 Dr Yahia Khairy Abdul-Rahman is not our typical mullah, but a high achiever in academics and finance — smart enough to educate his daughters at an Ivy League institution and invest for his wife’s corporate career
“Meet my second wife,” the young man points to an expressionless Japanese woman packed in a chaddar. We have just finished our Friday prayers at the mosque in Honolulu, the only one. Inside the cloistered quarters (actually it’s an airy room with open windows) confined to women, the man-made segregation robs us of a face-to-face with the Imam. He’s come from California to deliver the sermon. Being women, we must only watch him on close circuit TV.
Liberated out in the open to freely move around and mix with Pakistani residents rather feels good. There’s quite a bunch and the bonhomie abundantly visceral. Athar Rashid Dar comes my way. He appears excited to share his ‘success’ story and show off his SUV standing by, the black Land Cruiser, and of course his trophy — the Japanese wife. Earlier, I notice her as we stand in rows to offer prayers. The chaddar she’s tightly wrapped in grabs my eye — it looks so typically Pakistani with its traditional embroidery. I wonder how she has come by it this side of the Pacific!
Soon enough, I have the answer. Athar breaks into Urdu (I think his wife, though newly married, is quite used to being left out), and voluntarily tells me about his first wife. “She didn’t come — she’s at home; she’s American; she’s a Muslim.”
In one wordy sentence, I learn of the sum of Mr Dar’s conjugal bliss: how the two wives live together in peace and harmony. He has kids from the first only, so I’m told.
“I run a limo service and also own a marriage agency — getting Japanese women across to marry US citizens,” Athar continues. There’s nothing dissembling about his Pollyannaish charm.
I marvel at the man’s free capital marketing mind. By golly, he’s a blue-blooded Yankee when it comes to doing business — he even sports a tuft of blonde, dyed and gelled right in front like the hip fellas of today.
As for the sticky question of bigamy, it’s illegal in this country. The budding capitalist must have tunnelled his way around it, I guess. None of my business.
* * * * *
A pleasant surprise is meeting Nasir Gazdar. A Ph.D. in environment, Dr Gazdar often contributed articles to Dawn Magazine many moons past. “I am here to attend a conference on environment,” says the man now running Environment Management Society back in Karachi. Looking at the aging warrior, my mind races back to the presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, of the Green Party, the indefatigable son of Lebanese immigrants, chastening environment for half-a-century. Syed Ali, an agile Arab, runs the Muslim Association of Hawaii like a military academy. Before we come to the mosque, my media colleagues, the ‘non-Muslim’ types, are strictly instructed to dress “modestly” if they are “girls and women”; if “boys and men”, then they must be “tastefully dressed (pants should cover past the knees).” And beware: “intoxicated persons” will not only be not allowed entry but promptly “evicted immediately” if discovered!
And just watch it: “no eating, drinking, running and shouting.”
Ali’s day job is that of manager of a hotel (Nasir Gazdar tells me he gives good discounts to Muslims) and comes across as a charming glib guy, but at the mosque, religious orthodoxy makes him into Ali the enforcer. He clearly puts me in my place by saying that the Imam expects me to sit with the women and not men over lunch. Hello...you mean remove myself from where I have comfortably settled in and even allowed the scarf to slip from my head and go to the far corner of the verandah where women sit huddled? Oh no! Not me — I refuse to join the hen-party, pretending to be deaf rather than defiant to Ali, my host. I slide into my plastic chair, which commands a vantage view of the Imam sitting directly across, sipping his soft drink from a can.
Why does the Imam from sunny California shun women?
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