Dearborn, Michigan, and thereabouts
His name was Jared Akim. He was twenty-four. He was from Grosse Pointe, and his father was a periodontist.
“Are you blooded?” asked Juba.
“No. I’m not a fighter. Look how thin my arms are.”
“It’s not the arms, it’s the spirit.”
“Brother, I have the spirit. No arms, plenty of spirit.”
“I would like a man who is blooded,” said Juba to the imam.
But he got Jared instead.
“Brother,” said Jared, “if I were blooded, I would be on somebody’s list. The FBI would be watching me. I would have no freedom of movement. I would lead them straight to you. Unblooded, they have never noticed me. Even with two years in university in Cairo, they did not pay me any attention. I am a virgin in this business, and I am told of your importance, so I infer that you need a virgin as your assistant. I speak English as well as I speak Arabic. I’m cute, so people like me. But I am ready to fight, willing to die, and I will get the job done.”
Juba appraised him. Skinny, tousle-headed, lithe, quick, beautiful, earnest, a smiler and a charmer, a boy full of words. He didn’t care for men full of words, as they were often too clever and saw through everything and believed in nothing, but he had no real choice in the matter.
“If I sense weakness, I will dispense with you quickly. You understand that?”
“I do.”
“Then proceed.”
Jared learned quickly. He never forgot. Once spoken to him, it became a part of his mind-set. Currency was first, and after absorbing the values of American coins and bills, it moved swiftly to the culture of the exchange.
“You must be facile with the money. Americans notice very little, but if one is clumsy at the paying, they will notice that.”
No haggling. If that’s what it says, that’s what it costs.
No looking disappointed at a price.
No counting coins or bills out one at a time as if they were being torn from your flesh.
“They have so much money, they don’t care about it at all. Only another Arab or a Jew makes something of pennies. Most Americans don’t bother to pick up pennies or nickels anymore. Money is shit. Pay it no heed. That’s what they expect. That’s what lulls them to nothingness.”
Transportation: elemental, necessary, difficult.
“Cab is best. Pay in cash, no records. Your driver will be a Russian, another Arab, some sort of black fellow or other. He will pay you no attention. He will read you for threat before he picks you up, and seeing none—make certain you look forlorn and defeated, your body sags with melancholy, your cheeks are hollow—he will pick you up, take you, and forget you.”
Public transportation is slow but generally anonymous. Best to understand the payment system up front, however, so as not to struggle awkwardly trying to fit the right number of nickels and quarters into the hopper. This new thing—private cabs contacted by iPhone, Uber, Lyft—is useful, in that it picks you up where you are and it leaves you where you want to be. But as it’s all done via credit card and the Internet, records are kept. If unobserved and working with a card that has been validated, it’s okay, but the card should never be used operationally.
On to peoples. Jared was not kind in his evocation of various ethnic groups. To him, stereotypes were market research, the accumulated wisdom of millions of transactions between tribe members, and he brought a certain bourgeois zest to profiling those he considered inferior, which was pretty much everyone who hadn’t attended prep school. In political correctness, he was well schooled, but he did not care to burden Juba with its precepts. He knew it could get him killed.
Then on to the police, any race.
“Give them no attitude. They are not clever men or they’d be making some more money elsewhere. They are usually big; they like to hurt people and are always looking for an excuse to do so. But their obsession is with their local area, and they rarely see a bigger picture. They pay more attention to paper than to people, so keep your documents up to date and learn your story forwards and backwards.”
“My name is Awari el-Baqua, as the papers say. I am in the country on a six-month visa, legally admitted. I have some education, but I am here as a laborer to work construction for my uncle, who is a builder. I hope to raise enough money to continue my education back in Syria. I have three brothers. Do you want the names?”
“No policeman will ask you that. A federal agent might. But if the papers are good, you should be all right.”
“The papers are good. They had been produced by the best forgers in Chechnya.
“Also, smile a lot. They like smiling.”
“I can do that.”
“They say you’re obsessed with rifles. Bury that part of your personality. Never mention a weapon, never look at one, never ask about one. Many people are frightened of them and consider them evidence of malice. Don’t read magazines about them or go to where they are sold and talk to people who own them. A brown man with an interest in guns is a problem.”
“I understand.”
They went over it, over and over, on their walks. At first, they walked on Warren Street and the streets just off it, which felt like his own culture to Juba. But, each day, the young man took him in a new direction, and he visited the large city of Detroit, he visited malls where the Americans consumed out of any possible proportion to whatever needs they could have, he went to a famous university town and felt its absence of fear, in stark contrast to the city itself. They took every form of transportation. They visited museums, restaurants, hospitals, office buildings, schools, pizza parlors. They dressed casually, in jeans and running shoes and T-shirts and the kind of sweatshirt with a hood that zipped up the front. They wore sunglasses. They admired monuments and went to the lakefront. They went to the stadium and watched the crowds file in, though Jared could not get Juba to actually attend.
“I won’t try to convert you to the religion of baseball. But it will be a sad day when Allah wipes it from the earth. This, alone, I do not like about jihad.”
“You are a blasphemer,” said Juba. “It is only because you are so negligible that Allah does not punish you. But you have been very good to me, so I forgive you. I will pray for you tonight, and perhaps Allah will extend your time.”
Jared’s phone rang.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “Only the mosque has my number, and only for emergencies.”
He took it out, put it to his ear, and listened. Then he returned it to his pocket.
“They caught a spy,” he said. “A woman. Probably FBI. We’d better get back there.”