Laila had been taken to a prison not far from downtown. Daniel found her sitting rigidly among the slumping girls broken by either the injustice of life or the injustice of the law. She didn’t look at him as he led her away, the guard pulling the iron gate shut behind them. From a cell, a young inmate shouted accusations, telling everyone who could hear that her guard had raped her, although she was a good Muslim. An elderly woman replied, “They rape bad Muslims, too.”
Twisting her hands like she was lathering soap, Laila watched the road as Daniel drove her Golf, agreeing to pose as her servant if they were stopped. She conveyed nothing with her eyes, nor did she speak, other than to tell him he looked ridiculous. Every time he shifted gears, the jerking motion punctuated stretches of silence. At last she said, “Thank you.”
“Did you know about my father?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Peter told me that morning at the hotel. He was asking if I knew, but I didn’t.”
Daniel wanted to explain how this made him feel but had no words for this emotion, no precedent. He cursed the limitations of language.
“I’m finished as a doctor.”
“Without an investigation or a trial? You’ll be cleared. You’re one of them, after all.”
“But I did it. Their accusations are true.”
Telaya piped up. What is accurate isn’t always true.
“You’ll still work for them?”
“It’s not about them. It’s just time for real change, Daniel.”
Daniel dropped her off at her house. Peter was already there. None of the guards matched Daniel’s bearded, turbaned profile to the photos of him in the book. He was beginning to feel inordinately lucky, just as he had when he was a small boy living in a big house before his mother went away and his father went to jail. Once he was home, he waited until it was nighttime and took every bottle of alcohol that was left and poured the contents into the pool. Daniel fetched Sayed’s portrait from inside and went into the shed and smashed the frame with a hammer until it was nothing but splinters. He tore at the canvas but couldn’t destroy it, so he stalked to the pool and dropped it in the water and watched the oil begin to smear, his father’s features becoming indistinguishable. Sayed Sajadi had died not once but twice. Once in his bed, when his body collapsed after decades of drinking. And again in a swimming pool, fifteen years later, when his son drowned him along with the alcohol he swore to never touch again.