The Moment Before

by Jason Makansi

Holly turned to look at Penndel. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told about all this. My old teacher knew part of it, of course. And I told the lawyer in DC as much as I knew about my dad, but since then I haven’t talked about it with anyone else.”

  “Now I’m a repository of information about your life,” Penndel said. “If I fuck up as a roommate, just promise me you won’t throw me into the kiln and make one of my own works out of me. I don’t think I’d look good on a display pedestal.

  Holly laughed and started pushing the wheelchair through the gravel. “I feel like Joe is our confessional. Are we allowed to share him with anyone else, or is this our thing?

  “It’s a public space, so I don’t think we can claim it as our clubhouse. And with those Nazi docents guarding the entrance, it’d be hard to enforce a secret password.”

  “I guess since I’ve never come here with anyone but you, it seems special.”

  “I am flattered you think of it that way.” After a long pause, he added, “Just make sure the next person you share Joe with is worth it.”

  6

  Jordan, 1985

  Time washed past Elias in ways he could no longer fathom. Some of the other fifty or so men held with him said they were at a top secret detention facility in Jordan run by the American CIA. Yet, Elias imagined they could have been anywhere. Not one characteristic of the place indicated where on earth they were located. All he knew for sure was that the cell he was in this time was filthier and more cramped than the last one.

  Because of his proficiency with English and his nationality, the Americans accused him of being a Hezbollah agent, or a counteragent, depending on who was talking, while many of the Arabs confined with him believed he was a Mossad agent because he also spoke Hebrew. Despite the fact that no one trusted him, bits of information eventually filtered down to him from other detainees and camp officials.

  What he learned was that after the embassy in Beirut was bombed, the US sent in a covert military team to plan retaliatory strikes. Six months later, the Marine barracks were bombed at the Beirut International Airport, and that’s when the Americans began rounding up suspects, or rather, hostages. Fed up with appearing weak and ineffective, the Americans started collaborating with the Israelis to arrest anyone with suspected ties to militant Islamic groups even though many couldn’t even be identified by the military and espionage forces on the ground. Elias had been one of the unidentified—and unidentifiable.

  The Israelis, who had held him as a prisoner of war after the 1973 war with Syria and Egypt, later trained him to fight as a proxy in the South Lebanese Army, cobbled together from factions of Lebanese Christian soldiers, to resist the Palestinian Liberation Organization and later Hezbollah.

  After the carnage he was forced to witness against unarmed civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, Elias shut down. The slaughter permanently perforated his soul, his grip on what humanity was supposed to be leaked out to soak into the blood-drenched soil. The memories and images festered in him like maggots in a dead animal, eating away at whatever autonomy he had left. And like the death of the maggots that die only after an animal is consumed, those memories, too, would never die until he did. This, he knew for certain. He refused to cooperate after that massacre, and the Israelis began to suspect his sympathies lay with Islamic militants. So because of his English and of his insistence that he had lived in America, they handed him over to the Americans.

  After he transitioned from soldier to prisoner, every chamber of Elias’s body was violated. Torture was used to enforce discipline. To seek information he did not have. Food was minimal—or withheld. Drinking water scarce. Sanitation, non-existent. What they had not emptied out of him, he had done to himself. Even forced to violate his own bowels, so they functioned properly.

  In his last conversation having anything to do with his future, a fellow detainee told him the Americans could never return him to Syria because of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, enacted the year before. This prevented the US from extraditing any person to another country if there were substantial grounds to believe the person would be subject to torture. What irony, he thought.

  Elias had no secrets left. He’d never had any in the first place. So what did it matter where he lived? How he lived? Or how he died.

  Inquiries to his captors about his predicament ended, along with the hope of any messages getting through to family. He did as he was told. Shuffled mechanically from one place to another, as ordered. No action out of the ordinary. A living death.

  The years he’d spent ruminating over why his father sent him away from home were done. He’d convinced himself he wasn’t wanted in the first place. And even before he left America in the hope of visiting his ailing father one last time, he realized there was nothing left between him and the woman he’d married, Paula, the mother of his daughter. Their running feud about having more children got the best of them. He knew he’d acted improperly several times, hoping to make her pregnant again. But she was his wife, after all. It was her duty to have children, and what she’d done to keep from having a second child could not be forgiven.

  He’d even given up on Father Moody. If there was anything he could have done to help him escape this hell on earth, to intervene with the Americans or to get word to his relatives in Syria, he would have done so long ago.

  Elias was told by many people, inmates, prison officials, that the Assad likely wiped out most of his family because of their anti-regime activites or sympathies. He could not comprehend the totality of that. His father and mother, his brothers, and sisters? All of them gone? Any relative left, no matter how distant, would be too fearful to make even an innocent inquiry, others said. And he could never be returned to America because the government would be forced to offer a fair and impartial trial. With no concrete evidence against him, the government would lose.

  Get used to it, one prisoner said. We are international zombies.

  Now, nothing—his family in Aleppo, his wife in Illinois, his friend and confidant, Father Moody, or even his freedom—was of any consequence. Nothing mattered except his daughter. Therein lay his only remaining thoughts of life outside.

  He had not seen Halia in twelve years. She would be a woman now, twenty-one years old, graduated from college at the top of her class, surely. Ready to marry, raise a family. What did she look like? Was she happy? Does she treat her mother with respect? He hoped she was able to take the piano lessons they talked of so earnestly in days gone by. Hope for her life to be as happy and fruitful as possible clung to him. But even that hope had become ephemeral, fading in and out.

  7

  Christmas, 1973

  Cheryl glared at the family’s baklava pan, wishing she had the strength to mangle it into an unrecognizable shape. Anger at her father’s absence seethed just below the surface. Even though her uncles, her cousins, her grandmother all had volunteered to help her prepare the holiday delicacy, she refused.

  They knew without her saying it, that, without her father, she was determined to make it herself. This is our time together, her father had always insisted. Our tradition. Our gift each year for our family and friends.

  Earlier in the week, she had retrieved and carefully unfolded the recipe her father had written down in her school notebook. She ran her finger over the words and couldn’t help but smile at the spots of honey she’d dripped onto the paper the first time she’d helped. Unlike her father, they had not disappeared. Not vanished without a trace.

  When her mother had wanted to join them one time, her father had refused, insisting this was their time. A father and daughter tradition.

  Her mother had scoffed, and out of ear shot of her father, had taken her frustration out on Holly. “Your father’s not the only one who can prepare things for family, you know. I don’t know why you idolize him.”

  Cheryl shook off the melancholy.

  After getting all the ingredients lined up on the counter, she turned on the radio. Music—and p
atience—is the key to perfect baklava, Elias Haddad always said as he flipped on the radio to his favorite classical station. “Along with a glass of milk for you and a cigarette and a beer for me.” Only after lighting up and turning up the bottle for a deep drink, did he clap his hands together and say, “Now! Let us begin.”

  Cheryl smiled at the memory, repeated each and every year they’d prepared the baklava. She walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the bottle of beer she’d saved after her father’s disappearance, and set it on the counter. The only other thing missing now was the cigarette her father smoked. And of course, her father.

  As she proceeded, frustration soon got the better of her. The phyllo dough either tore, stuck together, or crumbled as she tried to lay the sheets one after the other in the pan. And she’d found she hadn’t ground the nuts fine enough. At first, she pushed through her irritation, but eventually a tear rolled down her cheek. Then without thinking, she gave the pan a hard shove and sent it crashing to the floor. She gripped the edge of the counter as tears stained her cheeks. Where was he? He’d said he would only be gone a short while, a few weeks, a month or so at most. His father, the grandfather Cheryl had never met, was ill and he needed to return to Aleppo to be with the family.

  But she needed him, too.

  Cheryl had clung to him before he left. “Why can’t I go with you? I want to meet my grandfather and grandmother.” She’d heard so many stories about Aleppo, she could practically smell the place.

  “Next time, Halia,” he’d said. “The time will go quickly, I promise.”

  That had been … forever ago.

  After three months had passed, Cheryl began repeatedly asking her mother, “Why isn’t Papa back? He should have been here a month ago.” Her mother only waved off the discussion, becoming more and more annoyed each time.

  Before the holiday break, Cheryl had come home from school one day, and walked into her parent’s bedroom to find her mother removing all of her father’s clothes from their bedroom closet. The pungent smell of his tobacco melded with his faint scent that hung on each piece of his clothing, a scent Cheryl associated with Syria. Had her mother discovered she’d been crawling into the closet to inhale her father’s scent and escape the world without him? She couldn’t imagine his things being gone.

  She’d panicked. “Mother! What are you doing?”

  “Just what it looks like.”

  “You … can’t!”

  Her mother wheeled around and threw a shirt at her. “Can’t? Can’t? I can do whatever I want here. This is my home. Mine. He’s not coming back. He abandoned us. Surely you realize that now.”

  Paula dropped to her knees and one after the other, threw shoes atop the mound of clothes on top of the bed as Cheryl watched in silent horror. Then Cheryl turned and ran from the room.

  Now Cheryl retrieved the baklava pan that had landed right side up on the floor. She cleaned up the mess and tried again to separate the paper thin sheets of dough. Now the entire roll stuck together. This time she picked it up and slung it into the sink.

  “To hell with it,” she said, violating her mother’s strict warning not to curse.

  “To hell with what?” her grandmother asked, walking into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.

  Cheryl turned to face her and sobbed. “With Papa … and this.” She swept her arm toward the counter, the unused ingredients, and the pan in the sink.

  “Oh, Cheryl. Come. Sit.”

  Her grandmother embraced her and led her to the kitchen table where Cheryl had spent afternoons doing homework as her grandmother prepared dinner. Her grandmother wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and Cheryl laid her head on her grandmother’s bosom and sobbed.

  “My sweet child, I should have known to help you. But you said you wanted to do it all by yourself.”

  “I can’t do it all by myself,” Cheryl managed to say.

  “Then I will help you. My beautiful girl, I am always here to help you.”

  Cheryl snuffed snot to the back of her throat. A few seconds later, she laughed through her tears. “Glad that didn’t make it onto your sweater!” She smiled up at her grandmother, but could see pain in her eyes, too.

  “Your father did not abandon you. Of that, I am certain.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Bah! Because he loved you more than anything in the whole world. Keep that in your heart and don’t listen to your mother. I love my daughter, but sometimes …” She hugged Cheryl and traced the side of her granddaughter’s tear-streaked face. “Now, let’s clean up this mess and try again. Yes? Kabelevskys can’t have Christmas without Haddad baklava.”

  Interlude

  Ya abi,

  This is my first entry in my new journal, Papa! I just wrote on the first page of this book with blank pages! (It’s hard to keep my lines straight.) A teacher named Mr. Dalton told me I should keep a journal. He says I could become a good writer. If I practice, that is. He is my English teacher, and he thinks I have talent. After being in his class for three months, I have learned something. I love to read what I write! I love it, I love it, I love it! I fall in love with my words. Now I keep every essay, every poem, every book report, sometimes even the long notes I write to my friends. I keep them in a plastic bag to preserve them. Every time I open the bag to put something new in, I start reading all the stuff I wrote before.

  Anyway, I told Mr. Dalton, finally, I would start a journal. Then I decided I would only write to you. I can keep our memories alive this way. He says only by writing every day can you become a great writer.

  Soon we will have another Thanksgiving feast without you. Our feast grows smaller and smaller because the family is losing our traditions. Traditions you kept alive. Mother especially. She says you abandoned us. I went with her one time when she visited Father Moody, but she made me wait in the entry. When she came out, she’d been crying. Father Moody said he would continue his search. That is the last time I think Mother went to see him. Pretty soon the whole winter was over. Spring, too. Then school ended. Later that summer, I caught her trying to move the rest of your things into the attic, but I told her I would run away. I think that scared her.

  I miss making the grape leaves and the stuffed cabbage and the shish kabob and, of course, the baklava, and going to the grocery store and having our contests about who could pick out the best fruits. I miss your music, even with all the hissing from that little tape player.

  Baklava doesn’t taste the same without you.

  —Yom tani fil jannah bin tak

  8

  July, 1980

  Ssome kids get a sweet sixteen party. A few get a car. Cheryl Halia Haddad got a gun. A mass murderer was running loose in Chicago, so her mother used that as an excuse. “Your father left us. Our neighborhood isn’t safe anymore. We can’t sell the house because interest rates are ridiculous. You need to learn how to defend yourself.”

  Tired of her mother always taking every opportunity to throw in your father left us, like he was her father but not her mother’s husband, Cheryl shot back, “I don’t have a father, so you get me a gun. Makes sense to me.”

  “Don’t get smart with me.” Her mother handed her the gun. “It’s not loaded.”

  Cheryl’s sarcasm was quickly forgotten as she held the gun in her hand. She lifted it and held it in front of her with both hands, like she’d seen in the movies. Closing one eye, she mimicked the sound of the gun firing. She was in awe of the strength it embodied, the maturity she felt, even if empty of bullets. Her mother wrested it from her grip.

  “It stays with me until we train you in gun safety.”

  “That’s the first time a gift has been immediately taken away.”

  “And for good reason! It is not a toy, Cheryl. Remember that.”

  The night before her first training session, her best friend, Maya, who already had her driver’s license, dropped Cheryl off at her home. They’d spent Friday evening hanging out in the park down by the
river, and as they approached the house, they could see a bluish glow in the front window. Getting inside, Cheryl was stunned to see her mom had bought a brand new television set, a 14-inch Sony Trinitron.

  “How do you like it?” her mom said.

  “I love it! But I thought we couldn’t afford a color TV.”

  “Never mind about that. Your uncles carried the old one up to your room, so now you’ve got your very own television.”

  First she got her very own gun and now she had her very own TV? What was up with her mom all of a sudden? Whatever it was, it was a welcome change.

  At school the next day, she told some friends about the new television and several ooohed and aaahed. “Those are top of the line.” “Very expensive.” “Fancy!” Cheryl wondered how her mom could suddenly afford one on a policewoman’s salary. They’d lived less than modestly, able to afford necessities, but not luxuries until very recently. And they’d lost the modest income her dad brought home from driving the cab. Had her mom gotten a promotion?

  One Friday night after Maya gave her a ride home, Cheryl was surprised to find her mother still awake. Two empty beer bottles stood like sentinels on the low table in front of her corduroy recliner.

  “Hey, Mom, what are you watching this late?

  “It’s this Clint Eastwood movie, Magnum Force, the second Dirty Harry flick. We watched it, remember?” Her mother loved all the tough cop movies.

  “Doesn’t all this stuff remind you of work?”

  “Are you kidding? This is nothing like my job. Do you see any cops giving traffic tickets, or making house calls for domestic disturbances?”

  Cheryl sat down on the couch, not to watch the movie, but to make her mom feel like she wasn’t hiding anything from her after a night out with friends.

  “Remember, we’ve got target practice tomorrow. Bright and early.”

  “I remember.” Cheryl hated getting up early on Sunday when she could be sleeping in, even though training was only twice a month. She hated running around outside when it was cold so early in the morning. But she loved being one of the only girls on the premises. Very few women ever showed up for target practice. She was pretty sure none of her friends owned a firearm. She loved living the secret of possessing a gun. She just hated the training.