“You only need one word to convert to Islam.”
“I know, shahada. But first you need to read the Quran, learn something about Islam, learn to pray… and then say the shahada. My friend told me about it. That’s the way to do it, to make the right decision. For life.” I’m trying desperately to divert the topic from trying to get me to convert to Islam here and now in an old bombed-out 1990 Audi car.
“No.” He says resolutely. A yellow crooked tooth peeks forward out of his mouth like a long-gone tourist directional signpost. “First you have to accept Islam. You say the shahada. You will learn everything afterwards.” He raises his voice emphatically. It’s rather claustrophobic in the small car. The absence of seatbelts in the front seat doesn’t help either. The lady in the back is silent and the child babbles contentedly. “That’ll make it easier for you.” He concludes his speech conciliatorily. Yeah, kid, if I’d made my whole life easier, I might end up a Muslim now, but it certainly wouldn’t be me. You don’t know me, do you? Of the three paths, I always choose the hardest one willingly.
“Okay. I’ll learn something and then I’ll decide.” Silence falls. There I go again.
A beat-up clunker bounces forlornly down an equally beat-up road. I’d look at the map, but I don’t feel like pulling out six wrecked Audis’ worth of cell phones. Detour, roadworks, road left, detour, road right. What the hell, I’ll get somewhere. And from somewhere to somewhere else. I’ve got time.
“And what language do you read the Koran in? Arabic or Kyrgyz?” We’ve already left the subject, but I still can’t find out more.
“In Arabic, of course,” a woman answers from the back of the seat. She speaks excellent Russian.
“Wow, you speak Arabic too!” I exclaim excitedly, thinking how lucky they are to have been born here in the region and to have spoken three languages from a young age.
“No, we don’t speak Arabic.” The driver cools my enthusiasm. “We only read the Koran in Arabic. There is no need to understand, there is a need to read.” This statement awakens so many questions in me…which I instantly decide I’d rather not ask. Do you at least understand the words? Have you ever read the translation as well? Do you even know what is in the Quran? Has anyone ever translated it for you? So many questions. Which I don’t really want to hear the answer to. I’m silent.
Fortunately, my silence is broken by the driver. “What language do you speak at home?”
“Czech,” I reply, already knowing where he’s going with this. I’m not wrong.
“I’m sure the Koran exists in Czech.” He declares firmly, and while his left hand avoids the potholes on the gravel road, which he says they’ve been doing “renovations” on for five years (yes, I told them about D1 Czech road right away, they were thrilled that we have a similar mess), his right hand searches for YouTube on his redmi with a broken screen. He enters “Koran audio in Czech” in Cyrillic into YouTube. In the car, the opening words of the Koran come through the surprisingly loud speakers. Only the right box works, so I have it privately in my ear. In Russian, of course. YouTube doesn’t search for the Czech in Cyrillic alphabet. “Neужели люди удивлены тем, что Мы внушили…”
” That’s beautiful.” I stammer uncertainly after a few minutes of recitation. I try to scream loud over the speakers. I mean one, the one in front of my head. It worked.
“Yes, it is.” He says, turning down the Russian Koran to a reasonable volume so he can speak.
“Christians call Jesus a god. But that’s not true. Jesus was just one of the prophets that God sent into the world. Mohammed was also just a prophet of god. But the Christians have got it wrong.”
“Yes.” I replied dryly. If you don’t know, say yes. I don’t know a shit about religion or Christianity, but I explained a moment ago that I’m a Christian, so I mustn’t fuck it up too badly. “Yes.” He’s concluding a private religion lecture. Ugh.
“That’s my principal in the back.”
“Headmistress?” I say, confused. It doesn’t feel right. The lady with the baby sure doesn’t look like the manager of a company with her own driver.
“Director. Wife. She runs my life. I don’t have a job, so I’m unemployed now. I have sheep, but not many, just six, goats, and chickens. And cows.”
“And how much milk do your cows give?” I ask. This is my new favorite question. Every farmer likes to brag about how much milk his cows have right now, or how much milk they had last year in a full feeding season. Since my beloved ranch near Brno managed to have two milk cows this year, I learned quite a bit about cows.
She laughs. “Six gallons!”
“Six liters, that’s good!” That’s pretty lousy for Czech cows, but actually really good for local mountain cows just after winter. I’ve even met ladies whose cows were milking two litres. I assume you’re all unbelievably interested in the milk yield of local cows, so I’ll add a few more random local cow milk numbers: three, four and five. You’re welcome. Literally.
“Do you eat pork?” the driver changes the subject from milk to meat.
“Yes, I don’t like it much, but otherwise we normally eat pork.”
“Pork is bad.” He frowns radically, as if I had said, “Yes, we all take pork in Brno, it’s cool, dude, everybody does it. No big deal, I’m fine, I don’t have a problem with it, I can handle it, pork drug is a great friend.”
“I know, pork is bad for Muslims,” I try to sound concerned.
“Oh no!” He frowns even more, until a peeking tooth digs into his scowling double chin. “Not just for Muslims, it’s bad for all people. For Muslims, for Christians, for all people, pork is bad for everyone.” He closed the gastronomic window sternly. I shrug my shoulders. Again, lying has its limits. We are pigs in the Czech Republic and we eat pigs. Just deal with it. In China they eat dogs too, and the eye of the average Czech dog-eater would not be too happy with a poodle on a grill. The curly hairs are quite unpleasant between the teeth. Unless you burn them with a blowtorch first. This is how gophers are prepared in Kazakhstan. A gopher on a blowtorch. A healthy breakfast from the mountains.
A child in the back of the car screaming and demanding to be moved to the front seat. The driver turns back and points to the child. “That’s my daughter. Does she look like me?”
I look at my daughter and my wife. Both have round faces, broad chubby cheeks like a baroque cherub, and big, sharply cut brown eyes. A man with a flat, pockmarked face, small sunken eyes and narrow lips looks at me searchingly, as if waiting to see what I will answer.
“No…. cheeks takes after your wife,” I say cautiously. I have no idea what to add to that.
“No, she looks like me!” He snaps sharply. “She’s all me. She takes after me exactly the same…..” There is a brief silence. “Little finger on my hand!” and he laughs boisterously. “Little finger by my hand! That’s the only way in which she resembles me!” And he laughs so hard he can’t drive. “She takes after me with her pinky finger! And that’s all.” he laughs, a little happily and a little bitterly. The wife-director in the back of the car has probably heard this joke many times. She smiles condescendingly and says nothing.
“Are you going home soon? And when are you coming back?” The driver asks questioningly. “You should come with your husband. Traveling alone like this is not good. I wouldn’t let you go.”
“I don’t know,” I reply hesitantly, wondering when I’ll have another window of free time in the thousand activities I’m doing. Hopefully soon, it’s beautiful here. “I’ll ask my man,” I reply, to fit the context.
“That’s right, you have to listen to you man!” He declares enthusiastically, stepping on the accelerator over the hole in the tarmac. The car hits the other side of the hole brusquely.
“Yes, I must obey a man.” I nod resignedly and, for perhaps the first time in the entire drive, please him with my answer. He smiles broadly, until a knocked-out yellow tooth nearly snags the tattered Soviet leather steering wheel of the wildly bouncing car on the mountain potholes.
And with that answer, the tyranny in the car ends. At the next stop, we pick up a local hitchhiker. We’ll buy potatoes for him. At the next stop, the driver jumps in for an energy drink. (“Where are you going? Energy drink? We don’t need it!” the wife protests, trying to prevent a hole in the family budget.) I know in advance that he’s going to bring something for me, too. There’s no point in resisting, it’s a habit, and I’ll make them happiest when I say thank you without bullshit.
With a litre of over-sweetened cherry juice, I get off cheerfully at the next roundabout (subsequently shitting myself from it, well, that’s karma).
“Here, here, your car’s coming!” Shouts “my” driver from the window, trying to wave to stop a bright orange Toyota with sub-bass disco music playing loudly.
I ignore it. “There will be cars yet,” I wave at him in satisfaction. I’m glad to be out and alone again. I’m going to take a break for a while. No point in trying to hysterically stop the first car. If nothing’s going, it just won’t go.
“Okay.” She smiles amusedly. “Bye,” and with a loud clunk of something on the chassis, he disappears into the thick black smoke from the exhaust.
Actually, he was quite a nice man.
