Sweet Home Lackawanna

[In September 2002, federal authorities in Lackawanna, New York arrested six Muslim Americans, now known as the “Lackawanna Six” on terrorism charges. The six have since agreed to plea deals with prosecutors, admitting to attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. According to the plea agreement, the six face seven to 10 years in jail upon sentencing, which is expected in December. –Ed.]

By Michael Muhammad Knight

I had with me photographer Mike Pedri, a former mayoral candidate from Gilboa, New York. He once stapled a campaign flier to a dead deer and left it on the steps of City Hall. We drove by my friend Keith’s house on the way and honked the horn. He came running out in the black Get Up Kids t-shirt that he wears all the time, and the bastard wasn’t in my car thirty seconds before reaching in his pocket for a tape of Something to Write Home About. Not my scene but God bless him, Keith loves his Get Up Kids.

“Remember at the Sideshow when they did Skynrd?” he asked, providing his reenactment of Matt Pryor’s “Sweet Home Lackawanna.” I almost punched Keith in the jaw, but we were on our way to a mosque. He sang along to “Out of Reach.” I smuggled myself into new nationalities…I’d think you’d be proud of me…

We got on the Skyway, which always bugs me out because it puts you so high up that you’re at eye-level with the roof of HSBC Arena. We went past decayed factories and shipyards and the glory of Rust Belt Buffalo. Ped riding shotgun had my downloaded directions for when we made it to Lackawanna. We had no problem finding the place. Keith was first to spot the white minaret.

We parked across the street and immediately felt uncomfortable. We were three white men at the famed mosque of the Lackawanna Six, Ped with his big dumb camera and me with my little poet’s notepad jotting down everything I saw. A bunch of brothers stood around outside. Ped got some shots of me in front of the mosque. I left him and Keith to go inside, leaving my shoes in a cubby and following a brother down the long ramp to the basement. It actually made me smile to see a bidet for the first time since Pakistan in February 1995. They also had showers down there, which reminded me of my friend Crazy Dave who used to live in a truck and wash himself at the campus gym. Crazy Dave would have taken shahadah just for access to the showers, which I could see as a decent sitcom pilot.

I entered the quiet prayer room right-foot first. The walls were white, the carpeting green.

For some reason, every time I walk into a masjid I’m surprised. By what exactly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that I had been to the Islamic Center of Rochester so many thousands of times that it still overwhelms my schema for how a mosque should look. For a handful of dashed hopes and broken hearts with me to blame, I can’t go to the ICR anymore. Last time I went was during last Ramadan just to sit in the parking lot during taraweeh. Now I only go to mosques where nobody knows me. It’s more comfortable that way.

My spiritual attitudes and practices lend themselves most to what I’d call Sufism. Not everybody would call it Sufism, but it’s the best I can do. My attitudes in just about everything have gone so far astray that some may call me a murtad or zindiq or whatever, and most of the time I don’t care. I’ve exceeded the bounds. Someday when I’m buried, the earth will cough me back up with disgust.

I stood at a random spot in the room and began my four rakats. It was hard for me to keep my gaze lowered. Standing with hands open like a Shi’a, my eyes darted everywhere but it was all zikr anyway—the men in front of me, red and white patterns wrapped around brothers’ heads, a man going around applying rosewood to everyone’s wrists with warm salaams, an old African-American brother in thobe and kufi with twisted and crazy driftwood walking-stick so he looked like Musa coming down the mountain, a three-year old Yemeni boy in an Old Navy t-shirt, soft and flowery Arabic conversations all around me in smooth half-whispers, the world outside those round windows, gray and crisp September awaiting Hurricane Isabel—everything called me to celebrate creation.

After my sunnah prayers I crawled off to the side, propped myself against the wall and whipped out my notepad to get everything down. The man putting rosewood on brothers’ wrists made it to my corner of the mosque and I extended my hand. It smelled good. I rubbed it in.

During the adhan, brothers echoed the muezzin’s “Allahu Akbar” with such exhalations of relief that it sounded as though liters of warm pus had just been pulled from their chests.

Even the imam’s half-hour khutbah had me bursting with taqwa, though completely in Arabic and I had no idea what he was saying. Sometimes it’s better that way. Since the words meant nothing to me, they could mean whatever I wanted them to. Or I could just take the sounds and get a nice feeling from them. It reminded me of Sigur Ros, an Icelandic band that often sings in its own made-up language that nobody in the world understands.

After his khutbah the imam took out a piece of paper, unfolded it and read: “Brothers and sisters, today’s khutbah is about freedom. Freedom comes in three forms: freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of religion. These freedoms come from Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’Ala and we cannot take them away.” He folded the paper back up and launched into a rapid string of Arabic du’as before starting the prayer. We rose and made lines shoulder-to-shoulder, feet-to-feet. I could not identify the suras he recited after al-Fatiha, but they made me want to cry anyway. In the second after prayer, I began to get up but the brother on my left extended his hand. I greeted the man and sat an extra moment to make du’a for him. Sometimes I think I’m over Islam, but I’m never over Muslims or the feeling I can get at jum’a when the world just slows down for me in the nicest ways possible. I don’t know what that means or where I stand. I don’t know how I’ll turn out. Allahu Alim.

Out on the sidewalk I bought some chapattis at a dollar a bag. Keith and Ped were sitting on the trunk of my car, Ped with camera still hanging off his neck. The Skyway cruise back to Buffalo seemed to come in moony slow motion. Popped out Keith’s Get Up Kids and put in Carburetor Dung, Joe Kidd’s legendary band out of Kuala Lumpur. My cell phone rang. Due to New York law, I scouted for cops before answering. It was a very sweet Desi girl who last night had asked me not to go to Lackawanna for fear that I’d pull some crazy punk stunt and get hurt. I told her that I was alive and had a wonderful time. Getting off the phone, I noticed that my hand still smelled good.

Michael Muhammad Knight is author of The Taqwacores, a novel available through the legendary punk label Alternative Tentacles.