After Uncle Tomás tells me about the day in 1967 when his father, my abuelo, whipped him for slapping his high school teacher in the ass, the two of us haul bags of weeds and garden detritus to the garage, and Mom helps us drag them in. They are heavy and smell of pollen. I hold back a sneeze. Mom tells me about Uncle Mike. “He was always getting into trouble,” she says. “He’s such a crybaby, but he somehow got himself in all these situations.”

When Miguelito refused to cut his Beatles hair, Mom tells me, Abuela waited for him to return from school before she ordered her other children to tackle him to the ground. Lourdes and Gloria pinned him at the wrists, Carlos and Tomás sat on his ankles, and Mom held him by the temples. Miguelito’s mane flowed sweaty and thick over Mom’s tiny fingers. She was the youngest.

Abuela retrieved a large pair of scissors from the counter and knelt on the creaking wood floor, binding Miguelito’s ribcage with the legs that had brought him into this world. She fitted his chin into the crook of her palm – “You listen to me, Miguel. You want the hair of a hippie? You can have it.” – and, as he stared back in horror, she let go of his chin, clutched his hair, and sliced away unruly chunks. She left half his do untouched, wild, brown, and elbow-length, and reduced the other side to stubble, tufts protruding from his gray scalp like the skin of a poorly shaved dog. “There,” she said. “Now you look like a real street monster. You like that?” His five other siblings, his cousins, and his friends ridiculed him. Two days later, he cut the rest himself.

The other siblings laughed, but they knew they too could become victims of their mother’s wrath. They had evaded the Trujillato in the Dominican Republic, but a piece of it followed them. Today, we refer to the women of the Paoli family as the Paoli Generals after our ancestor General Pasquale Paoli. General Paoli freed Corsica from Italy and founded the world’s first constitutional democracy. The Corsican Republic lasted little more than a decade before the French invaded, claimed the island for their own, and exiled General Paoli to London. In time, he returned, universally adored by his countrymen, including a young Napoleon, as a symbol of justice and liberty, and he was elected into the French-subsumed government.

When General Paoli sided with royalty in the French Revolution, Napoleon turned on him, and General Paoli, with the help of the British imperial fleet and the authority of King George III, chased Napoleon into France, freeing Corsica once again, this time from the French. But France quickly took back the island. General Paoli returned to London, where he lived his final days.

In the garage, Mom describes Abuela as the Paoli matriarch, an instrument of brutal reason. Outside in the grass, a squirrel raises its head, attentive to the sparse suburban traffic. A bird calls across the yard.

“They deserved it, you know,” Mom says. “Our family has a problem with authority.”

“Easy for you to say,” Uncle Tomás interrupts. “She never beat you.”

“That’s because I was good,” she says.

“It’s because you were fuckin’ spoiled!”

Mom rolls her eyes. When a child misbehaved, she explains to me, Abuela would wait for him or her to enter the shower. Usually it was Miguelito. After the water ran, she would unwind a metal coat hanger, open the bathroom door, rip aside the curtains, and swing at the shivering creature. He would squeeze his legs together, covering his privates. “I’m sorry!” he’d cry, and Abuela would swing harder. “Sorry isn’t good enough!”

“That’s what you tell me when I do something bad,” I cut in.

“You’re lucky I don’t do the other stuff,” Mom replies.

To his people, Pasquale was a general. But to the Italians, the French, and later his royal friends in Britain – when revolutionaries in the Thirteen Colonies opened Paoli Taverns in his honor – he was a rabble-rouser. The Paolis were experienced in the art of discipline because they had played equal part punisher and punished, occupier and occupied, general and soldier. But more so the latter.

Mom says we’re kicked out of every place we go. My great-grandmother’s ancestors migrated to the Dominican Republic from Germany. Pasquale ceded from Italy, then France, then was exiled for the second and last time to Britain. My great-great-grandfather left Italy for America, then America for the Dominican Republic as a US soldier in the occupation in 1917, staying behind after the country claimed independence and losing his American citizenship after he spent years voting in his new homeland.

Mom’s family left the Dominican Republic to arrive here, whipping their tail from beneath the clamp of Ramfis Trujillo’s boot as the US invaded once again in 1965. I have to assume my time is coming.

A week later we host a birthday party for one of my little cousins, Bella. Uncle Tomás isn’t invited. Titi Gloria, Mom’s eldest sibling, finds me sitting alone. I ask her about Trujillo, and she tells me about her relationship with the dictator’s regime. Before they left the Dominican Republic, Gloria protested the Trujillato. Abuela told her to stay at home, but Gloria didn’t listen. Abuela beat her harder and harder until one day she cracked open her daughter’s skull.

Titi Gloria tells this to me with gusto, as if delivering one of her many sermons, when the family circles around a meal as she sings Jesus’s praises while we grumble and rub our bellies. Titi Gloria’s evangelical, gives grace with vibrato. Still, we ask her to give grace at every party, like this one, and she’s careful about not calling Jesus “god.” When she’s done she asks Dad to come up and say something, and he’ll refuse politely. Everyone will chime in, and he’ll accept.

Dad and Titi Gloria balance each other well. She had a hard time accepting Mom’s conversion to Islam, but she’s come to terms with it. Mom has told me the transition wasn’t hard. She says she doesn’t feel like she lost anything. Islam changed a few things, but a lot was the same. So were the families. Both were large, and both partied hard at weddings. She says she wishes Dad’s family had been more dedicated to Islam, had been more willing to teach her values and practices that she would learn later. Dad and I are more Muslim now thanks to her. She’s cooked ropa vieja and arroz con pollo with halal meat for the party, so I can still eat Dominican food. Her and Dad don’t follow halal as strictly as I do, but they’re happy that I do it.

***

“Bend over.”
Tomás chewed the insides of his cheeks and focused on his toes atop the tiles. He inhaled the habichuela and plátanos. A moment passed, another, and with a grunt and a muffled whoosh, Abuelo struck him.
“Eyyaaaa!” Tomás screamed.
He heard Abuelo step back. “Do you know why this is happening, Tomás?”
Tomás balled his fists at his knees. He was going to be the king of the world.
“She was s-so hot!” he cried. “I c-couldn’t help it!”
Abuelo’s voice teetered to a higher volume. “Excuse me, Tomás?”
“She was s-so damn hot!”
He heard Abuelo step forward and swing. The pain came an instant later and burned.
“How dare you speak back to me!” Abuelo thundered.
Again, he swung the leather.
“B-but she was s-so hot, Papá!”
Smack!
“B-but she was so fucking hot!”
Smack!
“Papá! I c-couldn’t help it!”
Smack!
“Her ass was r-right there, what was I—”
Smack!
“Aaaa! Papá!”
Smack!
“Papá!”
The pain caught up with Tomás. It clung to him with urgency, singing shrilly in his ears. His back arched and his toes curled. His tongue twisted into itself and his teeth ground against one another. For a moment, he felt that he had left his body. First he believed he was in Abuelo’s body, delivering his own wounds. And then the body of the light from the window behind him, old and waning as the day completed itself. And then he was in the clothesline, vibrating, pulsing, flickering to a rapid beat, jazz maybe, or bachata, but bereft of melody. All drums. He jerked his head as if from a pool of cold water and discovered himself in his own body again, neck craned upward, staring into the hall. He heard Abuelo’s footsteps fade into an adjacent room. “Mi hijo . . .” Abuelo whispered.
Something black slipped from the clothesline. The tip of a boot, big as an ogre’s, then a thick, armored pant leg sealed to the boot, followed by half a torso, an arm, the blade of a sword, and a morion with its visor lowered. The rest of the body fell through the clothesline, moving impossibly into three dimensions like a beam of light split along all trajectories. The figure knelt in the doorway, and at last Tomás could discern what it was. A knight in shining armor, suited in black and, kneeling, as tall as the doorframe. The figure reeked of gasoline.
The knight rested his forearm on his upright knee and with his free hand lifted his visor. It clanked. Beneath was a sheath of stained glass and a breathing apparatus. He punched a rusted protrusion beneath his chin. The apparatus exhaled and the glass slipped away, revealing blue eyes, bushy brown eyebrows, and thin lips adorned with a generous, vibrant red mustache. He made a point of smiling.
“Hello, Tomás. Didn’t think I’d find you?” He spoke Spanish like a Spaniard, steady and formal, and at first Tomás did not understand his accent. The knight looked over Tomás’s shoulder and shrugged. His garments banged and scraped against one another. He smirked. “Was her ass worth yours?”
“Who the hell a-are you, man?” Tomás demanded.
The knight paused and stroked his nose with an iron-gloved finger.
“What year is it?”
“Uh, 1967.”
The knight spat onto the floor. “Shit.” He shook his head. “Shit shit shit.”
Tomás gestured with his chin at the knight. “You gotta problem?”
“I was supposed to kill you at a different time. Clean. No paradoxes.” He stared off. “Shit. Shit shit shit.”
“Kill me?” Tomás lifted a hand from his knee and beat his chest. “Why not k-kill me now, cabrón?”
“You would want to fight me. You stupid, stupid boy.” The knight continued to stare into the wall. “But I can’t. No paradoxes. I said that. No paradoxes.”
“What did I d-do to you, man?” Tomás asked, digging a fingernail into his palm to counter the pain in his ass.
The knight tilted his head, but his eyes remained on the wall. The cupboards rose on either side of the door, bearing rows of plates, glasses, and condiments. The air was still, as if a hurricane had passed through these rooms hours ago. Tomás could hear his father’s urine spool into the toilet in the adjacent room, and he wanted to call out. Fear and pain paralyzed him.
“You kill me. Killed me. Will kill me. One of those,” the knight murmured. And then, with distant confidence: “It’s a fucking mess.” He faced Tomás and pointed his thumbs in opposite directions. “You and I, we’re going along, downstream upstream. Time travel, man. How many times have we fought? Will we fight? Are we fighting? You’re still here, you know, and so am I. I have to wipe the slate clean. I killed so many . . . but you I can’t. I try so hard. I really do.”
“Hey! Answer me. Who the hell a-are you?” Tomás demanded, louder now.
The man shifted his left boot. His mustache twitched.
“You wouldn’t remember. We’re side by side, you and me.” He began to turn. “I’ll be back soon.” He turned back. “Oh, and don’t forget: Keep some change in your pocket. It’s very important you do that, Tomás.”
With this, the man turned. The floorboards groaned under his weight. He coughed, punched his chin, and slipped through the clothesline. The line twanged.

***

I remember when Kareem met our research team three years ago and taught us how to use the machine. He got excited when he figured out I was Muslim and more excited when I told him Mom was from the Dominican Republic.

“Oh, dude!” he exclaimed. “Dude. You dating any Dominicans?”

“Not really?”

He punched me in the arm. “Latina chicks are so hot, dude. You gotta hit that up. You got access, you know? I’m Egyptian. It’s here and there with us. Same with Pakistanis. Así así.” He winked. “But dude. Dominicans, man. You got access. You gotta key that in. The Dominican side. Oh, man. Oh, dude.”

“Uh, sure.”

I spent a year assembling in the robotics lab in the building next door and machining parts in the basement of the engineering school. Most of this time was spent with Kareem, who was meticulous in his preparation of each part. He blasted the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Quentin Tarantino soundtracks through the lab speakers, unearthing vivid childhood memories of Dad playing music on long drives to Vermont. Kareem liked that I was president of the Muslim Students Association. He had graduated a few years before me and had worked on the MSA Board when he was an undergrad. We discovered we ran in the same friend circles with young alumni. (“You know Omar?” “Yeah.” “You know Rayan?” “Yeah.” “You know Shan?” “Yeah.” “You know Hajira?” “Yeah.”) He lingered on the edges of my social field of view, here in the basement lab where it was hot and loud, hidden under the Greek pillars and Roman numerals and offices and suits and libraries. Here beneath the foundation, where it clanked like rusty clockwork and reeked of gasoline, sawdust, and burning plastic.

“Don’t tell anyone on the MSA I’m here,” he cautioned. “My parents are trying to hook me up with a family friend around campus and word spreads and I already got this girl, you feel?”

“Sure, man,” I agreed.

He explained his evolution to me while lathing a shaft for our robot’s wrist.

“I got disillusioned like every Muslim gets in undergrad, and I was like, ‘Fuck it.’ It’s too much dealing with these people, you know? But you’re president, man. That’s very cool. You’re not like the rest of those idiots.” He looked up. “Don’t be like me. I want to make sure you don’t end up like me. I got fucked up. Don’t let that happen, man.”

I shrugged. “They’re not all idiots. There are some really good people doing good work, I think. Smart and faithful and dedicated.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. I know what you’re saying.” He removed his goggles. “But you know what I mean. You get it.”

I avoided Kareem’s gaze.

“Yeah, I do,” I conceded. I missed the easy camaraderie of my high school robotics team, when the five of us relished the long, torturous hours. If the specter of NYPD surveillance and the university administration’s complicity in it wasn’t burden enough for Muslims on campus, we had our own differences to contend with, too.

He returned to the lathe and told me about his plans. He wanted to save enough to purchase or build his own boat, and then he would buy a shitload of supplies and take a copy of the Qur’an and maybe some Hadith and maybe some Al-Ghazali—but mostly just the Qur’an—and he’d sail the world. “I wanna get away from all this shit. I want it to be me and God, one on one.”

I laughed a little bit and thought about Titi Gloria and Uncle Jimmy, who used to sail to and from Puerto Rico and Manhattan.

“That’s cool, man,” I said, “but you know Muhammad, peace be upon him—he came down from the mountain. He didn’t sit there in his cave meditating on Gabriel’s message. He descended. Islam is about the people too. It’s about this world.”

I felt like a hypocrite. I prefer the cave on the mountain, too.

“I know,” Kareem replied, “but I need this. I need to, you know, sail the world.”

I smiled. “Like Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction.”

He pointed at me and yelped with joy. “Yes. Like that. That’s fucking it. We vibe, dude. We so vibe.”

Now, two years later and thirty feet away from the spot where he’d lathed the robot’s wrist, Kareem finally arrives at the lab. I don my gloves. He takes my hand and we chest-bump. “Salaams dude,” he says. “Gimme a sec.” He drops off a few parts and grabs his jacket. “I’m so glad we finally get to have lunch. It’s been a while. Sorry for my rants.” He has a habit of sending me long emails about the state of the ummah or Shari’a or the latest radical nutjob. I don’t mind, but I’m always too busy to read and think about them deeply. I tell him this. I tell him I prefer talking in person. It’s more valuable, I say. But I know I do the same to my other friends.

We walk down toward the nearest halal dive on 125th and Amsterdam. We miss it at first and double back and miss it again. When we walk in, we see the place is changed. The once-open kitchen on the right is now barely visible behind the cash register, which has moved to the back. The shelves are higher, and somehow they don’t seem to hold as many hookah.

“Whoa, it’s totally different,” I tell the waiter.

“Yes,” he says, smiling.

“It’s been a while,” I explain.

Kareem and I sit down and order shawarma. We talk about how hard it is to work as engineers. We’re implicated in military and economic power. We talk about the bureaucratization of the aerospace industry. The general public has little say in what is supposed to serve as a project for the good of humanity. I tell him about Boeing’s X-37 orbital drone, an autonomous space shuttle whose details remain classified. I tell him premodern understandings of Shari’a might provide legal structures that favor plurality and community empowerment over centralized power. Kareem nods and raises his hands in delight. It’s like I’m ranting to Glory, but Kareem isn’t just willing to listen. He understands. He says 3D printers are the solution. He believes that in fifty years, 3D printers will decentralize the technology industry. Anyone can make anything for dirt cheap. People will fabricate plastic, iron, aluminum, and more from their closets. “That’s real democracy,” he concludes. “That’s real freedom.”

“Man,” I say. “Most people, I say something, I have to explain so much. You get it.”

He shakes his head. “You have no idea. Sometimes I think I’m crazy.”

“Me, too.”

“People are stuck in their worlds.” He tells me about a guy ISIS burned to death. “It’s fucking crazy, man. These fucking idiots. They know nothing about Islam. We’re fighting each other for no reason. People are just . . .”

“It’s a political thing,” I say. “It’s about homogenizing power. We need a society that can accommodate multiple ways of being.”

He nods. “Yes. That’s it. People need to let people be. Let them live how they want to live.”