Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Sister Souljah

  “Good morning, baby. What were you doing?”

  “Riding, Daddy, you know I went riding first thing at sunrise. Ooh, you should’ve seen me. I was riding so fast. Soon I’ll be quicker than you.”

  “You’re right, you will! Until then, just keep practicing. Did you have something to eat and drink?” the general asked her.

  “Come on, Daddy. We already talked about this. I thought you understood.”

  “How are you gonna race in the heat of Japan’s sunlight without falling out? You’ll get dehydrated,” he warned with a real-sounding concern.

  “No, I won’t. This is the fourteenth day. I’m used to it. Besides, I rode at sunrise. I had eight bottles of water before then and some fruit and fish. I take good care of myself,” Chiasa said.

  “Enough of that,” the general said, his tone changing some. “So, when will you go to Korea?” he asked.

  “I don’t know if I’m going. He didn’t ask me,” Chiasa said.

  “And what’s his name again, honey?”

  “I never told you! Don’t try and trick me, Daddy. You don’t need to know him unless he asks me, and then if he does, he’ll face you. He’s not afraid of anything,” she said. “He’s like you,” she added, and laughed a little.

  “I gotta go,” the general said.

  “No, Daddy, wait. Don’t hang up so fast. What are you doing today and where are you?” Chiasa asked him.

  “I’m working hard for you, baby!” he said.

  “Okay, I see, you don’t want to tell me. Well, if you’re anywhere on the continent, fly your helicopter over and stop by and see me. We’ll ride horses together. Okay?” she asked him.

  “Okay,” he said in a way that made it easy to see he tries to give her mostly everything. I knew then that his daughter was this strong man’s only recognizable weakness.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Chiasa said, sending a chill through me.

  “I love you too.” The general pushed the button and the phone cleared. He looked at me. I understood. I looked straight back at him.

  “I love her,” I said.

  “You’re married.”

  “I’m Muslim.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve been stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia. I’ve known men with four wives, eight wives, twelve wives. I’ve seen their women wearing hijab, niqab, burkas, abayas, you name it. For all the years I’ve wondered, How do these men get these women to sit beside one another? Wife number one beside wife number two beside wife number three all seated quietly in one family. I said to myself, These women do it because they’ve been beaten. They have been forced. They do it at gunpoint. But experience taught me—and you might understand this now—to hold a man captive, or to hold anybody captive, takes a whole lot of money, a whole lot of weapons, an army, and a whole lot of time. I knew it was impossible that whole countries of women were doing these things, living this way by force. So I concluded they do it because they’re stupid. They’re uneducated and unaware. They’re just mothers and housewives, local women. They don’t know any better.” He leaned back in his chair. I didn’t say anything. Yet I was listening, carefully.

  “I raised Chiasa to be different. I sent my daughter to all the top schools. She skipped two grades and graduated high school at fifteen. She’s an expertly trained martial artist in five separate disciplines. She speaks English, Japanese, and French. She’s an expert at horseback racing and archery and is about to become a pilot.” Leaning forward and easing his chair closer to mine, he was now seated directly before me.

  “Now my baby says, ‘Daddy, I love him, he’s amazing. If he asks me, I’ll agree to be his second wife.’ She’s reading a Quran, fasting for Ramadan. Now Chiasa is not the type to sit idle in the house for anyone. She’ll never stop moving or learning or growing, but she’s anxious, waiting on you. She said she plans to wait for you for three years and that the two of you will marry in New York when she’s nineteen.

  “Are you beginning to understand my anger and disappointment?” he asked, now holding one of the grenades in his hand. But I knew he wouldn’t blow us up. He enjoyed his position too much and was a man who wouldn’t settle for less.

  “In the United States Army, we have an unofficial policy called ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell.’ This policy has nothing to do with you except I want you to not ask my daughter to marry you; to not tell my daughter that you and I have ever met; to not ask any questions about this operation; to not tell anyone that it ever happened. Do you understand me?” He shifted closer to intimidate me.

  “I understand, but—”

  He interrupted me. “I’m not asking for something for nothing. You survived an orchestrated attack by the United States Army. You outperformed my top recruits here on this base. In the war game you defeated ten men last night, two men this morning, and won three matches in our martial arts competition. The actual hits, the accuracy of your shooting, your marksmanship is not what impressed me the most, although it was an incredible achievement for a civilian. It was your mental endurance that made you a champion.” He leaned back again.

  “Let me tell you what makes the average solider fail. It’s mental weakness. He gets captured, he panics. His terror traps him. He can only think of what has happened before he was captured and what will happen to him ultimately. He can’t think his way through his present captivity. He can’t develop a plan rapidly enough and execute it. He can’t fight to win. He’s paralyzed! His fear of losing and his fear of death defeat him. In what he believes are his final moments, he thinks only of his loved ones. Dwelling on the emotion of love sinks him.” The general smiled, seeming satisfied with his analysis and watching to see if his words were moving me. He leaned forward again, with a fixed stare.

  “The naked thing was brilliant!” He smiled as though he was being forced to give me the credit, then laughed. Then he clapped. “You didn’t get stuck on stupid morals.” He said each word slowly, with extra emphasis. “You focused instead on survival. You made quick analyses and quick plans. You took risks, but not too many. You calculated your risks. You knew you couldn’t drive that truck. Smartly, you left it alone. You took the keys though, clever. Some recruits slash the tires and cost the army a fortune.”

  “I like you!” He stood up. “You are any general’s dream soldier. Do you know how many recruits never make it to the cabin during that war exercise? Over the years, the star recruit that makes it to the cabin, the one or two who pull it off, still fail once they get inside.” He turned toward me.

  “You didn’t fuck Irene! You didn’t even try! You didn’t eat her soup. You tied her up and fed her the sedative instead,” he said with pride. “I know some Muslim men who are real pricks! They could do anything except not fuck the blonde!” He laughed. Then his laughter evaporated. “You are young enough that with the right training you could be one mean-ass weapon. You would have a lifetime career in the military. How about it?”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I repeated, slowly and thoughtfully.

  “I can do that. I won’t ask you how you know who I am, how you found me, or why you think it was okay to abduct me and drop me into your war game exercise. You have my word. I won’t ask you or anybody else,” I said solemnly.

  “Don’t tell …” I repeated. “Don’t tell your daughter that I love her. I won’t. She already knows. Don’t ask her to marry me. There’s only one way that could happen. That is if I don’t ever see her again. I can stay away from her, although I don’t want to. But I doubt you can keep her away from me,” I said. The general’s face swelled with insult. Then he absorbed it and wore restraint instead.

  “No disrespect, sir, but a woman who is loved by a true Muslim man will love, cover, sit, wait, work beside wife number two or three or four because of the quality of the love that she is receiving, because of our passion, our loyalty, our submission to one God and the boundaries that we are required to respect. Any woman being loved and protected and provided for by a true Musl
im man, who may have more than one wife, gets more than she can get from a nonbeliever that she has all to herself. That’s the big secret, the answer to the question that’s been rocking you for all these years.” I stood up also.

  “So, since we are striking deals, let’s agree. Let me walk out of here and back into my life. I won’t say a word about this abduction to anyone. I won’t ask any questions about it. I won’t contact Chiasa or ask her to be my wife. And you guarantee me that I won’t see Chiasa Hiyoku Brown ever again. And I’ll guarantee you, if I don’t see her, she’s yours. If I do see her, she’s mine.”

  We shook on it.

  Chapter 8

  SON

  “Put this around your eyes,” the general said. I looked at the blindfold as he held it in his extended hand. I didn’t say nothing.

  “Come on. It’s almost finished. If I have agreed to be your driver, you should comply and put this on not for yourself but for me,” I took the blindfold and put it on and tied it tight.

  “Good, son. You’re a civilian, so I’ll talk civilized to you. If you were my soldier, things would be different,” he said.

  I was seated in the back of a covered army jeep. He was driving me. He had taken the jeep keys from the driver who was behind the wheel just as I was about to jump inside. When the first driver asked me, “Where should I let you off?” I answered, “Right where you picked me up.” He must’ve taken me for a fool; I could tell he was one of the runners who had snatched me just the night before. Then the general appeared, ordered him out of his seat, and took his place. Now only the general and I were in the vehicle and he had just called me “son.”

  “Son,” I repeated.

  “Just a slip,” he said dryly. He turned the key and we pulled off. Blindfolded, I pulled out a piece of paper from the pocket of my black sweats. The running clothes I had worn last night were all returned to me cleaned and laundered and folded and without any evidence of our “evening together” in heated war games.

  I had also lifted a half pencil with no eraser out of the office where they had held me after their morning raid on the cabin. In that office I washed in the bathroom and got into the dogi for the match. After the match and meeting with the general, I was returned to that same office to change from the dogi to my sweats. In that room I had hatched a plan regarding returning to Haeundae Beach. The paper and pencil were necessary to the plan.

  As we rode, I wrote down only letters and numbers. L was for left. S50 or S10 was for straight fifty feet or ten feet or however many feet I had calculated we had gone. R was for right. DH was for downhill. CL was for curved left. And it went like that. It was a simple map made by a blindfolded civilian, me. Getting it right didn’t run as smoothly as I would’ve liked. The general would interrupt my count and rhythm with his random remarks. Yet I believed that what I was writing was accurate.

  “Why are you driving me back?” I asked him.

  “To make sure you get home safe. You’re not too popular with my recruits after your attack last night. I wouldn’t want them to avenge themselves once you were out of my line of vision. Military types can play pretty rough,” he said.

  He was clever, I thought. Every word he spoke was loaded. He had converted his kidnapping of me into my “attack” on his recruits. He had turned himself into the hero who was getting me “home safe.” He had propped up that his recruits were a threat to me and could “play pretty rough,” when in fact I had defeated them at their game when all the circumstances had been completely in their favor.

  “Thanks for the ride.” I played it off, purposely. I knew I was walking a fine line. In my gut, I understood that he could become my father-in-law. On the other hand, I knew he would work hard to make it impossible. He resembled my true father in his appearance but not in his manner, thoughts, and ways. He had called me “son,” because he felt it. Then he characterized it as a “slip,” since his world is war. I figured he couldn’t help but look at himself as America and me as the Sudan.

  He said he liked me and praised my marksmanship, yet it was my Holy Quran that made him my enemy in his war. Many men base their opinion of my faith on corrupt Muslim men they’ve met. But not many military men have taken the time to examine the Quran itself. To read Quran is to learn respect for the faith of Islam whether you embrace it or not. The general didn’t know that this is the reason “smart girls” like Chiasa could learn and then accept the faith. She read Quran and slowly it was creating a respect inside her for the truth of something good—a meaningful way of life.

  “What do you see yourself doing with your life?” he asked me.

  “Family and business,” I responded. “That’s what all men are supposed to do, right?” I put the question back on him.

  “The business is easy,” he said vaguely.

  “The business is for the family. Without the family, there’s no reason for business,” I responded. Then there was a long pause between us two for some distance.

  “You’re a young man, you’ll learn,” he broke our silence. I didn’t respond. I was writing my map notes.

  “With the military and with business you get a manual. You get instructions. You get orders. You carry out the orders, simple,” he said, as though he were thinking aloud. I didn’t say nothing back.

  “With women, you get mood swings, attitude, insubordination. I couldn’t get my wife to follow one order. My soldiers listen to me.” He laughed two times and then turned back to his thoughts.

  I felt sorry for him. He was like most African-American men I had seen so far. He thought that life did not come with a manual, even though it does. He thought only soldiers are supposed to “follow orders,” even though Allah has set rules and boundaries and limits for every man and woman. He wanted to be respected and admired by his women but never would be, because he didn’t recognize his God, himself, or his limits.

  “How do you do it?” he asked. But I was focused on the scent and sound of the beach. I knew I had arrived now.

  “Do what?” I asked. The army jeep pulled over and stopped. I waited.

  “I’ll take it off now,” I said before removing the blindfold. He didn’t respond, so I untied it. He sat looking at me through his rear-view with a probing stare. My eyes were adjusting.

  “Do what?” I asked again. He sighed, turned to face me, and said, “Forget it.”

  “Okay, Father,” I said purposely.

  “Father?” he responded.

  “Just a slip.” I used his words. We both smiled.

  “I hope I never see you again unless you’re wearing one of my uniforms,” he said sternly.

  “You won’t see me in uniform,” I said. “But you might see me.” As I climbed out, my map was already folded inside my pocket.

  “Never say never, son,” he said, and pulled away.

  Chapter 9

  BODY SEARCH

  I called Umma and spoke briefly. We conversed like nothing special was happening in my life. I wasn’t sure if she was feeling any sense of danger because of my abduction. To be sure, I spoke calmly and carefully and joyfully to place her heart at ease.

  “Akemi,” I called her at her uncle’s apartment at 5:30 p.m.

  “Hai!” she said softly.

  “I’m coming.” I hung up.

  Seoul was a three- to four-hour car ride, depending on the route and the speed. I checked it on the map inside my room at Bada Ga after a shower and a cut. I decided to make arrangements for us to go together. My wife and her grandmother should be introduced as soon as possible. It would take time for her to see and react and adjust to Akemi. Then it would take time for her to learn of Joo Eun’s life, death, and ashes. I didn’t want to be cold, yet I knew we had to get it all started up right away.

  Akemi was excited when she saw me, but acting calm and cool in her aunt and uncle’s presence. As usual, it was her eyes that gave her heart away. When I arrived, everyone was ready—Dong Hwa, Sun Eun, their two sons, and the two-year-old daughter. I didn’t get the c
hance to see Akemi separately from them.

  Chicken galbi was my big outside Korean food experience. In a well-lit restaurant with long and wide wooden family-sized tables, we all sat. Dong Hwa’s family, Akemi, and I and Black Sea and the girl with the killa eyes from Busan University were all there as promised. It wasn’t as though we were too unusual compared to the other customers, except that I wasn’t Korean. Our party of nine was ordinary. The entire restaurant was packed with families and couples and babies, babies, babies.

  The grill was at the center of each table, heating up. The Korean waitress arrived and greeted all of us nicely and set down a large metal ring. She set the table with a long metal spoon and a set of chopsticks for each person. When she returned, she carried a rectangular bucket of raw, thinly sliced chicken breast. It was seasoned, marinated, and drowning in a thick red spicy sauce that resembled Sudanese shotta. The waitress placed the chicken, several pounds of it, in the center of the metal ring. When a fillet was too long or thick, she cut it with a huge pair of scissors, which could be found on each table.

  When the chicken began to sizzle and cook, she left and returned with two more waitresses who served us each a series of small bowls containing different sides: soup, salad, radish, kimchee, and bean sprouts. I observed that the Koreans liked to have a bunch of small dishes on every table where people gathered to eat and enjoy. They’d rather sip thirty times from tiny glasses than drink all that they could out of one big glass. They’d rather eat small portions out of twenty-four tiny dishes than give each person their own plate and pile the foods up on two or three big serving dishes. I figured it must be a visual arts thing for them.

  I’ll admit I watched the food process intensely. I had not eaten since before sunrise yesterday, although I did have some water last night in the cabin. The waitress kept appearing and reappearing, moving the chicken around with two thick and long wooden paddles to make sure it was well cooked. The feeling and the energy was good.