Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. … Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”
– Martin Luther King Jr., from “Strength to Love,” 1963

“Have you considered: if your water were to become sunken [into the earth], then who could bring you flowing water?” – Quran, Surat Al-Mulk

Porsche 911

The masjid parking lot was almost empty, but at the west end, four young brothers in their twenties were shooting hoops around the freestanding basket on the edge of the lot. Their cars were parked nearby, and Deek paused to admire a gorgeous black Porsche 911. It was a classic model, with raised headlight housings, tinted windows, chrome rims, a large rear spoiler, and dual exhaust pipes. It was a work of art.

Why should he continue calling Ubers like a tourist? And he certainly wasn’t about to walk home or take the bus. Plus, he had to go to the bathroom, and he knew himself; if he ignored it much longer it would become urgent. This had happened more often as he grew older and gained weight. He’d had some close calls, where he wasn’t sure he’d make it to a bathroom in time. And there’d been one time when he didn’t make it in time. It was a shameful experience that he didn’t care to remember.

He looked back at the masjid, thinking he could use the facilities there, but it looked like everyone was gone. Zuhair’s car was just leaving the lot. The building was probably locked.

He waved to the basketball players. “Hey! Whose Porsche is this?”

They sauntered over. A short, dark-skinned youth with a massive mop of curls – probably Yemeni, Deek thought – spoke up.

“Is mine. I’m Shujaa. Thass my car. Why?” His voice was squeaky, as if he was still going through puberty, and he had a strong Arabic accent.

“How old are you?”

“Eh? What’s with the questions, uncle?”

“I want to buy the car.”

Negotiation

The boy laughed, and his friends followed suit. “You know what that is there? Thass a classic 1990 Carrera 911. Dual carburetors, Turbo wide body kit, four-wheel disc brakes, dual exhaust, Sunpro Super tachometer, three-spoke steering, hood pins, toggle switches, roll bar, Turbo-branded wheels… I built this baby myself. It could goes over two hundred miles an hour.”

As the boy described the car, Deek noted that his accent virtually disappeared, and his voice even deepened, as if his voice box was an extension of the car’s powerful motor.

“How much do you want for it?”

“Are you is serious?”

“Serious as a car crash. But how old are you? I need to know you’re a legal adult so you can make a deal.”

“I’m twenny, okay? Don’t worry about it. I’m a businessman. I own five smoke shops in this town. I sell you this car for two hundred fifty g’s.”

“Do you have a crypto wallet?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Be reasonable. I’ll give you two Bitcoins.”

“Two and a half.”

“Deal.” It was probably more than the car was worth, but Deek didn’t care. It was only money.

The boy, Shujaa, was excited but suspicious, afraid that Deek would cheat him. Eventually, they settled on an impromptu escrow arrangement by which Deek would set up the transfer, with everything done but hitting SEND. He would hand the phone to one of Shujaa’s friends. Shujaa would sign the pink slip over to Deek, then the friend would hit the SEND button.

This Was Power

Five minutes later, it was done. The boy pulled his belongings out of the trunk, piled them in the parking lot, and then handed Deek the key.

Deek climbed into the car and sat, luxuriating. The interior was amazing. Wide leather seats that were cool to the touch, spotless and in mint condition. Black dashboard with old-fashioned circular gauges. The car was well cared for. It smelled of leather, furniture polish, and also faintly of za’tar. He started the car and listened to its confident, tiger-like purr.

“Wait!” Shujaa said. “I feel like I shouldna done this. My Baba bought this car for me.”

Deek winked at him. “You’ll be okay. Hold onto the Bitcoin, it will make you rich.” He floored the accelerator and peeled out of the parking lot, narrowly missing the boys, who jumped out of the way. He tipped his head back and laughed as he hit the open road. He hadn’t succeeded in getting that jerk Ajeeb fired, but it was okay. Screw him. Zuhair was right, his offer had been petty. He was rich now. Time to put those silly grudges behind him. Time to put a lot of things behind him.

This was power now, finally. This was what money was for. You saw a car you wanted, you bought it on the spot, boom! Didn’t matter how much it cost. He’d forgotten about the sensation he’d had of tentacles rising from a dark sea inside him, trying to pull him down into selfishness and miserliness.

Instead, pushing the gas pedal down, feeling the car leap beneath him like a racehorse, he imagined himself a superhero with electricity running in his veins. Was this what it was like to be rich? The world lay at his feet, ripe and ready. He was a conqueror at the frontier of a new continent, and the only limit was his imagination.

An Urgent Need

As he sped through the streets on the way home, the feeling of needing to go to the bathroom became intensely urgent. He jiggled his knees and pressed his feet into the car floor. At a stoplight on Blackstone, he shouted at the light to turn green. He was only two miles from home, but he wasn’t going to make it. He turned the radio on, then, as loud rap music came blasting out, turned it off.

Without warning, he jerked the wheel and peeled into the tiny parking lot of the 7-11 at Blackstone and Bullard. Cars honked at him, and someone shouted. He walked quickly but stiff-legged into the store.

The bored young Indian man behind the counter was eating a pizza slice with one hand and holding his phone with the other as he jabbered away in his native language.

“Bathroom?” Deek asked.

The clerk shook his head. “Out of order.”

Deek didn’t believe that for a second. It was something they said to keep the riffraff out of their own private bathroom. He took out his wallet and put a five-dollar bill on the counter.

“Bathroom,” he said again.

The clerk scowled and shouted, waving Deek away with the pizza slice. “Out of order, out of order!”

Deek cursed, snatched the five-dollar bill, and lurched outside. The store’s dumpster was hidden inside a fenced enclosure. Deek thought maybe he could slip in there, squat, and do his business. But the enclosure was barely larger than the smelly and stained dumpster, and with his protruding belly, he couldn’t get in. He hurried back to the car, wiping his hands on his pants, and burned rubber tearing out of the parking lot, nearly hitting a fat lady smoking a vape and swigging a bottle of beer.

He was halfway home when he crapped his pants. The car filled with a terrible stink. Deek rolled down the windows and continued home with a wooden expression, his teeth clenched in shame. He prayed that no one was home, so he’d be spared the mortification of Rania or his daughters seeing him like this.

If Your Water Were to Become Sunken

This wasn’t fair. He was a multimillionaire, almost a 10% billionaire, yet he was not spared from the brutal exigencies of his aging and unhealthy body. What good was money when a simple bodily function could plunge him into a state of abject humiliation? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!

A memory came to him of a day in his boyhood. His family had recently arrived from Iraq as refugees, and were quite poor. They were sitting at the bus stop on a hot summer day, shading their eyes against the glare, waiting for a bus to take them to the grocery store. An expensive sports car passed by and Deek pointed to it excitedly, saying in Arabic, “Look Baba, look how beautiful. This country has everything.”

In reply, his father had recited the last ayah of Surat Al-Mulk: “Have you considered: if your water were to become sunken [into the earth], then who could bring you flowing water?”

“All of this is an illusion,” his father said. “What power or wealth will they have if Allah takes away their sunlight, water, or air? Remember, Deek, we did not come here for fancy cars. We came for our freedom to worship Allah and practice our deen, and to work hard and provide for our family.”

Deek wondered now if this shame was a reminder from Allah that He, Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, could take away everything that mattered in an instant.

Shame

Rania would probably still be at work, and Amira, who was in 11th grade, would be at school. But Sanaya, whose college class schedule was irregular, might well be home. She didn’t have a car, so she either took the bus or rode her bicycle to school and work.

He let himself into the house and waddled quickly toward the bathroom in the master bedroom.

“Hi Baba!” Sanaya called from the kitchen. “Eww, what is that smell?”

Deek’s face grew hot with shame. He continued toward the bathroom. “It’s the car I bought,” he called over his shoulder. “The old owner had body odor. I’ll get it cleaned.”

“You bought a car? How? And why would you buy a smelly one?”

Deek shut the bathroom door and spent the next half hour cleaning himself and washing his clothing. He opened the bathroom window, sprayed the room with lemon air freshener, and lit one of Rania’s vanilla-scented candles. The bathroom would smell like a bakery, or so he hoped.

As he cleaned up, he found himself reciting the poem Dr. Zuhair had recited:

Forgiveness is among the traits of the noble,
And pardon is the mark of the great.
The truly gallant is he who forgives
Even when he has the power to retaliate.

It was a lovely little stanza, especially in Arabic. But who was Deek supposed to forgive? Rania, for being short-tempered with him? Fine, he forgave her, whatever. But Ajeeb? No way. The man had mocked him in public. It was an offense against his pride and honor. Deek would rather push the man’s head into a toilet and drown him than forgive him.

Zuhair was an interesting dude, widely admired in the community. Deek, who had not dealt with the man much, had always assumed it was because Zuhair had money. But now he realized it was more than that. Zuhair radiated a quiet, confident charisma. He’d stood there casually plucking and eating an orange as he turned down a million and a half dollar donation. On top of that, he was intelligent, and even though he was in his sixties, was built like a wrestler. Some people had it all, it seemed. The lucky ones. The chosen ones.

The Greatest Blessing

Deek was not one of those. He’d always struggled to earn money, lose weight, make friends, and be respected in the community. Nothing had ever come easily. The greatest blessing he had was his family. Rania, Sanaya, Amira. These were his treasures. How Rania had put up with him and loved him all these years, he did not know.

And now there was this. Money. Vast riches. It was incredible. He felt vindicated, as if Allah had anointed his forehead with olive oil and made him a king. As if he’d been walking in darkness for decades and Allah had suddenly plucked him out and brought him into shimmering light. And the best part was that it had happened through his own hard work and persistence. Years of studying, experimenting, losing money and trying again, working late into the night, never giving up.

When he emerged, cleaned and changed, Sanaya was nowhere in the house. He went outside and found her admiring the Porsche.

“It actually doesn’t smell all that bad,” Sanaya said. “Just needs a good detailing, inside and out. It’s a beautiful car. But I don’t get how you paid for it. Aren’t we, like, practically broke?”

Sanaya was a tall girl, taller than either of her parents, with mahogany skin, a prominent nose, and long black hair that she kept beneath a hijab when outside, like now. She wore thick glasses – a personal preference, as she didn’t like the feel of contact lenses. She always smelled of coffee, and Deek suspected that a disproportionate amount of her study time was spent at the university coffee shop. But she was an excellent student and should have attended a state university or UC, except that the family could not afford it, so she went to community college. She never even complained about it.

That was all over now. Sanaya could attend any university of her choosing, even an Ivy League school. And she didn’t have to work that night job at the convenience store anymore. Deek was suddenly choked with emotion, thinking about what a sweet girl his daughter was, and how patient she had always been. Amira too. They were both angels.

Work Husband

“Alhamdulillah,” he began to say, “I made some -”

“Mom’s home!’

Rania’s chocolate brown mini-SUV pulled into the driveway and parked behind the Porsche. She liked to park in the garage, and the Porsche was blocking the way. She wouldn’t be happy about that. But Deek had been in too much of a hurry when he’d arrived home to care about such things.

Rania emerged from the SUV with a cautious smile. There were circles beneath her eyes, and her shoulders sagged. Deek felt a pang of concern for her, and for an instant thought of going to her and embracing her. But her tone was tight and cold when she said, “What’s this? Do we have visitors?”

“Baba bought a car!”

“He did what?” Her smile was stiff now, as if she were wearing a mask.

“We really need to sit down and talk,” Deek said.

“That’s why I came home early. We need to talk about boundaries. Coming to my work like that was unacceptable. But is it true you bought this car?”

“Yes.”

Rania’s eyes went to the car, then to Deek. “I don’t even know what to say. It was one thing when you were nothing but a burden. A drain on our finances. But now you’re actively trying to sabotage this family. Your daughter -” Rania flung out a hand toward Sanaya – “goes to community college because that’s all we can afford! And here you are, an anchor around my neck -”

“Mom!’ Sanaya exclaimed.

“Are you having an affair?” These words came to Deek’s lips unbidden. He would never have suspected such a thing, but Rania had been so unkind and impatient with him lately, and the idea just popped into his head.

“I… What? No, of course not.”

Deek’s breath caught. “You don’t seem certain.”

“No, no, no. I mean, there’s a man at work, a doctor. He’s a friend, we talk. We eat lunch together. The other nurses call him my work husband.” Rania laughed nervously. “So silly.”

“I don’t want to hear this!” Sanaya covered her ears with her hands and walked quickly into the house.

“I guess I don’t either,” Deek said wearily. “I will remove the anchor from around your neck.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Overreacting

Deek walked into the garage, found two empty suitcases, took them into the master bedroom, locked the door, and began to pack. He didn’t pack carefully, but tossed items into one suitcase haphazardly. A handful of underwear, a pair of pants, and his pathetic little rock collection that he kept in a shoebox. Vanilla-scented smoke drifted from the bathroom, from the still-burning candle.

Rania began to knock, saying, “You’re overreacting. Let me in and let’s talk.”

Into the other suitcase he placed his computers, packing only the towers, keyboards and mice, and not bothering with the monitors. The whole job took only fifteen minutes.

When he opened the door, suitcases in hand, Rania said, “What the hell are you doing? I thought you wanted to talk?”

Deek thought he should be angry. If he was leaving his wife, didn’t it make sense to be angry? But he was only tired.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for two days,” he said. “You smacked me in the chest and put your hand on my mouth to shut me up, then you shouted at me in front of your co-workers. And now you say that I’m an anchor around your neck. You’ve changed. You were never like this with me before. It’s how I guessed about your work lover, or whatever you call him. I suppose that’s why you didn’t want me showing up at your work.”

He began to walk toward the front door, pulling the rolling suitcases behind him.

“I changed because you changed!” Rania yelled. “You used to work, you used to be a responsible man who paid the bills and cared for his family. Now you’ve become a sloth that sits in front of a computer all day, losing money. I want my husband back, the man I married.”

Deek opened the front door. “Seems like you’re on your way to finding someone else.”

“That’s nothing. He’s a married man. He flirts with me, it makes me feel good. That’s all!”

Rania followed him out into the driveway. “If you leave,” she said in a threatening tone, “the house is mine. Forget about getting anything at all.”

Deek looked at her sadly. “You jumped to that awfully quickly. That’s fine, you can have the house and everything else.” He could only fit one of the suitcases in the Porsche’s little trunk.

What About This Car?

“And what about this car?” Rania kicked one of the tires. “What insanity is this?” She was getting angrier by the moment, and Deek feared she might get a fireplace poker and start smashing the car’s windows.

He sighed heavily. “I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve had some good trades. I made money.”

“Then where is it? You spent it on a car when we have all these bills?”

“Check your bank account.” He went around to the passenger’s side and put the other suitcase in the seat. He realized at that moment that the car still smelled bad. He opened the suitcase, and the clothing he’d stuffed into it spilled out. He snatched up a t-shirt and leaned over to wipe the driver’s side seat, hoping Rania could not smell it. Then he put a towel on the seat. He closed the door and turned to find Rania standing right in front of him, holding up her phone.

“One hundred three thousand, five hundred ninety-two dollars? What on earth? There’s over a hundred thousand dollars in the account. Where did this come from?”

Deek shook his head. “You really don’t listen at all, do you?”

She stared. “Oh. The crypto? Your good trade that you were talking about?”

“Yes.”

“And you bought the car with that?”

“Yes.”

“How much did the car cost?”

“Two and a half Bitcoin.” Seeing her blank look, he translated. “About a hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

Rania clutched her throat as if she were choking. “A hundred and twenty-five thousand? Are you utterly mad? Don’t you think you should have discussed it with me first?”

“I tried, remember?”

Millions

“How much did you make on your trade?”

“It wasn’t one trade. It was a series of good trades over the last two days.”

“How much?”

Deek regarded her. Part of him counseled silence. What had Zuhair said? It’s clever to be discreet with your assets. If he and Rania were splitting up, it was not in his interest to tell her how much he’d earned. On the other hand, he wanted his vindication. He hungered for it. He wanted to see the look in her eyes when she realized just how badly she’d misjudged him. In the end, he only said, “Millions.”

Rania took a step back. “Millions?” She looked aghast. “For real?”

Deek nodded. Rania suddenly swayed on her feet. Deek leaped forward and grabbed her, then eased her down to the ground. She sat on the driveway with legs splayed and her face in her hands, breathing heavily as Deek kneeled beside her.

***

[Part 5 will be published next week inshaAllah]

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

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