"But-?"
"But Paradise must be real, a real place."
"Of course, dear boy-what else? And yet, to continue briefly with this matter of textual perfection, even in the tamer declarations of the suras ascribed to the Prophet's Medina governance, infidel scholars claim to discover awkwardness. Could you read for me-I know, the shadows are lengthening, the spring day outside our windows is pathetically dying-read for me, please, verse fourteen from the sixty-fourth sura, 'Mutual Deceit.' "
Ahmad fumblingly finds the page in his dog-eared copy of the Qur'an, and makes his way aloud through "yd ayyuhd
'lladhina dmanu inna min azwdjikum wa awlddikum 'aduw-
wan lakumfa 'hdharubum, wa in ta'fuwa tasfabuwa taghfirii
fa-inna 'lldha ghafiirun rahim."
"Good. I mean, good enough. We must work harder, of course, on your accent. Can you tell me, Ahmad, quickly, what it means?"
"Uh, it says that in your wives and children you have an enemy. Beware of them. But if you, uh, forgive and pardon and are lenient, God is forgiving and merciful."
"But your wives and children! What is 'enemy' about them? Why would they need forgiveness?"
"Well, maybe because they distract you from jihdd, from the struggle to become holy and closer to God."
"Perfect! What a beautiful tutee you are, Ahmad! I could not have put it better myself. ita'fu wa tasfahii wa taghfirii''- afd and safaba, abstain and turn away! Do without these women of non-Heavenly flesh, this earthly baggage, these unclean hostages to fortune! Travel light, straight into Paradise! Tell me, dear Ahmad, are you afraid of entering into Paradise?"
"Oh, no, sir. Why would I be? I look forward to it, as do all good Muslims."
"Yes. Of course they do. We do. You gladden my heart. For next session, kindly prepare 'The Merciful' and 'The Event.' In numerical terms, suras fifty-five and fifty-six- side by side, conveniently. Oh, and Ahmad-?"
"Yes?" The spring day has passed, beyond the upward- looking windows, into evening, an indigo sky too stained by the mercury-vapor lights of inner-city New Prospect to show more than a handful of stars. Ahmad tries to remember if his mother's hours at the hospital will permit her to be home. Otherwise, perhaps there will be a cup of yogurt in the refrigerator, or he else must risk the doubtful cleanness of the Shop-a-Sec's snack provisions.
"I trust you will not be returning to the kafir church in the center of town." The shaikh hesitates, and then speaks as if quoting a sacred text: "The unclean can appear to shine, and devils do good imitations of angels. Keep to the Straight Path-ibdind s-sirdta 'l-mustaqim. Beware of anyone, however pleasing, who distracts you from Allah's pure being."
"But the entire world," Ahmad confesses, "is such a distraction."
"It need not be. The Prophet himself was a worldly man: merchant, husband, father of daughters. Yet he became in his forties the vehicle God chose through which to deliver His final and culminating word." The cell phone that lives deep in the shaikh's overlapping garments suddenly sounds its trilling, semi-musical plea, and Ahmad seizes the moment to flee out into the evening, out into the world with its homeward rush of headlights and its sidewalk scents of frying food and of branches pale with blossoms and sticky catkins overhead.
Corny as they are, and as many times as he has participated in them, commencements at Central High bring Jack Levy near to tears. They all begin with "Pomp and Circumstance" and the stately procession of seniors in their swinging black robes and perilously perched mortarboard hats, and end in die brisker, grinning, parent-greeting, highflying parade back up the aisle to the tunes of "Colonel Bogey's March" and "When die Saints Go Marchin' In." Even the most rebellious and recalcitrant student, even those with free at last spelled out in white tape on their mortarboards or a sassy sprig of paper flowers interwoven with the tassel cord, appears subdued by the terminal nature of the ceremony and the timeworn pieties of the speeches. Contribute to America, they are told. Take your places in the peaceful armies of democratic enterprise. Even as you strive to succeed, be kind to your fellow-man. Think, in spite of all the scandals of corporate malfeasance and political corruption with which the media daily dishearten and sicken us, of the common good. Real life now commences, they are informed; the Eden of public education has swung shut its garden gate. A garden, Levy reflects, of rote teaching dully ignored, of the vicious and ignorant dominating the timid and dutiful, but a garden nevertheless, a weedy patch of hopes, a rough and ill-tilled seedbed of what this nation wants itself to be. Ignore the armed cops stationed here and there in the back of the auditorium, and the metal detectors at every entrance that isn't locked and chained. Look instead at the graduating seniors, at the smiling earnestness with which they perform, to loyal applause denied to none of them, not the dullest and most delinquent, their momentary march across the stage, under the Roxyesque proscenium, between banks of flowers and potted palms, to receive their diplomas from the hand of slick Nat Jefferson, head of die New Prospect school system, while their names are chanted into the mike by the acting high-school principal, tiny Irene Tsoutsouras. The diversity of names is echoed by that of the footgear displayed beneath the bouncing hems of their robes as they saunter forth in tattered Nikes, or strut by on stiletto heels, or shuffle past in loose sandals.
Jack Levy begins to choke up. The docility of human beings, their basic willingness to please. Europe 's Jews dressing up in their best clothes to be marched off to the death camps. The male and female students, men and women suddenly, shaking Nat Jefferson's practiced hand, something they have never done before and will never do again. The broad-shouldered black administrator, a master surfer of local political waves as voting power has shifted from white to black and now to Hispanics, refreshes his smile for each and every graduating face, showing a special graciousness, in Jack Levy's eyes, to the white students, a distinct minority here. Thank you for sticking with us, his warmly prolonged handshake says. We're going to make America /New Prospect / Central High work. In the middle of the seemingly endless list, Irene reads out, "Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy." The boy moves elegantly, tall but not ungainly, enacting his part but not overacting-too dignified to play, like some of the others, to partisans in the audience with waves and giggles. He has few partisans-sparse handclaps spatter. Situated in a front row between two other faculty members, Levy with a furtive knuckle attacks the incipient tears tickling both sides of his nose.
The benediction is offered by a Catholic priest and, as a sop to the Muslim community, an imam. A rabbi and a Presbyterian had delivered the invocations, both of them, for Jack Levy's money, at excessive length. The imam, in a caftan and tight turban of an electrically pure whiteness, stands at the lectern and twangs out a twist of Arabic as if sticking a dagger into the silent audience. Then, perhaps translating, he offers up in English, "Knower of the Hidden and the Manifest! the Great! the Most High! God is the Creator of all things! He is the One! the Conquering! He sendeth down the rain from Heaven: then flow the torrents in their due measure, and the flood beareth along a swelling foam. And from the metals which are molten in the fire for the sake of ornaments or utensils, a like scum ariseth. As to the foam, it is quickly gone: and as to what is useful to man, it remaineth on the Earth. To those who graduate today, we say, rise above the foam, the scum, but dwell instead usefully upon the Eardi. To those whom the Straight Path leads into danger, we repeat the words of the Prophet: 'Say not of those who are slain on God's path they are Dead; nay, they are Living!' " Levy studies the imam-a slight, impeccable man embodying a belief system that not many years ago managed the deaths of, among others, hundreds of commuters from northern New Jersey. From the higher vantages in New Prospect, crowds gathered to see smoke pour from the two World Trade Towers and recede over Brooklyn, that clear day's only cloud. When Levy thinks of embattled Israel and of Europe 's pathetically few remaining synagogues needing to be guarded by police day and night, his initial good will toward the imam dissolves: the man in his white garb sticks like a bone in the throat of the occasion. Levy doesn't mind Father Corcoran's nasally nailing the triple Lord's blessing on the lid of the long ceremony; Jews and Irish have been sharing America's cities for generations, and it was Jack's father's and grandfather's generation, not his, that had to endure the taunt of "Christ-killer."