“It’s Allah’s will,” Kowkab is saying, breaking Afaf’s reverie. “May He have mercy on us all.”
Afaf vaguely nods, her bandaged hand suddenly throbbing, in need of something to clench, of something to never let go of.
3
THE FEMALE guard pats Afaf’s body, examines the folds of her hijab, fingers crunching the fabric around her neck. “All right. Go ahead.”
A male guard gestures to her and she passes through a metal detector. They search the contents of her purse on a metal table. The guard holds up a packet of breath mints. “You can’t take these in.” He throws them away and they clink against the inside of a large metal trash bin.
Another guard motions to her. “Okay. Walk along that corridor line.”
She reaches an area that reminds her of the DMV. There are mostly women here, young and middle-aged, standing in lines cordoned off by rope. Everyone looks tired, as though they’ve been waiting a long time. The queue moves slowly.
When it’s her turn, Afaf offers her driver’s license and a copy of her birth certificate. She fills out the prisoner’s name and her own. The clerk scrolls on a computer screen, then looks up at her more intently now, recognizes her from the news.
“Wait over there,” she tells Afaf.
What do you hope to gain from this?
That’s what her therapist asked her. After weeks of sessions, Afaf revealed she wanted to visit the shooter.
Her therapist is much younger than Afaf, a white woman who wears false eyelashes and sips Starbucks coffee with one hand and takes notes with the other on a legal pad propped across her lap. She suggests that Afaf keep a journal to chart her daily emotions. At their first session, she asked Afaf whether therapy was discouraged in her religious culture. Afaf hates the sessions, where she turns herself inside out, but she still goes. She can tell this stranger all the things she keeps from Bilal. Her nightmares, her constant fear that someone will lash out at her in public places.
And she confessed her desire to speak to the shooter.
But how will seeing him help your recovery, A-faf? You’re making great progress here.
Progress is defined in small achievable goals. Taking a walk around her neighborhood once a day. Leaving the house at least three times a week to run an errand.
And eventually return to her job at Nurrideen School for Girls. But for the time being, it’s unfathomable to Afaf.
She can’t go back. Not without reasons, not without understanding.
The trial was held in June and was televised on a cable network. Afaf conscientiously watched from home with her sister Nada, who’d put her own life on hold to be with Afaf when Bilal finally went back to work. Her sister could finally be there for her in a way she’d never been. Afaf absorbed the footage of the exterior of the school on that day, young girls running into the street without their winter coats and book bags, their arms raised as local police ushered them away from the building. She couldn’t make out who each individual girl was, their identical uniforms and hijabs blurring the bodies. The footage was taken by a witness on his cell phone and the edited clip was played in intermittent breaks from the testimonies. It was surreal sitting in her family room, watching what had happened outside the school building while Afaf had been trapped inside the confessional, a rifle pointed at her.
At the sentencing hearing, the parents of the dead girls took turns standing up in court to face the shooter. They told him whom he’d stolen from them, how wonderful and smart and beautiful their girls were. How they volunteered for good causes, and loved America and Allah. Victim impact statements. You tell the killer how he’s forever turned your life upside down. Miss Camellia’s brother tried to speak and broke down, her parents sobbing in the aisle behind him.
I need to know why, Afaf told her therapist.
I don’t think we’ll ever understand—
No. He has to tell me why.
The defense attorney fought down first-degree murder, painting a picture for the jury of a lonely, disgruntled middle-aged man who’d gotten caught in a cyber web of hatred. The prosecution strenuously enforced the term hate crime, though the defense categorically objected. In the end, the jury—made up of eight white men and women, three black women, and one Hispanic man—deliberated for twenty hours. Their verdict of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder fueled the ire of civil rights activists for days afterward.
Afaf has recovered from her wounds. Though her hand suffered the least damage, a ghost-pain twitches between her thumb and forefinger. Stitches have left a tiny row of scar tissue like broken train tracks; Afaf unconsciously rubs the scar when she watches the news. Her insides have silently healed. She doesn’t feel any residual pain, takes pills only to ease her anxiety and depression, to slacken the rope lashed around her brain. Nothing helps her sleep at night. She refuses even a mild sedative, afraid her nightmares will bloom into something much worse, like the events of that day. In her nightmares she watches from a distance, screams and gunfire coming to her as muffled noise down a long corridor. Sometimes it’s like a silent horror film as she passes from classroom to classroom, trying to open locked doors, pounding with her fists, hearing nothing in return. Sometimes she sees Lou the security guard and calls to him. He waves his radio at her, then slips down a hallway.
When the shooting began, the surveillance camera recorded Lou bolting out the front entrance of the building where he was stationed. His call to the Tempest police came from the parking lot, minutes after hers from the confessional. He testified that he hadn’t asked to see any identification from the shooter.
He looked normal. Like he’s there to do a job, you know? Lou had told the jury.
The public excoriated him, calling him a coward and an embarrassment to his years of police service. So far, he’s refused any interviews.
The press won’t stop hounding Afaf. She’s the Muslim principal who sat face-to-face with the shooter. For a month after her release from the hospital, network television vans camped outside her home, lining the street down her entire block. Through a slit in the drapes, she watched from her bedroom window as neighbors elbowed their way through reporters, carrying aluminum trays and baskets of fruit. Her sister Nada hastily thanked them and closed the front door to a barrage of questions reporters shouted at her from the lawn.
What do you hope to gain from facing him again, A-faf? her therapist asked at the last session.
Whatever this thing is—hate, fear—she wants to look at it, hold it in her hands, pull it apart. How can she—how can any of them—move on without getting close to it? He must answer for those girls and Miss Camellia.
She wrote him one letter a week requesting he add her to his visitation list. Forty-three letters went unanswered until a few days ago. An envelope arrived with her name handwritten and the state penitentiary’s return address. The shooter’s name and his regulation number were also handwritten. Her husband intercepted it.
What is this? Bilal demanded, waving the letter at her. Are you out of your mind?
Her sons stood by their father. Why, Mama? Why would you want to see him again?
Her daughter Azmia has been more understanding though she, too, is shaken. Afaf has learned how youth demands truth, how it hungers for meaning. Do you want me to go with you, Mama? Afaf has managed to mostly shield her daughter from the press, though Azmia has insisted on speaking about the shooting on her own terms. Her account of her experience went viral on social media, #NurrideenGirls and #Azmia trending within hours of the shooting. Overnight Azmia became the poster child against anti-Islam bigotry in this country, a young woman whose own mother came face-to-face with extreme hatred. Between preparation for graduation and college, Azmia has been organizing vigils for the slain and weekly protests at the state capital. She boards a chartered school bus every Friday morning at six a.m. with a dozen other young people equipped with homemade signs: Hate Kills. Gun Control Now. Seventeen and Teen Vogue have run stories on her.
<
br /> A guard leads Afaf to a room with two chairs. The space is divided like a polling station. She’ll be seeing him through a window with tiny holes. Another female visitor is there seated with her back to Afaf. Afaf can’t see who’s on the other side.
Afaf sits down, sets her purse on the floor. A faint odor of bleach riles her stomach and she swallows down the bile.
When he enters the room on the other side of the window, he looks smaller than she remembers. His hands are cuffed in front of him and he holds up his arms like he’s about to catch a ball. A guard guides him to a metal chair across from her, doesn’t uncuff him. This time there’s a barrier that separates them and there isn’t a gun pointed at her. Still, Afaf clenches her hands in her lap, unable to quiet their trembling. He’s grown a beard, speckled and bedraggled—she might not have recognized him if they passed each other on the street. Their fates are twisted like the mangled steel of a totaled car—neither can escape the wreckage of events.
“What do you want?”
The sound of his voice rushes back to her now from the confessional. Her legs lurch and tremble. The chair keeps her body from collapsing. She wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake.
Maybe give it some more time—a year? her therapist advised her last week when Afaf showed her the visitation letter.
Time won’t dull this piercing in her brain—she owes it to her girls, to Miss Camellia.
She cups her knees, straightens up. Breathes: La howla wallah koowa illa bi lah.
“Why did you do it?”
He shrugs. “I don’t have to say a thing to you, lady.”
“You agreed to see me. There’s something you want to say.”
She had begged him to see her as a person, a mother of two sons and a daughter whose life he had put in danger.
When the federal agents interviewed her in the hospital, she tried to summon the exact words spoken between her and the man. She began wondering whether he’d uttered a single word—had she imagined the entire exchange? The agents wanted to know if he was visibly distraught: Did he cry? Did he mention a recent loss, or troubles with his family? She shook her head and they didn’t return for further questioning. The prosecution hadn’t called her to testify, and she was grateful.
He avoids her eyes now, looking over her shoulder through the window.
Anger fills Afaf. Fear and uncertainty float away, freeing her. “Why did you write me back?” she demands.
The female visitor sitting adjacent to her shifts and Afaf lowers her voice. “You approved my visit.”
He focuses on her again, his defiant eyes softening and his face tense. She can tell he’s lonely—perhaps that’s the reason he finally agreed to see her. She remembers an interview with his live-in girlfriend, a slender woman with dull, thin hair. I had no idea what he was up to. I didn’t realize how mad he was at the world. Has she abandoned him now?
For weeks, Afaf lay awake trying to imagine his family: Were his parents alive? Did he have siblings? Besides his attorney, there hadn’t seemed to be anyone present on his behalf in the courtroom. Looking at him now, it’s hard to picture him outside of these walls, outside of the confessional. Is it the same for him? Can he see Miss Camellia outside of that music room? A brand-new, beloved teacher? Or those girls with parents who quibbled and doted over them, and sisters who wanted to be just like them, and devoted friends who held their every secret, defended every petty grudge? All the years of their lives snuffed out, obliterated in a matter of seconds.
For a long time, they sit in silence, both resting their arms on the ledge in front of them.
Then Afaf tells him, “I can’t sleep anymore—can you?”
He shifts in his chair, drops his cuffed hands in his lap again.
“Please tell me how we got here.” She braces herself for what he might spew at her like the vile emails she received immediately after the shooting:
He should have blown up the entire school. Killed all you ragheads.
He’s an American hero.
Terror-islam must be wiped out.
Other strangers who reached out to her were kind and compassionate:
How can a thing like that happen in Tempest?
We are all God’s children.
But their messages hadn’t offered her a way to make sense of it all.
“Tell me why. I’m listening.”
He’d already heard who each girl was, the families and the prosecution sketching his victims as vividly as they could, adding as many details as possible to make a canvas of those lives. Every flourish of accomplishment, every stroke of potential.
He clinks his handcuffs on the ledge, leans forward. He weeps, long and hard.
Afaf’s body suddenly unwinds and she sits back in her chair. She waits for more and watches him, his face contorted in anguish. She’ll wait as long as she can, as long as they’ll allow her to sit here.
Epilogue
AUGUST IS hot and humid. On one side of the main entrance of the building, clusters of dahlias slouch from their long stems, red and purple heads heavy from the heat. On the other side a new wrought-iron bench has been bolted to the cement. Several of the more conservative board members and parents voted against any ostentatious display. They settled on a bronze plaque in the shape of a dove. And a simple inscription:
We belong to Allah and to Him shall we return
Inside the car, Afaf hesitates for a moment, gripping the door handle.
“You do not have to go back. Not right away,” Bilal tells her, squeezing her hand. He insisted on driving her this morning. “Let someone else run the school for a year.”
Afaf rubs the graying whiskers of Bilal’s beard. Her husband is not the same man she married. He looks unsettled, his eyes full of fright if she leaves the room for a moment. He’s no longer the father who countered her every fear and worry with hope and optimism. It had taken weeks for him to finally let Azmia go to California.
I’ll be home for Thanksgiving inshallah, Azmia told them, the last of her boxes arranged on her side of the dormitory room. Her Sudanese American roommate had smiled reassuringly at them.
Bilal wept on the drive home. She remembers Sister Nabeeha’s words so long ago: Women can withstand more than men.
Afaf isn’t the same woman, either. “Everyone’s moving on,” she tells Bilal. She still carries fear, though it’s tucked behind a wall of invulnerability. It’s not courage—but resignation. She survived the worst thing imaginable; she could go on with her life.
Once a week, she calls Mama and detects an unfamiliar joy in her mother’s voice. Did not the Prophet say, Heaven lies under the feet of your mother?
Afaf walks to the main entrance of the school and sees the lock on the door has been replaced with a new security apparatus. She presses a button and a young woman buzzes her in. Her assistant Sabah isn’t coming back for the new semester. Two teachers had immediately resigned.
“Ahlan, Miss Afaf! Mashallah, you look well!” The woman embraces Afaf. She wears an amber-colored abaya and tiny pearls dot her beige headscarf. “I’m Yasmine. Your new assistant.” She holds out a plastic fob. “That’s your temporary key. Until we get you settled again.” She gestures to Afaf. “Let’s get you to your office.”
How strange to be managed by someone so young, but Afaf follows Yasmine down the corridor as though it’s her first time in this building. A lifetime ago Afaf had entered the school a young, idealistic teacher. Nurrideen had felt like home for the first time in her career. Then she became its principal, crafting a new legacy of progressive education for young women. Would that be forever marred by that fateful day last winter? The blood of fifteen muslimat had been washed away, and walls had been painted over, window panes replaced. But a tremor still pulsated beneath Afaf’s feet as she walked down the corridor—did her new assistant feel it, too?
“Mr. Abbas has been using your office,” Yasmine tells her. “He’ll be here later to catch you up.”
Afaf nods, listens. H
er office appears unchanged except for a messy desk—the interim principal is not as tidy as she.
“Can I bring you some tea, Miss Afaf?” The young woman stands in the doorway, waiting.
Afaf shakes her head, smiles at her new assistant. “Thank you. I’m fine.” She pulls out her leather chair and sits down.
“Let me know if you need anything.” Yasmine closes the door behind her.
Her cell phone buzzes. Everything is okay?
She texts Bilal back: Elhamdulillah . . . Don’t worry abt me.
She fights hard against the urge to call him to take her home. There’s something she needs to do.
“I’ll be right back,” she tells Yasmine. Her assistant stands at her desk and looks like she’ll follow Afaf. Instead the young woman only nods.
The corridor is quiet. Afaf turns at the end of it and walks past the cafeteria. A banner hangs from the ceiling, the printed names of the deceased and signatures of support punctuated with hearts and crescent moons. Afaf doesn’t stop to read them, turns at the next corner.
She stops in front of the confessional and runs her fingertips along the wooden lattice. Her shoulders tremble as she turns the small doorknob and enters.
The lamp table and chair are gone. Her prayer rug, too. The space seems oddly smaller in its barrenness. The walls have been repainted a dull eggshell. Boxes of textbooks line one wall. She looks up at the vent in the ceiling, and tears fall into the hem of her hijab.
Afaf turns around, toward the back of the door. The mural has been painted over. She runs her fingers over this new coat of paint where Mary had once gazed into the face of an angel. It’s smooth against her touch, and there are no traces of what had come before.
Acknowledgments
THIS NOVEL proves to me how a book can be written but it only enters the world through many valuable people. I am deeply indebted to my incredible agents, Katelyn Hales and Robin Straus, for supporting my vision in a time when this story might have otherwise been stifled, and for patiently guiding me through the publication process.
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