During the several occasions they had met to discuss the video project, Dr. Ashrawi had repeatedly invited Amir to join him at the student mosque for prayer. Amir had declined each time, but after they met to review the finished video and Zack asked him once again, he relented. It was the Jumu’ah, the day of communal prayer held every Friday, and Amir agreed to join his professor in performing the salat, the ritual of prayer. Sitting among a small congregation of mostly young Muslim students in the room that served as the school’s mosque, Amir felt both a distant divide and a common bond with the others attending the service.
As Amir came to the last part of the prayer—first looking over his right shoulder, toward the angel who would be recording one’s good deeds and then turning to look over his left, toward the angel recording one’s wrongful actions—a memory of him and his father, Asaf, kneeling in that same position flashed through his mind. Together, they had repeated the ending words in unison, as Salaamu ‘alaikum wa rahmatulaah, peace and blessing of God be upon you. When they had finished, his father had smiled and patted him on the back, his look benign and light. It was one of the handful of times Amir could remember when he and his father had attended a service at their local mosque.
As he spoke those same words now in the student mosque, Amir’s eyes opened to see Zack Ashrawi smiling at him, yet at the same time looking at him with intent gaze, the older man’s eyes speaking a silent question, one that held the expectation of a certain answer. Amir was confused. Was it a call to the celebration of life, or to a life that enjoined him to praise a passion built of stone, a belief built from dogma, a circle drawn upon the ground marking a boundary separating that which lay within from that which lay without—the good and the bad reduced to the simplest of measures?
Flustered, Amir smiled back at Zack, averting his eyes in evasion of an answer he neither had, nor knew if he cared to pursue. For many, the call of religion offered a palladium of both place and identity where question might find answer and search find quench. The professor’s smile offered up what seemed a gentle place of faith, but Amir was uncertain whether it would answer the roil of his unresolved emotions or just add another layer of confusion that would make their buried presence within him all the more occult and repressed.
As they walked from the campus mosque and prepared to part ways, Zack Ashrawi asked Amir whether he might be able to help out on another small project, a few video clips for a website, nothing more. Amir knew that what the professor might see as a simple task was not necessarily so. The short video he had just made had taken many hours of work; so Amir answered evasively, explaining that, given his course load for the coming school year, it was unlikely he would be able to be of much assistance.
But Dr. Ashrawi seemed not to hear the underlying apology in Amir’s response and instead began to praise his student’s work again, saying he was going to prominently display Amir’s name on the credits of the documentary he had made and list him as media director of the professor’s foundation. The Islamic studies professor then spoke of the importance of their work to the cause of the Palestinian refugees.
Amir could see it was a clear attempt by his professor to win him over, yet despite the manipulation he still felt guilty for trying to excuse himself from further involvement. The Palestinian refugees were a forgotten people, their plight by common consensus erased from the minds of the Western world in place of what were called larger, more important political issues. Amir, hesitating, said that yes, he might be able to help out in some small way, but wouldn’t be able to take a lead role in the project and that, in any case, it wouldn’t be right for him to take credit as the foundation’s media director.
“Look, don’t worry about the title,” the professor had said. “It’s really nothing. I can list you as media consultant instead. It will look good on your résumé. Believe me, anything you can do to build up your CV will help in the long run.”
“No, it’s OK,” Amir replied with an apologetic smile. “I’m not even sure I’m going to work as a filmmaker after I get out of college. I might end up doing something completely different.”
“Then it won’t matter one way or the other,” Zack insisted. “Better to keep your options open.”
After a moment’s awkward pause, with no further response coming from his student, the professor asked if Amir had considered signing up for another course in Islamic studies. Zack showed his disappointment when the boy replied he’d be too busy with his major courses to do so. But in truth, the class Amir had taken with Zack Ashrawi had disturbed him. Fearful that what had happened to him in Bosnia would haunt him for the rest of his life, Amir wanted to keep his distance from anything that might remind him of it.
Chapter 22
It wasn’t until the car was packed and he and Margaret were on their way that Amir realized how much he had been looking forward to their yearly pilgrimage to the Cape. The long hours and excitement of his film internship had helped keep his mind from wandering to thoughts of vacation and to certain unsettling feelings he struggled to keep from intruding upon his summer’s heavy workload.
He had thought of Jadranka often, even though he labeled their relationship, as did she, one of only friendship—his mind relegating the call of stronger emotions to less accessible chambers of his conscious thought. But with his internship over, Zack’s project completed, and no other demands on his time or energy other than to enjoy his approaching vacation at the beach, the feelings he had suppressed could no longer be ignored. Images of Jadranka started to appear within his mind in larger format and in more vivid detail. Amir’s thoughts grew confused as they were pulled into fragile focus in abrupt, random movement, pushing and pulling against one another like a rowdy crowd in a ragged queue.
They were only friends, one voice said. He liked her very much, another spoke. It was OK, a third voice opined, in reconciliation of the others: good friends could like each other a lot; it was only normal. He would go see Jadranka as soon as he got to the Cape, two of the voices agreed—one anxious to see her, another reasoning that it would prove that they were just friends and there was nothing to hide or react to. But he felt guilty abandoning his mother on their very first day of vacation together. Of course, she wouldn’t really mind if he went. Then again, she would be left alone without a car. He should wait until his sister came, when there would be two vehicles, and other people to keep his mother company. He could visit Jadranka on that first night, when Margaret was sleeping. But he didn’t even know Jadranka’s schedule—how late she worked, or even on which days.
Margaret could see that her son was distracted. They had been coming back to the same house in Truro every summer, and the very first thing Amir always did, after unloading the car, was go sit out on the beach to stare at the ocean and drink in the sound of the waves as they lapped the shore. But this time he made no move to kick off his shoes and walk barefoot upon the sand. Instead, he began unpacking the groceries and putting them in their places upon the shelves. He asked his mother if she wanted him to fix her anything to eat. Was she tired, or did she need a rest?
“No, I’m fine,” Margaret smiled. “What’s going on? You’re acting a little too good to be true. Not that I mind, of course. I enjoy being waited on. But it reminds me of the time in eighth grade when you received a D on your report card and made me tea and cookies before you showed it to me.”
His mother’s words, or perhaps the tone of her voice, brought about a pause in Amir’s restless mind.
“Yeah, sorry,” Amir said. “That’s the problem with having a psychologist for a mother,” he laughed, then told Margaret he’d been thinking about going to see a friend who was working a summer job nearby.
“Why don’t you go, then?” she said. “I’ll be just fine here on my own. Is this a friend I know?”
“No. I mean, you haven’t met her,” Amir said, color coming to his cheeks. “She’s the girl at my school that I told you about, the one from Bosnia.”
“Oh, yes
, I remember you mentioning her. Well, go then,” his mother said, trying to dampen the expression of her pleasure.
“No, I think I’ll wait until tomorrow. There’s no rush or anything. I mean, we don’t have any set meeting. It’s just a casual thing, that’s all. Tomorrow will be fine. I don’t even have a number for her.”
Normally spare in his words, Amir realized his internal dialogue had slipped out into his response and that his mother was smiling. To his relief, she let the subject go, saying that whatever Amir wanted to do was fine with her.
That evening, sitting on the back porch staring out toward the sea, his eyes barely able to make out the whitecaps of the waves, Amir found himself thinking about his life with Margaret. His adoptive mother sat to his side in a cushioned wicker loveseat, a book nested between her hands, reading. The soft, rhythmic rumblings of the water rolling onto the sands filled the air. Closing her book, she looked out from the porch and gave her attention over to the ocean’s song. She could read anytime, but the opportunity to luxuriate in the sound of breaking waves came for her only this one time a year. Turning her head in her son’s direction, she noticed a kindred look of reverie on his face.
“Deep thoughts?” Margaret asked.
“No, not really,” Amir responded, then, after a pause, changed his answer. “Well, sort of.”
“Care to share?”
“I don’t know….I was thinking about how it feels like we’ve been coming here for so long. I can hardly remember myself back then. I barely spoke English. It seems like such a different world to me now, but listening to the waves I realize they’ve been crashing onto the shore here forever. It just seems funny how I could think of myself as having some kind of grasp on time, like I owned it or something, when really it’s just the opposite. I mean, when you consider it, it hasn’t been that long since that first time here. But to me it seems like forever. It’s strange.”
Margaret, her eyes rising to look out into the dark, paused for a few seconds before responding, “I feel the way you do, that we’ve been coming here forever, and at the same moment I feel as though it was only last week that we were here for the very first time. I can recall, like it was just yesterday, the wonder in the eyes of that little boy who saw the ocean for the very first time.”
Amir smiled at his mother’s words. His mind followed his eyes out to the sea, and his thoughts slowed and rested. After a time, he turned to look back at Margaret. She had gone back to her book, her head bent downward in concentration. Observing her as if from afar, he saw that she had aged. Just as a child steps into adulthood, from the one stage of life to the next, Margaret’s body had moved from the early, graceful time of retirement into a frailer, more delicate period of decline.
Margaret, feeling her son’s eyes upon her, looked up to see some unspoken question within them. And though she could see it wasn’t directly addressed to her, she felt drawn to answer by patting the empty cushion next to where she sat on the wicker settee. Her face spoke her love of the boy. He had once asked, years ago after some small incident, whether she regretted having adopted him. Everyone, she understood, no less a child who’d been through what her adopted son had, needed the occasional reassurance of his or her loved ones. The warmth of her smile repeated the words she’d spoken to him then: that his entry into her life had been a great and wonderful gift that had brought with it a profound sense of fulfillment.
Amir rose from his chair and sat next to Margaret; the two of them listening to the wind and ocean, their eyes looking out into the darkness of night. Neither spoke, but they were linked in that quiet moment by the fate that had brought them together and joined their lives, one to the other, as mother and son. It was a state they often found themselves returning to, a bond they shared—the deaf-mute child was still there, indiscernible in the young man’s body that had grown about the boy and now carried him into his adulthood.
The next day Amir excused himself from lunch and drove to Harwich Port to find the restaurant where Jadranka worked. After locating it, he parked his mother’s car and waited some fifteen minutes before gathering the courage to enter. He told himself there was no reason he should feel so anxious and was confused as to why he would be overtaken by such emotion. Before stepping from the car he looked into the rearview mirror. His gaze met his eyes’ reflection in empty stare, then scanned his face as though in search of something possibly amiss: a blemish, a strand of hair strayed from its proper place, or maybe just as much to see if he was there…the physical fact of his body not providing the necessary evidence, his mind feeling lost in foreign emotions speaking an unknown tongue. “Shit,” he said, “come on.” Running his fingers through his hair, Amir breathed deeply, continuing to talk to himself but now without spoken word. God, get it together, a part of him commanded. She’s only a friend, so what’s the big deal? a different voice asked. Maybe I should come back another time. Jesus, what’s the matter with me? Come on…straighten out.
Shaking his head, Amir forced himself to open the car door and step outside. Entering the restaurant, he could feel a dampness grow under his arms and a drop of sweat trickle down the side of his forehead. He was met by a young hostess who asked if he was alone or whether there would be others joining him. The girl had a British accent and smiled at him. His eyes glanced nervously from her to the dining room and then back again. He seemed disoriented, and the hostess asked if he was looking for someone. He answered no, that he was by himself. The young hostess led him to a table set for two and handed him a menu. A few minutes later a waitress came by and filled his glass with water. Jadranka was nowhere to be seen. Amir was crestfallen and now felt much worse than when he had entered. He was filled with a despondency that felt infinitely heavier than the jangling nerves of his anxiety.
The waitress returned with a breadbasket, asking if he was ready to order, while the menu still lay unopened in front of him. She spoke in a heavily accented voice, perhaps Polish, Amir thought. During the summer it seemed that foreign students serving the tourist trade on seasonal work visas far outnumbered their American counterparts.
“I don’t know if I’m really hungry,” he said hesitating, looking up at the girl who simply shrugged, as if she didn’t care one way or the other. “Do you know when Jadranka Pušić works?”
The waitress smiled her first real smile. The look on the boy’s face was revealing. She had seen it before. “You must be the boyfriend, then?” she asked.
Amir’s heart sank. He had never considered that Jadranka might have met someone during the summer. Seeing the boy’s face go blank as if in shock, the waitress laughed.
“No, no. I only ask the question,” she said, her smile broadening. “Jadranka, she is working now. In the back patio. Come with me. Perhaps you want to sit at her table, yes?”
He hadn’t realized there was an outdoor eating area at the rear of the restaurant. Amir chided himself for having been so nervous as to have overlooked the passageway leading through the main dining hall to a large deck that bordered a saltwater creek behind the building.
“You can sit here,” the waitress said, leading him to an empty table. “It is Jadranka’s station.”
As he took his seat, the girl flashed a playful grin in his direction and headed toward a set of doors that led from the deck to the kitchen. It was then that Amir finally saw Jadranka. She emerged from the swinging doors with a large tray hoisted just above her right shoulder, halting her march forward when the waitress who had seated him came up to her side and whispered something in her ear. Jadranka cast a look in his direction, her face seemingly neutral, only a small nod of her head indicating her recognition of him…though he thought he could see the light in her eyes brighten, bringing a nervous smile to his face. He watched her cross the deck to a nearby table, where she emptied her tray of its contents plate by plate, serving a party of four. When she was finished, she placed the tray on a stand and walked over in his direction.
“So, just passing by?” she asked.
“Yeah, just in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by,” Amir countered, his smile growing larger and surer.
“Hmmm,” Jadranka responded, hands on her hips. She nodded her head as if in consideration, looking Amir over as she did so. Then, finally, she smiled too.
Playing the waitress, Jadranka pulled out a pen and order pad from her apron pocket. “You will be having something, then?” she asked. As she spoke, her head tilted back and slightly to the side, her eyebrows rising with the movement while the corners of her mouth returned to neutral position, her eyes assuming a playful, skeptical air. Amir sat silent for some few seconds without response. It was to him an impossibly beautiful gesture that spoke of some silent mystery lingering just beyond the bounds of his conscious reach. The short, graceful movement of her head had been like the trail of a string turning the corner of his vision, making him wonder where it might lead. It wasn’t something he’d seen very often in the look of American girls. It belonged to another place and time, another way of life distant from the land he now called home.
“If you don’t know what it is you want, it is a help to open the menu,” Jadranka offered.
The Solace of Trees Page 22