Borderline

by Allan Stratton

  “I can’t imagine Dad telling me to follow my dreams.”

  “Yeah, well,” Tariq smiles, “he was meeting me for the first time. What else could he say?” He sighs. “After the final Jays game, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but I didn’t want it to be over, to have him disappear again, forever. I told him I wanted to see where he lived and worked, to meet you all. You people are the only blood I have. Mom’s folks are gone. Her brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles—when they found out why she’d left Montreal, they disowned us. I’ve never met my cousins. They’re kinda traditional, eh?”

  “What did Dad say about coming?”

  “He panicked. ‘You stay away,’ he said. ‘I have a happy family. I won’t have it destroyed.’ I asked if maybe he could get me some pictures of his parents—my grandparents. Or of my great-grandma who helped him escape, or maybe of the ancestral home in Iran. Or any cards, notes, or letters Mom might have sent him from before they broke up. Any medical history that might come in handy. Any mementos. It was all ‘No, no, no’—an ugly end to a magic weekend. Then, just before the raid, I get this e-mail about how he’s packed the stuff I want, and how he’ll show me around Rochester after all. He was so nervous in Toronto; he must’ve been a basket case at home.”

  I nod. Poor Dad. That’s why he wouldn’t let Mom and me go with him to Toronto. Why he said there were things he couldn’t tell me. Why he acted so strange. It explains that e-mail the prosecution read in court.

  Forgive me, Dad. You were trying to protect me. To protect Mom. As for the stuff you did when you were young—how can I judge what you did before I was born? That’s between you and Mom.

  Mom. What’ll you say—what’ll you feel—if you find out? When you find out. Because you’ve got to find out. It’s the only way to prove Dad innocent.

  Thirty-three

  I need something to help me focus. I take a biscuit.

  “Tariq,” I say, “if Dad wasn’t bringing you anything dangerous, if he was just packing family photos and mementos—then there was never a terror plot.”

  “No kidding, there was never a plot!”

  “So give yourself up. Tell the authorities what you know. If you and Dad speak up, you’ll go free.”

  “Oh really?” snorts the man behind me. “You watch the news?”

  Tariq puts up his hand. The man goes quiet.

  “If I give myself up, who’ll believe me?” Tariq says. “No one, and you know it. I’d need the letter I sent him. And the package he made for me. Does he have them?”

  “They would’ve been in his office. They’ll be with all his stuff at the FBI.”

  “Exactly. They’ll be classified. Buried. Meanwhile I’m damned by all those photos and cell videos of me and the so-called Brotherhood of Martyrs. If they don’t nail me for the bio plot, they’ll nail me for something else. I’ll never get out. Goddamn Erim Malik!”

  Without warning, Tariq’s on his feet, fists smashing the card table. One of the legs buckles. I save the teapot, but everything else goes flying.

  Tariq slumps against the counter. His friends must be stepping forward, because he waves them away. “Stay back! Sami mustn’t see you. You’re in enough trouble.” He slides to the floor, presses his elbows to his knees, his hands over his head. He’s gulping air fast.

  I don’t know what I should do. What I do do is sit cross-legged in front of him. Tariq settles, his breaths deep but controlled.

  “We were just a bunch of guys,” he says. “Most of us unemployed or back in school. A few of us had old cars. Only three or four of us had girlfriends. Some days, we’d meet up at mosque for morning prayers, then go to the country to a paintball range, get dressed up in camouflage gear, horse around. Other days, maybe we’d catch a flick. We were a losers’ club.”

  He wipes an eye with his wrist. “Anyway, my buddy Abdul Malik had a cousin Erim. Erim talked the talk, all right—sharia this, sharia that—but I knew he did coke, and he’d roughed up a few kids, and there were rumors he was forging passports at his uncle’s copy shop. But he was Abdul’s family, so we let him tag along. We didn’t know how to say no.”

  I stare at the floor, a little scared. I know all about being afraid to say no. What if I was Tariq?

  Tariq continues. “End of the summer, we’re in some field having a few beers after paintball. I know, I know, alcohol’s haraam; but that’s what we were doing. Erim’s taking a video of us with his cell, and he makes some crack about us whining all the time. ‘Yeah, you’re all a bunch of martyrs,’ he says. ‘A brotherhood of martyrs.’ And I go, ‘That’s us, the Brotherhood of Martyrs.’ And we all laugh, ‘Great name,’ and joke that we should make T-shirts or something. Only that part’s not on TV, is it?”

  I shake my head.

  “So then Erim takes out a gun, and we’re like, ‘Whoa, Erim, cut it out, this is Canada.’ But he just lines up a few beer bottles, and says target practice is fun, and what’s the big deal? And we’re in this field in the middle of nowhere, so we think, yeah, maybe he’s right, why not? And each of us takes a shot or two—and we’re lousy shots let me tell you—and Erim makes a video with his cell, so we can laugh about it later he says.”

  Tariq squeezes his hands on his knees. “This goes on a few weeks, Erim taking videos of this and that. Sometimes he talks up how bad things are, how somebody should just blow up the works—not for real, you know, just like a figure of speech—and we’re joking, ‘Yeah, Parliament, boom! The CN Tower, boom! Port-o-potties on the midway, boom!’ ‘What about the prime minister?’ Erim says. ‘Off with his head,’ I joke with a big wave, like that character in Alice in Wonderland. I mean it was stupid talk, totally bogus—not like it sounds on TV.”

  And I think of Eddy’s video, and all the other stuff in my life that looks one way but isn’t, or the way things have looked with Andy and Marty and they weren’t.

  “When your father…our father…when he said he was coming to Toronto, I was so excited,” Tariq says. “I told my friends about him, how important he was. It made me feel important, just saying it. I built it all up, the category four stuff. I said how he was so important he could move toxic shit whenever, wherever he wanted. I was flying so high. The guys were happy for me. They knew I didn’t have a dad; Montreal’s not so far, people move, they gossip. Well anyway, now I had a dad, and he was a big deal.”

  “Till you destroyed him.” A dam breaks inside my head. “Dad—my dad—he’s in jail. My family’s trashed. Because you, a total stranger, had to find your goddamn roots.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” I yell. “Maybe it’s not your fault, but you’re sorry?”

  He lowers his head in shame. “Want to get madder?”

  “You bet.”

  “Here’s the kicker: Erim Malik, the weasel with the gun, the dirt bag who got us talking, who made the videos, who pushes drugs and beats on kids—he’s the only one of us who never got arrested.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Tariq says bitterly. “He’s walking free. Word is, he’s a paid government informant. Star witness for the prosecution.”

  At dusk, Tariq has his friends blindfold me and drop me at a subway on the Yonge line. I take it down to the square opposite the Eaton Centre, the plaza Andy marked for our rendezvous.

  When the guys see me, they do a two-man pile-on.

  “We came so close to calling the cops,” they babble. “Like, we were so scared, man. You okay? What did they do to you?”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s cool.”

  “I almost got arrested for hopping the turnstile,” Andy says.

  “And I got a bruise the color of eggplant for smashing into it!” Marty exclaims.

  “By the time we got back outside, the Chevy’d been towed,” Andy moans. “It cost more to get it back than it’s worth. But who cares? You’re here! You’re alive!”

  A few minutes later, we’re on a bench by a fountain, stuffing our faces
with fries.

  “Andy,” I say, “I need your cell. There’s something I need to do.”

  “You’re calling the cops?”

  “I have nothing to tell them—not yet,” I say. “But this morning I made Mom a promise.”

  Whoever’s bugged our home will trace my call and know I’m phoning from a cell tower in Toronto. So I don’t call Mom directly.

  “Mr. Bernstein?”

  “Sami?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. I need a big favor. Could you please go over to my place? The house is probably wired, so ask Mom to step outside. Tell her I’m safe, I’m sorry if she’s worried, and I’ll be home by tomorrow, noon. Also, please tell her I need to see Mr. Bhanjee immediately.”

  Thirty-four

  Mom and Mr. Bhanjee are watching from the bay window when we pull in. Before my foot hits the pavement, Mom’s in the driveway. “Where were you?” doesn’t begin to cover it. First, she hugs me so hard I think my ribs’ll crack. Then, she’s shaking me. I thought last night’s visit from Mr. Bernstein would have settled her down, but the cloak-and-dagger stuff about having to go outside to talk just made it worse. Not to mention me saying I needed to see our lawyer.

  “What have you done?”

  “Nothing,” I say. Which isn’t exactly true, but I’m not gonna pull an Oprah on our front lawn.

  The three of us sit in the patio chairs in the backyard. I don’t say anything about Dad’s affair or him being Tariq’s father, but I spill the rest: how I met Tariq, how Erim Malik is this slimeball into guns and drugs and passport forgery who set everybody up. Mom’s knuckles are so white I half expect the metal armrests she’s holding to snap. I’m sure not looking forward to when Mr. Bhanjee leaves.

  I wrap up my story. Mr. Bhanjee beams. “Your information about Malik is pure gold,” he says. “It’s surely no coincidence that he’s the government’s star witness. A little digging, and I suspect we’ll find that he’s also their informant. Most likely, he was about to be arrested for the things you mentioned, and cut himself a deal: If charges against him were dropped, he’d turn in a terrorist cell.”

  “That’s why he started getting everyone to mouth off on video,” I say. “He framed innocent people, so he could go free.”

  “I see that kind of thing all the time, in all sorts of cases.” Mr. Bhanjee nods. “What can you expect when prosecutors offer criminals favors and plea bargains to act as informants and witnesses?”

  “But even without Malik, Dad has a problem: his e-mail, the one they read in court about him preparing a package for Tariq. But I have good news there too. I can show it was innocent.” I pause. “Mom, sorry, I can only say what it was really about to Mr. Bhanjee.”

  “I already know what it was about,” Mom says. She smoothes her skirt, presses her hands on her thighs, and looks me in the eye. “Tariq Hasan is your father’s son. Your half brother.”

  My jaw drops.

  “Mr. Bhanjee and I visited your father Tuesday,” Mom says. “It’s what gave me the migraine. He told me that Hasan wrote him a letter of introduction before he went to Toronto. And how later he searched through boxes in the storage room for photographs and mementos to make Hasan a package about the family, while I was watching golf on TV.”

  I look down, barely able to speak. The patio stones swim in front of my eyes. “What’s going to happen…with you and Dad?”

  Mom nudges her chair beside mine. She strokes the hair over my ear. “Montreal was a long time ago. I had a feeling, back then, that something was wrong. But after we moved here, that feeling went away. I’ve never felt it since.” She cups my face with her hands. “It was hard for your father to tell me. He was sure I’d leave and take you with me.”

  The words choke from my throat. “Are you going to?”

  “I thought about it,” Mom says. “But I told him the past is the past, and that I love him.” A smile flickers across her lips. “I also said if he did it again, I’d yank out his beard, shove it down his throat, and let the devil choke him.”

  An awkward pause. Mr. Bhanjee breaks it. “Your father’s told the authorities that he’s Hasan’s father. DNA testing on Hasan, or hairs from his apartment, can prove their genetic connection. But Hasan’s letter of introduction was the best evidence that your dad had just discovered their relationship, and that the package he referred to in his e-mail contained nothing more sinister than family pictures.”

  “So now that they have Hasan’s letter, they’ll let Dad go?”

  “No.” Mom shudders. “The thing is, they don’t have it. Hasan’s letter is missing.”

  “It’s what? Don’t tell me. Dad got rid of it, didn’t he? He was scared we’d find it. So he ripped it up. He burned it!”

  “Not quite,” Mr. Bhanjee says. “But just as bad. He hid it. Now it’s gone.”

  Mom hits her chest with her fist. “The FBI. They destroyed it when they tore the place apart. I’m sure of it. We’ll never see it again.”

  “Where did Dad hide it?” I whisper.

  “In his office. Behind a framed photograph of the two of you. ‘The one place my sons could be together,’ he said.”

  My heart skips. “Wait right here!”

  And I race downstairs and reach under my bed. The broken glass falls free of the frame. Sure enough, under the picture of Dad and me—Tariq’s letter, dated, and neatly folded with a small, signed graduation photo.

  I give it to Mom and Mr. Bhanjee. Mom covers her mouth.

  “Mom, if I hadn’t gone to Toronto and found out about Tariq, would you ever have told me?”

  She shakes her head, wiping her eyes. “Your father made me promise not to. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘Without Tariq’s letter, it’s hopeless. Better, at least, we save our pride.’”

  “So the letter would never have been found. It would have stayed a secret right under our noses. Dad could have gone to prison forever because of fear and shame.”

  Mr. Bhanjee interrupts. “I’ll see that this is copied and placed in evidence,” he says, putting it in his briefcase. “In the meantime, Sami, it’s still too early for celebration.”

  “But we’ve proved there’s no terror cell.”

  “Not quite,” Mr. Bhanjee says. “All we’ve shown is that Tariq is your father’s son, that the package mentioned in your father’s e-mail was personal, and that Erim Malik got his friends to say things on video. But the fact that Tariq and your father had personal dealings doesn’t prove they weren’t also engaged in a terrorist conspiracy. And simply because people are coaxed into saying things doesn’t make the things they say untrue.”

  “But there’s got to be a reason for suspicion.”

  “There is,” Mr. Bhanjee says. “Remember the court announcement of the unidentified terrorist? Someone else from this area, besides your father, made repeated attempts to contact the Brotherhood. What are the odds that a second person from this community would know the same group of unemployed youths in Toronto? Or that he and your father wouldn’t know each other? If the connection is innocent, why won’t any of the Brotherhood identify him? The coincidence and the silence are suspicious and alarming.”

  “So what can we do?” I gulp.

  “I’m not sure,” Mr. Bhanjee says. “But before your father can go free, the government will want satisfactory answers to two questions. First: Who is the mystery contact? Second: What is his or her link to your father and the Brotherhood?”

  “The FBI have started interviewing people at the mosque,” Mom says. “People whose thinking is extreme.”

  I flash on something Mr. Bernstein would say: “Thoughts aren’t crimes. If they were, everyone on Earth would be in jail.”

  “I’m not saying anything”—Mom hesitates—“but you know Mr. Ibrahim? A while back, he was strip-searched in Newark. His name was on a list. Maybe there was a reason after all.”

  “Stop it!” I yell. “That’s the kind of talk that got Dad in trouble.”

  “I’m not accusing him,”
Mom says. “But Mr. Bhanjee’s questions need answers.”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, those questions and answers explode in my head. How does stuff happen? How do little things cross the line into something big and terrible?

  I struggle to control my voice. “Mr. Bhanjee, have the authorities said which member of the Brotherhood the unidentified terrorist tried to contact?”

  “No,” he says. “The information is classified.”

  “I’ll bet it was Tariq.”

  “Why? What are you getting at?” Mr. Bhanjee frowns.

  “When Dad went to Toronto, I thought he was having an affair. I spied on him to find out, found Tariq’s number on his computer. I phoned it from the multiplex at the mall. I phoned it again the next day from the mosque. The only person apart from the FBI who’d know what number was called, when and from where, is the person who made the calls. Well, I’ve told you. So write it down, Mr. Bhanjee. Make it legal. Let them check. The so-called secret terrorist is me.”

  Thirty-five

  The case against Dad turns into confetti. The FBI never says who the “unidentified terrorist” tried to contact, or how or when. That information remains Classified For Reasons Of National Security. Also For Reasons Of Nobody Wants To Look Like An Idiot.

  What matters is, as soon as the authorities see my affidavit and interview me, they search the hard drive history in Dad’s computer and the one I used at the Academy, to see how I figured out Tariq’s phone number and address. Then they check the places and times I called him. Suddenly, the “unidentified terrorist” is downgraded to a “person of interest.” And within a week, they announce that the “person of interest” has been cleared, and that whole part of the case disappears—as if everyone decides to have amnesia, and they’re on to other things.