Homeland Elegies(45)

“And how are we?” The charming diffidence with which he posed the question only partly hid the dismissive sarcasm at its root. I sensed the temperature in me rise.

“Do we really want to get into this?”

“Why not? It’s just a conversation, right?” He looked over at the bartender, then back at me: “Another round?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“We’ll do this again,” he told the bartender, pointing to the drinks, then turned back to me with a shy, prepossessing smile. “C’mon. It really is just a conversation, right?”

“I mean…”

“So tell me: How are we?”

The thought of going into it pained me. I didn’t want the argument. I didn’t feel invested anymore in the ideas I had about our kind, however accurate I believed them to be. My critiques were taken for attacks—and I understood why. We, Muslims, were constantly besieged by a culture that didn’t understand us, that didn’t want us. It was why I only ever voiced my thoughts indirectly, through that particular prevarication called art. I didn’t see the point of harping on “our” issues in public when it was evident “their” mishaps and blind spots were so much more pressing. The existential threats to our species were not coming from us but from the proliferation of their “enlightened” way of life to every corner of the planet. Wasn’t that the necessary critique now?

And yet, as Riaz waited for me to respond, I could feel myself being drawn out. I could feel I wanted something from him, though I wasn’t sure what it was. I took a moment and another sip, and when I finally replied, it was with words I, too, had used before, but only with myself: “We are more obsessed with what they think of us than what we think of ourselves. We spend way too much time trying to correct the impression the West has of who we are. We’ve turned this defensiveness into a way of life. Edward Said writes a book about how wrong they’ve been about us, and it becomes our bible, a high road to self-knowledge. But that’s not what it is. Not remotely. Constantly defining yourself in opposition to what others say about you is not self-knowledge. It’s confusion. That much I’d figured out by the time I was in high school.” He was quiet. Whatever he’d expected me to say, this didn’t seem to be it. On some level, I must have known I was attacking what he saw as his purpose in the world.

“We’ve had good reason to be obsessed with how wrong they’ve been,” he finally said, visibly irritated. “I mean, even this conversation we’re having right now: You were born here. I was, too. But we’re referring to ourselves as coming from somewhere else. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know how it happened for you—but in my house, it didn’t happen because of them. They didn’t make us feel like outsiders. We were outsiders. At least my parents were, because you know what? They came from somewhere else. That’s what outsiders are. And it didn’t bother them. There was a culture here they had to learn—and they never really did. Not the way those who are born into it do. Don’t get me wrong. My father loves America. Loves it more than makes sense to me sometimes, frankly. He thinks he’s American, but what that really means is that he still wants to be American. He still doesn’t really feel like one. It’s been forty-five years, and he still doesn’t really understand what it means. Because being American is not about what they tell you—freedom and opportunity and all that horseshit. Not really. There is a culture here, for sure, and it has nothing to do with all the well-meaning nonsense. It’s about racism and money worship—and when you’re on the correct side of both those things? That’s when you really belong. Because that’s when you start to represent the best of what they think they are, to come back to your quote.”

“Your point?” His tone was sharp.

“My point is just that we’re not really all that different. We do the same thing they do: we make ourselves out to be better than we are. And what really doesn’t help is how we end up using their contempt as an excuse to avoid our own failings.”

He was leaning at the bar, staring into his new drink. “So what are they?”

“What?”

“Our failings?”

“Riaz.”

“Just one. Humor me.” The crowd at the bar had been growing. And though we were not the only ones with raised voices, we were the ones being noticed—two brown men arguing was apparently a thing to make sure one kept an eye on. Riaz pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face. For a moment, he looked tired, as tired—I thought—as I felt.

“Fine,” I said. “Here’s one: When are we going to stop talking about the Golden Age? About how we kept Aristotle alive. How we invented algebra. How we laid the foundations for the scientific method. How we—”

He cut me off: “What should we do? Let them forget? Pretend it’s not true? How is that better?”

“Do it all you want, just don’t pretend it means anything. It doesn’t. The winners write history. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you. So they take credit they don’t deserve. So what? It’s never been any different. Back then, when we were winning, we did the same thing. Now they are. Writing history the way they see it. The real mistake is to expect that anybody would do otherwise.”