On Becoming a Hafiz

by Jonah Charney-Sirott

It was day five of my unemployment that I discovered I could put my hand on a book, just my palm on its front cover, and immediately have its entire contents firmly fixed in my long- and short-term memory. I didn’t at first see how this would help me get a job, because all the jobs on craigslist were either for boring things I could possibly do or great stuff which I wasn’t qualified for at all.

I didn’t care much about how I had picked up this power; I had, but so what? It seemed so useless, and, to tell the truth, it seemed to take a lot of energy—I could only do two or three books a day. At first, I just played around with whatever books were nearby. I ended up loaded with a whole lot of words and images having to do with cheating husbands and robots killing their masters and taking over the planet. Having this kind of stuff floating around in your head may work for some people, but for me, it only lead to the epiphany that I should do something more intense, the kind of thing that would bring me admiration from the opposite sex, money, and somehow help other people, too.

While trying to determine what I could do that would fulfill all three factors, I did the dictionary, which is why I am now able to casually drop words like epiphany into conversation.

I also decided to do the encyclopedia, the whole thing, as a basic knowledge resource, although I couldn’t see any reason to do it in order. I started with E, then did K, then took a little break. None of my friends really cared about exoskeletons or the history of the kayak.

It was H that really turned the corner.

I was having a cheeseburger and cheese fries in a place that had a hot waitress. Huguenots kept coming through, French Protestants who didn’t seem very interesting, but had still gotten six pages. As I sucked on my cheese fries, Huguenots gave way to Hapsburg, a huge empire I had never heard of before, but now felt thankful to be well versed in, everything from their slow ascendancy and shifting fortunes to their final decline. I tried to think whether any of my friends would care about this empire, but was still hungry, so I ordered another cheese fries. I decided Scott might be interested in Hapsburg, but definitely not Huguenots.

It was right when the hot waitress, who had also not heard of Huguenots and didn’t care who they were, brought me a second serving of cheese fries, that Hafiz jumped into my consciousness. Hafiz: honorary term for people who had completely memorized the Koran. Back to back, front to front, whatever. Luckily, as I’ve said, I had already done K, so I knew what the Koran was. I knew it was very long and that for people who couldn’t place their hand on a book, close their eyes, then have the contents stuck in their brain, this was probably a pretty hard thing to do. The encyclopedia hadn’t really said how many hafizes there were, but it did mention that those guys were highly exalted, rewarded on Judgment Day, and allowed to save ten family members from hell. It seemed like being a hafiz would be cool.

In the meantime, I had applied to tend bar at Re(Faust), a place that advertised itself as having “the biggest, most massive drink menu in the biggest state.” I had always thought Texas was bigger than California, but I hadn’t done either T or C yet, so I wasn’t sure.

When it was my turn, I told the interviewer guy to ask me anything, that I had memorized the ingredients of every drink on the menu. The interviewer was a heavily built man, the kind with a head so large you assume that even so many years ago he must have been a cesarean section. He smirked and looked at me like I was a lost puppy or perhaps a dim child. “We serve 450 different drinks here,” he said. “Well, ask me what’s in any of them.” He sighed and flipped through the menu: 211. The Barracuda. I told him it had one and a half ounces of spiced rum, four ounces of pineapple juice, and a splash of grenadine. He didn’t seem that impressed.

We went on for 15 minutes, something I took as a good sign, since the guys waiting in front of me had come and gone much quicker. I told him about how a Kevin On The Floor has both coconut rum and normal rum, that Voodoo Tea always needs blue curaçao and a highball glass, and that you had better make sure to put equal parts pepper vodka and straight vodka in a Heaven And Hell.

He promised to give me only night and weekend shifts, “because that’s what a pro like you deserves.”

It turned out that Re(Faust) does not provide a vision or a dental plan and certainly does not promise to allow anyone to save their loved ones from hell, so I figured I ought to look deeper into somehow converting this hafiz thing into a decent nine-to-five, with benefits.

The first problem with becoming a hafiz was that I had no idea where any mosques were. I knew they were called mosques and not Muslim churches, because, on a whim, I had done a Salman Rushdie book I had seen a cute girl reading on the bus. So, one night when I came home real late after work, I got out the Yellow Pages and looked under “mosques.” There were three listed. While I was at it, I considered doing the entire Yellow Pages, but I was pretty tired—from work and from having that afternoon done six of my sister’s feminist theory books for a “women’s perspective.” All that theory had taken a lot out of me.

I went to the first address two days later. It was nothing special, just a big white box on a corner. I walked in and saw a bunch of guys talking very quickly. They seemed to be hanging out. They had their shoes off, and right by the door was a rack with a bunch of shoes on it. I had meant to get to the library and do Islam: A Primer, just to be on the safe side, but hadn’t squeezed it in, but I knew about being respectful, or at least doing what other people do when you’re around them and pretending you respect it, so I took mine off, too. My socks were white, and I noticed they were all wearing dark socks. I think Islam: A Primer would have told me to wear dark socks, but it was too late now.

I walked up to the men who were sitting talking. “Excuse me, I would like to speak to a priest.”

The men looked at me and said nothing. It wasn’t even clear if they spoke English. Then, one stood up. He was wearing khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt.

“There is no priest here, this is a mosque.”

“Well, I need to talk to the guy in charge.”

The other men continued to talk and joke in their language, while khaki pants paid attention to me.

“May I ask the nature of your request?”

“I have memorized the Koran.”

Everybody stopped talking, so it seemed the other men probably spoke English, too. Or maybe they just recognized dramatic pauses, which, I’m told, are international. Khaki pants spoke.

“Arboosh barbut lameiz drooble drabble,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“You have memorized the Koran, but you cannot speak Arabic?”

He laughed and the other men did, too. I knew from The Scope and History of Psychology that this guy was exhibiting all the signs of a superiority complex, so I let it go and instead felt sorry for him.

It seemed like a good time to wow them, but I was hungry and wanted to go home and shower before work, so I kept hoping they would hurry up and make me a hafiz already.

“Yes,” I said.

Another man stood up and turned around to face me. He had on khaki pants and a blue button-down. I wondered if this was part of the uniform like the black socks.

“I am Sheikh Al-Latif,” he said. “I run the religious school here. Can you prove this to me, what you claim?”

“Yes, I can,” I said.

We went to his office. The other men had started to follow, but he motioned for them to stay.

He sat down behind a desk that had no papers and no computer on it. There was only a phone. There was no chair for me, so I stood.

The sheikh motioned for me to begin. I decided to start from the beginning of the book. It seemed like the right thing to do. I went on for about five or six minutes until he stopped me.

“How did you learn this if you do not speak Arabic?”

I had been prepared for this one. I was not about to give up my secret to the sheikh, because if I did he would probably not be as impressed and would maybe say I couldn’t get rewarded on Judgment Day or that I could save only six or seven of my immediate family from hell as opposed to the ten the Koran had promised. I told him it came to me in a dream.

The sheikh seemed to like that, and he pushed a button on his phone and mumbled into it. In about four seconds, all the guys who had been in the main room crowded into the office. I was told to continue, and I did so, reciting until my voice cracked and my throat hurt. No wonder, I thought, that there are so few hafizes. This hafiz stuff is difficult business. Still, the sheikh had more questions.

“Do you understand and have respect for my people? Are you a true friend of Islam?”

I told him I was, which was true, because I wasn’t not.

“How long have you had this ability?”

“Three days,” I said. The men behind me murmured.

“What is your current occupation?”

“I work as a bartender at Re(Faust).”

I promised the sheikh and the murmuring guys that if they stopped by I would hook them up. That’s one of the privileges of working in a bar.

The sheikh looked disgusted or at least less than impressed.

“The Koran forbids alcohol,” he said quietly.

I again silently cursed myself for being so sloppy, and mentioned that Re(Faust) had all sorts of bar snacks, too, and I could still hook them up with pretzels or peanuts. I may be making this up, but some of the murmurers behind me seemed to be into this.

“You have memorized the Koran, yet you don’t know that it forbids alcohol,” said the sheikh. It seemed like he was talking to himself. He continued.

“What do you know about Islam?”

This was actually not too hard, since I had done both H and K. I told him about the history of the Koran, its stylistic attributes, that you have to clean your hands before you touch it, and that maybe it has always been here given to Muslims by God or that maybe a guy named Uthman wrote it. Although he didn’t say anything, I could tell the sheikh did not like the part about Uthman. Because I had read the H section of the encyclopedia, I also told him about the Haj and just to make conversation, asked whether he had made the holy pilgrimage. He had. But the sheikh had more questions.

“So the whole thing truly came to you in a dream?”

I told him it had.

The men behind me shouted something I couldn’t understand. The sheikh nodded his head in their direction.

“What is your position on Palestine?”

I hadn’t done P yet, so I told him I was still working it out. They continued to stare, so I mentioned that if the place was named Palestine, then it seemed pretty obvious that it should belong to the Palestinians. How complicated would it be if the Germans couldn’t have Germany or the Asians, Asia? This seemed to satisfy him, but the murmurers looked at me again and shouted another question for the sheikh to ask me.

“Are you Jewish?”

“No, but I have two friends who are,” I answered. The sheikh was silent.

“Is that a lot?” I asked.

I hoped it wasn’t. It had never seemed like too many before. Besides, I was pretty sure Scott was only half Jewish anyway.

The sheikh didn’t respond, but invited me back on Friday afternoon to give a larger demonstration. I took this as a sign to mean that two Jewish friends (or maybe only one and a half) was a perfectly acceptable amount.

I did come back that Friday afternoon, but I told them I couldn’t stay for too long since my shift started at eight. The sheikh had warned me not to mention where I worked, and so, when I told the other guys at the mosque that I had to leave, I just said “shift,” so they wouldn’t know what kind of job I was going to. Right after I said “shift,” I gave the sheikh a wink.

By this time, I had gotten to Islam: A Primer, and, for good measure, I had also tossed in Islam for Dummies and Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith and Power. Old habits die hard, and browsing the stacks at the library I had been tempted to go for Islam: A Concise Introduction, but then I remembered I wasn’t reading them anyway, so I might as well go for the thick ones.

When I started reciting, the crowd seemed to eat it up. Sheikh told me word had spread and that there were way more people there that night than normal. They invited me back again for the next Friday and the Friday after that.

On the third Friday, I started to wonder just what was in all this for me. I asked the sheikh, and he mentioned the salvation on Judgment Day and the saving ten people from hell, which I told him I already knew about. “What about some sort of benefit in this world,” I asked him. “What do you mean?” I asked whether I could have a hundred bucks, because I wanted a new pair of jeans. He said no, we couldn’t pay you for this, but what if we flew you to Saudi Arabia for free and you could give a demonstration there. He also mentioned that he had recently purchased a pair of perfectly acceptable new jeans for only $27.

Saudi Arabia sounded lovely. I pictured palm trees, hot girls on the beach, and wind in my hair, but that nice kind of warm wind, and I told him that Re(Faust) was pretty cool with the vacation time so I didn’t see a problem. That was last week.

I did start to see a problem once I did a travel guide on Saudi Arabia. Besides the really long plane flight, there are sure to be no women in bikinis, which is less than awesome, and, if there is wind blowing through my hair, it will have too much sand in it. Still, the flight is already booked, so I’m not quite sure what to do.

Yesterday, for the first time in forever, I decided to read the newspaper in a normal way. One article mentioned that there were lots of Muslims in France. In that case, I wouldn’t mind going there, since there would at least be some women in bikinis on the beaches and I already know a little French from high school.

I think I’m going to ask the sheikh if I can switch from Saudi Arabia to France.