The gun is heavy – Jacob can barely hold it, his hands are trembling, and it’s a surprise he’s even holding it at all.
Yassim stands in the middle of the floor. He has his hands at his side now, and slowly he raises an arm towards him. He says something, but Jacob doesn’t hear him, there’s a roar in his ears.
‘Who are you?’ he screams again.
Then Yassim is in front of him. The gun is ripped out of his hands and thrown onto the floor. Through the roar in his ears he can just make out the sound of it clattering onto the hard floor. Yassim is on top of him now, and Jacob holds up his hands to defend himself, but Yassim is too strong and Jacob falls back onto the floor, as if in slow motion, with his friend above him.
Yassim’s thin body feels heavy as he presses Jacob onto the cold floor; his hands are strong, relentless around his wrists. That is how he holds them when they fuck. But their sex is a game, or that’s how Jacob thought of it. Yassim’s domination, his own submission, each to stimulate the other. He’s thought of his submission as a choice, as roles they assumed and could break out of at any time. But this is serious, and it scares him for real.
Yassim turns him so that Jacob is lying with his stomach on the floor. And Jacob can feel Yassim’s weight, his breath, his hips, his cock. It’s humiliating. Not just getting caught snooping on the computer, but also that he is unable to defend himself physically. But the most humiliating thing of all is how horny this makes him. That he can’t resist this or defend himself against Yassim on any level. This is neither fucking nor a game. This is being steamrolled.
‘Fuck me,’ Jacob hisses against the cold floor. ‘Fuck me as hard as you fucking can.’
Yassim tears off his underwear, and then he’s moving inside him. The world explodes in pain and a raw, terrible pleasure, and for a moment Jacob thinks he’s going to die, that the world is ending.
*
Afterwards, Yassim pulls out and collapses with his back against one of the table legs. Jacob is still lying with his face against the floor, eyes closed. It’s too much. This is just way too much.
‘It was a Saturday,’ Yassim begins quietly. ‘My sister’s wedding was on a Saturday.’
Jacob lies completely still.
‘My whole family was there, of course. Everyone. My father was an important man. Influential. Powerful in his way. But most of all, he was very good at keeping everyone happy, understanding what people needed the most. That’s why they listened to him. That’s why the Americans listened to him, too. Everyone was there for the wedding. Secular rebels, al-Nusra representatives, al-Qaeda. Even Abu Bakr was on his way, but he was late. He wasn’t the caliph yet – just Ibrahim, an ambitious nobody.’
Yassim falls silent. It’s hard for him to tell this story, but Jacob knows that all he can do is lie still, act like he’s not even here.
‘It was a mistake, they said afterwards. The drone attack. An order that went awry. A drone pilot in fucking Virginia, or where ever they are, received the wrong coordinates. Who the hell knows? But instead of a wedding there were twelve funerals. My father. My mother. My cousins. My sister…’
Yassim pauses.
‘On her wedding day. She didn’t even have time to get married before they killed her.’
Jacob’s mouth is dry; he has the floor against his lips as he moves them. ‘But why did you lie?’ he whispers. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the beginning?’
He turns over so he can look at Yassim, leaning against the leg of the table with his eyes closed. ‘I couldn’t put that on you,’ Yassim says. ‘I don’t know you. Or… didn’t know you.’
Jacob rolls over on his side, leaning on an elbow. ‘I’m so sorry. If I’d known…’
Yassim waves his hand, embarrassed, self-deprecating. ‘Stop. How could you have known?’
They stay on the concrete floor for a while without speaking.
‘Where do you go when you disappear?’ Jacob finally asks.
Yassim doesn’t answer, but he opens his eyes and looks at him. He puts a finger to his lips to hush him. Then he stands up and stretches out a hand.
‘Come,’ he says. ‘Let’s take a walk.’
*
The city is quiet as they exit the parking garage in the middle of the night. A bass line is thumping from some roof terrace where the party hasn’t stopped despite the drizzle. A few cars roll by over the wet, bumpy asphalt. They don’t speak and Yassim leads him across a makeshift parking lot, into a late-night cafe which consists of just a few tarps over the ruins of a building that no one has bothered to tear down or rebuild. They buy Sprites and a bag of chips and sit beneath the tarp on dirty plastic chairs, sheltered from the rain. Yassim leans over towards Jacob and looks him in his eyes. The threat is gone now – there’s only warmth and sincerity.
‘Has anybody contacted you?’ he asks calmly. ‘Has anyone asked you to keep an eye on me?’
Jacob drinks the soda and looks into the parking lot and the rain through the dirty, transparent plastic. It’s cold and he pulls Yassim’s cardigan tighter around him. He nods slowly.
‘I thought we’d been careful,’ Yassim says. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. I swear.’
‘They say you’re a terrorist,’ Jacob says. ‘That you’re planning an attack.’
His mouth is very dry. Saying it out loud makes it feel real. But Yassim just nods calmly.
‘Do you believe them?’ he asks.
Jacob turns and looks straight into his eyes for the first time since they left the apartment.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘You disappear to Syria. You lie. You tell me you’re a photographer and show me pictures I don’t think you’ve taken. You have a gun under the table in an apartment that’s far too big and expensive.’
He looks out into the rain again.
‘What the hell am I supposed to think?’
Yassim just nods gently and looks at him steadily. ‘Who’s contacted you? The Americans?’
Jacob looks back at him, ignoring the question. ‘Are you a terrorist?’ he asks. ‘Are you, Yassim?’