Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,36
table, Noah looked up from his Toshiba tablet and said, “So, how did it go on Tuesday? Did you get in trouble?”
“Huh?” Wara frowned at him, glancing up from the Quechua book she d been reading while waiting for Nazaret to show up. The two girls were teaching a group of ladies to read in Quechua at a church downtown, close to Café Amara. Wara saw the twinkle in Noah’s eye and suddenly got what he was talking about. Her face spread into a grin and she lay the book on the table, right over half of Che Guevara’s face that some local artist had painted in pastels. She leaned back into the chair, raised an eyebrow at him and fingered the little gold star on the side of her nose.
“About this? Well, I don’t think they liked it, but I’ve always been a little weird. The Bennesons are nice missionaries; they didn’t say anything. Plus, c’mon, my name means star. In a Bolivian language.” She peered at Noah over the top of her maroon glasses, still grinning. “It’s you you should worry about. Just cause you didn’t go to prayer meeting on Tuesday doesn’t mean the rest of the team isn’t gonna find out next time.”
“You got me.” Noah ran a hand through his straggly sandy blond hair, pushing it aside to reveal a little silver hoop in his right ear. “They might be mad. But I’m not sure what the big deal is. Half the Bolivian guys I’m friends with here have an earring. Or a couple earrings.” He let the hair fall back over his ear and they both sat there, smiling, enjoying the moment of feeling like naughty missionaries.
Well, at least one of them wasn’t really naughty. Noah was just a nice guy who wanted an earring.
Clay dishes clinked from the kitchen and the aroma of lemon bubbles joined the coffee floating around them in the empty coffee shop. Footsteps scuffed on the pavement outside the open café entrance and Tiago slouched by under a black backpack covered in skull patches, wearing baggy black jeans with chains as usual. Noah and Wara threw him a wave, and he grinned back, revealing a silver stud in his tongue Wara didn’t remember seeing before.
Noah and I have a ways to go before we beat Tiago in the piercing count, she thought, still smiling.
Noah had stretched his legs out under the table and was back typing furiously at his little tablet. He was squinting at the thing with extreme concentration, like a successful young stock broker in an Armani suit instead of a missionary in cut-off khaki shorts that really needed a haircut. “Ok, so, look at this,” he told Wara, whirling the screen around so she could see. “Remember last week when we saw all those Muslim ladies passing out tracts in the plaza?”
Sure she did. Wara had been with Noah and Nazaret, and they had come upon a big group of women in veils, right in the Plaza Colon. Most of them were Bolivians who had converted to Islam through the influence of the small-but-growing Muslim community here in South America. The ladies had been passing out tracts about Islam, and the whole scene had been kind of surreal because back in the day, Christians used to be the only group you would see doing things like that.
Wara scooted her chair closer to Noah and planted an elbow right in Che Guevara’s eye as she positioned herself to squint at his tiny screen. “So I was checking online a little about Islam,” Noah said, “cause I was kinda curious about how it’s growing so much around here. Look at this website I found. ”
Wara’s eyes fell on something like a PowerPoint presentation, all in Spanish, with photos of dramatic mountain backdrops fading away around the large letters. “Islam is the only hope for Latin America,” the title proclaimed. The following screens explained how Islam really is the heritage of Spanish-speaking peoples and they should return to it with all their hearts. Islam is the only light for Latin America. And Islam gives us a common cause as brothers: fight against injustice and Western Imperialism.
“That’s a little bit freaky.” Wara bit her lip while meeting Noah’s eyes. “The part about fighting against Western Imperialism. The way so many people feel about Western Imperialism in Bolivia these days, that seems like a great reason for a lot of people to join Islam. ”
Noah cocked his head to one side