The Submission

by Amy Waldman

  With less gusto he blew again, and the marching band became a drill team: some five hundred well-spaced people kneeling as one, the move meant to mimic, then mock, Muslims praying: instead of touching their heads to the ground, they stretched out on their backs. “Giving Allah the Navel,” Debbie called the move.

  “Protect sacred ground!” his members chanted.

  “Save America from Islam!” the SAFIs chanted.

  Sean, after surveying the weave of bodies, lowered himself into a cloud of SAFI perfume and his own sweat. The ground beneath his back was hard, the sky above a piercing blue, smooth as newly made ice cream. A day as clear, as beautiful as the one that had brought the attack, a gift of a day, but irritation was stuck somewhere in him like a pebble in a shoe.

  “You are blocking a public street,” a police official said through a bullhorn. “I’m going to count to one hundred, and by the time I finish, you all need to disperse. If not we will begin making arrests.”

  The tight scripting struck Sean now as enfeebling (“… forty-three, forty-four, forty-five …”), their defiance as nothing more than managed submission. His secret hope had been that maybe the police wouldn’t arrest them at all, would refuse to follow orders, choose patriotism over duty (“… sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one …”). But listening for the sound of the blue wall cracking, all he heard were police boots scuffing. And then: “ninety-eight … ninety-nine … one hundred. Time is up, ladies and gentlemen,” and, “Please stand, sir, let’s not make this difficult, thank you, appreciate it, hands in front, these are plastic, don’t actually hurt, thank you.”

  “Terrorist lover!” he heard a woman scream at a cop, who said, almost kindly, “Ma’am, I’ve got four kids; the only thing I love is my paycheck.”

  Their politeness was killing him, as was his back. Lifting his head to check on the police, he saw a silent group of counterprotesters standing on the sidewalk. Most, but not all, looked Muslim—headscarves on the women, beards on the men, dark skin. They held signs: WE ALSO ARE AMERICANS and ISLAM IS NOT A THREAT and MUSLIMS DIED THAT DAY, TOO and BIGOTS = IDIOTS. It was that last sign that flooded Sean’s brain with red, which also happened to be the color of the headscarf on the woman holding it. Rubin wanted him to be less crude? He scrambled to his feet and stalked over to her. “Are you calling me an idiot?” His spittle flew; his voice cracked; he didn’t care. “You’re calling my parents bigots? A bunch of Muslims killed my brother. Why aren’t you out protesting them? Have you ever held up a sign that said, ‘Murder in the name of my religion is wrong’?”

  “Of course it’s wrong,” the woman said steadily, “but discriminating on the basis of religion is wrong, too.”

  Her placidity, so provoking, made him want to provoke her in return, to get a rise, and the most provocative act he could think of was to tug back her headscarf, and he reached out, some small part of him also wanting to see what was so valuable it had to be covered, and caught the edge of the scarf as she stepped back in fear, so that the scarf came forward, a little roughly, maybe he blinded her for a moment, maybe his hand brushed against her head, then a police officer was separating them, or rather holding back then handcuffing Sean, and reading him his rights, bundling him in a van with his committee members and the SAFIs, who were still chanting “No Muslim memorial!” and flashing him wide smiles and thumbs-up, and at the station the others were taken and quickly processed and released, while he was held for arraignment on a misdemeanor assault charge along with a miscellany of shoplifters, public urinators, and trespassers before being released on his own recognizance.

  Debbie called his pulling the headscarf “a stroke of genius.” Outraged liberals called it a stunt. None of them would believe he hadn’t planned it. His determination to escape the script served only to affirm it.

  His chest housed a hard ache. At home, his mother greeted him with pursed lips and a silent shake of her head.

  “It looked pretty bad,” his wet-eyed sister Hannah whispered, to which Sean said, “Well, fuck that,” and went up to shower. But he avoided his own eyes in the mirror. He’d out-Debbied Debbie, and it didn’t feel all that great.

  14

  The Committee to Defend Mohammad Khan, the Mohammad Khan Defense Fund, the Mohammad Khan Protection League—all of them lacked only one ingredient, which was Mohammad Khan. He didn’t want to compromise his independence, didn’t want to shoulder any donors’ associations, didn’t want to be some radical-chic pet, a Black Panther with a beard in place of an Afro, but they organized on his behalf even without him, staged press conferences, plays, fundraisers, and seminars in his name. And parties, including one that Roi asked, or rather ordered, Mo to attend. Its host was a film producer whose Hamptons house Roi had designed. “People want to be in the room with you,” Roi said, then sent his regrets as soon as Mo agreed to go.

  The party, in a vast, dimly lit, high-ceilinged apartment at the Dakota, was packed. Through enfiladed rooms currents of guests flowed onward without cease, carrying Mo and Laila—in a dress whose torn-petal layers made her look like a pink peony—with them. Strangers plucked Mo out of the processional to introduce him to other strangers, then returned him, like an unworthy pebble, to the stream. Champagne was passed for toasts no one could hear.

  “You know Bobby, right?” De Niro nodded as if to say that yes, Mo did.

  “I’ve been a great supporter of the Palestinian cause,” a British baroness told Mo meaningfully.

  “This isn’t about the Palestinians,” someone said, overhearing.

  “Always, this attempt to disentangle,” eye-rolled Mariam Said.

  Rosie O’Donnell laughed behind him. Sean Penn was drunk.

  I’m dreaming, Mo thought. Dreaming this is all happening to me. It was not unlike how he had imagined Frank Gehry’s or Richard Meier’s life to be, or his own if he reached their level. Except here was Meier now, waiting, like an acolyte, to have a word with him. The world was upside down. He was half god, half freak. He reached for Laila’s hand, then remembered not to. Russell Simmons squeezed by and jostled him against her. She smiled without turning to look at him. He imagined them home, lacing fingers in bed.

  Green ribbons curled vivaciously from dresses and lapels. Mo drank more champagne and struggled toward the windows overlooking the courtyard. Admirers checkmated him to offer inexact praise or overdone sympathy. A woman displaying biceps to rival Madonna’s asked if anyone had bought the rights to his life.

  “I didn’t know they were for sale,” he tried to banter. He was more than a little drunk.

  “I know Shah Rukh Khan, a bit,” her companion said. “Cousin—?”

  “Brother,” Mo said.

  “He’s kidding,” Laila interrupted. “Khan is a very common name in India. And elsewhere.”

  In the cab on the way home, Laila looked at him and said, “No jokes, Mo. Those people are on your side, even if you don’t like them. And you can’t complain about being misrepresented, then misrepresent yourself.”

  His buzz was fading. “I wasn’t myself in there, in a good way,” he said wearily. “I was actually having fun. Every day I’m different, Laila. I’m not the person you met three weeks ago. If this keeps up, in two weeks I won’t be the person you know now. You can’t misrepresent an object in motion.”

  Her gaze roamed from his mouth to his eyes. “You’re underestimating your own solidity. I saw it in that first meeting. It’s what drew me to you, and probably what will drive me crazy in the end. The edges of you may be changed by this. But Mohammad Khan is intact. You’re like your steel trees.”

  Steel breaks, steel melts, he wanted to say—we all know that now. Instead he took her hand.

  On the way to her newsroom cubicle, Alyssa decided to detour by her editor’s desk. Chaz would be there by ten, sleeves rolled up, barking orders, berating reporters, mocking rival papers, downing black coffee, his immunity to hangovers as legendary as his benders.

  He had been avoiding her lately, and in those eye
s that wouldn’t meet hers, she saw her demotion scheduled. The initial column had been provocative enough to land her two more, but they lacked exclusives, lacked bombs. The most recent had been so deadening that it had drawn a yawn, literally, from Chaz, who then killed it. Her currency was devaluing. That first column had earned her an appearance on Bill O’Reilly, a clip she replayed often enough to memorize.

  “Are Muslims a fifth column, Alyssa?” O’Reilly had asked.

  “I think that’s too strong, Bill,” she replied, his first name a lozenge on her tongue. “Maybe fourth and a half.” He laughed hard and said afterward that he would invite her back to the show. But he hadn’t.

  Now Chaz ducked his head and picked up his phone when he saw her coming, then put it down when he thought she had passed. There it was, her dimmed luster confirmed. Like a junkie’s, her addiction had progressed from reading the news, to reporting it, to breaking it, then—the crack cocaine of her business—to shaping it. Being it. The prospect of her supply being cut off triggered a cold sweat.

  No one greeted her as she finished circumnavigating the newsroom, which was no surprise. She hadn’t bonded with her new colleagues; they resented her, as she likely would resent them if the positions were reversed. Rare was the newsroom that celebrated anyone’s ascent, especially a newcomer’s. The energy instead went to spinning elaborate theories about why her success was undeserved, with any subsequent fall only proof of the notion. Never had she felt so friendless.

  From her purse she extracted and fingered, as if it were fine silk, her one flimsy hope, Claire Burwell’s cell-phone number, procured by another expensive dinner for that fey jury assistant. Lanny’s power only seemed to be growing—he was overseeing press strategy for the memorial mess, and his strategy for some reason included passing her information. It amazed her no one had identified him as the leaker; instead he had convinced Paul Rubin to put him in charge of the leak investigation, then set about casting vague aspersions on various jurors and sundry employees.

  She dialed Claire, nervous, and almost dropped the phone when she answered.

  “Mrs. Burwell?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Alyssa Spier, from the Post.” She hated, in that moment, her hissing name, her paper’s name, all that sibilance.

  Silence.

  “How did you get my number?”

  “From a friend. I’m—”

  “No friend of mine would give you my number.”

  I didn’t say your friend. Alyssa pressed on. “So sorry to bother you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about the memorial, the hearing. Uh, I just want to get a sense of what you’re thinking—”

  “You wrote an appalling column about what I’m thinking, and now you want to talk?”

  Alyssa held the phone slightly away from her ear and thought: Fuck you, you moral prig. You’ve had everything easy—okay, everything other than your husband dying—and you judge me?

  “Maybe we could just meet and talk informally,” she said. “You know, not for the record.”

  “Don’t call me on this number again.”

  “Wait!” Alyssa hailed Mary. “Wait. I’m calling because I have information you’ll want. On Khan.”

  There was a tantalizing hesitation on the other end of the line, then Claire said, coldly, “Why would your information be of interest to me?”

  “Because,” Alyssa said, “because—it could be explosive, for the families, and if I were you I’d want to be prepared for that.”

  “Fine,” Claire said, after another pause.

  For all her relief, Alyssa was surprised that Claire agreed to meet, and suspicious, as if by accident she’d stepped on a soft, rotting plank in an impeccable hardwood floor. There was some uncertainty, some vulnerability there. The only problem was that Alyssa had no tool to pry up that plank: she’d lied when she said she had ominous information about Khan. Under-promise, then surprise, Oscar had always told her. She’d promised “explosive,” with only until tomorrow morning to find it.

  She worked the phone and keyboard until the tendons in her forearms ached. There had to be something on Mohammad Khan she could use: there was something on everyone. She circled back to her contacts at the police department, the FBI. Was he on any terrorist watch list? Any no-fly list? Any general “suspicious Muslim” list? Nothing, at least nothing anyone would share. Plenty of dirt on the woman lawyer, but the blogs were already all over her maggoty client list—terrorist suspects, loudmouthed Palestinian-defending imams, unidentified undocumented relatives of attack victims for whom she had secured windfalls. Anyway, guilt by such attenuated association probably wouldn’t move Claire.

  The newsroom began emptying out. When Alyssa looked outside, darkness had already dropped. She ate ramen noodles from the vending machine, their texture just a few molecular recombinations from the Styrofoam cup containing them. The janitor had begun pushing his supply cart and sadness across the cluttered room, and something deeper than panic pressed hard on her heart.

  At ten, she left the building to walk across a city temperamentally indifferent to desperation. She rehearsed her words: “Oscar, I need help. Oscar, I need help.” He had deeper law enforcement sources than anyone. Why he should share them with her, an ex-sort-of-paramour, now a reporter for a rival paper, she couldn’t say. She could only hope.

  By the time he answered his buzzer she was in tears, blubbering so that the words came out, “Monster, I weed kelp.” He let her up anyway. It never occurred to her that he might not be alone.

  “Alyssa, this is Desiree,” he said, managing not to be awkward despite the fact that he was wearing a T-shirt and boxers, as was Desiree. “She’s having a work issue,” he told Desiree. “Give us a minute?” He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and it took Alyssa back to her first time seeing his naked eyes, more meaningful to her, somehow, than his naked body had been. She would have given anything to be back in her newsroom now, but it was too late. With Desiree boudoir-bound, Alyssa confessed her predicament.

  “What did I always tell you?” he said, his tone as reassuringly solid as a wall, and as impenetrable.

  “I know, I know. But now I’m stuck. Please. Anything. I’ll owe you. I don’t even need anything to print. Just something to get her to talk.”

  “In that case you could make it up.”

  As Alyssa pondered this, Oscar put his glasses on and watched her through them. “That would be cheating,” she said. “It’s no fun, you know that. And once you start doing that, what’s the point of doing this at all?”

  His mouth turned up at one edge, like a wink. Good girl: she had passed the test. Ignoring the sound of the bedroom television and the woman watching it, she briefly let herself imagine a rekindled affair. That he then gave her a scrap to use only fed the dream. In their world, it qualified as a romantic gesture.

  “Here’s what I got,” he said. “A buddy of mine at the bureau who was in Kabul for a while told me this, but it’s Pluto”—their shorthand for “so far off the record it’s on Pluto.” His eyes commanded now:

  “And you’ll see why I didn’t run with it, and you won’t, either. I have your word?”

  My word, whatever else you want. She nodded.

  She and Claire met near Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. It was neutral ground between Chappaqua and Manhattan. And who would spot them in an Albanian coffee shop? Its walls were mirrored, its tables marble, its espresso feral, its pastry stale. Wrinkled old men played dominoes at one table, the tiles clicking in place of talk. At another, three young men brooded, their eyes never leaving Alyssa and Claire. In posters on the walls, female fighters brandished AK-47s. Alyssa’s glance lingered on them for a moment: Albanians were … Muslim. Maybe neutral ground wasn’t so neutral after all.

  Through bleary vision, she studied Claire’s bone structure and sapphire eyes, until they narrowed in suspicion. “Why are we here?” Claire asked, cool.

  “I have information
, but I can’t share it unless you give me an interview,” Alyssa blurted. She was underrested, overcaffeinated, and jittery.

  “I can’t,” Claire said. “It’s against the rules. I told you that.”

  Something on background, Alyssa insisted, that would allow her to convey what Claire was thinking, even if it came from “knowledgeable sources” or “a friend of Claire Burwell.”

  “How do I know that what you’re telling me is important?” Claire said.

  “Trust me,” Alyssa said, and they both looked embarrassed.

  Claire unfolded and refolded her paper napkin. “This is a dirty business, isn’t it,” she said. A statement, not a question. Alyssa wasn’t sure which business she was referring to. Journalism? The memorial selection? The Albanian coffee shop, which stank of being a cover for organized crime? For a minute she pitied Claire for having to soil her pristine values in the muck where everyone else lived.

  “I like to think of it as practical,” Alyssa said, in a way she hoped was soothing. She waited until Claire almost whispered “Oh, all right,” and then pulled out her notebook.

  “He was in Afghanistan,” she told Claire now. “Kabul.”

  “So is that where—” Claire started to say.

  “He made a threat against the embassy there.”

  “What?” Claire said, incredulous. “That can’t be true.” But she was white. Alyssa pushed a water glass closer to her. Claire sipped. “There must be some explanation,” she said, tremulous. “Why wouldn’t everyone know about this? Why wouldn’t they have arrested him?”

  “I don’t think it was an actionable threat,” Alyssa said. “More threatening language. Supportive of threats, rather than making a threat himself. These cases are difficult—if they locked up every Muslim who said something anti-American, the prisons would be full. More full. Way more full. I’m just trying to give you a sense of how he thinks.”