by Davis Bunn
Yussuf’s head jerked in a tight spasm. “No. No call.”
“I don’t mean to pry.” Heather hesitated, then went on, “But the others here felt God telling them to make some unwanted turning.”
“No, is not a turning.” Yussuf refused to meet her gaze.
Heather leaned back, watching her husband.
John asked, “Why are you here in this hotel, Yussuf?”
The Arab did not reply.
“Did you come here because you felt called to do—?”
“Is impossible, this thing, what God wants.” His forehead was beaded with perspiration. “No man can see what I have seen, and now do this.”
John waited, and when no one else spoke, he said, “What if I went with you?”
“You do not know what you are saying.”
“I know God’s power has been upon us all,” John said. “What if the reason we’re all here is to offer you his strength in human form?”
His dark eyes scattered tension around the table. “You do not know me.”
Alisha replied, “We all know Jesus.”
Ruth said, “Tell us how we can help.”
The letter was tattered evidence of war’s calamity. The single sheet, stained and yellowed, shook in Yussuf’s hand like a tragic leaf. The others gathered about him downstairs as he waited by the entrance to the banqueting department. The kitchens were off the small, windowless conference rooms that served as spillovers from the larger chambers upstairs. The padded doors were shut, the corridor empty.
“This is a terrible thing,” Yussuf said.
Ruth Barrett said, “You are right, of course. It is impossible. We can’t be doing this.”
Yussuf glanced over. “You are making joke?”
“No, my brother. I am agreeing with you. Your fears and your anger are not just real, they are justified. But you know you have to do this.”
The placid features drew together in real pain. “But why?”
“Because God is using these acts. I did not understand it until I listened to each of us. We are gathered here with our deeds as living testimony to the power of God. Only he can bring hope to such impossible circumstances.” She spoke with the calm of a woman whose entire life had been centered upon worshiping that same one of whom she now spoke with such assurance. “Now let us join hands and pray one more time.”
The story had been told in the jumbled style of a man who had sought to blind himself from the memory. Yussuf had been working in his clinic, which served as a day surgery for the northern districts of Damascus, Syria’s capital. They were seeing more and more gunshot wounds as the civil war continued to escalate and draw ever closer to their city. Treatment centers like his had become increasingly sectarian. The hospitals in the Sunni districts only treated Sunni, and so forth. Yussuf’s clinic stood upon the main highway dividing the Alawite section from the Christian. He treated everyone.
That day, a gunman had burst into the clinic, hunting an opponent who was also Yussuf’s patient. He had shot the injured man, then turned his gun upon the three members of Yussuf’s staff who tried to stop him. One of them had been Yussuf’s sister.
This letter he now held had traveled to Damascus, then overland to Beirut, where his wife had wept over the words and sent it on to him in New York. How the gunman had escaped to New York, where he worked in the kitchen of the hotel on Times Square. He had found Jesus, and he had written the doctor to ask his forgiveness.
Which Yussuf could not give. “My sister’s children, they grow up without a mother.” He wept openly now. “My daughter, she was named for her. My sister was not even meant to be working that day. She came because I was shorthanded. I murdered her. My own flesh and blood.”
Ruth and John and Heather and Jenny and Alisha, they all stood about him. Their hands rested upon him and upon the shoulders of each other. Bound together in concern for a man who had been a stranger until only minutes ago. John said, “Ask Jesus what you should do.”
“I cannot,” he wept. “I cannot do this thing.”
Then the padded doors leading to the kitchen swung open. Not one man emerged, but three. All were Arabs. Two wore silver crosses about their necks, and supported the man in the middle, who wept harder than Yussuf. When the man in the center saw the surgeon, he collapsed, falling to his knees and gripping the doctor by the legs.
Hard as it was, painful as it felt even to him, John had the distinct impression that it was also one of the most beautiful moments of his entire life. Watching the doctor reach out his hands, lift the man from the carpet, and embrace him.
Afterwards Yussuf accepted their invitation and returned to the table by the windows. Yussuf knew he probably should acknowledge the gift they had granted him, but just then he felt utterly undone by the experience by the kitchen.
The others looked exactly like he felt, their features slack and their limbs nearly motionless. They reminded Yussuf of patients who had crowded his waiting room following the first few attacks. After the Syrian civil war had brewed for a time, people grew a thicker skin, a frightening tolerance, especially the children. Yussuf had found it incredible how fast children adapted to new circumstances, even civil war. It was why he had left behind his beloved homeland, abandoning his people in their hour of need. He had felt he had no choice, after hearing his youngest daughter giggle over her dolls while they hid in the bomb shelter one night. People could adapt to anything. But the first assaults were still emotionally traumatizing. That was what he saw among those sharing the two small tables. People trying to make sense out of the impossible emotions and events.
What made the strongest impact was seeing the invisible hand of God made real. The power of love, the gift of hope they had all witnessed, was as strong as a physical onslaught. They sat and watched silently as the waiter from downstairs, the same Syrian Alawite who had murdered Yussuf’s sister, laid out a feast. His name was Mahmut, and he continued to shed tears as he and the two Arab pastors unloaded the trolley. They left glasses and water pitchers and a coffee service on the second trolley, there for anyone who wished to help themselves. Mahmut was following an Alawite tradition, old as the Syrian hills, whereby a penitent offered a feast to those he had wronged. It was part of the formal act of apology, seeking to lighten the hand that held the rod or the blade.
Yussuf backed from the tables without turning away. Had he turned his back on the gift of food, Mahmut would rightly have seen this as rejection. So Yussuf moved away just far enough for his words to be masked by the lobby’s tumult, and brought out his phone.
The number he dialed was answered on the first ring. The voice demanded, “Did you do it?”
“With the help of friends.”
“What? You let others be there and told me to stay away? How is this possible?”
“I only met them here. You are my friend, my prayer partner—”
“I do not understand.”
“No. Which is why you need to come and witness this for yourself. How soon can you arrive?”
“Soon. I am in a café across the square.”
Yussuf spun about, then remembered himself and turned back to face the table while he said into his phone, “Can this be true?”
“I wanted to be near in case you needed my help.”
“We are at the back of the lobby, in the alcove overlooking the square.”
“Five minutes, perhaps a bit longer. The square is jammed, and the police are out in force.”
Yussuf cut the connection just as Mahmut finished laying out the meal. Mahmut stood by the tables, back to the windows, hands clasped in front of him, his head bowed. His tear-streaked face drew stares from across the lobby. Twice the pastors had to step away and stop some manager from intervening.
“I thank you,” Yussuf finally said.
“How may I be of further service?” came from Mahmut.
“There is nothing I require, brother.”
“There must be something.”
The words were
a formality, spoken in Arabic, which made them even more powerful as far as Yussuf was concerned. “I would appreciate your prayers.”
The Alawite sect contained a rigid caste structure, one that trapped its members from the moment they took their first breath. To have a Christian whom he had wronged request a spiritual boon was, well, unthinkable. Mahmut stared at him, but it was un likely he saw anything through his tears. “You would let me do this thing?”
“I would treat it as an honor. Pray for me, for my friends here, for our mission.”
“What mission is this, may one ask?”
“I do not know.” Yussuf could see that Mahmut did not believe him. So he continued, “We have been drawn together by God’s hand. We did not know one another until just before I met you. If they had not found me here, I would not have had the strength to come downstairs.”
“Then I am in their debt as well.”
Yussuf said in English, “Mahmut thanks you for the role you played, the strength you granted me.”
Ruth Barrett asked, “Are you and your friends able to join us?”
The two pastors lay open palms upon their hearts and backed away. Mahmut said, “I must return to my duties. Please excuse me.”
“Wait.” Yussuf took a pad and pen, and wrote down his cellphone and email address. “Contact me. I will tell you what this mission proves to be.”
Mahmut stared at the paper as though it was his manumission. “I am your humble servant.”
When they embraced a final time, Yussuf found himself becoming unbelievably calm. His heart beat at the slow pace of a funeral drum. So many burdens rested upon his people. So many wounds no human hand could heal. “Thank you for writing to me, Mahmut,” he said. “Go in peace.”
8
“In our union …”
NEW YORK CITY
Trent shifted to the sofa in the corner of Barry’s outer office. In the space of twenty-five minutes, three different teams passed by the secretaries’ desks. There were nineteen in all, eight women and eleven men. Most were in their late twenties and early thirties. They carried computers and tablets and easels and rolled plastic displays and flat artist valises crammed with exhibits. None of them were inside for more than eight minutes.
He sat there, motionless. Waiting. There was nothing more he could do. He was one inch from being nothing more than the last guy to try and fail.
Or succeed. Maybe.
When the third team was ushered out, Gayle came over and said, “You’re up, Mr. Cooper.”
He rose on unsteady legs and walked to the closed double doors. But as Gayle started to open the door, he said, “You’re clear on the task and the timing?” He was entering the conference room the same way he had the first time, empty-handed, without notes or tablet. Gayle’s eyebrows raised, but the only thing she said was, “I would have hoped that by now you would know I am both a pro, and trustworthy, Mr. Cooper.”
“Call both numbers immediately. Tell the first person, three minutes. The second, five minutes.”
“Duly noted.” Before she shut the door, she murmured, “Good luck.”
The simple gesture should not have meant as much as it did. Trent walked unescorted to the head of the table. Today, the conference room was jammed. Each of the division chiefs was joined by two aides—standard format, Trent now knew. They called such larger meetings the action board. They were not there merely to decide. Whenever an idea was approved, it was also set in motion. Budgets granted, targets set. Future careers set in place.
Or destroyed.
He had less than ten minutes to prove himself.
“All right, Cooper.” Barry Mundrose was again flanked by his daughter and, this time, the head of his film division. The son was back in Canada. Trent had no idea whether that was a good thing or not. “You’ve got the floor.”
Trent began, “The fastest growing profit center within the entertainment industry is dystopia. This is the term collectively used for a phenomenon that includes a myriad of directions. But it all is based upon one core concept. The Generation Xers and the Millennials fundamentally disagree with the assumption that tomorrow is a better day. They reject the notion that the future holds greater promise. Today’s youth reject these concepts. They are scorned as myths belonging to a different era.”
The younger executives who crowded the space between the table and the walls were trained in the same blank expressions as the directors who lined the table’s opposite end. But there were no smirks, no whispered asides. They sat and they listened. Trent took that as a good sign. He heard the clock ticking in his head, and hurried on.
“Dystopia, the opposite of utopia, is a word drawn from this grim forecast. Our two target generations see the future as bleak. There aren’t enough jobs. The world is dying. The environment won’t be saved. There aren’t answers to all the problems. Wars are growing worse, peace is a myth, politicians are liars. This trend is playing out in entertainment. The current zombie and vampire series are perfect examples of dystopian trends.
“But our goal today is not to identify what has worked in the past. Our aim is to establish a new trend. One that we own. We create it, we build upon it, and most important of all, we profit from it.”
A growing din outside the window rose in volume to filter through the triple panes of heat-hardened glass. The diaphanous blinds were down, blocking out the grey daylight and the flickering advertising screens around Times Square. Trent pulled an electronic control from his pocket and drew back the curtains. “What we want is a theme that echoes what these generations already feel but have not yet put into words. It must grow organically from their impressions of the world. It must give voice to their hidden secrets.”
Barry Mundrose shifted impatiently. “We’ve got that. So tell us what this new theme is.”
“I’ll do better than that,” Trent replied. “I will show you.”
As if on cue, the square below erupted. The clamor lifted the entire executive board from their seats. They gaped at the mob spilling off the sidewalks and pouring into the streets.
Today’s crowd was huge. Twenty thousand, thirty, forty—the numbers no longer mattered. They were every color, every race. Most wore some concoction of mask and mascara, creating a bizarre array of ghouls and vampires and werewolves and ogres and aliens. Their actions were so frantic and illogical they looked insane, borderline violent. The police whistles were joined by a massive mash-up from drums and wind instruments of every conceivable variety.
The crowd waved thousands of identical signs and banners. The sea of waving placards all carried the same three words:
Hope Is Dead.
And at that instant, the electric signs surrounding Time Square all went blank.
The sight was shocking. The brilliant displays were so constant, most scarcely saw them at all. Until now, that is, when they were absolutely black.
And then in unison they all flashed up the same three silver words, emblazoned upon screens of midnight blue.
Hope Is Dead.
The crowd went completely and utterly berserk. They broke free of the guard rails, flying into the traffic, clambering upon the roofs of cars and trucks, dancing with a dark glee that was just one step away from rage.
The police and the cars and the other pedestrians froze in shock, totally engulfed within a scene of bedlam. By now the whole conference room was fastened against the panes, as frozen as the spectators below.
Four hundred thousand dollars had bought Trent ten minutes and a promise that it would happen upon his command.
Trent pulled his gaze from the scene he had created and glanced at the others around and behind him. All of them, including their boss, were locked on the thousands and thousands of ghouls linked in jubilant frenzy.
Then another gaze pulled away. The daughter of Barry Mundrose backed up slightly, so she could look down the length of the boardroom. Edlyn’s green eyes were as hard as emeralds, but Trent thought he saw a hint of something else there. An e
lectric current that shot down the room, and set his body vibrating. Then she turned back to the window.
Beyond the glass, the crowd began shouting the words and dancing in time, until the entire square was filled with the ragged chant roared from thirty thousand throats.
Hope Is Dead.
9
“Come near to God …”
NEW YORK CITY
Alisha sat by the hotel lobby window and cradled the phone in her lap. She wasn’t dreading this call. Not really. It was all so far beyond what she wanted and how she thought, such things as pride really didn’t matter anymore. Well, it did. She was still human, after all. But what she had just witnessed downstairs was so big, her heart was so full, she just had to put all that pride aside. Even when it hurt. Because it did. This was her choir. And it was a lot more besides. Alisha could see her reflection in the phone’s darkened screen. She studied her round features and strong determined gaze. And she also saw the hurt. The choir was her way of making things right with the world. And doing it her way.
As she punched the numbers, the phone seemed alive in her hands. When the pastor’s wife answered, Alisha said, “Hello, Celeste. Do you have a minute?”
“Of course I do.” Her tone hardened a notch. Alisha heard it because she had been hearing it ever since the woman had arrived at church with her husband. “Where are you at, Alisha?”
“Still in New York.”
“People have been asking about you, what with the event this weekend. How much longer does this meeting last?”
“Another day and a half.” Alisha rose from her chair and faced out the window. Down below scurried people from all over the world. Rushing around, caught up in making their plans happen. She wished God had taken the time to actually speak to her. Just lay it out in black-and-white. But the divine silence didn’t change anything. “I just saw a miracle.”
“You what?”
“A real one. The hand of God and everything. And it showed me clear as day—” She took a big breath, like the one she had needed before ringing her sister’s front bell. And in that moment, she knew what she was doing was right. Being difficult didn’t change a thing. “Those children of yours are going to sing.”
