The Garden of My Imaan

There is a lake not far from my house, with a sandy beach on one end and spongy walking trails on the other. In the summer, Zayd and I go there to swim and Amma, our grandmother, tags along. When Badi Amma was stronger, she’d come too. Our great-grandmother loved to kick up the sand with her toes.

Our little beach is just about the only sandy place we have close by. As far as I know, there are no deserts to speak of in the Northeast, only mountains to the west, the ocean to the east, and a coastal plain in between. I remember all this because I made a travel brochure in fourth grade social studies class one year ago.

And so, when the crazy lady screamed at us about deserts, I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she pretty much ruined our day.

Tha morning, Mom was really annoyed that I didn’t get out of bed when she called me, but a storm had kept me tossing and turning for most of the night and it was hard to wake up. Fifteen minutes later, I heard her arguing with Zayd too. By 9:30, we were on the road to Sunday school. By 9:45, we were stuck in traffic, still some distance away from the intersection where we normally turned left to go to the Islamic Center of Wilshire County.
“Looks like the lights aren’t working right.” Mom craned her neck to see ahead of us. “Maybe the wind knocked the wires down last night.”
“There should be someone directing traffic,” I said. “Where’s the cop?”
“Sleeping in on Sunday,” my brother Zayd chimed in.
“We’re going to be really late.” I kept my eye on the dashboard clock, already trying to prepare myself for Sister Kahn’s comments about punctuality and tardiness.
We inched our way forward and finally came to the intersection where the traffic light flashed red. Mom hesitated waiting to see if someone would let us through.
I saw an opening in the oncoming traffic and yelled, “Go, Mom!”
She stepped on the gas and whipped the car into a left turn.
“Watch out!” I shouted. Our tires squeled as she shot into the intersection, toward a car that had appeared out of nowhere. Mom slammed on the brakes and we came to a jerky stop, narrowly avoiding a collision. The other car swerved around us.
“Do you want to kill someone?” the driver screamed out her window. “Go back to the desert, moron! Drive a camel!”
I could see her glaring angrily at us as she sped away.
Flustered, Mom tugged at her dupatta, which she had started to slide off her head. “Sorry,” she muttered to herself. “It was a stupid mistake.”
Quietly, I eased my own scarf off my head.
My brother poked me on the shoulder. “What did she mean, ‘Go back to the desert’? We’re not from the desert, are we?”
“Just shut up, Zayd!” I snapped.
“And what did she mean, ‘drive a camel’?” he persisted. “No one drives camels. They ride them, don’t they?”
“Ignorant woman!” Mom shook her head. “She thinks we’re Arabs.”
“It was the hijab, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Mom noticed me playing with my scarf in my lap. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing… I will put it back on in a sec.”
“Oh, Aliya!” Mom sounded exasperated.
Zayd piped up from the backseat. “Hey, Mom, did you ever do that?”
“Do what, Zayd?”
“Ride a camel?”
“No!” Mom said sharply.
“Did Amma or Babi Amma?”
Mom sighed and moved forward another car length. “Of course not, Zayd. Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” Zayd said. “It would be kind of fun to sit on top of the hump and go bumpity bump.”
“There are no camels in India, you idiot.” I pointed out.
“There are camels in Rajasthan, but that’s very much beside the point,” Mom said. “And besides, Rajasthan is one thousand miles away from where Amma lived.”
“Why would that woman say that, Mom?” I asked.
“Because she’s an ignorant person who doesn’t know her geography and has no clue about things in general.” Mom’s brow creased with worry. “She clearly doesn’t know that Muslims come from all corners of the world. Just put it entirely out of your mind, okay?”
But that was hard to do. We drove the rest of the way in silence.