Land of no regrets, p.7
Land of No Regrets, page 7
When Nabil and I got back to our room after Isha, we waited for Maaz and Nawaaz to show up. They came most nights now after everyone went to bed, just to chill and chop shit for a bit.
When they hopped onto my bed, I got into it almost immediately. I’d been so close to making Nawaaz throw a plate of food at me at dinner, I knew I had him on the verge of a meltdown.
“Okay,” I said, “I still think it’s ridiculous that you guys think Nawaaz can beat the shit out of the older students when most of them don’t even fight. They’re huge!”
“Well that’s exactly why I know I could run them,” he replied. “They don’t even fight!”
“Well, what about Heart Attack One then?” I asked.
“I could take him,” Nawaaz said without hesitation.
We burst into laughter, applauding Nawaaz’s ego. Now that Maaz and Nabil had joined in, though, it was only a matter of time before Nawaaz came flying at me.
“Fam, are you dumb? C’mon. Heart Attack One isn’t even human. Have you ever even looked him in the eyes?” Maaz asked.
“I could take him. I swear,” Nawaaz said, ignoring the question. “I’ve been looking for a reason to anyway. Always wanted to humble that asshole. Been itchin’ to take him on for years.”
“Uh-huh. Sure buddy,” I said, trying to bait him.
“I understand kids and people close in age to us, but how you gonna talk about beating grown men in fights?” Nabil added on.
“Yeah you gotta chill fam. Mans acting like a big man all of a sudden. No one to kick his ass here. Could you even take the three of us at the same time?” I asked.
Nawaaz’s answer was to come flying at me while Maaz and Nabil hoot-whispered and held him back while I danced on top of the bed, goading the barking giant. I loved him, but mans were so entertaining while he was this sensitive.
Very quickly though, I grew bored of the silent wrestling and dragged them down the dark hallway to the secret landing at the end. We’d found the seldom-used spot one night after dinner, and our sneaky creepy-crawlies now often led us there. The door to the landing was normally locked on the dorm side—the teachers and Sharmil Bhai probably did this on purpose, to prevent loitering—but once we figured out that the door was left unlocked on the stairwell side, we kept it slightly ajar so we could come and go as we pleased. All the other kids respected that this was where Maaz, Nawaaz, Nabil and I hung out and steered clear of the area for the most part.
This was where I told them about how one of the signs of Qiyamat was the future robot uprising, and how aliens were actually djinns in disguise, hiding on other planets and soon to arrive. Oh, I also made sure they knew that Alexander the Great was actually Muslim, and his true name was Zul-Qar-Nayn, and he was so much better than the white people version. I’m not sure if we met there to discuss those things, or if we discussed those things because we met there. Either way, I figured that was it. I’d entertain them like that, to infinity and beyond, ’til one day, we’d grow up. Beyond meant adulthood. Tears would exact their cost, and love would beget love. The end. ’Cept not. Every love must have its due.
Chapter 5
Dear Diary
The discovery of the stairwell landing was a godsend. The walls were thick enough there that we could yell about whether Orc truly was OP in Frozen Throne or go into minute detail about the size of Chun-Li’s thighs or if we could truly flip an ounce for three bills. That’s also where we made the acquaintance of Cynthia Lewis.
There was a second door on the landing—a smaller one that was kept permanently locked. We were told by the older students that this door led to a storeroom. We tried to open the door multiple times out of sheer boredom but always failed. Eventually, we just ignored it, until one evening when Farid overheard something.
We were on the darkened landing with the dorm’s hallway light shining through the window when Farid spoke up.
“After Isha, I heard Maulana Ibrar tell Sharmil Bhai to check one of the generators on the roof. He said there were a few lights and power outlets that weren’t working in the basement.”
“And so?” Maaz asked. He was lounging on a pillow, like we all were. We’d pulled them from unused rooms and beds to soften the landing.
“Well how’s he going to get to the roof?” Farid asked.
“I don’t know. How?”
Farid stretched his foot out and tapped the nondescript locked door a few times.
“You’re an idiot.” Maaz turned on his back to face away from Farid, in mock dismissal of his suggestion.
“No, wait. I’m serious, guys,” Farid implored. “C’mon, think about it. What else do you want to do up here?”
“Shit, I don’t know man, but that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” I said in response, rolling my eyes. I didn’t believe there could be roof beyond that door. Farid was always coming up with hare-brained schemes, and this one made no sense either.
“Have you seen any other locked door up here? Where else is there a locked door?” Farid asked.
“What does that even mean? So what if this door is locked?” Maaz said without turning back to face him.
“Think about it. How is Sharmil Bhai supposed to get up to the roof? And before you say, ‘I don’t care,’ my answer is there’s no way up there. We know every door in this building. The only way is through this one right here. At the very least, we oughta break into the damn room. It’s bothering the hell outta me,” Farid finished.
We were quiet. I was mulling over whether there truly was access to the roof at the top of the stairs, and what that would mean for me if there was. There was no real reason for us to venture up there, even if the view was nice. Nawaaz, no doubt, was thinking about what he could use the roof for, how it would give him power over the other students, provide him with leverage in his disputes. The knowledge of how to access the roof could be bartered or used as a threat if someone got in his way. Maaz would’ve been thinking about having another secret, and wondering whether the view up there could make him feel something. For me, it was simply a new challenge, an escape from boredom. I broke the silence first.
“Okay, how do we get past the door though? We’ve already tried literally everything.”
“Not everything, my fine numbnutty friend. We haven’t tried lockpicking,” said Farid.
“What the fuck?” I started laughing, thinking it was something only done in movies.
“It’s possible,” Nawaaz said quietly. “But we’d have to do some research. We’d have to find, like, paper clips and needles and shit.”
Maaz and I moved towards the door to check the lock. It was hard to see in the dark, but there was definitely a keyhole.
“Okay, so let’s say we get some paper clips somehow. We try this door and then what?” Maaz was on his knees, trying to peer through the keyhole.
“Shit. Man, it’s the middle of the night and I’m bored out my damn mind!” Farid replied. “You think I’ve thought that far ahead? I’m just tryna get through this door for now.”
The next day, we realized we could get some safety pins or paper clips from Sharmil Bhai by claiming that we were low on clothespins and needed something to hang up our laundry or fix some clothes. That night we gathered again on the third-floor landing, with the rest of the student body none the wiser.
“Okay lemme try this shit.” Nawaaz unbent the paper clips and approached the door on his knees. None of us had any idea what we were doing. He fiddled around for some time, jamming two of them inside, trying to wiggle them around. Nothing happened, of course.
Maaz shoved him aside. “Here, lemme try. You possess none of the grace of Musab ibn Umayr and all the pride of Abraha.”
But after fiddling for some time, Maaz too came up empty. Farid took the paper clips from him and tried as well, but to no avail. It was finally my turn, although I had no clue what to do. My idea of lock picking came from video games, where you simply move the mouse around until you hear a click.
I held the lock up with one paper clip and gently wiggled the other around the keyhole. Maaz and Nawaaz were leaning against their pillows, resigned to failure.
Farid, too, was finally being realistic. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t work,” he said. “My bad, man. We’ve never picked locks before. Just being here sometimes makes me go crazy. I just . . . had to try something to get away, even if it was just to a place in my head where there was a roof beyond this—”
“Shhh, I gotta focus,” I said.
The keyhole made sense. It was a problem we could solve. It was an obstacle with a solution. We couldn’t go anywhere or do what we pleased, but I felt that if I wiggled the second paper clip around long enough, with enough precision, with enough bated movement, I could do this one thing.
“The door won’t open man,” Maaz said. “Just give it up.”
He, Nawaaz and now even Farid were prepared to live with beaten spirits. I was not quite ready. Just then, I felt the lock’s pins disengage, and I pushed the door handle down with my chin. The handle went down the entire way. My hands were too busy holding the pins up, and I was too afraid to move them and accidentally lock the door again. I held the handle down with my chin, my nose pressed up against the door, and with a muffled voice, I shouted to Farid.
“Oy sala, grab the handle and pull.”
Farid approached quickly and pulled on the handle, swinging the door fully open. It gave way in silence, and Maaz and Nawaaz leapt to their feet. I was elated. It was the middle of the night, but I didn’t care about hiding my excitement.
“Holy shit, I can’t believe it. I fucking did it!” For the first time in a very long time, I was proud of myself. It didn’t matter that I was committing a crime.
“Yeah you did!” Farid said, pushing me forward. Behind the door was a narrow dusty staircase leading up. The staircase was a faded reddish brown, and as we began to climb, it whined and groaned with each quiet footfall. At the top, we were submerged in darkness and scared shitless. When our eyes adjusted, I noticed a string in front of me and pulled it. A light bulb clicked on and blinded us. When we opened our eyes again, we looked around and realized we were in a storeroom, true to the rumour. But that didn’t matter. What mattered is that we’d successfully done something we weren’t supposed to.
We walked quietly around the room, sifting through brooms and mop buckets, looking for anything interesting. We found cleaning supplies and lockers with stacks of old towels and dishrags. We found unused lumber and tarps and even a few baseball bats and tennis rackets. We were rummaging through boxes when we heard Farid’s voice ahead of us.
“Holy shit it’s true. It’s true! Guys, look!”
He was getting louder and louder, turning to shout over his shoulder at us. Maaz was rummaging through a cardboard box, and Nawaaz and I were against the walls going through hockey sticks when we turned and saw Farid silhouetted in a doorway by the wintry night sky.
“Holy shit, I can’t believe it,” I whispered.
We followed Farid through the door and onto the rooftop, cold gravel underneath our toes, biting into the soles of our feet. It hadn’t begun to snow yet, but we felt the cold all the same. Up that high, the wind whistled, buffeting our bodies as we walked across the rooftop, trying to make it to the edge. We could tell we were moving towards the back of the building, away from the light that shone from the front facade. The crunch of our steps finally reached the edge of the roof, which came only up to our waists. As we looked out over the building, we were presented with a view of our enormous dried-out field and bare treetops and hills as far as the eye could see. The Ganaraska Forest seemed to stretch on forever, at least at night. The sky was starless, meeting the thin branches on the horizon in some blended, imperceptible mess. We knew we’d have a better view during the day. Still, it was a triumph.
Then we heard a voice behind us.
We turned and saw Maaz poking his head through the door. We’d assumed he was right behind us the whole time.
“I found something weird. You guys gotta come and take a look at this.”
If the outside world could not tempt him to venture even a few steps onto the roof, we knew he must’ve found something truly alarming to call us back indoors. We walked back and re-entered the storeroom, immediately feeling the difference in temperature.
“Bro why’d you pull us off the rooftop!? The view was amazing.”
Nawaaz was exaggerating. We couldn’t see much from the edge, and the view was amazing only because it wasn’t through a window. So perhaps it wasn’t too much of an exaggeration.
“For this.” Maaz tossed a brown leather book at us. Farid caught it and opened it up while Nawaaz and I peered over his shoulder on either side. We saw handwriting in blue ink.
“You found a . . . notebook?” I asked.
“No. Well, yeah. But look at it carefully. It’s like a diary. A journal or some shit.”
“Wait what?” I peered back at the notebook. At the top of each entry, every few pages, there was a date. Farid randomly picked an entry, and we all started reading in silence.
1/15/78
Dear Mark,
You might reach a point in your life where you’re feeling low and sad and doubtful about your purpose. I go through days and weeks where I feel like everything is perfect and life with Catherine is all I could ever want or need. And then one morning, I’ll wake up and want Sacred Heart to burn to the ground and for all of us to die. I mean, why should I care? Every morning, it’s the same old business. Every day, it’s the same shit. This morning it was, “The Devil—possessed with envy at the thought that we, beings of clay, would possess the inheritance that he’d forfeited forever through his sin—came to the woman, the weaker vessel, and poured the poison of his eloquence into her ear, blasphemously promising her that if she and Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, they would become as gods. Nay, as God Himself. Eve yielded to the wiles of the arch-tempter. She ate the apple and gave it also to Adam, who had not the moral courage to resist her. The poison tongue of Satan had done its work. They fell.”
“The weaker vessel.” Except I don’t feel weak. I don’t feel weak at all. I feel like I could challenge any man’s faith and devotion to God. Maybe not the clergy, but I just mean a boy my own age. I know it’s pride, but it’s not pride against God. I just don’t think I’m weak. It’s strange. Women are too weak to resist Satan, but they’re strong enough to convince Adam. Adam is strong enough to resist Satan, but he’s too weak to resist women. Who’s really weak and who’s really strong? I feel like these are blasphemous questions, so I hope God forgives me. If you feel like this too—full of doubts and all that—I want you to know that it’s important to turn to God and pray in those moments. Pray and talk to Catherine, haha. They’re the only two ideas that make me feel anything at all. I can’t really ask Father Michael after what happened the last time. Honestly though, why is Jesus always shown as white? Even in my own damn house, Jesus is white for some reason. Tsche! (That’s the sound of me kissing my teeth.)
—Cyn
Something fell from a high wooden shelf, distracting us before we could read the next entry together. Our eyes had been focused on the diary, so we heard the loud clatter before we spotted a baseball rolling in and then out of view. We looked at each other wide-eyed.
“Wallahi fam, this is kabira,” Maaz said. “We can’t be doing this. It’s a sign.”
He took the journal and chucked it against a wall. He shook his head, performed a quick tauba by touching each cheek with a few fingers in a mock slap and walked towards the stairs. Nawaaz followed. Farid quickly dove after the book, and I joined him. Maaz and Nawaaz turned to look at us.
“Those people are complete jaahil, man! Ignorant! Kaafir! Allah is going to strike us where we stand if we read that stuff and get influenced by it!” Nawaaz said, falling back on his faith with his brow furrowed.
Farid and I looked at each other. We would’ve laughed if the situation wasn’t so serious.
“Who said anything about being influenced?” I asked. “It’s just interesting is all. This is a thing from the past. From someone who used to be here.”
“So what? None of that matters. Leave that shit there. Let’s go before we get caught.” Maaz gestured for us to follow him. He looked like he was running from a rolling boulder and had no time to spare. But it was the middle of the night, and the boulder was nothing but a baseball that had rolled through the storage room, reacting to the changing chill of a shrinking shelf.
Or perhaps his fear was founded. Finding the journal set into motion events we would all regret. Everyone except me. Maybe Maaz had a premonition then.
As we all walked back down the stairs, I noticed Farid still had the journal in his hands.
* * *
Over the next few days, Maaz and Nawaaz wanted nothing to do with the journal. They didn’t even want to talk about it. They clammed up whenever we mentioned it, as if it were some sort of necromancy guide. They tried to pretend it didn’t exist, willing the memory into darkness, which mirrored their reaction to all of their guilty acts. Don’t tell, don’t remember. Read no evil is no evil.
For our part, Farid and I refused to read any more of the journal without them. The four of us were together. We were a unit. If some of us weren’t on board, none of us were on board. We weren’t going to fracture our group into the readers and the non-readers. That would force me and Farid together and leave Maaz and Nawaaz to grow closer without us. We didn’t need to discuss any of these repercussions. We were at that age when we implicitly understood how loyalty worked.
It was up to us to constantly badger and press Maaz and Nawaaz to take another look at the journal with us. We were kept so busy between classes and recitation that we didn’t have much time during the week to read it, but nevertheless, I knew we were making headway with our incessant prodding.
