Pearl Abraham - American Taliban

ALSO BY PEARL ABRAHAM

The Romance Reader

Giving Up America

The Seventh Beggar

For my mother,
Gitel Kohen-Brezeski Abraham,
in memoriam

OUTER BANKS (OBX), NORTH CAROLINAAUGUST 2000

HE WAS LITTLE JOHN AT HOME , Gator John on wheels, John Jude on his birth certificate, Goofy-Foot John, or simply da kine to those in da know. He would also be Knowing John, or thats what he promised his mother. Thus he opened his Tao and read where he left off the day before

Knowing things makes you smart,

But knowing yourself makes you wise.

To rule others you must be powerful,

To rule yourself you must be strong

and stopped. He confined himself to one passage a day, one ounce of wisdom, so as to give it time and space, allow it play. Thus he was also Playful John.

So he linked to www.surfcheck.com to see the mornings surf, though swelling and curling and breaking just around the corner were the real waves.

The conditions today based on his digital view: swells that might develop into rideable waves at second tide. Which meant that business on the Outer Banks would be put on hold, lines at local supermarkets and stores would be long and slow, as everyone in checkout and bagging and restocking took the day off to catch and ride a wave. Which also meant lineups in the water so it would be harder to catch one.

In his inbox, seven new messages, from online buddies mostly, continuing chat-room conversations outside the chat room. But. It was August 8, his eighteenth birthday, and he and Katie & Co., his offline friends, were driving down to Hatteras to surf. In real time. Hed catch up on reading and virtual life later.

He reached for his baggy board shorts that according to the tall and tan and young and lovely at the surf shop had signs of aloha. Shed pegged him, she said, as a soul surfer as soon as he walked through the door. Crisped dry, along with his other salty shorts and tees, they clung to the clothesline hed strung NW by SE of his room, an attic space retrofitted with dormers and skylights and portholes for plenty of sky and light and evening stars, as Barbara liked to say when she showed visitors around.

He pulled on a bleached shirt, grabbed his Thinsulate go-everywhere gray hoodie, and also the new Dylan biography hed started, though it was unfortunately a hardback, which went against his own policy. He usually insisted on paperbacks, because they

a. presented no hard edges

b. slipped into his pocket

c. survived surf and sand as well as or better than the costlier version

d. and passed on without second thought to the next skate rat

Thus equipped, he scraped down the carpeted steps and heard Barbara on the telephone, per usual, since she lived and breathed on the phone. He tuned in to hear her inform the person at the other end that Bill Parish had also just this past weekend met a long-lost relative.

A long-lost relative? John queried short-term memory and recalled that his father had scheduled lunch last week with Great-aunt Lucy, one of the few Parish kin alive, since Bill had had the good fortune to be born into the most unregenerative family on earth. Barbara, John concluded, must be on the phone with someone who had truly met a long-lost relative but, as his dear, mad, competitive, generous, self-absorbed, self-important, loving mother was wont to do, she was busy topping that persons story instead of merely listening to it. If someone broke a leg, Barbaric Barbarella would have broken two legs, and perhaps an arm as well, and if the Washington Post had written about a friend or friend of a friend, then the Washington Post had also interviewed Barbara multiple times and had also misquoted her, or quoted her out of context, she knew exactly how it all worked, nothing was new to her, she couldnt be surprised or impressed by anything. She was Barbara Parish, wife of William Parish, lawyer to the powerful and famous, in other words homo importantus in his professional circles, and she, she herself, was also nothing to sneeze at, a Freudian psychoanalyst invited everywhere, who had her paws in everything Freudian, or at the very least wanted to and tried.

John stopped himself. It was way early in the day to allow his brain to go into petty berdrive; too soon to hand it over to busy Bar-bar-barellas doings. But hed gotten used to having the house to himself, and now it was the month of August, when Freudian barbarians take their vacations. Fortunately it was also the month for which East Coast surfers train all year, when the first good swells of the hurricane season arrive from the South, which makes for occasional overhead waves and stoke for everyone. He and Katie & Co. were practically living on the beach.

He poked his head into the open-style kitchenslashbreakfastslashfamily room, noted that busybody Barbara was barefoot and bright in her pink and green shift, her beach uniform, she called it, which came, as did her entire Outer Banks wardrobe, from Lifes a Beach: A Lilly Pulitzer Shop, on the boardwalk in nearby Duck. She made a point of stopping there once a week. While Bill relaxed in the pale yellow Adirondack chair at the stores open door and enjoyed the bliss of bay and ocean winds meeting across his sun-warmed face, Barbara would try on the latest arrivals and select another bright shift.

On this day, this early in the morning, Bill was most certainly hidingmeaning, most certainly painting in the nether region of the house, also known as his studio. John Jude waited for Barbara to feel his presence.

Happy birthday, darling.

He stooped to receive her warm lips on his cheek. A dozen of his favorite chocolate chocolate-chip muffins were cooling on the counter, and now she folded four of these ch-ch-chuffins into a cake box to go. She was a primo baker. She thought of such things and Katie & Co. appreciated it. The females in his life were mutual fans. Katie admired Barbara, and Barbara loved her. Barbara, John knew, was pleased he had friends she could meet. Too many of his friends, she worried, were virtual. Even their names, she said, were strangely biblically foreign: Josiah, Naim, Tajh, Ahmed, Jacques, Ibrahim.

People dont always use their real names online, John explained.

Of course, its a mothers job to worry. She checked her copy of his summer reading list which shed stuck on the fridge and noted that he was still on the books scheduled for the first two weeks of June: the Tao, the Whitman, Emerson, and Dylan.

At this rate, she said, your summer reading will take all year.

Which meant he wasnt keeping his end of the bargain. She and Bill had unwillingly agreed to let him defer Brown to allow him time to pursue his own interests, scholarship included. But it was summer and his birthday. He would catch up on his reading later.

So he gave her the fingerum, the sign, good-bye, later alligator, meaning he raised a fist, unfolded his pinky, then his thumb, and ducked out and away. Which never failed to amuse her.

Ha-ha-ha, shed say as soon as she thought he was out of range. Isnt it wonderful that little John, who at near six foot tall is hardly little, feels perfectly comfortable talking to us as he would to his own friends.