The world’s a blur of shouts. Shadows. Boots. Dogs.
“FB—?”
“I SAID FREEZE!”
The knee jams into my face. It burns my left cheek into the carpet. Squashes into my eye.
Can’t breathe. Can’t see. Except—
Dad in a headlock. Men crowded around him. Attack dogs at the ready.
Dad’s dazed from the Demerol. “Who—? What—?”
They hustle him down the stairs, out the front door. The dogs follow, straining their leads.
“Why???” Dad cries out. He disappears into the night.
In the distance, sirens. Cops. Andy. He must’ve made the call.
Now lights. Lights everywhere. I blink in the glare. See an army of agents tromping up and down the stairs. Dad’s computer carted away. His scanner. Drawers. Files.
And I’m suddenly airborne. Up on my toes, my arms half out of their sockets. A hand grips my head from behind. Forces it down into my chest. I’m whirled around, forced to the kitchen, down the basement stairs into my room.
Marty’s face is on my monitor. His eyes go wild when he sees me. Somebody yanks out the plug. The screen goes blank. Oh my god! They’re taking my computer.
“Wait! Don’t! It’s got my homework!”
It’s got my homework?
Two men with rubber gloves empty my desk. Others tear down my posters, rip open my mattress.
“What are you looking for? What?”
Fingers dig under my collarbone. I crumple.
My chair gets spun from behind. I face a bare wall.
Through the open door, I hear crashes upstairs in the kitchen and family room, and down the corridor in Dad’s workshop. A whine of drills. A smash of axes, maybe crowbars. A tide of agents floods by with plastic bags from the downstairs freezer, plus Dad’s toolbox and who knows what else.
Are the men who wrecked my room still here? Is anybody here? Am I alone? I want to turn around, to see, to know, but I’m afraid. I’m—
I smell the stink of stale cigar smoke. Hear my two folding chairs scrape across the floor. One stops behind me, to my left. The other bangs down to my right.
Silence.
Whoever’s there, they’re staring at the center of the back of my head. It’s as if my skull is burning. Like their eyes are drilling their way into my brain.
“What’s going on?”
A long pause. Then a man’s voice from the chair to my left: “We know everything, Sami.”
I hesitate. “How do you know my name?”
“You weren’t listening, Sami. We know everything.”
The man to my right shifts in his chair. His butt makes a sound on the plastic seat cover. “Is there something you’d like to tell us?” Wait, I was wrong. This voice, it isn’t a man—it’s a woman. “If you tell us, it’ll make things easier,” she says.
I think: If you know everything, what can I tell you? “Can I turn around?”
“No.”
I try to picture them. I can’t. They’re like voices in a nightmare, at the end of a dark alley; wherever you turn to run, it’s always the alley, with them at the end of it.
“Why are you here?” I whisper.
“You know.”
“I don’t!”
The man snorts. I hear him get up, walk slowly around my room. Every so often he stops. Why? What’s got his attention?
“Am I in trouble?”
“Not if you cooperate,” the woman says.
“How? I don’t even know what you want.”
“The truth,” the man says. He’s over by my dresser.
“The truth about what?” The snake slithers in my guts. I try not to panic. “Is this about Toronto?” I want to bite off my tongue.
“Toronto?” the man says. “What do you know about Toronto?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“It just came out.”
“Funny thing to think of, Toronto.” He sits. “Funny thing to say, out of the blue.”
“It’s not,” I say. “It’s—Me and my dad—We were going to see the Jays and the Leafs, and—Look, should I have a lawyer?”
“Why do you need a lawyer?” the woman asks.
“Because, I guess, I mean, I thought—”
“Tell us,” she says calmly. “We don’t want to make things hard for you.”
The snake coils in my belly. This IS about Toronto. It’s about your dad. His lies. His secret phone number.
I don’t know that.
So tell them. If it’s not about that, what does it matter?
It matters because whatever I say will look bad.
That’s not your problem. Why suffer because of your dad?
Because he’s my dad!
But think what he may have done. The FBI doesn’t break down doors for nothing.
Sure they do. They make mistakes. Like with Dad’s friend, Mr. Ibrahim. He got strip-searched at Newark coming back from the Hajj because of a mix-up with his name.
Who says there was a mix-up? Maybe he just got lucky.
No!
Have it your way. Ibrahim was innocent. They let him go, didn’t they? Your dad’ll go free too, if he’s clear. Like he says, who needs privacy if there’s nothing to hide?
I won’t snitch on Dad!
It wouldn’t be snitching. The FBI knows everything. If they don’t, they will. You won’t be giving them anything new.
“Stop it! Leave me alone!” Oh god, I said it out loud.
The man swoops in behind me. “If you know something and don’t say it, you’re toast. Got that? If people die, you’ll be an accessory to murder.”
“What?”
He squeezes my shoulders hard. “You heard me, Sami. You’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.”
Save yourself! Save yourself!
The man whirls my chair around. He plants his hands on my arms. Sticks his nose in my face. His breath is hot, pores huge. “You tell me, and you tell me now,” he hollers. “Where is Tariq Hasan?”
“Tariq Hasan? Who’s Tariq Hasan?”
The man doesn’t blink. “Don’t play dumb.” His head’s big and boney, cheeks hollow, hair so cropped he might as well be bald. I should be shaking, but I can’t. I’m frozen.
The man relaxes his grip on my arms, grabs the chair behind him, swings it around between his legs, and squats on it. He’s older than he looks. I can tell by the veins on the back of his hands, and the tight flap of skin under his chin. One thing’s for sure: He’s important. Not like the others. No, this one’s in a blazer and dress pants.
He leans forward. “I asked you a question, Sami,” he says evenly. “Don’t make me ask it again. Where is Tariq Hasan?”
“I don’t know who you mean. Really.” My voice is so light it could float through the ceiling.
The man reaches his arm toward the woman. She hands him a folder. He takes it without looking, pulls out an 8x10, holds it in front of my face.
It’s shot from across a street. The guy in the center of the photo is in his early twenties. He’s slouched against a wall between a shaded window and a short set of cement steps, wearing a loose, long-sleeved shirt that drops to mid-thigh and matching baggy pants pulled in at the ankle. Oh, and he has a sketchy beard, a skullcap, and a sandal on the foot that’s pressed against the brick; and he’s smiling. Maybe he’s seen a friend. Maybe he’s thinking about a joke. Or maybe that’s just how he is.
“This is Tariq Hasan?”
“You know him by another name?” the woman asks.
“I don’t know him at all.”
The man looks right through me. He still hasn’t blinked. I’m surprised his eyeballs haven’t cracked. If they had, he wouldn’t notice. He’s the kind of machine who’d do one-armed push-ups on a busted elbow. I wonder if he has a wife. Or kids. I wonder what he’d do if strangers broke into his house in the middle of the night, threw his wife in a room, his son in the basement, and scared the living shit out of them.
He puts the photograph back in the file and pulls out another. “Take another look.”
It’s a close-up of Hasan’s head. He’s looking way up, like at something in a window. Or maybe he’s just catching some rays. Dark curls sneak out from under the rim of his cap and around his ears. He’s still smiling. I wish I had teeth like that; I’d have girlfriends for sure.
“No,” I shake my head. “Never seen him.”
“Oh?” The way the man says it, I think I’ve made a mistake. I look at the picture again and again. But I haven’t, I really haven’t, not ever. Or what if I have, and I don’t know it? Like, what if he visited the mosque or something? Or he works at Dad’s lab and I saw him in a public area during one of those stupid Take Your Kid to Work days?
I gulp. “I don’t think I’ve seen him, no.”
The man rubs his tongue against the back of his teeth, like there’s something stuck between his molars. “So you don’t think you’ve seen him.”
Do I lie? What can I say to make them go away and leave us alone?
“Maybe he’s been to the house?” the woman coaxes.
I look over, see her for the first time. Pantsuit. Rings. Flat shoes. Heavy cheeks. A helmet of black, lacquered hair.
“No,” I say. “Honest. He’s never been here.” Why won’t she believe me? “What’s Hasan done?”
“It’s not what he’s done. It’s what he’s going to do.”
“Which is what?”
The two of them stare at me dead cold.
“Look,” I say in a small voice, “is this about Toronto?”
Nothing. So it is.
I take a deep breath. “Okay, Dad went to a security conference in Toronto. You know that, right? What you don’t know is, he was supposed to take me. He bailed because of a woman. I think he’s having an affair. But I don’t know for sure, I really don’t. And anyway, it’s between Mom and Dad—it’s nobody else’s business. Even if it was, Dad has nothing to do with this Tariq Hasan guy, or people getting killed, or anything. He doesn’t even know Hasan. I promise. So, like, I think this is all a mistake. Okay?”
The male agent stretches his arms. I get a waft of bad air. He reaches into the file and hands me three more photos.
The top: Hasan again. The smile is gone. There’s a storm on his face.
The middle: Hasan’s eyes are guarded. He’s shaking hands with a man facing away from the camera.
The bottom: The other man’s turned around, his expression grim.
It’s Dad.