THE BEAUTY OF YOUR FACE
Nurrideen School for Girls
ANOTHER ANGRY phone call, and it was only Tuesday.
“It’s very haram, Ms. Rahman! All that drinking and debauchery!”
Afaf Rahman inhaled deeply. She had cultivated a reputation for patience as principal of the Nurrideen School for Girls. This wasn’t the first complaint lodged against a book. “The Great Gatsby is a state-approved text, Mrs. Ibrahim,” she calmly explained to the parent on the other end.
“The state of Illinois is not raising my daughter to be a proper muslimah, Ms. Rahman.” A swift retort. She could hear sneering through the line.
The fathers rarely called Afaf—a professional woman with two master’s degrees—didn’t bother speaking with a marra. The men coached their wives on what to say when they called her. She could tell by the weak persistence in their voices that some of the wives had not taken their husbands’ positions against the liberal education of their daughters.
This mother, however, was raring to go.
Afaf’s assistant Sabah appeared in the doorway of her office, holding a folder. Afaf waved her in. “Um Ibrahim, raising your daughter to be a proper muslimah is your job at home, and my job at this school.” She rolled her eyes at Sabah. “I’m also responsible for providing each young woman enrolled at this school with a competitive education. I’m confident that no book could ever steer her—or any of my students—off the path of righteousness, Um Ibrahim.”
My students—four hundred young, bright, and determined girls whom Afaf claimed as her own daughters. Her love and devotion to them were fierce.
Sabah pointed at a signature line on a document and handed her a pen. Her assistant wore a thickly knitted infinity scarf around her neck and a long sweater over her abaya. In the middle of February in Illinois, you could bet on a wind chill of ten degrees one day and wake up the next morning to a thirty-degree hike above normal.
“Have you read The Great Gatsby, Um Ibrahim?” Afaf asked the parent on the phone, quickly signing the form.
Sabah smiled, knowingly shaking her head, and replaced the document in a folder. She retreated to her desk outside Afaf’s door.
“Well, no. Abu Ibrahim and I watched it on Netflix. Leonardo DiCaprio’s in it.”
Afaf massaged her left temple. “I see. Perhaps you and your husband should read it. I can arrange for copies to be sent home with your daughter Eman. Inshallah we can sit down once you’ve read it and discuss your concerns.” A few seconds of silence. She scratched the top of her hijab with the antennae of her two-way radio, waiting.
In her ten years at Nurrideen School, Afaf wrestled with parents who never backed down—a few even withdrew their daughters’ enrollment. The majority eventually relented and trusted her. Still, she chose her battles: contraception could be explored in health class, without encouraging premarital sex. And absolutely no discussion of abortion.
“No. That won’t be necessary, Ms. Afaf. May Allah give you the strength and wisdom to guide our daughters in this frightening world.”
The parent hung up and Afaf left her office, clutching her radio. She gave Sabah a thumbs-up.
Her assistant laughed. “By the way, the interfaith summit meeting is rescheduled to next week. They’re sending us a revised agenda by the end of the day.”
“Good. Who are the student ambassadors?”
Sabah scanned her desk. “Majeeda Abu Lateef, Jenin Muhsin, and Renah Abdel Bakir. Two seniors, one junior.”
Afaf nodded. Jenin was her daughter Azmia’s best friend and the two of them had started the first student chapter of Amnesty International at Nurrideen School. Azmia had been only a freshman that year, already championing human rights. Like so many of her peers, she’d paid close attention to the case of Malala Yousafzai, a fifteen-year-old student like her, shot in the head for wanting an education. Azmia had been rattled for days.
How can they do that? Aren’t they Muslim, too? her daughter had wanted to know. Afaf had no good answer except, They’re not true muslimeen, habibti.
Then Sandy Hook happened and Azmia helped mobilize a student rally that traveled all the way to Springfield, joining other groups demanding that Illinois legislators hold Congress responsible for the lives of those twenty young souls.
Azmia was a senior now, her eyes set on international law. Her friend Jenin had chosen premed with plans to volunteer with Doctors Without Borders. Sometimes Afaf stood outside a classroom, listening at the door as the teacher lectured, followed by an intermittent chorus of loud and unflappable responses. She was overcome by her students’ sense of pride and purpose. There was an infinite number of choices for these young women.
At home, Afaf watched Azmia at the kitchen table, her head buried in a textbook, hair pulled into a bun, marveling at this magnificent creature who was nothing like Afaf had been at her age, wrecked and lost. Azmia was an extraordinary surprise at the saddest part of her life, growing up bold and assertive, her brothers fretting over her, though she constantly pushed them away, making room to spread her wings, to chart her own course.
When she was nine years old, the girls in her Brownies troop told Azmia she was lucky she didn’t look Muslim. She’d come home fighting tears and begging Afaf’s permission to begin wearing hijab.
Afaf had gathered her in her arms. Why, my love? You’re still so young.
Azmia’s eyebrows furrowed like two wings intersecting as they always did when she was about to cry—a rare occasion, as tough as she was.
I don’t want anyone to make a mistake about who I am.
Hadn’t every muslimah asserted this collective identity to the world? There could be no mistake about who they are, what they believe. Her daughter’s brazenness still amazed Afaf; Azmia was so unlike how she herself had been at her age, a mousy girl with no sense of self, an invisible child. It’s what your children did: erased your flaws, your tragedies.
Outside her office, Lou, the school security guard, sat at a small wooden table, spectacles propped on the bridge of his freckled nose, reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up, the bill of his White Sox cap shadowing his eyes. He raised his two-way radio in greeting.
Afaf remembered his skeptical look when she hired Lou last year.
“I’ve been retired from the force for five years. I’d never worked with a Muslim population.” He pronounced it Moo-slim and looked like he wouldn’t have been disappointed if he didn’t get the job.
And yet Afaf had wanted him. He had that self-assured way that white people oozed because they believed you counted on them to improve matters. After a series of bomb threats, a jittery school board swiftly approved the full-time hiring of Lou, an ex–Chicago cop.
She turned down the corridor past the cafeteria, where laughter and chatter rose and fell. Young girls—twelve through eighteen—ate turkey sandwiches and sipped from water bottles, their heads swaddled in the compulsory white hijab, their bodies hidden under shapeless forest-green uniforms.
The head of the cafeteria staff waved at Afaf with her metal tongs. Um Khaddar was a widow, ancient and ageless all at once, with nine grown children. She’d pleaded with Afaf for a job in the kitchen to fill her empty days. The students adored Um Khaddar; she was like a mother hen, plump and fretting over wasted food.