But the viewers were left with no time to ponder as the film moved forward toward its end. The camera returned its eye to the elementary schoolyard, the place from which its tale had begun. On the screen appeared the features of the spirited boy who had greeted the audience at the film’s start, the child from the schoolyard who’d come running up to Amir’s camera and stuck out his tongue in mischievous delight. The schoolboy’s face once again loomed close, his playful eyes and delightful spirit lingering, filling the screen for a long moment before exiting. There was a quality about the child, a look that spoke of happiness, of goodness, and of hope. And it was with this scene that the film ended, and left the viewers to ponder. The boy was everyone’s child. He was yours; he was mine; he was from our country and from another across the sea; he was a Christian, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, or from a family with no religious affiliation whatsoever. He was hope, hope that human society, no matter its differences and divisions, could arrive at a place where it could understand its shared humanity. If society could not overcome those things that put one group at angry odds with another, it could at least choose to not kill and maim because of them—nor be manipulated into violence by those whose consciences were lost to their hunger for power or hate.
The audience sat in stillness as the last image receded from the screen. There was some scattered clapping to be heard, but it was subdued and pensive. With the credits scrolling up the screen, the audience slowly began to walk from the theater, a lone, quiet piano playing in the background: Reinbert de Leeuw’s recording of Eric Satie’s “Gnossiennes No. 1”…the slow movement of the notes journeying in minor key, the melody seeming to float above the music itself, a feeling of an impressionist’s painting imbued in its sound…the music blurring the edges of the literal and leading the exiting listeners’ minds deep into thought.
Chapter 29
Jadranka and Margaret sat by Amir’s side at his film’s debut showing. The film student noted the arrival of Amir’s professor, Harold Irving, who greeted him as he entered the theater. Amir felt two opposing emotions as the lights dimmed and the movie began. He was both fearful that Harold Irving’s criticisms of the film would be proven true and proudly confident that his film would be well received and the audience would understand the work’s intent.
As the film told its tale, Jadranka’s body spoke her emotions’ struggle by drifting in close to Amir. On his other side, his mother reached over to take his hand in hers. Margaret, who knew her adopted son’s story better than anyone, who had been the first to intuit its hidden trauma, was taken still deeper into remote realms of his being as the film continued. Watching the images of death appear on the screen before her, a small trickle of tears ran down her cheeks for the silent child she had taken into her home and who had become her son. He was finally telling his story. She realized then what she had always really known: that compassion not born of experience, no matter how deep and sincere, can never truly understand the burden it offers to share.
Afterward, the three made a brief appearance at a film festival reception. A number of people congratulated Amir on his movie, saying they had been deeply moved by it. There were others, though, whose congratulations were more muted. A reporter from a nearby city newspaper interrupted a conversation Amir had begun with some friends, asking some pointed questions about the film’s intent. Amir begged off, saying the man could phone him the following day—that he couldn’t speak with him at the moment. Amir and Jadranka left soon afterward to drive Margaret back home.
Sitting at the kitchen table, they spoke about Amir’s movie and then, after a time, moved on to other topics. With both spring and the end of the school year within sight, the conversation turned in the direction of the future.
“Jadranka, I imagine you’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with the end of school just a few months off,” Margaret said. “It must feel like it’s been a long road indeed. Are you excited about graduating?”
“Yes and no,” Jadranka answered. “It is strange, you know? I feel like I was such the young girl when I first came, and now I feel like I am so old.”
“Oh, yes,” Margaret smiled. “I know just how you feel.”
“Come on, Mom,” Amir rejoined. “You’re young in spirit.”
“Hah,” Margaret laughed. “You know you’ve grown old when people start using that line. ‘Young in spirit’ definitely implies its opposite in body and mind. Jadranka, what are your plans after graduation? Will you be working at the Cape again this summer?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s been so long since I have returned to my home. It is too hard to wait another year. My visa permits me to work for one year after graduation, so my plan is to go home first for a visit and then come back and teach.”
“That’s wonderful for you to be able to see your family,” Margaret said, glancing at Amir and leaving her next question hanging. The last time she had talked with him, her son’s summer plans had still been up in the air, awaiting the outcome of Jadranka’s decision whether to return home. A job opportunity working in a movie production being shot in Boston had also been put on hold. Just as Margaret was about to ask whether or not he’d decided to take the job, Amir answered the look of her eyes.
“Mom, I’m going to go back with Jadranka,” he said.
“I see,” Margaret replied, caught off guard, not knowing what else to say.
Her brief acknowledgment, however, belied the state of mind reflected on her face. That her son should one day return to his homeland had always been a given in Margaret’s thoughts. In the process of helping to rebuild his shattered life, she had long imagined that his return to Bosnia might symbolically represent the last piece put into place—his return to wholeness and the reconciliation of his lost childhood. It was a journey she had always envisioned as one she and her son would make together.
“We are not going for so long, Margaret,” Jadranka added quickly. “Amir will still be able to work on the film in Boston.”
“Yeah, I talked with the director a couple of days ago,” Amir clarified. “I got the job and I’ll be able to get back in time. They don’t start shooting until the end of June.”
Margaret smiled at the concern of their anxious explanations. It was right that her son make this journey with his lover, she who could share his experience in ways that Margaret could not. Time and fate had worked against her own dream of what would be.
“I think that will be lovely,” Margaret said, interrupting the momentary pause, and then, in afterthought, another question came to mind. “There won’t be any passport issue because of the INS problem, will there? What did the attorney say?”
Amir had recently received a letter from the federal agency asking questions pertaining to the naturalization process he’d undergone when obtaining his US citizenship. When he had shown it to his mother, she had thought it odd that he should be receiving such a letter. Amir explained that in the aftermath of 9/11, many foreign students at the school, especially those of Muslim heritage, were having their status reviewed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “But I don’t understand. Why would they include you?” she had asked, adding, “You’re not a foreign student. You’re an American citizen.”
“I know, but almost everyone connected to Zack Ashrawi has come under suspicion and practically all the people at school with a Muslim name have been interviewed by the FBI. The lawyer said it’s no problem; he wrote the INS a response to the letter they sent me and said that should be the end of it.”
But what had really transpired at the meeting with the immigration attorney had not seen so clear-cut a resolution, nor had Amir been given so simple a reassurance as he now gave to his mother.
Sitting across from the immigration attorney, Amir had silently watched as the man read the letter from the INS that he had received. After looking it over, the attorney opened the file Amir had brought along with the letter. In it were documents pertaining to his relocation to the US, hi
s subsequent adoption, and the naturalization process that had made him a US citizen. The middle-aged lawyer spent a few minutes reviewing the papers in front of him, occasionally interrupting his reading to ask a question of his client.
“Well, obviously, there was no intent to willfully misrepresent your past during your relocation to this country,” the attorney stated, after having read the last of the files in front of him. “I don’t think we have any real problem there. A simple letter in response, outlining the facts, should take care of it. Let’s see…how old were you at the time of your entry?”
“Eleven.”
“Hmmm, and I see here you were naturalized at seventeen. I can’t see any cause to think there was any attempt to illegally procure your citizenship or procure it through concealment of a material fact in your naturalization application, which is what the INS letter is essentially questioning. Actually, I’m mystified why the INS would even bother with this, given all they have to do these days.”
“Well,” Amir spoke, clearing his throat, “I go to Franklin College. You’ve heard of Professor Zakariyya Ashrawi, the teacher from there who was arrested?”
At the mention of Ashrawi’s name the attorney looked up from the files he’d been scanning. His eyes met his client’s as Amir explained that he had been a student of the professor and that he’d helped the now-infamous academic on some video projects for his foundation. Amir paused, waiting for the lawyer to say something. The attorney, who could see there was more, responded by simply saying, “Go on.”
Amir nodded and continued. There had also been, he said, an interview with the FBI. The day after Zakariyya Ashrawi’s arrest, Amir had been approached by an FBI agent who said he had a few questions concerning Amir’s relationship with the professor. Given its timing, the encounter had come as a surprise and left him feeling strangely embarrassed: Amir had just sat down to class when the agent entered the room and, making no effort to hide his identity, requested that Amir come with him.
The agent questioned him for nearly an hour before letting him go, handing him a card with his name on it, and saying he would soon be receiving a letter requesting a second interview at the regional FBI office. Amir then further explained to the lawyer that though the agent had been courteous, his questions had been leading and his demeanor clearly skeptical at the responses Amir had given.
“And did you receive the letter requesting a second interview?” the attorney asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t go. An ACLU lawyer on campus came to see some of the other students who received letters from the FBI. I spoke with him, and he said it was a voluntary interview. That I could choose to go or not. So I didn’t.”
The immigration attorney sighed, and he adjusted his glasses before speaking. “OK, what I need you to do now is start from the very beginning again. This time in detail, from the very first day you met this professor, until the last time you saw him. I want you to remember that I represent you and that anything you say is confidential. It’s important that you don’t leave anything out. I’d like to read you something first. Normally, I wouldn’t bother. But given the times…”
The lawyer rose from his seat, walked over to a set of shelves lining one side of his office, and selected a book. Returning, he paged through it and, finding the paragraph he wanted, read it to Amir.
“Do you understand what I just read?” the attorney asked when he had finished.
“Yes, I think so,” Amir answered, though his eyes showed less than complete assurance of the legal jargon the attorney had read out loud to him.
“Basically, it’s saying that if at anytime before or after your naturalization you were affiliated with any organization or group the government feels is a threat to our country, your citizenship can be stripped, along with all of the rights that go along with it, retroactively to the beginning of your residency here. Now, I didn’t read this to frighten you, but rather so you understand the importance of not leaving anything out from what you’re about to tell me. So please, go ahead.”
With the attorney taking notes, Amir recounted his history with Zack Ashrawi. It took him about thirty minutes to do so, the immigration lawyer interrupting here and there for clarification. When Amir was done, the lawyer sat for several minutes jotting down his thoughts and considering the information he’d just heard.
“From what you told me, I still think we’re OK. However, I don’t think it is a coincidence that you received the letter from the INS and the FBI is interested in talking to you. We’ll write a letter of response to the INS and at the same time set the stage, without specifically addressing it, for any possible future question of your relationship with the professor. Hopefully, this will be the end of it. Within the next month or two the INS will come under the umbrella of a new agency called Homeland Security. That could complicate matters or, just as likely, make the whole situation fade into the woodwork. We’ll have to wait and see.”
A week later Amir received a copy of the letter his lawyer had sent to the INS and considered himself lucky when weeks passed without further communication from the federal agency. Others at the school had not been so fortunate. A number of Muslim foreign students, most of them having some kind of tie to the indicted professor, had received letters stating their student visas were being revoked and that they would have to leave the country immediately. As time moved on and Zack Ashrawi’s arrest faded from the news and people’s minds, Amir gratefully let it fade from his as well.
Winter that year seemed to drag on interminably, time moving slowly through a miasma of foul and cold weather. Amir and Jadranka burrowed deep into their schoolwork and each other, not looking any further than the day at hand. One weekend in mid-April, they awoke to the chirping of birds outside their window. Raising the sash to better hear the birds’ song of celebration, they were met by the sweet smell of a warm breeze and could feel with confidence that winter had finally ended. Time itself seemed to react to the change of season. The hour hands of the clock, which throughout the winter had traveled at a plodding, sloth-like pace, now seemed to turn with more verve and energy, the tempo of the beat quickening with the temperature’s rise and the sun’s path tracing higher in the sky.
Jadranka and Amir suddenly found themselves thrust out from winter’s den to face a future that just a short time ago had seemed a distant prospect. There was much to do and little time to do it in. Projects needed to be completed, details of Jadranka’s post-college employment ironed out, Amir’s course selection and independent project for his senior year finalized, and the dates for his summer job set to accommodate his trip to Bosnia with Jadranka.
It wasn’t until the week before they were to leave that the reality of his coming journey began to awaken in Amir’s consciousness. As each succeeding day passed, he tried to keep thoughts of his homeland at bay—yet its images began to build and rise within his mind, threatening to overrun the path of normal and ordinary order that carried him through the day. There was both fear and excitement in this, and in brief moments of clarity, he could see that those seemingly polar emotions didn’t exist as separate entities, each reacting to different cause, but shared the same ground, like lovers walking hand in hand.
The closer it got to the time he would actually begin to pack his bag, the more the idea of his upcoming return to his homeland felt strange and otherworldly. He and Jadranka were to fly into Sarajevo, where they would be met by her mother and sister. After a week with Jadranka’s family, the young couple would take a short trip by themselves, traveling to Mostar and then on to the Croatian coast to Makarska. Both were places Amir had never seen before. The irony that he would now visit those cities as a tourist from America made his upcoming journey seem all the more surreal to him.
After their short vacation to Mostar and Makarska, the two young lovers would return to Sarajevo to spend more time with Jadranka’s mother. There was, however, yet one other place Amir knew he would have to visit before returning home to the United States—the villag
e where he had been born.
Amir couldn’t imagine what it would be like to return to his family’s homestead. In his mind not only his family’s farmhouse, but the entire village, had been destroyed. Yet he knew this wasn’t true. It had been only the Muslim villagers who had been “cleansed” from the town. And though many had been killed, a number had survived, having fled prior to the arrival of the invading soldiers. He had no idea how many would have returned to live there. He had distant relatives with whom he and Margaret had been in contact during the process of his adoption and for a few years thereafter, but in the end their communications had trickled down to nothing. When he and Margaret had last heard from them, they wrote that the village was slowly returning to its former self, its inhabitants coming to live together again in an uneasy peace. There had been some question about the family property and Amir’s inheritance of it, papers that needed signing, documents that needed finding. But the house and outbuildings had been burned to the ground. Like many Bosnians who had escaped the genocide, Amir was ambivalent about trying to recover any property rights that carried little in financial value and much in the way of sad memory. He wondered whether there would now be others living on his family’s property or whether it sat overgrown and abandoned.
The Saturday before they were to leave, Margaret held a small party to wish the young couple a safe journey and to celebrate Jadranka’s graduation. Alice and Paul drove in from Cambridge for the occasion with their children. Margaret had fussed all day Friday, chiding herself for being so nervous about something so simple as a small gathering of friends and family. She was greatly relieved when her son and Jadranka arrived early to help her with the small tasks she declared she could just as easily do on her own while they enjoyed a walk in the woods. Amir had smiled and laughed in wordless dismissal of the self-reliance his mother still felt obligated to tender, like the search of her handbag for the few spare pennies the clerk at the market had no care of receiving. His sister, Alice, always responded to such declarations from her mother with debate, the ensuing dialogue having become almost ritual in the expression of their caring for each other.
The Solace of Trees Page 29