WHEN YOUR MOTHER SHOOK ME FROM SLEEP AND TOLD ME about the small bruises that lined your arms, I was so disoriented, I felt, at first, as though you were still a baby who had just begun to crawl, and she was asking out of casual concern, and not looking to me, bewildered, to answer the questions she did not yet have the courage to ask.
Why did I choose to look closely then? I waited until it was obvious, until everything that came before aligned with such striking clarity, it felt as if the darkness of the world was lit at once. The money that had gone missing from my wallet. You smelling strongly of booze. Your eyes so red, or else the dark of your eye a tiny speck. How you would not come home for days. How Layla would say you would be speaking to her and then, in the middle of conversation, fall asleep. Layla insisting her gold earrings were in the house somewhere, maybe sucked up by the vacuum cleaner, and when I went to check she told me she had not liked them that much anyway.
I stepped into your bedroom. You were sleeping so deeply. Your hand curled and tucked beneath your chin. Anything for this, I had prayed once, standing so still in the hospital hallway. Here you were, years later, fast asleep and breathing. I shook you and still you did not wake. It smelled strongly of a body unwashed, a body that slept for hours, and something else I could not name, vinegar or the scent of an animal. I lifted your heavy arm from beneath your blanket and searched your skin until I found it, that black dot in the soft inside of your elbow, and another one a bit below it, the bruise surrounding them both, and I heard your mother’s voice from years ago, holding you, a baby in her arms, and pointing to the bruise on your thigh and saying, “This, how did this get here?”
I looked through your belongings until I saw the irrefutable glint of light on the tip of the needle. And every excuse I had given myself before—it was not so bad, my son might sin now but would repent later—was rendered mute.
“Well,” Layla said, when I stepped out into the hallway, “what do you think is happening?”
It occurred to me for the first time that we really had no clue. I had never sipped alcohol in my life. When I first moved to America, I lived with four boys I hardly knew, and once they had handed me a can they had just opened. I waited until they were talking with one another before going to the bathroom and pouring out the contents, yellow and fizzy and smelling quite horrible, and I said to God, I am sorry, forgive me, I did not have the boldness to say no thank you. It was a story I thought I would tell you one day, and we could bond over a common response to the world. We were so very different. Now, in my own home. Now, my own son.
What was unfathomable to me was possible to you. I told Layla to sleep. I told her I would be back, not to worry. I sat in my car. I did not know what to do. I called Hadia. She did not pick up. I panicked, not knowing what my children were capable of, having been made aware suddenly that the limit of their behavior was nothing my greatest fears could even conjure. We raised them here hoping. Now it was out of our hands. They would do what they liked. Maybe it had always been out of our hands. Maybe anything we could have wanted to instill in them was, at best, a hope.
I could not face your mother. I could not bear to pray in my own home, knowing Layla would be frightened that I was driven to kneel not out of obligation, but something else, something much more desperate and unfamiliar. Layla’s faith came from her own heart—she would turn often to the text, she would weep listening to duas, she told you three stories of Imam Ali or Abraham as if she had been the one to come up with them. Amar, I know I must have struck you as a religious man, a man of faith. And I have fasted and I have prayed and I have gone to Mecca and Karbala and I have worn black and bent my head in mourning every Moharram and I have given money to the needy and I have taught my children to stand when the adhaan is called. I believe, sincerely, that eating non-halal meat is a sin, backbiting is a sin, drinking is a sin, not praying is a sin, and defying one’s parents is a sin.
But what I never told any of you, never even explored within myself, is that it has been a habit, my faith, a way of living I never questioned, and once you three were born it was for you all that I adhered to it as I did. I wanted you three to grow with an awareness of God, with that order and compass and comfort it provided, safe from the dangers I could not imagine and could not protect you from.
That night, I drove to the empty mosque. I had the keys from my efforts volunteering. It was dark and it was quiet and I was alone there. I could hear the beat of my own heart and it sounded like an animal inside my chest. I stepped out of my shoes. I walked until I reached the large hall with the high ceilings, where vines and verses had been painted, elaborate calligraphy I sometimes stared up at while I listened to speeches. I took a seat where we gathered to stand in prayer, where you also stood beside me on some nights. I knelt, I rested my forehead against my cold hands, the way I had in the hospital room after you were born and I only wanted to give thanks. And I thought, God, what do I do? What have I done? What is required of me as a father in this moment? My son has turned his back on You. He has learned nothing I wanted him to, he has followed nothing, he has descended in such a way that I am afraid not even You will forgive him.
Why am I telling you this? I know you think I was only angry that night that I confronted you.
* * *
THE DAY YOU were to run away I had gone to the library to do my research. Hadia had surprised me in the early morning. I was so relieved to see her I did not even scold her for driving all night. I hugged her very tight. I felt as though she was no longer just my daughter, but that she had also become my friend; I wanted to protect Layla, who would be devastated, but Hadia was wise and mature and when I hugged her I knew I could lean on her, trust her. I told her what I had found. She was silent.
“Have you known about this?” I asked.
“Not this.”
She was very pale. I knew then I was not overreacting.
“What did you know about?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it, bit the bottom of her lip.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I can’t.” She crossed her arms.
“Hadia, now is not the time to protect him.”
“You’ll just get mad at him. Let me try to talk to him first, when he wakes up.”
I felt powerless. Everyone thought so little of me I was beginning to wonder if they were all justified and I was the delusional one to think otherwise. She made me swear I would not get mad and I promised.
“Hadia,” I called after her, “I’m not angry. I’m not.”
She stood in the hallway. She watched me. I deserved every unkindness they might accuse me of. But I was not mad at my son for this. I was too terrified to react in any way that was not the best way for you. I needed her to know that. Her eyebrows came together, she was either frustrated with me or felt sorry for me, I could not tell.