Alykhan Boolani
“A Grown Ass Man”

Terrified Immigrant Syndrome

I gave up trying to meet women at jamat khana years ago. These days, I’m mostly in it for the aunties, the uncles, and Bapa’s chai.

I haven’t given up on religion itself per se, but I’ve got my devotional disregard down to a science: Friday night dua starts at eight and is over by half past. At five till, I glance at my wrist, making note of the day and time. At ten past, I attempt to fix my hair in the mirror by my front door. North Oakland is a solid fifteen to Alameda, on the 24. By the time I slide into the corporate-office-park-unitcum-masjid—demarcated only by a yellowed inkjet printout of an American flag with the words UNITED WE STAND in Times New Roman—prayers are damn-near over and the first eyes on me are always Pops’s. He sits in the chairs by the door, outside the prayer hall, with all the other budha bhais, whose knees and backs keep them off the ground where the rest of us sit. He looks me up and down, looks at the clock, looks right back at me, and grins to himself while shaking his head. I choose to interpret this as playful disappointment.

Fortunately my mother sits inside, usually up front. I’m glad to know that she doesn’t have to witness my weekly ritual of cultivated neglect. We are, however, keenly aware of each other; and in the sad state of affairs, weekly neglect is far better than downright absence. Like a hostage situation, my attendance holds Ma’s last hope for my life on sirat al-Mustaqim by its throat. Otherwise, I could become like so-and-so Auntie’s kids who stopped coming altogether, and then became alcohol-and-drug addicts, and then married—gasp— the whites!

Unrestricted hyperbole is a well-documented effect of Terrified Immigrant Syndrome (TIS). Thus my mother links a bit of religious laxity to wholesale cultural downfall—another friend’s mother has been known to link Jolt Cola to eventual cocaine use. But admittedly, her fears are, if dramatic, not unfounded. Her central cultural wish of keeping Shia Imami Isma’ilism conjugal, in my sordid generation, is quickly becoming, outside of the motherland, a dream deferred.

I mean the story of Ma and Pops? It may as well be another dimension of space/time: the two grew up in flats opposite each other, on a street bookended by a grand Isma’ili jamat khana and an Isma’ili grammar school, in a part of Karachi where the cultural, economic, and social life was Isma’ili. It was not an arranged match, though a degree of city planning may have been involved.

The Mantra

The table, crowded by hot and slick plates, looks to be alive. The overhead fan cuts the fluorescents into a flicker, and the feast’s glistening seems to dance in the light. We’ve been eating like this every night since we arrived in Karachi, around a long wooden table protected by a thick plastic film. I gladly ignore grown-up conversation about family drama, focusing instead on stuffing my face with home cooking, smacking my lips a little too loudly. I feel almost mischievously young. Uncles, mothers, fathers, aunties, brothers, sisters, cousins—I pick up bits here and there, this chatter in the flutters of hometown Sindhi I can only half understand, not having grown up here.

Something about Nani being so naive as to give away her bangles whenever someone asked her for a loan. Another bit about how Apa Jan would leave black-and-blue marks on your thigh if you left the chulo on. How, at age sixteen, Naseem Babi came to marry Aslam Mamou, who was seventeen years her senior; and how her aunties and her mother prayed after sour-milk promises were made—gripping their tasbihs tightly—that Naseem Babi would actually like this older man. How the success of this marital fable is revealed in the beginning, because we are sitting here today, right now, happily, as a family. I am half aware of the moral aim of this story, with its awkward empirical dimensions: In Order to Be Happy, One Must Marry Isma’ili, Even If It’s a Little Creepy. There is a part of me that enjoys—with a notable degree of reservation—this simplified offering of a great, confusing truth.

I am quietly pondering the onset of diabetes during postdinner kulfi when my old chacha speaks, from the head of the table, in an affected, deep baritone; a man asserting his God-given right to silence and command.

I look up stunned—Is he talking to me?—first straight ahead, then left, and then right—to find the collective gaze set upon me. Eyes range from expectant to earnest to curious. And of course, there’s Pops’s shit-eating grin. I am positive I have melted kulfi cream all up in my beard.

“Sorry—what did you ask, Chacha?”

How old are you now—no longer a question but an annoyed test of patience.

It was inevitable. I already knew whatever number I said would precipitate the dangerous mantra my uncle was dead set on delineating. At twenty-nine, this question is a predetermined, existential adjudication: the contextual set of evidence being that my older cousins (all twenty-six of them) are exempt from this line of questioning; that my sister is well on her way toward respectable, Isma’ili family-hood; and that here in the old country, my tawdry theories of progressive neocultural hybridization make even less sense than usual. I make eye contact with no one, grab a little Karachi banana from the center spread of postdinner fruits, and brace for the worst.

“You’re overdue,” he says.

Like rent. Like car payments. Like this banana covered in soft, brown spots.

Across the table, the look on Ma’s face is unmistakably one of a mind at work. She is calculating some monstrosity of a multivariable equation, involving my sister’s marriage at twenty-five and upcoming five-year anniversary; twenty-six weddings of twenty-six first cousins; three grandnieces and four grandnephews; thirty-seven years of marriage to Pops—such that in the multifarious matrix of time, tradition, and propriety, all tallies end up with me in the red: overdue.

Paola’s Infinite Street Cred

Sofiya’s eyes are a little sunken, and up close, nose-to-nose—her breath mixing with my own—they are vast. The darkness of her eyes against the light brown of her cheeks makes it seem as if she was born with a just-right touch of kohl in permanent, perfect placement. I can’t see it, but her smile reverberates up through the delicate folds of her cheek under her eyes; her nose is soft as it slides across the side of my own; our eyes close gently, slowly, and into the moment. Four days before, Paola and I were taking a Tuesday postwork stroll around the municipal lake. She noticed I’d stopped paying attention to her workday story, and that moreover, our easy gait was accelerating toward a light jog. My eyes were trained fifty feet ahead of us on a certain striking somebody. Paola, being my lifelong best friend, could see right through me.

“Do you know her or something?”

“What? Oh yeah, maybe—I think she goes to my masjid.”

“Oh shit, really?”

I begged her to slow down as she began to tear ass toward the Unidentified PotentiallyIsma’ili Chokri. Paola knew what it meant—she had known my mother too long not to—that meeting a UPIC in an unprovoked, real-world, love-interest-type situation had all the trimmings of a big deal.

I pulled at her arm, but she broke my tackle: either she was looking to score eternal street cred with Ma, or else Paola’s rambunctious streak was some uncashed check of childhood revenge. Regardless, it was no more than a minute later that I was taking a first shy glance into Sofiya’s eyes.

“Hello.”

Game Recognize Antigame

It is undeniable that at its foundation, Pops’s jamat khana status as a Sweet & Funny Uncle is built upon merciless flirtation. It’s kind enough, and seemingly aimed at no particular gender, so as not to cross the line to Creepy Uncle. Pops makes it hard to not love him, a cup of Bapa Uncle’s chai in one hand, the other busied by gesticulation; holding court with his old buddies, or the twenty-something Corporate-Type IndoPaks who live in the city, or maybe the East Bay young college students. They are always laughing.

My sister Zarah either occupies her own group, or plays a perfect second fiddle to Pops’s irresistible charm—she is gregarious, attentive, kind, and a little sassy. Dynamic even. Her laugh can warm hearts and capture souls—as it’s done with Samir, my incredibly handsome but awkward brother-in-law; a caring being, yes, but one who will often wait in the parking lot to avoid conversation.

Ma operates on a more prophetic plane inside the prayer hall— if the game isn’t spiritual, she’s probably not playing it—or else, it’s the kind of fastidious social-religious work that would seemingly require a clipboard. (She doesn’t need one, though. Her practical capacity for doing good by her fellow murids is only surpassed by her spiritual one.)

Let’s say now—for the sake of experimentation—that one Friday, I happen to notice a Striking Woman by Bapa’s chai percolator. If you’ve been keeping score, things, seemingly, should go my way: sister and Pops, clever and engaging, masters of flirtation—are well occupied by their respective crowds. My handsome brother-in-law waves timidly while backing toward the door. My mother is either in a corner of the prayer hall, still silent and rocking at a Sufi’s pace, or else doing good somewhere.

Taking advantage of the moment, I move toward the percolator, mindlessly busy myself with chai preparation, and maybe get out a quick and mellow “hello” to said Striking Woman—the one and only innocent second before the Avalanche begins. Oh, my dear SW, let me introduce my entourage of misguided matchmakers: sister-and-Pops, suddenly and inexplicably free, materialize out of thin air, armed with coquettish collocations in stereo sound; brother-in-law Samir lingers awkwardly on the outskirts, having forgotten the keys to the car in my sister’s purse; Ma comes over for chai and unassumingly requests full contact information for the Jamati database. Et voilà—the Avalanche has swallowed me and Striking Woman whole, and I realize, in paralyzed awe, that this is most certainly the death of cool.

An Awkward Proclamation

Ice rattling in glasses, sitting closer than the bar’s seat requires—a good first date, yes, but on the edge of something bigger and unspoken: our special-ism lingers heavily below the light and airy excitement of getting to know each other, having met just four days before, around the lake. Lost in the flying moments of when someone looks at you like that, the day-and-time strikes me and I take an almost involuntary look at my wristwatch: it is Friday, five till, and my hair is a mess.

I wonder who will mention it first.

I make a firm commitment not to—so as not to ruin the beautiful secularity of this budding romance—and she doesn’t bat an eye. I don’t think she even knows wherejamat khana, much less Alameda, is. My heart buzzes at this possibility; then, on the bar, so does my iPhone: MA in big letters, visible to both of us.

“BABA, IT’S ALMOST DUA TIME! ARE YOU COMING?”

She always screams into cell phones. I turn down the volume in the earpiece and shoot a nervous smile toward Sofiya, who thinks either that this is cute, or that I am not the grown-ass man I purport to be. I hope for the former.

I let Ma down gently, all the while knowing that if she really knew what I was doing—exchanging loose looks with not-just-anychokri—missing Friday dua would be the kind of spiritual sacrificethat this particular Daughter of Abraham would offer up without a second thought. When I put the phone down, Sofiya’s eyes have that look of, So are you going to say it or am I?

And out it comes, in all its awkward glory:

“So . . . we are Isma’ili.”

“ . . . ”

“It was my mom, it’s dua time . . . I mean, you know.”

I decide that her silence says enough, that, yes, she does know, not just that it’s dua time, but that there are several parallel dimensions of time at work: it is overdue-shadi time; it is we’re-not-getting-any-younger-cultural-wish-fulfillment time; it’s jeez-it’s-nice-being-on-a-date-not-set-up-by-my-auntie time; it’s holy-shit-you’re-Isma’ili-and-I-like-you-I-wonder-if-my-parents-were-right time.

A few hours later, nose-to-nose, she tells me, in the dreamy almost of a whisper, that she can’t believe I’m Isma’ili. I take a page out of her book and keep my exclamations inside. Ican’t believe that the only thing compelling this tender moment is volition, that I amchoosing to be nasally close, that the –ism is absent, and the perfect storm of sister-and-Pops, brother, and Ma aren’t watching from somewhere, leaning in with their good-natured, poorly-executed yenta-ing.

Waiting for the Death of Everyone

“Baba, you will finish your master’s, then get a good job, and then you will meet a niceIsma’ili chokri. . . . I mean, Baba, you’re over . . .”

Due. Yeah, I know.

My mother’s zealous embrace of Old Chacha’s Mantra for Yours Truly is so unimaginatively textbook that I find the tired Ghosts of Every Pakistani Immigrant Past—the scenes in which a young brown boy has to explain, unintelligibly, why he neatly stacks pepperoni in the corner of his post-soccer-game paper plate; why root beer would cause some very understandable confusion; what a masjid, no less a jamat khana, is and why he keeps missing Friday-night school dances—are resurrected and renewed with each incantation of the O-word.

I thought, in the case of my family, as the Pakistani continues its steady, two-score drift toward the Pakistan American—cue Pops’s frustrating assimilatory rhetoric about “The Greatest Nation on Earth” and “Democracy and Freedom”—that these weary Ghosts would finally get some deserved rest. That maybe, in their place, we would build new, complex, and nuanced stories, alive and reflective of our changing conditions; that our stories would engender the myths, morals, and lore that shall trickle down and guide posterity.

I guess not.

Instead, I am now abruptly exposed to this redoubled effort for cultural continuity and core value, after hiding, for the past half decade, in the penumbra of my sister’s wedding. Zarah, true to traditional form, got married at twenty-five—not just to some man with subcontinental roots—but a bona fide, Allah-fearin’, Ali-lovin’ Shia Imami Isma’ili Muslim. She kept not only in the race but in the sect!

This choice deserves no reprehension—excuse me if I’ve made it sound so. I respect the values and honor the deep love hidden in my mother’s hackneyed proclamations. Moreover, I witness, almost daily, the ease, joy, and love in my sister’s marriage. This is the ease, the very same brand of it, that my parents have fought their up-hill, immigrant fights to secure forme. Shit, maybe I’m even a little envious about how things have worked out for my sister. What is this obscure desire for Freedom and Democracy in my love life? Is this—gasp—what assimilation feels like?

I used to joke with my cousins about how we just needed to wait until the entire parent generation dies before the work of neo- Isma’ilism can commence. Seems like I’m the only one who still remembers the joke.

The Deathblow

Paola sometimes does this thing where she mouths the words you’re saying while you’re talking to her, somewhere between repetition and prediction, so it kind of looks like she’s a mirror that’s trying to read your mind. This is especially the case after coming home from a date, when the action potential of a kiss-and-tell story takes her into full-steam predictive mode: she’ll even start dropping the occasional sentence finisher or two.

It’s Monday evening, I didn’t see Paola all weekend; the anticipation has reached a boil. So when I start telling her about the peculiar last few days re: Sofiya—a record of cosmic oddities and bad luck in the gauzy shadow of a phenomenal first date—her penchant for prediction ends up becoming the proverbial last straw:

“Many things, P. A few too many bad omens with this one. Weird shit. I mean she’s fantastic, but—”

“—she looks like your sister?”

“ . . . ”

The innocence of it and the honesty behind it soften the blow a bit, but goddamn it—this is never something anyone wants to hear.

Although unintentional, Paola’s unfortunate proclivity for sentence closers was the masterstroke at the end of a brief and ill-fated potential love-interest-type situation, a fitting capstone to a weekend of madness and misfortune. Suddenly, my special Friday night feelings couldn’t have seemed further away, and I was left in wonderment: how could it all fall to pieces in seventy-two hours?

So I tell Paola everything.

I tell her about how I went to sleep on Friday reeling in the nuances of a date at once volitional and votive, strange and intimate. And how I slept soundly, grinning like a dope.

Then, a rude awakening: on a clear and bright Saturday morning— the morning after an outstanding first date—the unseasonable, the unpredictable, the damn near impossible for such a low altitude: the Avalanche.

A Saturday morning text message fromZARAH read: Heard you had a big date last night 😉 LOL.

With the speed afforded only by modern smartphone technology, I dialed my sister’s number with the kind of panicked instinct expressly reserved for autonomic processes. My mind caught up a half second later and I ended the call to assess: How? Who? Paola? No, impossible. Public place—spying? Allah?

I call back another minute later, and my sister answered the phone with a kind of elongatedhey, stretched out extra long in that I-know-what-you-did-last-night kind of tone. I cursed at her immediately in a half-playful, half-sororicidal fashion, demanding truth and explanations.

The taqueria. They met in line. We had just talked about this specific taqueria, the night before—how I love it, how Sofiya loves it, how the whole fam loves it—did I put it in her head?

“Your friend happens to know Samir—they went to Al-Ummah together, in ’96.”

I was beyond belief. Zarah knew this, and I sensed she was graciously holding back her pleasure at my suffering. Isma’ili summer camp? Upstate New York? Fifteen years ago?

“What’s the damage?”

“Me, Samir—Pops was there, too. Don’t worry, we’ve already agreed not to tell Mom.”

She read my mind. This was bad enough. Definitely can’t tell Ma. Things were already turning for the worse. Telling Ma would introduce a wild card into an already fragile situation. The explosive potential energy of mentioning The Fabled Isma’ili Chokri could very well blow this whole thing apart.

On the phone with my sister still, the call-waiting screen popped up, reading SOFIYA. I took a deep breath, but not deep enough, and inadvertently answered with that same stupid heymy sister had just used.

Cosmic Kismet

So it’s not as bad I think: Zarah and Pops kept it cool, and apparently Samir, in a rare case of animation—brought on, perhaps, by fond camp memories—was a bit charming himself. The worst of it is in my head, as the soul search for The Meaning of All This commences: is this a simple coincidence? A cute cosmic joke? Foul play, or maybe conspiracy? More than anything, where can I find some privacy in the –ism? Is that even possible, or else, the point? I feel an acute sense of dread: the shrinking space of my formerly independent potential love-interest-type situation.

The coup de grâce a la Paola, of course, would become the-end- as-we-know-it of this hapless love, but it was truly the irony of Ma’s sense of spiritual-religious responsibility that set everything in motion toward an irrevocable end: a mundane Sunday closet-cleaning, a phone number found, remembrance of a promise, and a love-shattering phone call.

I imagine it sounded something like this:

“Hello, is this Sofiya? Ya Ali madad, darling, my name is Shamim Aunty, from Alamedajamat khana. How are you doing? . . .Good, beta. Well, Sofiya honey, I met your mother a few months ago . . . Yes, right, when she was visiting. She gave me your number and I’ve just now found it . . . I know, funny . . . Well, she said that you might need a reminder every now and again to come to jamat khana, and I promised her I would call you, so darling, you should really try to make it some Friday . . . Mmhmm, yes, I know . . . mmhmm . . . of course. You live where? Oh perfect! My son lives in Oakland, he has a car, his name is—”

Again, SOFIYA—a text this time—which reads, thirty-six hours after Friday night: I think your mother just called me.

Bapa’s Chai

Navroz always packs the house—a fire hazard of a Persian New Year celebration, where 130murids squeeze into the tiny officepark- cum-masjid, capacity 70. I know she’ll be there, and I consider joining Samir in the parking lot to sit this one out. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, vis-a-vis my precipitous drop off the planet. Just thinking about the bullshit sincerity of the clichéd excuse—I’m just not in that place right now, or You’re just too good, or the immortal I don’t want to get attached—was making me sick with anxiety. To lie so unabashedly, and to cloak it in earnestness: it seems almost sacrilegious to wield such dunya banalities in a place so expressly concerned with cultivating a healthy sense of deen.

She’s standing right by Bapa’s percolator, and moving in this time elicits no familial Avalanche (their absence most likely spurred by a fiery tirade at the dinner table on the topic of “Minding One’s Own Business,” by Yours Truly). We get some air outside, the steam of our chais rising from Styrofoam cups into the cool March night. Behind the strained, excruciatingly robotic small talk, Sofiya’s eyes are calling: So are you going to say it, or am I?

I want to say it all, I want to paint a picture of my mental landscape so vivid that it would surely rescue me from my current (presumed) status as Another Asshole Who Didn’t Call. I want to tell her about how I can’t deal with the ways in which the –ism looms so large. That I want to stand up from prostration and speak directly into the big, scary face of Tradition, and say, Hey, bow toward me a little bit, like I bow toward you! Just give me some room, and I’ll do this my way, and I’ll do it with good heart and a right mind, like you taught me! But is this really a conversation to have with an institution? Or is it a really about my mother? As in Ma, I love you, but I’m a grown-ass man and you can’t play a major part in my love life, albeit by utter cosmic accident.

So I don’t: I don’t say any of it. My heart and mind go cold like this chai in my hands, and I spout off some spurious excuse-for-an-excuse that impresses no one and leaves both of us feeling ashamed and sad.

I slink back through the front door of the office-park-cum-masjid, into the warmth of bodies created by endless uncles and aunties standing too close to one another; into the warmth of knowing that Ma and Pops and Zarah and Samir—abashed and perhaps afraid of me for tonight—linger somewhere out of my line of sight; into the warmth of Bapa’s gaze, who signals to me, sticks his finger into my cold chai, shoots me an indignant glance before he dumps it out, and pours me a hot, fresh cup.