Once A Warrior (Mustafa And Adem)

by Anthony Neil Smith

"Adem. Gave up Adem."

  Whatever Teeth was about to say got stuck in his throat. When that boy's name came up, it always stopped the conversation. He was off-limits. Teeth wasn't stupid, not to make it this long leading a gang full of stupids, and he looked away, running it through his head. What was this nigga talking about, giving up his own son? He took a little walk through some of the empty parking spaces, Glock dangling. Mustafa let him go. The man was mumbling, laughing to himself, gluing the pieces together. Mustafa stepped over to the Escalade, climbed into the passenger seat, and waited. The air was still and hot in the truck. He waited. Teeth out there pacing some more. Coming to terms.

  Took him nearly ten minutes. Some point halfway, Mustafa realized he wasn't going to die. Teeth was onboard. All he was doing out there now was putting on a show. He finally stopped pacing and walked back to the driver's door, opened up and climbed inside. Cranked the motor and got the A/C blowing nice and cool.

  "Who you want going down South?"

  "You, me, EGX, Dawit."

  "Gotta bring Goat."

  Mustafa nodded. "Wondering if he leaks to Heem."

  "Seriously?"

  "Just saying. But yeah, Goat. Let's go pick them all up. But first, we need to see somebody else."

  Teeth put the truck into drive and drove up the spiral exit until they were out in the sunlight again. Mustafa told him where to go, and Teeth blew out a big breath, like, Nuh uh. But said, "Makes sense."

  Radio off, sweet silence. Mustafa's nose itching to no end, but if he scratched up there, it would start pouring blood. He sniffed over and over.

  Teeth asked, "What about Raphael? He's coming along?"

  "No. He's dead." Turned his face to make sure Teeth knew what he meant.

  He did. Nodded and said, "Well, shit."

  "Yeah."

  Another stoplight. Another long moment of silence.

  SIXTEEN

  Hide and seek, hide and seek, and Adem had daggers in his stomach. He remembered the other day, all the help he got running around the mall, friends of the Benefactor—the lingerie saleswoman, the shoe salesman—but now, it was like a double game. Hide from those people, even though there had to be plenty more working for the Benefactor that Adem didn't know about, and hide from police, from security guards, from whoever else was on his tail. He stopped off in a small hop to buy a hijab, a kashibo, bright red lipstick, and some eye make-up. Ridiculous. There was no way the saleswoman believed he was buying for his wife. She looked like someone's mother, naturally suspicious. He wouldn't let her out of his sight, either, thinking she might have recognized him, might try to call the police while he was still in the shop.

  He started adding prices in his head and realized he didn't have enough money, so he asked if she had more of a certain size in the back. More colors. More anything. She couldn't get away fast enough. "Yessir, yessir, I'll see, I'll see." Retreating through a curtain to a back room that was barely large enough to hold a restroom, let alone extra inventory. He knew it. She knew it. Adem ran. Ashamed, trying to forget it moments after he'd done it, stolen food from the woman's mouth. Perhaps even cost her the job. So sorry, so sorry.

  He found the nearest public restrooms, still several blocks from the Lutfi Tower. He thought for a moment about sneaking into the ladies' room so that his exit would appear more natural. But a quick look around, there, and there, security cameras. A man going into the ladies' room would set off alarms, whereas a woman leaving the men's room would cause some chuckling, eyerolls, and maybe one of the security guys would call her a slut. An ultra-modern city, with the most high-tech security in the world, still run by men whose ideas about women would never get past 500 A.D.

  In the restroom, Adem wasn't alone. Two others pissing, and then a loud man on the phone in a stall, talking to his secretary, it sounded like. Asking for details on a call he had missed.

  Adem took the end stall and piled the women's clothing on the toilet tank. He looked at his feet. The shoes. He had forgotten to get sandals. All he could do was move fast enough and hope no one would notice.

  The loud man in the next stall laughed out loud and then said in Arabic, "You beautiful whore! If I was there now, I would kiss every inch of your ass, you know that?"

  Adem unbuttoned his dress shirt. The collar would get in the way, so he was stuck with his undershirt, stuck to his skin with sweat, turning colder every moment he was out of the sun. The smell of the bathroom was more refreshing than he had imagined it would be, but strong on the chemicals to keep it that way. The fumes made him dizzy.

  "Tonight, I shall bring you pearls, and you will bring me pleasure with your mouth."

  Adem didn't know enough about women's sizes, so he had chosen a kashibo that was a bit too tight around his chest. Really? He wasn't a big man at all, and he somehow picked the smaller dress. He pulled it into place, even though it threatened to tear at the seams. At least he had chosen the length well, as it almost covered his shoes.

  "I told you, don't mention her. That is my life, my family. It's none of your business! I cum on your tits, your face, and you want to ask me if my wife knows?"

  How long did this idiot plan to stay in there shouting at this poor secretary? Adem needed the mirror to get the lipstick and eye-liner right. He tried to wrap the hijab, kept having to turn to keep his elbows from bashing into the walls. So simple when he'd watched his mother do it, before she stopped wearing one. Or Sufia, that short time they were together before things went so bad. There wasn't time to soak in nostalgia.

  "Bitch, I take your ass if I want. I ruin you for other men. You don't demand anything from me."

  Adem shuddered. Listening in, powerless, reminded him of what it had felt like before, nearly dying at the hands of those on his own side. He would always wear the scar on his throat. But then he'd become the character of Mr. Mohammed, and it changed him. He learned that power didn't have to come from sheer muscle. Confidence could make stronger men do his bidding. Intelligence. Manipulation. Just like himself, the men with the lower rank wants to be of higher rank, which means bowing to the ones who somehow made themselves more powerful.

  But he'd been outplayed. He was dressing like a woman so he could hide. He was listening to a lousy example of a man assault a woman over the phone, and as much as he would've liked to have stopped it, Adem knew the woman on the other end was melting for this douchebag. All he could do was hide while the man shouted and grunted and stunk up the air—chemical citrus blending with whatever the hell this guy had eaten for dinner the night before, soured.

  It wasn't worth the wait. He peeked through the space where the door connected, saw no one else, and headed directly for the mirror, lipstick in his hand shaking. He steadied it with his other, and then tried to run it over his lips. Too much pressure. It came off in clumps, felt disgusting, like chicken grease. He pressed his lips together the way he'd seen his mother do it. Another fart and grunt from behind him, the man in the stall. Adem's mouth looked like a clown's. He decided to ditch the eye make-up and go with what he had. Quickly moved for the exit.

  "Hey, I see you." From the stall.

  Adem froze. He turned his face, saw the eye peeking through the gap.

  "Who do you think you are? Are you looking for someone?"

  Couldn't answer. Adem cleared his throat.

  "You're a man?" The son of a bitch stood, unlocked the stall door, pants still down. "Are you a man, dressed like that?"

  Adem made for the door while the man behind him shouted, said he would call the police. The door opened before Adem could push it, another couple of men laughing, coming inside. They weren't looking ahead. Adem fell into the first one and tangled himself up, fell to the ground. They rolled onto the concrete, once, twice, trying to stop by shoving his hand out blindly and nearly breaking it on the ground.

  The friend was yelling, "It's a man! A fucking man! A trannie! Stop him!"

  Adem pushed off the ground—another stab of pain to his wrist—and tried to orient
himself. The guy on the ground wasn't far behind. "You freak. You want to fight me or fuck me? What? What?"

  Shit. He was too tired for this. The dress was too tight for running. The man from the stall had finally made it outside with the others, trying to flank him. All of them breathing heavily, hands at the ready like an old American Western. More men on their way between meetings, on phones, wearing Rolexes, stopped to watch.

  Adem, hands on his knees, said, "Please."

  The man he had wrestled with said, "Please? Please beat the sissy out of you, is that what you want?"

  His friend laughed.

  Then screamed.

  Then his shoulder began to bleed..

  He fell onto the ground. The other man rushed to his side.

  The one from the stall was looking all over. Taking small steps backwards.

  His knee exploded.

  Adem didn't wait for his turn in the sniper's sites. They had found him. They were coming for him. He would never make it in time.

  But he had nowhere else to go.

  Adem grabbed the hem of his kashibo and pulled it up to his waist, held it as he flat-out ran the hell away from there, staying close to the walls of buildings, taking turns through small alleys, not looking back. People staring, mouths going wide. He pushed past. He kept going.

  *

  A block from the tower, Adem slowed down and dropped the hem of his dress, readjusted his hijab. Sweating through now. He wasn't worried about fooling the pursuers. What he wanted was to blend in with the women, slip past the security guards and cameras. He glanced around, up. Someone was watching. Where? Was this a trap? Had he tripped himself up?

  The entrance to the Tower's mall was a gleaming semicircle held up by iron columns plated in silver. Huge ads lit up the walls, almost like stained-glass windows in churches—CHANEL, PRADA, APPLE. Adem watched cars with tinted windows slide up to the door, valets running over to let out people who were far overdressed for a mall, at least the malls back home in Minnesota.

  Once inside, the air cooled and his skin chilled. He had to move fast. Straight to the elevators. He still had the keycard the Benefactor had given him to access the upper floors. Mood music, echoing all over the expanse, and there weren't many people there that time of day, so the crowd noise was minimal. Adem felt it all, though. He was overly sensitive, tried to calm his breathing. Sweat on his lip tickled. He itched it on reflex, then reached for the card in his pocket, but there was no pocket there. His hand slid past where it should've been one two three times before he remembered the pocket was in his pants, not the dress he was wearing over them.

  He said, "Shiiiii—" and let the rest go with a hot breath. Fine. He would fix it. He looked around for the nearest ladies room, ducked inside, and waited in line behind three women, the smells of bodily function and women's perfumes and shampoos and skin creams more pleasant than the men's shit and cologne. They had to know he was a he, right? Couldn't they tell? Pheromones or something? But no one even glanced at him. They were busy texting. Every single one of them. Texting. He was the odd woman out. They would sooner sneer at him for that than for his penis.

  Another flush, and he was next. He locked himself in the stall and pulled up the dress, found the card, and smoothed everything back into place. He dropped the card on the ground, picked it up again, grimy and wet, then opened the stall door. The woman outside nearly pushed him over trying to squeeze past him, elbows out wide while she tapped at her iPhone. She was a light-skinned Somali, tall, in a loose red hijab with some amber curls peeking out, which left him blinking, shocked. What were the odds? She glanced up at his face, lips parted, and said, in American English, "You need to check your make-up."

  He stumbled out of the ladies room. Some sort of omen. This was going to end very, very badly. In the main hall again, he gathered some coherence, then weaved his way to the elevators, the real ones. Not the glass ones in the center that went lightning-fast, went outside, and showed you all of Dubai from the top of the world. Instead, he walked towards the back wall where three reflective silver elevator doors waited side by side, hardly anyone waiting for them. Adem needed to be the only person in the elevator. He stepped back and let several cars comes and go, a few here or there, someone running up at the last second, for nearly five minutes. He heard so many languages—Arabic, English, Chinese, Somali, French—while waiting, people passing by, all walks of life. The mall was a great democratizer. Adem thought of the things he'd done that none of these people knew about. How world-changing decisions were made by rich men in secret rooms and there was nothing the entire population of this mall could do to change it.

  When he was sure there was no one nearby, with the elevator doors opening to let out a car full of shoppers, he slipped into the elevator, fumbled with the keycard. He missed the slot three times. The doors slid closed. Someone above must've pressed the button. He hit the stop button before it could rise. Finally got the card in. He whispered, "Thank God" and pressed the button for forty-six. That sounded nice and random.

  But nothing happened.

  Adem looked at the light beside the keycard slot. Bright red.

  He pulled it in and out again. Still red. He slammed his finger against forty-six, forty-five, thirty-nine, twenty-four. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  The alarm buzzer caught him by surprise. He yelped, felt a trickle of piss on his leg, just a few drops. Time to leave. Time to find the stairs again. A long climb.

  He pressed the release button and the doors slid open.

  Three men, two blacks and an Arab, all security guards, stood there. They stepped onto the elevator, the black man in front palming Adem's chest and pushing him back.

  "Should've padded your bra."

  The doors closed, and all three were facing him. The Arab pulled something from his back pocket and handed it to the lead guard, who flicked it with his wrist. A dinner napkin? No, no, a cloth sack.

  The man moved fast. By the time Adem realized the bag was going over his head, he tried to raise his arms, but they had already been pulled behind his back.

  He shook his head and shouted, tried to kick, tried to leverage his feet against the elevator walls, but they slid down. The man with the bag had a good grip on it, twisting tight beneath his chin. Beige, rough, thin enough for light and air to get through but nothing else. It pulled tighter and tighter against his nose, his lips, and he began gacking as it squeezed his throat.

  Lips close to his ear, the same man holding the bag. "Trust me, Adem."

  The elevator dinged—they hadn't moved—and he was dragged from the elevator, dangling between the two extra guards, knees almost touching the ground.

  SEVENTEEN

  Mustafa felt no rush of adrenaline or anxiety as he usually would on a night like this. The four of them—Teeth, Mustafa, Dawit, and GOAT, who they felt was better kept close than left to wonder where everyone had gone to—stood in the hotel parking lot, scattered, except that Mustafa had wanted Ali nearby to make sure he didn't text or call the Prince.

  They had popped the hood of the Challenger and pulled out the starter. Now they waited for Dragoslav to take his nightly ride to collect some cash from operators in around Nordeast, check out some pussy at Dream Girls or Deja Vu, or outdrink everyone at Palmer's Bar before scoring some crank around back. He could get started anytime between eleven and two, depending on how sleepy he was, apparently. Mustafa had done a little more checking. When he wasn't here, or down South where the girls were spread across Tennessee, or overseas, he went home to Superior, Wisconsin, where he had a decent middle-class ranch house in a subdivision built in the seventies that you couldn't see the Lake from. He was married. He had three kids, the oldest eleven, youngest four. Mustafa wondered if they had any idea what he actually did out on the road.

  Mustafa was having trouble giving this his full attention, though. Too busy worrying about Adem, selling him out like that. But shit, that wasn't fair. A father got to keep his boy safe. That's not selling
out. That's just being a non-shitty dad. And what was all that at the end, sounded like this Jacob didn't have it all together, sounded like Adem was in trouble again? Goddamn it. Long as his mother didn't find out.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Idil had to know Adem hadn't gone over for no pilgrimage. Not the way he loved TV and pizza and thick winter socks. His son was American. Maybe he would have a desire to explore his faith more deeply after another five, ten years, but Idil had to know Adem was really trying to find that girl. But she sure as hell didn't need to know about the CIA.

  Mustafa sniffed. His nose hadn't stopped itching. He rubbed a thumb and finger across it, winced at the sting. Ali was a real trooper, standing there with his hands in his jeans pockets. Staring at the hotel doors, barely blinking. Never looking away. The other two had hidden themselves in the shadows. Mustafa didn't have a clue where they were.

  He drifted closer to the GOAT. "Let me ask you something. So if I hadn't turned up okay, you think you'd go back to banging for Heem?"

  Shrug. "If he'd have me, yeah, I guess."

  "But last night, didn't no one know, and you were still with us."

  "Don't matter. I'm a Killa. I fight for the Killaz."

  "So if Heem doesn't want you back, how about Teeth? You up for joining Black Ice?"

  Ali shook his head, kept his eyes on the hotel door. He swallowed hard, throat jumping. "Look, why you asking all this? I done something wrong? You testing me or something?"

  "It's okay. Just...asking. You're a good man, but when it came down to the Prince or me, you picked me. Some might say that's a shitty friend."

  Finally got Ali's eyes on his. "But a good soldier."

  "You right."

  "I ain't never said I was your friend. Never said I was Heem's friend. That's just you making assumptions. The Killaz are my family. You started the Killaz. That one's easy. Don't go asking about me switching sides when I ain't switched shit, man."

  Mustafa nodded. Wanted to kick himself for even bringing it up. There wasn't a whole lot about gangbanging that was common sense except in the most primal aspect—protect you and yours, and don't snitch. So now Ali would be looking at Mustafa like, Something wrong with him. And, shit, what was any of the Killaz going to do when this trip down South was done anyway? When Bahdoon came back with the girl and told them all, "I'm out." Again.