“One more thing, sir?” Senator Wamsler nodded. “A friend of mine, a guy I went to law school with, he says you’re on AIPAC’s enemies list.”
The senator laughed. “You know what they say about shit lists.”
“No, sir, what?”
“They stink so bad, you can’t help but know you’re on them.”
John chuckled, even though he didn’t know anyone who’d ever said that.
“I’m just passing along the information, sir. You said you can’t get enough ground intelligence in this business.”
“True enough, son, true enough. I’m well aware I’ve got a big target on my back, and, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.”
Later that day, John called the number at the hostel. When Dalton came to the phone, John asked to speak directly to Cheryl, and then he told her the senator had put the wheels in motion. “Things move slowly in this town, but I will call if we learn any new details about your father’s disappearance.”
After three days, John called again and told them that they shouldn’t waste their money waiting in DC. “I’ll let you know if we find any information. Can I have your phone and address, Miss Haddad?”
“Here, let me give you mine,” Dalton said. “Her mother won’t be happy if she knows Cheryl’s trying to find her father.”
A month later, there was still nothing new, which Veranda thought odd. Every inquiry led to a dead end. The best he could figure was that either no one really knew what happened to Haddad, or the man’s disappearance was kept under wraps by people with the authority to keep secrets from a senator, even a senator with seniority on the Foreign Relations committee. Veranda hoped for the young girl’s sake it was the former, and that time would reveal additional leads. If it was the latter, well, God help Elias Haddad and his daughter.
After updating Cheryl again, Veranda spent a long time wondering what the girl’s life must have been like without her father and whether
it was a good thing or a bad thing that she’d managed to get hooked up with someone like Mr. Dalton given what she’d said about her mother.
“She’s been to Washington! Went to Senator Wamsler’s office for help finding out what happened,” Paula Kabelevsky—she’d dropped the Haddad after her husband had been gone a year—hissed into the phone.
“Do not concern yourself about it, Paula,” Father Moody said, his voice as calm as ever.
“What do you mean, ‘do not concern yourself’? I’m in a fucking panic!”
“Calm down. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Calm down? How dare you? She’s a kid. She’s fragile. If she finds out, she’ll hate me. Hell, I gave her a gun. She’ll probably want to kill me.”
“Cheryl is no longer a child, Paula. And I highly doubt she would do anything so reckless. Besides, she will not learn anything. I don’t think the president of the United States could find out if he wanted to.”
“For that matter, neither can I. You won’t even tell me what happened when he stepped off that plane.”
“When we made our arrangement, you told me you didn’t want to know. That was our agreement.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure now. You don’t think this gnaws at me? Even after all these years? No matter how things were between Elias and me? I have an ulcer for Chrissakes. I want to retch when I see his clothes hanging in the closet, but every time I try to get rid of the damn things, Cheryl cries, starts accusing me of not caring about her feelings. She gets so distraught I think she’s going to hurt herself.”
“Paula, you know as well as I do, that parts of this world are incomprehensible. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, proxies fight proxies in a Cold War that burns hotter than the fires of hell. The Middle East is a region where alliances shift so swiftly that no one can anticipate what will happen next. Who really knows what happened to Elias after he returned to Syria? Assad keeps a lid on the political turmoil and all the simmering, historical hatreds, but many things happen inside the country that even I don’t know about.”
“I don’t want a fucking lecture on Middle Eastern politics. I trusted that whatever you concocted would be enough to get me out of my marriage, but I had no idea that meant Elias would disappear completely.”
“All I can tell you is that as far as you are concerned, your husband was going to visit his ailing father and pay his last respects. That’s all you know. End of story.”
“Cheryl is eighteen now, and I can’t control her anymore.” Paula drew a choked breath. “Good god, what if she tries to go over there? What if she tries to find his family?”
“You needn’t worry about that. Your daughter does not have a passport and even if she did, she would not be getting a Visa to travel to Syria.”
After a long pause, Paula whispered, “Jesus, Moody, who the hell are you?”
As the Mustang pulled up to the curb, Dalton could see Paula Kabelevsky’s profile in the front window. Shit. Before Cheryl could even get the car door open, the screen door banged against the porch wall and disgorged Cheryl’s mother like cannon shot.
“Dalton, you sonofabitch, you are in a heap of shit. I’m gonna see to it you go up the river for kidnapping.”
Cheryl jumped in front of her. “Mom, stop! You’re embarrassing me! The neighbors will hear.”
Dalton got out of the car, strode around, and stood beside Cheryl. “Embarrassing you? I’ll show you embarrassing.” Paula, a good ten inches shorter than Dalton, jabbed her finger into his chest, glared at her daughter, and raised her voice another octave. “This man, Frank Dalton, a teacher no less, took my daughter for a week without my permission. That’s abduction!”
“She’s of legal age, Mrs. Kabelevsky,” Dalton said without moving or raising his voice.
“I decide when she’s of legal age, Dalton. Not you. She’s still under my roof.” Paula grabbed Cheryl’s arm and pulled her towards the house. “Get in the house. Now!”
Cheryl yanked her arm free. “You can’t tell me what to do. I’m eighteen. I can drink. I can vote. I can do whatever the hell I want for God’s sake! Even go home with Frank.” She knew using Dalton’s first name would piss her mother off. “The hell with you. At least he gives enough of a shit about me to help me try to find my father!”
Dalton set Cheryl’s suitcase on the sidewalk. “Maybe you should listen to your mother,” he said sheepishly, exhausted from the drive.
“What the hell? You’re siding with her now?” Cheryl’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Well, then, to hell with you both!” She grabbed her suitcase and ran towards the front door, tears streaming down her face.
“As for you,” Paula yelled at Dalton, “stay the hell away from my daughter. If you don’t, I’ll make damn sure a few of Chicago’s finest show up at your door. With your rap sheet.”
“I was completely honorable, Officer Kabelevsky. I was only trying to help her, and I think in making this trip to Washington, she learned a great deal about American government.”
“Oh, please, spare me the goddamn civics lesson.”
As calmly as possible, Dalton climbed into his car and drove off. He’d heard stories all his life about how Chicago’s finest often took matters into their own hands. And he didn’t think living in Joliet would offer him an ounce of protection. He didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer if the situation escalated. And he certainly didn’t want to end up in jail or with two busted kneecaps.
Interlude
Ya abi,
I moved out of our house. I moved in with Frank Dalton, my old English teacher. I can’t deal with Mother anymore. I can’t. I know, I know, he’s twelve years older than me. He just turned thirty. But, he’s a nice man and he lives in a garden apartment on the outskirts of town. Kind of where we had to drive around that day Martin Luther King was shot, remember, and we couldn’t get back over the bridges?
You know what else? Mother told me if I left, not to ever set foot in the house again. Then she calls every day asking me to c
ome back home, but I refuse to talk to her. She even sent two other policemen over to talk to me. Can you believe that? And they were really ugly to Frank. He was such a gentleman, though. I hate her for that.
After that, I did go back, but to tell her that only when she helped me to find you would I think about going home again. I found her in the bedroom, throwing all your clothes in a bag. All I could do was grab your favorite jacket and yell, I hate you! I’ll never forgive you! Then I walked out and slammed the door behind me.
How could she do that? You’ll come back. I know it. I’m glad I have your jacket. It still smells of your cigarettes, and the wonderful scent of everything from your home country. Like it’s from another time, long ago. I even smell zatar in your clothes! I found one of your handkerchiefs in the pocket. I use it as a headband! My friends at the diner say there’s an air of mystery about me when I wear it. By the way, my job is fine. The tips are great, and Frank doesn’t make me pay for rent or food, so I’m saving lots of money to get my own pad someday.
Papa, my faith is unwavering that we will find each other. And when we do, I will share all I have written to you. Frank says this is how I can keep you in my life until you return. Words will find their way to you, he says, and if I speak them, the sound waves will travel to where you are. He’s one of these mystical guys; believes in meditation and Zen, stuff like that. He gets high, too. A lot, actually. Every night. I don’t know how he grades his papers, or gets through all of his classes. But he’s good to me … in many ways. Ways I can’t talk about. Anyway, he tells me to look for you in the white spaces of life, to hear you in the silences of the world. He insists our energy waves are connecting.
I know you are out there somewhere.
Yom tani fil jannah bin tak
13
Spring, 1985
Cheryl didn’t mind putting Dalton’s laundry away since he’d been letting her live rent free for almost two years so she could save enough money to buy her own car. She didn’t mind, that is, until the day she found the letter from Senator Wamsler’s office postmarked three months earlier. It was already open—Dalton had read it and hidden it!—and she slipped it out of the drawer and read the note from the senator’s aide that told her there was basically nothing more to learn from their end, that all inquiries had come up dry, and that they had no information to offer her. The letter was apologetic and sincere and Cheryl read it with tears streaming down her face. How long was Dalton going to let her imagine there was hope? How long was he going to live a lie of omission?
She sat on the couch, letter in hand, suitcase packed, and waited until Dalton walked in the door. After a scene that started badly and ended worse, she peeled out of the drive without thinking about where she would go next.
Their relationship had stagnated and Cheryl had grown tired of Dalton’s placid, everything-will-work-out attitude. She knew better. Sometimes bad things happened and things didn’t work out. At first, as they waited for news, Dalton had suggested Cheryl join the new Arab American Affairs Institute, or AAAI, chapter in Chicago in order to connect with others who might help her. He’d even attended the first few meetings with her. Cheryl knew she wasn’t always the most diplomatic person, and felt his presence might take the edge off her bluntness and help her get established. It had worked, and after Dalton bragged about Cheryl’s writing skills, they’d put her to work writing fundraising letters and press releases.
After the last AAAI meeting and before Cheryl left in frustration never to return, she had gone back to Dalton’s apartment full of ire. “Christ, these people are as bad as my Mom always said!”
“What do you mean?”
“They can’t agree on anything.”
“It often takes time for a group to reach consensus.”
“Yeah, but this is different. You can tell there’s never going to be consensus.”
“I just think you’re not used to being a part of a group dealing with such important issues and with people from vastly different backgrounds and vastly different ideas on how to solve problems.”
Cheryl had come to hate his “positive attitude” and mild way of reasoning. “The Lebanese Christian,” she said, “has nothing in common with the Palestinian Muslim, who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, or the Kuwaiti who’s worth so much she comes to meetings dripping in gold. And don’t get me started on the Egyptian couple. So how can these people ever agree on anything? They can’t even agree on where to get hummus and grape leaves for the meetings.”
“You can’t expect them to shed the cloak of their heritage overnight.”
Cheryl ignored the comment. “And the Iraqi does nothing but argue with the guy who’s a first generation Iranian-American. Persians aren’t even Arabs so what’s that guy doing there, anyway?”
“Iraq and Iran are fighting a war, you know.”
“You think I don’t know that? But shit, we’re in America. We’re supposed to be working together to get something done. Hell, I spent the entire evening rewriting a single paragraph in my press release about the Israeli massacres in the refugee camps of southern Lebanon because none of them could agree on just what to say. I thought there might be a massacre in that damn office tonight. What a waste of time.”
“That’s why they say witnessing democracy in action is like watching sausage being made.”
“Well, it’s certainly worse than what goes on in Kosake’s kitchen.” Cheryl laughed at her joke and went to the refrigerator to pull out a beer.
“I thought you didn’t like my choice of beer,” Dalton called out. “Maybe it’s time to buy your own, you know, and pay for it yourself.”
Cheryl ignored his comment, waltzed over to Dalton and pecked him on the cheek, then kissed him on the mouth, turned and sat down at the table. “But here’s the worst part,” she continued. “A new woman attended the last meeting, and she was really helpful and smart and seemed like she’d get things done.”
“That’s positive.”
“But tonight she didn’t show. When I asked one of the other guys if they knew where she was, he says, ‘Oh, you know, she’s part Jewish.’”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, exactly. She was great, but we spent an hour debating about whether we’re being infiltrated by a spy. I mean, what’s with these people?”
“Unfortunate for sure.” Dalton leaned over and lit a half-smoked joint sitting in the ashtray. “I don’t know much, but from what I’ve ready over the past few years, without liberal Jewish supporters in their ranks, the Arab-American community wouldn’t have much of a voice at all.”
Cheryl lifted the bottle of Heineken to her lips and pulled a long swallow. She hadn’t eaten, so the alcohol went straight to her head. “I mean, you had to have seen it. All of them, finding a common enemy to distrust, when none of them trusts each other one bit. What a joke. Anyway, it’s all a waste of time, money, and gas to drive to Chicago. And, the place we meet in is depressing.”
“Surely, it’s a small sacrifice for the possibility of help in locating your father.”
“That’s the problem. They don’t know anything about stuff like that, which is not their fault. I mean, they are sympathetic. When the executive director from the national office in DC came to speak on political action, I sat on the front row, like you told me to, and rushed up to him as soon as he was done. I explained my situation, and his response was like someone petting a puppy. They have civil rights lawyers and lobbyists and people ‘working the halls on Capitol Hill,’ but they don’t know anything about how to find a lone individual lost in Syria so long ago. And, besides, I think they’re all afraid of Assad. Every time I start talking about him, you can see people get uncomfortable, almost like looking over their shoulders and checking behind doors and shit. Apparently he’s the biggest asshole of all Middle Eastern assholes.”
“That’s saying a lot,” Dalton said through a cloud of smoke. Cheryl stared long and hard at him. His eyes were beginning to glaze over. More than the fat
igue of AAAI hung over them. They had become like an old married couple, always bickering. Dalton was an effective teacher, a good motivator at school, and truly dedicated to his students, but at home, all he wanted to do was get high, listen to tunes, and avoid anything constructive. And have sex. Their energy levels were no longer compatible. The sex was great for the first year or so, all of it so new to Cheryl, but even in that department, he’d lost interest.
“I’m not sure there are any good options left,” Dalton said. Cheryl wondered if she was talking about them, or finding her father. “I suppose you could try to request some information based on the Freedom of Information Act. Maybe even travel to Syria?”
“What? Trying to get rid of me?” Cheryl chirped. She thought about straddling his lap, pull his mouth down to her breasts, but pushed the thought away as quickly as it surfaced.
Dalton put the joint to his lips, inhaled, and held his breath.
“Well,” she continued, “I could try to get in touch with that friend of my father’s, that priest, Father Moody, but he always gave me the creeps. Like he was always watching my father. Watching me.” She shuddered. “Anyway, last time I asked Mom about him, she said she hadn’t seen or heard from him in years.”
Cheryl sucked down the last of the beer and set the bottle on a thick slab of board perched across stacks of plastic milk crates, which served as the table.
“But the bottom line is, I don’t have enough money to go to Syria, or even to know what I’d do once I got there. I don’t have a passport. And besides, Mother threatened to have me snatched at the airport if I tried.”
“Imagine that.” Dalton leaned back against the couch and shut his eyes. “Paula Kabelevsky threatening to kidnap her own daughter. Such a fine, upstanding officer of the law.”
The Moment Before Page 10