Middlesex

off, when he thought he was compromising himself. Going through the bins, I look at his women, their engineered hosiery, their uneven smiles. I gaze into those faces my grandfather gazed into, years ago, and I ask myself: Why did Lefty stop searching for his sister’s face and start searching for others, for blondes with thin lips, for gun molls with provocative rumps? Was his interest in these models merely pecuniary? Did the cold wind blowing through the house lead him to seek warmth in other places? Or had guilt begun to infect him, too, so that to distract himself from the thing he’d done he ended up with these Mabels and Lucies and Doloreses?

Unable to answer these questions, I return now to Temple No. 1, where new converts are consulting compasses. Tear-shaped, white with black numbers, the compasses have a drawing of the Kaaba stone at the center. Still hazy about the actual requirements of their new faith, these men pray at no prescribed times. But at least they’ve got these compasses, bought from the same good sister who sells the clothes. The men revolve, one step at a time, until compass needles point to 34, the number coding for Detroit. They consult the rim’s arrow to determine the direction of Mecca.

“LET US MOVE NOW TO CRANIOMETRY. WHAT IS CRANIOMETRY? IT IS THE SCIENTIFIC MEASUREMENT OF THE BRAIN, OF WHAT IS CALLED BY THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY ‘GRAY MATTER.’ THE BRAIN OF THE AVERAGE WHITE MAN WEIGHS SIX OUNCES. THE BRAIN OF THE AVERAGE BLACK MAN WEIGHS SEVEN OUNCES AND ONE HALF.”Fard lacks the fire of a Baptist preacher, the deep-gut oratory, but to his audience of disaffected Christians (and one Orthodox believer) this turns out to be an advantage. They’re tired of the holy-rolling, the shouting and brow-mopping, the raspy breathing. They’re tired of slave religion, by which the White Man convinces the Black that servitude is holy.

“BUT THERE IS ONE THING AT WHICH THE WHITE RACE EXCELLED THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE. BY DESTINY, AND BY THEIR OWN GENETIC PROGRAMMING, THE WHITE RACE EXCELLED AT TRICKNOLOGY. DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS? THIS IS WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW. THROUGH TRICKNOLOGY THE EUROPEANS BROUGHT THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE FROM MECCA AND OTHER PARTS OF EAST ASIA. IN 1555 A SLAVE TRADER NAMED JOHN HAWKINS BROUGHT THE FIRST MEMBERS OF THE TRIBE OF SHABAZZ TO THE SHORES OF THIS COUNTRY. 1555. THE NAME OF THE SHIP? JESUS. THIS IS IN THE HISTORY BOOKS. YOU CAN GO TO THE DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY AND LOOK THIS UP.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FIRST GENERATION OF ORIGINAL PEOPLE IN AMERICA? THE WHITE MAN MURDERED THEM. THROUGH TRICKNOLOGY. HE MURDERED THEM SO THAT THEIR CHILDREN WOULD GROW UP WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE, OF WHERE THEY CAME FROM. THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE CHILDREN, THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE POOR ORPHANS—THAT IS WHO YOU ARE. YOU HERE IN THIS ROOM. AND ALL THE SO-CALLED NEGROES IN THE GHETTOS OF AMERICA. I HAVE COME HERE TO TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE. YOU ARE THE LOST MEMBERS OF THE TRIBE OF SHABAZZ.”

And riding through Black Bottom didn’t help. Desdemona realized now why there was so much trash in the streets: the city didn’t pick it up. White landlords let their apartment buildings fall into disrepair while they continued to raise the rents. One day Desdemona saw a white shop clerk refuse to take change from a Negro customer. “Just leave it on the counter,” she said. Didn’t want to touch the lady’s hand! And in those guilt-ridden days, her mind crammed with Fard’s theories, my grandmother started to see his point. There were blue— eyed devils all over town. The Greeks had an old saying, too: “Red beard and blue eyes portend the Devil.” My grandmother’s eyes were brown, but that didn’t make her feel any better. If anybody was a devil it was her. There was nothing she could do to change the way things were. But she could make sure that it didn’t happen again. She went to see Dr. Philobosian.

“That’s a very extreme measure, Desdemona,” the doctor told her.

“I want to make sure.”

“But you’re still a young woman.”

“No, Dr. Phil, I’m not,” my grandmother said in a weary voice. “I’m eighty-four hundred years old.”

On November 21, 1932, the Detroit Times ran the following headline: “Altar Scene of Human Sacrifice.” The story followed: “One hundred followers of a negro cult leader, who is held for human sacrifice on a crude altar in his home, were being rounded up today by police for questioning. The self-styled king of the Order of Islam is Robert Harris, 44, of 1429 Dubois Ave. The victim, whom he admits bludgeoning with a car axle and stabbing with a silver knife through the heart, was James J. Smith, 40, negro roomer in the Harris home.” This Harris, who came to be known as the “voodoo slayer,” had hung around Temple No. 1. Just possibly, he had read Fard’s “Lost Found Muslim Lessons No. 1 and 2,” including the passage:“ALL MUSLIMS WILL MURDER THE DEVIL BECAUSE THEY KNOW HE IS A SNAKE AND ALSO IF HE BE ALLOWED TO LIVE, HE WOULD STING SOMEONE ELSE.” Harris had then founded his own order. He had gone looking for a (white) devil but, finding one hard to come by in his neighborhood, had settled for a devil closer at hand.

Three days later, Fard was arrested. Under interrogation, he insisted that he had never commanded anyone to sacrifice a human being. He claimed that he was the “supreme being on earth.” (At least, that was what he said during his first interrogation. The second time he was arrested, months later, he “admitted,” according to the police, that the Nation of Islam was nothing but “a racket.” He had invented the prophecies and the cosmologies “to get all the money he could.”) Whatever the truth of the matter, the upshot was this: in exchange for having the charges dropped, Fard agreed to leave Detroit once and for all.

And so we come to May 1933. And to Desdemona, saying goodbye to the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class. Head scarves frame faces streaked with tears. The girls file by, kissing Desdemona on both cheeks. (My grandmother will miss the girls. She has grown very fond of them.) “My mother used to tell me in bad times silkworms no can spin,” she says. “Make bad silk. Make bad cocoons.” The girls accept this truth and examine the newly hatched worms for signs of despair.

In the Silk Room, all the shelves are empty. Fard Muhammad has transferred power to a new leader. Brother Karriem, the former Elijah Poole, is now Elijah Muhammad, Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad has a different vision for the Nation’s economic future. From now on, it will be real estate, not clothing.

And now Desdemona is descending the stairs on her way out. She reaches the first floor and turns to look back at the lobby. For the first time ever, the Fruit of Islam do not guard the lobby entrance. The drapes hang open. Desdemona knows she should keep going out the back door, but she has nothing to lose now, and so ventures toward the front. She approaches the double doors and pushes her way into the sanctum sanctorum.

For the first fifteen seconds, she stands still, as her idea of the room switches places with reality. She had imagined a soaring dome, a richly colored Ezine carpet, but the room is just a simple auditorium. A small stage at one end, folding chairs stacked along the walls. She absorbs all this quietly. And then, once more, there is a voice:

“Hello, Desdemona.”

On the empty stage, the Prophet, the Mahdi, Fard Muhammad, stands behind the podium. He is barely more than a silhouette, slender and elegant, wearing a fedora that shadows his face.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he says. “But I guess today it’s all right.”

Desdemona, her heart in her throat, manages to ask, “How you know my name?”

“Haven’t you heard? I know everything.”

Coming through the heating vent, Fard Muhammad’s deep voice had made her solar plexus vibrate. Now, closer up, it penetrates her entire body. The rumble spreads down her arms until her fingers are tingling.

“How’s Lefty?”

This question rocks Desdemona back on her heels. She is speechless. She is thinking many things at once, first of all, how can Fard know her husband’s name, did she tell Sister Wanda? … and, second, if it’s true he knows everything, then the rest must be true, too, about the blue-eyed devils and the evil scientist and the Mother Plane from Japan that will come to destroy the world and take the Muslims away. Dread seizes her, while at the same time she is remembering something, asking where she has heard that voice before …

Now Fard Muhammad steps from behind the podium. He crosses the stage and descends to the main floor. He approaches Desdemona while continuing to display his omniscience.

“Still running the speakeasy? Those days are numbered. Lefty better find something else to do.” Fedora tilted to one side, suit neatly buttoned, face in shadow, the Mahdi approaches her. She wants to flee but cannot. “And how are the children?” Fard asks. “Milton must be what now, eight?”

He is only ten feet away. As Desdemona’s heart madly thumps, Fard Muhammad removes his hat to reveal his face. And the Prophet smiles.