No True Believers

by Rabiah York Lumbard

  Sure, Principal Philip had asked a few dumb questions about Islam over the years. And yes, he made no secret of his admiration for Robert E. Lee. Neither bothered me. Plenty of ancestors on my mother’s side admired Robert E. Lee, too. I remembered once, freshman year, Mariam grumbling about his insensitivity after a mass shooting in a church. He’d made a big stink at an assembly over changes at the Arlington House—Robert E. Lee’s nearby historic estate and Franklin’s go-to field trip destination (naturally)…something about how its curators had exploited a tragedy to “disrespect the General.” I could even picture the ugly sneer on his face as he’d said those words. Disrespect the General. But I couldn’t recall why. And right now, with law enforcement officials sitting directly across from me, it didn’t seem to matter much anyway.

  The younger detective cleared his throat. “Thanks for taking the time out of your school day to come and talk to us. You’re under no obligation to stay, but we wanted to ask a few questions.”

  “Um…okay?” My voice was shaking.

  “This is just a routine check,” he said. “I’m Detective Tim McManus, but you can call me Detective Tim. We’re pleased to meet you…Salma, is it? Can I have your full name?”

  I took a breath and focused on speaking without fear. “Salma Dihya Bakkioui.”

  “Salma Dihya Bak-kee…yee,” he said. He flashed a quick smile, acknowledging that he might have mispronounced it. “Pretty name. I don’t mean to alarm you, but the school received a bomb threat. Can you open your laptop, please?”

  At first I didn’t understand him. I must have misheard. I tried to follow a line of logic given the words that he’d just uttered. His tone was inscrutable. A bomb threat? Wouldn’t they have cleared the premises? We had lockdown drills to train for this sort of thing. And why was he smiling? Why did he compliment my name, knowing he couldn’t even say it properly? My eyes flashed to the disheveled older cop, who leveled his glasses at me. I stared back for a moment, unnerved. There was no emotion I could see in those fixed, dark eyes. The Silent One, I named him. I had no choice; unlike his counterpart he seemed to have no interest in introducing himself to me.

  “No problem,” I finally managed. “I have nothing to hide.” I reached for my computer case, but Detective Tim darted forward and put his hand over mine.

  “I’ll get it.”

  Frozen, I watched as he reached in and removed my darling, my precious, my baby. Nobody, not my parents or sisters—not even Amir or Mariam—dared to handle it without specific permission. Detective Tim withdrew and flipped it open on the table so that the screen faced me, then began to tap on the keyboard. A Quranic verse appeared as wallpaper. He rotated my computer so the Silent One could view the image. The Silent One jerked his head in a sort of code language I recognized from the longtime partners on Law & Order: SVU. At least that’s how my brain interpreted it. Olivia Benson was my hero.

  “What does that say?” Detective Tim asked me.

  “It says, ‘Hasbunallahu wa ni’ma’l wakil.’ ”

  “In English.”

  “ ‘God is all we need. What an excellent Guardian is God.’ At least that’s what Titi taught me.”

  He traded another glance with the Silent One, who shrugged noncommittally, then jotted something down in his notepad.

  “Who is Titi?” Detective Tim asked.

  “My eighty-two-year-old granny.”

  He frowned at me. “This is serious. I’d prefer less sarcasm.”

  “About what?”

  “This friend ‘Titi,’ the person who taught you this phrase, is…?” He left me to fill in the blank.

  “I just told you,” I snapped, shifting in the chair. “She’s my granny. If you don’t believe me, call her. Or call my mom. Or my dad.” My voice rose. “This is serious, right? I want to talk to them. Now.”

  “Absolutely,” Detective Tim said. “You can call them in one second….”

  He slid my computer across the table to the Silent One, who in turn inspected it. The sudden soft buzzing of a text made Detective Tim stiffen. The Silent One sat up, too. Like a pair of synchronized robots, each pulled a smartphone out of his inside jacket pocket. They glanced at their screens, glanced at each other, and shoved the phones back inside. What was going on? If they wanted to know what I was up to online, they would have done one of several dozen things—beginning with actually touching the keyboard. Just as I was about to demand what the hell was going on, the Silent One ripped a page out of his notebook, crumpled it, and tossed it into the recycling bin. Then he closed my computer and gently slid it across the table to me.

  “Well,” said Detective Tim, “we appreciate your time and cooperation. Sorry to interrupt your school day.”

  I glanced between them, then pushed myself away. My leg was throbbing. My EDS was making me even more irritable than the situation warranted. “So can I go?” I grumbled.

  “Yes. Oh. One more thing. I just wanted to ask you about a boy named Amir.”

  “What about him?”

  Detective Tim leaned in. “He’s your boyfriend?” he asked, close enough that I could smell his aftershave.

  I leaned back. “What do you care?”

  “I’m sorry; I don’t, really,” he said, withdrawing. “You’re right. It’s not my business. Just gauging how well you know him. Are you aware that he’s in touch with people overseas?”

  “I…” I bit my lip. Instead of answering right away, I stared at the floor, afraid of what I’d do if I looked into his face. “Yes,” I said finally. “Amir is a musician. He Skypes with other musicians. It isn’t easy to find a community of world-class oud players in Northern Virginia.”

  “A community of what players?”

  My jaw tightened. “It’s an instrument. Google it.”

  “Are these friends in Morocco?”

  I paused, baffled. “I…um…maybe? Mostly the United Arab Emirates, I think?”

  “But your parents met in Tangier, correct?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “What does that have to do with Amir?”

  “Nothing. You were with him last Sunday, May third.”

  It was a statement, not a question. My pulse picked up.

  “Sunday? Yes. At my house, the neighbors…” Now I was frightened. In seconds, Detective Tim’s stream of nonsense had somehow suddenly brought us to the day of the bombings. The room spun as the headline from Mom’s computer flashed through my mind.

  AL-QAEDA IN NORTH AFRICA

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  I nodded furiously. “Yes. I told you that I wanted to leave, and I told you that I want to call my parents. I’d like to do both now, please.”

  Detective Tim smiled again, as he had when he’d butchered my name. “Of course, Miss Bakkioui.”

  This time he pronounced my name flawlessly.

  With my jaw hanging open, he and his nonverbal partner left the room.

  I STEWED ALONE for what felt like hours, though it was less than four minutes. I knew this for a fact because I held my phone in my hand and stared at the screen the entire time. Still, I didn’t make the call to my mom, the one I desperately wanted to make, precisely because they had given me permission. I would be strong, stronger than them, just as Mom advised. To use her sad cliché, I would turn this around. I would resist them in any way I could. The nerve. Treating me like a damn criminal! Here! At Franklin! I was proud of my restraint (even as I was losing it) when Principal Philip finally appeared.

  He opened the door and held it for me.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Salma.” He spoke in a monotone. “You can go.”

  Funny: he’d used the same word that they had. Cooperation. I couldn’t think of anything lower on my list of priorities. I’d come here for contrition—his, specifically—for a formal apology over how I’d been attack
ed and ignored. Instead I’d been treated like a suspect…in what, though? Had there really been a bomb threat? If so, he had bigger problems than me. Neglecting a bullied Muslim student with EDS was one thing; neglecting the entire school would surely drown him in a flood of lawsuits and get him fired. None of this seemed right. I tried to meet his eyes. He avoided mine, just as Mrs. Owens had.

  “Is that it?” I asked, giving him one last chance. Only then did I realize how desperately I wanted him to explain himself, to tell me he was sorry, to confess that he had no control over the situation. Anything. Maybe he was simply following the police’s orders; even saying that would have helped. It was a feeble excuse, but a plausible one. He just needed to offer it.

  At a loss, I finally demanded, “Are we in danger?”

  “No, it’s…” He shook his head. “There is no danger. It was a misunderstanding.”

  “Is that it?” I repeated.

  He nodded stiffly and gestured for me to leave.

  Well, then. The world had lost its mind. Without another word, I stormed—okay, limped on crutches—out of the office…past him and past Mrs. Owens, then out into the hall toward the exit. It would have been a gloriously defiant departure had I been able to shove open those heavy doors at the school’s main entrance. But of course I was denied even that small victory, thanks to my bad leg. I whacked the automatic door opener with a crutch. I envisioned Mrs. Owens’s sickly tight-lipped smile in place of the blue button. This was the same woman who’d doted on me when my EDS had acted up in the past. Who congratulated me semester after semester for making the honor roll! I’d taken her basic human decency for granted. Principal Philip’s, too. In their silence and inaction, they were no different than the idiots who’d shoved me down the stairs and posted it on Instagram. What did they think was going on? What about the words he said at commencement every year? “We thrive together thanks to a social contract built on trust.” Apparently that social contract wasn’t so binding.

  My thoughts were at a fever pitch when a hand suddenly pulled on my shoulder.

  I whirled around, livid. “Leave me alone!”

  It was Amir. He stepped back.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Amir,” I whispered. “I didn’t know it was you—” A lump lodged itself in my throat. All of a sudden I was crying.

  “What happened?” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head and sniffed. “Just take me away. Anywhere.”

  “Good timing,” he said. “No one will notice if we leave now, anyway. It’s lunchtime.”

  “It is?” I hadn’t even noticed.

  Amir whisked me away. No questions asked. We hopped in his Jetta and sped toward the Beltway, fortunate that neither of our afternoon teachers consistently took attendance, and even if they did, we’d get home in time to erase the automated school-to-home absentee messaging service. Ha-ha! Screw you, Franklin.

  * * *

  —

  Mariam always thought that Amir was quiet because he’s shy. And he is on some level, yes. Still, she never quite got it, got him. The truth is that he just prefers to listen instead of speak. It’s no great secret or mystery: you can’t be such a talented musician unless you are a listener first. But there’s something more, too—something Mariam might have even known on a subconscious level, but that I never realized or understood until Amir and I got together. It’s the unspoken fear all brown-skinned boys share. Especially Muslims. Most days it barely registers. But it never truly goes away—the fear that a stranger will always assume the worst, that you should never attract attention to yourself…that your survival depends on being as close to invisible as possible.

  Of course, right now, Amir was just being a good boyfriend. After all, he knew me, too. He knew how much I needed silence. I didn’t care where we were going. All I wanted was distance. Distance and highway hypnosis. And gradually Amir’s presence, combined with the blur of passing cars, helped my mind disconnect from the massive shit sandwich the day had served. Sure, we all have to eat one from time to time. But today was some kind of Bonanza All-You-Can-Eat Special.

  As we rolled over the Fourteenth Street Bridge, Amir finally took a deep breath. “Are you feeling any better?” he asked.

  I pulled my good leg off the dashboard. “Yeah, a bit.”

  He reached over and stroked my cheek. “What happened, habibti? I’m worried.”

  Habibti. My love. I took a deep breath. Those words. His voice. Kareem. He was always kareem.

  “Yeah, so…I’m actually not sure. But I think that someone called in a bunk bomb threat, and even though the cops knew it was bunk, they decided to interrogate me anyway. One of the few token Muslims. And Principal Philip was totally cool with it, because he knew it was a fake.” I scowled at the glistening tree-lined Potomac, once again parsing the horrific and nonsensical sequence of events. “You know what? Come to think of it, for all I know, there was no bomb threat. Maybe they just made one up so they could ask me about May third.”

  I glanced at Amir, who was silent. He gripped the wheel tightly. A rare display of anger.

  “What?” I asked him. “What is it? Were you questioned, too?”

  “No,” he said. “I wasn’t. But before you ran me over in the hallway, I overheard Chris and Michelle, laughing their asses off. Chris was giving props to Warren. You know, his older brother. He said, and I quote: ‘Warren’s got the mad prank skills. He shut down the whole Metro once.’ ”

  I clenched my fists. That figured. I’d heard rumors about Warren over the years, mostly through Vanessa, although I barely remembered him. He graduated when I was in eighth grade. Same year that Vanessa’s older brother graduated. Warren had been a big shot at Franklin, a star quarterback. (Cornerback? Something.) The story came drifting back, how Vanessa once told me that he’d gotten a full ride at Virginia Tech, but his scholarship had been revoked….He’d gotten arrested, hooked on opioids, and was now sharing a bedroom with his younger brother. Knowing Vanessa, this pathetic tale was probably true. It almost made me pity Chris. Almost. I was about to open my mouth to say that I could forgive an idiot drug addict for doing something idiotic and drug-induced—if that’s what had in fact happened—when Amir nudged me with his elbow.

  “You know what I think?” he murmured. The cloud over his face had lifted. The darkness melted into a smile as he pulled to a stop at a red light.

  “That we should find Warren and beat the crap out of him?”

  He shook his head. “Too easy. I think it’s time to initiate Project Mayhem.”

  “Ha!” I laughed out loud in spite of myself.

  I wanted to kiss him then, kiss him like I had that first night…kiss him in honor of our special movie. It figured Fight Club brought us together. I mean, what a deranged film. Not a single ounce of typical romance. Maybe that’s why atypical romance had ensued. There we’d been at Vanessa’s, all those months ago, publicly glued to the screen and secretly glued to each other. Glued to the silly empowerment and the absurdity of the plot. Why wouldn’t two nerdy Muslim teens love a film about a gang of disaffected white men, led by a mentally ill insomniac, all pummeling each other in basement fights while secretly plotting to destroy civilization?

  I leaned forward and fake-punched his arm.

  “What can I say, Amir. You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

  * * *

  —

  Once Amir took a right onto Constitution Avenue, I knew exactly where he was taking me: the Smithsonian’s Butterfly Pavilion. It was only a few weeks ago that I suggested we go there for my eighteenth birthday. I guess he’s bumped it up on the calendar, thinking, quite rightly, that a day spent in a garden could undo a morning trapped in hell.

  The Natural History Museum’s only live exhibit was practically empty of other humans. Amir and I were wonderfully alone in that tubular, climate-con
trolled room with a hundred or so free-flying goddesses. Or gods. I’m not that talented of an amateur lepidopterist.

  My eyes immediately zeroed in on the Blue Morpho. It has topped my “must-see” list for ages, and since I don’t have any international trips in the foreseeable future (they live in various South American countries), I was overcome with total euphoria. I crushed Amir’s hand. “I know, I know,” he whispered, slipping from my death grip. “I see her, too.”

  We crept closer to the exotic plant where the Blue Morpho was resting—motionless, her wings fully extended. I inhaled deeply. I absorbed every inch of her delicate glory. Her dark-as-night frame, her spider-thin veins. And what a color, a blue to which all blues aspire, so irresistible you want nothing more than to fold yourself up into a microscopic ball and fall inside.

  Then, just like that, she collapsed her wings, revealing an earthy-brown underside. Another blink and she was blue again.

  Brown. Blue. Brown. Blue.

  Up and away she flew.

  I turned around and stood toe to toe with Amir. “Thank you…for this…for you…just what I needed.” I slipped my arms under his and tucked my thumbs into his back pockets.

  He pulled me close. “Anything for you, Salma.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  Wow. Anything? Okay, Amir…you’ve got me. Hooked. Like a moth to a flame. Ready to melt.

  Just then a group of loud-mouthed visitors in hideously matching T-shirts burst into the pavilion. DC tourists. You gotta hand it to tourists: they always know how to screw things up. We flopped down on a nearby bench.

  “So,” I continued. “If anything truly means an-y-thing, then let’s go to Manu National Park. Peru. It’s a Mecca for butterflies.”

  “Why wait?” he said. “My private Jet…ta is at your service.”

  “That pun was worthy of my dad in its lameness.”

  “Then forget the Jetta,” Amir said. “We should get out of here. Why don’t we go to the UAE? We could take a gap year. Work. Study. Whatever.”