Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  “I can always go back to India.”

  “But will you?”

  Yes, she enjoys her freedoms here, including being out and proud, and cannot conceive what her life would be like in Iraq under Saddam or even in India, were she to return to it. But her point is that America cannot be allowed to value the lives of others any less than the lives of its own citizens. For when she watches the TV coverage she sees only rabid cheerleading from the American newscasters—predominantly White men and women, but also a few persons of color, who should know better, given the history of their own oppression and exploitation in America. From the front lines the journalists all report gushingly, from the point of view of the armed forces they’ve been “embedded” in, inflating victories and slavering over stories of coalition forces saving Iraqi babies and being welcomed as liberators. And liberal America seems to have fallen in line, extolling what seems to be the swift and decisive campaign Bush had promised.

  The lone source she holds on to desperately is Al Jazeera reporting from Baghdad, with its pictures of a city in fiery ruins, of bloodied dead and dying, of resistance, of captured coalition servicemen. She even takes solace in its English website’s periods of mysterious unavailability, suspecting American censorship of unflattering news. But there’s no denying that within three weeks of the start of the war, Baghdad is in American hands, and Saddam Hussein has fled underground. In three more weeks, Bush lands on an aircraft carrier and disembarks in a military-green flight suit and prominent codpiece, cockily proclaiming to the cameras and the world: Mission Accomplished.

  Seema is depressed. The defeat feels personal. She feels increasingly powerless, increasingly useless, as San Francisco settles back into business as usual, as if the war were a distant memory. Iraq, meanwhile, has descended into an insurgency tending toward civil war. The Bush administration is widely panned for having no plan to secure Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam’s expulsion, but the satisfaction of “told you so” is fleeting.

  If nothing else, Seema vows, she must at least fight to prevent Bush from being reelected for a second term, to avenge Saddam’s ignominious dismissal and defeat.

  8

  Bill, by then, is one of the few friends still willing to listen as she rants about how pissed off she is that many of the Democratic challengers to Bush supported him in the lead-up to the war. It is he who suggests she look into volunteering for Howard Dean, one of the few Democrats willing to take on his own party for its support of Bush’s policies and the Iraq War. He’s a fighter, with a wagging finger and beetling eyebrows. The more Seema learns about him the more she likes: he’s a doctor, not a politician; he’s never lost an election; he’s the first governor of any state to sign a same-sex civil-union bill into law. And if he’s White, he’s partly redeemed by having requested to be roomed with a Black student while at Yale.

  She’s sold on Dean when she hears him speak: “The great unspoken political lie is Elect me and I’ll solve all your problems. The great unspoken truth is that the future of the country rests in your hands, not mine. You have the power to rise up and take this country back.”

  The internet is beginning to make its power felt, providing Dean supporters with new tools to connect online. Seema, fueled by a renewed sense of control, throws herself into organizing meet-ups and fundraisers through the summer and fall of 2003, maintaining a blog highlighting Dean’s policy positions, and creating posters and presentations to be shared with other volunteer groups around the country.

  In these efforts she finds in Bill a willing assistant. Any hopes of reviving his start-up have been dashed over the summer, and he has plenty of time on his hands now. He helps set up her Dean website, drives her to meetings, takes over planning her events, and even shops for them and cleans up afterward.

  “He’s in love with you,” Fiaz tells her. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  They are at a Dean for President meet-up at Bill’s apartment. This is Fiaz’s first time encountering Bill, though he’s heard about him for a couple of months now. Fiaz is the only one from her queer circle who has met Bill.

  “Bill knows what we’re doing—we’re volunteering for the Dean campaign.”

  “And you’re not falling for him?”

  “Of course not. He wants to help, and he’s super useful.”

  “He’s super sexy, too, in a straight-professor kind of way.” Fiaz eyes Bill appreciatively. Bill, talking to a woman volunteer at the other end of the room, glances in their direction. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  She’s noticed, of course, the way women at the meet-ups navigate toward Bill. She’s joked to Bill about it: he’s the draw, not Dean! She’s even encouraged him to ask some of the interested women out on dates. But she has to admit—to herself at least—the unexpected pangs of possessiveness whenever Bill returns their interest.

  “This is new,” Bill says. “They’ve always ignored me before. Having you by my side has increased my cachet.”

  What’s also new is Seema’s experience having Bill around. She hasn’t started dating again in San Francisco. She tells herself she can’t be preoccupied with love while Iraq is disintegrating—there are more important matters.

  Bill’s solicitude, of course, goes beyond favors. He’s remarkably detail oriented, great at logistics and organization. With his assistance, she gets to concentrate on what she does best—preparing and delivering the message—and the Dean campaign has begun to notice.

  And having a man around makes her feel safer, more supported. She derides this as heterosexual conditioning, just as she complains about heterosexual privilege—as a couple she and Bill are taken more seriously, even treated better, like being seated quicker and served faster in restaurants, for example. But she can’t avoid pondering the what if.

  Sometimes she imagines herself sleeping with him. A charge has developed between them, like static electricity. She’s never been with a man before, and the idea takes on the thrill of a taboo to be broken. She’ll lose her gold-star status, of course—she can already sense her lesbian friends pulling away from her, some rudely and resentfully, as rumors of her “dating” a man begin to invade her queer circles—but fuck them. Isn’t true equality about being able to sleep with whomever she wants to?

  At least the Dean campaign, working on a shoestring budget, is appreciative of her contributions. Over the summer, the efforts of the snowballing number of volunteers bear fruit, and Howard Dean is catapulted into the front-runner slot for the Democratic nomination. As fall turns to winter Seema is in regular touch with the headquarters in Vermont. Her blog posts are highlighted on the campaign’s website, her suggestions are incorporated in press releases, her PowerPoint presentations and posters make their way into the hands of every volunteer group around the country. Come December, she receives an offer to move to Burlington and join the campaign officially.

  Seema considers the offer seriously. Accepting it would change the trajectory of her life. Her “activism” until now has been on the fringes, with little chance of having any real effect. Perhaps she could be like her ex Ann, who is now on the brink of what could be victory—the Massachusetts Supreme Court has just decided that it’s unconstitutional for only opposite-sex couples to be able to marry in the state. Ann must surely be feeling triumphant—Seema can picture her in a white tuxedo, as though stepping out of a wedding magazine, a white-gowned bride in tow, all lip gloss and blond highlights.

  But the ruling would definitely be used by the Republicans in the next elections—declaring it the end of marriage and civil society—to scare conservative America into turning out to reelect Bush. Once again, the need of a privileged few would trump the necessity of protecting the rest of the world from disastrous policies. The world wouldn’t be able to survive another four years of Bush, who despite the chaos in Iraq, could claim victory: mid-December, the U.S. forces succeed in capturing a bedraggled Saddam Hussein, hiding in a spider hole on a deserted farm. If Bush smirks occas
ionally during the news conference announcing Saddam’s capture, she can’t really fault him, though it does stoke her fire to deny him further successes.

  Another reason to accept the Dean offer: it would provide a natural ending point to her relationship with Bill. She’s definitely not “in love” with Bill, though in half a year she’s let herself become dependent on him like she’s never allowed herself to depend on anyone else before, not even lovers.

  A part of her regrets that she’d be giving up a chance to experiment being with a man, while another part is relieved: What if she likes it after all? It would give lie to her life until then, making her suffering and sacrifice—the rift with her father, the exile—meaningless. And is she then to sell out and settle down to a complacent conventional life with Bill, housed and hitched like Ann?

  There’s really nothing conventional about her relationship with Bill, though, and Bill is the opposite of Ann in every way—a Black man, from an underprivileged background, the awakening son of a Black Panther, a rising descendant of an oppressed race. There would always be battles to be fought. And it needn’t last forever—nothing lasts forever.

  She keeps the offer a secret and decides she doesn’t need to decide yet. She could join the campaign after they win Iowa, which will be the first test of Dean’s strength for the presidential nomination, kicking off the primary season in less than a month. Meanwhile, there’s a lot that needs to be done, and she can’t do it without Bill’s help.

  9

  Josh warns Bill: “Be careful, she’s a lesbian, and a Hussein. She’ll dance on your heart in her boots and stomp it to bits.”

  But Bill remains hopeful, perhaps because Seema never talks about dating anyone. The two people in his life could, of course, get along better—Seema calls Josh a Zionist, and Josh has labeled Seema a terrorism apologist—but at least they rarely encounter each other. What remained of the company was finally sold in November to a more successful competitor—for pennies on the dollar—and Josh is already on to his next venture. Bill has decided to take a few months off. For the first time in his life, he can devote himself to something other than his school, or job, or career. He’s chosen to devote himself to Seema.

  And to remedying his ignorance of his past. Discovering the photo of his father in Black Panther uniform has awakened something in him that mere acquaintance with the fact hadn’t. When he’s not helping Seema with one of her Dean-related projects, he reads with a lawyerly assiduity foundational Black texts he should have read earlier, maintaining careful notes as if doing research. He can’t read enough about the Black Panthers, especially autobiographies and writings of its lead members. The world they describe—the hunger, the anger; the intelligence, the hysteria; the resistance, the militancy; the hideouts and shootouts; the fear, the hubris—seems completely removed from his world growing up with Mame and Grandpa, though only a few years apart and on the other side of town. He can’t imagine his father in that other world, not the bow-tied student, not even the bereted soldier.

  Searching for further clues about his father, he methodically sifts through Mame’s unopened boxes. He’d hired movers to pack them, too drained after Mame’s death to deal with the remains of her life. He finds a few of his father’s yearbooks but little else. Even in death Mame has made sure he wouldn’t stumble on anything that could become a distraction. At times he feels he’s disrespecting Mame by going through her belongings, like he’s raiding her grave. But surely it had to be done.

  And it becomes a thing to do with Seema, who is keenly interested. After a meal at his place, they open another of Mame’s boxes, sipping a glass of sherry, Mame’s favorite. Those nights are rewarding, even if they learn nothing new about his father, even if the night ends as it always does with him driving Seema back to her apartment and then returning to decide what to do with the contents uncovered.

  Memories of living with Mame are evoked and shared—first in the blue-shingled house, his room in the attic overlooking the garden with its pride of Mame’s roses, and after Grandpa’s death, in a small apartment whose only charms were a spacious kitchen and a partial view of Lake Merritt—both spaces fragrant with the after-scent of summer roses all year long, which still persists faintly in many of Mame’s belongings. Seema listens eager and rapt as he speaks about his youth, something intimate settling between them. His only regret is that she continues to share little about her own childhood, her own life, even when asked directly.

  When they’re done with the boxes, they go through Mame’s clothes. Seema helps sort them, exclaiming over the dresses and jackets and scarves, holding them up against herself: “Your Mame sure was stylish.”

  They come across a locked jewel box that Bill can’t find the key for, and which Seema pries open with a knife. It doesn’t contain any jewelry but does contain what they’d been searching for all along. There’s a paperback book, the cover missing, its pages marked with water stains, and a sheaf of yellowing letters, the ink fading but still legible, each dated and addressed Dear Mother and Father in a fluid graceful cursive.

  Seema is thrilled. “Your father’s handwriting is lovely, just like my sister’s.”

  But Bill is torn between sharp guilt and dread. Should he be reading what Mame sought to keep hidden? And what if he finds in them something disquieting or worse?

  He hands Seema the letters, unsteady, the way he’d felt months earlier finding the Black Panther photo. “You read them first.”

  “Are you sure? We don’t have to read them now.” But she’s already scanning through the top letter. She looks up. “This is written in prison.”

  He nods, having realized that from the dates on the letters. He flips through the warped pages of the book he’s still holding. It’s a beat-up copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His father’s name is inscribed on the title page in the same distinct handwriting. Had his father been reading this in prison or earlier? Would his father have even been allowed it in prison? Bill has read it recently but without imagining his father holding the same book in his hands. The second half—after Malcolm X claimed to be saved—has many passages underlined. Bill browses through some of them, passages his father must have returned to more than once, for they bear the marks of various pencils and pens.

  Reading his father’s notes in the margins, Bill perceives a glimmer of what Mame must have dreaded all the years she was bringing him up. He can sense it again now, his own self constricting in response to Mame’s unvoiced anxiety outside home, her hand tight around his wrist even in his teens, as though she were afraid to let him wander away, as though she couldn’t be at ease until she’d dragged him back up the stairs of their stoop.

  He becomes aware that Seema has stopped reading, the letters in a heap on her lap. She’s cracking her knuckles, the sound of popping joints painful to his ears. Her face is pinched with the effort to control herself.

  “What do the letters say?” His own distress is overshadowed: What could possibly be in the letters to upset Seema so much?

  As if she hasn’t heard him, she says, “Bill, can you take me home, please? Now?”

  She doesn’t wait for him to reply but sweeps the letters off her lap, gathers her jacket and handbag, and heads to the door. He knows she won’t reply to his questions in this state. He puts the book back in the jewel box, but the letters must be folded before they can be returned. He picks up his car keys, pulls his shoes on, and follows her out.

  They drive in silence to her apartment, a brittleness between them that could shatter if he so much as makes a move toward her. At her doorway she says, “I’m sorry, but I just need some space. I’ll call you.”

  Back at his apartment, Seema’s absence is palpable. But Mame’s presence is strong in the living room, as if she’s there disapproving of the ransacking of her possessions, her clothes in stacks on the sofa and chairs, her jewel box open. And there’s another presence—elusive, indeterminate—the specter of his father hovering restively in the room.

&nb
sp; Bill first sets about repacking everything but the jewel box and its contents. There are a few letters left unread in the box; the remaining are in Seema’s messy pile. He goes through them, identifying the sheets of each letter, and folding them back together as they were. Seema must have been reading the top letter last.

  It’s an exhortation, echoing Malcolm X. To Mame and Grandpa to renounce Christianity and embrace Islam. To raise his son as a Muslim. It praises Islam for its inclusion, it condemns Christianity as criminality. The Christian God is a false god, who’d made them believe that everything white is good, to be admired, respected, and loved, and that everything black is ugly, a curse, to be hated and loathed. But there is only one true God, Allah, with Muhammad as His prophet. In Islam, all the colors are united, the White man stands equal with the others before Allah. Only Islam can save the Black man by giving him the dignity he needs to live his life as a whole person, only Islam can save America from the malignancy of its racist cancer. La ilaha ill’Allah Muhammadur rasulallah. The letter is signed Abdul Jabbar.

  Bill picks up the box. It’s carved walnut with a crimson velvet lining, dried rose petals from Mame’s garden at the bottom. Mame’s fragrance is strongest here, stubbornly clinging to the velvet and the petals: the box must have remained locked for years.

  One whiff and Bill is enfolded in Mame’s embrace, in the pink chiffon of her Sunday dress, a rose pinned to its pleated lapel, the mesh of her matching hat grazing his face, as she gives him a hug before leaving for church—“Be a good boy now, and take care of Grandpa”—the fragrance lingering as he reluctantly waves her goodbye—“Why can’t I come with you to church?”—his hand tight in Grandpa’s hand. And after that, from Grandpa’s colostomy bag the odor of shit returning as Mame’s fragrance fades. His resentment grinds: he’d rather have gone with Mame. He wheels Grandpa back to the parlor in the grip of that odor, the dread—he can feel it rising within him, the puke—that he may be called upon to empty the bag before Mame returns. He’s almost dizzy with nausea. He takes another deep whiff of the box’s crimson interior before he shuts the lid.