found the spectacle”—he searched for the right word with two open hands—
“illuminating! The two of you looked so beautiful together. Disturbing yet
beautiful. Not traumatique. Perhaps it is what made me into a painter.”
The story was too personal, painfully private. It made the brothers seem
terribly intimate and close. They were so close, in fact, that they didn’t even
notice the other people listening.
Elena only looked amused. She’d clearly heard this before. “Your guilt is
very sentimental, Hassan. I am sure you have done worse things in your life.”
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
2 4 3
“I have. This was only the first sin. It taught me to recognize sin. Blood is
thicker than water, especially with brothers.” He turned to Zack, as if a psy-
chiatrist would understand. “I began to recognize the other sins, the whores
and drugs and the rest. And I felt ashamed of them, too. The great change in
my life began in shame. I slept with a good friend’s wife and felt shame. I was
angry with my father and felt shame. I walked past beggars on the street with-
out giving them money and felt grievous shame. It took a year or more, but
shame made me feel very naked in the world. Exposed and alone. I was alone
with my sins. I saw that I had no inner life, only an outer life, a material life. I
was all matter and no spirit. I felt so alone that I began to miss my country.
Not God. My country.” He now turned to Abbas. “Isn’t that interesting? I
was a man without a country. I wanted my country back. So I went looking for
it in the mosques of Paris. I didn’t want God, I only wanted to hear Farsi or
Arabic or see a veil or turban, things I once found backward when we lived in
Tehran. I used to think Islam was narrow and confining. But the secular world
drowns in choices. Whores and cocaine and Haitian girls. It is like Sartre said,
We were never so free as under the German occupation.” He paused, then
loudly cleared his throat and addressed everyone. “To make a long story
short, I found God, or rather God found me, and I came home.”
There was silence around the table, nobody certain what to say next.
Abbas was staring down at his plate—in embarrassment, guilt, or worry, it
was hard to guess.
Then Elena said, “A very pretty story, Hassan. I always enjoy hearing it.
Not least because its purpose seems to change from telling to telling.”
33
When they finished eating, Zack helped Daniel clear the table,
eager to compare notes with him in the kitchen.
“The brother is not what I expected,” he said as they loaded the dish-
washer. “Very worldly, very open. A Muslim businessman who quotes French
existentialists? And not without a sense of humor.”
“I’d say he wants to impress us,” said Daniel. “Only he barely notices
we’re here.”
“You feel that, too? Yes. It’s all between the two brothers, the older sib out
to prove something to the younger sib, while Elena keeps getting in her two
cents. How are you holding up? Is this too strange for you or is it objectively
interesting?”
Daniel frowned. “Don’t worry about me. It’s interesting, but not that in-
teresting.”
They came back out with the coffee and cake and found their guests in the
living room, all three using the fireplace as an ashtray for their cigarettes.
“Our smoking does not bother you?” asked Hassan.
“Oh no. Go ahead. I used to be a smoker myself,” said Zack.
“So polite,” said Elena. “Almost Iranian. ‘Please step on my eyes,’ ” she
said in a thick, parody accent.
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2 4 5
The Iranians laughed, and Zack automatically laughed with them. Daniel
looked guilty, as if embarrassed for Zack.
They took their seats on either side of the fire, Daniel, Abbas, and Hassan
on the sofa, Zack and Elena in the love seat facing them. While Daniel handed
out the cake, Zack introduced a new topic, something he’d been wanting to ex-
plore. “I apologize for my ignorance, Hassan. But I know almost nothing about
Islam. Not even the basics. For example, do you actually pray five times a
day?”
Hassan was happy to discuss his religion. The rules and rituals were not
strictly enforced, he said, but provided order when order was needed. He
usually prayed twice a day, in the morning and the evening. The calls to prayer
back home were the most beautiful sounds imaginable, lovelorn chants from
all over the city, but one did not need to answer every call. He took a prayer
rug with him on his travels, a lovely kilim that he’d purchased in London. He
would pray alone in his room—he did it here in the house on Chandler