Circle Around the Sun

by M. D. Johnson

  The three of them laughed and cried in turn. Harrison knew better than to interfere. He resigned himself to finish making the coffee which he poured into tiny demitasse cups, after which he headed for the cabinet and took out the scotch. Filling three glasses and handing two of them to “his girls”, he settled his family down on the large sofa in the adjoining library to let Haley recount the events of September 11th at the Pentagon.

  “Now here’s what I thought was strange...There were a few FEMA guys at the hotel I stayed in last night who mentioned that they arrived there on Monday night. They were on an Urban Search and Rescue Team in New York City. Seriously! They were deployed to New York on Monday night, the day before it happened, ready to go into action on Tuesday morning, September 11th. They were actually upset that they couldn’t get access to the site until Tuesday.

  “OK, you’re saying that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an agency responsible for responding to, planning for, recovering from and explaining away the circumstances around an attack could have preceded this one? FEMA coordinates the effort of everybody called into such a disaster. This could not be!” said her mother.

  Haley kept going, “There’s also another ‘legend’ I heard last night. It seems that an instant messaging service whose name was completely new to me, ‘Saco’, an Israeli firm said that two of its workers received messages two hours before the attacks took place. The company has been working with Israeli and U.S. law enforcement trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack. Apparently the two guys who received the messages informed their management company an hour after the attack. They did not know the sender. The company is U.S. based, but has corporate offices in Israel. Saco users are not limited to just sending messages only to people on their “buddy” list either. Usually, Mother, a company will protect the privacy of its users but in this case they’re going all out to find all the registered users with the originating Internet Protocol address of the message. That way the FBI can track down the Internet Service Provider and eventually the sender of the message.”

  “Do you believe it was an inside job?”

  “Mother, I can’t answer that!”

  “Sweetheart, you already did,” replied her mother.

  “You know that’s not the only strange thing,” Harrison finally commented, “Do you know who was in Washington while all this was going on?”

  “No, who?” the others answered together.

  “Shafig Binladen. One of Osama’s brothers. He was at a conference hosted by the Carlyle Group at one of the big hotels. You know, I hardly think he would have been here if he’d have known what was about to happen.”

  “Maybe the Binladen’s have been set up.”

  “By whom?”

  “Israel, of course,” Mason said, “It’s well known in the Muslim and Hebrew community that the Binladen family live and work here. They’re lawyers and professionals, and they do contribute to the more prestigious communities and universities. It’s all bloody politics isn’t it? They could just as easily be discredited. Now that Osama the Nutcase is on the top of the heap, they’re very easy targets.”

  “Israel? Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Yes, I agree they’re all too capable, but what’s the intent?” Emily answered

  “Outrage against the Arabs, more support for the Israeli bombardment of Palestine,” her son went on to explain. “Something of this magnitude makes Palestine’s occupation seem legitimate. You know, keep those terrorists under control. Keep the attention on terrorism, not Israeli injustice.”

  “Mace, you’re twisted,” his sister added, “although there are a lot of rumors floating around that the passenger loads on the planes were all very low, three of the continental flights departing for the West Coast were two thirds empty. The flight that left Newark for San Francisco had only 37 passengers and that included the hijackers. The only flight half full was the one that left from Boston to Los Angeles. If this is an inside job then it would account for how at least one gun was found on one of the planes. It’s suspicious and it will be checked out.”

  “Well, I must make a family announcement while you’re all here. I’ve been asked to head a task force on bin Laden, al-Qaeda and their finances. I’ll work from a site on the Eastern Shore and I’ll be home late at night. I’ve also got the authority to add to the task force, and I’m looking at several known commodities to assist. Of course your Dad will be a part of the group.

  “Sorry my dear, but I have no desire to get involved in this at all. I’ll be your sounding board instead.”

  “I knew you’d do this, so I’ll approach Liam. But remember, you were my first choice.”

  “Liam Navan? That’s big bucks. Navan International Security is twice as big as Dad.”

  “A good honest ex-pat IRA supporting Irishman?” Haley asked in mock horror.

  “Oh come on, he’s as Irish as I am,” her brother answered, filling his empty cup.

  “Anyway, I’m off downstairs to make some calls. Harrison, will you order dinner from ‘The Grill’? I’ll take a Cream of Crab soup and a Turkey Club with fries and Mason, call the center and get your bloody job back before you’re ruined. I don’t know what Grandfather Desai will say about all this.”

  Haley and Mason gave their orders to Harrison, who quickly went to his office, leaving brother and sister alone for the first time in several weeks.

  “So what’s happened Mace and why is she so pissed at you? I talked with her this morning and she was thrilled you’d invited a girl over for dinner tomorrow. I think she thought you were gay or something!” She giggled, “It’s such a big deal for her, you know that. She wants you to marry and give her grandchildren.”

  “You know, Haley, I don’t understand her, never have. She should have been a man. She controls and gives orders, that’s it! Her entire life and value system is to make decisions for everyone and run their life.”

  “Come on Mason, that’s hardly fair. She’s not the demure queen of domesticity, I agree, but she has been a great mother. She cooks, cleans, holds down a worthy profession and she adores us, Mason, she’d die for us. You know that, and she almost did at one point!”

  “Haley, come on. She did that to further her own goals,” he answered, pouring his sister another drink.

  “Where did you learn that, Mason, the Ansaris? They hate her.”

  “No they don’t. They just wanted a normal daughter-in-law. Not a bloody MI6 groupie.”

  “Regardless. What happened at work?”

  “I have a friend, Safiya Muhammad. She’s an intern, originally from Pakistan. She was called a ‘fucking Arab’ by a nursing student and there has been no action taken against the student. No apology, nothing. It’s almost as though they’re condoning it. I got bent out of shape about it and quit as a result. Safiya is a beautiful girl, very intelligent, quiet and non-confrontational. She’s Muslim, of course and...”

  “Obedient?” his sister interjected.

  “No, she’s responsible!” he replied.

  “What you really mean is malleable and completely unlike Mum or me, right?”

  “I suppose so,” he looked crestfallen as he stared at his sister.

  “Mason, don’t get involved with the first woman you meet who fits your silly criteria. You may think you’re Afghani, but you’re very European and you live here in America, not in bloody Afghanistan! I mean, you’d die over there. No ‘Sopranos’ or ‘MI5’. No ‘Third Watch’. What the hell would you do without cable or even Public Television? Think before you get involved Mason, I’m telling you. If that girl doesn’t want to live here, leave her the hell alone.”

  “She lives here already and she’s staying here. It’s not a big deal anyway!”

  “Well it is to Mum. Seriously Mason, I know you better than anyone and I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. You’re angry but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Medical Center. I think, and this is just me, your sister and I hope best friend talking, I thi
nk,” she paused looking him square in the eye, ”that you want part of the action.”

  “What action?”

  “I think you want to go back to Afghanistan, particularly now.”

  “Hal, You’re cracked!”

  “All your life, you’ve been on this Afghan rising tangent. I expected you’d run away to fight during the Russian occupation and you were just a kid then. You were always talking about how you’d fight with the Mujahideen and free Afghanistan when you were older. It used to scare me shitless because I thought I’d lose you.”

  “I wanted to. Remember when Mum first got involved with the activists to help Afghan women get their rights back? You know I didn’t support her efforts to westernize them.”

  “Yes. How could I not remember the arguments you two had? But you were wrong, Mace. Westernizing them had nothing to do with it. Those women, like all women for the most part in Muslim countries, are subjected to second-class citizenship and bloody near gendercide.”

  “Hal! That’s total rubbish,” Mason said angrily.

  “Bullshit, Mace! You know as well as I do that women in rural Afghanistan are treated worse than livestock. For years Islamic extremists in control of most of Afghanistan were not limited to destroying women’s rights but they’re destroying other religions, historical artifacts, stopping children from being educated, even selling them. This is an affront to Islam. And you Mason, I don’t know how you can even slightly embrace militant Islam, look at what is happening in Algeria to women; forced prostitution, atrocities under militant groups for holding down a job to support their families, temporary marriages! Women are beaten and sometimes beheaded for refusing to wear head covering. In Pakistan, where your friend is from, one woman is raped every three hours and one out of three victims is a juvenile. How about in Muslim Africa, where women suffer genital mutilation to preserve their chastity and stoned to death for adultery? You call that religion? Frankly brother, I think they should take all of these bastards and put ‘em in one place and blow the fuckers to paradise, preferably with a weapon of mass destruction all the way up their Jihadic asses.”

  “Hallah, it is not about cruelty to women. It is about living without western interference.”

  “Do not call me Hallah.”

  “Why? Are you ashamed of your name? You are an Arab woman.”

  “I’m not an Arab woman.”

  “Oh course you are. Your mother is half Moroccan. Your forefathers were raised in Egypt. Except for our English Gran who has some Jews in her background, they’re all Muslims, so what the hell does that make you?”

  “I am an American, Mason. That’s what it makes me, and you know something, I can shout it from the fucking rooftops if I want to. That’s why I’m an American, we can do that here. So call me Haley, OK? I’m not struggling to find an identity, I have one and it’s colored Red, White and Blue and freedom of speech comes with the package!”

  “Excuse me, but d’you think you can keep the speech a bit quieter?” Harrison came in with the food. “Your mother’s trying to solve the problems of the universe in the next room. I think you’re kind of cramping her style a wee bit. Besides that, I’ve not heard you screaming like this since you were horrible little children. What’s going on that makes you two so antagonistic towards each other?”

  “Give me my steak sub.”

  “No Mason, that’s mine.”

  “It’s not; you ordered a meatball one, dip-shit”

  “Well, I changed my mind. I want that one now and I’m the baby.”

  Haley grabbed the steak sub from her brother, stomped hard on his bare feet and elbowed him in the stomach.

  “Muuuuuuuuum,” he howled, “She hit me.”

  “Jesus Wept!” came the cry from the library. “Can’t you two ever get along for more than five minutes? Will the pair of you stop it and just split the subs in two and have half each. Harrison, can’t you control them better than this?”

  “I’m sorry my dear, I thought at thirty plus they’d be able to handle a crisis like this themselves.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN

  Sunday, September 16th 2001

  Ayman Almagid picked up the phone in his office. He’d planned what he going to say for several hours, having been thoroughly prepped by Tony Shallal. The objective was simple. Mason Desai was to be called about his resignation from the hospital. The call was of the subtle, “Have you reconsidered?” type and focused on what Desai would do as of this point. Almagid would mention a group of like-minded individuals operating under the name of “The Believer” or Al-Kifah Refugee Center. The group had been located in New York City over an Asian food store on Atlantic Avenue but had temporarily closed their offices late last week out of fear of American reprisals since the attack on the World Trade Center. As in the capitals of Britain, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden, there was a branch in Washington D.C. and Desai would be told that they needed not only recruits to fight for freedom in Afghanistan but doctors, paramedics and nurses as well. Almagid would then pass on contact information to Desai and that would be that.

  Mason Desai, it turned out, was extremely interested in the Refugee Center idea. Working in Afghanistan could repatriate him not only with his grandparents but his almost forgotten culture. Afghanistan was a nation at risk. It had been pulverized by the Russians for almost twenty years. Grandfather Ansari had told him quite recently that they we now under siege by the very Mujahideen who had saved them from the Russian occupation. Now there was inter-tribal fighting, and women were not allowed out unless a male relative accompanied them for their own protection. It was like some awful pendulum, swinging from one set of fundamentalist rules to another without any normalcy. Afghanistan was doomed unless young blood with fresh ideas was pumped into the country’s veins. Mason Desai would meet with the person Almagid had mentioned. How kind, Mason thought, of Almagid to go to all this trouble for him. Mason’s felt his heart quicken at the thought, he could volunteer for the stipend he had discussed with Almagid and he’d be there in “Ariana”, his spiritual homeland.

  Emily worked very hard preparing the evening meal for her son’s guest. To even up the numbers she had invited Liam Navan as her daughter’s supper partner. Emily and Haley spent hours stuffing Samosa, a deep fried pastry with ground lamb and chick peas, and adding Bulanee turnovers filled with leeks and spring onions. They’d settled on Pakawra-E-Bandenjan, an eggplant in batter dish served with yoghurt and meat sauce and Korma Challaw made with chunks of beef, green peppers, onions and tomatoes as the main course for the meat eaters. As Safiya was a vegetarian, Haley made her specialty, Challaw Sabzi, a spinach stew with onion and garlic served with Basmati rice, along with Challaw Kadu, a dish made from spiced sautéed pumpkin topped with yoghurt and mint. They had plenty of mango juice to drink and warmed fruit compote with homemade ice cream for dessert. Emily placed baskets of warm Afghan bread with bowls of local fresh plums, apples and tangerines all around the smaller patio tables and took special care to use the most comfortable accessories she could find. This would be an Afghan and Middle Eastern welcome. The dishes were served from deep red bowls and large ruby and brown diametric patterned platters that Emily brought back from the Middle East. As a cosmopolitan finish they brought out all the family relics from their travels, large green glass goblets from Spain and heavy Sheffield silverware, the only European addition, which Emily had inherited from her English grandparents.

  The house had a vast patio that had been built using tile fired in Italy and stone quarried in Spain. It was furnished in Mediterranean style with kilims and plush cushions on comfortable couches and chairs. The music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan played in the background as the family settled down to begin their feast.

  Serving drinks on the patio looking out onto the spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay, Harrison Cowan welcomed their two guests to the family home. Raising his glass he began, “The past few days have been traumatic for our country and for many of our friends in Afghanistan and the A
rab countries, but tonight we are going to raise our glasses to a better world! To peace, and in its absence, victory over our enemies and the company of good friends to get us through the hard times ahead.”

  “By Christ, Harrison. That’s dismal enough for me to fill me glass again, Lad,” moaned Liam Navan.

  “I thought the Irish were the most maudlin people in the world, Dad,” echoed Haley. “Here you go Liam, have another,” she said, passing him the Glenfiddich.

  Eyeing the scene carefully, Emily considered the potential of an alliance between her daughter and Liam Navan. Now there’s a real man, she thought to herself. He’s an armful alright. This man was one who could make her daughter very happy. As for Mason, she pondered her son’s new friend. The girl was tall, thin and exotic looking with liquid brown eyes and beautiful high cheekbones. She wore little makeup, and strands of her dark hair were visible under a purple floral Amira type headscarf. Her figure appeared slender and high breasted, although it was almost totally concealed by her loose lavender tunic and long purple skirt. She appeared modest, but much to Emily’s pleasant surprise talked openly and without reservation about politics and women’s rights in Afghanistan as well as her native Pakistan. She was vehemently opposed to the religious separatism in Afghanistan and felt that the way to peace was to acknowledge the rights of all people in the country.