The Bad Muslim Discount

by Syed M. Masood

I started to answer, but he didn’t give me the chance.

  He shot at me. It sounded like thunder sent by God. I ducked my head and threw my arms up in front of my face. If his aim had been true, it would’ve been a futile gesture. It wasn’t. The bullet pinged against something metallic and thudded into a wall.

  “Where is she?” Abu Fahd demanded, and I wondered if he had ever meant to shoot me.

  “I don’t know. I came here looking for her, didn’t I? I called out her name,” I said. “Don’t do this. The police will be here soon.”

  He didn’t seem to care. There was only one thing he wanted. “Tell me where you are hiding her.”

  “I really don’t know where—”

  He raised the gun higher, pointing at my forehead. “Do not make me kill you, Anvar. I will. You do not know the things I am capable of doing.”

  “I know what you are capable of. I’ve seen Azza’s bruises.”

  “My daughter has no honor, just like her mother. She wanted to break her engagement to Qais. She wanted me to break my promise. A man’s word is everything he has in this world. My word is all that I have left.”

  He shot again. I went to my knees, though again my mind knew attempting any defense was pointless. He missed once more and I was certain now that he was not aiming for me, not yet, because he still wanted to know where Azza was.

  I knelt before him. He loomed over me, taller than ever, his revolver pointing down at my head. “You also know nothing of honor. You are like these kuffar, with your clever, twisting words. You made me believe you were one of us who had learned to talk like one of them. No. You’re just one of them.”

  “There is no us, Abu Fahd. There is no them. We’re all the same.”

  “No,” he said, almost as if it were the saddest thing in the world. “But it does not matter. No one else is here. It is you and I, here in this place, alone. Tell me. Who will save you from me?”

  I cast about for an answer. I tried to find some measure of calm, to summon my ability to focus on forming an intelligent response. The barrel of his gun was hot against my forehead. I smelled something burning. It made it difficult for me to think.

  I should be praying. That was what a good Muslim would do.

  Then a memory, fourteen hundred years old, passed from generation to generation, rose unbidden in my mind. A man in a desert. A sword at his throat. An enemy asking him the same question. Who will save you from me?

  “I say to you what the Prophet would say to you,” I told Abu Fahd. “Allah will save me.”

  He recognized the answer.

  He recognized this moment.

  The certainty in his eyes shattered.

  I could see that he was searching for words. He seemed lost. I knew then, somehow, that he would not kill me. I knew that, in a moment, he would lower his weapon.

  Someone screamed my name, then screamed for me to get down. I flung myself to the ground just as Abu Fahd raised his gun toward the door, and the world ignited with the sound of gunshots, a sound that had kept me awake at night many times, in a faraway place in a faraway time. Bullet after bullet tore through the mountain that was Abu Fahd. He slumped against a wall, then fell.

  Agent Hale crouched next to me. She was saying something, checking me for wounds.

  I couldn’t look away from Abu Fahd. There was so much red. Several bullets had hit him dead center, in his gut, but at least one shattered his jaw and teeth. His eyes were still alive and wet with pain. A nearly lifeless hand flopped at his side, maybe searching for his gun. Then, gathering all his will, Abu Fahd raised a disfigured index finger upward at the ceiling. Of course, he was pointing higher than that. He was pointing higher than the sky and the firmament and the heavens. Abu Fahd was pointing at Him.

  I knew what he was trying to say. I nodded to show him that I understood. He was trying to muster the last words every good Muslim hopes to say, so the declaration of faith will be his last act in this world, except those words were not written for him, not anymore. He couldn’t speak them.

  I could speak them though.

  “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah,” I said for him softly, in a whisper, but he heard me. His broken mouth collapsed in a grotesque, limp, sardonic smile. With his last breath, he tried to spit at me, but it resulted in nothing, except a stream of blood dribbling weakly over his lips. Then the old man’s hand fell to the ground and he was gone.

  * * *

  —

  “I didn’t get a blanket.”

  I could tell from Agent Moray’s blank stare that he did not understand. I didn’t care. I stared past him at the flashing lights of ambulances, at paramedics and police officers going about their tasks with calm efficiency, like they understood what had happened and knew how to deal with it. I wished they’d explain it to me. I realized, after a few minutes, that he was asking me something.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No. It’s just that in the movies when something like this happens, they always give out blankets. I’m just letting you know that I didn’t get a blanket. I’m lodging a complaint.”

  Moray looked at me like Satan must have looked at Job, with utter incomprehension. “You’re an odd duck.”

  I didn’t respond. I was still watching the competent-looking people going about their business around us. “What are they saying?”

  “Those guys? The local police? They’re saying it is an attempted honor killing. The kind of thing that goes on in your part of the world.”

  “California?”

  “Have you ever tried not being a horse’s ass? You know perfectly well what I meant.”

  “I do,” I admitted. “Have you found Zuha yet?”

  “Not since the last time you asked.”

  “I’m going to keep asking.”

  “Of course. Why should you, even for a moment, cease to be annoying? Listen, we’re going to take you in. You make sure to let Awiti—Agent Hale—know you want to talk to her instead of me. That’ll be better for both of us.”

  “You’re taking me in?” I asked.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me I have the right to an attorney, Agent Moray?”

  “Why? You know any good ones?” He grinned, waiting for me to acknowledge his cleverness. He scowled when I didn’t. “You’re not under arrest. You’re coming with us voluntarily.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I’m serious, son. Hell, we’ll even wait on your convenience. Your family is anxious to see you. Especially your mother. So we’ll wait for you to be done with her—”

  “No. It’s fine. I’ll come with you now. Voluntarily, like you said.” I smiled at the look of surprise on his face. “Trust me. It will be the easier interrogation.”

  Moray smiled. “Fair enough. And just as a gesture demonstrating how little I like you, I’ll be sure to tell her you said that.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “She’ll think it’s a compliment.”

  AZZA

  Zuha asked me if I wanted to see the Painted Ladies one last time before we left San Francisco. I shook my head. I was doing, for the second time in my life, what my mother had never done. I was leaving. I didn’t want to think about Mama as I did so. I wasn’t sure if she would judge me for it or envy me. I wasn’t sure if this ability that I had, this ability to fly, which she’d never possessed, made me worse than her or better than her. I just knew that it made me who I was and that, at least for now, was enough.

  I couldn’t help but remember the day I’d been driven to Basra, by the strange man whose daughter’s name I’d stolen.

  “If you had a baby, a girl,” I asked Zuha, “what would you name her?”

  She seemed surprised by the question. “Why do you ask?”

  “People say history repeats itself. I was
just checking to see if it did.”

  There were women who would have gone silent in response to my remark, and women who would’ve been confused and demanded an explanation. There were those who would’ve thought me bizarre or weird or strange for saying what I had. Some would’ve even said as much to my face.

  None of them would’ve been able to hold captive and torture the heart of Anvar Faris like Zuha had. She asked the one question that he would have been interested in.

  “Does it?”

  “It does,” I said. “But not exactly.”

  “Then there’s a reason to have hope.”

  Zuha took me to Sacramento, two hours northeast of San Francisco, to a train station on I Street, which was a squat, long building that looked like it was made from reddish-brown bricks. It probably wasn’t. In America, they build things out of wood and then put false faces on them, to make them seem like they are stronger, more durable, than they really are.

  I took a deep breath. It was time to go.

  I wanted to say something nice to Zuha, something kind. I wanted to offer her deep words of gratitude for what she had done for me.

  Without having any reason to do so, Zuha had rushed back to Anvar’s apartment and helped me get out before Abu could come find me. Just the thought of what he would’ve done to me after he found out about my relationship with Anvar was enough to make my soul quiver like I’d sometimes felt California quake. He wouldn’t have left me alive. He would have hurt Zuha too, when she tried to stop him from hurting me.

  “Thank you.”

  Zuha shook her head. “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “You did it for Anvar then?”

  “No. The choices we make are ultimately always about ourselves, about who we are, instead of other people, don’t you think? I did what I had to do to be who I am.”

  I opened the passenger-side door and got out.

  “Good luck,” Zuha said before I could close the door.

  I smiled for her, squared my shoulders, started limping across the parking lot, ready to begin my journey, to where I did not know.

  ANVAR

  I didn’t have any cell reception in the windowless room they put me in. I kept checking my phone anyway, hoping to somehow get a message from Zuha telling me that she was safe. When the battery ran out, Agent Hale offered to take my phone and charge it.

  If any of my clients had agreed to hand over their phones like that, I would have been furious. Faced with the same situation myself, however, I didn’t hesitate to comply. I just wanted to hear from Zuha. I didn’t care about anything else.

  When Agent Hale finally walked back in, she was carrying Azza’s journals. She tossed them on the table in front of me.

  “They’re fake.”

  I made my eyes wide, gasped dramatically and put a hand on my heart. “Oh no. Gosh. Wow. Really? I can’t believe it.”

  She scowled and sat down. “I assume you didn’t know that Ms. Saqr was lying when we spoke to her in your apartment.”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “Shortly thereafter,” I admitted.

  “And then you, a responsible citizen and an officer of the court, called us to report that we were in possession of fabricated evidence.”

  “You make that sound like something I should’ve done.”

  “Mr. Faris,” Hale snapped, her voice an ice pick. “I swear I’ll read you Miranda right now.”

  “I don’t need you to read me—”

  “Enough. I’m starting to think Moray is right about you people.”

  “Lawyers?” I guessed.

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course. Would you please explain why you didn’t call us right away to tell us what you’d found out?”

  “I was going to eventually.”

  “Eventually,” Hale repeated. “This delay was so that Azza bint Saqr could escape the consequences of her actions?”

  “I was going to tell you soon. I wouldn’t let Qais Badami be punished for something he didn’t do.”

  “And how did you know we didn’t already have his location? While you were sitting on critical information, we could have already been moving in to arrest him. What if something had gone wrong when we tried to bring him in?”

  “Do you know what a forced capture is?”

  She shook her head.

  “In checkers, sometimes you don’t get a choice. When you have the opportunity to take an opponent’s piece, you must, no matter what the consequences.”

  “Mr. Faris, are you saying that you simply did what you had to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then say that. You don’t have to put on a show.”

  “If I don’t, how will anyone know I’m fun at parties?”

  Hale sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Just tell me what you know.”

  I explained how I’d figured out that the journals, and the other evidence, had been manufactured to frame Qais, that Azza had wanted to be rid of him and was using the DHS to make that happen. I told her why Azza had done what she’d done.

  “So Abu Fahd came to murder his daughter and found you instead. What happened between the two of you, at the end there, what was that? Just a garden-variety honor killing gone wrong?” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I have to tell you, Mr. Faris, that whole concept eludes me. How can someone want to murder their own child?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wouldn’t have killed her. I don’t think he was going to kill me at the end there, to be honest.”

  “That isn’t how things appeared from where I was standing. The man went looking for his daughter armed with a gun. I don’t see how a charitable inference can be drawn from that behavior.”

  “If Abu Fahd had planned to kill Azza, it would’ve been because he thought God wanted him to do it. He wouldn’t have called it murder like you just did. He would’ve called it a sacrifice.”

  “It is incomprehensible.”

  “I agree. So what happens now?”

  “Now I tell you that you’ve shown extraordinarily poor judgment through this entire episode. This would have gone differently if you’d trusted your government. I wish you would’ve trusted us.”

  “I wish I could have, but I’ve found my government pretty hostile to my clients.”

  “Maybe you should represent better people.”

  I was going to tell her that the right to due process didn’t hinge on the value, or perceived value, of the accused, but she knew that, of course. She was just being a federal agent.

  When I didn’t reply, Hale added, “We’ll keep trying to bring Ms. Saqr and Qais Badami in—”

  “Wait. Qais?”

  “He’s in the wind.”

  I couldn’t tell her I knew that, of course, or that I was the one who’d warned him.

  “Why do you need to bring him in at all? It’s clear he isn’t a terrorist.”

  Hale raised her eyebrows at me. It was an expression of both surprise and amusement. “But he is a criminal. You told me yourself what he did to Ms. Saqr. You also told me he was the one who procured Abu Fahd’s weapon for him. He doesn’t have a license and the weapon isn’t registered. Qais is undocumented too, so there is also that. I guess you were unable to see the whole chessboard, Faris. You missed a trick or two.”

  “It’s not really my game. You’ll be looking for Azza as well?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can’t you let her go?” I asked. “There’s been more than enough damage done. It can stop now.”

  She shook her head. “You know we can’t.”

  “Okay, well…I hope you bring them both in alive.”

  “As do I.”

  “If you ever find them, do me a favor. Tell them that I will stand for them. If they want me to, I’ll
represent them.”

  “You can’t. You’re a material witness. Besides, did you learn nothing from the Taleb Mansoor case? What is with you and lost causes, Anvar?”

  “It’s kinship, I think.”

  She started to say something when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She reached for it, studied it and then smiled. My heart leapt. She looked up at me.

  “One last question.”

  “What was that text? Did your people find Zuha?”

  “Yes. And she says she wants to see her lawyer. Before I let you go, I need you to tell me, did you know who Abu Fahd was?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve identified him now that we have data from his body. Fingerprints, photographs….This man had been held in Iraq on suspicion of being a militant. He was in this country illegally, virtually untraceable, and we’d subjected him to—”

  “Torture?”

  “Enhanced interrogation. His presence in the States was obviously problematic.”

  I shrugged. “Not obviously. I mean, you wouldn’t have let him go if you’d had any actual evidence against him. In fact, I’m surprised you let him go at all. Innocence isn’t necessarily a way out for your prisoners.”

  “So you knew? How could you not report that a man like that was in our country? He could’ve been dangerous.”

  Because we were in his country, I almost said, and were dangerous too.

  “It goes like this,” I said, quoting one of my father’s favorite songs. “The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the—”

  “The major lift?” Hale finished. “The Fifth doesn’t apply in these circumstances.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” I said with a shrug. “But I’ve recently been told I’m not a judge, and neither are you.”

  “So you aren’t going to say anything else?”

  “Take me to Zuha,” I told her. “And I’ll say Hallelujah.”

  * * *

  —

  From Cicero to Clarence Darrow, never in the history of attorneys anywhere has a lawyer been happier to see his client than I was to see Zuha Shah. I sat by her and held her hand as she answered questions posed to her by an agent whose name I never bothered to remember.