cool with the owners that I could leave my stuff there until I was finished shopping in their area. They would store it for me until I picked it up and loaded it into a cab. The ones I trusted with it never skimmed my packages.
Umma didn’t have any American credit cards yet, but we had credit. Those select foreigners who came to America and opened little spaces packed tight with the beautiful goods that we were accustomed to overseas, would extend credit to one another that they would not extend to Americans. Many of us had come from unknown places where a man’s word was worth as much as gold. And, for Muslims, paying your debts is required, expected, and done.
17
AGREEMENTS
“My father said I couldn’t play in the Hustler’s League, but my mother said to go ahead and play ball anyway,” Ameer told us casually. I didn’t say nothing. It took me a few seconds to understand a mother telling her son to ignore his own father’s instructions. I actually never heard of that before.
In fact, Ameer’s mother did a few things I never understood. I remember when Chris decided to get an S-Curl in his hair. He wanted his shit to have a low cut with curly waves like everybody else in the hood. I told him not to do it. He laughed
and said, “Everybody’s doing it.” And they were, the males roaming around pretending that their hair was naturally wavy and feeling good about it. This was something I could never understand.
Ameer told Chris that his mother knew how to put the S-Curl in. We trekked to East New York so Chris could get his secret curls. Ameer’s mom opened the door wearing tight shorts and half a shirt, her legs and belly button and most of her breasts and arms completely exposed. I turned away, thinking that we must’ve caught her off guard by arriving too early.
She didn’t move away though. She stood holding the door open after Chris had already walked inside. “Stop playing this shy routine and bring your tall ass in here,” she said, to me smiling.
I walked in with my head down, eyes cast toward the floor, seeing that everybody was still wearing their shoes inside the apartment.
Ameer welcomed us like everything was regular. “Y’all come in the kitchen.” Chris sat in a chair by the sink. Ameer’s mom massaged his scalp as Chris’ head lay between her breasts.
I stood up and looked out the kitchen window. I didn’t feel it would be cool to watch. That’s why I could see Ameer’s father coming up the walk three floors below. I didn’t know what to do. I figured when he came through the door and saw his wife dressed this way with three thirteen-year-old boys in her kitchen, some shit was gonna go down.
“Janice, let me talk to you for a minute,” Ameer’s father said calmly after his eyes took it all in.
“What?” she said in a defiant tone.
“In the back room,” he said, asking her for privacy.
“Honey, you must be kidding. This boy has the cream in his hair. He’s on the timer. I can’t leave him sitting right here,” she said, still working Chris’ hair. Ameer’s father walked slowly to the back of their apartment looking disgusted. I heard the door in the back slam and the music come on, the volume increasing until it was blasting.
I was still staring out the window.
“Your moms is cool as shit,” Chris told Ameer when we three was back at the dojo, Chris’ low-cut curls shining. Ameer gave him a pound. “I know, my moms always been cool like dat,” he agreed.
“I can play in the league,” Chris said. “My father don’t know nothing about who is running it. As long as it doesn’t affect my grades, it’s all good. Besides, now my father runs a group meeting at our church on Friday nights. What’s the chances of him rolling up the way your father did?” he asked Ameer.
“The only fucked-up thing about it is, this Friday night we supposed to take the girls out. Remember?” Ameer asked both of us.
“We can take them out on Saturday instead,” Chris proposed.
“Saturday’s out,” I told them, hoping to possibly meet up with Akemi.
“You owe us,” Ameer said seriously.
“You right. I said I would do it,” I agreed halfheartedly, wanting to get it over with. “Just once,” I told them.
“You never know, brotha. Try it. You might like it,” Ameer joked, then cracked up.
18
PRIVATE LESSONS
Weapons class with Sensei was intense. I felt the difference between sitting among many students and being seated with Sensei one-on-one in a room.
He had a chart of the human body posted on the wall and held a long wooden pointed stick in his left hand. He pointed out the eyes on the chart first.
“The eyes, the throat, the pelvis, the knees, and the ankles; these are the points of vulnerability on an opponent. These are the points of vulnerability on you,” he said. By removing or disabling the eyes of your enemy, you win. He demonstrated the moves used to snatch or poke an opponent’s eyes out of their socket.
“One simple strike to the larynx, executed properly, can kill any man,” he said, then demonstrated how to execute the strike properly.
“The larynx?” I asked.
“The pipe that runs from here to here.” He pointed out his own larynx in the vertical area of his throat.
After an hour of using his chart and then demonstrating the precise movements, and requiring me to prove that I understood the chart and could repeat the lessons and could duplicate his moves, he brought out his knives—the kunei and the shuriken.
My eyes were wide open, admiring the way his weapons glistened and were crafted. I wanted to confide in Sensei that I had my own set of shuriken crafted long ago, that I had been practicing using them on my own anyway, that I had made my own paper targets in my room, laid them across a mounted cork board, and taught myself to get nice with my knives. But I didn’t tell him. Easily I could see that he was the master at this. I needed to watch him carefully and listen closely to take my own efforts to a much higher level.
He demonstrated how to hold each weapon properly. He said the ninja art is to appear that you are not holding or using any weapons at all.
“Holding and concealing the weapon is an art all by itself. Your enemy will not be able to defend himself against a weapon he cannot see and does not realize you are using.”
Advancing through my first lesson, Sensei demonstrated how to execute the ninja attack, concealing knives and positioning them to penetrate or slice an enemy at points of vulnerability.
For some reason, this reminded me of a lesson from my father. He taught me how to kill a chicken and a sheep. Even though I was very young, my father said a man has to know how to feed himself and his family. My father said that men in the cities of the Western world “only know how to be fed, but don’t know how to feed themselves.”
He shared memories of guys he went to university with in Paris, London, and New York who had never slaughtered any animal to make themselves a meal, but in conversation, talked like my father was a savage for slaughtering animals himself.
My father said that these same men would sit in the cafeteria and eat chicken, pork, beef, or lamb, and feel more civilized because they had not slaughtered the animals themselves. He also pointed out how easily these guys would waste food.
Then he taught me to slaughter animals only in the amount that is necessary for yourself and your family, and not to be the type of man who hides from the realities of nature. “If you eat meat, be able to hunt meat and prepare it. If you are unhappy hunting and slaughtering your prey, then don’t hunt and don’t slaughter for meat. Eat only vegetables, fruits, and grains instead. But don’t be the man who hides while other men do men’s work, then appears for the feast after the work has been done.”
My father said he even had friends who would go fishing, catch fish, then refuse to eat the fish they caught. He said this was complete foolishness. Either you go fishing and eat your catch along with your family, or you leave the fish in their living space alone. But to go fishing and catch a fish with a hook and then withdraw the hook from its bloody mouth only to throw it back into the water is not only a waste, it’s cruelty.
“Nature works perfectly alone,” my father said. “It is only the abuses of human beings that can alter that.”
When it was time to slaughter an animal for eating, my father recited a brief prayer which is required for Halal meats for Muslims. Then using the sharpest knife I have ever seen up to this day, with one quick motion the animal’s head was severed from its neck. We drained the blood, which is also required. We cleaned the animal. Then he showed me how it is more difficult to slice through the animal’s bones. He demonstrated to me how the knife goes through with such ease when you place it between the joints and the cartilage of an animal, similar to slicing butter. When I used my knife to cut the chicken or the sheep into sections, I understood my father’s lessons completely.
Facing Sensei with his incredible knife demonstrations brought this memory of my father back to my mind.
When it was my chance to demonstrate to Sensei my use of his weapons and what I had learned, I closed down my memories and focused one hundred percent on executing each new move with deadly precision.
Even though I paid for all my classes and use of the dojo and had been doi
ng so for seven years, I had mad respect for Sensei for being a master teacher who gave each of us so much more than we could ever pay him for.
After two hours of receiving these private instructions in the dojo, I headed over to The Open Mind bookstore to do some reading. After two hours of having my head buried in a detective story, I closed the book and played a game of chess with the bookseller, Marty Bookbinder.
Ever since Bookbinder had asked me when I was seven years old, “Do you know how to play chess?” I decided to learn. I purposely went to a different bookstore, bought a book on how to play chess, and taught myself how to play on a two-dollar chess board I purchased from the local drugstore. By the time I was eight I was decent at the game.
That’s how it was with me and Mr. Bookbinder. I hated to be underestimated and second-guessed by him. Even though he was an adult and I was a child, I wanted him to respect my intelligence.
Of course his respect came more easily when I became a teen, but not because of my age or size. His respect came when I invaded his castle, captured his rook, and defeated his queen, only to corner and checkmate his king.
19
CATCHING FEELINGS
Later, I was sitting at the top of the staircase at Pratt, uninvited, wanting to see Akemi even if it would only be for a moment. I knew I wouldn’t see her Friday after work because of the League. I knew I wouldn’t see her Saturday because of agreeing to meet Ameer, Chris, Redbone, and them. It had already been two weeks since me and Akemi enjoyed going out together. I wondered if she was missing me like I was missing her.
She showed up, climbing the cement stairs slowly, wearing jeans, dark-brown leather Nikes, and a tapered dark-brown windbreaker with a matching bandanna pulled tightly across her forehead like a gorgeous Cherokee squaw showcasing her dark eyes.