The Answer

Isn't it a little too implausible that I would hear a knock at my door two days later, at an hour when Jake and Michael happen to be out, and find Rafael standing there? Or that I would invite him in? I myself find it hard to believe. He looks helpless and bewildered, clutching a textbook and a ragged notebook under his arm, in a long white T-shirt and the same jeans as before. The outfit reminds me, uncomfortably, of a movie I've seen about Mexican-American gangsters in prison.

I'm sorry to bother you, he says. You're in my psychology class. Are you studying for the test tomorrow? I'm having a hard time with it.

You're in Salovey's class? I've never seen you there.

Yeah. I sit up in the balcony.

In our common room—a futon, a halogen lamp, a stack of milk crates for bookshelves, a Dinosaur Jr poster, a Rothko print, a stereo sitting precariously on its own box—he looks awkwardly from side to side, unsure of where to sit, twitching with discomfort. Finally I point him to the futon and move my desk chair to face him.

It's this influence stuff, he says, opening the textbook across his knees. This part:

The human mind has an overwhelming craving for stability and symmetry, particularly in social relationships with strangers. Schloss (1967) demonstrated that adult subjects who feel an obligation imposed on them (even one they did not choose themselves) will make every effort to fulfill it, and report feeling unsettled and anxious if prevented from doing so. The same logic applies to all free-giveaway programs and one-on-one selling techniques.

Okay, I say. This is easy. Think of the example he gave in lecture. The Hare Krishna guy comes up to you in the airport and gives you a sticker that says 'Smile!' without asking you for permission first. Even if you don't want the sticker, he won't take it back, and you can't throw it away in front of him—that would be rude. So you have to talk to him for thirty seconds. That gives him time to make the pitch for his children's charity, or whatever he's trying to collect money for. Again, because he initiated the relationship with a gift, you still feel indebted, so you might wind up giving him a dollar or two or five—even though you know better.

He takes off his glasses and wipes them on the long hem of his T-shirt. It's a warm night, still now in mid-September, and the creases in his forehead are shiny with sweat. Without his glasses, and slightly flushed by the heat, he looks naked, defenceless as an overgrown newborn. Except, I notice now, he has a small white scar at the left corner of his mouth, a cut badly healed.

Only an idiot would act that way, he says. Doesn't it just seem like nonsense to you? All this manipulation, all these tricks?

I shrug. These are unconscious tendencies, I say. Some people are more strongly influenced by them than others.

That assumes that everybody has the same unconscious. And why should that be? Think about it. Why should some professor know what my unconscious is like?

Well, you know, the studies are all supposed to be multi-ethnic, so they factor that part in.

He laughs, the one and only time I will ever hear him laugh, a deep guffaw out of the belly that is also like a suppressed groan. Bullshit they do, he says. All these studies are done on college campuses, so who do you expect they're going to find?

Then why take psychology? If you've already decided you don't believe in it, why take it?

Leaning back, he tilts his head up to stare at the ceiling, and lets his hands fall uselessly on the textbook's open page, fingers curling skyward. The futon creaks underneath him. Everyone has to learn a skill, he says tonelessly, as if repeating a line learned in childhood. The Movement doesn't need illiterates. It needs doctors, lawyers, engineers. People with degrees. The new nation depends on those people.

Without looking at me, he digs into the pocket of his jeans and thrusts a battered yellow pamphlet in my direction: 'Jihad in the Cause of God, Young Muslims United, Toronto, CANADA, for free distribution'. The paper is tissue-thin, the type a reprint of an older edition, printed on an inferior press, hardly legible in places. In my hands it falls open to a paragraph highlighted in orange:

This religion is really a universal declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men and from servitude to his own desires, which is also a form of human servitude; it is a declaration that sovereignty belongs to God alone and that He is the Lord of all the worlds. It means a challenge to all kinds and forms of systems which are based on the concept of the sovereignty of man; in other words, where man has usurped the Divine attribute.

Each page contains more of the same—long paragraphs in tiny print, studded with quotations:

There are many practical obstacles in establishing God's rule on earth, such as the power of the state, the social system and traditions and, in general, the whole human environment. Islam uses force only to remove these obstacles so that there may not remain any wall between Islam and individual human beings, so that it may address their hearts and minds after releasing them from these material obstacles, and then leave them free to choose to accept or reject it.

What does this part mean? The whole human environment?

He lifts his head and looks at me curiously.

Why? What do you think it is?

Well, what else is there? God's environment?

Exactly.

That's a circular argument. If you define God as everything not human and yet say that we're supposed to destroy our own environment and accept God's—

Shut up and listen for a second. Tiny drops of sweat trickle down his forehead, and he wipes them away with the back of his hand. This isn't just philosophy, he says. It's a programme. The first people going down are the governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It's all about reclaiming the Islamic world and making it real. Not just a copy of the West. Those countries have their laws, and we have shari'a. We don't want to force anybody to become Muslims, but we want Muslims to be allowed to be Muslims.

As he speaks he squares his shoulders and leans forward, elbows on his knees, watching me, watching the room. Projecting. Did he learn that in theatre class, I'm wondering, and if so, can he tell I have a trick of my own, pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep from smiling?

I know what you're thinking. He flicks his fingers dismissively. Yeah, I was a Catholic. I went to Catholic school through eighth grade. Does that make you happy? You want to hear about how my mother waded across the Rio Grande with only her shoes in a plastic bag?

Look, you have to admit it's a little incongruous. Who's to say you won't decide to give it up in another year?

And who's to say you won't be a Muslim yourself in another year?

He stands and walks over to my desk, arms crossed, peering at the CDs piled along the windowsill, reading the posters and postcards I've taped to the wall above.

Cat Stevens is a Muslim. You like Cat Stevens, don't you?

I turn around in my chair to face him, as he bends over my desk, scanning the papers and open books curiously, dispassionately, as if looking at a museum display under glass.

Is that how you recruit new members? Cat Stevens?

He closes his eyes.

Islam has nothing to do with violence, he says. If you try it—if you pray, if you read the Qur'an, if you come to the masjid, you'll understand. And I really think you should, Isaac. Because I can tell that you're not happy. You may think you belong here, but you don't. Not really. No more than I do.

I have a curious tickling feeling at the back of my throat, as if I've swallowed something dry and scratchy by accident; I cough, once, twice, but it doesn't change.

What makes you so sure of that?

His smile lifts up only one corner of his mouth, at once wistful and patronizing. Why else would you be sitting here talking to me for so long? he says. Shouldn't you have somewhere else to be? He picks up his textbook and the pamphlet, tucks them under his arm, and pauses for a moment, his head lifted, reading another poster I've tacked to my closet door. A sepia-toned picture of Rilke, and a quotation from Letters to a Young Poet:

The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Have you read Rilke? I'll lend you his books if you want.

He shakes his head in a kind of spasm, as if coming out of a momentary trance.

It's not so hard, he says, giving me a sly, sideways smile. Why should you have to wait so long?