by Tal Bauer
Ryan swallowed, looked away.
Would Ryan finally listen? Actually hear him if he tried to really speak? They’d been using the same language but talking past each other for sixteen years.
“Dan, Noam, George, and you, yes, you, Ryan, have all had the same problem for sixteen years. You look at Islam and all you see is al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram. You see the loudest, worst parts, and you erase a billion other believers who don’t share any of those beliefs. You don’t see nuance when you look at The Other. You just see an enemy.”
Ryan stayed silent.
“Al-Qaeda and ISIS are the right-wing fascists of the Muslim ummah. They rose to prominence like all fascist groups do. In response to failures of nationalism, of governance, in response to people’s fears about the future, worrying economics times, and a fragile world teetering on the edge of all-out war. Fascists are rising everywhere, from the US to Europe to Asia. They’re all playing on fears, trying to control the world through terror, through hatred. They pull lines from the Quran to justify their evil, and twist everything to their own ends, just like fascists everywhere justify their actions. Why can’t you see how al-Qaeda and ISIS are exactly the same as fascists rising within the West? It’s fascism, and it’s hatred, pure and simple.
“The failure of the Arab Spring to bring any lasting change, any democratic reform, led to the resurgence of these fascists in the Middle East. To ISIS, and their satellites. Al-Qaeda, trying to come back after Bin Laden’s death. They’re tapping into fear, amplifying terror, feeding hopes and dreams like a drug. ISIS and al-Qaeda are just the fascist, right-wing Islamic response to the yearning for a bright future for the Muslim world.
“No one over here seems to get that. There are fascists in Islam, and they’re hated just as much there as the fascists rising in our communities are here. And there are people fighting against them inside of Islam. It’s not just the Western world versus ISIS versus al-Qaeda. This isn’t the clash of civilization that so many people dream about. It’s just another fight against the return of fascism. And we need to fight that, yes, but we need to support the progressives, too. Not tar every Muslim into shades of evil.” Kris exhaled, holding Ryan’s gaze.
“What about Haddad? I mean… Dawood?” For the first time, Ryan used Dawood’s Muslim name.
“Dawood?” Kris smiled, sadness tugging down the corner of his lips. “He’s a hippie. He always has been. Gentle in his heart, his soul. He just wants to connect with the universe, find the good in everyone. Just like his father, I assume. If his father had lived, I think Dawood and he would have been as happy as they could ever be living in the desert, herding camels, and living a simple life of prayer and family love.” He chuckled. “Maybe smoking some hash, too. But Dawood is an Islamic hippie. He’s always just wanted to love and be loved.” His thoughts turned darker, turned against themselves. “This war has shredded him. Sixteen years, and almost a decade out in the cold. I can’t believe he held on to himself.”
“Did he?”
Kris nodded. The night they’d had together, and Dawood’s confession in the woods. He’d seen the truth of Dawood, the light of his soul, the inner strength of the man he most loved, most admired in the whole world. “Ten years changes a person. It does. For Dawood… He’s like a diamond that’s been compressed out of ashes. Gold that’s been through fire, all the rough spots, the wreckage, burned away. When I look at him, I’m breathless.” Kris closed his eyes as his throat clenched. “He’s the best of all of us. And he always has been.”
“And you?” Ryan asked. “Did you change?”
“For the worse,” Kris whispered. “Without Dawood, I forgot how to love.”
“Where do we go from here?” Ryan swallowed hard, both hands clutching his coffee cup.
Where did Ryan, and the CIA, and the world go from here? Kris hadn’t a clue. How could anything change? How could the hatred ever stop? Would anyone so hateful, so twisted, so full of vileness and malice, like Dan, like Noam, like the fighters of ISIS, ever reconcile? Ever find a way through the madness to peace?
Dan had given up peace long ago, had surrendered to cold expediencies. Peace through victory, Dan must have thought. Peace through death and destruction, laying waste to the enemy. Peace through circumnavigating justice, avoiding the trifles of conscience and human rights. If Dan had believed he was fighting monsters, then it was only a small leap to accepting that monsters didn’t have human rights. He could follow Dan’s warped logic down into the abyss, the rationalities and explanations for torture, for murder. For using terrorism as his own weapon of political persuasion, to galvanize the masses to his will.
He had become exactly what he despised.
“In a way, we lost this war when we lost Dan.” Kris cleared his clenched throat, tried to speak through the memories, the pain. “When we lose ourselves, when we become what we hate, we’ve lost everything. Defeat came, and we lost the war, and we never even saw it. But now we're sitting in the rubble and ruin and trying to make sense of the future.” Kris exhaled slowly. Ash sat heavy on the back of his tongue.
What was left, after all that?
How did Ryan reconcile his best friend to the abyss? Ryan’s fingers scratched over the cardboard sleeve of his coffee, picked at the overlapping edge. His bloodshot eyes stared at a point on the laminate table between them, somehow gazing a million miles away, into the past, into all of the paths that had led them to this point.
“This world is full to the brim with agony and grief and rage. Everyone is searching for something to hold on to, Ryan. Searching for certainty. Who is the enemy and how do we destroy them to make the world safe again? Searching for hope, that there is still goodness in the world, beyond the hatred, beyond the pain. But we have to face the world as it is, and not try and force it to be something it’s not. There is evil in this world. There are fascists, both in the West and in Islam. There are terrible things, and terrible people, and terrible choices. But we have to find some kind of light through the darkness. Something that cuts through that.”
“I was always so…” Ryan’s expression twisted, like he was about to jump off a skyscraper, like he welcomed it. “I hated how certain you were. All the time. You were so fucking certain of yourself, of your morals. This was right and that was wrong. I didn’t know how you held on to that, with everything…”
“You couldn’t watch what Dan did to Zahawi.”
“But I didn’t try and stop it, either. Not like you.” Ryan’s voice broke. He looked away from Kris, visibly fighting for control.
This war had robbed them all of their empathy, their ability to see reason. Hatred was a smog that hung in the air, that colored the world in shades of blood and fire. That let men be tortured to the brink of death and beyond, that let Dan build an entire program, a machine dedicated to breaking men, to anguish and suffering, all in the name of expediency.
“I was lucky, Ryan. Dawood has always been my rock. My light in the darkness. You once said he compromised me. That being close to him led to me making wrong decisions. You almost called him, and me, traitors to the CIA.”
Finally, Ryan looked up. Met his gaze. “I was wrong,” he whispered. A single tear slipped from his eye. Ryan wiped it away with the back of his hand, turned to the side. Hid his face, his shame. “About… everything. And for far too long.”
Now he recognizes what he’s done. Kris was exhausted, almost too exhausted, for this conversation. But he could see Ryan’s agony, see his pain bleeding out all over the table, flowing across the hospital’s cafeteria. See a soul-weary ache, and a desperation for something that looked like salvation.
Ryan’s wounds went soul-deep, fissures on his heart and his conscience that he’d have to reconcile with. Choices he’d made that had fractured who he was, until he was a man barely hanging on, clinging to rationalities and his rage. George, too, was lost in his own psychic wounds. A lifetime of playing politics and fighting a war, and losing both, forever destined to make sacrifices an
d compromises for the worst of all sides, did that to a man. He’d been a politician more times than not, trying to please everyone, but when the hard calls had to be made, George had, at least, been able to call people who could get shit done. Kris. Dawood.
And what about them? Dawood was fighting back from choosing to die, choosing to sacrifice himself for everyone, and Kris didn’t know if bringing him back was the right or wrong choice to make. After forty-seven years of an anguished life, did Dawood deserve his peace? Did he deserve to meet Allah face to face, and rest, finally, in the arms of his creator? He was a hero, an undeniable hero. Should he be given the hero’s send-off?
Was it selfish, holding on to him?
He wouldn’t live without Dawood again. He’d come to that simple truth days ago. What happened would happen. But his choice was made.
“We all lost ourselves in this war. Some more than others.” Dan… How did you spin so entirely out of orbit? “Every choice we make, we choose to either cut out a piece of ourselves, sacrificing what we know is right, or we make the choice to be better. But it all comes down to us. How each of us faces the world, and our choices in it. And after that…” Kris sighed. “It’s up to our conscience to make peace with our souls. Because it’s us who will build this future, Ryan. Us. Individuals. Men and women and people who think and feel and make decisions. So are we going to make a world of hatred? Or are we going to look at ourselves, at what we’ve done, and try to make something better?”
There weren’t any answers to that, not yet. Answers didn’t lie in reports or CIA briefings, in Congressional testimony, or in destroyed videotapes.
Answers lay in everyone’s souls, deep inside their hearts. The greatest battle they would endure would be to face the world and feel it, see it, through someone else’s eyes. Through someone else’s heart.
“I don’t know if I can live with this,” Ryan grunted. “Dan, he was my direct report. He was my friend. My only real friend. I didn’t see this? I didn’t see what he’d—”
“Don’t take Dan’s sins onto your soul. They’re not yours. Dan duped everyone. Everyone. I was just as close to him as you were.”
Ryan crumpled over his coffee cup, hiding his face again.
“We all have a past. We all made choices. Dan made his. Dawood made his. Those choices set them on a collision course toward each other. Two shooting stars bursting apart on impact.” Kris reached across the table, pried Ryan’s clenched fingers off his coffee cup. He squeezed. “What matters is what we do now. How we live with our past. The choices we made.”
When Ryan met his gaze, Kris saw shades, echoes of Ryan’s decision. A bullet, a gun. A lonely house, and a bottle of whiskey.
“Don’t do that, Ryan.” He squeezed hard, until Ryan’s bones shifted in his hand. “Don’t take the easy way out. We need you. The world needs you. We need to make this right.”
“I don’t know how…” Ryan breathed.
“Don’t drag your past into your future. Don’t hold on to that pain. Leave your history where it belongs. In the past. Learn from it. Take it out and look at it, turn it over. But put it back where it belongs. Don’t let those ghosts live with you in the present.” He shuddered. Swallowed. “I… carried nine-eleven with me. I’ve carried it all this time. Because I felt responsible. Because the hijackers’ names crossed my desk. Do you remember the Nine-Eleven Commission? When they were done, they recommended thirty-six CIA officers be censured and terminated, because they knew about the hijackers entering the US and they didn’t share the intel with the FBI. I was one of those thirty-six.” He licked his lips, swallowed hard. “Director Thatcher said there was enough hurt to go around, enough self-blame and self-castigation. He didn’t fire any of us. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t responsible.”
Ryan frowned.
“Did that give me the drive I had? The fire to live this life? Did my moral failing, at twenty-three years old, shape my ethical certainty for the rest of my life? A commitment to doing the right thing, no matter what? Maybe.” Kris shrugged. “But I also let those ghosts dictate my life. Keep me tied to what I felt was my sacred duty. I couldn’t separate the good from the bad. Couldn’t learn from my past without feeling the shame, spiraling into the agony all over again.
“We’ve done terrible, obscene things. The CIA, and each of us, individually. And in this world, there are appalling things, appalling people whom we’ve fought, darkness that we’ve come up against. But they’re people. Just people, making terrible choices from their own places of darkness and horror. We can slide into the darkness with them, or we can fight them and their horror, their terror. Some days it feels like we’re just killing machines, trying to take out as many bad guys as we can before more crop up. But maybe there’s something different we can try. Maybe there’s a new direction you can lead us through. You and George.”
Ryan nodded slowly. He squeezed Kris’s hand. “You could have gone the other way. Decided the ends justified the means. You’d do anything to stop another nine-eleven.”
“It was a moral failing that caused nine-eleven. More moral failings, more abandoning what’s right? That wouldn’t solve anything.” Kris shook his head. “You’re at a crossroads, Ryan. You’re at the center of fate and destiny, where all paths have converged.”
Paths upon paths, choices made that carved destinies, changed the course of time and reality. What if Dawood hadn’t been lost for ten years? What if there had been no one to stop Dan?
Ryan closed his eyes. Took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he opened them again, the certainty, the finality, was gone, replaced by someone else. Something that looked almost like hope.
“What you do next, the choices you make, will impact the lives of millions. Billions. Make your choices for them. For everyone else. Walk the path that will save lives, and you will change the world.”
“Like Dawood did?” Ryan, finally, smiled, just faintly.
“Like my husband, yes.”
“I never said…” Ryan breathed, red washing his cheeks. “Congratulations on your marriage, Kris. On finding the love of your life. I mean, that was such shit timing in the middle of a war. But, thinking back, that had to be fate, right?” He chuckled, once.
“Thank you.” It was eleven years late, but it was something. Kris let go of Ryan’s hand, sat back. Sipped at his cold coffee. “And you? Any wife at home?”
“I haven’t been able to connect with anyone. This job…” He waved his coffee cup, trying to encompass the enormity of their lives. “I stopped even trying to meet people. The last few dates I went on were… years ago. I don’t know, maybe something is broken in me.”
“It’s not. Not anymore.” Kris smiled, his lips thin. “You are going to be okay, Ryan. Don’t eat a bullet.”
Ryan took his time answering, fiddling with his coffee cup, staring at the plastic table. But when he looked up, Kris saw certainty in his gaze. “I won’t. Because of you. I won’t.”
Kris returned to Dawood’s bedside, needing to ground himself in Dawood, take over George’s vigil. George stood up, and they exchanged a long, silent glance before George pulled him into an awkward hug. Kris felt his trembles, heard the words George couldn’t say.
As the sun set, and the last of the daylight bled from Dawood’s room, Kris pulled up his phone. Opened an app he’d installed days before, sitting by Dawood’s bedside.
Daily verses of the Quran appeared. He’d been reading to Dawood as often as he could in the stillness, in the silence. He laced their hands together and recited, whispering from the Al-Furqaan surah. “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. The servants of the Most Merciful are those who walk the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, ‘Peace’.”
Oh, how deeply that described Dawood, in almost every way. Kris felt a hot blade slide through his heart as he tried to breathe.
Next to read was the Al-Imraan surah. “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merci
ful. O Allah, Owner of Sovereignty. You grant sovereignty to whom You will, and You strip sovereignty from whom you will. You honor whom you will, and You humiliate whom you will. In Your hand is all goodness. You are Capable of all things. You merge the night into the day, and You merge the day into the night, and you bring the living out of the dead, and You bring the dead out of the living, and You provide for whom you will without measure.”
He studied Dawood’s face, the stillness. The stubble, dark brown mixed with silver. Wake up, my love. Wake up.
Kris flicked to the next verse, from the Al-Araf surah. “It is He who sends the wind ahead of His mercy. Then, when they have gathered up heavy clouds, We drive them to a dead land, where We make water come down, and with it We bring forth every kind of fruit. Thus We bring out the dead—”
Kris dropped his phone on Dawood’s bed and pitched forward, resting his forehead on Dawood’s thigh. “Oh Allah,” he whispered. “I’m not ready to let go. Please… please don’t take him. Not yet. Please.”
Fingers brushed his hair. Ghosted over the back of his neck.
Kris sat back, staring up at Dawood—
At Dawood’s open eyes, at his soft smile. “At the end of the path…” Dawood whispered, his voice hoarse, dry, unused for a week.
“You were there,” Kris recited in unison with him. “You were there,” he repeated, rising, rushing Dawood, cradling his face in both hands as he kissed him, kissed every inch of his skin, his eyelids, his lips, his forehead. Dawood held him, his left hand squeezing his arm. His right arm was immobile in a full cast and sling, propped on a pillow.
Dawood reached for Kris’s left hand, brought it forward. Stared at his wedding ring, and then up at Kris, his jaw slack.
Kris lifted Dawood’s left hand and kissed his ring finger, his wedding band. Dawood hissed, and then smiled, the same smile he’d worn the day of their wedding.
