American Dervish: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar Page B

screaming. She screamed back. And then he hung up on her.
    The next morning, as I readied for school, Mina was still in bed. This was odd. She was usually up early, helping Mother with breakfast, getting Imran ready for nursery school. When I left for the bus that morning, her bedroom door was shut, and when I got home that afternoon, Mother complained that Mina hadn’t come out all day. At teatime she finally emerged, shuffling along the hall and down into the kitchen, where Mother was pouring tea. Mina looked drawn, downcast, her eyes wide and sunken into darkened, cavelike sockets.
    “Hi, Auntie,” I said, trying to be cheery.
    “Hi, behta, ” she mumbled.
    “Can I come see you tonight?” Since the weekend—and the subsequent nightly calls from Nathan—we’d had no time together with the Quran.
    “Don’t make your auntie’s life difficult, Hayat,” Mother said abruptly.
    “It’s fine, bhaj, ” Mina said with a faint smile.
    “Let’s go,” Mother said to her friend brusquely, as she handed Mina her tea and took her by the hand.
    Mina smiled at me again. “Come and see me later, behta, ” she said as Mother led her out.
     
    At bedtime, I went to see her, Quran in hand.
    “Is it okay if we do a story tonight instead of diniyaat? ” she asked with a whisper. She pointed: Imran was lying on his bed, sleeping.
    “Sure, Auntie,” I whispered back.
    Mina threw open the covers, inviting me inside. She asked me what story I wanted to hear. Something new, I said. She took a moment to think, and then her eyes lit up.
    “I’m going to tell you about a dervish. That’s someone who gives up everything for Allah.”
    “Gurvish?”
    “Dervish. With a d, not a g. ”
    “Dervish,” I repeated, nodding. But an image had already been born from the word incorrectly heard: Mr. Gurvitz, the old janitor at my elementary school, a bald, skinny man who doddered, hunched, along the halls trailing a trash can on wheels.
    “So I want to tell you about a dervish who was wandering the world by foot. He wandered and wandered, thinking only of Allah all day long. He’d given everything up in search of God, behta, to the point that he was depending completely on the kindness of strangers for his meals, sleeping at night on the open road, under the open sky—”
    “He’s a homeless guy,” I said.
    “Not just homeless, Hayat. I’m talking about a Sufi. A Sufi dervish. Whose whole life is devoted to Allah. It was his choice to give everything up.”
    What she was saying made no sense to me. “Auntie, why would anybody choose to be homeless?”
    “Because by giving everything up, his home, his family, his job, nothing is in the way anymore. Nothing between himself and God.”
    Mina could tell I wasn’t following.
    “What is special for you, behta? Is there something you would never want to lose?”
    “You, Auntie.”
    She smiled. “That’s so sweet, Hayat.” She ran her fingers along my forehead. “You love being with me…in this moment…”
    “So much, Auntie. So much.”
    “You don’t want it to end, right?”
    “Never.”
    “It’s the same with our dervish . He feels this kind of love with Allah. He doesn’t ever want it to end. Just like you and me right now. Everything else, television, school, chores… those would take you away from me right now, right?”
    I nodded.
    “So that’s what the dervish does, gets rid of his television and his school and his chores. Everything that takes him away from Allah’s love.”
    “I understand, Auntie.”
    “But in this story, the dervish gave up everything, but he still felt sad and confused. He still felt he was holding on to something that took him away from God’s love.”
    “What?”
    “He didn’t know. And he was asking himself that question over and over. For years he wandered and searched and prayed for an answer. And he couldn’t figure out what it was…
    “Then one day, the dervish lost hope. After looking for so long, he was so tired. He