by Ali Eteraz
We entered the monument from the bottom—from underground, through a subway door—and then passed the names of all the victims of the attacks. Then the subway door sealed shut and we entered a dark and empty chamber with a huge hole in the ceiling. There was a hollow tower extending up into the place where the explosives had shot out into the street above. Inscribed inside the tower were messages of condolence.
This was where Leila’s transformative moment had occurred.
“It was a couple of years ago,” she said. “I was here during a college trip. One day I came here. Walking distance from the Goya in the Prado and Picasso in the Reina Sofía. I just thought to myself, those artists depicted all that violence and yet there is still more violence in the world.” Her face took on a pained expression. “It was so crazy to sit there, you know? I realized it had been Muslims not much younger than me, acting in the name of my faith, who had carried out the attacks. All I could think about was how Muslims once brought Alhambra to Spain and now gave this.” She had become a reformist as a response. She needed to believe that there were Muslim peacemakers, because to not be a reformist would mean that she would have to be terrified of being a Muslim.
I envied Leila in that moment. She had, from the very start of her adult life, known that she was nothing but a Muslim and found a space to live in, thrive in. I, on the other hand, had grown up under the misapprehension that I wasn’t similarly circumscribed. I had lived under a lie. Why had I not seen my chains earlier? I might have worn them like bangles like she did.
The whole thing reminded me of a novel I had read once, written by a Russian émigré. At the start of it a man called Cincinattus C. is arrested for an inchoate crime and taken to prison. Except for being accused of “gnostical turpitude” the man is never given a reason for his arrest. The reader is left to ponder what kind of crime gnostical turpitude really was. Cincinattus stays in the farcical prison, under the aegis of a cruel warden, for a very long time, until the moment of his execution is imminent. Suddenly the entire edifice of the prison withers and fades from his view. Cincinattus had willed it away.
Residual supremacism was nearly as obtuse. What George Gabriel had been hinting at was the notion that underneath the cultured exterior, underneath the man who knew Chagall and spoke highly of Nietzsche and Goethe, there was a latent man, a zealot, one who drew direction from the supremacist message of the Koran, aspiring to ultimately overturn the existing bookshelf and seek out domination in the name of Allah. I had been identified as an agent of Islamic expansion, the fear of which was woven into every Westerner, who had known a thousand years of Islamic assault, from Spain to Russia, from late Rome to early America. This fear transformed and cohered into a different form after the shadows struck New York. No longer was it a fear of an empire of faith lorded over by a sultan, armed to the hilt, strapped with swords, but robotic sleeper cells waiting to be activated by some dark man in a dark cave. But either way the fear was the same as it had always been: Islam sought ascendance and Muslims made that ascendance happen.
The trouble with this narrative was that it didn’t apply to me. There had been a misunderstanding. I harbored nothing toward Islam, or toward any other idea in the world that might assert itself as a competitor to America. I didn’t recite la ilaha illallah, neither out loud nor in any recess in my heart. For me there was no deity but America, and this was all there was to it.
But that’s the thing about misunderstandings. Unless you have the power to take control of the one who has misunderstood, you have to participate in the misapprehension. You have to enter the prison that someone else has constructed for you, and you have to live there with all the patient forbearance of Cincinnatus C., without any guarantee that the prison might wither and break.
* * *
Later in the week Leila and I went to visit a far less stellar mosque, in inner-city Madrid. It was located on a block where the shops belonged to newly arrived immigrants from North Africa and where many of the signs were in Arabic. The imam here was a portly man named Qahtani, who seemed always to be surrounded by college-aged men and women. When Leila and I arrived outside the mosque, an old jobless laborer from Algeria began grilling me. He spoke Arabic and assumed I did too. I simply made a thumbs-up sign and said, “USA!” He made a thumbs-down and disappeared.
The mosque was three stories, with a large courtyard downstairs, a large prayer hall on the second level, and a third level where the administrative offices, conference rooms, and women’s section were located. The old building had the smell and disposition of a place held together through will and hard work. The shelves for the shoes were old and creaky. The bathrooms were tired, damp, with leaky faucets. The carpet in the prayer room had worn ages ago. There was no library so much as a series of shelves in various rooms.
The imam led us to a small room where Leila and I waited for the youth to arrive. The room was full of junk, old sofas, broken chairs. Once we were alone Leila started snooping around, digging into a box containing trashed books. She laid them out before me. Most of them were theological manuals about ablution, prayers for the bathroom, and the like.
“Goddamn!” she said, raising a small green book over her head.
“What?”
“Look at the name.”
It read, Jihad fi Sabilillah.
“What is that?”
“A pamphlet,” she said. “It was written by these assholes—Qutb, al-Banna, and Maududi. Mahmoud considers them the trinity of evil. This book created all the bin Laden and Zawahiri types in this world.”
“Well, good thing it’s in the trash then.”
Leila tucked it into her purse. “That could just be for show. I better take it with me. Mahmoud might want to see what kind of literature lives at this mosque.”
“But if it’s in the trash, maybe they really aren’t interested in it.”
“At one point they owned a copy. That is troubling.”
“You’re probably overthinking it.”
“I know Muslims well. I’ve been one all my life. We become quite good at putting on a show.”
We sorted through the rest of the books. They were old guides about the virtues of patience; manuals about Islamic ethics; and commentaries on the Koran. Leila dismissed them and sat back down to wait for the youth.
“I’m a little worried now,” she said.
“Why?”
“This seems like a fundamentalist place. And I’m a Shia. If these guys turn out to be crazies, they’re going to come after me for not wearing a hijab, for not being a Sunni.”
I wanted to tell her that she was panicking for no reason. But her increasing paranoia seemed to cut into my own sense of security as well. By the time the young people had loaded into the room—men on one side and women on the other—I was also looking at them with suspicion. Maybe they were exactly as Leila had alleged. Maybe they were all immoderate and maniacal.
The discussion, though, revealed anything but. The youth were engaged and informed and wanted to know about the internecine and granular theological debates that Muslims in America were having. About women becoming prayer leaders, about the inclusion of homosexuals, about excommunicating the extremists. These were things that Leila was better suited to handle. I let her talk and turned to play with the two-year-old son of a cheerful man in a leather jacket. I barely said a word throughout the presentation.
After the event was over, the men in the room came toward me to ask about my career and other hobbies. They were, almost all of them, in technical and engineering fields, with a few working as businessmen or entrepreneurs.
“I assume things must have been very difficult for you after the towers fell,” the man with the son said to me. “Being a Muslim here, it became an insult.”
I looked around to see where our State Department liaison was. I didn’t see him. I pulled the Spaniard closer to me. “Same with us. Same thing happened. They insult us for being Muslim. I was fired for being a Muslim.”
They s
eemed intrigued; my confession was something they hadn’t expected to hear.
Leila overheard my comment and came rushing over. She gave me a severe look for veering so far from script. “But you see, what the Muslims in America did is that we started to get involved in the politics and the media of our country. So we couldn’t be excluded. We are not marginalized in any way.”
The mention of media struck a nerve with the men.
“No one in the media wants to hear from us,” said a black-eyed Syrian-Spaniard with an Italian wife in a paisley scarf. “There are no Muslim columnists in any papers.”
“The Left and the Right,” said an immigrant from Jordan. “They just want to beat up on Muslims. We are responsible for all the job losses. We are responsible for all the crime. We are responsible for violence and death.”
“Have you tried writing to the newspapers to complain?”
“We write all the time but they don’t publish us. And the reporters don’t care.”
A frustrated lull hung over the room. The ever-cheerful Leila tried to use words like bridge-building and peace initiatives and networking methods, but no one stirred. I offered no meaningful assistance.
Eventually the little group drifted apart. Leila was pulled back toward the women. The guys, growing disenchanted by the meeting, invited me out to watch a match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The only place to go were the pubs. A couple of the establishments didn’t let us in because they were aware that Muslims wouldn’t purchase alcohol. It was almost halftime when a pub finally let us in. Even there the bartender and the patrons gave us dirty looks and had us sit far away from everyone else. We ordered fries and soda. I picked up the tab for all of us. I left a 100 percent tip; it was to bribe respect.
* * *
I ended up spending a couple more days in Spain, mostly just touring the museums or having listless conversations with Leila about what she wanted to do with her life. Her ultimate goal was to be a feminist human rights lawyer who served on war-crimes tribunals and on the side ran an Islamic reform think tank. Mahmoud had agreed to mentor her until she achieved her ends. Placing her in the State Department program was meant to bolster her credentials. She planned on putting a few years in, and then transitioning into an aide role for a senator, where she hoped to offer commentary on foreign policy and the Islamist threat. Then she would hit the lecture circuit and live her life fighting radicalization and fundamentalism.
I had no such long-terms plans. I simply wanted to return to Philadelphia five thousand dollars richer and get back to sorting out my little vicissitudes.
Chapter Nine
Marie-Anne had been sent to Las Vegas to meet with some of the soldiers who operated the drones out of Nellis. After that she needed to go to the Persian Gulf. I missed her; I had wanted to tell her all about my trip. I also hoped that if she saw that I had a solid gig going, she might become inclined to talk about starting a family. The possibility that Candace might be having my child didn’t make me less inclined to seek the same with Marie-Anne. If anything, it compelled me more, not only to cover up the crime I had perpetrated, but to remind myself that I was serious in my recommitment to Marie-Anne.
I took the alone time to spruce up the condo, to make it more of a home for her. I went and bought a couple of aloe plants to deal with the summer humidity. I got the air-conditioning vent and met with a real estate agent to find out about the financing that we would need in order to purchase the apartment. Later I went to seek out a bespoke tailor on Market Street and had myself measured for a pair of suits. I also got an estimate done for new kitchen counters. There was money in my hand and it had to be spent.
All this time I also kept in touch with Ali Ansari. He told me about the difficult time he’d had in tracking Candace. Not only was she not at her apartment but she also hadn’t been to work. He had made some inquiries with her colleagues at her job and they said she had taken personal days and gone home, without any explanation. She had no family or apparent friends in the area and Ali said that the trail had gone cold.
I told him it would be a good idea for us to meet. I recommended getting together that night at my apartment. But he said he was traveling back from New York and suggested meeting up the next day, at the deli near the Divine Lorraine.
“What took you to New York?” I asked, unaccustomed to him leaving Philadelphia, wondering if perhaps it was something Candace-related.
“Will update you.”
The next day I got to the deli a little before Ali. The sun was out, with egg-shaped clouds passing before it, a smokestack trying hard to touch the sky with its whorls. The owner stood at the door in his stained yellow wifebeater with his hand on his hip and a remote control pointed at the high-definition TV hanging on the wall. A number of young men chatted with one another about a soccer match. I had never much gotten into soccer. It was a game of perpetual motion, a sport for those who wanted to act more and reason less; we preferred our sports with starts and stops, with pauses affording the athlete time to come up with a plan for attack, the way the ultrarational like to play.
There was a smaller TV in the corner of the deli, dusty and unused. I went and sat before it. I looked around for the young attendant who used to work here. Chris had been his name. Not seeing him, I gestured for the old man to come over.
“You a spy?” He wiped his hands on his smock.
“Excuse me?”
“I never see you before,” he said, loud enough for some of the younger men to glance over.
I felt a pulse of panic go up my thighs. I thought of Leila sneaking that manual out of the trash in Madrid. I thought of all the time I’d spent around people close to the State Department. Was there some unstated war between the moderate Muslims and whatever strain this old man was affiliated with?
“I think you misunderstand me,” I offered.
“No,” he wagged his rag, “I know exactly who you are. Only two falafel places in city. Me and Hisham in West Philly. He send you here to watch me, yes? You are caught, no need to lie.”
I assured him that I was not committing culinary espionage and wasn’t even aware of Hisham’s existence. This made the old man quite happy. “And even if I knew him,” I added, “I’d be on your team because you are from my neighborhood.”
“Good,” he said. “This is why I like Philadelphia. So very neighborly. What you will order?”
I ordered a burger and watched Al Jazeera. I wanted to add bacon but knew better than to ask. A bit of instrumental music, interspersed with the pleasing sound of an announcer, came on the set. Globes and parabolic maps and gold-flecked leaves flew around on the screen and revealed a young female anchor with a Turkish name sitting confidently in her chair. She sprayed out a sentence in near-perfect Victorian English.
The old man saw my interest and got out of the way.
The anchor was interviewing a Malaysian geographer. He wanted to take the opportunity of the unveiling of the newly erected clock tower in Mecca—which he called “the Big Bin”—to make the world drop Greenwich standard time and replace it with Mecca standard time. His first argument vis-à-vis the Big Ben in England was simply, “Our clock is bigger.”
The anchor didn’t seem to find this convincing. “The other clock is older . . .”
“Fine, fine,” the man said, stroking his goatee. “But Greenwich time is a colonial relic. We could accept their time before but we won’t accept their time now. We are almost first world ourselves.”
“But aren’t there pragmatic reasons to stick with Greenwich?”
“Like what?”
“Well, the international date line,” said the anchor, “as it currently stands, is exactly 180 degrees to Greenwich, which makes the line fall somewhere in the middle of a giant ocean—and that is convenient because it prevents conflict and confusion. If you were to make Mecca the meridian, the date line would end up running right through the West Coast of North America, so even though it would be Wednesday in New York, it would a
lready be Thursday in San Francisco.”
The geographer chortled and got excited. “So what? You make it seem as if it’s important for New York and San Francisco to have a consistent clock. Maybe when America was powerful such things were true. But now? Bankrupt countries don’t have a right to a schedule that makes sense.”
“Maybe,” the anchor replied. “But you haven’t really given any clear reason why Mecca should be the meridian.”
“It is very simple,” the geographer said with narrowed eyes. “If you were to move far away from the earth, and look down at it with a telescope, you will see that Mecca falls at the exact center of the earth, and in the exact center of Mecca you will find the holiest place of Islam—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” shrieked the anchor, adjusting her hijab. “Your comment would only make sense if the world was flat. But if the world, as has been known for some time, is round, then its exact center can’t be on the surface. It must be deep in the middle of it. At least that is what my physics teacher taught me. I think we’re going to end our—”
“No, wait, wait,” pleaded the geographer. “Fine, so you do not accept religious argument, I understand. But what about history? Long ago, long before Islam even, Arabs used to worship time. They used to call it dahr. They even had a goddess in its honor.”
“You are on stronger footing with that,” the anchor commented. “Except this was two thousand years ago.”
“Yes,” said the geographer, now visibly irritated. “But if after thousands of years the Jews can claim Israel, then after many more thousands of years the Arab can claim time, no?”
The anchor rolled her eyes and continued arguing. I zoned out and turned my gaze outside. A couple of youths passed by, flipping a football to each other.