"The Lord of Jesus," a voice from the back of the old church puts forth.

"The Lord of Mary," cries a female voice.

Another ventures, "The Lord of Bathsheba."

"The Lord of Zipporah," calls a third.

The preacher decides the time to close has come. "The Lord of us all," he booms, leaning as close into the microphone as a rock star. He is wiping the shine from his tall bald head with a white handkerchief. He is filmed with sweat. It has made his starched collar wilt. He has been in his kafir way wrestling with devils, wrestling even with Ahmad's devils. "The Lord of us all," he repeats, mournfully. "Amen."

"Amen," many say, in relief and emptiness. There is silence, and then a businesslike sound of m.u.f.fled pacing as four men in their suits march two abreast up the aisle to receive wooden plates while the choir with a ma.s.sive rustle stands and readies itself to sing. A small robed man who has made up for his shortness by growing his kinky hair into a tall puff lifts his arms in readiness as the grave men in pastel polyester suits take the plates the preacher has handed them and fan out, two down the center aisle and two on the sides. They expect money to be placed in the plates, which have red felt bottoms to soften the rattle of coins. The unexpected word "impure" returns from the sermon; Ahmad's insides tremble with the impure trespa.s.s of his witnessing these black unbelievers at worship of their non-G.o.d, their three-headed idol; it is like seeing s.e.x among people, pink scenes glimpsed over the shoulders of boys misusing their computers at school.

Abraham, Noah: these names are not totally strange to Ahmad. The Prophet in the third sura affirmed: We believe in G.o.d, and in what bath been sent down to us, and what hath been sent down to Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and in what was given to Moses, and Jesus, and the Prophets, from their Lord. We make no difference between them. We believe in G.o.d, and in what bath been sent down to us, and what hath been sent down to Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and in what was given to Moses, and Jesus, and the Prophets, from their Lord. We make no difference between them. These people around him are too in their fashion People of the Book. These people around him are too in their fashion People of the Book. Why disbelieve ye the signs of G.o.d? Why repel believers from the way of G.o.d? Why disbelieve ye the signs of G.o.d? Why repel believers from the way of G.o.d?

The electric organ, played by a man the back of whose neck shows rolls of creased flesh as if to form another face, makes a trickle of sound, then jabs out a swoop like a splash of icy water. The choir, Joryleen among them, in the front row, begins to sing. Ahmad has eyes only for her, the way she opens her mouth so wide, the tongue inside so pink behind her small round teeth, like half-buried pearls. "What a friend we have in Jesus," he understands the opening words to say, slowly, as if dragging the burden of the song up from some cellar of sorrow. "All our sins and griefs to bear!" The congregation behind Ahmad greets the words with grunts and yips of a.s.sent: they know this song, they like it. From the side aisle a kafir man taller than most, in a lemon-yellow suit, with a big broad-knuckled hand that makes the collection plate look the size of a saucer, pa.s.ses it into the row where Ahmad sits. Ahmad pa.s.ses it on quickly, depositing nothing; it tries to fly out of his hand, the wood is so surprisingly light, but he brings it down to the level of the little girl next to him, her scrabbly brown hands, not quite a baby's, reaching to s.n.a.t.c.h it away and pa.s.s it on. She, who has been looking up at him with bright dog-eyes, has inched over so that her wiry small body touches his, leaning so softly she may think he will not notice. Still feeling himself a trespa.s.ser, he stiffly ignores her, looking straight ahead as if to read the words from tire mouths of the robed singers. "What a priv-i-ege priv-i-ege to carry," he understands, "everything to G.o.d in prayer." to carry," he understands, "everything to G.o.d in prayer."

Ahmad himself loves prayer, the sensation of pouring the silent voice in his head into a silence waiting at his side, an invisible extension of himself into a dimension purer than the three dimensions of this world. Joryleen has told him she would be singing a solo, but she stays in her row, between a fat older woman and a skinny one the color of dried leadier, all jiggling slightly in their shimmery blue robes, their mouths pretty much in unison, so he cannot tell which voice is Joryleen's. Her eyes stay on the puff-haired director and not once stray toward Ahmad, though he has risked h.e.l.lfire to accept her invitation. He wonders if Tylenol is in the evil congregation at his back; his shoulder hurt for a day where Tylenol had gripped it. "... All because we do not carry," the choir sings, "everything to G.o.d in prayer." These women's voices all together, with the deeper ones of the men standing in the row behind, have a stately frontal quality, like an army advancing without fear of attack. The many throats are ma.s.sed into an organ sound, unanswerable, plaintive, far removed from an imam's single voice intoning the music of the Qur'an, a music tiiat enters the s.p.a.ces behind your eyes and sinks into a silence of your brain.

The electronic organist slips into a different rhythm, a hippity-hop studded with a knocking noise, a wooden per- cussion produced at the back of die choir, by an instrument, a set of sticks, that Ahmad cannot see. The congregation greets the shift of tempo with mutters of approval, and the choir begins to keep the rhythm with its feet, its hips. The organ makes a gulping, dipping sound. The song is shedding the clothing of its words, which become harder to understand-something about trials and temptations and trouble anywhere. The skinny dried-up woman next to Jory-leen steps forward and, in a voice that sounds like a man's, a mellow man's, asks the congregation, "Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share?" Behind her the chorus is chanting the one word, "Prayer, prayer, prayer." The organist is bouncing up and down, seemingly going his own way but keeping in touch. Ahmad hadn't known the organ had so many notes on the keyboard, high ones and low ones, all in cl.u.s.ters hurrying upward, upward. "Prayer, prayer, prayer," the chorus keeps chanting, letting that fat organist have his solo say.

Then comes Joryleen's turn; she steps forward into a spatter of clapping, and her eyes skim right across Ahmad's face before she turns the full-lipped oval of her own face toward the crowd beyond his pew and higher, in the balcony. She takes a breath; his heart stops, fearful for her. But her voice unspools a luminous thread: "Are we weak and heavy laden, c.u.mbered with a load of care?" Her voice is young and frail and pure, with a little quaver to it before her nervousness settles. "Precious Savior, still our refuge," she sings. Her voice relaxes into a bra.s.sy color, with a rasping edge, then rises in sudden freedom to a shriek like that of a child pleading to be let into a locked door. The congregation murmurs approval of these liberties. Joryleen cries out, "Do-hoo thy friends despise, for-horsake thee?"

"Hey, well, do they?" the fat woman next to her calls out, chiming in as if Joryleen's solo is a warm bath become too inviting to stay out of. She jumps in not to jostle Joryleen but to join her; hearing this other voice beside her, Joryleen tries a few off notes, harmonizing, her young voice getting bolder, transported into self-forgetfulness. "In his arms," she sings, "in his arms, in his arms he'll take and shield thee; thou wilt find, oh mercy yes, a solace there."

"Yes, a solace; yes, a solace," the fat woman echoes, and steps out into a roar of recognition, of love from the crowd, for her voice takes them deep into and then right out of the bottom of their lives, Ahmad feels. Her voice has been seasoned in the suffering that for Joryleen is mainly ahead, a mere shadow on her young life. With that authority, the fat woman, her face as broad as a stone idol's, begins again, with "What a friend." Dimples appear not just below her cheeks but at the corners of her eyes, the sides of her broad flat nose, as her nostrils flare at a fierce slant. The hymn has by now been so pounded into the veins and nerves of those gathered here that it can be accessed at any point. "All our sins, I mean all all our sins and griefs-hear that, Lord?" The choir, Joryleen among them, hang on undismayed while this fat ecstatic snaps her arms back and forth, swings them for a moment in the mock-comic jaunty triumph of someone striding down a gangplank after crossing a stormy sea, and shoots out a pointing hand to the writhing reaches of the balcony, shouting, "Hear that? Hear that?" our sins and griefs-hear that, Lord?" The choir, Joryleen among them, hang on undismayed while this fat ecstatic snaps her arms back and forth, swings them for a moment in the mock-comic jaunty triumph of someone striding down a gangplank after crossing a stormy sea, and shoots out a pointing hand to the writhing reaches of the balcony, shouting, "Hear that? Hear that?"

"We hearin' it, sister," comes back a man's voice.

"Hear what, brother?" She answers the question: "All "All our sins and griefs to bear. Think of those sins. Think of those griefs. They're our babies, isn't that right? Sins and griefs, our natural-born babies." The chorus keeps dragging the our sins and griefs to bear. Think of those sins. Think of those griefs. They're our babies, isn't that right? Sins and griefs, our natural-born babies." The chorus keeps dragging the tune along, but faster now. The organ clambers and jounces, the percussion sticks keep knocking out of sight, the fat woman shuts her eyes and slaps the word "Jesus" across the blindly continuing beat, shortening it to "Jeez. Jeez. Jeez," and breaking into, as if another song is leaking in, "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the love, all day, all night." As the choir sings, "O what needless pain we bear," she sobs, "Needless, needless. We need to take it to Jesus, we need to, need need to!" When the choir, still under the control of the small man with the high puff of hair, arrives at the last line, she does too, singing it, "Everything, everything, every little old thing to G.o.d in prayer. Yeaahuyess." to!" When the choir, still under the control of the small man with the high puff of hair, arrives at the last line, she does too, singing it, "Everything, everything, every little old thing to G.o.d in prayer. Yeaahuyess."

The choir, Joryleen's the widest-open, freshest mouth in it, stops singing. Ahmad finds his eyes heated and his stomach in such a stir he fears he might vomit, here among these yelping devils. The false saints in the soot-darkened tall windows look down. The face of a scowling white-bearded one burns with a pa.s.sing beam of sun. The little girl has snuggled into his side without his noticing; suddenly heavy, she has fallen asleep in the heart of the huge, belting music. The whole rest of the family, down the length of the pew, smiles at him, at her.

He doesn't know if he should wait for Joryleen outside the church, as the worshippers in their pastel spring outfits push out into the April air, which is turning watery and chill as clouds overhead tarnish darker. Ahmad's indecision is prolonged while, half hiding behind a curbside locust tree that survived the demolition that created the lake of rubble, he satisfies himself that Tylenol was not in the crowd. Then, just as he decides to sneak away, there she is, coming up to him, serving up all her roundnesses like fruit on a plate. She wears a silver bead, holding a tiny reflection of the sky, in one nostril-wing. Beneath the blue robe all along there were the same sort of clothes she wears to high school, not dress-up church clothes. He remembers her telling him she doesn't take religion all that seriously. "I saw you," she teases. "Sitting with the Johnsons, no less."

"The Johnsons?"

"That family you were with. They are big church people. They own do-it-yourself laundry places downtown and over in Pa.s.saic. You've heard of the black boor-shwa-zee} boor-shwa-zee} That's them. What you staring at, Ahmad?" That's them. What you staring at, Ahmad?"

"That little thing in your nose. I didn't notice it before. Just those little rings on the edge of your ear."

"It's new. You don't like it? Tylenol likes it. He can hardly wait till I get a tongue stud."

"Piercing your tongue? That's horrible, Joryleen."

"Tylenol says the Lord loves a sporty woman. What does your Mr. Mohammed say?"

Ahmad hears the mockery but nevertheless feels tall standing next to this short, ripe girl; he looks down past her face, with its gleam of mischief, to the tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, exposed by a loose-necked springtime blouse and still glazed with the excitement and exertion of her singing. "He advises women to cover their ornaments," he tells her. "He says good women are for good men, and unclean women for unclean men."

Joryleen's eyes widen and she blinks her lids, taking this unsmiling solemnity as part of him, which she might have to deal with. "Well, I don't know where that leaves me," she says cheerfully. "Their notion of unclean was pretty broad in those there days," she adds, and brushes back some moisture from her temple, where the hair is fine like a boy's mustache before he thinks to shave. "How'd you like my singing?"

He takes thought, while the chattering congregants stroll past, their duty done for the week, and the in-and-out sun makes feathery weak shadows beneath the emergent locust leaves. "You have a beautiful voice," Ahmad tells her. "It is very pure. The uses to which it is being put, however, are not pure. The singing, especially of the very fat woman-"

"Eva-Marie," Joryleen supplies. "She's the most. most. She never gives it less than her everything." She never gives it less than her everything."

"Her singing seemed to me very sensual. And I did not understand many of the words. In what way is Jesus such a friend to all of you?"

"What a friend, what a friend," Joryleen pants lightly, in imitation of the way the choir broke up the hymn's phrases suggesting the repet.i.tive (as he understood them) motions of s.e.xual intercourse. "He just is, that's all," she insists. "People feel better, thinking he's right there. If he isn't there caring, who is, right? The same thing, I 'spect, with your Mohammed."

"The Prophet is many things to his followers, but we do not call him our friend. We are not so cozy, as your clergyman said."

"Hey," she says, "let's not talk this stuff. Thanks for coming, Ahmad. I never thought you would."

"You have been gracious to me, and I was curious. It is helpful, up to a point, to know the enemy."

"Enemy? Whoa. You didn't have no enemies there."

"My teacher at the mosque says that all unbelievers are our enemies. The Prophet said that eventually all unbelievers must be destroyed."

"Oh, man. How'd you get this way? Your mother's just a freckle-faced mick, right? That's what Tylenol says."

"Tylenol, Tylenol. How close are you, may I ask, to this fount of wisdom? Does he consider you his woman?"

"Oh, that boy's just trying things out. He's too young to get fixed up with any one lady friend. Let's walk along. We're getting too many looks."

They walk along the northern edge of the empty acres waiting to be developed. A painted big sign shows a four-story parking garage that will bring shoppers back to the inner city, but for two years nothing has been built, there is only the picture, more and more scribbled over. When the sun, slanting from the south above the new gla.s.s buildings downtown, comes through the clouds, a fine dust can be seen lifting from the rubble, and when the clouds return the sun becomes a white circle like a perfect hole burned through, exactly the size of the moon. Feeling the sun on one side of him makes him conscious of the warmth on the other, the warmth of Joryleen's body moving along, a system of overlapping circles and soft parts. The bead above her nostril-wing gleams a hot pinpoint; sunlight sticks a glistening tongue into the cavity at the center of her scoop-necked blouse. He tells her, "I am a good Muslim, in a world that mocks faith."

"Instead of being good, don't you ever want to feel to feel good?" Joryleen asks. He believes she is sincerely curious; in his severe faith he is a puzzle to her, a curiosity. good?" Joryleen asks. He believes she is sincerely curious; in his severe faith he is a puzzle to her, a curiosity.

"Perhaps the two go together," he offers. "The feeling and the being."

"You came to my church," she says. "I could go to your mosque with you."

"That would not do. We could not sit together, and you could not attend without a course of instruction, and a demonstration of sincerity."

"Wow. That may be more than I have time for. Tell me, Ahmad, what do you do for fun}" fun}"

"Some of the same things you do, though 'fun,' as you put it, is not the point of a good Muslim's life. I take lessons twice a week in the language and lessons of the Qur'an. I attend Central High. I am on the soccer team in the fall-indeed, I scored five goals this past season, one a penalty shot-and do track in the spring. For spending money, and to help out my mother-the freckle-faced mick, as you call her-"

"As Tylenol called her."

"As the two of you evidently call her-I clerk at the Shop-a-Sec from twelve to eighteen hours a week, and this can be 'fun,' observing the customers and the varieties of costume and personal craziness that American permissiveness invites. There is nothing in Islam to forbid watching television and attending the cinema, though in fact it is all so saturated in despair and unbelief as to repel my interest. Nor does Islam forbid consorting with the opposite s.e.x, if strict prohibitions are observed."

"So strict nothing happens, right? Turn left here, if you're walking me home. You don't have to, you know. We're getting into worse neighborhoods. You don't want to be ha.s.sled."

"I wish to see you home." He goes on, "They exist, the prohibitions, for the benefit less of the male than of the female. Her virginity and purity are central to her value."

"Oh, my," Joryleen says. "In whose eyes? I mean, who's doing this valuing?"

She is leading him, he feels, close to the edge of betraying his beliefs, just in responding to her questions. In cla.s.s, he observed at the high school, she talked well, so that the teachers became engaged with her, not realizing that she was leading them from the set lessons and wasting cla.s.sroom time. She has a wicked streak. "In the eyes of G.o.d," he tells her, "as revealed by the Prophet: 'Enjoin believing women to turn their eyes away from temptation and to preserve their chast.i.ty.' That's from the same sura that advises women to cover their ornaments, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not even to stamp their feet so their hidden ankle bracelets can be heard."

"You think I show too much t.i.t-I can tell by where your eyes go."

Just hearing the word "t.i.t" from her lips stirs him indecently. He says, staring ahead, "Purity is its own end. As we were discussing, it is both being good and feeling good."

"What about all them virgins on the other side? What happens to purity when those young-men martyrs get there, all full of s.p.u.n.k?"

"Their virtue enjoys its reward, while remaining pure, in the context G.o.d has created. My teacher at the mosque thinks that the dark-eyed virgins are symbolic of a bliss one cannot imagine without concrete images. It is typical of the s.e.x-obsessed West that it has seized upon that image, and ridicules Islam because of it."

They continue in the direction she indicated. The neighborhood grows s.h.a.ggier around them; bushes are untended, houses unpainted, sidewalk squares in places tilted and cracked by tree roots underneath; the little front yards are speckled with litter. The rows of houses lack a few, like teeth knocked out, the gaps fenced in but the thick chain-link fencing cut and twisted under the invisible pressure of people who hate fences, who want to get somewhere quick. The row houses in some blocks become a single long building with many peeling doors and four-step stairs, old and wooden or new and concrete. Overhead, high twigs interlace with electric wires carrying electricity across the city, a sagging harp that dips through gaps lopped by tree crews. Spat- ters of blossom and unfolding leaf, in color between yellow and green, appear luminous against the cloud-blotched sky.

"Ahmad," Joryleen says with a sudden exasperation, "suppose none of it is true-suppose you die and there's nothing there, nothing at all? What's the point of all this purity then?"

"If none of it is true," he tells her, his stomach clenching at the thought, "then the world is too terrible to cherish, and I would not regret leaving it."

"Man! You are one in a million, no kidding. They must love you to death over at that mosque."

"There are many like me," he tells her, both stiffly and gently, half rebuking. "Some are"-he does not want to say "black," since the word though politically correct does not sound kind-"what you call your brothers. The mosque and its teachers give them what the Christian U.S. disdains to- respect, and a challenge that asks something of them. It asks austerity. It asks restraint. All America wants of its citizens, your President has said, is for us to buy-to spend money we cannot afford and thus propel the economy forward for himself and other rich men."

"He ain't my President. If I could vote this year I'd vote to kick him out, in favor of Al Sharpton."

"It makes no difference which President is in. They all want Americans to be selfish and materialistic, to play their part in consumerism. But the human spirit asks for self-denial. It longs to say 'No' to'the physical world."

"You scare me when you talk like that. It sounds like you hate life." She goes on, revealing herself as freely as if she is singing, "The way I feel it, the spirit is what comes out of the body, like flowers come out of the earth. Hating your body is like hating yourself, the bones and blood and skin and s.h.i.t that make you you."

As when standing above that glistening trail of a disappeared worm or slug, Ahmad feels tall, tall enough to be dizzy, looking down at this short round girl whose indignation at his yearning for purity gives her voice and lips a lively quickness. Where her lips meet the other skin of her face there is an edge, a little line like the circle cocoa leaves on the inside of a cup. He thinks of sinking himself into her body and knows from its richness and ease that this is a devil's thought.

"Not hate hate your body," he corrects her, "but not be a slave to it either. I look around me, and I see slaves-slaves to drugs, slaves to fads, slaves to television, slaves to sports heroes that don't know they exist, slaves to the unholy, meaningless opinions of others. You have a good heart, Joryleen, but you're heading straight for h.e.l.l, the lazy way you think." your body," he corrects her, "but not be a slave to it either. I look around me, and I see slaves-slaves to drugs, slaves to fads, slaves to television, slaves to sports heroes that don't know they exist, slaves to the unholy, meaningless opinions of others. You have a good heart, Joryleen, but you're heading straight for h.e.l.l, the lazy way you think."

She has halted on the sidewalk, in a bleak, treeless stretch, and he thinks it is her anger at him, her disappointment near tears, that has stopped her, but then realizes that this drab doorway is hers, with its four wooden steps stained gray as if with never-ending rain. He at least lives in a brick apartment building on the north side of the boulevard. He feels guilty about her disappointment, since in inviting him to walk with her she laid herself open to expectation.

"You're the one, Ahmad," she says, turning to go in, planting a foot on the first drab step, "don't know where he's heading. You're the one don't know which f.u.c.king end is up."

Sitting at the heavy old round brown table that he and his mother call "the dining table" though they never dine at it, Ahmad studies the Commercial Drivers' License Home Study Course booklets, four of them, each stapled together.

Shaikh Rashid helped him send away to Michigan for them, writing the check for $89.50 on the mosque account. Ahmad always thought truck-driving was something for simpletons like Tylenol and his gang at school, but in fact there is a confusing amount of expertise to it, such as all the hazardous materials that have to be publicly identified one from another by means of four different placards measuring ten and three-quarters inches and placed in a diamond shape. There are flammable gases like hydrogen and poisonous/ toxic gases like compressed fluorine; there are flammable solids like wetted ammonium picrate and spontaneously combustible ones like white phosphorus and ones spontaneously combustible when wet like sodium. Then there are real poisons like pota.s.sium cyanide and infectious substances like the anthrax virus and radioactive substances like uranium and corrosives like battery fluid. All this has to be trucked, and any spills of a certain quant.i.ty (depending on toxicity, volatility, chemical durability) must be reported to the DOT (Department of Transportation) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).

Ahmad is sickened, thinking of the paperwork, the shipping papers bristling with numbers and codes and prohibitions. Poisons should never be loaded with animal or human food; hazardous materials even in a tightly sealed canister should never ride up front with the driver; beware of heat, leaks, and sudden changes in speed. Besides hazardous substances there are ORM (Other Regulated Materials) that might have an anesthetic or irritating or noxious effect on a driver and his pa.s.sengers, such as monochloroacetone or diphenylchlorarsine, and a material that might damage the vehicle if leaked, like the liquid corrosives bromine, soda lime, hydrochloric acid, sodium-hydroxide solution, and battery acid. All across this land, Ahmad now realizes, hazardous materials are hurtling, spilling, burning, eating roadways and truck beds-a chemical deviltry making manifest materialism's spiritual poison.

Then, the booklets tell him, there is, in shipping liquids by bulk in tanker trucks, outage, also called ullage, the amount by which the cargo falls short, so that the tank will not burst when its contents expand during shipping-if, say, ambient temperature goes as high as one hundred thirty degrees. And also, with tank vehicles, the driver must beware of liquid surge, more acute and dangerous in the case of so-called smooth-bore tanks than in that of those with inside baffles or complete compartments. Even in these, however, sideways surge can overturn a truck taking a curve too sharply. Forward surge can push a truck out into traffic at a red light or stop sign. Yet sanitation regulations forbid baffles in a tanker transporting milk or fruit juice; baffles make the tanks harder to clean, and hence invite contamination. Transportation is full of dangers that Ahmad has never before contemplated. It excites him, however, to see himself-like the pilot of a 727 or the captain of a supertanker or the tiny brain of a brontosaurus-steering a great vehicle through the maze of dire possibilities to safety. He is pleased to find in the trucking regulations a concern with purity almost religious in quality.

Somebody knocks at the door, at quarter of eight at night. The noise, not far from the table where Ahmad studies by the light of a battered bridge lamp, jolts him from his focus on ullage and tonnage, surge and flow. His mother quickly emerges from her bedroom, which is also her painting studio, and goes-rushes, even-to answer the knock, fluffing up her light red hair-nape-length, henna-enhanced-as she goes. She greets mysterious interruptions more hopefully than Ahmad. He is still, ten days after attending the infidel church service, nervous about having trespa.s.sed on Tylenol's territory; it is not impossible that the bully and his gang will waylay him sometime, even at night, calling him out from his own apartment.

Nor is it impossible, though unlikely, that an emissary from Shaikh Rashid knocks. His master has few disciples. He has seemed on edge lately, as if something weighs upon him; he feels to Ahmad like a finely honed element in a structure on which too much tension is imposed. This past week the imam showed a short temper with his pupil in a discussion of a verse from the third sura: Let not the infidels deem that the length of days we give them is good for them! We only give them length of days that they may increase their sins! and a shameful chastis.e.m.e.nt shall be their lot. Let not the infidels deem that the length of days we give them is good for them! We only give them length of days that they may increase their sins! and a shameful chastis.e.m.e.nt shall be their lot. Ahmad dared ask his teacher if there wasn't something s.a.d.i.s.tic in the taunt, and in the many verses like it. He ventured, "Shouldn't G.o.d's purpose, as enunciated by the Prophet, be to Ahmad dared ask his teacher if there wasn't something s.a.d.i.s.tic in the taunt, and in the many verses like it. He ventured, "Shouldn't G.o.d's purpose, as enunciated by the Prophet, be to convert convert the infidels? In any case, shouldn't He show them mercy, not gloat over their pain?" the infidels? In any case, shouldn't He show them mercy, not gloat over their pain?"

The imam presented half a face, the lower half being hidden by a trimmed beard flecked with gray. His nose was thin and high-arched and the skin of his cheeks pale, but not pale as Anglo-Saxons or Irish were, freckled and quick to blush, like Ahmad's mother (a tendency the boy has regrettably inherited), but pale in a waxy, even, impervious Yemeni way. Within his beard, his violet lips twitched. He asked, "The c.o.c.kroaches that slither out from the baseboard and from beneath the sink-do you pity them? The flies that buzz around the food on the table, walking on it with the dirty feet that have just danced on feces and carrion-do you pity them?"

Ahmad did, in truth, pity them, being fascinated by the vast insect population teeming at the feet of G.o.dlike men, but, knowing that any qualifications or signs of further argument would anger his teacher, responded, "No."

"No," Shaikh Rashid agreed with satisfaction, as a delicate hand tugged lightly at his beard. "You want to destroy them. They are vexing you with their uncleanness. They would take over your table, your kitchen; they will settle into the very food as it pa.s.ses into your mouth if you do not destroy them. They have no feelings. They are manifestations of Satan, and G.o.d will destroy them without mercy on the day of final reckoning. G.o.d will rejoice at their suffering. Do thou likewise, Ahmad. To imagine that c.o.c.kroaches deserve mercy is to place yourself above ar-Rahim, ar-Rahim, to presume to be more merciful than the Merciful." to presume to be more merciful than the Merciful."

It seemed to Ahmad that, as with the facts of Paradise, his teacher resorted to metaphor as a shield against reality. Joryleen, though an unbeliever, did have feelings; they were there in how she sang, and how the other unbelievers responded to the singing. But it was not Ahmad's role to argue; it was his to learn, to submit to his own place in Islam's vast structure, visible and invisible.

His mother may have hurried to the door in expectation of one of her male friends, but her voice in Ahmad's hearing backs off, puzzled and yet not alarmed, respectful. A polite, weary voice slightly familiar to Ahmad is announcing itself as Mr. Levy, the guidance counselor at Central High School. Ahmad relaxes; it is not Tylenol or anybody from the mosque. But why Mr. Levy? Their conference left Ahmad uneasy; the counselor communicated dissatisfaction with Ahmad's plans for his future and a desire to interfere.

How has he gotten this far, to the door? The apartment building is one of three erected twenty-five years ago to dis- place row houses so run-down and drugs-plagued that the administrators of New Prospect thought that ten-story stacks of mixed-income housing had to be an improvement. In addition, they calculated, the land taken under the right of eminent domain could be used for a park with recreational areas and, in the bargain, a curving parkway speeding commerce with towns where a "better element" prevailed. Yet, as with draining malarial land, problems returned: the sons of former drug dealers took up the trade, and addicts used the park benches and bushes and the apartment-house stairways, and raced back and forth in the hallways at night. The original plan called for a security guard at each entrance, but the city had to effect budget cuts, and the little offices with television monitors showing halls and doorways were erratically manned. Back in 15 minits, Back in 15 minits, a hand-lettered sign would say for hours at a time. This time of evening, residents and visitors usually walked right in. Mr. Levy must have walked in and studied the mailboxes and taken the elevator and knocked on their door. Here he was, standing in the s.p.a.ce this side of the door, off the kitchen, describing himself in a louder, more formal voice than he had used with Ahmad in the guidance conference. Then, he had seemed insinuating, lazy, and bone-weary. Ahmad's mother's face is flushed and her voice high and quick; she is excited by this visit from a representative of the distant bureaucracy that hovers above their lonely lives. a hand-lettered sign would say for hours at a time. This time of evening, residents and visitors usually walked right in. Mr. Levy must have walked in and studied the mailboxes and taken the elevator and knocked on their door. Here he was, standing in the s.p.a.ce this side of the door, off the kitchen, describing himself in a louder, more formal voice than he had used with Ahmad in the guidance conference. Then, he had seemed insinuating, lazy, and bone-weary. Ahmad's mother's face is flushed and her voice high and quick; she is excited by this visit from a representative of the distant bureaucracy that hovers above their lonely lives.

Mr. Levy senses her excitement and tries to put a calm face on things. "I apologize for invading your privacy," he says to a point midway between the standing mother and the sitting son, who does not get up from the brown table. "But when I tried the phone number on Ahmad's school records, I got a recording saying it had been disconnected."

"We had to, after Nine-Eleven," she explains, still a little breathless. "We were getting hate calls. Anti-Muslim. I had the number changed and unlisted, even if it does cost a couple dollars a month more. It's worth it, I tell you."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs.-Ms.-Mulloy," the guidance counselor says, and he does seem sorry, above and beyond his usual sad look.

"There were just one or two calls," Ahmad interposes. "No big deal. Most people were cool. I mean, I was only fifteen when it happened. Who could blame me?"

His mother, with that infuriating way she has of making something of nothing, says, "It was more than one or two, I can tell you, Mr. Levine."

"Levy." He still wants to explain why he has shown up. "I could have called Ahmad to my office at the school, but it was you I wanted to speak to, Ms. Mulloy."

"Teresa, please."

"Teresa." He comes to the table and looks over Ahmad's shoulder. "At it already, I see. Studying for the CDL. As you realize, I'm sure, until you're twenty-one you can't get better than a 'C rating. No tractor trailers, no hazardous materials."

"Yeah, I know," Ahmad says, pointedly looking down at the page he was trying to study. "But it's interesting, it turns out. I wanted to learn it all, while I'm at it."

"Good for you, my friend. For a young man as bright as you are, it should all be pretty simple."

Ahmad isn't afraid of arguing with Mr. Levy. He tells him, "There's more to it than you'd tbink. There's a lot of strict rules, and then there's all tbe parts of the truck and what you should do for maintenance. You don't want your truck to break down, it can be dangerous."

"O.K., you keep at it, son. Don't let it get in the way of your schoolwork, though; there's still a month to go, with a lot of exams. You want to graduate, don't you?"

"Yes, I do." He doesn't want to argue over everything, though in truth he resents the hint of a threat. They're dying to graduate him, get rid of him. And graduate into what? An imperialist economic system rigged in favor of rich Christians.

Mr. Levy, hearing his surly tone, asks, "Do you mind if I talk a minute with your mother?"

"No. Why would I? And what if I did?"

"You want to see me?" the woman affirms, to cover up her son's rudeness.

"Very briefly. Again, Mrs.-Ms.-whatever: Teresa!-I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm the kind of guy, when something is bothering me, my mind won't let me rest until I take action."

"Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr.-?"

"Jack. My mother called me Jacob, but people call me Jack." He looks at her face, with its flush and freckles and protuberant, overeager eyes. She seems anxious to please. School personnel don't get the respect from parents they used to, and with some of the parents you're an enemy like the police, only laughable because you don't have a gun. But this woman, though of a generation younger than his, is old enough, he guesses, to have had a parochial education and learned respect from the nuns. "No thanks," he tells her. "I'm a lousy sleeper anyway."

"I can do decaf," she promises, too eagerly. "Can you stand instant?" Her eyes are a pale green, like the gla.s.s bottles c.o.ke used to come in.

"I'm tempted," he allows. "If it can be quick. Where can we go, to stop bothering Ahmad here? The kitchen?"

"It's too messy. I haven't cleared the dishes yet. I'd hoped to get to my painting while I still had some energy left. Let's go into my studio. I have a hot plate."