Two

I was 20 years old when I first set foot in America. Attended a state university in some creekville town in the Midwest. It was summer then, and I was always surprised to see how different trees and leaves were. I always thought it would be the same as back home, but American trees during summer, they made me lonelier. They were brittle and did not have the scent of rain on them.

Settling down into academic life was smooth; after all, I was a student. I thought that my life would be as normal as an average person's life could be, but then some things cropped up. I needed some money. I later learned in life that most instability was usually initiated by money, and that you could change your values if the price was right.

I used to be apathetic about money. But becoming a member of an Islamic missionary movement, which I was quite active in, reversed that indifference.

My religious journey

I was reading heavily, books by Hassan al Banna, Mustafa Mashur, Maryam Jameelah, Maududi, Syed Qutb. These books, at that time, seemed to answer a lot of questions and as a young man with raging blood, eager for solutions to social problems, I embraced the ideals and principles espoused by those prolific Islamic activists.

In Malaysia, becoming active in an Islamic movement was a no-brainer. In my own country I can find my way around things without spending much. In America, travelling costs money.

Keeping in touch with other TM members cost money. The activities that we did, the bulletins that we continually published, they all needed cold hard cash. But there were so few of us, and there was so much money needed. I was looking for something to finance the whole deal. One day I stumbled upon the answer. Literally.

It was the summer of 1992. I had the most horrendous class schedule that semester, a 7.30am class, for two hours! I usually walked to class at around 7am, when the streets were still very much clear of traffic.

This one particular Tuesday morning, I saw a young woman in her early 20s cross the road in front of a junction I was on. She was maybe a year or two older than me, with a long bag slung over her shoulder. It was too big for her frame, but she carried it with comfortable ease.

As I passed her by, I looked at her face. Stung by her freshness, I said 'Hi! Good morning!', and promptly collided with the traffic light post. I must have hit the post pretty straight on with my head, for I passed out and couldn't remember anything until I woke up on a bed.

Sleeping beauty

There was a concussion pad on my forehead, a slightly wet cotton press with blood not yet dried up. I looked at my watch. 7.45. Then I looked harder: 7.45pm. I was out of circulation for the day!

Panicking immediately, I got up in a rush, only to fall down and hit the wooden floor with a sickening thud, promptly putting me out of whack again.

I was out until the next morning, when I felt someone rearranging the blanket that was on me. I opened my eyes slowly, my head throbbing, and I saw the lady that caused all this.

What followed was quite an awkward conversation.

"Hi! Good morning!" she said.

"I don't feel so well," I said.

"I know. You fell and hit the floor this time."

"I'm Hazani," I said. Something told me I should tell her my name, so she'd know how to pronounce it right.

"Kristina. You can call me Kristy."

"Kristina what?" I didn't know why I was that inquisitive, at a time when my head was bleeding.

"Kristina Becker."

"Hi Kristina. I've missed two days of classes already. Could you get me up please?" During summer semester, classes were packed and one day of classes was equivalent to a week in a regular semester. I was going to fail if I missed one.

Pheasant hunting

Without waiting for her help, I got up. And that was when I felt like falling down again, because I saw, on the dining table across from my makeshift bed, a few guns and a rifle, together with knives and sharp objects, lined up neatly beside each other.

"What's that?" I pointed out to the table.

"Oh that. Don't worry. I go hunting regularly. It's pheasant season, now."

She didn't seem like the hunting type. Her skin was fair, and I was already into one year in Iowa, and most Iowan women sported a tan in the summer. This was late summer. Kristina was as white as the sheet I had been sleeping on for the past two days.

I lumbered slowly to the dining table. Caressing the black steel of a long range rifle, something crossed my mind.

"This is a Remington 700. If you use this to shoot pheasants, you'd be eating corned birds." Like I said, I'd been in Iowa for a year now. I knew about guns and I knew about game.

Kristina's face lit up.

"You know your guns! Are you a marksman or something?"

"No. But I read up on things. Hy-Vee sells past magazines for a few dimes, which is what I normally have at the end of the month." Now I felt a little lighter. Kristina handed me a mug of hot chocolate.

This was going to give me a terrible headache, I thought, but I was hungry and Kristina looked, as she did yesterday, fresh. She looked so innocent, with not a freckle on her face - her complexion was as smooth and creamy like the foam lining the mug of chocolate I was holding.

That really made the chocolate extra tasty.

Kristina was not a tall woman by American standards. She was about 5' 7". I was half an inch shorter. She wore short pants, the ones that extend to the middle of your calves. Not that short, but short enough to reveal a nice long pair of legs, the ones that get toned by jogging and regular walking.

She must have been no more than 140 pounds. She was shapely enough. The T-shirt she wore was the common collegiate tee, but it seemed to fit her in the right places, if you know what I mean, and I know you know what I mean.

Seduction 101

I extended my left hand to her right side. "Kristina," I said, "I need to get to my classes."

Maybe I extended my arm too much, maybe it was extended the wrong way around. Suddenly it reached the small of her behind, and my hand rested there for a while. I will spare you the boring details.

I am not in the mood to tell this story with such technical accuracy, but they were not, by any stretch of argument, boring details, at that time. I was with a woman that was pleasantly beautiful, who picked me up and sheltered me at her place.

I did the unforeseeable, the unthinkable. I pulled her towards me and kissed her lips.

Now, I need to remind you again of my upbringing. Of what I was at that time, an active Muslim student activist, albeit a very young one. My youth was both my strength and my weakness. Men at that age will have intimacies with anything that moved.

'Innocent' was one word I could no longer describe myself, 30 minutes after we kissed. She was receptive and I was out of my mind. And there was this one big move that made everything fall into neat little places that is the mess I call my life that I am in, now, 12 years later.

Kristy taught me everything I knew about the fine art of putting people to sleep. Not only did she and I become an item, but we were also master and student, and finally, members of the same profession.