The Taqwacores by Michael Knight Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Knight
Tags: Fiction, Coming of Age
C’mon man, get up.” He slapped my blanketed leg.
“Give me a minute,” I whined.
“Alright, I’ll go get Fasiq.” Jehangir got off the bed, almost knocking the three-inch by five-inch Pakistani flag from its stand on my headboard. I looked at the green field and white crescent, thought about Rawalpindi and adhans waking you for Fajr from neighborhood minarets. Jehangir rumbled down the stairs and
yelled something. From the sounds of Fasiq’s reaction I could tell that Jehangir had jumped on him.
“C‘mon, man,” groaned Fasiq. “Get off me, it’s not even fuckin’ eleven yet—”
“Get off my couch, asshole! We’re shredding today!”
“Fuck,” said Fasiq.
Fasiq threw some shoes on and grabbed his board from under the mess of clothes and Qur’ans that had accumulated by the couch he called a bed. We went in Jehangir’s car, me in the back seat. Jehangir brought along his boom box and a handful of his skillfully arranged mix-tapes.
“Got a little something for everyone on here,” he bragged, holding the tapes. “It’s the philosophy of the three-ring circus. If you don’t like the clowns, you’ll like the elephants. If you don’t like the elephants, you’ll like the acrobats.” There was only one component lacking.
“Why don’t you have any taqwacore bands?” I asked.
“Because the fuckers put all their shit out on vinyl.”
“What? Why?”
“They just do,” he answered shrugging.
“But who even has a record player anymore?”
“I do,” said Jehangir. “But just so I can listen to those guys. And it fuckin’ sucks because it can’t record from vinyl to a cassette, the shit’s so old.”
“I don’t get the vinyl thing,” I said. “Is there some kind of ideological point behind that?”
“Maybe. A lot of punks turn out to be sentimental suckers.”
“Like Amazing Ayyub last night,” Fasiq interjected, “when he said that there hasn’t been any real punk since 1980.”
“What does that have to do with vinyl?” I asked. “Do they think that they’re closer to the Lost Golden Age by rejecting CDs? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Allahu Alim,” Fasiq replied. Jehangir popped one of his mix-tapes in the deck. “Nice,” remarked Fasiq as it came on halfway through the Descendents’ “Suburban Home.” They both slouched to accommodate their high hair. Riding in the backseat behind two brightly dyed mohawks with my digital camcorder in a grocery bag, hearing noisy music through lousy speakers, windows down, the weather pleasant but not uncomfortably summer just yet, I realized that there were a million forms of coolness floating through the world and one of them—the zeitgeist of three guys en route to juvenile stunts on public property—had been captured successfully that day. Both Jehangir and Fasiq wore exactly the same clothes as the previous day. but I had known them too long by this point to think anything of it.
Just then I noticed a patch on the left shoulder of Fasiq’s Operation Ivy hoodie. He saw me looking. “Bosnian Muslim unit,” he explained. It was white with green letters reading “ALLAHU EKBER” above a yellow crescent and green star.
We arrived at a museum off Elmwood to find that we had been beaten to it by a gangly gang of kids hopping around on hundred-dollar boards with little toothpick-arms poking out of clownishly oversized outfits, everything splashed with logos: Billabong, Atticus, Quiksilver, Independent.
“We should’ve hit Pac-Sun and gotten the right uniforms,” said Fasiq. “We coulda been friends.”
“Everybody’s got a sunna,” replied Jehangir with his Oi-tranquility. Fasiq in his Op Ivy hoodie and reasonably baggy khakis seemed at least somewhat closer to the code than Jehangir who in spike-covered leather jacket and red plaid bondage-pants was too scary, too old school, too ’77 British-style grog-shop punk. The pop-punk kids picked up their boards and left on foot.
The museum’s
“Give me a minute,” I whined.
“Alright, I’ll go get Fasiq.” Jehangir got off the bed, almost knocking the three-inch by five-inch Pakistani flag from its stand on my headboard. I looked at the green field and white crescent, thought about Rawalpindi and adhans waking you for Fajr from neighborhood minarets. Jehangir rumbled down the stairs and
yelled something. From the sounds of Fasiq’s reaction I could tell that Jehangir had jumped on him.
“C‘mon, man,” groaned Fasiq. “Get off me, it’s not even fuckin’ eleven yet—”
“Get off my couch, asshole! We’re shredding today!”
“Fuck,” said Fasiq.
Fasiq threw some shoes on and grabbed his board from under the mess of clothes and Qur’ans that had accumulated by the couch he called a bed. We went in Jehangir’s car, me in the back seat. Jehangir brought along his boom box and a handful of his skillfully arranged mix-tapes.
“Got a little something for everyone on here,” he bragged, holding the tapes. “It’s the philosophy of the three-ring circus. If you don’t like the clowns, you’ll like the elephants. If you don’t like the elephants, you’ll like the acrobats.” There was only one component lacking.
“Why don’t you have any taqwacore bands?” I asked.
“Because the fuckers put all their shit out on vinyl.”
“What? Why?”
“They just do,” he answered shrugging.
“But who even has a record player anymore?”
“I do,” said Jehangir. “But just so I can listen to those guys. And it fuckin’ sucks because it can’t record from vinyl to a cassette, the shit’s so old.”
“I don’t get the vinyl thing,” I said. “Is there some kind of ideological point behind that?”
“Maybe. A lot of punks turn out to be sentimental suckers.”
“Like Amazing Ayyub last night,” Fasiq interjected, “when he said that there hasn’t been any real punk since 1980.”
“What does that have to do with vinyl?” I asked. “Do they think that they’re closer to the Lost Golden Age by rejecting CDs? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Allahu Alim,” Fasiq replied. Jehangir popped one of his mix-tapes in the deck. “Nice,” remarked Fasiq as it came on halfway through the Descendents’ “Suburban Home.” They both slouched to accommodate their high hair. Riding in the backseat behind two brightly dyed mohawks with my digital camcorder in a grocery bag, hearing noisy music through lousy speakers, windows down, the weather pleasant but not uncomfortably summer just yet, I realized that there were a million forms of coolness floating through the world and one of them—the zeitgeist of three guys en route to juvenile stunts on public property—had been captured successfully that day. Both Jehangir and Fasiq wore exactly the same clothes as the previous day. but I had known them too long by this point to think anything of it.
Just then I noticed a patch on the left shoulder of Fasiq’s Operation Ivy hoodie. He saw me looking. “Bosnian Muslim unit,” he explained. It was white with green letters reading “ALLAHU EKBER” above a yellow crescent and green star.
We arrived at a museum off Elmwood to find that we had been beaten to it by a gangly gang of kids hopping around on hundred-dollar boards with little toothpick-arms poking out of clownishly oversized outfits, everything splashed with logos: Billabong, Atticus, Quiksilver, Independent.
“We should’ve hit Pac-Sun and gotten the right uniforms,” said Fasiq. “We coulda been friends.”
“Everybody’s got a sunna,” replied Jehangir with his Oi-tranquility. Fasiq in his Op Ivy hoodie and reasonably baggy khakis seemed at least somewhat closer to the code than Jehangir who in spike-covered leather jacket and red plaid bondage-pants was too scary, too old school, too ’77 British-style grog-shop punk. The pop-punk kids picked up their boards and left on foot.
The museum’s