Middlesex

Surely you’ve guessed by now. That’s right: Jimmy Zizmo.

“Mana!”

“Hello, Desdemona.”

“You!”

“Who else?”

She stares, wide-eyed. “We thought you died, Jimmy! In the car. In the lake.”

“Jimmy did.”

“But you are Jimmy.” Having said this, Desdemona becomes aware of the repercussions and begins to scold. “Why you leave your wife and child? What’s the matter with you?”

“My only responsibility is to my people.”

“What people? The mavros?”

“The Original People.” She cannot tell if he is serious or not.

“Why you don’t like white people? Why you call them devils?”

“Look at the evidence. This city. This country. Don’t you agree?”

“Every place has devils.”

“That house on Hurlbut, especially.”

There is a pause, after which Desdemona cautiously asks, “How you mean?”

Fard, or Zizmo, is smiling again. “Much that is hidden has been revealed to me.”

“What is hidden?”

“My so-called wife Sourmelina is a woman of, let us say, unnatural appetites. And you and Lefty? Do you think you fooled me?”

“Please, Jimmy.”

“Don’t call me that. That isn’t my name.”

“What you mean? You are my brother-in-law.”

“You don’t know me!” he shouts. “You never knew me!” Then, composing himself: “You never knew who I was or where I came from.” With that, the Mahdi walks past my grandmother, through the lobby and double doors, and out of our lives.

This last part Desdemona didn’t see. But it’s well documented. First, Fard Muhammad shook hands with the Fruit of Islam. The young men fought back tears as he said farewell. He then moved through the crowd outside Temple No. 1 to his Chrysler coupe parked at the curb. He stepped up on the running board. Afterward, every single person would insist that the Mahdi had maintained personal eye contact the entire time. Women were openly weeping now, pleading for him not to go. Fard Muhammad removed his hat and held it to his chest. He looked down kindly and said, “Don’t worry. I am with you.” He raised the hat in a gesture that took in the entire neighborhood, the ghetto with its shantytown porches, unpaved streets, and disconsolate laundry. “I will be back to you in the near future to lead you out of this hell.” Then Fard Muhammad got into the Chrysler, turned the ignition, and with a final, reassuring smile, motored away.

Fard Muhammad was never seen again in Detroit. He went into occultation like the Twelfth Imam of the Shiites. One report places him on an ocean liner bound for London in 1934. According to the Chicago newspapers in 1959, W. D. Fard was a “Turkish-born Nazi agent” and ended up working for Hitler in World War II. A conspiracy theory holds that the police or the FBI were involved in his death. It’s anybody’s guess. Fard Muhammad, my maternal grandfather, returned to the nowhere from which he’d come.

As for Desdemona, her meeting with Fard may have contributed to the drastic decision she made around the same time. Not long after the Prophet’s disappearance, my grandmother underwent a fairly novel medical procedure. A surgeon made two incisions below her navel. Stretching open the tissue and muscle to expose the circuitry of the fallopian tubes, he tied each in a bow, and there were no more children.

CLARINET SERENADE

We had our date. I picked Julie up at her studio in Kreuzberg. I wanted to see her work, but she wouldn’t let me. And so we went to dinner at a place called Austria.

Austria is like a hunting lodge. The walls are covered with mounted deer horns, maybe fifty or sixty sets. These horns look comically small, as though they come from animals you could kill with your bare hands. The restaurant is dark, warm, woody, and comfortable. Anybody who wouldn’t like it is someone I wouldn’t like. Julie liked it.

“Since you won’t show me your work,” I said as we sat down, “can you at least tell me what it is?”

“Photography.”

“You probably don’t want to tell me of what.”

“Let’s have a drink first.”

Julie Kikuchi is thirty-six. She looks twenty-six. She is short without being small. She is irreverent without being crude. She used to see a therapist but stopped. Her right hand is partly arthritic, from an elevator accident. This makes it painful to hold a camera for a long period. “I need an assistant,” she told me. “Or a new hand.” Her fingernails are not particularly clean. In fact they are the dirtiest fingernails I have ever seen on such a lovely, wonderful-smelling person.

Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level.