by Sheena Kamal
Sanchez is waiting for an answer. I don’t have one, so what I settle for is this: “I’m looking for information about my father.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Some thirty odd years ago.”
He shakes his head sadly. “You’re making this hard for yourself.”
What he means is, I’m making it hard for him to go home and take a nap of his own. “It’s true,” I say. “My father died over thirty years ago. I had a visit recently from someone who served with him in the marines. He suggested that something happened to my dad during his military career, but he left before I could ask him more. I wasn’t thinking straight. So I came here to see if anyone remembers anything. He grew up in Detroit.”
“How did your dad die?”
“Suicide.”
He jots this down on his notepad.
“He died in Detroit?”
“No, in Winnipeg.”
He frowns. “And you’re here now looking for information about a suicide that happened thirty years ago in another country? I gotta tell you, it doesn’t seem like a good story. All you need to do is tell me a good story and you’re outta here. We get you a nice escort to take you to the airport. Shake hands and you get on a plane. No more harm done. No more people getting shot.” He drops the concerned act for a moment, and his voice takes on a hard edge. “Now, when you’re telling the story, make sure it’s the truth.”
It seems a bit rich that he wants a good story that is also the truth. I’m stretched to my limits here just trying for the latter. So I say nothing.
“Okay,” he says, going back to his notes. “A couple days ago you reported an attempted robbery at your motel room, but you claim nothing of value was taken.”
“That’s right.”
“You confronted the robber, who witnesses say had a gun.”
I nod.
“Your quick thinking got you out of that situation alive. Not a lot of people would have that kind of presence of mind.”
“I’m pretty special.”
“No kidding,” he says, though his tone is less than admiring. “Not even a week later you’re involved in another crime. This time a man gets shot.”
“A man with an important aunt.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Every man and his aunt is important to the Detroit Police Department. The first 911 call about the incident was made from your cell phone number.”
Which reminds me to get rid of my phone.
“Witnesses say that you were being chased by a man with a gun, who seemed to fit the description of the man you encountered in your motel room. We weren’t able to identify his tattoo,” he says, lying. “But he had a broken nose.”
“Oh.” My voice is all sugar and spice now. There’s nothing I hate more than being lied to. “You think it’s the same guy?”
“What’s going on here, Nora?”
“I don’t know.” This is the absolute truth. I’m as upset about it as he seems to be.
“Do you have any idea how easy it is to put a hit out on someone in Detroit? Someone knows a guy who knows a dude whose brother’s a gangbanger. It’s not sophisticated. These guys are often no more than hired thugs—and they’re desperate for the money. Fifteen thousand dollars. That’s what human life is worth to some people here. Ten if you catch them on a bad day.”
“Might be a lot of money to some.”
He’s incredulous. “You really arguing that’s all your life is worth?”
Someone raps twice on the door and opens it up. It’s the plainclothes female officer I’d seen at the hospital. “We gotta get going,” she says to Sanchez.
He gets up from the table. Gives me a hard look, then turns to the woman. “Yeah. Actually, I’ll do that interview on my own. Why don’t you take Ms. Watts here to the detention center? I’m not done with her yet.”
The woman is having none of this. “I gotta be there today and you know it, Sanchez. Don’t pass this off on me because all of the female detectives are out. Besides, you got court starting tomorrow,” she reminds him. “You won’t get a warrant in forty-eight hours for this. Plus, she’s just a witness.”
Sanchez runs a hand over his shaved head. “Shit. I got the kids this week, too.”
“And this is a foreign witness,” she says, her tone implying that there may be additional paperwork to account for my Canadian-ness.
“Yeah, yeah.” He drums his fingers on the table. Comes to a decision. “Where are you staying?”
“With my uncle.” I give him Harvey’s address, which he dutifully adds to his notes.
“Who else knows you’re staying there?”
“No one.” Not even Harvey.
“We’ll take my car,” the woman says to Sanchez. “Meet me in the lot.” Then she is off to begin their secret journey that she won’t allow him to cut her out of.
After she leaves the room, Sanchez turns back to me. “Do you know who shot Nate Marlowe, Nora?”
“No.”
“Alright. Don’t tell anyone else about your uncle’s place. Keep your phone on you. You and I both know that Nate wasn’t the target.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right. I think you’re in danger, lady. I really do.” And with that, he leaves.
I’m escorted out of the fancy police station shortly after. I’m not sure how much time has passed since I’ve been picked up, but I’m as exhausted as Sanchez at this point. The earlier kick from my nap has worn away. I get a coffee from a nearby shop, because my day is far from over. There’s still some daylight left. In the restroom of the coffee shop, I take the battery out of my phone. The temptation to throw it away is strong, but I can’t just yet. I hate to admit it, but I have become attached to it.
37
Dope and bodies, Sanchez had said back at the hospital.
This is probably the only time in my life I wish that I was a drug dealer, at least there would be some sort of explanation for a gang in southwest Detroit to be after me. In my confusion, I decide to seek refuge with my Arab brethren. The address of the couple in Harvey’s article was easy to find. They are upstanding members of the community and the house has been in the family for years.
A woman opens the front door of their sprawling home in Dearborn. Dania Nasri, the bride in the photograph with my mother, must be in her sixties, but looks a decade younger underneath her impeccable makeup. She is stylish and elegant in a way that seems almost effortless—the kind of woman who can make leggings and a tunic look like a fashion statement. “Yes?” she says in a quiet, accented voice.
I introduce myself and show her the photo I’d taken of the newspaper clipping from her wedding.
She takes the phone from me and studies the image on the screen. Her hands are smooth, nails painted a soft gold. “Sabrina Awad. Yes, I remember her very well. I’ve thought about her often.”
Dania Nasri gives me a long look, then steps back to let me in. I follow her into the living room, which is dominated by a beautiful Persian rug in hues of red and gold. “I just made a pot of tea for myself, but there’s enough for two. You better sit down, if you want to hear about your mother.”
Let me tell you a story, she begins.
A young Palestinian woman lived on the outskirts of a refugee camp in Beirut with some relatives. The last living member of her immediate family, she asked a distant aunt living in Canada to help her get out of the country. She didn’t know the aunt very well, but the aunt owed a favor to this woman’s deceased father, so there they are. The papers were put in and she took a job as a cleaning woman to pass the time and get some money. The papers came through and she got on a plane to Montreal.
Once in Montreal, she went to university to continue her studies. She wasn’t politically active at the time, didn’t want anything to do with life back home. When we met through a mutual friend in college, we became quite close. She could be charming when she wanted. I found
it hard to believe that she’d ever been a maid. There was just something different about her. She came with me to my wedding in Dearborn. I told her she would get to dress up, meet some other Lebanese, ha. She hated being photographed, though she was beautiful. She’s only in one of my wedding photos, and there by accident. It’s that photo, the one you’re holding now. My father-in-law is an important man in Lebanon. They come from an old family, many of whom are involved in politics. At the beginning of the Western hostage crisis in the 1980s my father-in-law was in Lebanon helping with the negotiations and the newspapers ran a few stories on him and his life here. When they do a background piece on him, they sometimes use that wedding picture because the whole family is in it.
What beautiful woman doesn’t want to be photographed?
A journalist showed up when the national papers started profiling my father-in-law’s political work back in Lebanon. The journalist wanted to know about the people in the wedding photo. He asked about everyone, but did seem interested in Sabrina specifically. I thought it was because she was so pretty. I called her up after he left, your father answered the phone. I met him once, at the same time she met him. He was quiet, but very nice. It was just like Sabrina to ignore all the rich ones and go for the poorest man she could find. When they met here in Detroit, he was just out of the military and thinking about moving back to Canada, where he was born. She always said there was something about him. He was so kind. She liked the thought of bringing someone back to their homeland because, you understand, she could never go back to hers. Palestine was a dream.
Where was I?
Oh, the photo in the paper. I said to your father I’ll send him a copy of the article. He said don’t worry, he’ll find one. Two days later, she called back and she sounded funny. I tried to ask her about you and about the new baby, but all she cared about was this journalist that was interested in her. She didn’t sound like a happy new mother. She sounded . . . I don’t know. Dull. Like she was separate from everything. Some women go through that after childbirth—but you didn’t really talk about it back then. I told her it was going to be alright. Not to worry about the journalist, he was just doing a fluffy piece on the life of the Lebanese who came over. He said his paper was probably not interested in the ones that went to Canada, but I gave him their new address in Winnipeg anyway so that he could write to her. He was nice. He just wanted to talk about our lives here, not about politics. Sabrina married outside the community so he thought maybe her experience would be interesting. And she married an American veteran—well, one that was really Canadian. He was interested in that. Like it was some kind of love across borders story or something.
Your mother—she went quiet for a minute. I felt that something was very wrong. I’ve never forgotten that feeling. I kept calling her name, then she asked me what he looked like. I told her, not tall, not short. Blond hair, blue eyes. He was in good shape, though. You could tell. Attractive, except for the scar on his neck he kept touching. Then she hung up. Didn’t say good-bye or anything. I haven’t heard from her since. I never understood any of it. I told that man only good things. I called your house a few times, trying to talk to her, but finally your dad answered. I remember it like it was yesterday. You know “London Bridge,” the nursery rhyme? It was playing in the background. Your father said she was gone. After she talked to me, she packed up and left in the night, while everyone was asleep. That their relationship was under strain and she wasn’t handling things too well with the new baby. He thought . . . he thought she was going to come back sooner or later and he’d let me know when she did. He was something, your father. I liked him a lot. He said he understood the impulse to run away, but people usually come back to the ones they love. He believed in her.
You know what bothered me, though? It was something she’d said when we were in college and had gotten drunk together for the very first time. She said she was tired, so tired of running. That she wanted to live her life like a normal person, without looking over her shoulder. I thought at the time she was talking about the war, but what if she wasn’t?
Why was she looking over her shoulder?
The front door opens and closes and a parade of young women fills the room. It is only about five girls, but my standard for what constitutes a parade is low.
Dania smiles at me. “You want to stay for dinner? It’s just me and my granddaughters.”
Do I want to have dinner with a pack of teenagers and their grandmother hen? I shake my head. “You’ve been very helpful,” I say, holding out my hand.
Her smile is effortless, if a little sad. “You’re welcome. I cared about her, you know. Sabrina. She was so independent, so stubborn. She walked to her own beat, that’s for sure.” She cocks her head to the side as she considers me. “You remind me of her.”
With that doozy, she shows me out. I’m a lot like my mother? The woman who left more questions than answers, who abandoned her family at the first sign of trouble?
I knock on the door again, after she closes it. It opens almost immediately. “You change your mind about dinner?”
“No. What you just said about me being like her . . . that’s probably the worst thing you could say to me. She left us.” I can’t keep the anger out of my voice. “My sister and I grew up without a mother. When my dad died, we went into foster care. He was wrong. She never came back.”
She nods. “This is exactly what I mean—you coming back here to tell me that. Sabrina, she got into a lot of trouble. You could sense that about her. But she wasn’t afraid of a confrontation.” She tilts her head slightly to the side. “She came from a place that was hell on earth. One thing you learn about life in war is when to pick up and move on. Maybe she was struggling and she refused to stay with a fight she couldn’t win.”
My smile has no warmth to it. Not even a little. “Then she was nothing like me at all,” I say.
38
When Brazuca gets to the hospital, explaining away Whisper’s presence as a service dog, Warsame shakes his head at him from outside the hospital room. Brazuca enters the room with Whisper because he can’t imagine keeping her away. She goes over to the lifeless body on the bed and climbs onto the armchair at the bedside. From there she puts her paws on Sebastian Crow’s emaciated chest and rests her head just over his heart.
There is a sound from the corner of the room. Leo Krushnik stands there with his fist in his mouth and tears streaming from his eyes.
Brazuca watches as Seb’s lover falls apart.
As the expression slides from his face.
And his body follows it down.
As it hits him in the gut that the man he loved is dead and chose to die alone, away from him.
Brazuca goes to his knees beside Krushnik and gathers him into his arms.
“Where’s Nora?” Warsame says, much later. He and Brazuca are in the hallway, keeping an eye on the room. Whisper has moved from Seb’s body and is now on the floor beside Krushnik, with her head on his lap.
“Detroit.”
“So it is her.”
“Looks like.”
“That chick . . .” Warsame shakes his head. “Might as well paint a target on her back, bro. What’s she mixed up with this time?”
“I don’t know,” Brazuca says, after a moment. Whisper raises her head. She looks toward Warsame, who is leaning against the door, and then back at Brazuca. As if waiting for him to make a move.
“Before Crow passed, he kept telling Krushnik to check the book. You know what he’s talking about?”
“Here,” says Brazuca, handing over the keys he’d found at Crow’s house. “You’re an investigator. Find out.”
“And you got Nora?”
Brazuca shrugs, because if he says it, it has to be true. He doesn’t want Nora. She isn’t his problem. But he can’t deny that she means something to him. He doesn’t know whether it’s the sacred bond of alcoholics who’ve sat meetings together or the fact that she had once trusted him, but it’s there and undeniab
le. As much as he wants to leave her hanging, he doesn’t know if he can. As he walks away, Warsame shouts after him, “Hey, you forgot the dog.”
“No, I didn’t,” Brazuca says. When he’d looked a moment ago, Whisper had been staring at him, yes, but made no move to leave Krushnik’s side. Last year, before Nora had gone to Vancouver Island to rescue her daughter, she’d left Whisper with Crow and Krushnik. They were still together back then, living in the town house that is now empty. They’d both loved that dog. He can’t do a hell of a lot for Krushnik now, but he can do this. Leave him with someone to share his grief with. Someone to be there for him. Someone alive.
He gets in his car but it takes him a full minute to start it. He’s too tired to go running to Detroit and has to deal with Lam before he does. But for now, what’s on his mind is sleep. Suddenly, he’s so damn exhausted.
39
After much deliberation, I put the battery back into my phone, turn it on and send an email I’ve been dreading since Nate was shot. Describing exactly what has been happening since I left Canada. Then I walk toward the riverfront. I can’t go back to the hospital, or the bar, or anyplace I’ve been since I got to this city, so I sit by the water and look toward Canada. Only a narrow stretch of water, the Detroit River, separates the two countries, linked by a bridge owned by some kind of industry tycoon. If I was to get on that bridge, clear customs, and drive a few hours, I would be just in time for a cup of tea with my teenage daughter. I could send her a photo of where I am but part of me doesn’t want her to know that I’m close.
