A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  We are proud of you, Rez. Your mother, myself. You have done well.

  Thanks.

  Should we go? This is over, isn’t it? His father looked across the quad.

  We have a reservation at the restaurant at one.

  It’s only noon, Dad. I need to say hello to a few more people. This might be the last time I see them.

  His father sat back down in his chair and looked at his phone. His mother smiled at Rez and pushed him back toward the gathered families.

  Go. Go, see your friends. We will meet you at the car in half an hour.

  He walked through the groups of families and kids and waited for the good feeling to come back but everything had a stain on it now and all the shadows seemed to fall the wrong way. He heard laughter, clapping, and proud deep voices and he turned in their direction and saw Fatima’s entire clan of uncles and aunts and other people he could never name, gathered in the dappled light of a tall Japanese maple, joyous. He walked toward them and they took him in with handshakes and knowing nods and shouts of For you! For you! Our Fatima goes to Stanford. You and your excellent tutoring. The old woman, Fatima’s grandmother, approached him and took his hand in hers. Their eyes met and Rez waited for her to say something but she did not and so he stood and felt her vibrations, the coursing out of something sure and strong through the soft parchment of her hands and face. When she seemed satisfied, she let go of his hand and Rez bowed his head to her in some Japanese version of thanks that made a girl nearby laugh.

  Getting a little emotional, are we?

  For the first time in three weeks he heard Fatima’s voice, felt her body close. Three weeks and not a phone call or a text, not even a glance in the hallway or at the year-end assemblies. After the first week Rez wrote her a nasty message about how stupid it was to get so involved with an Internet cause and how Arash was turning into a kook. The second week of silence made Rez sad and he walked around low and angry and tried not to listen to too much Beyoncé or Adele. By the third week Matthews convinced him that the summer was full of girls and Rez started to believe him, wipe his mind of the want of one thing and move into the want of many and let himself flirt, hook up if offered, drift. Now she was near him, it all left him—the anger, the sadness, the want for distraction—and he saw her, beautiful in the black robe and high heels, a colorful bouquet held near her face, and all he felt was gratitude. He took her in with both eyes and felt a calm near numbness take over his frazzled tripping nerves. She seemed like a beacon of all good things, and he stood without speaking like a dumb devotee before his guide. She looked back at him, her face alive and warm and curious.

  What are you on?

  Rez laughed and Fatima moved a few inches closer and he whispered in her ear.

  They made out in Mr. Joseph’s room and did as much as they could in fifteen minutes. At some point he had her in his mouth and his eyes opened and looked up to see the posters of Whitman, Brontë, Hemingway, Angelou, that Josephs had stapled above the whiteboard and Rez’s heart rushed and he thought, Terrific. Terrifying. Terror.

  The mushrooms wore off during lunch with his family, and when Fatima picked him up from the restaurant, she brought tabs of ecstasy and soon he was up again, up and flying. She drove him to the parking lot just above Laguna Cove where every spot had some kind of view of the sea. They laid down the seats in the back, threw a blanket across the flat surface and let themselves go. Three weeks of energy flowed out of one and into the other until they were both empty and full. When Fatima finally sat up she looked out the window and shouted, Sunset. Holy shit. Sunset. We’ve been here for six hours! And they laughed and rolled around against each other’s skin until it was dark.

  The night was full of parties, each one wilder than the last. Rez enjoyed them like presents, one sweaty dark room of dancing friends, one poolside bonfire, one round of shots after the next. They held hands all night long, entered and exited each party like the couple they never admitted to being. At Haleh Mernissi’s house he followed her outside to the pool, where she took off her dress and jumped in and he did the same and underwater they grabbed each other and kissed and slowly sank. They dried off on lawn chairs, her head in his lap.

  I miss Arash.

  Rez put his hand on her head and tried to keep his thoughts of Arash away. All day long he’d had to do this, turn his thoughts from the empty space where his friend should have been, laughing, making people laugh, giving congrats, getting them, celebrating his next step, to Harvard or Oxford or some other fancy place. Rez tried to guide her away from the empty space of him.

  He will find his way. A’s a smart guy. And a good guy. He’ll figure it out.

  Fatima looked up at him, her eyes alive, black planets all their own.

  He already has, Rez. He’s already figured it out.

  He woke in a hotel room, Fatima beside him as a mass of hair and skin, the bedside lamp still on; condom wrappers, Red Bulls, half-smoked joints all over the table and floor. He felt the great freedom of it, waking in a bed with a girl. He stood and walked to the curtains, which he pulled aside just enough to see the sixteenth-floor view down onto the highways of Irvine, the neat business parks and sprawled-out shopping malls with parking structures that ran up against the strawberry fields where men and women crouched, covered mouths and noses, heads and hands, to pick and pick and pick in the cool morning sun. He let go the curtain and went back to bed. The first day of summer. High school done. Childhood done. Life at home nearly done. His skin shivered at the thrill of it and he pulled the sheets up over his shoulders and put his body next to Fatima until he was hard and she was awake and they were fucking, quietly at first and then loudly, in a hotel room, like adults.

  They ate lunch at a fancy place in Corona del Mar where they were the only ones under sixty. The old men stared at Fatima in her cocktail dress and heels and washed-clean face. They stared at Rez too and a few of them smiled. The drugs left them hollow and wanting and though it was long past lunch they ate breakfast and drank champagne and orange juice and coffee. They both wore sunglasses and neither spoke between bites and Rez let Fatima’s bare foot travel up and down the inside of his leg.

  On the ride home he looked out the window at the waves off Highway 1 and hoped for a swell big enough to call Matthews and work off the hangover with a long session in the water but the waves looked mushy and Rez felt so sleepy that when Fatima started switching stations, a habit that drove him crazy, he almost didn’t notice until he did because each station she turned to played a version of the same thing: breaking news, breaking news, breaking news. DJs that normally sounded like jocks or beauty queens were serious and scared and some of them already angry, reading off the bits of information as it came in. South Coast Plaza, at least four gunmen still loose, a suicide vest discovered, undetonated, people held hostage in stores, security footage showing attackers firing at random in the food court, in department stores, at the carousel. One of Southern California’s largest high-end malls … At this point, untold dead … Surrounding areas shut down for two miles in every direction … a live situation. Around them cars slowed and some pulled over. Fatima drove twenty and then ten and then five miles an hour and whispered, Oh my God, Oh my God, under her breath. She turned to the NPR station, the same one Arash listened to, and the announcer, her voice steady, told them, This just in, we have confirmation of the identity of two of what seem to be six attackers. Fatima stopped the car in the middle of the road and there were the names, a son and daughter of Islam. Rez watched her hands drop off the wheel and into her lap.

  Pull over. You’ve got to pull over. You can’t park in the middle of the street.

  She started to cry. Rez reached for the wheel.

  Here. Just press the gas pedal a little bit. Can you do that?

  She shook her head no but her knee moved and Rez steered the car to the shoulder, where others had parked and sat head forward, listening to their radios, fingers on their phones. They were less than twenty miles from it. T
wenty miles south and Rez looked around for signs of a massacre and saw traffic lights that still turned colors, an ocean that kept churning, and bougainvillea swaying up and down in the breeze. Fatima was crying and there was untold death close by, but otherwise everything was ok, it was going to be ok, like all the other shootings, this would be ok. Rez put a hand on Fatima’s thigh.

  Stop. Don’t.

  Her voice was caught in the back of her throat and she didn’t clear it so when she spoke it sounded like a growl.

  Leave me alone.

  It’s gonna be ok. This shit happens now. It’s the way the world is and it will pass just like the other shootings and bombings. This is just the—

  No. No. No. This is not going to just pass. We are fucked. At a mall?! What if there were children? This is right here. Here! Where we live!

  She stopped and heaved in a breath and wiped her nose.

  Maybe it will pass for you, since all you do is try to pass as some white surfer dude … maybe everything just passes for Rez.

  Rez felt her jab in the middle of his chest, and shame like a hot liquid swallowed too fast spread through the middle of him and he moved away from her, considered getting out of the car and then thought about the walk home, the long miles to his door.

  Whatever. Just take me home.

  She wiped her nose again and started the car. They drove and even though he was too angry to look, he did, every few minutes, to see if she was still beautiful, to see if he could stop liking her right now, forget about her face and hair and mouth and damn her in his mind, but there she was, wild hair and smooth skin and shiny black eyes. When he couldn’t glance at her anymore, he turned his head and looked out the open window at the world of his home. They stopped at a red light and Rez saw the driver beside them, a middle-aged woman with gray in her black hair, younger than his mom, crying, both hands on the wheel. Rez heard the radio in her car … the death toll continues to rise and one gunman, a woman, has been injured by authorities … the situation remains dangerous … law enforcement encourages all residents to keep away from Costa Mesa, and immediately report any suspicious activity should this be part of a larger attack … The woman stared back at Rez and Rez held still with a singular thought in his brain: Will she know? Do I look it? Can she tell? The woman, her cheeks streaked with makeup and her eyes wet, peered at him and then past him to Fatima and her face hardened and Rez heard her sobs skip and her breath catch and then the glass of her car window rose between them and severed the air.

  Fatima dropped him off in front of his house and Rez pushed himself to forget what she’d said, to lean in and kiss her, to comfort her and say something like It’s going to be ok, but she did not bend to him, did not take her eyes off the road. He tried a last time.

  Call me.

  —

  Last night was fun. With you. I had fun with you.

  —

  We can have fun this summer. Things will get better and then we move north. Remember? You said you couldn’t wait …

  —

  He got out, closed the door on her silence, and opened the door to the house. No one was home and he moved as quietly as he could, grabbed a towel from the laundry room and took it to the edge of the pool and spread it over the green grass beside the blue water and then took off his shirt and his shoes and pants and lay down to bake his worn body until he felt some calm.

  22

  First it never happened and then it happened all the time. Sometimes once a week, sometimes a few times a day, but it didn’t matter because he thought about it every time he left the house and so the summer was fucked. For a few days after the massacre Rez stayed home, like most people, and watched the news, cycle after cycle on all the channels, every few hours a new detail, a bad detail, to capture the attention and keep you glued. Eighty-three dead. The Spanish tile fountain filled with blood and the floating bodies of two security guards. Men and women and children hidden in dressing rooms, restrooms, clothes racks, play structures, air-conditioning vents. Eighty-three dead. Twelve children. Six attackers. Two Yemeni men, two Iraqi women, a brother and sister from Saudi Arabia. Three of them asylum seekers. Three American-born. They all left the same statement on their Twitter accounts. The same sentence with no remorse: And we will strike at the heart of America’s most sacred center, where the sins of usury, vanity, devotion to false gods, collide, where the souls are damned long before we destroy them. And then a prayer. There were images of the food court, the glass atrium blown off, shards piercing the bodies of the dead, dressing room mirrors streaked with blood, mannequins toppled over and beheaded. Only Fox, and the Internet, showed those images, but everyone talked about them and debate ramped up on values and freedoms and the coming clash of civilizations. Rez thought of the practicing-Muslim families he knew, Omid’s, Yuri’s, Arash’s, Fatima’s, and he thought about his own, his mother’s prayers when they left the house, the no-pork rule, the undercurrent of devotion from something long-ago believed in practice. Every house was different. Some had prayer rooms, some did not. Some of the women covered, most did not. Some fasted for Ramadan, some did not. Every one of them shopped. Most had been to that same mall because America was the great place where you could worship many things at once, until now. After a few days even Rez’s dad got tired of the news and one afternoon switched the channels until they found a James Bond marathon and the two of them sat easily and then happily through old ideas of danger and fear and courage.

  He didn’t feel like calling anyone and no one called him. Matthews was on vacation in Hawaii with his family and Arash hadn’t answered his phone in weeks and Rez was still angry with Fatima for what she’d said about his being a poser and how it was and wasn’t true.

  On the third day he wanted to get outside and left around sunset to go for a walk. Old Mr. Haas stood across the street, his hand in tiny scissors trimming a bonsai tree. Rez raised his arm and waved and shouted, Good afternoon! And the old man, who always, at least, waved, put a palm up but did not shake it, left it frozen in the air and then pushed the air back as if to say, stay back. Then he put his scissors in his pocket and moved into the shadows of his garage. Because that was the first time and it hadn’t really started happening yet and Mr. Haas was an old kook, Rez shrugged it off and kept walking up the street toward the cul-de-sac that led to the trailhead and then up to the sagebrush and cacti.

  Then it happened again. And again. In instances big and small. Sometimes nothing more than extra-long stares, the eyes asking, Mexican? Middle Eastern? Where from? Should I be scared? Are you the same evil? And Rez forced himself to look back and say hello or smile. As long as they didn’t know his name, that was as far as things went. Only when he showed his name did it get serious, his driver’s license to buy rolling papers, his debit cards to get a sandwich after pickup soccer or to buy a brick of surf wax at the store across from the ninety-nine steps, that’s when the situation would change. Refusal to sell goods or an error in the transaction, or a hard look and then the question, like a cop would ask, in the same right-to-know tone: Where is this name from? To which Rez either answered Iran, or kept silent, grabbed his card and left.

  This was not the summer he had planned. No pool parties, no beach fires, no hangouts or trips to Vegas, everybody stuck at home because of the massacre. And the stories like the one about Hassan the day after it happened and how the cops stopped him for a broken taillight and then took him to the INS, where he sat in a refrigerated room with lights that didn’t turn off for two days while his parents tried to find him. He posted about it on Twitter but not a lot of people responded. The air was filled with other noises. Everyone on the radio or television or Internet spewed presidential proclamations, acts of Congress, news of local civilian curfews, and then the death count. The death count that kept rising. The mall with the ring of flowers and candles five feet deep outside its modern glass storefronts. A few times Rez thought, How could this be? This is Laguna Beach, where everyone, even the most uptight housewife, l
earned how to relax, chill, be kind. It was the way. The beach demanded it. The wealth made it possible. He had known nothing else his whole life. But now his whole life included this, and this included going to the car wash with his dad and waiting for the Mexicans and Salvadoreans to hand-dry the car as a man in golf pants walked past and spat down on the ground, casually, on the toe of Rez’s father’s shoe. His father didn’t look down but Rez did and the man walked slowly on, as if blameless. One of the car wash employees brought over a rag and handed it to Rez’s dad. For your shoe. And walked away. No one said anything after that.

  It can’t stay this way forever, Rez thought, day in and day out. After the trip he’d come home and find Omid and Hassan at the gazebo in Laguna Beach and they would smoke and watch the tourists from Riverside and Death Valley eat frozen yogurt and buy T-shirts that declared LOVE SAND and CALIFORNIA RIVIERA and everyone would do as before: Relax. Chill. Be kind.

  When it was time for the trip, Matthews started the nonstop texts: Are you ready? Dude are you listo? Can you hear that? It’s a Bali girl calling your name … Rez wanted to say more than Yeah man, let’s do this! but he was tired and stressed. For a month he did a hundred sit-ups and a hundred push-ups every morning and before bed to get in shape for waves he had only ever read about, rides he could not even imagine. He was completely packed a week before his flight and tried not to read the guidebook to Bali more than once all the way through. Indonesia. An island chain made of volcanic residue, majority-Muslim population, sophisticated craft culture. Every ten minutes he wanted to go up to his mom or dad and tell them how much this meant to him, the ticket and traveler’s checks and the emergency insurance card and the new backpack. When his father gave him the envelope with the tickets and the money, he looked away as Rez opened it.

  Your mother wanted to get you a watch. I told her this is what the American parents do. Send their children out for a test run. It is a good practice. Maybe you will come to see your place in the world.