Easy Convert
On Islam, psychosis, and my parents' mortality
I’m at MOTW Coffee, nibbling on a fig cookie as Caleb Granger converts me to Islam. I’m a pretty easy convert. I love New Haven’s pamphlet people: the dreadlocked white guy with his Hare Krishna art books, his feet as rubbery and thick as tires; the elderly black matrons who sit like squabs beneath Jehova’s word on poster board; the squat Korean ladies on drizzled sidewalks who try to strongarm me into reciting the Lord’s prayer, lipstick and the word of Christ smudged on their teeth. Faith makes great bait. To stay silent, I have to grip my clay golem like a giant squeezing milk from a stone.
Caleb is a gentle converter, so gentle that I’m not sure he realizes he’s converting me. He’s sharing, starry-eyed, about the undeniable proof of the existence of Allah. In my lap is a gifted Quran — felty-cornered, simple in language, a perfect gift from Caleb — and I thumb the book’s edges as I lean forward in my chair. Am I being spiritually called? Or am I just crudely, mortally jealous (although it’s mostly just admiring) of the certainty of Caleb’s conviction?
I finish my cookie, and Caleb moves on to morality. Islam tenderly convinced my friend that he is good in a way that is inherent, earned, and complete. His self-assurance relieves me. I’m a red-blooded American, overly familiar with Christian guilt and peeraged damnation. The appleseed’s poisonous aftertaste stains even my Hebrew tongue. Most American religions go for the sinner angle, but my dear friend is safe in the arms of Islam. For this, I am grateful. And endeared. And embarrassingly eager to don a Hijab.
We move on to the afterlife. In my Quranic literature class, hell is terrifying and inevitable. A worthy Muslim life, or so I’ve gleaned, is lived on a ceaseless razor’s edge, barely safeguarded by meticulous ritual practice. Judgment Day is similarly merciless (a weighted word, I realize, to use in a religious context, but that’s what I feel I’ve been taught). One Hadith tells the story of a heavenbound woman who watches, apathetic, as the Mizan (scales of ethical judgement) tip from her son’s favor. This woman has lived her life. She has fought for her reward. Her child’s damnation is no longer her problem. But Caleb is notably a practicing Muslim, not a literary interpreter for a secular university. To him, the Islamic afterlife is a different story: one that gazes skyward.
The lowest heaven, Caleb says, is for anyone, self-declared Muslim or not, who stumbled through their life as a monotheist. This is the first of two easy criteria: believing in one god will earn me half a ticket to low-tier heaven. This afterlife, Caleb says, a congregation in the night sky’s bowl-bottom, is relatively mediocre. To climb the rungs to better heavens, one must pledge oneself to Islam and live in a mindful manner. Caleb is going for the super-reward: basking in the light of God’s face, criss-cross applesauce in the Almighty’s palm. But a lowly afterlife among the stars is more than enough for me. Unlike Caleb, I don’t want God. I just want my parents.
Two years ago, during a DPDR episode, I invented my answer to the afterlife. When I was in the throes of psychosis, nothing felt real or reliable. Behind every closed door was a black, hungry void, barely detained by weak, hinged wood. It seemed completely plausible that, at any given moment, my body could blink out of existence. I stopped believing in the past. I didn’t know who — or what — I was. There was only one upside. If I could subconsciously convince myself that everything outside my immediate field of vision was an evasive void of TV static, then I could also consciously force myself to believe any story. And what I wanted to believe in most was the fate of being my parents’ daughter.
I told myself that after I died, I would backstroke through time. I’d be reborn to Steve and Melissa Shiffman on December 11th, 2004, at Saint Vincent’s Hospital on West 12th Street. The cycle starts in the cradle of Manhattan Island, ends somewhere in a river or ditch or a hospice cot, and then spits me back, red-skinned and grasping, into my young father’s arms. Even in my psychosis, when I couldn’t recognize them, something more me than myself knew that I loved my parents. In my more lucid moments, I even loved them like a daughter. What I needed to believe in, more than reality itself, was that my family could always belong to each other.
My mom has Cystic Fibrosis, a terminal illness in the lungs. I grew up with expert attunement to her — and, to a lesser extent, my father’s — mortality, impermanence, and miracularity. So it makes sense why the afterlife I invented and choose to believe in is built entirely around an eternity with my parents. No matter when the three of us die, I’ll be their daughter again.
But now, in MOTW Coffee, Caleb gave a new answer with an easy procedure. For someone so trained in forcing her own faith, I’m amazed that I missed the obvious answer: Heaven. Believe in one God, said Caleb, and you can stay your parents’ child for eternity.
But then Caleb teaches me the second requirement. All I have to believe, he says, is that the Abrahamic prophets existed. Caleb is gentle, glowing, aware that I’m on the hook and confident that this softball will reel a soul that he cares about into the Islamic embrace. I can’t remember if Caleb told me that I had to believe these men were divinely chosen, or just believe that they were alive, but it doesn’t matter. Both interpretations were equally unreachable.
As previously mentioned, during that bout of psychosis, I stopped believing in the past. Although I’ve gotten exponentially better in the last two years, I still have a hard time grasping abstract or faraway concepts. I joke that I don’t believe that outer space exists, but behind my jester’s tone is cold truth. I cannot touch the moon. I can only see it. And seeing the moon doesn’t mean anything, really: for all I know, that dot in the sky could be a sticker, or a scab, or a massive prop made from cardboard and paint and hung by a piece of fishing line. History is equally as unprovable, ergo: no prophets. No heaven.
Embarrassed but unable to lie to this sweet, earnest Murrabi, I apologetically explain my conundrum to Caleb. He seems confused, but like a good converter, he rises to the challenge. Caleb tries to break it down into easier things to grasp. Do you believe that the sun came up in the East this morning? No, because I wasn't looking when it rose. Do you believe that you walked to this coffee shop? No, because the universe could have snapped us into existence mid-conversation, and what we think are real memories are actually planted. Caleb can tell he’s losing me. Poor Caleb. Poor me. What about this cup, he says, more concerned at this point than confused. Your hand and this cup can’t exist in the same space because of the laws of physics. Right, Chloe?
I am so goddamn disappointed in myself. I wanted to grant our hopes like wishes. Caleb, that he could help the soul of his friend. Mine, that Cystic Fibrosis isn’t the monster I know that it is. That death can’t hurt my family in a way that ultimately matters. But losing my parents is a fact of life. And no matter how hard I try to convert myself, there are some things that no amount of faith can change.
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The names in this piece have been changed to protect anonymity.
Love this, "his feet as rubbery and thick as tires"