by Teddy Wayne
But as I walked home, instead of considering the goose or the rules of the game or if I was cut out to be in business, I thought about the toothpicks Mr. Slagle had deposited on the ground, and I wondered how long it would take until someone located them and picked them up, and how they would probably remain hidden for weeks or months with small pieces of dates and bacon on them and turn rotten. It was not the correct subject to be thinking about, but sometimes it’s difficult to control where your brain routes itself.
in the ballpark = an estimated value
man enough = possessing the strength and power to succeed
raw deal = a deal that is unfavorable for one party
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: DECEMBER 26
The next day I still didn’t know what to do. I could consult with Barron, but (1) I still didn’t want to reveal what Kapitoil was, and (2) I was afraid he would think I was greedy for considering taking the money. And I had already not told the 100% truth to Rebecca and couldn’t disclose to her all the details.
My mother would have also been a valuable advisor in this situation. She would not have judged me like my father would. And she would not have been as inexperienced as Zahira is in subjects like this. She also would be able to see multiple POVs, e.g., maybe the epidemiology proposal wouldn’t function and I might lose this program that would certify Zahira and I had sufficient funds for the future, or maybe it would function and some ventures like this merited the risk.
On the day of Christmas Eve I watched television for several hours. Most channels displayed shows or movies with Christmas as the subject. In one, a family invited a homeless man to their Christmas dinner, even though they were poor themselves. In the end he revealed that he was in fact a millionaire, and for their generosity he rewarded them. It was unrealistic and false although it still made me feel slightly enhanced at the end, but the more I thought about it after, the less I liked it.
By nighttime I felt quarantined in my apartment. I had seen advertisements on the news the entire day about Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and driving past it with Mr. Schrub had already made me think about attending it, and I had nothing else to do.
I walked along 50th St. to the cathedral. The black sky was littered with snowflakes like rays of sun underwater. I thought of how they would melt and sink into the ground for trees, and then the trees would eject water vapor, which produces more rain in return. The world can be so elegant when it is left alone to itself.
I wished I could share that moment and that thought with Rebecca, or with Zahira.
On a large monitor a few blocks from the cathedral, an anchorman was discussing a story about a famous female singer who sang for soldiers at an American base on Christmas Eve. Below it the scrolling font displayed: INSIDERS PREDICT “ANY GIVEN SUNDAY” WILL WIN HOLIDAY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE…
I followed the crowd entering the cathedral and powered off my cellular. The interior had long white pillars that curved at the top to form a ceiling that reminded me of the New York mosque’s dome. White lights looked like the snowflakes from the nighttime sky, and the blue glass windows were like the daytime sky. Although it wasn’t midnight yet, members of the church wearing white robes that looked like the class men wear in Qatar were singing in the front in Latin. There were no open seats, so I stood in the rear and closed my eyes and listened to the singing for several minutes. Of course it was a foreign language, but it was simultaneously not foreign at all.
The rest of the service was a combination of music, reading from the Bible, and rituals with candles. I imitated the people around me, and different religious ceremonies usually follow similar classes of algorithms and procedures, and although I looked different, I believe I merged well with the Christians, except when they launched the ritual of communion and I remained in the rear.
When I left, it was snowing more heavily and the frozen ground looked like a clean tablecloth. I didn’t want to ruin it, so I walked only in the paths other people had produced.
I woke up on the morning of Christmas and remembered I had powered off my cellular. I had two messages.
I was surprised to hear my father’s voice on the first one. He sounded volatile and all he said was to call him back ASAP. The next message was also from him and provided a different number.
I called, and a female voice answered “Hamad General Hospital,” and my lungs inhaled air too rapidly.
It took me several seconds to ask for my father. In a minute he was on the telephone.
“There has been an accident with Zahira,” he said.
I could not speak. My brain produced a series of images similar to the ones from the bad dreams I sometimes have about her.
A small bomb had exploded in a trash bin in the Mall early in the morning, he said, and Zahira was there. The bomb did not hurt her, but the explosion knocked her against a wall and she hit her head. She had a concussion and was taken to the emergency room.
“Is there any serious damage?” I finally asked.
“Not from the concussion,” he said. “But the doctors say they found something abnormal with her blood and are running additional tests.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he said. “The way they speak, it is impossible to understand. We are allowed to talk to her in a few hours.”
I didn’t know what else to say. So I asked, “What was the reason for the bomb?”
He spoke slowly. “They say it was a group here that is protesting the development of new malls in Qatar.”
“Did anyone—” I paused. “Did anyone else get hurt?”
“A few other people had minor injuries,” he said. “But there was a boy standing between Zahira and the trash bin.”
“What happened to him?” I asked, and immediately I wished I hadn’t.
His voice became very quiet. “I think he was taken to the burn unit.”
We were mute for a while. I asked him to have Zahira call me at her earliest convenience.
I disconnected, then sat up in bed and looked out my window. The Schrub monitor displayed: MERRY XMAS…BRONCOS VS. LIONS 4:15 P.M. KICKOFF…MIX OF FREEZING DRIZZLE AND LIGHT SLEET THROUGH DAY…I watched for several minutes, but there was nothing about the bombing.
My eyes moved up to the neon-green Schrub hawk against the gray sky. It was strange. I always thought of it as setting down the S and E, but now it looked as if it were picking them up in its talons.
The solitary positive was that Zahira was too young to remember which hospital it was.
I didn’t leave the apartment because I wanted to certify Zahira could reach me. I prayed, but not for Zahira’s health, because I know that only frustrates you when it fails. Finally my cellular rang in the afternoon.
“It is me,” Zahira said when I answered it. She sounded exhausted.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’ve felt healthier,” she said, “but I’m okay.”
“Father said they were running tests,” I said.
“That is why I am calling,” she said, and again my stomach rotated. “They think I have something called ulcerative colitis. It’s a disease in the colon. I have been losing weight for several months, and this is why.”
I closed my eyes with force. “How serious is it?”
“Because they found it early, they’re going to put me on medication, and they believe it will help,” she said. “If they had discovered it later, it could have required removal of the colon.”
I opened my eyes again. Three of the chairs at the table were in order, but the fourth one was out of line, and the asymmetry bothered me. “What causes it?”
“No one knows,” she said. “It’s just poor luck.”
“Maybe you have been losing weight because you have been studying so much. When I work hard I sometimes forget to eat well.”
“No. I have been eating less because everything I eat makes me feel ill,” she said. “I did not tell anyone what was happening to me because I was humili
ated.”
“You should get a second opinion,” I said.
“Three different doctors here all agree.”
“Still, doctors are sometimes wrong.”
“I have it!” she said. “All right? I have it.”
I aligned the fourth chair with the other three and sat in it. “This is not right. It is not fair for you to get this.”
“Stop it, Karim. Don’t make me sad about this.”
“I’m not trying to make you sad. I am upset for you.”
“Well, don’t be!” she said. “I’m trying to see the better side. It could have been worse. They could have discovered this in six months and I could be preparing to lose my colon. Or the accident could have been worse. I could have been that boy.” She stopped.
“I am going to fly home tomorrow,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I can handle this. They say I am anemic and require a blood transfusion and they want to observe me here for a few more days. The visiting hours are short and there is no need for you to miss your last week of work if you are already coming home on the 31st.”
I hadn’t told her that if I signed a new contract, Schrub would therefore probably extend my stay beyond my initial departure date. We argued more about it, but finally I said I would call her each day. Then I asked, “How is father?”
“Haami and Maysaa are with him now,” she said. “It is hard to tell with him. He has been very quiet.”
Before the nurse made us disconnect, I asked, “Zahira, why were you in the Mall?”
“I was buying a gift,” she said.
“Who was it for?”
She paused. “It was for myself.”
It was difficult to continue talking, but I said, “I have missed our conversations.”
She said, “So have I.”
At night I called Rebecca. “We have family friends over, so I can’t talk long,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
She talked about the activities like cross-country skiing she had done with her family and the many milkshakes she had consumed and a class of cheese she enjoys that she consumes there. “I may even need to set foot in a gym to shed these 30 new pounds,” she said. I didn’t respond, and she laughed and said, “That’s an exaggeration. I’ll never go to a gym.”
I said, “My sister has had some health issues.”
She immediately said she was very sorry and asked how she was. I told her, but I didn’t include the bombing. “What about you?” she asked. “You all right?”
“It does not matter how I am,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Is it a good hospital?”
I felt pressure behind my eyes as I did in Rebecca’s bedroom at her party, and my throat began restricting itself. My voice was unstable as I said, “I am receiving another call. It may be my family.”
“Take it.”
“Good-bye,” I said, and now my voice was very volatile.
“Bye,” she said. “I guess I’ll touch base with you when I’m back.”
I disconnected and stood there for several minutes with my eyes closed until my body stabilized. When I opened them, my black table and its four ordered chairs looked very spacious and voided.
touch base = reestablish contact
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: DECEMBER 30
I talked to Zahira each day. She was still fatigued, but her mood was enhanced, and she told me everything about her disease that she had learned from the doctors and her own research. She used many jargon terms I had never heard before, and I had difficulty following her, although I didn’t want to tell her that while she was stimulated, but when she started discussing a chromosome named “1p36” in English, I finally had to confess that I didn’t understand.
“I think that is the first time you have admitted you don’t know something,” she said.
Normally I would be slightly angry, but I could tell she was smiling, so I merely said, “You are skilled at biology, and I am skilled at computers. If you studied computers you would excel in them, and if I studied biology I would excel at that,” although that is false, as I was never strong at biology.
Talking to her distracted me, but I was still uncertain about what to do at my meeting with Mr. Schrub on Thursday afternoon.
Rebecca was working overtime in preparation for Y2K and was too exhausted to see me, but I went to her apartment on Wednesday night. Jessica was there with a man she had recently launched a relationship with named Colin who had almost parallel facial features to her, and the four of us cooked a dinner of couscous and vegetables and a stew together. When Jessica couldn’t find their blender (which was inferior to my Juicinator) and I found it in a cabinet, she said, “Time for you to move in with us,” which simultaneously humiliated and delighted me.
Colin and I partnered to purchase olive oil at the market. He asked how long I had been dating Rebecca. “Since Thanksgiving, so five weeks minus one day, although I have known her for almost three months,” I said.
“You seem to really like each other,” he said.
“We are very different in some ways, but similar in others, and I have not met anyone like her before,” I said. Although I always attempt not to be boastful, I added, “And I believe she has not met anyone like me.”
After dinner we played poker and bet quarters. I played well, as did Rebecca, although I was cautious and only bet when I knew I had a high percentage of winning. At the end Rebecca and I continually raised each other, and Jessica and Colin exited the game. I had two pairs, but Rebecca raised so rapidly that I began to question the relative value of my cards, and finally, even though the money was insignificant to me, I exited as well, because it’s still always preferable to minimize losses. Jessica asked what we both had. Rebecca showed her cards, which were valueless. “Just my ability to bullshit,” she said as she aggregated the quarters. “You’ve got to learn how to bluff if you’re going to be a card shark, Karim.”
We divided into the two bedrooms. I selected a CD by Bob Dylan without asking her permission and reclined on the bed with my head on her stomach and listened to it while she petted my hair. My preferred song was called “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” which was a strong example of the art I had been enjoying the last few months in that it blended positive emotions with negative ones. I still of course appreciate art that boosts positive emotions, because that is rare and necessary, and although the Beatles will always be special to me because of my memories and because their instrumental and vocal skills are the highest quality, musicians like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are also appealing because they sing about subjects that reject binaries and are mysterious in the way math can be mysterious, e.g., sometimes you locate an answer and the universe becomes almost magical because in the middle of chaos there is still order, and sometimes there is no answer, and because of that the universe is even more magical since it has secrets that humans can never understand.
I told Rebecca this, and she said, “You’re turning into a real postmodernist,” which I understood from the movie essay even if I still didn’t 100% understand the concept of postmodernism.
“You haven’t mentioned Zahira,” she also said.
I told her what I had learned about her disease from her, and that the doctors believed she could control it with medication.
“If you have your health and family, nothing else really matters,” she said. “My apologies for turning into a human Hallmark card.”
Without evaluating it, I asked her, “What would you think if I created a computer program that might have a significant impact on health in developing countries?”
“Is that what you’ve been working on?” she asked.
“Yes, but if I pursue it, I may need to leave the country for several months,” I said. I was regretting telling her this much already. Even explaining further a partial detail such as how I would need to leave the country temporarily, because Schrub would fire me and I would have to find a new employer in the U.S. to sponsor my visa,
would require full disclosure about Kapitoil.
“So it’s like a fellowship?”
I looked at one of her brother’s paintings and its strange colors. “It is similar to that,” I said.
The music compensated for our muteness. Then she said, “If it’s something you want to do, don’t let me hold you back.”
I was hoping she wouldn’t want me to go, to facilitate my decision, but I said, “I will know what I am doing in a few days.”
She received a call, and I asked if she wanted me to exit to give her privacy, but she said it was her mother and she would require just a few minutes. She talked in a different voice to her on the telephone from with me. I heard her mother ask a question, and Rebecca slightly rotated her head away from me and she said a little more quietly, “I can’t really say right now.” Now I felt I was being invasive, but if I left the room it would appear that I was aware of my infringement, so I moved to the bookshelf and examined her books but couldn’t restrict myself from listening.
The volume of her voice lowered even more. “It’s far from that stage yet, so you don’t have to worry about it. In fact, it’s not even your place to worry about at all.” She listened more. “Fine. Yes, fine.”
She said good-bye and disconnected and made an angry animal sound with her throat. I went to the restroom to give her some time to stabilize. When I returned, she was drawing lines with her finger against the cold glass of her window. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Hmm?” she said. “Yeah, she’s just…I don’t know.”
We listened to the remainder of the CD without talking. Our bodies were in contact on the bed, but it felt again like we were magnets with similar poles.
She fell asleep before I did, and when I petted her arm I felt a square object under her sleeve. I lifted it and recognized from advertisements a nicotine patch. I hadn’t seen her smoke or smelled it on her clothing recently. I was happy to see the patch, but I had two other thoughts: (1) It is hard for me to understand why someone needs to rely on any drug to resolve a problem (which is the same reason I find it hard to understand why Rebecca requires Zoloft), although I know that not everyone is like I am and wants to problem-solve independently, and (2) it is intriguing that to overcome an addiction to a substance, the addict frequently requires a certain amount of the substance before she can 100% remove it. It supports my theory that extreme reactions aren’t necessary and are often less efficient than moderate approaches.