Good Muslim Boy by Osamah Sami

strong
crowd, masses and masses of people.
    The condemned was tall and lanky, but it was the glasses I couldn’t get past. They
just weren’t something I associated with a homosexual. He spent his time bonking
men, not reading like normal people. He didn’t need the glasses. And they made him
human.
    Deep down, I felt the tickling knowledge that he was a human, and because he was
a human, that he shouldn’t die.
    He was asked, as was the custom, if he had any last words. He politely asked the
officer if he could set his hands free, momentarily, so he could raise them to the
heavens and pray.
    ‘God will look upon repentance favourably,’ the Entezami officer said, and agreed
to the condemned man’s request.
    Once freed, the condemned man, surrounded by a dozen officers, used his hands to
pull his pants down and expose his bottom to the crowd. The officer stood up, unholstered
his revolver, and shot a full round into the man’s head.
    The glasses shattered into his face. Blood fountained from his temple. The snow was
crazed with a thousand random splotches, all different shapes and sizes, but all
the same dark red.
    The astonished crowd was silent, except for the man’s mother, whose wailing echoed
through the courtyard for eternity. It did not stop, but was soon drowned beneath
the wave of religious chanting—the entire crowd, passionate, approving.

A brief atonement
    One day, my cousins and I conferred and decided to take an extended break from our
corrupt behaviours. For all our rebellious spirit, we felt terrible, even monstrous.
We’d taken fun to an aberrant level. We had gone astray.
    As the children of clerics, we knew just what our decadence could lead to. Looking
at girls’ hair, knocking on strangers’ doors, infiltrating families at the movies,
masturbating at the barbershop…how low would we sink next? Might we actually kiss
a girl? God! We needed a time-out to reflect upon our sullied souls, and emerge renewed.
    So I spent countless days and nights reading up on Islamic jurisprudence, cloistered
at home. I went to the holy shrine and sought forgiveness and repented. I began to
visit the graves of the martyrs every Friday, and read the Koran to brighten their
souls.
    Due to chemical conditions in the adolescent body, this reclusion didn’t last beyond
two months. I was a Muslim in my heart—but the same heart that felt so Muslim pumped
hot blood through my body, rendering me pagan.
    I accepted a compromise, deciding that my soul was Muslim but my body was 100 per
cent agnostic. It knew nothing of Thou Shalt Not, nor of the Holy Text. All its knowledges
were governed by the art of fornication. My soul needed a good dose of repentance.
My body needed a good dose of romp.
    Accordingly, I closed the Koran, rounded up my cousins, and explained my latest plan—Plan
F, G, H, whatever.

Payphone pick-ups
    That stubborn desert heat was back. That’s why they called it stubborn. The city
of Qom had turned into a furnace.
    We gathered once more outside the holy shrine—this time beside the payphones, which
were segregated, like everything: men on the right, women on the left. All around
us, more wholesome kids were cracking eggs on the sidewalk, cooking them on the
large, flat stones for fun.
    I had now employed the services of my younger brother, Moe Greene, who had started
moving up our adolescent ranks. Moe had been a great warrior and comrade of mine
since an early age, and was thereby my most trustworthy relation.
    Today, he was required to secrete a cache of Bin Laden rockets inside a garbage can
across the road. I had carefully choreographed our foursome’s movements:
Musty chats to the Entezami officers in a distracting fashion.
I walk to the women’s phone booth and attach an ‘out of order’ sign I’ve made.
Mehdi keeps watch for a possible Monkerat ambush.
Moe detonates the fireworks.
Everything works perfectly.
    The other thing I needed to do during the chaos was call our home phone number