After driving around for a while, Cheryl decided to go to her mother’s after leaving Dalton’s. Thankfully, the key still worked, even though her mother had threatened to change the locks several times. Knowing her mother was at work, she went through her mother’s dresser drawers, her address book, and even through some of her father’s old clothes, which, thankfully, still hadn’t been removed from the attic. She didn’t know what she was looking for, maybe contact information for Father Moody or the whereabouts of family members in Syria. Didn’t matter. She found nothing.
She was about to call Dalton, ask for the phone number for John Veranda so she could hear the bad news from Veranda himself, but then she realized she could very easily contact the senator’s office on her own. She went to the kitchen and dialed information to get the number. She drummed her fingers on the table, nervous about calling Washington DC, and waited until she was finally connected to Wamsler’s office. She sat up straight as if in the office herself, and said, “John Veranda, please.”
“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “Mr. Veranda no longer works for the senator.”
“What? I just got a letter from him.” The words slipped out before she remembered the letter had been postmarked three months ago.
“Can you tell me how to get in touch with him? He was helping me with a personal matter.”
“I’m sorry, we’re we’re not authorized to give a forwarding address.”
Her mother let her move back into her old bedroom, but since her grandmother had moved in with one of the uncles and his wife while Cheryl had been living with Dalton, the house felt empty and she felt exposed, like she was constantly under surveillance. Her mother hovered. The uncles would show up at the restaurant during her shift and stop by the house at odd hours. Still, she made plans for the next step in her investigation. If Senator Wamsler’s office couldn’t find anything out and if the AAAI couldn’t help her and if her mother wouldn’t give her any information, she felt she had no other choice but to go to Syria. She barely had enough money, but she could swing it. She stopped by a travel agency, got the information she needed to apply for a passport, got her picture taken, and sent in the application.
What are you going to do when you get there? You don’t speak a word of Arabic. The Middle East is not a place where a woman can travel alone safely. The State Department has even issued warnings about traveling there. These thoughts rolled around in her head while she waited.
Then, she got a letter informing her that her application for a passport had been denied. That day, she waited for her mother to return from her shift. All she could think about was waving the paper in her face, demand to know whether she had something to do with the denial. Just like with Dalton, she sat waiting with the letter in her hand, only this time, she didn’t have her suitcase packed. She didn’t know where else she could go. So she sat and waited, by turns furious and resigned.
In time, the silence and stillness surrounding her broke down into their component parts, and when they finally recombined, a haunting quiet replaced the comfort of the familiar. The four walls of the house seemed to contract. Nicks and stains loomed as fissures in the foundation. Boxes and cans of food in the pantry became insurmountable barriers between her and some kind of future. The faint background odor of the home, a rich mixture ingrained in furniture, carpet, and the scent of last night’s dinner—all of it—was abhorrent. She ran to the bathroom and threw up, then turned out the light in her bedroom, crawled under the covers, and fell into an exhausted and fevered sleep.
When she woke the next morning, she looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t know what her future held, but she knew she needed to begin to transition to something … someone else. She no longer wanted to be Cheryl Haddad, daughter of the man who disappeared and the woman who didn’t care. She didn’t know who she wanted to be, yet, but she knew she needed a drastic change.
After her shift at the diner, Cheryl stopped in at a hair styling studio she had passed many times before. It turned out, the salon was run by a couple of African American girls she knew from high school, two grades above, who played basketball with Maya.
I need a whole new look, Cheryl said, after a faux hug and a few minutes of reminiscing about Maya and their shared experiences.
“What look you have in mind?”
“I want to be blonde. Dazzlingly blonde.”
“We turn the blackest hair flaxen gold, platinum, iron pipe, manila, wheat, and anything and everything in-between. We make kinky straight, straight curly, we got plugs, extensions, wigs. What you want, we got.”
Cheryl embraced their enthusiasm. She found the soul, R&B, and disco tunes blaring from the speakers a refreshing change from the rock and classical music that usually filled her ears. The whirring of dryer hoods, blow dryers, water flowing from faucets, made it a little difficult to carry on a conversation, but the chatter and the gossip and the stories among the ladies didn’t miss a beat. At times, they even paused to move to the beat themselves. Customers not tethered to a hair dryer or otherwise encumbered joined in. And when it was all done, Cheryl couldn’t get over the change. It was exactly what she needed.
And keeping the black roots from taking over meant regular trips back to the shop. Getting her hair done become a social affair with raucous entertainment, all for the price of a styling. She and her stylists became friends outside the salon, and Cheryl was introduced to a whole new side of Joliet. She spent months going to clubs with new friends she met from the shop, and learned to let go for the first time in her life. She tried new foods, listened to new music, wore different clothes, and dated different men. And she learned how to dance through the music, not to it, how to dance for others, not with them. And, she found she liked dancing for others. The attention from the men. And the women.
14
September, 1985
While investigating the disappearance of Elias Haddad, Veranda learned quickly just how fast sources of information could shut down. He was sorry he couldn’t help the daughter, but his efforts did open new doors for the senator with Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Arab-American policy and human rights groups. One organization in particular caught Senator Wamsler’s early attention: the American-Arab Affairs Institute, the AAAI. It was growing quickly, and they already had a large presence in Chicago. Once Veranda learned that, he immediately sent a note to Mr. Dalton, remembering that he didn’t have an address for Cheryl. Maybe the girl could at least find some common cause with some of the local activists.
The group was founded by an ex-senator from Nebraska, and two of the founding board members had spent their entire careers in the foreign service working either at the State Department in DC or in one Middle East country or another. Wamsler asked Veranda to stay close to them, and John welcomed the assignment.
After several phone calls and get-acquainted sessions at various events around town, Veranda arranged a formal meeting to better understand their mission. He was excited to visit the office in the DuPont Circle neighborhood, home to some of the coolest nightspots and pick-up joints in the district, and he arranged a meeting with the executive director late in the day, so he’d be perfectly positioned for happy hour on Connecticut Avenue. He was making better money now, his rent was still reasonable, and he had more discretionary income. Splurging on high-priced drinks where DC’s loveliest single women could be found was less of an issue these days.
The executive director greeted him in a slate grey suit with a sunshine yellow paisley tie and matching suspenders. John immediately thought of Dr. Zhivago and Omar Sharif and felt slightly shabby in comparison. The man’s pleasant, easy-going manner belied the argumentative Middle Eastern stereotype some on Capitol Hill seemed to have, and John found himself impressed by his political acumen. Thankfully, the man did not immediately mount his soapbox to lecture Veranda on how unfair the political process was to his people. A few of the Arab-American leaders had annoyed him when they did that. Gaining influence in Washington was a process.
Yes, it took money and resources, but bellyaching about the deck being stacked against them wasn’t going to win them friends and allies.
AAAI’s overriding objective, the director said, was to present a more balanced perspective on the Middle East, counter the superior, and, he added almost dutifully, highly respected advantage Jewish groups had earned in the American political process. He picked up a book from his desk, handed it to John, and excused himself to use the facilities.
Veranda flipped through the pages and saw pictures, cartoons, commercials, stills from movies, and media images with Arab caricatures. It didn’t take long to get the point. They were always portrayed as dark, sinister, criminal types, or buffoons taken advantage of by others.
The director returned to his office.
“Some of these are my favorite movies,” John said, putting the book back on the desk.
The director ignored his comment. “I have a test for you,” he said. “How many Americans died in World War II liberating Europe?”
“Uh … honestly, I’m not sure.”
“How many Jews were exterminated in the concentration camps?”
“Six million,” John answered almost automatically. “Now, I’m not talking about equivalency here. But 350,000 soldiers lost their lives in the line of duty along with twenty million Europeans. Six million exterminated in a genocidal holocaust is mind-numbingly abhorrent in any context, but one cannot dispute that some facts and numbers are embedded in our culture and others are not. This is not by accident.”
Veranda admitted that he hadn’t thought about it that way, and the director pushed the book back toward him. “Please accept this copy as a gift. The author is a highly respected scholar who studies this sort of thing, how certain knowledge and certain perceptions become embedded in culture. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
When their meeting concluded, the director escorted John out of his office. The DuPont Circle address was posh, but the decor and furnishings in the office told a different story. You could barely maneuver in narrow aisles between file drawers, cubicle walls, and boxes of books.
“Here, let me introduce you to our staff,” the director said, guiding him down the cramped hallway.
John shook hands with a young guy that looked like he was fresh out of college and who was introduced as Mahmoud, or the Brain, because he ran the computer. John chastised himself for noticing that the guy had a head full of wire-thick black hair and a very large nose with a hook on the bridge, much like the character on the cover of the book in his hand. Next, he was introduced to a tall, white-haired ex-State Department gentleman who independently published an influential newsletter on the Middle East. Finally, the director ushered him into a small office where a striking young woman sat typing furiously at a computer keyboard.
“Jami, I’d like to introduce you to John Veranda, a senior aide in Senator Wamsler’s office, from the great state of Illinois.”
“John Veranda, my pleasure.” She stood and reached toward him, a wide smile on her face. Her handshake was firm, but soft, smooth. “Jami Strachan. We may have talked on the phone once or twice,” she said.
John was sure he would have remembered her voice.
“Jami has been with us,” the director paused, glancing at her, “what, less than a year now, and works with our dignitaries and ambassadors.”
John did not hear the rest of what the director said. He didn’t let go of Jami Strachan’s hand, even though she gently tried to pull away. She was simply dressed in a long, ankle-length skirt, the color of autumn, John’s favorite season. Her hair was full, strands so thick, he thought a Bokhara rug like the one in Wamsler’s office could have been woven from it. He imagined burying his face in her curls and drinking in the scent of it. For a brief moment, she reminded him of that girl, Cheryl, who came with her teacher. And for a brief moment, he could see his life laid out before him. Suddenly, he felt conspicuous for staring and holding her hand, so he released her and mumbled something that was most likely completely ridiculous.
“Thank you, Jami. I look forward to getting to know you and working with you,” he said and wondered if she’d felt the intensity he felt while holding her hand.
“Likewise,” she responded. Then she gave him another smile and sat back down at her desk and went back to work.
“The Brain—or rather, Mahmoud—will show you out,” the director said. “We look forward to a closer working relationship with you and the rest of Senator Wamsler’s staff.”
When they reached the front door of the office, they exchanged obligatory last words and shook hands. Veranda spotted Jami standing across the way at the reception desk. As if she felt him staring at her, she looked up at him and briefly held his gaze. Veranda assumed Jami was looking at him the same way he was thinking about her. To think otherwise would deny that his mind, his body, and his emotions had achieved synchronicity. Any sign of disinterest from her would destroy that fundamental truth. His future had been reduced to a single point, and he and Jami both occupied it.
When he got to the sidewalk, he was conscious of breathing again. Traffic whizzed by, but he heard nothing. At the corner he saw the instrument of his salvation. He pulled a quarter out of his pocket, squeezed into the pay phone, and dug into his jacket pocket for the director’s business card with the AAAI office number on it.
“Yes, may I please speak with Jami Strachan?”
“Certainly. Whom shall I say is calling?”
“Just say John.”
John waited for the call to transfer.
“Hello. Jami Strachan speaking.”
“Hi, uh, Jami, this is John, John Veranda, the guy who was in your office, meeting with your director, like a minute ago. I’m sorry to bother you . . .” He felt like he was in high school again.
“Oh, it’s no bother at all. I recognize your voice. Did you forget something?”
A smile spread across his face. His voice had left an impression.
“Yes, Jami, I did forget something.” He took in a long breath. “I forgot to ask if you would care to have dinner with me tonight, or meet me for a drink, or meet me on the corner to talk, or for a cup of coffee in the morning?” He hoped he didn’t sound desperate. He realized, too, he’d never checked to see if she wore a wedding ring. He exhaled away from the phone’s receiver, directing the possibility of rejection elsewhere.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in a phone booth across the street from your office.”
“Oh my, you didn’t get far, did you? I hear the traffic.”
“I can wait until quitting time,” John said. “In the phone booth?”
She laughed. He laughed, too.
“You could wait up here.”
“I’d rather not. Don’t want to appear to mix business with pleasure.”
“I’m sorry, I forgot I have a work engagement tonight. I’ll be at an event with the ambassador of Kuwait’s entourage.”
He was crushed. All the energy he could muster, he’d squandered on that one question. “Oh,” he managed to somehow say.
“But I could meet you for lunch tomorrow, if you’d like, as long as we don’t go too far. I only get a half hour.”
Veranda could have hugged the pay phone. O’ instrument of joy, he thought. Jami suggested a place, Spiro’s, right on Connecticut, right across the street, in fact. “What time?”
“How about 11:15? Before the rush.”
“I’ll be there.” He hung up, thought about getting a celebratory cocktail at the Blue Moon grille, then decided to go home, and wait for tomorrow to arrive.
While he absent-mindedly watched a World Series game in the evening, he thought about Jami’s eyes, green, set off by exquisitely thin, long lashes, topped by thick, unplucked eyebrows, almost as thick as a man’s. Something deep, faraway, was contained in those eyes, a quiet determination that no one was going to spoil this life of hers, that she was going to follow her passions and dreams no matter the odds. Again, the simila
rities, the eyes especially, to Cheryl Haddad passed into his imagination’s field of vision, only to leave it almost as quickly.
The next morning, John woke to a breaking story on NPR. He made his way down to the kitchen and picked up the Washington Post and held it in front of him, the type blurring before his eyes. A fire bomb had been thrown through the window of the AAAI offices on Connecticut Avenue around 9:30 pm. One woman was killed, her name withheld pending notification of family.
He followed the news, the investigation into the attack, until the trail went cold. Buried deep in the column inches on the story was this tragic irony: Jami, a young Jewish woman from Pittsburgh, who had majored in political science, had planned to attend the School for International Studies at Columbia University in New York City. Her passion was civil rights. Senator Wamsler was quoted several times in the news accounts stating a clear, moderate voice for American-Arabs and the Middle East would not have emerged without the help of liberal Jewish activists, exemplified by the courage and commitment of Jami Strachan, and others like her, who dared to speak out.
15
1 October, 1985
Senator Wamsler had accepted an invitation to speak at the Annual Conference of the Arab-American Affairs Institute and had asked John to attend as well. Held just across the river in Arlington, John arrived not knowing what to expect. Still he was surprised when the woman who gave him his guest badge informed him that he, too, would be sitting at the head table with the senator.
As Veranda made his way to the bar, he was struck by the cacophony of English and Arabic conversation. He tried to remember if he’d been surrounded by so many people from so many diverse backgrounds at the same time. There were plenty of black kids in Saluki and he’d been good friends with a couple of guys he’d played sports with, and in college he’d met a few students from other countries. One guy on his freshman dorm floor had been from Greece and he’d gotten to know several of his friends. And of course, he’d lived with Stuart during law school and had gotten to know a bunch of his Jewish friends, but before working for Wamsler, had he known any Arabs? Were there any Arabs or Jews, for that matter, in Saluki? He couldn’t think of any. Anyway, it had never mattered to him.
The Moment Before Page 11