by Alan Gratz
Mom and Dad waited at the table, looking as dismal as I felt. Mom had made lubia polo—an Iranian dish with rice pilaf, meat, and green beans. It was one of my favorites, but I had no appetite. Apparently my parents weren’t very hungry either. No one ate.
“Your mother and I have discussed moving,” Dad said without prelude. “Maybe changing our name.”
“What?” I said. “You’re kidding, right?” I was stunned. We were the Smiths. We lived in Phoenix. That’s the way it had always been. “Change our name? Move where?”
“Mexico, maybe,” Mom said quietly. “Or Canada.”
I gaped at her. “Canada or Mexico? I thought you were talking about California or something. You want to leave America? That’s just great. How’s that going to look?”
“Kamran—” Dad started.
“We can’t just move to another country! We’re Americans, no matter what Darius has done.”
The phone rang again. Dad got up from the table to answer it while I fumed.
“No comment,” he said after a minute. “No. Please don’t call here again.”
He’d no sooner hung up than the phone rang again. He frowned as he answered it. “Hello? No, I— No. No comment. Please don’t call again.”
While he was talking, Mom’s cell phone started to ring.
We were still getting calls every day, but not this frequently. This was like the night of the homecoming game, when Darius’s first video had appeared. Which meant only one thing:
Darius had done something bad again. Really bad.
THE HOUSE PHONE RANG FOR THE FOURTH TIME AS I turned on CNN.
An American journalist had been beheaded. On TV.
Darius hadn’t held the sword, but he’d stood by in the background.
Stood by, and not done anything to stop it.
I sat down on the couch and stared. There was no message this time. No code. Just Darius standing there while an American citizen was brutally murdered on television. My stomach churned. I think the only reason I didn’t throw up is that I hadn’t eaten in two days. Tears rolled down my face, spilling onto my T-shirt. I cried for the journalist, for the journalist’s family, for Darius, for the whole awful world. How could something like this happen? How could Darius let something like this happen? What had happened to our Code? What happened to being the bravest of the brave and helping the helpless? What happened to killing all the monsters?
What had happened to Darius?
Mom ran to her bedroom and shut the door. Dad kept fielding phone calls. I sat and watched the TV like a statue, unblinking. Like it was my duty to watch. Like I owed it to the journalist and all those soldiers and civilians who’d died in raids Darius had been a part of. I couldn’t even hear what was being said over the ringing phone. But it didn’t matter. I just had to watch.
Suddenly, the screen changed. CNN showed the now-familiar photo of Darius, clean-cut in his army uniform. Then they showed a live picture of the front of a house. I blinked, dully realizing I was looking at the front of my house, the house I was sitting inside right that second.
The camera zoomed in on a man in our front yard wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a backward Diamondbacks baseball cap. He had a handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth like an Old West outlaw, and he was shaking something up in his right hand. I frowned and leaned in close, trying to understand what I was seeing.
The man reached up and spray-painted a giant letter T just below our front window.
“Dad—Dad! Somebody’s spray-painting our house!”
Dad looked up from the phone and frowned, trying to process what he was seeing on the television. The man had followed the T with a large letter E.
“He’s spray-painting our house!” I said again. “Right now! He’s out there right now!”
Dad ran for the front door, and I followed him. Camera lights found us as soon as he opened the door, and reporters swarmed across the lawn like locusts.
“You!” Dad called to the vandal. “Get out of here!”
“Come make me, Osama!” the man called back. He kept spraying. He wasn’t scared of us at all.
The reporters reached us, lights blazing, questions flying, and Dad backed us both into the house.
“Dad, he’s still out there,” I protested.
“Just leave it alone, Kamran,” he said, closing the door.
I went to the TV. The vandal was almost finished. In big, crooked red letters he’d painted the word TERRORISTS across the front of our house. Right there for our all our neighbors and CNN and the rest of the world to see. Someone pounded on our front door and rang the doorbell. A reporter climbed over the fence in our backyard. Dad ran around locking all the doors and pulling all the shades down. It felt like we were under attack. Like all of America was going to break down our door and come for us.
And then, later that night, they did.
WAS I IN AN ELEVATOR? IT WAS HARD TO TELL with the sack on my head. I could feel a slight vibration under my feet. And something about the closeness, the hum in the small space, told me it was an elevator. I was with two other people. I knew because they’d led me along, one at each elbow, steering me through whatever building they’d brought me to.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked for the thousandth time. “Where are my parents?”
For the thousandth time, nobody answered me.
I hate to admit it, but I was so scared I cried.
I’d been dragged from my house, wrists bound and a sack over my head, and thrown in a car. We’d driven for a while, the black bag hiding everything from me, and then I was taken out of the car and put on a plane. I recognized the sound of jet engines warming up. Knew what the short climb up metal stairs meant. My hands were recuffed in front of me so I could fit in a seat, and I was buckled in and told not to remove my seat belt. I asked again where I was being taken, where my parents were, but got no answer. Someone put a cold plastic bottle in my hands and told me it was water. “Drink,” they told me. They pulled the sack up just enough to free my lips, and I drank, if only to prolong the wonderful sensation of fresh air on my chin, my mouth.
After that I got sleepy. Passed out. I don’t even remember the airplane actually taking off or landing. I woke up again in another car, on the way to wherever I was now. As the grogginess wore off, the realization slowly dawned on me: I had been drugged. They’d put something in that water to knock me out. Make me easier to deal with.
I had been taken from my home, handcuffed, hooded, and drugged.
My skin crawled with goose bumps. If I had been scared before, I was terrified now. This was deadly serious.
I heard the elevator doors slide open. Hands grabbed me by the elbows, and we were walking again.
Where had they taken me? If we got on a plane, we probably weren’t in Arizona anymore. Some government facility in New Mexico, maybe? Colorado? Nevada? The air force had all kinds of bases out west. It could be any of them.
I was walked down an echoey corridor and led inside a room. A chair squawked as it was pulled out for me, and the hands pushed me down into it, my arms landing on an empty metal table. There was a clink of chain, and someone attached my handcuffs to the table with a click.
Then, right before the last person left the room, they pulled the black sack off my head.
I sucked in cool, fresh air with relief as the door clicked shut behind me. I was alone. Alone in a small white room with a mirrored window along one side and a camera with a glowing red light up in the corner. I’d seen enough cop shows to know what the big window was for. That’s where people sat and watched you while you were being interrogated. This was an interrogation room. There was nothing else there besides me, the table I was handcuffed to, and two more chairs.
“Hello?” I called. I turned to the mirrored window. “Is anybody there? Where am I? What’s going on?”
Nobody came. Nobody answered. Somebody might’ve been watching me behind that glass, and on that camera, but I was all alone.
I put my head down on my arms and tried not to cry.
THE DOOR OPENED BEHIND ME, AND I JERKED MY head up. Had I been sleeping again? How long had I been in this room? I didn’t know. I didn’t have my phone to tell the time.
A white man and woman came in and sat down. The man was older than my father, but younger than my grandfather. In his fifties maybe? I always had a hard time guessing people’s ages. He was wearing suit pants and a rumpled white shirt with no tie. He had dark brown hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed since last week, and stubble that was closer to the beginning of a beard. His mouth was small and thin over a short, sharp chin. His forehead was creased in a frown or a look of concern, or maybe both. He sat back in his chair and studied me with his gray-blue eyes.
“Do we really need the handcuffs?” he asked.
The woman ignored him. She set a thick file folder on the table and sat down, clasping her hands over it. She was thin and pretty and wore a business suit with a skirt. Her face was round and soft, but the way she wore her blond hair pulled back made her look hard. Tough. Everywhere the guy was laid-back and sloppy, she was neat and professional. She sat so straight her back didn’t even touch the chair.
“Kamran Smith? I’m Special Agent Tomaszewski.” She didn’t introduce the man, and he didn’t offer his name.
“Where am I?” I asked. “Why did you bring me here? I don’t know anything.”
“You’re a guest of the United States government,” the woman said.
I tried to lift my hands away from the table where they were chained. “A ‘guest’?”
“We’d like to talk to you about your family,” Special Agent Tomaszewski said.
“Where are my parents? Can I see them?”
“Not right now,” Special Agent Tomaszewski said. She flipped open the file folder.
“I want a lawyer,” I told her. I didn’t know why I needed a lawyer. I just wanted someone here with me besides these government people, and I’d seen people say that on TV.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” she told me. “You’re not officially under arrest.”
“Then can I go?”
“No. As I said, you’re a guest of the United States government.”
“Until when?”
“Until we get the answers we need,” Special Agent Tomaszewski said. “Now. Let’s talk about your mother.”
“My mom?”
“She was born in Iran, is that right?”
Here we go, I thought. We’re all terrorists because my mom was born in Iran.
“Yeah. So what?”
“She came to America in 1978 to escape the Iranian Revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic,” Special Agent Tomaszewski read from her file.
“If you already know, then why are you asking?” I said.
“Kamran, this will be a lot easier for you if you cooperate.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Your mother eventually settled in the Phoenix area and attended Arizona State, which is where she met your father. Is that right?”
I shrugged. “Far as I know. I wasn’t around then.”
“Your father is a Christian, is that right?”
“Kind of,” I said. “He doesn’t go to church or anything. But he was raised that way.”
“And your mother is a Muslim?”
I glowered at her. “It’s a free country,” I said, even though I wasn’t feeling so free right now.
“Please answer the question.”
“Yes, my mom was raised Muslim,” I said wearily. “But she isn’t anything anymore. None of my family are. We don’t go to church or mosque or anything. My mom was born in Iran, but she became a US citizen after she moved here. My dad’s American. I was born in America. Darius was born in America. We’re Americans. The only other country I’ve ever been to is Mexico, on vacation. We’re not terrorists, or members of al-Qaeda. Darius isn’t a terrorist. Look—my mom is Shi’a. Al-Qaeda is Sunni. If Darius suddenly got religious—which he didn’t—he’d be a Shi’ite. Not a Sunni. Al-Qaeda wouldn’t even want him.”
“Unless they just needed an American Muslim to be the poster boy for their jihad.”
I let out a long, frustrated breath and tried again. “We have a code of honor we live by. Darius and me. He’s a United States soldier taken prisoner and being forced to do things against his will. He’s told me. There’s a secret code in his videos. I’ve been trying to tell you guys that.”
“A code of honor. Secret codes. Lots of codes,” Special Agent Tomaszewski said, flipping pages in her folder. “All right. Let’s talk about this secret code, then.”
FINALLY. I TOLD HER EVERYTHING I’D TOLD THE other agent on the phone: about Rostam, and how Darius and I used to make up adventures, and the Sith Lord reference, and what I thought it meant.
“There are others, too, in the newer videos. References to the games we used to play together. I just don’t know what they mean yet.”
The man behind Special Agent Tomaszewski stirred, his eyes going to her. He looked like he was going to say something, but she went on.
“Do these games you played as children have anything to do with this?” she asked. She pulled a glossy photograph from the folder and pushed it toward me on the table. I gaped at it. It was a picture of the Code of Honor Darius and I had written up as kids. The same Code of Honor I’d dug out of the stuff from Darius’s desk a few days ago. The DHS had taken a picture of it. Given it an evidence number.
Evidence of what?
“Yeah,” I said at last. “This is—Darius and I made this up. It’s the Code of Honor our hero Rostam lived by in our stories.”
“A Code of Honor you and your brother also lived by, is that correct? That’s what you just told me.”
“Kind of. Yeah. I mean, they’re good rules for living your life.”
Special Agent Tomaszewski nodded. “Be strong. Be brave. Tell the truth,” she said, skimming the list. “Be loyal.” She paused. “Loyal to whom?”
“What?”
“Loyal to whom?” she asked again. “It says ‘Be loyal,’ but it doesn’t say whom you should be loyal to.”
I shrugged. “Your friends, I guess. Your family.”
“Your country? Your faith?”
“Sure,” I said. “I guess.” Where was she going with this?
“Be loyal. Never give up. Kill all monsters.” She paused. “What monsters?”
What did this have to do with anything? “Dragons, demons, vampires, ninjas. Sauron, the Joker, Voldemort, Darth Vader. Stupid stuff. We were kids. We made that when I was like five.”
Special Agent Tomaszewski clasped her hands in front of her again. “So it wasn’t about killing real monsters, then,” she said.
I laughed. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there aren’t real monsters.”
“Aren’t there?” she asked, dead serious. “Some people call the United States government monsters.”
“Yeah,” I said, slumping back in my chair as far as my handcuffs would let me. “I’m thinking maybe they’re right.”
The man beside Special Agent Tomaszewski sat up straighter. When he spoke, his soft voice was laced with an Irish lilt. “Whoa, now. Listen, son, I don’t think you should—”
“Are you familiar with the Persian legend of the Seven Labors of Rostam, Kamran?” Special Agent Tomaszewski asked me, cutting her partner off. He slouched back in his chair.
“Sure,” I said. “My mom used to tell us those stories.”
“So Darius would have been familiar with them, too?”
“Sure.”
Special Agent Tomaszewski read from her file. “Rostam fights beasts, dragons, demons … those the kinds of monsters you and your brother swore to kill?”
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t see what—”
“What’s the last of Rostam’s Seven Labors, Kamran? Do you remember?”
“He kills the White Demon and saves the king.”
&nb
sp; Special Agent Tomaszewski nodded. “There are some scholars who believe that last story is a metaphor. That it’s really about the struggle between the Persians and invaders from the north. White invaders. That Rostam is a hero in Iran because he fought the white invaders who meant to conquer his kingdom, and won.”
I saw where she was going with this, but it was crazy. “But—I—we never thought of it that way. The White Demon was just a giant wizard. He was Voldemort and Grawp rolled into one. He didn’t represent any white invaders or anything to us. We were just kids!”
“But now you’re not,” Special Agent Tomaszewski said.
“So you’re saying … what, that Darius thinks Americans are monsters he has to kill because he signed some made up Code of Honor in middle school? That doesn’t make any sense! Why would he hate America? He joined the US Army! He’s a Ranger!”
“Let’s talk about Darius,” Special Agent Tomaszewski said. She flipped to another part of her folder, and I sank lower in my chair. I was starting to really hate that folder.
“Straight As in high school. Varsity football. Strong SAT scores. West Point. Volunteered for the Army Rangers. Made captain before the age of twenty-five. All very impressive. Just as impressive as your record so far, Kamran. Almost identical. Trying to follow in his footsteps?”
That was a loaded question, and we both knew it. Yes, I was following in Darius’s footsteps. But I thought he was an American hero, and she thought he was a terrorist. I didn’t answer, and she went on.
“During his senior year, Darius spent a week in Washington, DC. Strange place for a seventeen-year-old boy to go on spring break. What did he do while he was there?”
“I—I don’t know.” I vaguely remembered that Darius had taken a road trip there with some friends. From the photos on Facebook, it had looked like they’d had a lot of fun. “Visited the White House? Took pictures. Did touristy stuff.”
