Anissa's Redemption

by Zack Love

  Chapter 31: Julien

  Thursday, 8/21/14 at 23:58.

  I finally opened up to Anissa about my past, sitting down next to her on my bed. After the news of James Foley had led her to tell me last Tuesday about her parents being beheaded, I realized that I had made her wait long enough and that she was entitled to the full truth about my own past, for all of its horrors. It was time for me to stop hiding and just accept the risk that she might forever leave me.

  I began to cry as I tried to get through the story that begins with my father forcing my hand to grip a blade in his butcher shop, in front of a conscious life about to be taken by me in an act that would forever prevent me from eating or even being around meat. Anissa held my hand and tried to sooth me, even as she encouraged me to proceed. “It’s OK, Querido. I will love you no matter what you tell me. Please trust me. I’ve exposed myself to you in countless ways. Please confide in me about this. You’ve made me wait long enough. And if you tell me, it will only bring us closer,” she concluded reassuringly, stroking my hair.

  I finally managed to get all of the words out, and told her everything – every last frightful detail I could compel my memory to recall. As I feared and expected, she reacted with utter horror and disgust. “No wonder you deferred this moment for months, trying so hard to keep something so hideous from me!” she yelled. “You monster! Please don’t ever contact me again – you’ve just broken my heart into a thousand pieces.”

  She tried to get up off my bed, but I tugged her by her hair and prevented her from leaving. As she struggled and screamed to let her go, I pulled out the blade that was hidden beneath the covers, held by my right hand, and with a single stroke, I slit her throat. Her last words were, “But I thought you loved me.” Then I suddenly regretted what I had done and tried desperately to plug up her wound, but it was too late – there was no way to reverse that act of horrible madness born out of a soul damaged decades earlier, and the blood just kept flowing from her neck. I pulled her closer to me, pressing on her slashed neck as hard as I could, but her vital fluid sprayed out of the carotid artery where I had cut her, and soon it was all over my nose and mouth and I started coughing and choking on her blood.

  And then I screamed in terror, throwing the blankets aside, as I realized that I had just had the most awful nightmare of my life. Anissa, who had awakened from a nightmare of her own a few hours earlier, gently caressed my sweaty chest, trying to calm me. “It’s OK, Querido, I’m right here for you. As you were here for me. We’ll get through our demons together.”

  I knew at that point that I had to speak to Lily again.

  The next morning (yesterday), I called my therapist, desperate to see her as soon as possible. Lily said that she was all booked up for the day. I offered her one thousand dollars for a one-hour session, if she could find the time. She agreed to stay at the office late and schedule me in after her last appointment.

  When I walked into Lily’s office that evening at 7:30 p.m., there was no hint of flirty ambiguity in our relations, as had so often been the case, back when I had been seeing her on a regular basis. This was all business. She rightly sensed from the urgency of my phone call and tone that I genuinely needed her professional help – now more than ever.

  We sat down in her office and I did my best to recap an entire summer for Lily, as she listened attentively, occasionally jotting down notes on her yellow pad. Her facial expressions were mostly neutral the whole time, except for a slight eyebrow raise when I told her how I was more in love with Anissa than I had ever been with any other woman. When I finally thought Lily had enough background information to be helpful, I dove right into the issue that had prompted me to call her that morning.

  “I had the most horrific nightmare last night, confirming my deepest fears about Anissa... If I tell her everything, it will be over between us. But then I’ll have revealed to another person what I can’t disclose to anyone – including you. So I need to end it without divulging what she’s waited months to hear. But how do I do that now? Refusing her the same trust that she’s extended to me so many times will devastate her. And sharing those details will just add horror to the same bottom line of a broken heart for both of us. She is far too scarred already, and the last thing she needs are the scars of my own horrific past. There are no good options. So what should I do?”

  Lily pursed her lips and shook her head for a moment before finally reacting. “I hate to say that I told you so. But what else can I say right now? I did try to warn you.”

  “I know. But a part of me always suspected that you maybe had your own interest in seeing me stay away from Anissa.”

  My therapist uncrossed her legs, so that her right leg was on top. “If a woman sees her neighbor’s house ablaze and is happy to report the incident because she fancies the firemen on duty, does that make the fire any less dangerous?”

  I rolled my eyes at her analogy, and stroked my chin a little. “Well, what do I do with this blaze now? And which fire department can extinguish it?”

  She put her pen down on the pad, as if to emphasize that it was her turn to talk and my turn to listen. “I don’t understand why you can’t at least tell her what you told me about that day in your father’s butcher shop. You’ve already trusted me with it, why not also trust her?” she asked, almost as if to challenge me. “Especially when you say that you’re closer to her than to anyone else you’ve ever met.”

  “Because I didn’t tell you the whole truth, or even the most important part of the truth – only as much of it as I could get myself to share. And my gut is convinced that Anissa would see right through that evasive approach, because she knows me so well, and because of her own experience in hiding trauma.”

  Lily squinted a little, like a poker player who just realized that she’s been cheated by the dealer. Shaking her head in frustration, she finally reacted. “What are you so afraid of Julien? Just let it go. You were nine years old.”

  “If this ever got out, it would entirely change my public image. As battered as my reputation has been in the past, there would be no recovering from this.”

  Lily’s face hardened. “Then man up to it, and accept that you’re going to destroy this woman’s heart. I’m sorry, Julien. There is no way to avoid both evils in this set of bad choices that you’ve imposed on yourself. You just have to do your best to decide which is the lesser of those evils and then manage the fallout as best you can.”

  “That’s what I paid you a thousand dollars to tell me?”

  “Apparently. Therapy is often about hearing and facing the truths you’d rather avoid.”

  When I left Lily’s office there was no flirtatious eye contact or lingering at the door. I was frustrated and just wanted to be alone, to try to sort things out. I told Anissa that I wouldn’t be able to see her that night, but that she should plan to come over the next night for our usual long weekend in the Hamptons.

  I thought long and hard about what to do, often pacing around poor Icarus, who must have thought I’d lost my mind, walking laps around his cage. After a few hours of wandering ruminations, I finally crystalized the issue in the form of a single question. I asked myself, “What will you regret more: telling Anissa and then losing her after she is horrified by your past, or not telling her and wondering for the rest of your life if you might have kept her, had you told her?” That dilemma then led to a related question: “If she’s really as special as you say, shouldn’t you treat her that way and leave the rest to fate? If she’s like no other woman to you, then you should trust her like no other woman.”

  In the end, I decided to tell her the next day, before our trip to the Hamptons.

  And that just happened. I just told her, and my worst fears materialized. She just stormed out of here in tears – shocked, speechless, and horrified.

  Chapter 32: Anissa

  Thursday, August 21, 2014

  To My Dearest,

  I’ve been shaking and crying for the last few hours – lost, confuse
d, and upset. I think writing to you is the only thing I can do to try to calm myself. Maybe by recounting the details of what just happened, they’ll become less potent and horrible than they seem to me right now.

  At around 6:30 p.m., I finished my work for the day and exited the MCA office. Julien’s driver was pulled over by the curb, waiting for me. I entered the sedan with my bag packed for a long weekend in the Hamptons, in case everything went well with the long-awaited chat in which I expected Julien to open to me completely. Technically, according to the promise he had made to me in mid-June, he still had a few weeks to reveal his hidden past to me, but I felt more unfairly exposed than ever, after what I had told him about my family, two nights ago. So I decided that it was time to give him an ultimatum, because I could no longer live with the imbalance. To my surprise, when I arrived at his place, I would quickly learn that a final demand wasn’t even necessary, because he had already decided on his own that it was time for him to open up to me about his childhood trauma.

  The summer air was heavy with humidity, so he suggested that we sit on the sofa in the living room by his sixty-fifth-floor bedroom, where we could still admire the splendid view with the comfort of air-conditioning around us. On the nearby coffee table, there were two tall glasses, sweating with condensation, each with a straw. He brought them over to us and handed me the cold beverage. “Here. These are freshly squeezed, organic strawberry and banana smoothies,” he noted, taking a sip of his.

  “Thank you.” I took a sip of the sweet beverage. “It’s delicious.”

  He looked away, and then back at me. “Anissa, before I tell you anything, do you remember what I said when I first told you about my decision to hire Craig Walkenford, even though he was a homeless man suffering from PTSD?”

  I looked into the corner of my eyes, trying to recall the most interesting moments of that conversation. “You mean, when you said that there’s no such thing as trust without risk?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “OK. And why do you mention that now?” I asked, before taking another sip.

  “Well, because I’m about to trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone else,” he replied, resting his glass on the nearby coffee table. “And we saw how things worked out with Craig in the end, right?”

  “I know, but his PTSD made him emotionally unstable – mine just gives me nightmares, like yours. But I’m totally in control when I’m awake, and you should know by now that I would never betray your trust.”

  “Yes, I do know that. But I also know no one is perfect. Remember what happened when I trusted you not to go into my Facebook inbox?”

  I looked down in shame and nodded my head a little. “That was different, I just – ”

  “It’s OK, Querida. We don’t need to rehash that incident now. I’m just reminding us both that – even though you are the most angelic woman I’ve ever met – you’re still human,” he added with a gentle smile, as he lightly put his hand on mine. “So I’m still taking a risk by sharing this with you.”

  “I understand that,” I conceded.

  “Good. So before I take that risk, I need your most solemn oath that – whatever happens between us – you will never repeat what I’m about to uncover for the first time ever... ” His stare seemed to penetrate my eyes, probing deep into my interior. With so much solemnity surrounding his revelation, whatever it was, I almost didn’t want him to tell me anymore. “Because once I tell you this, there’s no going back.”

  I took a hard swallow and braced myself to receive something that I could never share with anyone. “I swear to you, Querido, on the memory of my blessed parents, and on the future of my people, that I will never tell a soul.”

  He nodded slightly, as if to acknowledge my vow, and took his hand back. He let out a deep breath, and his hands began to fidget a little, as if he was trying to decide where and how to begin. I put my glass down on the coffee table, wanting to concentrate as much as possible on whatever he was about to say. After a few moments of silence, he finally spoke. “Where do you think I was born?” he asked.

  “Mexico?” I asked.

  “And where do you think my father is from?”

  “Also Mexico, like your mother?”

  “No. Both of those notions are incorrect, even though everyone assumes them to be the truth – from every personal friend of mine to the wider media.”

  “So where were you born?”

  “In Kabul, Afghanistan, like my father.”

  I felt stunned and confused for a moment, as if someone had just informed me that the Earth is actually a moon orbiting the planet Mars, and not the third planet from the sun. He seemed to expect this reaction in me, and waited a moment so that I could adjust to these startling new facts.

  Still trying to cling to my earlier beliefs, I grasped onto whatever counter-evidence I had. “So why is your last name Morales?”

  “My mother, Leticia Morales, reverted to her maiden name after she left my father and took me back to Mexico with her.”

  “Why did she leave him?”

  “It’ll be obvious to you by the time I finish telling you everything.”

  I exhaled, a little nervous. “OK. So, what was her married surname? I mean, what was your father’s last name?”

  “It was Omar. His full name was Abdul Sayyaf Omar.”

  The room began to feel unsteady. Omar was also the last name of the doctor who had betrayed my father to the Sunni Islamists who murdered my family. I tried to control my shock, so that I could receive whatever other stunning facts had yet to be revealed. I cleared my throat to ask my next question, afraid of the answer, but pressing forward anyway. “So I assume that your first name wasn’t always Julien, right?”

  “That’s right,” he replied looking down for a moment. “In Kabul, growing up, my name was Jihad Omar.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I looked around my surroundings for a moment. Was I in the right apartment? Was this a dream? I was totally dumbfounded. Trying to make sense out of what Julien, or Jihad, had just told me, I asked the next question that puzzled me: “And your mother was OK with the name Jihad? Was she Muslim too?”

  “No, she was Catholic. But when my parents had me, my dad took that word to mean a kind of personal struggle for self-improvement, and, after he explained that to my mom, she was OK with it.”

  “How did a Mexican, Catholic woman end up in Kabul?” I asked, more confused than ever.

  He released a nervous chuckle. “It’s a fair question. She was actually Mexican-American – born and raised in Mexico, but she came to the United States on an academic scholarship, and eventually became a doctor. After she graduated from UCLA Medical School, she went to Afghanistan in 1972 as part of a special humanitarian mission to provide medical training to doctors and other medical staff in Kabul’s main hospital. The program was open to any M.D. with at least two years of residency, which my mother had completed. She had skipped a year of high school and graduated college in three years, so she was just twenty-six years old at the time, and was eager to combine her love of medicine and helping people with her passion for travel and discovering other cultures.”

  The whole thing seemed surreal to me. I folded my arms and looked away, trying to gather my thoughts. “So how did Leticia Morales end up marrying Abdul Sayyaf Omar?” I finally asked, practically cringing as I said that name.

  “He worked as a mid-level security guard at that same hospital where her humanitarian mission was based. He spoke English well, and was a charming, handsome man who was her age. She saw him quite often because he was assigned to guard her group of foreign doctors on the humanitarian aid mission. I guess it would have made more sense for her to become romantically involved with another Western doctor working with her, but there were a total of five doctors in the group and only two of them were men, one of whom was married. The other male doctor, from the U.K., quickly started dating, and ended up marrying, one of the other female doctors from the U.
S. Apparently, my father was also relentless in pursuing his future wife, bringing her flowers to the hospital, helping her at every possible opportunity with translation or anything else she needed. In terms of his physique and charismatic presence, he was a really strong man who seemed to be a natural leader, and my mother assumed – like the many locals who admired him – that he was destined for things far greater than his security job at the hospital. After a few months of his persistent wooing, she finally agreed to go on a date with him, and three years later, on December 12th of 1975, I was born.”

  I still didn’t know how all of this related to his trauma in a butcher shop, but I almost didn’t want to know any more. I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I looked in the large mirror, as I held on to the edges of the stylishly designed and immaculately clean sink, feeling a bit nauseous. In the end, I didn’t need to throw up, and just used the private moment to try to calm down and compose myself.

  I went back to the couch and sat down. “Are you OK?” he asked. “I realize that this is a lot to digest.”

  My eyebrows rose and I nodded my head in agreement with his understatement. “Yes... It certainly is... So how did your father become a butcher?”

  “According to my mother, soon after I was born, my father started talking about going to study in the university. She began to sense that his ambitions were frustrated by his hospital job and that he felt inferior because of her impressive education. He spoke with some friends who told him that he could earn a lot more money, and have more control over his hours and thereby study in the university, if he became a halal butcher with them. So he decided to leave his hospital job to partner up with them. He learned all of the Muslim rules and rituals of animal slaughter and shared the work duties with his friends. The first two years after I was born, he used his time off to help my mother take care of me and the house, but after I turned two, he enrolled part-time in the university, to study political science alongside his work as a butcher. My parents together made enough to pay for a full-time housekeeper who also looked after me, so that my mother could continue working in the hospital.”