The Occurrence

  Nazir watched Imam Sayyid Sarif appear through the rows of hanging clothes.

  Sarif took Nazir in his massive arms and gave him a warm welcome. He spoke English and encouraged Nazir to do the same. Nazir told him that his vocabulary was limited, but that Hashim had taught him well, so he could get by in most cases.

  “Very good,” Sarif replied. “The better we assimilate the more impact we have.”

  The back room of the cleaners was lit with fluorescents. Its glare made Nazir squint.

  Sarif spread out his burly arms as a silent introduction to the three men sitting there, who would help in the hunt for Hashim.

  Nazir analyzed these three compatriots. His mind clicked off a series of immediate observations: Arrogant. Undisciplined. Soft.

  Although Nazir was the new kid, the crucible of war had formed him, while these men had been overstuffing themselves tending to their “assimilation.” Nazir despised that word.

  Nazir was an insider with a privileged track into their target’s mind. He told the men their first objective must be to find the Marine and the journalist. That would be the quickest way to find Hashim. He didn’t know why, but Nazir sensed Hashim was here because of the Americans—and not to do them harm—but kept that to himself.

  Sarif’s daughter, Mariam, reminded Nazir of home. Though born and educated in America, she looked like every bit of earth he’d come from. Her face warm and rich like desert sand. They spoke in Arabic, which heightened their connection.

  She helped Nazir choose a new wardrobe from the clothes her father had brought for him, for his assimilation.

  Nazir changed in the small storage area in a back room of the dry cleaner. The door was ajar and Mariam had many questions about his home. Questions Nazir knew her father would never let her ask. But he could see that she’d been lost in America and longed for the land her father so often talked of. And so, he let her defy what was forbidden, and told her about his home, for he was lost here, too.

  He told her of his experience on the other side of the world, and she continued to be enthralled and asked questions about his life and family.

  The more he talked, the deeper his conflict grew. The words his grandmother had spoken stretched across his thoughts like ticker tape. “Blood for blood is not God’s way.” She’d said that in the aftermath of his parents’ death, and again after the occurrence in the desert. “You were spared for a reason. Jihad is wrong.” Nazir had no defense against her words now. But he needed to present the self all here believed him to be.

  “Are you all right, Nazir?”

  “Yes…” But it was a lie.

  What had happened to him shook the core of his belief.

  He looked different in his dark blue fitted jeans and crisp, white shirt. But he saw a deeper change beyond the clothes. There was a dark cast of sorrow in his eyes reflected in the glass from which he couldn’t turn away. And staring at his reflection it became clear that the reason to find Hashim and facilitate his capture was misguided.

  35

  The FBI had an informant inside Church Dry Cleaners. His real name was Aaron Ajam, but to the members of the cell he was Mustafa Taliq. He’d been undercover for a year, recommended to Sarif by a member of ISIS here in the states.

  Good undercover men come in shades of gray. They’re men whose faces you forget. That wasn’t Taliq. He thrived on being noticed. Arrogance as camouflage. It’s one of the things that kept him alive.

  Taliq burned with intensity. But heat this intense burned off in time, and Taliq figured he had another year at most before he’d turn cold and need to come in. Right now he was in the middle of figuring out what Hashim was doing in America. No one inside the terrorist cells or at the FBI had been able to figure out the “why.” He wouldn’t put it past Hashim to keep certain cells out of the loop, forcing them into confusion in order to get the Bureau caught up in that misdirection while he planned an end run toward another 9/11. Whatever that might be, it would be fierce. Hashim had been responsible for thousands of deaths, so why would he stop? Taliq needed answers. And that this young emissary from across the world had appeared made him hyper-aware something was about to go down, and he was going to insert himself into whatever that was before anyone else.

  36

  In a local mosque in the center of D.C. Nazir’s ambivalence was carving a deeper fracture in his psyche. Prostrate, as his forehead pressed into the prayer rug, he was disturbed by something Taliq had said to him when they met: “Are you afraid to enter paradise?” Had Taliq noticed Nazir’s conflict? A mash of thoughts collided as his head pressed harder into the praying floor.

  Hashim had told him there were reasons for their survival. Nazir had always thought it was for Allah, though Hashim was never specific with what the reasons were. He’d told Nazir that soon he would come to know. Did Hashim have his own doubts? Why had he left? Nazir tried to stop the thoughts that ran like wild horses in his mind.

  A strange lightheadedness overcame him and a voice said, Protect him. Save him. He will help us all.

  Nazir shuddered.

  “You okay?” Taliq asked.

  Nazir opened his eyes.

  Prayers were over. Everyone was gone except Taliq who watched him, and reached out his hand.

  Nazir took it to steady himself.

  “Come, my friend,” Taliq said, guiding Nazir out of the mosque. “Let’s have tea.”

  Nazir followed. But there was something about Taliq that made him nervous.

  In a Starbucks near the mosque Taliq and Nazir sat in comfortable, overstuffed chairs by the window.

  Nazir looked at the cup of tea in his hand and spun the sleeve, intrigued by its purpose.

  The place was jammed with young people all in various stages of self-conversation: texting, head phones on, listening to music in worlds of their own, or on computers, reading or writing.

  Nazir took the sleeve off the cup and slipped it over four of his fingers.

  Taliq chuckled. “More interested in that than the tea?”

  “It’s not very good.”

  “You expected something like home?” Taliq said with a grin. “I understand. You’ll not find much of that here.”

  Nazir slipped the sleeve off his fingers and back onto the cup. He watched the people outside. A parade of well-dressed men and women. He chuckled and leaned into Taliq.

  “Are you afraid to enter paradise?”

  “I’m sorry if my question disturbed you, Nazir.”

  “Are you?”

  “We shouldn’t be talking about this here.”

  “Look. No one’s listening. No one cares.”

  “We don’t have to be friends, brother. We don’t even have to like each other. But I’m as concerned as you as to why Hashim has come here. I’d like to help you find him.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Sarif believes you do. You blew off the other three with a wave of judgment, dismissing them before you got to know what they’re capable of.”

  “I don’t need to live with them to know what they’re capable of.”

  “Fair enough. But whether you like it or not, Sarif has ordered me to work with you. This ‘tea,’ as misconstrued an idea as it is, was an attempt to get to know each other a bit.”

  “Do you know me any more now than you did?”

  “I know you speak English much better than I thought you would.”

  “Thanks for the tea.”

  Nazir got up and left.

  Taliq waited until Nazir was out of sight. He took out a burner phone, dialed a number, and waited until someone answered.

  “I made contact,” Taliq said. “It’s not going to be easy to work together, but Sarif will convince him. I’m sure of it.” He ended the call.

  He grabbed the two cups of tea off the table and dropped them into the trash bin. His eyes probed the room, as they always did, to make certain no one cared or was suspicious about these two dark men who looked like people they feared. No one did.r />
  37

  Catherine was startled awake in the middle of the night. Her connection to Hashim had grabbed her so deep she was being bombarded with images of people and places he’d talked about. She grabbed a sheet of paper and sketched her remote dream.

  Nazir had arrived in D.C.

  She walked tentatively, across the creaky floorboards on the second floor of her cottage.

  She knocked on the door to the room where Hashim slept.

  When he opened the door he was dressed. He looked better. The fever had broken.

  Catherine showed him the drawing.

  “He’s arrived?”

  “Yes. He’s here in Washington.”

  Hashim stared at her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “How are you so comfortable with me? And why so willing to use your ability, and put yourself in danger?”

  “Danger isn’t foreign to me.”

  The gathering awareness of a deeper connection to him was something for which she had no reference.

  From the open balcony doors, they looked out at the lake.

  Moonlight spread across the ducks gliding over the quiet water. They immersed their iridescent heads beneath the surface, in search of food or whatever other adventure they bobbed for in the dimness of the tow.

  He reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper. He handed it to her.

  She opened it and read it to herself. It was written in English.

  There are stories we carry inside that have slipped beyond the veil of consciousness and wait until a certain time. And, as a falcon descends upon its prey, we rise up more fierce and hungry than the falcon, through ashes at the merest fraction of light, grasping, trembling for God, in order to heal the desire to destroy.

  “You wrote this?”

  “When I was a boy.”

  In the grief of his eyes she saw he was still grasping for that fraction of light.

  “Even from the blackest nights there can be salvation,” she said, and handed the poem back to him, but he held up his hand.

  “Keep it in remembrance of who I once was and want to be again.”

  He looked at her a long time. She didn’t avoid his gaze. A bridge had been created between them.

  She held his poem like a prayer in her folded hands.

  38

  Tuesday, September 22

  Her name was Isabel Chavez. She was a lawyer for the Department of Justice and had spent a week in Manhattan beginning to collect data the department would use to prosecute Hashim upon his capture. The agencies were sure they would find him, one way or another. It was still top secret that he was in America. A team of lawyers had been put in place for the trial that would follow. It would be a circus, but they needed to be prepared.

  Isabel stared out the plane window, watching the afternoon sun beat down on the ground below as the plane made its approach to Dulles.

  The wheels hit the tarmac.

  The plane glided to its gate.

  First thing Isabel did was turn her mobile back on.

  There were text messages, emails and phone calls.

  Isabel was startled when the first phone message she heard was from her younger sister. They hadn’t talked in months. Isabel listened to the message; afraid it might have something to do with their father. But Arama spoke, eager to tell her sister of the miracle that had happened in Cuzco, how she was called to help the young girl, and how Isabel would play a part.

  Called? Miracles? The land of magical thinking. This nonsense was why she’d left Cuzco.

  She put her phone down, distracted with the preoccupation that grew inside her. Thoughts of her sister had come in streams in the past week, and she couldn’t dismiss the strange charge that had been running through her the past few days.

  Isabel was the beauty, the motivated one with the drive to succeed no matter the cost, while Arama was the plain sister, happy to be of service to the poor and forgotten.

  But for all her success Isabel wasn’t happy. Say what she would about Arama, dismiss her flights of fantasy, her magical thinking, but bottom line—Arama was the one at peace. If Isabel could admit it to herself, Arama had always been at peace.

  Had Isabel yearned for the opposite of what she’d strived for? No matter how much she’d left behind and achieved, her sister hovered in the corners of her mind. She hated these doubts, and that she and Arama were, and would forever be, connected. Connected in a way that always pushed Isabel to the edge of some giant unknown. Unknowns she’d fortified herself against with all the might she had, and all the common wisdom in the rules and laws that were on her side—that this physical world was the one provable reality.

  39

  Vincente Salva hadn’t prayed in a long time, yet he was kneeling in the church of La Merced, Cuzco. Relics and remembrances of the impassioned lives of saints and saviors surrounded him. He thought about Jhana-Merise. She was not a saint. She was not a savior. She was a little girl. Yet he knew his mission was to protect her. He knew she was his for a short time. He knew she would never marry, never love another except her God. And this filled him with sorrow, yet he knew it was her destiny. He’d known it from the first time she spoke to him from his wife’s womb. He’d hated God for the gift of knowing. He’d hated God for taking his wife. But now on his knees he was asking for help. And as he prayed he realized it wasn’t God he’d hated, but the intermediaries who’d claimed to speak for Him, promising things they could never deliver. The ones who wallowed in gory details of sin and crucifixion.

  Vincente had studied the lives of saints and kept up with news of visionaries around the world. It was part of his silent vow to know as much as he could to protect his daughter. He knew of the messages from Fatima and those of Medjugorje. Places where young children had claimed to be visited by the Virgin Mother. Places that had become shrines, and the children objects of adoration, and ridicule.

  Vincente was familiar with the Madonnas that had appeared in clouds. Or statues that had shed tears of milk, blood, and honey. And now in the new century, the internet had become an instantaneous and integral source of reported apparitions and the sharing of faiths, genuine and otherwise. Through it all he knew there were those who’d cast critical eyes on anyone who challenged their beliefs. And so, he’d surrounded himself with a wealth of learning to inspire, sustain, and ready him for the conflicts he’d always known were ahead.

  He remembered how Jhana-Merise had kept to herself during school, and how her fellow students had thought she was strange, but not as strange as they would have thought, had they known her one friend was God.

  40

  Vincente knocked on Sister Helen’s door. She welcomed him into her office.

  Vincente stared at the crucifix hanging over the desk behind her. His anger at that symbol had diminished in the days since his daughter came back to life.

  Helen told him the marriage had its ups and downs.

  He wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “We’re all married to Christ here,” she said with a smile. “We nuns.”

  She showed him the simple wedding band she wore.

  “It must be lonely,” he said without thinking. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  “It’s all right. Yes. It used to be. But I realized I must give myself completely. Doing that, I’ve found who I am. Oh, there were many dark nights. But they’re not the same now.”

  His hands moved almost against his will, running his fingers through his hair, rubbing his face, his hands, rocking back and forth, uncomfortable with her honesty and connection.

  He continued to avoid her gaze.

  She sat back in her chair, eyes on Vincente.

  “I was surprised when I saw you at the door, Vincente. I wasn’t expecting you. Would you like to see Jhana-Merise?”

  It had been less than a week since Vincente had seen his daughter. And he missed her.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “About your daughter?
”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll have to ask her.”

  “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”

  He rubbed his hands on his thighs.

  “You’re a good man, Vincente. I hope you know that.”

  He went to the open window. He saw a family of swallows had made their home in the hollow of the orange tree. Their song dotted the air.

  “I thought God had abandoned me. Then Jhana-Merise was born.”

  He spoke of that September morning when his daughter’s voice came to him for the first time, and of the grace that came into their lives with her birth.

  “She was born with the scent of roses,” he said.

  He turned back into the room. For the first time since he’d arrived he looked into Sister Helen’s eyes. He cherished the sweet energy flowing from her, and thought how lucky God was to have her as His wife.

  “God tests our faith,” she said. “The road is not easy, nor simple, but it is a road back to Him. While you may doubt, and fear the journey ahead, you must know you’re not alone on the path.”

  As uncomfortable as it had been at times, he’d learned to talk with women, being the one boy in a family of them. He understood his mother and came to understand her tears. They would talk for hours about life. She wasn’t happy married to his father, but ritual died hard, and divorce was worse than living with sorrow in the eyes of the church, so she’d cried instead. And while his own marriage was rocky, their arguments and conversations had kept both of them vital and linked. They’d challenged each other and may not have been perfect together, but his heart ached in his wife’s absence.

  Through the years he’d been privileged to listen to the female mind. He’d learned to listen when women spoke with passion and intent, although it was one of the first things for which he’d cursed God. That sensitivity didn’t go down with the macho boys of his youth.