Safiya's father
"Ἕως ἂν οἱ φιλόσοφοι βασιλεύωσιν, οὐκ ἔστιν ταῖς πόλεσιν ἀνάπαυσις κακῶν, οὐδὲ τῷ ἀνθρωπείῳ γένει."
Halid trudged the steps into the house, his clothes heavy with dirt, his hat pressed low over his eyes. He smelled food—tiylua sug, it smelled like, and that heartened him. Soya meats, probably, but you took what you could get. What he really wanted was a beer, which was haram, but he wasn’t observant (who on Iphigenia was?), and his father, who was, lay dead and buried back on Earth a hundred years ago.
So only God was watching, and he wasn’t sure (if he even believed in God) that God could find this place out in the stars, this speck of dust from which no one would ever go back.
Where even was Mecca?
He and other Muslims had figured that out easily enough. You would pray towards the constellation Boötes, which sounded pretty idolatrous to him, and inconvenient since sometimes it was in the sky and sometimes beneath the world. Most of them were as lukewarm as he was, or more. He and some of them met at one house or another on Fridays, but fewer of them than fifteen years ago when they started the study group. There’d been talk of a mosque, but it had never happened. Now, they mostly drank tea, read from the Quran, and complained about how hard things were at home. Wives throwing shoes. Children being disrespectful and paganish.
There wasn’t any beer right now; he knew that. The Council had directed no more alcohol until after harvest.
“Nadzwa, I’m home!”
Nadzwa came into the main room, where he was putting his shoes away. “How was work?” she asked. She was wearing worn-out scrubs with patches. She worked ten hours at the clinic and then came home and put food together for the family. A lot of women wouldn’t, especially those from Atlantic countries. He felt lucky and guilty as well. She’d had two kids, and she was still beautiful.
He kissed her, and she went pfouf! “Take a shower, Halid. You smell like manure.”
“I smell like the fields,” he said mildly. “You like eating?”
“I like breathing.”
He smiled. He liked talking to Nadzwa. There were few other Tausug in Landing, so his own language in her mouth was like music. He spoke English too, enough to get by, and he was supposed to be able to speak Arabic, but he could only read it, and not well, anymore, even with the study group.
Then there was the new language.
His daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, papers stacked, working on her tablet.
“Hey, Safiya,” he said.
She didn’t look up. “Saluton, paĉjo.”
He sighed. The men in the study group purported to disapprove of the new language, and the irreligious children, and all the kuffar, but when eight out of ten people weren’t in the ummah, even by dint of their great-grandfathers, who was the kaffir and who was not?
“How was school?”
“Estis bone.”
He nodded. “Where’s Yusuf?”
“Li estas en la lernejo pentrante la koridorojn.”
He was at the school painting the hallways. Responsible, hardworking Yusuf. He nodded again—“Good, good.”—and went to the shower behind the house with clean clothes and a towel. He washed away the sweat, dirt, and the smell, the water hot from the tank, sitting all day in the sun. He tried not to waste, but it felt so good, pouring down his tired muscles. He tried to excuse himself by thinking numbers, spreadsheets, hectares of manure spread, bioinjections into the regolith, liters of compost tea poured in, worms by the kilogram.
“Don’t waste all that!” Nadzwa said, rapping at the door to the shower. “Get out! I need to wash. Get a bowl of supper!”
He laughed and made a friendly grab as they passed, but she pushed him out, and he got dressed behind the house where no one could see. Then he went back in, sat at the table with a bowl of tiylua sug, and watched Safiya working, working, working.
“Kio?” she finally asked, looking up, exasperated. “Ĉesu rigardi min!”
“Nothing,” he answered. “Sorry. I’m not staring. I just want to know what you’re doing.”
“Politika klaso,” she said. “Why won’t you talk Iphigenian?”
“Don’t feel like it. What are you reading there?”
“Respubliko de Platono,” she said, sullen.
He took the tablet, and she sat back, frowning at nothing, waiting for the interruption to go away. He read slowly to himself in the new language, but better than he spoke it, just like his Arabic:
“Athenian stranger—No matter; we may make use of the illustration notwithstanding:—Suppose that some one had a mind to paint a figure in the most beautiful manner, in the hope that his work instead of losing would always improve as time went on—do you not see that being a mortal, unless he leaves someone to succeed him who will correct the flaws which time may introduce, and be able to add what is left imperfect through the defect of the artist, and who will further brighten up and improve the picture, all his great labor will last but a short time?
“Cleinias—True.
“Athenian stranger—And is not the aim of the legislator similar? First, he desires that his laws should be written down with all possible exactness; in the second place, as time goes on and he has made an actual trial of his decrees, will he not find omissions? Do you imagine that there ever was a legislator so foolish as not to know that many things are necessarily omitted, which someone coming after him must correct, if the constitution and the order of government is not to deteriorate, but to improve in the state which he has established?
“Cleinias—Assuredly, that is the sort of thing which everyone would desire.”
He gave it back to her.
“Tiu parto estas el lia libro La Leĝoj.”
“The Laws,” he echoed. “This is what they teach you, eh?”
“Jes.”
“All to separate out, and scatter to the winds, a dozen little colonies or more?”
“Jes.” She looked up through her hair. “More. Maybe dozens someday.—Some of us are talking about going with a new one, next year, when we graduate. Up in the Montoj Serpentaj.”
He looked at her a long time, and she went back to work, ignoring him, and he prayed as best he could, and picked up his spoon and began to eat.