Only Wrong Once

by Jenifer Ruff

  “No, we don’t,” said Kareem. Al-Bahil was preoccupied with his own safety and wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it. That’s why he’d built a compound in the middle of nowhere. It was also the explanation for why the school had such a large presence in the center of the compound, even though there were hardly any children there. Schools implied youthful innocence, lives to be spared at all costs. Western militaries would never drop a bomb in the vicinity of a school building.

  “So, Kareem, you’ve just returned from Aleppo, from your other lab.” He slapped his desk and laughed. “Was your experiment a success?”

  Kareem nodded. “There was no one left alive.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “Less than a week before symptoms developed. Three days for some. Once symptoms appeared, death was almost immediate, within a day or two.”

  “How is that possible?”

  If Kareem had been asked the same question back at the University of Damascus, he would have smiled and said with confidence, “Because I’m amazing.” Instead he said, “I used RNA from the strongest strains of virus.”

  “Hmmm.” Al-Bahil pressed his meaty lips together.

  “Aamaq captured some good data before he died.”

  “Humpf. Not sure why you need it. Now, what is the status on recruitment?”

  “Well, I have three Americans. They don’t know what they’ll be doing yet, but they know they’ll be returning to the States to help your… I mean, to help the cause. They’ll do it.”

  “Only three?”

  “They’re from opposite coasts, two from California and one from Massachusetts. I’m working on more.” He hadn’t heard from Redman in days, the man might have had a change of heart, but claiming to have three recruits sounded much better than only two.

  “Three isn’t enough. Why haven’t you found more? You still sound like an American.” He said this as if it disgusted him. “Use your connections.”

  “I will. I’m working on it.”

  “They’ll go through our program first and watch our new recruiting movie. Have you seen it yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You need to watch it then. Today. It’s amazing. It could be an Oscar winner. You know. Like the Titanic.”

  Kareem nodded. “A blockbuster.”

  “I want to meet them and speak to them personally before they return to America. Make sure that happens.” He picked up a handful of nuts and put them in his mouth.

  Kareem nodded. “Okay.”

  “Will you be ready for November sixth?”

  Kareem wanted a few more weeks. He had one more piece of the project to complete. Something critical wasn’t finished. Something he didn’t want Al-Bahil to know about. A scientific breakthrough. But he couldn’t ask and risk being discovered.

  Al-Bahil leaned forward. “I won’t let my brother’s death go unmarked. If you claim that after infecting only Aamaq, all of the men from the Aleppo experiment died, the virus is effective enough. You’ll be ready.” He peered at Kareem, challenging him, and Kareem felt his breath catch in his chest.

  “Our plan will succeed. And we may never need another. The United States will be decimated.” Kareem swallowed hard and did his best not to look away.

  “That’s what I needed to hear from you. Sometimes I doubt your allegiance.”

  Kareem bowed his head.

  “Am I wrong to doubt your allegiance?”

  Kareem felt his gut clench. He was trapped. He couldn’t tell Al-Bahil he was wrong, but he couldn’t let his allegiance be doubted. He shook his head and hoped a humble gesture would suffice.

  “You can go now.”

  Kareem turned to leave. The burden of responsibility pressed strongly against him. Or maybe it was moral ambiguity crushing his chest like a massive pile of stones. If he was going to mentally survive, he needed to focus only on the job ahead and push the emotions aside.

  From behind him Al-Bahil spoke again. “Watch the movie. And don’t forget, if you’re falling short with recruitment, there is one more person you know who has an American passport. You know him well. He should be easy to inspire.”

  Kareem wished he had never spoken of his cousin. He gritted his teeth, suppressing the urge to shout, Find your own fucking recruits, you fat asshole.

  Allah would not be pleased with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Charlotte

  September 24th

  Amin’s cubicle on the 34th floor of the Continental Bank Building reminded him of a child’s living room fort, the ones with blankets stretched across the back edge of chairs. Temporary. Insignificant. A box. Perhaps it was the box Kareem was talking about when he said, “give up your fears, get out of your box.” Which was a rather perfect description because Amin felt most comfortable thinking inside his box, working with numbers and spreadsheets.

  He was concentrating on his monitor and a forecast spreadsheet when Doug, his third boss in as many years, plodded over, his breath wheezy, and leaned heavily against one of Amin’s gray fabric cube walls. Amin turned to face Doug, wondering if the wall could support all his weight. Inside his dress shirt, Doug’s gut hung over the edge of his suit pants. “I need to talk to you about these numbers. Stop by my office when you have a chance.” He finished with a grunt.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Amin immediately clicked and saved his spreadsheets. In the adjacent cube, which shared a wall with his own, he heard Melissa, his colleague, tapping out an irritating rhythm with her pen. Melissa brought in home-baked goodies to share at least once a week. Today she’d brought “rich” caramel brownies and coconut chocolate-chip cookies. She wasn’t helping Doug any with his weight. She had an MBA from a prestigious business school. She wasn’t married, didn’t have children, but she was a “big sister” for two elementary-aged girls who, she explained, needed a good role model. Pictures of a smiling, light-complexioned Melissa with two different dark-complexioned little girls were pinned to her cube walls. The pictures captured their trips to Panthers games, Hornets games, the Nutcracker ballet, and the Discovery Place museum. Amin respected Melissa for her kindness and her intelligence. During their weekly finance review team meetings, when Melissa diplomatically pointed out where Doug had made mistakes, Amin sometimes forgot she was a woman. He suspected she was a lesbian. His religion expected him to be concerned for her, but he didn’t care. He had developed a complete apathy toward her potential lesbianism, or anyone else’s for that matter. Her sexuality was her business. Live and let live. One more reason he was a poor excuse for a devout Muslim. His college friends might say, “good for you, you’ve become more open-minded”, but his parents would say he was now immune to morally conflicting situations. Who was right? Did it matter?

  Amin walked through the center of the building and its maze of cubes to the outer corridor. He passed several offices, the ones with the floor to ceiling window views, all with closed doors, until he reached Doug’s corner space.

  “Shut the door.” Doug didn’t look up when Amin entered. “How are things?”

  “Fine,” Amin answered, uncertain which “things” they were talking about.

  “Good. Unfortunately, the bottom line isn’t so great around here,” said Doug. “There are hundreds of layoffs in the pipeline, all coming from the internal support departments—HR, IT, Operations, and Finance. It’s fallout from the recent acquisition of Future’s Bank. We all need to prove our worth these next few weeks. Particularly with the upcoming forecast. We can’t afford any mistakes.”

  “I understand,” Amin glanced at an empty plate covered in brownie crumbs on Doug’s desk.

  “Just wanted to let everyone know. That’s all. You can go.” Doug rolled his big leather chair away from his desk as if he was about to stand up, although he remained seated.

  “Thank you.” Amin returned to his cube, his spreadsheets, and his numbers. He had barely started when Melissa entered his space.

  “Knock, knock,” she said.<
br />
  Amin rotated his chair. “Yes?”

  “There’s a flu shot clinic in the lobby for employees. We should go. We’re supposed to have a bad flu season this year.”

  “Hmm.” Amin cupped his chin. “I’ve never had a flu shot before. I never get sick.”

  “Never? Are you sure?”

  “I can’t remember a single time. I have an amazing immune system. I have never seen a doctor aside from annual check-ups. Remember when everyone in the department had a bad cold, and I didn’t catch it?”

  “Actually, I do remember. I was jealous.” Melissa smiled.

  Amin shrugged. “I’ve got some sort of super immunity. Seriously.”

  “Well, it’s up to you.” Melissa turned and walked away.

  Although he truly believed he didn’t need one, saying so suddenly seemed arrogant. Wouldn’t it be his rotten luck to get sick this year, for the first time ever, because he was so certain it wasn’t possible? The shot would cost him nothing aside from a few minutes of his time. And it couldn’t hurt. “Okay. Why not?” he said to himself, clicking and saving again before hurrying to the elevator banks. “Melissa, wait up. I’m coming with you.”

  Amin stood in a line with Melissa and other Continental employees in the lobby. He let his eyes trace the etchings on the marble floor. When his turn arrived, he removed his suit jacket, sat in one of the upholstered chairs, unbuttoned his shirt cuff, and bunched his sleeve up over his elbow.

  The health care provider, an attractive woman with very dark skin, opened a sealed packet and removed a syringe. She smiled at him and made eye contact. “This won’t hurt. Just a quick sting. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” He found himself suddenly nervous and offering unnecessary information as he watched the needle head toward his arm. “It’s my first flu shot. First one ever. I can’t quite remember what it’s going to be like. The shot, I mean, what it’s going to feel like to get a shot.” He tensed all his muscles. The tip of the silver needle was on his arm and then it quickly disappeared into his skin. Before he registered the sting, the woman was finished, pressing a piece of folded gauze against the prick mark.

  “All done,” she said, cheerfully, glancing over her shoulder at the line of people waiting.

  “That was quick and easy,” Amin said.

  “Of course it was.”

  At home, while eating his take-out dinner—empty shelves again—Amin thought about revisiting the Muslims Unite chat room. Inspirational guidance backed by ayahs from the Quran might lift his spirits. He scrolled through the site, absentmindedly kneading his shoulder, a little sore from the vaccination. He paused to check out a post analyzing the lyrics to an offensive rap song—heroin, ho’s, robbing a pimp, and gunning down the “po-po”. Amin shook his head. The author of the post acted as if Americans had collectively chosen the song to represent the morals of the country. Amin was tempted to write, “Get over it. I’ve never heard this song before. It may have a small following, but it is not a mainstream song,” but he moved on instead. Continental Bank was the main topic of a thread titled Greed and Capitalism. The CEO had recently been granted a twenty-five percent salary increase and would gross twenty-seven million. Amin quickly calculated the CEO’s annual salary to be seven hundred seventy times his own. He let out a low whistle with his breath. Did that make him seven hundred seventy times less valuable than the guy in charge? He frowned. It didn’t help that the bank had announced a recent salary freeze for employees at Amin’s level.

  The words “What is your purpose?” caught his attention. The “Learn More” button led to a video, in English, about following Allah’s call. Images of young Muslim men surrounded by friends and pretty wives temporarily transported Amin to a world with possibilities for self-fulfillment. The soundtrack struck a hopeful chord, like watching a movie where the underdog team wins the game, the bad guys get what they deserve, and the audience cries happy tears. When the video ended, a live-chat session box popped up. A real person on the other end of the connection had typed, Hi. What do you do for a living? Easy to answer—finance. Amin leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers against the counter, wondering where the conversation might lead. He took a chance and responded, which led to—What do you do for fun? Not so easy. Where do you see yourself in a year? In my cube – although I hope not. Half an hour later, after pondering some soul-searching questions, he finally shut his computer down.

  Chapter Twelve

  Charlotte

  September 25th

  On Saturday, for the first time in a very long while, Amin attended the Charlotte Islamic Center’s afternoon service. He had a few reasons for going. One was to be a good son. Muslims believed that raising a virtuous child benefited them after death and he didn’t want to deprive his parents in their afterlife. During the service, his mind wandered. Should I have used a higher interest rate for the margin model? Did Doug ever answer my questions about the forecast assumptions? Can I eat pizza again tonight or should I try and find something with a vegetable? Are all my suits at the dry cleaners? When the service ended, he felt more of a misfit, more aware of a gaping disconnect, than when he arrived. The time he spent inside the mosque seemed inconsequential in relation to the rest of his life. He was thinking about going into the office to knock out some work, when a heavily accented stranger spoke to him.

  “Hello. Have I seen you before at daily prayers?” the older man asked. He wore a prayer cap, a sign of traditional respect.

  “I come whenever I can,” Amin said, stretching the truth. “I’m Amin Sarif.” He extended his hand.

  The man shook his hand. “I’m Maran. Sarif, you say? Where are you from originally?”

  “I was born here, but my parents are from Iraq.”

  “Where in Iraq?”

  “Mosul.” Amin cast his eyes downward to acknowledge the current turmoil in his ancestral city.

  “I’m from Mosul! And my wife as well. Thank Allah we don’t live there now. The Islamic State is holding on to its self-proclaimed caliphate. It’s a tragedy, a constant battle between the Iraqi army, police, and the militants.” Maran shook his head and closed his eyes briefly. “Millions of civilians are trapped. The U.S. is providing support in the form of airstrikes, but those do the most damage to the city. They’re perceived as the real enemy.”

  Amin nodded. He had little to contribute to the conversation unless he offered some of Kareem’s opinions, but he wasn’t going to go there.

  “Where are your parents now?” Maran asked, as they walked out of the mosque together.

  “My parents live in Michigan. My father is an engineer at Chrysler.”

  “And what brought you to Charlotte?”

  “A job. I work at Continental Bank, in finance.”

  “And what else do you do here in Charlotte?”

  Amin thought, I should have waited to find a job in Michigan where I had friends and family. “I’m afraid not a lot, I spend most of my time at work. I’m trying to change that.”

  “Oh. Ah, here comes my family.” Maran’s eyes beamed. “I’ll introduce you. This is my wife, Nina, my teenage son, Rehan, and my lovely daughter, Isa.”

  Amin’s mouth went dry, his palms grew sweaty. Isa exuded warmth and beauty. Her large brown eyes were so luminous a Disney princess could have been modeled after her. Dark slacks and a flowered blouse looked lovely on her petite figure. Unlike her mother, her head was uncovered and her long hair hung loose. Maran continued to talk about Mosul and possible family connections, but Amin was only tuned in to Isa.

  Throughout the following days, Isa’s image occupied Amin’s thoughts. Over the past few years, when he did pray, which wasn’t very often, he had consistently asked for a pretty and kind Muslim woman who could understand his sense of cultural misplacement. Ideally, one who had already figured out how to handle the dichotomy between America’s “anything goes” culture and her family’s religious loyalties and expectations. He believed his prayers had been answered. He planned
to go to the mosque the next week, same day, same time, hoping to see Maran and Isa again.

  He had just finished his cheesesteak sandwich in the food court. As he passed the small convenience store, he remembered running out of toilet paper at his apartment. If he bought one of the single rolls they sold inside, he would be set for a few days. He went into the store to make the purchase.

  “We’re out of bags,” said the cashier. “Can you handle it?”

  Amin laughed. “Yes, no problem.” He only had the one roll of toilet paper.

  He was leaving the store when he heard his name.

  “Amin!”

  It was Isa, and she sounded excited. Amin’s face lit up. She remembered his name! Her lovely dark skin and raven hair stood out amongst the dozens of uptown workers threading their way around her. She wore a fitted navy pants suit and white blouse. His heart beat faster.

  “I’m Isa. Remember we met outside the mosque?”

  Amin nodded. He remembered all right. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since. Mesmerized by her beauty, his eyes followed the graceful gestures of her hands when she spoke. He couldn’t believe she had spotted him in the lunch hour crowd.

  “My father introduced us. He introduces himself to everyone.” She laughed. “It’s nice to see you again. Do you work around here?”

  “Yes, I work in the Continental Bank building. How about you?”

  “I work in the Hearst Tower.” She turned and pointed in the building’s direction before laughing again, a melodic sound reminding Amin of someone who was simply happy to be alive.

  They spoke for a few minutes, long enough for Amin to learn Isa worked as an IT programmer at another big Charlotte bank. Giddy anticipation accompanied his every word and gesture. Their conversation ended when Isa said she was going to be late for a meeting. They had to say goodbye. Walking back to his office, Amin considered everything he had learned about Isa. Beautiful. Nice. A college graduate. An IT specialist. Middle Eastern descent but raised in America. He imagined her trapped between two worlds, like him, wanting to fit in somewhere and unsure of which way to lean. Might they create their own middle-ground world together? He was all the way back to his cube when he realized he’d been holding the roll of toilet paper the whole time. He felt his face grow hot. Oh well.