What could I do, though?
I blinked a few times at the truck before it disappeared into the detached garage that mirrored our own.
I’d already tried to stop Mariam’s family from leaving. What I’d tried wasn’t crazy or anything. But it wasn’t exactly legal, either.
* * *
—
From earliest childhood, I’d spent an excessive amount of time fiddling with computers. As in the actual software on hard drives. It runs in the family; Dad is a professor of computer science. His unofficial job is fixing his department’s IT issues. All of his younger academic colleagues are theoreticians without any practical skills. He loves to joke how his job security is dependent on how backward everything really is. Especially infrastructure. He has a point; the Arlington internet hub—as in the actual machinery that makes it all work—is housed in a crumbling cement building that should have been condemned before I was born. “Good thing us old folks know how to repair a toaster oven,” he often cracks whenever we drive past it. “It’s the first thing you kids will need when your screens go dark.” Hardy-har-har. Gallows nerd humor from the Muslim tech guy.
On the other hand, that humor has made him something of a lovable dorky legend at work. So when Mariam first told me how bad it was for her father, I had a hard time believing her.
She rolled her eyes at first. Then she got mad. “Salma, his name is Dr. Muhammad Muhammad. It might as well be Dr. Evil-Evil. You’re so naïve!”
Never mind that he was the best chiropractor in Northern Virginia. Even my grandmother Titi—convinced that a spoonful of honey and nigella seeds can heal anything—swore by his talent. Nobody listened. The depressing truth about the Muslim community, at least ours, is that it sucks at supporting its own. We’re either trying to cope with our alienation or debating the legality of something ridiculous, like what qualifies as a “clean sock.” I’m not kidding. Our imam might hold the world’s record for discussing the virtues of doing laundry. Shoes come off for prayer at every mosque, yet somehow we here in Arlington, Virginia, end up with the halal sock police. (Of which Titi is a proud member. So I’m just as guilty of not listening to her sometimes.) All of which is to say that occasionally I’m forced to take matters into my own hands…or fingertips, to be exact.
Anyway, Mariam is naïve, too.
Like most non-nerds, Mariam doesn’t have a clue as to how interconnected we all are. Or that there are people—yes, even some who aren’t Russian villains—who manipulate search engines. There are even some who do it legally, as a job. Yet for some reason we nerds seem to be the only ones who know the truth.
Human beings don’t pay attention to truth or logic. They pay attention to Google searches.
While I couldn’t hide the Muslim heritage of Dr. Muhammad Muhammad, I could up his game by placing his reputation front and center. The downside: I couldn’t tell Mariam, because I had to hijack her router to do so.
In my defense, I’d at least tried to guess her dad’s username and password. (Isn’t it a good thing I can’t read the mind of a suburban chiropractor?) Failure to hack in the old-fashioned way prompted me to cross a line I hadn’t before: I ventured onto the Dark Web. For better or worse, it didn’t take long for me to understand what the benefits were. After I tossed off just a single cursory password-and-username query into this gated netherworld of encrypted networks, a friend appeared to help me: Pulaski88. I was quickly ushered into a chatroom for “ethical hacking”—a forum for the subversive but righteous—and there, under the handle I’ll never share, we struck up a conversation. It turned out Pulaski88 was exactly who I was looking for, someone who specialized in accessing “nearby non-criminal hardware.”
Long, redacted story short: after I answered some ridiculous questions (“On what planet would you hypothetically live?”), Pulaski88 walked me through what I needed to do to take control of Dr. Muhammad’s hard drive—and also warned me of the penalties involved, everything from a class B misdemeanor to a class D felony.
I wasn’t concerned. Pulling it off was the easy part.
Once inside, undetected and glitch-free, I tinkered with Dr. Muhammad’s meta tags, those keywords that make websites more discoverable. From that night on, whenever someone local searched for a back pain specialist, voilà: Dr. Muhammad Muhammad rose to the top. I did feel guilty. What I’d done was black hat, criminal. And worse, I’d kept it from my best friend. But it reinforced that invaluable secret: privacy is an illusion. Easily hacked and easily violated. The next morning I covered my webcam with a postage stamp in case anyone out there wanted to snoop on me. And full disclosure? Mostly I felt a flush of pride. Mariam’s father was briefly the king of the Arlington chiropractors.
My happiest memory from that otherwise grim period was catching him at his phone with a bewildered smile, shaking his head at his sudden rise in internet rankings.
The difficult part? Accepting fate. Boosting his rankings was like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. A futile, pathetic attempt at stemming the inevitable.
“SALMA, GET READY. No dawdling. And please wear something nice. Like one of your kaftans.”
Ugh. Saturday evening, and instead of going out with friends, I was being dragged to the mosque. During Ramadan. I don’t fast for health reasons, which means that I’ve always struggled with the Ramadan spirit. “Mom. Do I have to?”
“For Titi, dear. It’ll bring her joy.”
It’ll bring her joy. Titi is moving in with us. Salma! Can you take the basement and give her your room? It’ll bring her joy. Titi would like to go on a walk. Salma! Can you be her cane? It’ll bring her joy. Salma! Titi needs another prescription refill. Can you run to the pharmacy?
Yes, I’m Titi’s personal assistant. A full-time joy-maker. But you know what? Titi deserves it. And if paradise lies at the foot of a mother, I am quite certain that the key to its highest realm is straight through the heart of a grandmother. So I forced myself out from under the covers, brushed my teeth, and jumped in the shower. After battling with my Queen Bey big curls, I unzipped the hermetically sealed takchita that had been hiding in my closet since last April.
A takchita is like a kaftan on steroids. Mine was a vibrant sea of oranges and reds. It would have been gorgeous on some, no doubt—if you had big boobs and wide hips to fill it in, but that ain’t happening. Besides, I was more of a tunic-with-leggings sort of girl. I preferred something low-key and comfortable. Simple. A double-layered, ankle-length dress is…anything but. This particular takchita consisted of a cotton undergarment hidden by a layer of silk and sequins, dripping with beads: a fountain of femininity tied at the waist with an oppressively thick made-for-a-queen belt.
As I tied it tightly, I reminded myself of Titi’s joy. Then I contemplated the shoes. They matched perfectly with the gown, but those two-inch heels induced palpitations. I, Salma B., utterly lacked the charm and grace of an Oscar-winning actress. Odds were that I would stumble and fall on the mosque’s red carpet. Forget it. No way. Mom appeared once again as I finished lacing my cherry-red Doc Martens—Amir’s favorite.