The Twelfth Imam

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Najjar stumbled down the front steps and got into the backseat of the cab, only to realize he had no wallet on him and thus no money. Worse, before Najjar could say anything, the driver pulled into traffic and Najjar realized he had no idea where he was going, either.

  “You look like you’ve seen an evil spirit,” the driver said, staring at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Just watch the road,” Najjar said, more gruffly than he had intended.

  “Where to?”

  Najjar couldn’t think. He felt foggy, drugged. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember where he lived—what street, what building. Where was his wallet? Had someone stolen it? Had he just left it at the hospital? It had his ID. It had his only picture of his mother and father. It had . . .

  Without instruction, the driver began heading east, across the Tigris River toward Sadr City, a district of nearly a million Shia Muslims.

  Where are we going? Najjar wondered. How does the driver know where to take me?

  Ten minutes later, the driver pulled up in front of an apartment building that looked familiar. As did the neighborhood. As did the people.

  “Najjar? Is that you?”

  Najjar instantly recognized the voice of his aunt, calling to him from across a courtyard.

  She ran up, pulled him out of the cab, and kissed him on both cheeks in greeting. Then she paid the driver and, sensing that Najjar was not well, led him up to their apartment.

  “Are you okay, Najjar? Why did you take a cab home from the university? Why didn’t you take the bus as usual?”

  As they stepped onto the elevator and his aunt pushed the button for their floor, Najjar was struck with the oddest thought. How had that driver just gotten him home, when he himself had not remembered where he lived?

  Najjar’s aunt tucked him into bed, and he slept for the entire afternoon.

  12

  U.S. Air Flight 3940

  A storm was brewing at twenty-eight thousand feet over Lake Ontario.

  “David, would you mind switching seats with me?”

  Startled, David Shirazi opened his eyes and found himself staring into the face of Mr. Harper. Biting his lip to keep himself from saying something he shouldn’t, he peeled off his headphones.

  “Say again?” he asked, trying to get his bearings.

  “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you,” the older man said with a genuineness that only annoyed David more. “It’s just that now that we’re at cruising altitude, I was wondering if I could sit with your father and catch up a little. Would you mind?”

  Of course I would mind, David thought. You’re not even supposed to be here, and now you want my seat?

  But David Shirazi loved his father far too much to say it. Indeed, he felt guilty for thinking it.

  “Sure, Mr. Harper, no problem,” he mumbled.

  Harper shook his head and chuckled as David unbuckled himself and stepped into the aisle. “You and your brothers are all taller than your father now, aren’t you?”

  David nodded. He didn’t want to disrespect his father by being rude. But he certainly had no interest in small talk at the moment. He scanned the rear section of the Boeing 737, looking for somewhere else to sit and finding nothing. The flight was packed. The rain was picking up and through the windows he could see flashes of lightning crackling through the thick gray thunderheads all around them. Then the seat belt sign came on and the copilot warned them they were heading into some rough weather and should take their seats immediately.

  “What seat were you in, Mr. Harper?” David finally asked as the man buckled up beside his father.

  “Oh, right, sorry—23B,” Harper replied. “Right next to Marseille.”

  Great.

  David put his headphones on, hit Play, and made his way toward the rear of the packed jet, carefully gripping the seatbacks along the way as the turbulence picked up. He spotted Marseille. She was curled up against the window with a red airline blanket over her, wearing her own set of earphones. David was glad her eyes were closed. He wasn’t up for small talk with her, either. He quietly took the seat beside her and buckled himself in, careful not to make a sound that might wake her. It didn’t work. Marseille turned, rubbed her eyes, and smiled.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  She took off her headphones. “Sorry I didn’t say hi before,” she said. “I just got chatting with everyone else. Everyone’s been really nice.”

  He shrugged. What was he supposed to say?

  “First time?” she asked.

  There was a long pause.

  “What, in a plane?” he asked, incredulous.

  “No, up to Quebec—on this whole fishing thing,” she replied.

  He nodded.

  “Me too,” she said, then added, “obviously.”

  There was another awkward pause. Thunder clapped just outside their window, startling everyone.

  “Quite a storm, huh?” she asked, her hands gripping the armrest.

  “Yep.”

  The two were quiet for a while, and David slowly began to relax. Then, out of nowhere, Marseille asked, “Hey, do you remember coming to our house for Thanksgiving, a long time ago?”

  He actually did have some memories of the rainy weekend of board games and hide-and-seek at the Harpers’ small Cape Cod house in Spring Lake, along the Jersey Shore. He even remembered a picture of Mr. Harper and Marseille carving the turkey together, which he had seen in one of the dozens of photo albums his mother kept organized and labeled on a shelf in their living room in Syracuse. But he didn’t feel like admitting any of that now.

  “Not really,” he said lamely.

  Marseille got the message. “Six years is a long time, I guess,” she said quietly, then turned back to watch the lightning flashes out the window.

  David watched her pull up the blanket and try to get comfortable. Then he felt a sudden pang of guilt. This poor girl was only trying to be nice, and he was acting like an idiot. For crying out loud, even the Mariano and Calveto brothers had been nicer to her. They’d had different motives, to be sure, but he’d been brought up better than this. It wasn’t Marseille’s fault she was here. David’s own father had invited them. The least he could do was be civil.

  “Whatcha listening to?” he asked, putting his own music on pause and taking off his headphones.

  She turned back, her eyebrows raised. “First you ignore me; now you’re suddenly interested in my music?”

  “I’m just asking. Conversation. Small talk. They have that down in New Jersey, don’t they?”

  Marseille studied him for a moment as if sizing up his sincerity or lack thereof. He took the moment to study her as well. She really was quite good-looking, a sort of girl-next-door beautiful, he decided. Her summer tan hadn’t yet faded. She wore no makeup or fingernail polish. She had a barely noticeable scar on her upper lip. But it was her eyes—big and warm and expressive—that really caught his attention.

  “Okay, guess,” she said at last.

  “Guess?”

  “Sure,” she prodded. “You know, conjecture, consider, reckon, suppose—they know how to do that up there in central New York, don’t they?”

  Caught off guard, David suddenly smiled a real smile. “Sometimes,” he conceded. “All right, let me see—Madonna?”

  She shook her head.

  “J. Lo?”

  Marseille rolled her eyes. “Pleeease.”

  “Hmm,” David said, “so I’m thinking Lady Marmalade is out too?”

  “Ugh,” she replied. “Do I look like I would listen to Christina Aguilera?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “It’s remotely possible, isn’t it?”

  “No, it really isn’t.”

  More thunder rumbled outside. As she turned away and began to pull the blanket over her again, her necklace shifted and glinted in the overhead light. A pair of drama masks, comedy and tragedy. Aha.

  “Les Mis,” he said just as Marseille was putti
ng her headphones back on.

  She stopped cold and turned back to him again.

  “What did you say?”

  “You know—France, revolutionaries, ‘One Day More’ . . .”

  Marseille paused and stared at him for a moment.

  “I’m right,” David said, seeing her surprise. “I got it, didn’t I?”

  Marseille shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “But you’re shockingly close.”

  Then, rather than turn away from him—back to her music, back to the storm, back to her dreams—she surprised him by putting her headphones over his ears and hitting Play.

  Try to remember the kind of September

  When life was slow and oh, so mellow.

  David was startled. This was the sound track from The Fantasticks—the world’s longest-running musical . . . and his mother’s favorite.

  13

  Quebec, Canada

  It was now late afternoon.

  The sun was just beginning to set as the de Havilland floatplane steadily gained altitude and gently banked northeast. The line of thunderstorms they had encountered after leaving Philly had cleared by the time they landed in Montreal and caught the train to the tiny town of Clova. Here, over the province of Quebec, the skies were clear.

  Dr. Shirazi sat in the copilot’s seat of the single-engine prop plane, nicknamed the “Beaver” by the Canadian-based de Havilland company. Azad and Saeed sat in the middle row. David was in the back row by himself, surrounded by backpacks and fishing gear. It was cold and cramped, and David knew he would be back there for nearly an hour, but the truth was, he was finally beginning to enjoy himself.

  The de Havilland Beaver had just one serious design flaw, as David saw it. It was loud. Really loud. The view out the tiny window was amazing, but he could barely hear himself think. Yet as they reached a cruising altitude of eight thousand feet—soaring high above a seemingly endless carpet of blue rivers and lakes and lush green islands, moving farther and farther away from any sign of civilization—David couldn’t help but nudge Azad in front of him and say, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “What?” Azad yelled, barely able to hear over the roar of the Pratt & Whitney 450-horsepower engine.

  “I said, she’s a beauty, isn’t she?” David yelled back, leaning closer.

  Azad laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” David asked, bracing himself for whatever sarcastic zinger was sure to come.

  “You,” Azad said. “You’re a real comedian.”

  “Why? I’m just saying . . .”

  “I know what you’re saying. But forget about her. You haven’t got a prayer.”

  “What?”

  “With Marcy.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl—Marcy.”

  “You mean Marseille?”

  “Whatever—she’s not your type.”

  David just stared at him for a moment. “I was talking about the plane, you idiot.”

  “Whatever. Just steer clear. You’re way out of your league, Charlie Brown.”

  Their twilight water landing was picture-perfect.

  Moments later, the other two de Havillands bringing the rest of their party landed and taxied over to join them by two wooden docks; four small, flat motorboats were moored alongside. A cluster of small, weathered, rustic cabins stood nearby. The only problem was they were running behind schedule and were quickly losing the light they needed to set up their base camp.

  Larry McKenzie, the gruff, scruffy, ponytailed, chain-smoking pilot of the plane David had been on—and the owner of McKenzie Air Expeditions, the charter service his father’s fishing group had used for years—helped them unload their gear. The other two pilots did the same and carried several large coolers and cardboard boxes into the cabins as well. These were filled with food for the long weekend. There was nothing gourmet, just basic fruits and vegetables, milk, juice, coffee, butter, bread, eggs, and bacon, all of which would supplement the main dish each night, which would be, of course, fresh fish.

  When they were done, McKenzie gathered the group together by the shore and reminded them of the rules. “Don’t drown,” he barked. “Don’t get bit by a snake. Don’t get eaten by a bear. Any questions?”

  Most were veterans of this trip. None of them seemed bothered. Only Marseille appeared a bit unnerved, whispering something to her father David couldn’t quite hear.

  “No questions?” McKenzie confirmed. “Good. We’re out.”

  A moment later, he and the other two pilots were back in their cockpits, hightailing back to the real world. These guys were making $750 a head to drop “clients” off in the middle of nowhere. That and a “don’t drown” pep talk and poof, they were gone. Nice work if you can get it, David thought. Not that he really cared. It wasn’t his money. It was his father’s, and his father always said this was why he’d escaped from Iran—to be free. Free to think. Free to work. Free to play. Free to travel. Free to do whatever he pleased, without a tyrant controlling his every move. Amen, David thought. He took in a deep breath of cool Canadian night air. The temperature was under fifty and dropping fast. But they were finally here.

  Dr. Shirazi turned to the group and encouraged them all to grab their gear and set up the cabins. Meanwhile, he asked David and Marseille to go gather as much firewood as they could. Internally, David resisted. He hadn’t come on this trip to be treated like a kid. But he felt better when he saw his brothers’ faces, just visible in the final traces of the sunset—why should David get time alone with the girl?

  Marseille’s reaction brought him back to reality. “Out there?” she asked. “With the bears?”

  “Don’t listen to Old Man McKenzie,” Dr. Shirazi laughed. “He’s not even Canadian. He’s from Poughkeepsie.”

  “Poughkeepsie?”

  “He got hooked on drugs and dodged the draft in the Vietnam War. Moved up here to get away from Nixon and get free health care. I met him when he desperately needed triple bypass surgery faster than the system up here could get him scheduled. Nice guy, but one taco short of a combo platter, if you know what I mean.”

  David looked at Marseille as Marseille stared at his father.

  “What does that have to do with bears?” she asked.

  David grinned at the perplexed look on her face. “Nothing,” he said, handing her a small flashlight and shaking his head. “That’s just the way my dad answers a question. Come on. Let’s go.”

  David headed into the woods, a more powerful flashlight in his hands. Marseille clearly didn’t want to be left behind. She zipped up her North Face fleece jacket and caught up to him quickly.

  “So my dad tells me you read and write Farsi fluently,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And German.”

  No reply.

  “And you’re working on Arabic.”

  Still no reply.

  “Of course,” she said, glancing at him as they walked, “you might want to work on your English a bit.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  “Yes, I speak all those languages.”

  “What are you, a genius?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s what my dad says.”

  “How would your dad know? He hasn’t seen me in six years.”

  “He says you were almost fluent in all those then.”

  David said nothing. They walked quietly for several minutes.

  “So where in the world are we, anyway?” Marseille finally asked, trying again to break the ice.

  “You really can’t stand silence, can you?” David replied.

  “Shut up,” she laughed, punching him in the arm, “and answer my question.”

  David feigned pain but finally answered. “The Gouin Reservoir.”

  “The what?”

  “The Gouin Reservoir—or in French, Réservoir Gouin.”

  “Ooh la la, I’m impressed,” she said. “Parlez-vous français, aussi?�
�

  David shook his head. “Je ne remember much pas.”

  Marseille laughed. “Je le doute. Anyway, that’s too bad.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause we’re in Quebec, and they speak French up here.”

  “So you do know where we are.”

  “I can read the ticket stub. But Le Réservoir Gouin—what the heck is that?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I’d just like to hear you put two or three sentences together in English . . . you know, just to know that you can!”

  “Fine,” David said. “It’s a collection of hundreds of small lakes containing innumerable islands and peninsulas with highly irregular shapes, located in the central portion of the Canadian province of Quebec, roughly equidistant from Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City. Its shoreline stretches over 5,600 kilometers, excluding islands. The reservoir was created in 1918 at the upper reaches of the Saint Maurice River and is named after Jean-Lomer Gouin, who was premier of Quebec at the time. Construction was done by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company to facilitate hydroelectric development by controlling the flow of water for the stations downstream.”

  Marseille had stopped walking and was staring at David. “How do you know all that?”

  “I read a lot.”

  “What did you do, memorize an encyclopedia article or something?”

  David shrugged and quickly changed the subject. “Hey, over there, grab those old branches and I’ll grab these,” he said. “That’ll be a start.”

  For much of the next hour, they gathered firewood, hauled it back to the camp, dropped it off, and went back out for more, avoiding the older boys. In their gathering, they passed by a few cabins farther inland, unoccupied and clearly out of use. They were unlocked and seemed to have been left to the elements. One of them displayed plenty of bear claw scratchings around the door and windows, but another A-frame style cabin was in pretty good shape, just a little dusty. They didn’t have time then to explore, but this little island ghost town fascinated them both.