Wine

That day it was because he found the word ‘wine’ in a book I was reading. Saqr lost it. In his eyes, that was enough to earn me forty lashes.

He snatched the book from me and tore it up, then threw it at my feet. I watched as the characters of the novel raced around, clear as day, terrified by the sudden attack. I saw the carnage, the arms and the legs and the heads severed from their bodies, the orphaned shoes flying in the air. Everyone was wiped out. I started gathering up the papers, apologizing. I buried them together in an empty flowerpot in the courtyard of the house, making them a mass grave.

Another day Saqr happened to come by my room on one of his patrols while I was reading Charles Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris. I was feeling out the magical form of the prose poem, born without head or tail. Saqr took the book.

“What’s this?”

He held the book by its cover as if he were holding a bird by its wings.

“Poetry.”

“So this is the latest thing now?” He spoke with great disdain. I didn’t want to say a word in front of him. My focus was on how to avoid a confrontation and get rid of him as quickly as possible.

“God, people have nothing better to do.”

“Well, I finished my homework, so I don’t really have anything better to do.”

“Go read a few verses from the Quran. That would be better for you and serve you better in the afterlife.”

He won’t let me love anything in this world, I thought sadly.

“Reading isn’t haram. The Quran tells us to read.”

“We read the Quran, not the heretical ramblings of Baudelaire and Voltaire and junk like that.”

“The Prophet said, ‘A believer is always seeking wisdom, wherever it is found.’”

“We Muslims don’t need any more wisdom.”

“If that’s true, then why are we a backward ummah?”

“Because we chase breathlessly after the heretical ramblings of unbelievers.”

Heretical ramblings of unbelievers. He said it with so much loathing. It seemed the words had worked their effect on him, because in no time he grew enraged and started ripping the book up before my eyes, as if he were tearing the feathers from the wings of a bird, the bird trembling in fear. Then he threw it on the ground, declaring, “You’ll thank me one day, even if that isn’t until Judgment Day.”

After that, I started downloading pirated books from the internet and having them printed and bound at the student services center with clear plastic covers and titles like Negotiation Skills 221 by Dr. Ounsi al-Hajj, Introduction to Political Science 101 by Dr. Mahmoud Darwish, Computer Systems Management by Dr. Amin Salih.

It cost me around nine dirhams to have a book made, including paper, ink, and binding. It was so easy it was funny, and it made me feel superior. I’d fooled my big brother! My impossible brother, as huge as the wall and the closets and the rain boots. I beat him.