: Zain Khalid
: Brother Alive
: Grove Press UK
: 9781611858709
: 1
: CHF 8.90
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 352
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in Staten Island. The boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are so close as to be almost inseparable. Nevertheless, Youssef is keeping a secret from his brothers: he has an imaginary double, a familiar who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother. The boys' adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. But he is uncharismatic at home, a distant father who spends evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, writing letters to his former compatriots back in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health, the reason for his nighttime excursions from the house and the truth about what happened to the boys' parents. When Imam Salim's path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys will be forced to follow. There they will be captivated by an opulent, almost futuristic world and find traces of their parents' stories. But they will have to change if they want to survive in this new world, and the arrival of a creature as powerful as Brother will not go unnoticed. With stylistic brilliance and intellectual acuity, in Brother Alive Zain Khalid brings characters to vivid life with a bold energy that matches the great themes of his novel - family, capital, power, sexuality and the possibility of reunion for those who are broken.

Zain Khalid has been published in the New Yorker, the Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and elsewhere. He has also written for television. Brother Alive is his first novel. He lives in New York City.

Part 2


The Barbarians


27


I have been writing this letter for some time. In fact, I have already written this letter. I wrote a bolshie letter, then a complaining one, then a droll one that began “My name is Salim Taufiq. At least this much is true.” I burned them all. Let this be a plain letter.

Let us start with what happened in Markab.

After graduating from Columbia and my first and only hajj, I enrolled at the Islamic University of Markab to start my career. Though one cannot explicitly study to be powerful, just as one cannot study to become a prime minister, that is precisely what I aimed to do. What better than power to help those like me? No, that’s a lie. I have always been too talented in that practiced economy, pretending that deception is more virtuous than a hurtful truth. I coveted influence because it would have been acceptance, validation. Becoming what I am now—a man exiled to an insignificant place—did not, at the time, appeal to what I believed was my character. I was ordained! I suffered from the kind of delusion generally reserved for young Westerners. My favorite friend from college, a woman named Khadija, once said that this ambition was my faith trying to reconcile with my intellect. She called me foolish to think the two could ever make peace.

It was in Saudi Arabia, in Markab, where I fell in love for the first time. Yes, I had slept with Adam in college, but I did not love him then. And, for your information, I know you are all aware of my inclinations—you haven’t been as clandestine as all that—but I will no longer insult you by keeping secrets. My first love was not Adam. My first love was the eighth and youngest son of a Pakistani general, a fellow student at the university named Mohammed Ali Riyaz. His namesake was not the boxer, but the road in Bombay where he was born while his father attended meetings with Indian officials.

Between classes, following the halaqa in which I said nothing, for fear of being identified as ignorant, I found Mohammed Ali seated at a plastic table in the cafeteria, his kinked nose buried inThe Bustan of Saadi. I would soon learn that he was the kind of boy who would always choose poetry over scripture and did not think the two comparable. When I asked if I might sit with him, he responded with a recitation: “‘In Isfahan, I had a friend who was warlike, spirited, and shrewd.’”

“‘O tiger-seizer!’” I exclaimed. “‘What has made thee decrepit like an old fox?’”

Funny, isn’t it? How all things are marked by their beginnings?

Mohammed Ali’s face would age well, I thought. A line deepened along his forehead when he smiled that I knew would become his first wrinkle. He was thin but had broad hips. He was able to listen like an older man, without moving his head. He was not devout; his enrollment at the university was an order from his father. More than anything, Mohammed Ali wanted to paint, but that was an absurd notion. Having a son classically trained in sharia would be all too plea