Man of the Hour

by Peter Blauner

  Nasser stood there, transfixed and horrified. The Great Chastisement would surely start here, but he found he couldn’t move. A powerful force was holding him. The dancing girl’s swaying hips and the swimming red numbers had him hypnotized.

  “Care for a dance?” A brown-haired girl in a red sequined gown approached him with a dazed, glassy smile. “Only ten dollars until six o’clock.”

  He felt himself trembling inside. By God, this was the Devil himself tempting him. Tearing him apart from the inside. Yes, no, yes. He wanted to be touched, but he didn’t want anyone to touch him.

  He thought again of his friend Hamid in Ashkelon prison. Hamid, who was born a week before him and grew up twenty-five kilometers down the road from Deheisha. The Jews had put Hamid in a room alone with a beautiful Nablus girl, who told him he’d be given an early release and a big house in Jerusalem where they could make hot passionate love forever if he’d just cooperate a little and become a jailhouse informant. And then Hamid, who’d promised his friends he’d never break, had gone back to his cell and at the first opportunity cut his own throat with a razor he’d been given, so he wouldn’t be tempted.

  The same thing was happening again here.

  “Can I show you to a seat?” the girl reached for his hand.

  Nasser jumped back, as if she were about to engulf him in flames. “No! No thank you. I must go. I can’t stay in this place.”

  He turned and ran out while he still could.

  The street outside was full of people hurrying for the subways, hustling to their homes, to their families, to someone waiting for them. While Nasser stood by his car, feeling lost and crushed by the pressure of his loneliness.

  At last, he knew he couldn’t resist anymore. It was getting late and he needed a place to stay the night. He got in the car and started the drive up to the residency hotel on 23rd Street. It was his destiny and God’s will that he fall in with Youssef and Dr. Ahmed again, he realized, so he could help them with their mission. There was nowhere else for him to go.

  34

  DAVID FINISHED HIS MEETING with the lawyers and rushed over to the old apartment on 98th Street as fast as he could. As soon as Arthur opened the door, though, he knew he was too late.

  “Mommy’s in the bathroom and she won’t come out,” the boy said in his cartoony, sing-song, I’m-so-upset-I-can’t-let-it-show voice.

  “I’m sorry, buddy. Are you all right?” David knelt to give his son a hug.

  Arthur felt stiff and cold in his arms. “Some big men came.”

  “I know. They were at my house too.”

  Arthur looked at him carefully, trying to take his cue whether to fall apart or not. “Did they touch my toys over there?”

  “Not much,” David lied. He’d have to get the place cleaned up before letting Arthur back in. “Did they mess with any of your things here?”

  “Just a little.” The boy sucked on his shirt collar. “But they went through Mommy’s stuff and she got mad at them and started yelling and wouldn’t stop.”

  David put a hand on the back of his neck and sighed deeply. The living room was disturbed in more subtle ways here than at his apartment. Everything had been picked up and put down just a little bit wrong. The couch was pulled away from the wall a few inches. The edge of the carpet was curled up. The TV and stereo were unplugged and the computer equipment was rearranged, as if someone had been checking the hard drive. That same half-eaten green apple was still sitting on a plate on the coffee table, though, and turning black.

  David felt his rage giving way to weary frustration. What were these people trying to do to his family? Why were they trying to destroy everything he loved?

  “Daddy, what were they looking for?”

  Okay, Fitzgerald. Keep it together. The boy’s whole world depends on your maintaining a brave face.

  “They were looking for a bad man,” David said finally. “But they made a mistake coming here. Somebody must have given them the wrong directions.”

  The boy’s eyes went from side to side, searching his father’s face for reasons to trust him. “When are they going to find him?”

  “Soon, buddy. I’m sure it’ll be soon.”

  “And when is Mommy going to come out of the bathroom?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll go talk to her.” He ruffled the boy’s hair and listened to the sound of his breathing. “You gonna be all right, buddy?”

  “Yeah.” The boy wandered back toward the Lego castles in his room, trying to slough it all off. “They should arrest Anton. He’s an asshole.”

  David followed him halfway down the hall and then made the detour to knock on the bathroom door.

  “Renee, honey. It’s all right. They’re gone.”

  “C’mon-a-my-house, a-my-house …” She was singing softly and out of tune to herself.

  He rested the top of his head against the door, the effects of a sleepless night catching up with him. Why was this happening?

  “Look, babe. You gotta come out. Arthur needs you.”

  The pipes squeaked and water began running into the sink inside the bathroom.

  “Renee, what are you doing? You’re not going to hurt yourself, are you?”

  “Why were those men here, David?” Her voice was barely audible over the rush of water. “What did they want from me?”

  “Renee, open the door so I can talk to you. I’m losing my voice.”

  He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to knock down the door again. He’d accidentally given her a black eye the last time he tried that stunt. The water cut off and the pipes grunted. Renee opened the door less than half an inch. A sliver of pale light slanted into the darkened hallway and one bloodshot green eye appeared at the crack in the door.

  Immediately, David understood that whatever thread she’d been hanging by was now broken.

  “They scared me,” she said, cautiously opening the door the rest of the way.

  An awful smell hit David. His first thought was that she’d been washing the walls with her own vomit.

  “Come on out a minute.” He reached for her hand. “It’s all right. They were trying to scare you. But they’re not here anymore.”

  She grasped his fingers and slid one bare bruised foot into the hall. She’d been crying and drinking. Cigarette ash spilled down her fingers as she brought the filter up to her lips.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “These men, they just come in here. I mean, they say they have a warrant, but what do I know about warrants? I’m a dancer.” She began to babble, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Why would they show a dancer a warrant? Why would they show an actress a warrant? Do I look like I know about warrants?”

  “There, there.” David led her back into the living room and sat her down on the couch, noticing the Margot Fonteyn poster was slightly crooked.

  “And then they started going through my things. They looked in my closet. They opened Anton’s saxophone case. They asked me all these intimate questions.”

  “What kinds of questions?”

  “Ba-ha!” She threw open her arms, leaving a trail of smoke in the air. “They wanted to know what you were like, who your friends were, what you talked about at home. Whether you were capable of hurting anyone. If you knew anything about explosives. Crazy things.”

  “So what did you tell them?” David asked cautiously.

  “I told them they were wrong. That you weren’t like that. That you were a good person. Basically.” She stopped and touched her lip. “I mean, when you added it all up in the end. I think.”

  He sensed her mood was changing. The hollows of her neck were deepening. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s just that they kept after me.” She moved down the couch, away from him. “Telling me about guns and uniforms in your mother’s garage. And how one of your students was on television this morning saying you brought an ax to class. They kept asking me these things and after a while I started to get paranoid. I
thought, what if they’re right? What if everything I thought was wrong? You think you know someone, but you don’t. I mean, really you don’t. I thought we’d be married forever and now we’re not, so how can you ever really know anybody? There are things in my head I’ve never told anyone. Nobody knows anything.”

  “Renee, listen to me.” David sat down next to her and put his arm around her. “I did not do this. Okay? They’re doing a number on you. Something else is going on here that has nothing to do with you or me or Arthur or the divorce.”

  He felt her body quivering. He felt irritated with her and then sorry for her and then angry with himself for not being able to do more to comfort her. This is tremendous, he thought. She’s having some kind of major breakdown, I’m under investigation, and we have a conference with the judge tomorrow.

  “Oh God.” She stubbed out her cigarette and hugged herself. “They showed me pictures of the bus driver. They told me how he died, with his skull fractured and his neck broken. It was awful. I feel like climbing into bed and never getting out.”

  “You can’t do that, Renee,” David said steadily, as if he was trying to talk her down from a bad acid trip. “Arthur needs you.”

  “I know, I know.” She turned away from him and started to pick at her lip some more. “But I keep seeing the picture of the bus driver in my mind and I can’t get rid of it. I keep thinking how lonely he must have been when he died. Nobody was there who loved him. I told them, how can you really know anything about anybody? It’s the loneliness of existence. The fragility. Oh, goddamn it. Look what they did to my rug!”

  She bent down and started scratching at a perfectly clean spot on the carpet.

  “It’s okay, babe, it’s okay.” He got off the couch and patted her on the shoulder until she stood up.

  “They fucked it up.” Her cheeks bunched up like little fists on either side of her face. “They just fucked everything up.”

  “Look, Renee.” He exhaled. “I think the best thing to do from now on is not to talk to them. Not to the press and not to the FBI. If they call or come by again, just tell them to talk to my new lawyers. I’ll get you the numbers.” He wiped his brow. “This is all just an insane mistake. I’m sure it’ll be over in a few days.”

  Though probably not in time for the custody hearing tomorrow. He wondered if there was any way to put it off.

  “I’m trying to be strong, David.” Renee put the top of her head against his chest. “Really I am.”

  “I know, Renee. I know.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, as if he were literally trying to hold her together. My fault, my fault, my fault. Somehow, it’s all my fault. He felt like she was wounded and bleeding and he was a medic with no instruments to help her. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked.

  “No, Anton will be back soon. He’ll … do …”—she gestured lamely—“something.”

  He kissed her lightly on the forehead and then went to say good-bye to his son. He found Arthur lying on the bedroom floor with his legs in the air, reading a Batman comic and pushing his cheeks up with his fingers.

  “It’s going to be okay, buddy.” David sat down beside him. “Someday, you won’t even remember this.”

  A lie. A blatant lie. A pathetic lie. And even worse, a lie he was telling himself instead of the boy. Arthur didn’t look at him.

  “Okay,” he said blandly.

  David nuzzled him and stood up. “By the way, Arthur, did they ask you anything, the men who came here?”

  “Just what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

  David looked down, and felt that tightness in his chest again. Just a few days ago, the boy had been running around telling people he wanted to be just like his dad. “So what did you tell them?”

  “I told them I wanted to be a cop.”

  35

  SHEIK ABDEL AZIZ AYAD was a thin-boned, fiftyish imam with broken teeth and smiling impish eyes. Dressed in a white robe and a red prayer cap, he sat in the living room of his Atlantic Avenue apartment, talking to Nasser, Youssef, and Dr. Ahmed.

  “There are some calling themselves holy men, who say there are other interpretations of the Holy Book—but this is ridiculous!” the imam said with a crooked, slightly mischievous grin. “There is only one way, one interpretation, one God. Is there more than one way to get an egg out of its shell? No. You have to break the egg. So that is what we talk about here.”

  Youssef started to rise. “Can I get you something from the kitchen, sheik?”

  “No, thank you, brother. I had a halal candy bar before.” The imam, who was sitting cross-legged on a brown rug, reached up to get his cup of tea from the table and then turned to Nasser. “This nation we are in is an abomination before God. Of this, there can be no doubt. God himself has put a blanket over the hearts of the nonbelievers and stuffed wax in their ears. This is the way it is! They cannot know the truth. They can only inflict suffering on others. God has no mercy for those who have no mercy. And this is why there must be jihad.”

  Dr. Ahmed was rocking back and forth on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest. “Ah, now, see, this is what I want to talk about. The Great Chastisement. About what form it will take.”

  The imam smiled without quite seeming to hear him. “We must afflict them in their homes. We must not allow them to feel comfortable in their Godlessness. Why do they support Israel? It’s because they worship money and the Jews give money for bribes to the White House. They say they care about human rights and then they allow the Jews to oppress us and torture our peoples. They are hypocrites and cowards. So we must fight them everywhere and make sacrifices when we have to. There is nothing holier before God than a martyr. No greater hero than one who fights for the cause of Allah.”

  “Allahu akbar!” cried the doctor.

  “No God but God.” Youssef tapped Nasser on the knee.

  “A man who stays at home to pray is nothing in comparison.” The imam turned his smiling imp eyes to Nasser. “He will not enter Paradise as quickly as the warrior. One hour on the battlefield is worth a hundred years of prayer.”

  “Insh’allah!” Dr. Ahmed said loudly.

  It felt good to Nasser, hearing this after being thrown out by his family. It felt right. To be here with these men, in this room, talking about things that were real, belonging in the company of warriors. It brought him back to the feeling he’d had in the early days of the intifada: the weight of the stone in his hand, his brothers alongside him in the crooked little streets of Bethlehem, that sense he once had of standing in the exact right place at the exact right time. Before he came to this country and lost his way.

  “But of course, we must be cautious.” The imam poked him with a long, gnarled finger. “Trust in Allah, but tether your camel. You know this saying?”

  “No,” said Nasser.

  “One of the Prophet’s followers asked him whether he should tie up his camel or trust in God when they were traveling. So the Prophet said, ‘Trust in Allah and tether your camel.’”

  Nasser bit his lip, considering this. Perhaps he’d been wrong, depending on God to arrange so much in his life.

  “I want to talk about the place we should target next,” the doctor interrupted, tapping the floor with his fingers. “Where we can do the most damage with the hadduta.”

  The imam leaned away from him. “Well, this must be studied,” he said vaguely.

  Dr. Ahmed’s brow became a hardened ridge, and he began to rock more quickly. “I was thinking one of the great institutions they are so arrogant about. It’s true the brothers missed their chance at the World Trade Center a few years ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to try something of this scale. The loss of many lives is important to make our point, to cause the disruption… . I was thinking about the United Nations again. It is possible to put the hadduta perhaps in the parking lot.”

  The imam’s smile grew faint and he started to fidget. “Well, of course, this could be studied too,” he said. “I don’t know if
it is necessary to go into such detail right now.”

  Dr. Ahmed missed the hesitance in the imam’s voice and went on with his rocking and his planning. “I was also thinking to consider one of their great bridges and tunnels. The Lincoln Tunnel or the Holland Tunnel. My God, can you imagine? We could drown them all and stop traffic for days.”

  The imam folded his lips and said only, “Sometimes, it’s best to keep things simple.”

  Nasser watched him closely, wondering why he’d suddenly fallen silent. Was he afraid someone was listening in on their conversation? Were they not alone?

  Youssef had told him: The imam was not just a holy man, but a man of the world. He’d studied at the University of Cairo and for a time even went to classes at the University of Wisconsin. Naturally, he’d fought alongside his brothers against the Jews in Israel, but he was also a pragmatist. After all, he’d negotiated with the CIA to get military support for brothers repelling the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, where he’d met both Youssef and the doctor. So perhaps he was aware of certain things in the air, attuned to potentials for calamity.

  Trust in Allah, he’d said. But tether your camel.

  “So what do you think, sheik?” Dr. Ahmed was asking. “Which should be the target?”

  “I think,” said the imam, standing slowly, “I am late to prepare for the evening prayer downstairs and there will be another time to discuss this. Remember, it is more blessed to worship among enemies than it is to worship among friends.”

  His smile came back as he made his way to the door. Youssef jumped up to open it. “Peace upon you, brother! God is greatest!”

  “Asalam allakem.” The imam nodded his acknowledgment as he looked back at Nasser and Dr. Ahmed. “Stay as long as you like, brothers. My home is your home. Or join me for the prayer downstairs in a few minutes.”