by Joshua Corin
“How can there be no paper shredder in here? I’d have thought it came with the desk and the phone.”
“My lawyers assured me that at worst, if what I propose here becomes codified into a bill and that bill becomes codified into law by the state assembly, and with your help, Poncho, as always, they will codify it, if all of that were to occur, when all of that does occur, there will be lawsuits from the usual suspects. But I’m not a fool, Poncho. You asked me who else knows I’m going to read this speech. What if I told you that I’ve already been in touch with the president of the Muslim-American Coalition and that later this afternoon, he’s going to announce his support for my proposal. Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s due diligence.”
This time it was Judy who touched Poncho on the arm.
She nodded to him.
He frowned.
She waited.
He shrugged.
And put the file back on the desk.
“Thank you, sir,” she told the governor. “I’ll send someone in to get the speech transcribed for the TelePrompTer.”
“Yes, thank you, Judy. You’re a peach. And Poncho, I need you with me on this. I can’t be leading the charge if I have to be looking over my shoulder. And you understand why I have to give this speech today, don’t you?”
“Because you’re guaranteed the national spotlight,” Poncho muttered.
“There he is. There’s my Sun Tzu.”
Poncho and Judy left the governor’s office and passed several Homeland Security agents waiting in the anteroom.
“Shouldn’t you be a part of that briefing?” Poncho leaned toward his ex-wife’s ear. “So you can—”
But Judy accelerated her gait, and Poncho did, too. She cantered toward her office. Poncho had to gallop just to keep up. They finally reached their destination, and Judy instructed that he shut the door and shut the door he did and then, without his asking, she handed him a Coke.
“Judy,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
She held up a finger—one minute—and opened her computer’s browser. Poncho stood behind her and watched.
“A few months ago,” she said, as she surfed through online folders, “I reorganized all official communication to and from the executive. And by reorganize, I mean organize. I created automated spreadsheets that correlated internal memos with their subject lines. I have every draft of every public speech given not only by the governor but also by the lieutenant governor and by the attorney general sorted accordingly.”
“Yeah, that sounds like you. I seem to recall you micromanaging my sock drawer.”
Judy ignored his quip and continued, “To get this system to work, I had to make sure everyone was using the same software. I chose this software because it is cloud based and encrypted and has a robust editing suite for mobile devices should we be stuck overnight in Macon or Savannah.”
“Is any of this supposed to mean anything to me?”
“Because it is cloud based and because I have administrator privileges, I can check when any new document has been added and when any old document has been changed. Plus, I have it set so that every printed copy has the current file metadata listed in a footer on every page so we can cross-check if need be.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“The speech he showed us today was written using this software. It was printed using this software. And I think you’ll agree with me that it’s a detailed speech. It specifically mentions today’s events.”
Poncho sighed, sipped his Coke. “He wasn’t lying, Judy. The ideas in that speech, the solution he’s proposing, they’ve been on his mind for a while. And I don’t know if it’s the worst solution in the world. It benefits our Muslim Americans, it benefits our—”
“We’ll talk about why you’re wrong in a minute. Now, when you were reading the speech, did you happen to notice the metadata listed in the footer of every page?”
“Yeah, I may have missed it.”
“I didn’t. Because according to the metadata, this document, this speech, which details the attacks both here and in Dearborn, was last revised yesterday at 10:08 p.m.”
Judy waited for Poncho to say something, anything. She waited for him to dismiss her allegations. She waited for him to open that big mouth of his and prove her wrong, as he so enjoyed doing.
She waited. And waited. And waited.
“I just checked the system,” she said quietly, “to make sure it wasn’t a glitch. Here’s the file. Last revision was yesterday, 10:08 p.m. It even records the IP address he used. Poncho, I’m sorry, but I got to ask the question out loud. I just got to. How did he know to write about these terrorist attacks eight hours before they even happened?”
Poncho collapsed into his chair.
Their collective silence hung over the room like a fog. The air thickened. The sound of the air conditioner seemed to fade far away. They sat among a thousand tons of weight and it was crushing them and a small part of them wanted to be crushed.
“We need to do something,” said Poncho. “Or we don’t.”
“We don’t do something,” replied Judy, “and we’re complicit.”
“That’s not…and we don’t even know for sure what we’d be complicit in…or if there’s a context we’re missing…”
“A context?”
“Yes, because I refuse to believe that this man, one of my oldest friends, would have been a part of…of…this…unless there was some kind of overarching rationale—”
“You read his rationale!”
“Then we’re not seeing the whole picture!”
Judy shook her head, disgusted. “No, the problem, Sun Tzu, is you’re sitting there wondering if the ends justify the means.”
“That’s Machiavellian.”
“Because you’ve already said you agree with the end result. You agree with this godforsaken solution he’s about to propose on live TV.”
“If I agree with part of it, Judy, I’m not the only one. You seem to think the nation is going to hear him say these words and rise up as one and denounce him. And some will. And some of those who demonize him the loudest will be an embarrassment. And some of those who rise up in support of what he’s saying will be an embarrassment. And the heart of the matter will lie somewhere in the middle. Because that’s where you can always find it. However—”
“However?”
“Yes. However. Because Machiavelli’s dead. And now we’ve got a couple hundred people who could have died as well, and for that, there’s got to be a reckoning. There were children in those mosques.”
“Would it have been okay if the victims had only been adults?”
“For Lord’s sake, woman, I’m saying I agree with you! So what do we do about it?”
Over the next few minutes, the formerly married couple stitched together a plan. Judy wanted to prevent the governor from delivering his catalytic, cataclysmic speech, but Poncho convinced her that the speech had been delivered. Only then, in the aftermath, might they be able to identify the extent of their enemies.
“I thought you didn’t believe in enemies,” said Judy.
“This day,” Poncho replied, “is giving my faith a real hard time.”
Chapter 27
“My fellow Americans, good afternoon. I am speaking to you today on behalf of myself and the governor of Michigan. He and I have been in close contact for several hours now, and this joint statement was put together by the combined efforts of his excellent staff and my own.
“This morning, our country experienced two irredeemable acts of terrorism. Make no mistake. This was terrorism. Though in recent years, we have come to expect such barbaric and cowardly offenses to be committed by Muslims against the Western world, against God-fearing Christians, today’s actions remind us that terrorism does not discriminate. Today’s victims we
re unarmed civilians. They were women and men and children. Many of them were American citizens. And their deaths will be avenged.
“I come to you today, though, not to point my finger at the problem. We all by now can identify it. There are those among us who are driven by fear and by hate, and their numbers are small and they will be defeated. An assault on American soil is an assault on every American. Their values stand antithetical to our own. Theirs are the values of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Their fates will be the fates of those terrible men.
“What we cannot ignore, though, is that today’s tragedy was targeted against Muslims living in America. What we can ignore no longer is the threat of violence against Muslims living in America, which has been ongoing since September 11, 2001, if not earlier. One could argue that the anti-Muslim sentiment we’ve exhibited has been a natural by-product of September eleventh. We were attacked by Muslims and so we attack Muslims. I am here today to remind everyone that this behavior is shortsighted and counterproductive.
“Muslims have lived among us in this wonderful country for hundreds of years. Muslim Americans are some of the hardest working men and women in our armed forces, in our corporations, and in the public sector. Our Founding Fathers, brilliant gentlemen such as Adams and Jefferson and Franklin, wrote highly of them. To hate Muslims is to disagree with our Founding Fathers. To hate Muslims in America is to hate Muhammad Ali and Shaquille O’Neal. To hate Muslims in America is to hate entertainers like Dave Chappelle and Akon, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube, Mos Def. To hate Muslims in America is to hate Dr. Oz.
“But I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that maybe they should be hated. You’re thinking about the attack on the USS Cole and about the World Trade Center and about San Bernardino and about the bombings at the Boston Marathon and how afraid those attacks made you and how it’s only fair that, since Muslims perpetrated these attacks, Muslims should have to shoulder the blame. I know you’re thinking this because I thought it, too. I was angry. I wanted someone to suffer. And haven’t we all heard about the oppressiveness of Sharia law? Haven’t we all read about the vicious, medieval beheadings? If this is what the Quran preaches, then this is what the Muslims believe, and if this is what the Muslims believe, we must rid ourselves of them the way a body rids itself of infection. And so we yell at them to go home and we smash their windows and we even beat a few of them up until they get the message that they’re not welcome.
“As the governor of a Southern state, this behavior is beginning to sound far too familiar. It wasn’t long ago we treated our African American brothers and sisters exactly the same. So believe me when I say to you today, my fellow Americans, that what happened this morning here in Atlanta and what happened this morning in Dearborn were nothing short of lynchings.
“Are we going to stand by and let this happen? Are we going to let it happen again? When we have the wisdom and ability to stop it?
“Our African American brothers and sisters did not deserve the violence perpetrated upon them any more than our Muslim brothers and sisters deserved it today. Because the Quran does not preach oppressiveness. The Quran does not preach violence. I’ve read it. Have you? I’ve read it because I wanted to learn about my enemy, and in reading it I learned they weren’t my enemy. I read it and I was reminded of the Gospels and I felt ashamed for my hate. I prayed to my Lord Jesus Christ to forgive me for my shortsightedness. For the Bible teaches us to greet each other not with closed fists but with open arms.
“I stand before you today and I say to my fellow Americans who are Muslim that we have been negligent toward you. We have let our devils blind us. We have been disrespectful and we are sorry and this mistreatment stops today. It stops here and now. Together, we will repair the damage that has been suffered. The question before us now, as always, is how.
“One alternative, of course, would be to simply police our American mosques and keep our Muslim American citizens under close supervision so as to protect them from hate crimes, but this would be a violation of their right to privacy.
“In reflecting on other alternative solutions, I look to our past. I am proud to call myself a Georgian, but I am not proud of some of the colder, bloodier events from our history, be it our aforementioned mistreatment of African Americans or our gross mistreatment of Native Americans. The Trail of Tears began here in Georgia. The Seminole, the Creek, the Cherokee and Choctaw and Chickasaw nations had their land taken by force and their people driven west. Thousands died. Unarmed civilians. Women and men and children. This is part of our legacy.
“As reparations, the federal government enacted several laws in the 1800s that led to the establishment of reservations for our Native American population. These reservations are self-governing and sovereign. They maintain their own court system. They are sanctuaries. They are one way for us to atone for the sins of the past and to protect an historically vulnerable population from any future malice. Reservations have provided our once-vulnerable Native American population with a source of identity and protection from harm. The rate of violent crimes against them has diminished exponentially, and the rate of Native Americans becoming millionaires has increased geometrically.
“We can do this again.
“The Muslim population of Georgia is estimated at just under 90,000. The Muslim population of Michigan is estimated at over 170,000. These are only two of our fifty states, only a small fraction of the 3.3 million Muslims living within our borders. These millions should not have to live in fear. We owe them peace of mind. We owe them community and security.
“Do not misunderstand my intentions here. I am not suggesting nor in any way advocating that any of this be accomplished by force. My goal here, and the goal of the governor of Michigan, is not to establish some ghastly internment camps. Our goal is to provide Muslim Americans who choose to move with a home within our borders. They cannot be allowed to suffer any more due to the actions of a few madmen.
“Both the state of Georgia and the state of Michigan have the land to give. Beautiful land. Rich soil. Should these proposals be accepted by our legislatures, we will work to make these new reservations as self-sufficient as we can. We will build modern homes and streets and outfit the area with a twenty-first century infrastructure. And we will do this in partnership with leaders from the Muslim American community so that their specific needs, be they cultural or aesthetic, are met. I am proud to announce that Azhar Shariq, president of the Muslim-American Coalition, has already agreed to assist us in this endeavor. Dr. Shariq is one of the foremost Muslim scholars in the world and has dedicated his life to the betterment of his people in America. He will be releasing a separate statement shortly.
“I wish I could stand here today and tell you that this will end hate. It won’t. There will always be those among us who are weak and who are fearful and who confuse violence with strength. The perpetrators of this morning’s acts of terror do not represent America, just as those nineteen terrorists on September eleventh did not represent Islam. We have it in our power to do good. Let us represent that America, to ourselves, and to the world.
“God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”
He spoke. And rapidly drank a glass of water.
Chapter 28
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” said Xana.
Jonesy, not fucking kidding her, merely shrugged and let her continue to bitch. She obviously needed to do something while the two of them waited for their interrogator to return, and in the short time he had known her, bitching had always seemed to provide solace, hadn’t it?
“How could I be a coconspirator? I have an airtight alibi, which they could easily check if they fucking wanted to check, which they obviously don’t.”
“I don’t think they suspect you of piloting the drone, Groucho.”
Xana pounded a fist against the table. “This is absurd!”
“Well…”
“Seriously?”
“Kafkaesque, maybe, but to call it absurd takes it to a level I’m not comfortable admitting.”
“Do I look comfortable to you, Jonesy?”
The old man shrugged a third time. Although certainly it wasn’t only the third time today. Merely the third time in the past five minutes. The muscles in his shoulders were feeling the burn. So were his eyes, come to think of it. He had never suffered from allergies until moving to Atlanta, but every day since, even in the winter, his eyes watered without provocation and his nose dribbled and no amount of over-the-counter medication helped. He had even tried a few homeopathic remedies recommended to him by colleagues. He had always been a proponent of open-minded experimentation. Alas, no luck. And so he’d taken to carrying a packet of Kleenex with him wherever he went, including to bed.
An ex had once suggested that his cat was to blame.
One of the primary reasons she was an ex.
“None of this ever happened to me when I was drinking,” said Xana. “There was no absurdity in my life.”
“From your perspective.”
“Well, yes, Jonesy. I’m not a mind reader. I don’t even wish I were a mind reader. I’d probably get a lobotomy. Which brings us back to drink, I suppose. Who was it that coined the phrase ‘liquid lobotomy’? They deserve a prize. I’m not naive; I’ve always been aware that absurdity exists. I’ve read Gibbon. But it was what happened to other people. My life was not chaotic or out of control or—”
“From your perspective.”
Xana glared at him. “I want a new lawyer.”
“And I want a new client. Looks like we’re stuck with each other.” Jonesy glanced at the door. When were the authorities going to return? Were they using this time to shore up their evidence? Were they waiting on a prosecutor or a judge? The law moved ever so slowly, and Jonesy had never been a patient man. Now a fine bottle of Jameson—that could make time zoom like a shooting star. And what a fun, fast ride the world became! Consequences lost their heft when an hour lasted only a minute. “What do you miss most about drinking, Groucho?”
