Man of the Hour

by Peter Blauner

  For a second, hearing him sound so hurt and inarticulate made David feel a kind of fearful tenderness toward the boy. But the dynamite sticks were still wrapped around him.

  “All right, enough.” The little man with the gun was trying to reassert control over the situation. “All Muslim children out of the room, except the sister. You take the message with you and tell everyone what we’re saying. Everyone else stays.”

  There was a flurry of movement and about two dozen kids lined up by the door near the little man. There was Ibrahim Yassin, an eleventh-grader from Egypt. And Fatima Fayyad, a Lebanese freshman, and Mohammed Azzam, a junior from Iraq. And sneaking onto the end of the line, Amal Lincoln and Yuri Ehrlich.

  Seeing them standing there, David felt hope drying up in his chest. Everyone else in the room was supposed to die. The knowledge came over him suddenly like a rush of wind. No, you had it wrong before. You weren’t supposed to die on a burning bus. That was just to get you ready. You’re supposed to die here. This is the last room you’ll ever see.

  David clenched his fists in frustration. Come on, do something. A fighter fights. A writer writes. A teacher teaches.

  He turned and looked over at Elizabeth’s brother, who stood on top of the next table, shoulders hunched, shivering slightly against the prospect of his own imminent dismemberment.

  “Nasser,” David said, trying to appeal to him. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to go along with this. Think for yourself.”

  “Think for yourself! Think for yourself!” The little man by the main entrance mocked him as he ushered the Muslim kids out. “That’s the difference between us. You only think for yourself. But we think about the peoples. We think about God. This is what you cannot understand, I know. To you, this is just crazy Arabs who blow themselves up. You don’t know what it is to make a sacrifice for something that’s bigger—”

  “Okay, okay. I get it.” David put his hand up, hearing him, but not really acknowledging him.

  He looked over at the big bearded man by the emergency exit, who was shifting slightly as if all this talk of Arabs blowing themselves up made him uncomfortable. Maybe this was more than he’d bargained for. But he wasn’t moving.

  So David turned back to Nasser and reached down into himself for what felt like the last bit of courage he had left. “You know, I’ve got my people here too.”

  Could he do this? He wasn’t sure. His eyes swept around the room, taking in all the students. Seniqua in her belligerent pregnancy, Kevin in his striped Gatsby shirt, Elizabeth without her skates. Kids who in one way or another had entrusted a part of themselves to him. Yes, he was supposed to look out for them.

  “I’m willing to make a sacrifice too,” he said slowly.

  In the gym upstairs, someone was bouncing a basketball.

  Nasser looked over at him, not wanting the connection, but getting it anyway.

  “Let everybody else go. I’ll stay,” David said wearily. “So there’s my sacrifice.” He waved his hand at the room. “These guys are my people.”

  “Yin an deen nekk!” the small man shouted, pointing the gun at David from some fifty-five feet away. “He’s not going to listen to you. He knows you play with his mind.”

  “You got the power,” said David, playing out the gambit and not taking his eyes off Nasser’s. “You call the game. You’ll get just as much press coverage if everybody else leaves and it’s just you and me who get blown up when the building comes down. Come on. Let the rest of them go. Don’t make it about anybody else.”

  But, of course, it was about somebody else. Not five hours ago, David had coaxed his son out of the bedroom, held his puffy little white hand, and promised him that everything would be okay from here on out.

  And now he was throwing that promise away and it tore him up inside. Big man—so what? There was no such thing as a selfless sacrifice, he realized. In the end, someone else always got hurt.

  “My life for their lives,” he said, struggling not to be overpowered by emotions. “Come on. I’m ready to go. Are you?”

  The little man with the gun and the big bald man both started hollering at Nasser in Arabic at once. “Wala al noor! Wala al noor!”

  Nasser was starting to do a little worried-man shuffle on top of his table. Not knowing where to put his eyes. He glanced once down at Elizabeth and then back at the little man and then over at David.

  “Come on, Nasser,” David persisted. “Let your sister out of here. She hasn’t done anything wrong. Just make it about you and me. I’m ready to go. Are you?”

  Just saying the words was wrenching. How would Arthur and Renee make it without him?

  “Wala al noor! Wala al noor!” The little man was frantically gesturing for Nasser to throw the switch. “Ya habela!”

  “Come on.” David stretched out his hand to Nasser and edged toward the end of the table, like a pirate getting ready to board an enemy ship. “I’ll even stand next to you and we can hold hands when we go up together. I’m ready to go when you are. Just let everybody else out.”

  His heart was jackhammering against the walls of his chest.

  “Askat!” The little man’s neck veins were popping. “Wala al noor!”

  Nasser was trying not to look at him. Trying to focus on anything else; the ugly green walls, the other students, the wretched, indigestible food on the plates. But his eyes kept slipping back to Elizabeth’s and then David’s. He was terrified himself, David realized. Not in any way ready to carry this out What he needed was a way to step down.

  The pressure inside Nasser’s head was getting to be too much. The teacher yelling, Think for yourself, are you ready to go? And Dr. Ahmed screaming, Turn on the light, throw the switch! His temples were bursting and he felt like his skull was going to explode and rain bloody bits on his shoulders. His eyes went down to Elizabeth once more, as if drawn by magnets. Seeing her again, but seeing her in a new way.

  All this time, all these years, he realized he’d only been seeing parts of her. But now it all came together and it frightened him to the depths of his soul. He saw his mother, his father, his half sisters, the baby who died before he was born, ancestors from the Monastery of Branches, and grandchildren who would never exist. He saw himself and he saw the future exploding. And all at once, it seemed unbearable and unholy to destroy this, to wipe out every last trace of the family. It was like disturbing the universe, to do this. Blotting out the stars. Drying up the land, so nothing would ever grow again. Do you dream anymore, Nasser?

  Was this truly God’s will?

  “Come on, Nasser.” David tried to remember the word he’d heard both brother and sister use. “Isn’t this really … haram?”

  He saw Nasser arch his shoulders and then reach around behind his back, as if he had another detonator switch there. All together, the kids in the cafeteria started hollering and throwing themselves on the floor in terror and disgust.

  And then time seemed to slow down and the noise seemed to die away again. Nasser’s arm began to circle back toward his front and David heard the unmistakable sound of adhesive being peeled off, a little bit at a time. Several bands of masking tape were clinging to Nasser’s fingers and as he pulled them away from his body, the dynamite sticks began to pull away with them.

  Reacting out of instinct, David jumped off the table, came over, and stood beside Elizabeth, ready to receive the dynamite. The jackhammer in his chest had subsided, replaced by one tremendous thud every few seconds.

  Here was a thing of moment. His heart was squeezed blue. He reached up to Nasser, beckoning to him, staring, forcing him to look down and make that connection again. For a few seconds, everything depended on maintaining the connection. Easy there, steady now. The dynamite was halfway stripped off with its red and green wires hanging out. Nasser finally lowered his eyes to David’s, locking in on him. Completing the circuit. Only this time, instead of looking angry or confused as David half-expected, the kid looked relieved. He didn’t want to handl
e this thing either.

  David put one foot up on the bench and stretched out his hands. The tape, the dynamite, and the wires were just barely attached to Nasser’s body, a little over two feet away. David was already thinking about what he would do once he had them; what if one of the wires was loose and the device got tripped off anyway? Shouldn’t they just sit down at this point and call the bomb squad?

  But then the connection was broken. A little firecracker snap echoed across the lunchroom and the light in Nasser’s eyes went dim. He turned in on himself and fell to one knee in front of his sister, blood spurting wildly from the side of his head.

  Elizabeth let out a scream—a shriek heard across the desert—as Nasser collapsed sideways on the tabletop and blood sprayed onto the floor. The students all rose together and started to stampede toward the eastern end of the cafeteria, away from the little man who’d just fired the gun.

  David tried to stand his ground as students went running by him going the other way, knocking into his arms and shoulders. Fifty-five feet away, at the main entrance, the little man with the gun was looking exasperated and furious.

  He started to limp toward David with his chin lowered and the gun raised. His eyes were looking off to the side a little, though, as if his real objective were elsewhere.

  David glanced over his shoulder and saw kids trampling each other brutally, trying to get out me emergency exit. The big bearded man had disappeared in the pack, but was obviously trying to hold the door and keep them back. And in the resulting gridlock, kids were falling and getting stomped. A ninth-grader named Cheryl Smith crawled away, spitting blood.

  In the meantime, the little man kept coming—limping and grunting in outrage. From the corner of his eye, David saw Elizabeth trying to kneel on the bench and cover her brother’s body with her own. Clearly she’d figured out what was just dawning on David—that the little man was coming for the bomb, to find the switch and finish the job.

  David tried to stand in his way, even as the metallic taste of fear filled up his mouth.

  The little man raised the gun and pointed at David’s face. Warning him to get out of the way. David didn’t budge. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to play the hero anymore. He only wanted his ordinary life back again, but it was too late.

  From twelve feet away, the little man fired.

  David felt stinging just under his left eye and then a spider’s web of pain spread back through his skull. He staggered backward and the little man brushed past him on his way to Elizabeth and her brother. The pain was more than enormous. It was a world in and of itself with no outside reference points. It turned into a horn boring into his head. Unbearable. It was impossible to remember not being in this much pain. But somehow David managed to break free of it for just one second and with a last furious burst of strength, like a mother lifting a car off a child, he reached out and grabbed the little man by the collar, spun him around, and punched him in the face.

  More from the force of surprise than anything else, the man stumbled and started to lose his balance. Knowing he was about to black out, David threw himself forward, plowing into the little man with his shoulder, knocking him down and pinning him to the greasy floor. For a second, he was aware he was covering the man like a heavy rug and then he wasn’t aware of anything.

  When he came to, he heard a thousand feet running his way, a mad horde, the kids reversing field to come help him. Someone pulled him off the little man, and as he rolled over, he saw what looked like a forest come to life—hundreds of flailing limbs and branches closing in on the shooter, crashing down wild angry blows.

  “Call my son. Call my son. Somebody please call my wife and my son and tell them I’m all right.”

  In the parking lot some twenty-five minutes later, David was beginning to collapse into a kind of delirium. He’d lost a great deal of blood and he kept hearing paramedics talking worriedly about the discharge coming out of his ears. There were ambulances, cop cars, bomb trucks, emergency service vehicles, helicopters circling, reporters swarming, broadcast trucks, satellite dishes and oh, who cared anymore?

  “Somebody please call my son.”

  Camera shutters went off in his face. Sirens screamed in the distance. He was on a stretcher, being worked on by strong purposeful men in blue jackets and white shirts. One of them, a young black guy with kind eyes, kept holding his hand and smiling at him.

  “Don’t worry, man. We’re not gonna let you die.”

  David tried to sit up. “Who said anything about me dying?”

  “Never mind.” The young guy gently pushed him back down and made sure David’s IV line was still firmly attached.

  More bodies materialized around him. More FBI agents, more reporters, more cameras, more noise. He was aware of other bodies on stretchers nearby. The little man and the big bearded man, looking badly beaten. He hoped they wouldn’t go in the same ambulance with him. A black bag was carried by, and he knew Nasser was inside it.

  “Who killed you?” somebody called out to him. He vaguely recognized Judy Mandel’s voice.

  Who killed me? But I’m not dead yet. Somebody started to put an inflatable sleeve over his leg and he mumbled that it wasn’t broken. In spite of all the drugs they were giving him, pain still kept flashing through the inside of his head. He turned and saw Elizabeth Hamdy being led away by Jim Lefferts from the FBI.

  “Somebody please call my boy …”

  Donna Vitale suddenly appeared before him. She must have been in another part of the building when everything happened in the cafeteria.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Somebody please call my son. Tell him I’m all right.” He could barely get any other words out, it was so hard to focus in all this agony.

  “It’s all right. I’ll call your son for you.”

  She started to reach for his hand, but then Detective Noonan grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her off into the crowd.

  Flashbulbs went off, leaving a blinding white light when he closed his eyes. But why would anybody be using flashbulbs? It was still daytime.

  He wanted to cry out after her. She didn’t have the number for Arthur. And she didn’t know what he’d meant by “I’m all right.” He wasn’t sure if he was going to be all right, physically. In fact, with flashbulbs going off inside his head, it was gradually dawning on him that he might not be. But he wanted his son to know that his father was all right in the larger sense, meaning that he was no one to be ashamed of.

  He tried to push up on an elbow and call out to her, so she’d come back and he could explain it to her. But it was too late. The drugs were finally beginning to wrap him up in a thick, warm, drowsy blanket. Somehow, she’d figure it all out anyway.

  “Think we should move him now?” one of the medical technicians was asking.

  “Better late than never.”

  Then he was being hoisted up and carried aloft. As in a dream. More bulbs were going off in his head. He was shuttling between there and not mere. He was going, going, and people were still taking his picture. In the last flashes of consciousness, he saw a microphone suspended before his face and heard Sara Kidreaux’s familiar voice.

  “David, do you have any comment about what happened here today?”

  “Noooooooo …”

  He was shoved into the back of the ambulance and the door slammed. Then all at once, they were moving and the texture was changing again. Past the lights, the sounds, the gyrating chaos of the city around him. Through the sound waves, microwaves, fiberoptics, high-definition pixels, and bouncing satellite signals. Toward a vast black empty space.

  He closed his eyes and saw himself again as a skinny awkward boy, tracking the arc of a scuffed ball against a setting late afternoon sun, running, running, running hard for the love of his family and friends; diving in among the champagne-colored weeds, catching it just at the very tip of his mitt, and holding it aloft, triumphant in the gathering dusk for everyone to see.

  64
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  DEAR MR. FITZGERALD,

  Thank you for your kind note, which Agent Lefferts had passed on to me at my new location, which of course I am not allowed to disclose to you.

  I am glad to hear you are feeling better. I prayed for you every day that you were in a coma, along with performing my traditional Muslim prayers.

  I am not sure what to say about all the terrible things that happened with you and my brother at school. My father tells me there is no God but God and everything that occurs on earth is subject to His will, so we must accept it. Even if it means the destruction of a part of our family. On the other hand, you always taught me to think as an individual, and take responsibility into my own hands. So now I am not sure what I believe. Perhaps it was God’s will that Nasser was killed and you got shot and my family has to live in hiding. Or perhaps everything is my fault because I am a bad person. I keep thinking there must be something I could have done or said that would have made things come out differently. Either way, I feel a sense of sadness about the way everything ended, like that hand is still over my heart, and it will probably take me the rest of my life to figure it all out.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do about college. The circumstances of my life make it complicated now. But I also know it’s something you very much wanted me to do. So Insh’allah, who can say how things will work out?

  I may be back in Brooklyn in time for the holidays, though the contact agents have asked me not to say when or where exactly because of the trial coming up with my brother’s friends. If it is God’s will, perhaps I will see you again. If it is not, know that you have a special place in my heart and may God smile upon you in His beneficence.

  Yours very truly,

  Elizabeth Hamdy

  On a warm April day, David Fitzgerald sat on the sofa outside his physical therapist’s office, still struggling for the tenth time to make sense of the perfectly drawn blue words on the white page.