Anissa's Redemption

by Zack Love

  * * *

  Unfortunately, my worst fears about the MCA meeting materialized. But my resentment at seeing Michael and Karen next to each other was quickly overshadowed by the horrific news that prompted the sudden gathering. Michael informed us that Kessab had been the target of three days of brutal, cross-border attacks from Turkey by al-Qaeda-linked fighters, with at least one report claiming about eighty dead in the attacks.[1]

  According to news reports, the ground assault was reportedly preceded by an artillery bombardment of Kessab launched from inside Turkey. The armed incursion began in the early morning, with Islamist rebels crossing the Syrian-Turkish border and attacking the civilian population. The assailants immediately seized two guard posts overlooking the village, including a strategic hill known as Observatory 45 and later took control of the border crossing point. Snipers targeted civilians and launched mortar attacks on the town and the surrounding villages.

  According to eyewitness accounts, the attackers crossed the international border by openly passing through Turkish military barracks and even carried their injured back to Turkey for medical treatment. Thus, it appeared that Turkey was backing the aggressors. Michael noted that this marked the third time in the last century that Turks were directly or indirectly involved in the displacement of the Armenian Christians in Kessab. In 1909, Turkish armed forces entered and pillaged the town, killing almost 200 people. In 1915, during the Ottoman-era genocide of about two million Armenians, the entire population of Kessab was deported to the deserts of Deir al-Zour, near the Iraqi border, and Jordan. Close to 5,000 people reportedly died. Only a fraction survived to make their way back to the historical town by the 1920s.

  In this latest outrage, Michael noted that about 2,000 residents were forced to flee their homes, and there were reports that some families were taken hostage, the town’s three Armenian churches were desecrated, and some residences were pillaged. Kessab residents feared that armed bandits overrunning their town would impose strict Islamist doctrine, with public beheadings of “infidels” and the levy of a jizya (protection tax) on Christians.

  All I could think about was my family members, who had sought refuge in Kessab barely a week ago, and now were again forced to uproot themselves because of Islamist invaders. That awful feeling of vulnerability and helplessness started to creep back into me as I felt myself vicariously fleeing the same evil forces that again endangered my last relatives in Syria. I realized that they’d probably all be unreachable now and, sure enough, as soon as I got back to my dorm (and just before writing this to you) I tried to contact them but couldn’t reach anyone. I had no idea when I’d be able to speak to any of them again.

  But Michael’s urgent plea, after he shared this deeply unsettling news, reminded me that my family wasn’t as helpless as it had been before I came to the USA. Michael called on every MCA member to do his or her best to raise more money for the organization.

  “I’m trying to create a well-armed Christian militia to protect our houses of worship and communities in Syria and Iraq. We’re also trying to repair desecrated churches, feed and shelter displaced families, and raise awareness among Western media and governments. But this effort is going to take many millions.”

  Not once during the emergency meeting did Michael look at me. And he very clearly avoided asking me for any help with another donation from Julien. Of course, he’s very discreet and would have never publicly asked that of me, but – if things were normal between us – he would have certainly made the request privately, either before or after the meeting, in person or via email. But he didn’t. He just made a general plea to the whole group.

  But I don’t care – these games are all so petty. I’m going to do my best to get another donation anyway – not for him, but for my family and all of the other vulnerable Christians suffering terribly at the hands of these barbaric Islamists.

  Speaking of Julien, he actually invited me to see him at his office hours later this evening, so I can try to get his help when I meet with him. It’s an emergency, after all. My only worry is that if I ask for another five-million-dollar donation, I may be cheapening my whole relationship with him by transforming it back into that transaction that we had half-jokingly discussed (where he was supposed to donate five million before I had sex with him, and five million after). As it turns out, we’ve actually followed those terms rather closely, even though he asked me never to mention them again: he donated five million, I had sex with him, and now I’m thinking about asking him for another five million.

  Further complicating things, after that terrible flashback I had last night while we were having sex for the third time, he probably doubts whether we’re even sexually compatible – especially after all of those trust-building exercises we did together. I could see how, from his perspective, it might seem as if those games actually made things worse, which might make him think that achieving real intimacy with me may just be too difficult. Oh, and then on top of that, if there’s to be any hope of him understanding what happened, I’d need to admit that I’ve been lying to him this whole time (which he vaguely suspects anyway) and that I wasn’t even a virgin and there was no car accident.

  But I have no choice – this is an emergency. I have to do whatever I can to help, which means opening up to him completely – even well before I was planning to, or even had a chance to discuss it with Monique. I’m just thankful that I took a moment at least to tell you, My Dearest. That will hopefully make it a little easier when I meet with Julien later. I’ll write more afterwards to let you know how it went.

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure how much time I would need with Julien, so I went to his office a little early, and was pleased to see that, when he arrived at 6 pm., I was the first to see him and there was no other student there waiting after me, which would make our time together feel less rushed and more private. When he greeted me, his face released a subdued smile – like he was delighted to see me but was hiding it from anyone in the university who might happen to pass by. We entered his office and he locked the door behind us.

  “Hi Anissa. It’s nice to see you again. Have a seat,” he said, as he went behind his desk and I sat in the chair nearby. “Does this mean you read my mind or you just saw my text?” he asked with a smile, trying to lighten the mood a bit. He turned on his computer and took a seat, facing me attentively.

  “Maybe a little of both,” I replied coyly. Julien looked down at my fidgeting hands, and we both became more aware of my increasing nervousness, as my tone adjusted to my more serious reason for coming to his office hours. “Julien, I want to apologize for last night – it really wasn’t your fault.”

  “Actually, I’m the one who should apologize – I swear to you that I don’t normally try to have sex to the sound of horror movies blasting in the background,” he added, with an endearingly self-deprecating tone and embarrassed frown.

  I released a much needed chuckle and the tension in my throat diminished a little. “I know – that was just a remote-control mishap.” I looked at the door nearby and wondered how much of our conversation could be heard, if a student were to arrive and wait outside for Julien’s next opening. There was no way I could get myself to open up in this environment.

  “You’re not comfortable talking here, are you?” he asked. I shook my head meekly. Julien reached for a nearby sticker sign, adjusted the time on it to “30” so that the placard said “Back in 30 minutes.” He got up out of his chair, walked around his desk, and opened the door for me. “Come on. Let’s find a place where students won’t be looking for me.” I stepped back into the hallway as he attached the sign to his office door.

  We put our coats back on as we headed to the elevator. Once we had left the building, we walked for about five minutes to a secluded part of campus nearby, where there was an empty bench and we could easily see if anyone was approaching. “Better?” he asked, as we sat down.

  “Yes. Thank you... What I’m about to tell you is extremely per
sonal and private – I haven’t even told my therapist about it yet. But I really do feel very close to you, and you’ve been such an angel that you deserve to know about the barriers that still stand between us when it comes to our intimacy.”

  He gently put his hand on mine. “I’m not such an angel. But if anyone can help me to reconnect with my angelic side, it would be you. I just wish there were more that I could do to relieve some of your internal suffering.”

  “Well, maybe talking about it with you now will help a little. You were right when you said that you sensed that I wasn’t being truthful with you about what happened to me and my family in Syria.”

  “It’s funny, but at one point, after I realized that I didn’t have the real story about your trauma in Syria, I recalled that time in class when you tried to claim that people who convince themselves that a falsehood is true and repeat it to others are not lying because they genuinely believe in its truth. I wondered whether you were thinking of yourself when you gave that answer.”

  My eyes widened at his almost frightening perspicacity – nothing seemed to escape him. “That’s exactly what I was thinking of,” I admitted. “I made up a lie about my parents dying in a car crash, and my therapist actually encouraged me to embrace that narrative because it normalized their death, since countless people die in road accidents every year. So that’s what I started telling everyone. The more I repeated it, the more convincingly I told the story, and the more I started to believe it myself.”

  “I knew something wasn’t right when you mentioned that the scar on your hip was from that accident.”

  I nodded. “The problem with lying to others is that you eventually say something that contradicts your story. But when you lie to yourself because you prefer your fabrication over the truth, you don’t notice the inconsistencies.” I looked away for a moment. Was I really ready to tell him? Maybe it was enough just to admit that I had lied without actually telling him the truth.

  “It’s OK, Anissa,” he began, rubbing my arm reassuringly. “Your therapist’s advice makes perfect sense, and I probably would have suggested the same thing. You really don’t need to tell me what happened, if you’re not ready.”

  But I had to tell him. I had worked up to this moment now, and the emergency of Kessab was looming in the background, waiting for me to help however I could. And helping meant gaining additional support through more intimacy and trust with Julien. “No, I think I’m ready. I really do trust you, Julien.”

  “So, dangling you from my balcony, did help a bit,” he joked, trying to put me at ease a little.

  I chuckled. “I suppose it did. But I had a good feeling about you long before that, or you would have never gotten me to try that with you.”

  “That’s a fair point. I doubt I could get any of my investors to do that with me, even if they do trust me with their money,” he added lightly.

  My hand squeezed his in nervous anticipation, as I told him the truth, with tears starting to stream down my face. “Julien, my parents never got into any car. Islamist gunmen invaded our house and murdered them, my older brother, our housekeeper, and our dog.” I looked away for a moment, wiping away my tears and struggling to continue, because the next confession seemed to expose the greatest deception of all, where Julien was considered. “And one of them raped me before I managed to escape. So, I also lied about being a virgin. I lied to you, and to everyone else – including, above all, myself.” I cried some more, shaking, as a great weight was finally lifted off of me.

  Julien’s face tightened empathetically. He pulled me into his chest, hugging me tightly, his reassuring arms easing my dread just slightly. “I’m so sorry, Anissa. So sorry. My heart breaks for you!” He held me for a few minutes, as I sobbed into his neck. His lips kissed my forehead every so often while his hand caressed my cheek.

  I eventually composed myself, wiping away my tears and sitting back up to look at him. “What’s even worse is that this whole nightmare continues. The little that’s left of my family in Syria – my younger brother and older sister, my uncle, and his family all managed to leave the unbearably oppressive city of Raqqa, which is barbarically ruled by ISIS. Thanks to your help, they recently managed to resettle safely in Kessab about a week ago, as I mentioned during one of our recent dinners. And then just this morning, I learned that Kessab has been attacked by Islamists and up to eighty people may have been killed, with another 2,000 residents forced to flee. I tried to contact my relatives there, but can’t get through to anyone, so I don’t know if they’ve been killed or are on the run now. Michael asked every member of the MCA to try to help raise funds for an adequately-armed Christian militia that can defend our vulnerable communities. And the MCA needs money to provide food and shelter to all of these displaced Christians. I feel terrible even mentioning this to you, because you’ve already been so generous – and I’m already eternally grateful to you – your help directly enabled my family to escape Raqqa in the first place. But I just had to – ”

  He cut me off with a smile. “You can stop now, Anissa.”

  I cringed a little, thinking that I had gone too far this time. “I’m... I’m sorry, Julien... I just get so emotional – I got a little carried away. Forget I mentioned this last thing I told you.”

  Julien gently put his hand on my cheek and turned me so that I was facing him enough to make eye contact. “No, Anissa. You can stop now, because I’ve already sent the money.”

  I looked at him with a mix of hope and confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I gave my assistant the wire transfer instructions a few hours ago, but it was after the market closed, so the funds probably won’t reach the MCA bank account before banks open on Monday.”

  “Wire transfer?” I repeated, still confused and doubtful.

  “Yes. I caught the horrible news about Kessab after markets closed. I subscribed to one of the news sources listed in that presentation you gave me about the work that MCA is doing. They send out a lot of news alerts, so I don’t pay attention to most of them, but I remembered that you had mentioned your family relocating to Kessab, and that detail in the email subject line caught my eye.”

  My mouth was agape, as I tried to process everything he was saying. I just couldn’t believe what a good man he was. All I could bring myself to say was one word: “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I sent six million dollars.”

  An enormous smile spread across my face and happy tears fell to my cheeks as I felt overwhelming appreciation for him. “What?”

  A surprised expression formed on his face. “I know – I can hardly believe it myself.”

  I laughed. “But why six million?”

  “Well, the deal that we had jokingly discussed involved five million before, and five million after.”

  “Yes, but you said that you wanted us never again to mention anything about an arrangement.”

  “And I don’t. Which is precisely why I had to do something other than what we had arranged,” he explained with a mischievous smirk.

  “Either that, or you wanted to make sure that I still owed you something after this second donation,” I replied teasingly.

  “You mean you’re still not addicted enough to come to me without owing me anything?” he quipped. “Clearly, I need to work on my technique a bit.”

  I laughed, and threw my arms around him. What started as countless kisses of gratitude quickly became more, as my lips pressed up against his neck and clean-shaven cheek. His alluring aftershave moved me towards his mouth, and I had just begun to caress his tongue with my own when he pulled away a little. “I think we just lost our privacy,” he noted lightly, with a slight nod of his head. I looked in the direction of his gaze and saw a small group of students talking amongst themselves but walking towards us.

  Chapter 8: Julien

  Sunday, 4/20/14 at 23:50.

  I’ve been regularly thinking about Anissa since Thursday night, when she freaked out while we were having sex. In fact
, I focused my entire therapy session with Lily on the related issues.

  “There’s trouble in paradise,” I began. “My prediction that my student lover could soon address all my needs and make therapy no longer necessary was wildly premature.”

  Lily scoffed slightly, looking vindicated. “Surely you must have sensed that it was premature when you shared it with me.”

  “I did,” I conceded.

  She uncrossed her legs, switching the one on top, before fixing her eyes on mine. “Why are you so eager to diminish my power in this situation?”

  “Because I’ve given you far more power than I have to anyone else – other than Anissa. And I’m not used to that – it makes me uncomfortable at times.”

  Lily’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “In what way have you given her more power?”

  “Well, for starters, I donated eleven million dollars to her cause. I let her share my bed, where she saw my nightmare first hand. And I think about her even more than I used to think about you.”

  She made a few notes on her yellow pad, and then looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t realize that you used to think about me.”

  “Now you know. I’m not even sure why I told you that. But this session isn’t about you. It’s about Anissa.”

  Lily seemed reluctant to refocus. “Right. Anissa... So why is there now trouble in paradise, as you put it?”

  “Many reasons. I’m not sure if we’re even sexually compatible. At first, I thought it might be because she was a virgin when we met and just not very comfortable with her own sexuality. But on Friday, I discovered more about her horrible past that explains her sexual difficulties and other issues. She was raped. And when you add that to the fact that her parents and older brother were murdered by Islamist extremists when she was sixteen, this is one extremely traumatized woman.”