by Stephen Dau
“Welcome to America,” someone whispers, and the room erupts into laughter.
23
He remembers talking with one of his sponsors, just after he arrived in America. He remembers asking her why they were helping him.
“We are the right hand,” she said.
She was the director of the Friends International Assistance Society, the Quaker organization that helped people like him. She was heavyset and wore thick glasses, and she had a kindly face, but tired, her soft brown eyes deep and compassionate. She had just given him the small allowance he could use for “incidental expenses,” as they were called, which at this time usually consisted of pizza and bottomless cups of cola. He would meet with her regularly, every few weeks, and she would inquire after his progress, his health, his social adjustment. She would ask about his host family, which the society had found through an interfaith cooperative, and his school, his classes, his friends. He always painted for her a pleasant, sanitized picture, because he felt it would be rude to do otherwise.
He remembers her handing him this little sum of money sealed in a tiny white envelope, and he asked her why she did it, why she helped people like him. She looked at him for a moment from across her cheap metal desk, and then she said, “We are the right hand.”
This confused him. “The right hand of what?” he asked. “God?” He was amazed, because this was the kind of thing only zealots thought highly enough of themselves to say, and this woman was no zealot. But she laughed gently.
“No, nothing so bold.” She glanced out the window briefly, as though looking for permission to continue; then she looked back to him. “Unfortunately,” she said, “our country sometimes has a habit of making a mess with its left hand and cleaning it up with its right. We are the right hand.”
24
The kid saved me. I should probably make that point. He showed me the way out. I saw him running down the street out of the corner of my eye, and out of habit I lifted my weapon toward him. I saw that he was running away from me, and I looked around, at what we had just done, and I saw this kid run down an alley, and I followed him. It wasn’t logical. There was no reason in it. He could have been leading me anywhere, death trap or salvation, and I didn’t care which. You always have choices, but there are times when the split second before you is so starkly illuminated, it becomes clear that everything you are, and everything you are ever going to be, hangs in the balance. And I had one choice to make, which is basically the choice you always have to make in any situation: stay or go.
So I went. I followed him. I didn’t care where he led me. And he ducked between some houses and down to the river, and then north along the river. I stayed far enough back that he didn’t know I was there, which was pretty easy, because the moonlight seemed to shine on everything, and I could see him clearly up ahead of me, and the noise from the river, wide and beautiful and cursed, drowned out everything else.
25
They share a conversation in the kitchen, in the suburbs, Cutie and Ad-son clearing up after dinner, the clinking of plates and glasses in the sink, the canned echo of laughter from the television in the family room, the low hum of the dishwasher, and Mrs. Martin sitting alone with him at one corner of the kitchen table.
“I’d like to talk to you about something, Jonas,” she says, and for a moment he suspects she is on the verge of reaching out to grasp his hand. “Something important.”
“Okay.”
“You have traveled a long way to come to us, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you must have had many difficult experiences. Some horrible things must have happened to you.”
“Yes.”
“Jonas, did you ever think that perhaps there is a larger plan at work? Did you ever think that maybe you were brought here for a reason?”
“Well, I don’t … I mean, I’m not sure.”
“Jonas, I need to tell you that there is a way to clear away all of these horrible experiences. A way to find comfort. A way to be forgiven for all of your sins.”
“Yes, well…”
“Jonas, I’m going to ask you probably the most important question you will ever be asked.”
“Are you?”
“It’s the same question I was asked years ago, the same question Mr. Martin was asked, and our children. We have all done this.”
“Okay, but…”
“Jonas, will you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior?”
“My what?”
“Your personal Lord and savior. Will you establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”
“My … savior from what?”
“From your sins, of course.”
“My sins?”
“Yes, Jonas. Your sins. After all, we are all sinners in the eyes of the Lord.”
“But were we not created in His image?”
“That was before. Before we sinned. Now we are all sinners, and must seek His forgiveness by accepting Jesus, whom He sent to die for us, to cleanse us of our sins.”
“All our sins?”
“Yes. But we must accept Him first.”
“All the sins of all the world?”
“Yes, Jonas.”
“Then he must truly have His hands full.”
26
Where do you go in your mind, Paul asks, and Jonas tells him sometimes he travels someplace else. He goes there in his dreams or in his waking thoughts, but when he is there, he is really there. He stands up high on the southern mountain, the wind blasting up from the far valley below, the first glow of sunrise pale in the east. The smoke, now black and ominous, rises from the burning village, and gunshots echo methodically from the rocks. No, Jonas tells him, this place is real. As real as the pen in your hand, as you note it, as real as the paper and ink. As real as that morning when it comes roaring back to him, standing on the precipice, so scared he can’t feel a thing.
And then he’s back, the poltergeist fading in the rearview mirror of Paul’s silver statue, and he’s safe, and maybe he understands a little bit more, and maybe he is ever so slightly wiser.
27
He remembers a clear day on the hill overlooking the village. The rapid, light-handed tapping of metal on stone echoing out over the valley as the mason labors beside a freshly dug grave. The supine stone, destined to join the chorus of standing rocks which either reach for or point to God, is the same shape, but a shade lighter than its neighbors, which have weathered months or years or centuries and darkened accordingly, their rows on the hillside presenting a graded palette of loss.
He remembers staying in the mosque after prayers, kneeling with his eyes closed while everyone else stood to leave.
“Peace be upon you.”
“And upon you.”
He remembers the entire village weeping, and his father’s angry vows of revenge. He remembers feeling as though there were something overhead, a lens or a prism, an inverted pyramid, serving as a conduit, through which all the world’s sorrow was focused.
He remembers how they lowered them into the wounded earth, how they could have been sacks of laundry, or wool rugs wrapped in their protective gauze.
He remembers how, despite his vehement wishes, peace didn’t come to him through prayers, or reading the Book, or fiery sermons, all of which served only to cloud his focus. So he learned to wait for it. He would stay a long time, waiting. Forever if he had to, kneeling on the mosque’s worn rugs, long after everyone else had left, keeping his eyes closed until he lost track of time, forcing himself to stay, to concentrate through boredom and aching knees and legs fallen asleep, until at last it came, entering his soul with a whisper.
28
When he cannot be outdoors, he escapes the bullying, the interminable host family, the simplistic classes, by hiding away in the high school’s library. If the rest of the school is institutional, spartan, coldly lit by fluorescent lights, the library is an oasis of wooden bookshelves and learning, as though built a h
undred years earlier. At some point, he comes to realize that this is because it was built years earlier, and while the rest of the school has been recently renovated—shiny, stainless-steel laboratory equipment in the science department, new classrooms filled with sparkling plastic-and-Formica-topped desks, whiteboards instead of chalkboards, a new athletics stadium—the library has undergone no such renovation. Unrefurbished as it is, timeworn and outdated though its shelves and tables and massive card-catalog file are, it is the best-appointed library Jonas has ever seen. As soon as he discovers it, almost by accident one afternoon while wandering the halls, he spends all his free time there.
He reads not only the Bible he has been given, but reads about it, about how it was created. He learns about the Council of Nicaea, where, as far as he can tell, a bunch of priests got together and determined, more or less arbitrarily, what would be included in the Book and what would not. He reads about what was not. He reads about the Apocrypha, the Gospel According to Thomas, and Peter and James. He reads about the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. He is utterly fascinated by the thought that these writings had survived nearly two thousand years buried in the desert, that they had to be buried so that they might survive.
Often it is dark when he leaves the library, his footfalls echoing from the linoleum floor and institutional green tiles of the hallway. He stays so late that he is nearly locked in the building several times, and has to be let out by the scowling janitor. But he thinks to himself that, with so much he does not know, so much reading to do, this might not be so bad, to be sealed inside such a bastion of knowledge overnight, or for a weekend at the very most.
29
The recruiters came and talked with us in school, and I remember it like yesterday. I wasn’t interested. I told them I wanted to do something good. I told them I wanted to help people. I told them I couldn’t do it, told them I wasn’t interested.
But they told me that there was no better way to do good and to help people. They told me they helped people all the time. Doing good was what they were about. Plus they were going to pay me. Where else could I get paid for helping people? Plus they would pay for my college. Plus, in addition to helping people, and paying me, and paying for my college, they would teach me a skill. I would be helping people, and seeing the world, and earning money, and having college paid for, and learning a skill that I could use later to earn money and help people.
In the end, it was a pretty easy decision.
30
He makes it into the news twice.
The first time, he is mentioned within a single sentence, in the form of a number. He is one of eighteen injured civilians. Twelve killed, eighteen injured. When she thinks he is old enough, the director of the Friends International Assistance Society tentatively shows him the newspaper clipping, which she has kept for long enough that it is just beginning to yellow at the edges. The article is short, and he has to read it three times before he realizes that he is not reading about someone else. He catches himself feeling that feeling, that momentary luxury of denial, of thinking, Oh, well, at least there were survivors. He is surprised at how little space the story occupies.
Then he wonders which number he was.
“I think that I was number five,” he says. “Of the eighteen.”
“Why do you think that?”
“It just feels right.”
31
He walks down the high school hallway. It’s late in the day, after hours, and Jonas has been in the library since the final bell. He has been reading once again about the Bible. He has become obsessed with it.
He has learned that the original son of God, prince of peace, savior of the world, was Caesar Augustus, that these honorifics were bestowed upon him by the Roman senate. This increases Jonas’s admiration for the early Christians, for their acts of defiance, appropriating the emperor’s titles to their crucified leader, an act that virtually guaranteed their own executions. And even though Mrs. Martin has told him repeatedly that the Book is the inerrant word of God, that it contains only historical facts, the more he learns, the more he comes to believe that the writings themselves live in metaphor, that they seek not to convey factual information, but to reveal larger truths. He comes to believe that by insisting on taking them literally, Mrs. Martin manages to simultaneously denigrate the scriptures and paint herself a fool.
And so he walks down the hallway after hours, considering the meaning of spiritual truth, the enlightened path, and suddenly there is one of them, the big kid with freckles, standing next to the lockers and laughing with several of his friends.
They have been waiting for him.
“Hey, Apu,” says the freckled kid, sneering, and shoves Jonas into the bank of lockers, holds his head against the wall, reaches down to try to do something with his underwear.
Jonas is flooded with despair. Something snaps, something in his mind. Whatever has allowed him to remain passive and afraid snaps like a thread. He feels it, feels the change, as his entire body becomes one single, collective muscle.
He lifts his knee hard into the kid’s crotch, grabs a finger and pulls it back, yanking his arm, trips him to the ground. The freckle-faced kid becomes an object, a talisman through which Jonas focuses his rage.
He grabs a textbook from the floor and slams it edgewise down into the face, listens to the bridge of the nose snap, watches twin rivulets of blood flow over the mouth, spreading a red stain on the shirt. The freckled kid lies prone on the ground, holding his face, and Jonas stomps on his knee with both feet, jumps on it up and down, over and over, trying desperately to break the leg. The kid’s friends struggle to pull Jonas off, but he breaks free and kicks the freckled kid in the head, opening a gash along the top of his skull.
From nowhere a teacher reaches in and, now with the help of the freckled kid’s friends, grabs Jonas and holds him down, pinning his outstretched arms to the ground.
He is assigned to the school psychologist. There are concerns about post-traumatic stress.
The next day he goes and talks with her. He is surprised by what they don’t know about him, by his constant need to explain himself in a way they might understand.
“Where did you get that scar,” she asks, looking at Jonas’s arm.
“I once fought a lion,” says Jonas, “and he gave me this.”
She is not buying it, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, she asks how he feels.
Eventually, she will tell him that he is fascinating to talk to, that she wants to help, but that her field of expertise does not include him, his “situation,” she will call it. But she knows someone, someone good, someone experienced, someone Jonas really needs to see.
“Based on what has happened, we can get a court order,” she says. “But I prefer you go voluntarily.”
And that’s when he starts going to see Paul.
But in the meantime, Jonas is happy to sit in her office and chat, and the conversation gets him out of gym class.
32
Another memory, like a faintly recalled dream. He is walking home from somewhere, across the rough, upturned sod, his breath forming the only clouds under the bright sun. As he approaches the house, his mother comes out the back door carrying a jug of tea and an earthenware cup. He vividly remembers that when she pours the tea, two streams come out: the liquid filling the cup, and the steam drifting up in a hazy mirror image, mingling with their breath.
Later, his father arrives, eclipsing the front door’s rectangle of light as he stoops to enter it. He is bearded, and wearing his shalwar, and carrying a large duffel. He has fractured memories of a meal, of his father smoking a pipe at the head of the table. They laugh, but it’s an uneasy laugh, as though they know that it is all just temporary.
After dinner, his father disappears into the back room. As his mother clears up, he rises from the table and creeps down the brief passageway, past a low, wooden bench, to peek his head around the corner and look into his parents’ bedroom. His father is laying his things out
on the floor, shirts and belts, and the plump duffel is open and leaning against the wall. In his memory, the interior of the bag glows as though filled with fireflies, but he knows this is a trick of his mind, looking backward, long after he has peered into it and seen that it is filled with money.
“Hey, get out of here, you little thief!” says his father, laughing. But this is where memory plays another trick. For is it a hearty, honest laugh? Does it not contain some hint of apprehension? Of frustration at the broken secrecy? Of irritation? Of anger? Or perhaps even hidden admiration for his son’s stealth, entering the room without being noticed?
It is impossible for him to tell, to look back and see clearly, and each attempt he makes to do so, to clarify his memory, sharpen its lines, results only in further blurring the picture, smudging it like a clumsy child playing with finger paints.
33
The second time he makes the news, a reporter phones him after getting wind of his story. The city has apparently become home to a sizable population of “displaced persons,” which has temporarily made it the subject of the national news cycle.
“People would be really interested,” says the reporter. “How you came here, how you’re making a life for yourself.” Noting Jonas’s reluctance, the reporter tries to generate a certain level of excitement, and ends up sounding like a game-show host when he says, “After all, you’re a success story!”
Jonas wants to ask about all the others, the “sizable population.” He wants to scream. He wants to tell him to go to hell.
In the end, he hangs up the phone on him, leaving the article to be written using different sources, other people, before referring obliquely to “countless others who live right here in our own area, some of them too traumatized to speak about their experiences.”
