I set Andrew at one edge of the carpet and I take up my place next to Michael at the other edge. Andrew lifts a bare foot and plops it down in front of himself. His other foot follows. I see his weight fall too far forward and his eyes grow wide with anxiety, but he recovers and repeats the process, quickly, hurtling himself across the length of the carpet and into our arms. Michael and I cheer and kiss Andrew on his cheeks. My baby is breathless with excitement.
“I am so proud of you, little brother,” Michael says reaching for Andrew’s hand, practically towering over him. “Walk to the balcony, so we can see the ocean.” Andrew eagerly toddles along holding his brother’s hand for stability. I follow them quietly.
“Now you can grow up to be a big boy,” Michael—unaware I am listening—speaks in a voiced tinged with his idea of paternal gravitas. “After you get good at walking, you’ll be able to run, and then ride a bicycle.” Andrew holds onto the spindles of the balcony railing and looks up at his brother. “After I could run my father said he’d teach me to ride a bicycle. But he died in an accident. But it doesn’t matter that I don’t know how to ride a bicycle, because I’m going to learn how to surf.” He kneels down so he shares his brother’s perspective, as I have done with Michael thousands of times. “Can you see the waves? Surfers ride the waves, like dolphins. I’m going to learn to do that, Mommy says it’s the best sport because there are no teams, no fights.”
Andrew sways on his feet, leans his backside out and back and finally lowers himself to sit on the balcony. “Mie Mie,” he smiles with his version of his brother’s name and he points at the ocean giggling.
“Don’t be sad that we don’t have a daddy,” Michael rests a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “We don’t need one, we don’t even need to talk about him. Mommy takes care of everything for us. And I’m getting bigger so I can help too.”
Andrew plucks his toes and sings random notes to himself. “Daddy was from Pakistan, but tell everyone he was Greek. Greekland is better, no one likes Pakistan.”
I take a few steps back so I can walk to the sliding glass door as if I had just arrived there. “Come in now, it’s getting windy.”
Michael helps Andrew to his feet and steps back, encouraging his little brother to walk to him. I look over my shoulder, instinctively looking for their father to share my pleasure at this milestone. Of course, I am alone, only ghosts could hover behind my shoulder. Never mind. I walk to the phone and call out in my most sing-song voice, “Let’s call Grandma and Uncle Ted and tell them Andrew’s walking!”
I greet my nieces who are watching television cartoons. Janet calls out a greeting from the back yard. We step outside. Ted rummages in the garage as Janet makes a bee line for Andrew. She squats down before him, flattening the precise crease in her pedal pushers, “Andrew! Show me your walking.”
I smile and let go of his hand. Janet and I must look like mirror images of delight. Andrew rushes to her and she embraces him, still not the full-bodied hug I would give him, but genuine.
Ted emerges from the garage, a red bicycle with tassels dangling from the handlebars held aloft as he wades out between neatly stacked and labeled boxes. Do they ever use the things in those boxes? I wonder with a tinge of jealousy about their intact history.
“Come on little man,” Ted booms with a smile. “Time you learned how to ride a bicycle.”
Michael looks at me for permission first, and when I smile he runs to Ted, who has set the bike on its kickstand in the driveway.
Andrew pulls on Janet’s hand, trying to lead her back into the kitchen. I look back at Ted who holds the bike and positions Michael’s feet on the pedals. For a delicious moment I stand alone in the garden, absolved of demands. Safe. Welcome. I have learned to take these moments, recognize these fleeting spaces, the interstitial seconds, when I need not project anything for anyone else’s benefit. I am simply a woman living, breathing, feeling the air on my skin, hearing the sounds of the world moving around me, a simple presence with neither future nor past, neither regret nor hope.
And then Amanda’s voice calls out from the living room, “Mom! Dad! Come quick. You should see this.” A curious tone in her voice—a deadly urgency—transposes to a happy note. “Hurry!” I rush in. Andrew has led Janet to the drawer where he knows she keeps cookies. Janet sweeps Andrew into her arms, still holding a cookie, closing the drawer with her foot before joining her daughters in front of the television.
The cartoon program has been replaced by the somber face of President Obama, the backdrop precise, dignified, serious. “The ten-year search for Osama bin Laden is over.” The man who has terrorized us has been hunted down and killed. “He was killed in a precise surgical strike in his compound in Pakistan.” I think of the compound, the cluster of rooms where I lived for brief periods as part of a Pakistani family. I understand that even a patriarch like Osama—a man who had perfected hatred and terror mongering—would have been surrounded by women and children.
Ted lets out a cheer, as if he were at a football game. “About friggin’ time we got that bastard.”
“It’s been a long war.”Janet sighs. “Hopefully this means we’ve turned a corner.” Andrew squirms in Janet’s arms until she returns him to the floor.
The ticker along the bottom of the television screen repeats Obama’s statements almost as quickly as he makes them, interspersed with tallies of the deaths Osama’s side has inflicted. 2,977 killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. 1,864 soldiers in Afghanistan. 52 in the London subway attacks. 202 in the Bali bombing. 3 in the double freeway bombing in Los Angeles. My blood runs cold. Did they all read that luminous statistic on the screen? I hear the awkward silence in the room. Are they are all avoiding my gaze? Are they holding me responsible for that last number? Perhaps they didn’t see it. Perhaps this is just my imagination. As Obama completes his address the broadcasters display a selection of file footage; Osama in his videotaped addresses, Osama standing outside at a training camp in Afghanistan years earlier, the iconic image of Osama the wanted man. Suddenly a little hand strikes his face. Andrew has swaggered to the television screen and continues to hit at the oversize face on the wide flat-screen television.
“That’s right Andrew. Give him what he deserves.” Ted eggs on my little boy.
The image changes and Osama’s face is replaced by Obama’s. Andrew continues to bang at the screen. I know I should retrieve him, know he is behaving badly, but I dare not step in front of them. I don’t want this family, this whole, healthy, normal family to notice that I am here.
Janet hurries over to Andrew, “All right baby, not him.” She grabs his arm mid-strike. “Don’t hit him, he’s one of the good guys.” She places her hands on his shoulder and he pivots in place. He takes a few steps toward me before tripping and banging his head on the corner of the coffee table. He lets out a little cry then unleashes a terrible scream. Janet reaches to lift him, but I rush to him, gather him to me. I am his mother. I will be the one to comfort him, to wash away the blood, to examine the cut, not her.
I retreat to the bathroom, so I can escape their eyes, the eyes of Ted’s family, the violent eyes on the television screen. I hold Andrew’s head to my shoulder, trying to muffle his shrill cries. I clutch a washcloth at his brow. After a moment his sounds diminish to whimpers. I pull away the perfectly white terrycloth, see the little blot of blood. I rinse out the cloth, wash the spot as I stroke his head. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” The superficial cut will heal quickly, but I welcome it as a pretense for us to leave. I open the door to start making my way out.
“So what’ll happen now?” Amanda asks from the sofa. “Does this mean the wars will end?”
“Do you think my friend Jeremy’s cousin will come back from Iraq?” Valerie picks up the train of thought.
“I don’t know girls, bin Laden wasn’t running the wars. But even if the troops don’t come home, the end of Osama bin Laden is a very good thing. We should be very happy about this.”
My stomach tightens like a fist before a punch. I want to tell the girls, Of course the wars won’t end, Iraq is about oil and regional occupation, not terrorism—the media has blurred the issues, the politicians are delighted for us to confuse the meanings of these two military campaigns. Arguments and rationales that I had carefully edited when I was at the journal, balanced opinions I had exhorted reporters to articulate tumble through my head. I want to recite them, lay out my logic, convince them of the historical folly of trying to tame Afghanistan, of trying to impose a democracy on a foreign culture, of thinking the rule of law could outshine centuries of clan-based loyalties.
But I do not speak. It doesn’t matter if I am right.
Michael tugs quietly at Ted, who is now sitting next to the girls on the couch, glued to the continuing coverage. “Uncle Ted? Can we go back to the bike?”
I take a step toward Michael, perhaps a bit too forcefully. “We’re going home now, Michael. Andrew needs to take a nap. And this has nothing to do with you.”
“But Mom, what about the bicycle? Uncle Ted’s teaching me to ride.” The weight of the disappointment pulls his shoulders down.
“No. Ted is watching the television,” I say, perhaps too crisply. I kneel down beside my boy, hoping to soften the blow. “Perhaps we can take the bike with us. I will teach you to ride.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I walk from my cubicle to the water cooler and go through the motions of taking a drink. From here I can see into Ed’s office. He is not on the phone. He doesn’t yet appear stressed about the afternoon deadline. I knock on his door and he motions for me to enter.
“What can I do for you?”
His chairs are stacked with newspapers so there is no place to sit.
“May I?” I gesture to the obstructed chair seat.
“Oh excuse me.” He pushes his chair out so he can get to the stack.
“I’ve got it.” As I lift a dozen newspapers to set them aside, I see the above-the-fold photo of today’s paper. A crowd of people celebrate bin Laden’s death; waving American flags, arms outstretched, mouths open mid-cheer, illuminated by the streetlights that surround the construction site at ground zero.
I sit down and point to the paper. “Actually, this is what I want to talk about.”
“You’re wondering why we chose to lead with a photograph of New York? We thought about going with a photo from San Diego, but the celebrations were more subdued here. We thought that New York was more emblematic of the end of that chapter.”
“But that’s the problem, I don’t think it will be an end. People the world over who have followed Osama bin Laden will feel obliged to avenge his death. I feel less safe this morning than I did yesterday morning.” I look down at my naked fingers, the absence of rings marking my isolation. “I know how seriously Pakistanis and Muslims take their revenge.”
He is quiet for a moment. “I see your point. So what do you think would be a better option? You think we shouldn’t have killed him?”
“Why not capture him, put him on trial? Don’t we follow the rule of law?”
He purses his lips, thinking. “Let’s play that out. Say the SEALS break into the compound under cover of night, and imagine that by some good stroke, they’re able to get Osama bin Laden out of his home alive, never minding the inevitable firefight his guards will put up.” He puts his wrists out in front of himself, as if they are cuffed together. “And we bring him back to American soil in a military plane. The Pakistanis will love this—we make a big show of how they were protecting our most wanted enemy as we set him up on trial here. And which court of law should we use? A regular civilian court? A court martial? Like we have handled with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay?” He places one hand over his heart and the other over an imaginary Bible. “And suppose we get old Osama to take the oath of truth over our trusty Bible, what truth do you think he’s going to spew? His truth about the return of the caliphate? His truth about the coming victory of Islam over the infidels?”
“Well, that would be pretty incriminating, right? And don’t we enshrine freedom of speech? Doesn’t he have the right to speak on the witness stand?”
“Are you really worried about bin Laden’s first amendment right?” Ed leans in. “And let’s continue with this. Suppose we do somehow manage the Herculean security feat of keeping bin Laden alive to stand trial, and preventing some wacko extremist from blowing up the courthouse, or the prison, or the vehicle that transports him between the two, and we manage to get a conviction, and assuming he hasn’t died from kidney failure by then, what’s his sentence? The American people couldn’t possibly accept anything short of a death sentence.” He brings his hands together on the desk. “One way or another, we had to kill Osama.”
My nostrils flare with inhalation. “We had to take our revenge.”
“Yes. And I have to say after what he did, he deserved what he got, and I think the President did it pretty well.”
I am silent. I gaze down at the images of patriots, people intoxicated with the glory of our country’s revenge. On other days I have seen images of other people, men with dark beards wearing pale kurta pajamas similarly imbibing on the wine of revenge. Different countries. Different perpetrators. Common emotion.
“What’re you worried about, Kathryn? Are you concerned that your connection to the bombing somehow singles you out for an attack? Seems to me it would be just the opposite.”
“No, I guess it’s not that I worry about my physical safety. But I worry about what this says about us. What does this mean for us as a nation? Who are we if this is how we treat our enemies?” I press my lips together, feel the lipstick between them. “When I married Rashid I went to great pains to describe Muslims as peace-loving people. I was open minded about his culture to a fault. I explained away their tendency toward violence as an artifact of the British empire and Partition. I was so naive. I looked the devil in the eye and remarked about how rich were the colors of his irises.”
I look Ed in the eye, feel a force rising in my chest.
“I hate their system of justice.” I clench my jaws together, feel the pressure behind my eyes. I fight back my tears, I did not come to Ed’s office to cry. “I hate the way it rips apart families, not just mine, countless families across the region. I hate the way it elevates death over the living, glorifies the suffering of others as the thrill of revenge. I want nothing to do with it. I have reengineered my life, I have amputated my memories so that my sons and I will not have to live with the ugliness of revenge. And now…” a tear bursts onto my cheek despite my efforts, “and now I feel like I see the same ugliness in my own country, these people who are supposedly my people.” I let my hand rest over the newspaper photo in my lap. “I just want to believe in a place where people settle their disputes in a civilized way, where you know that if you behave according to the rules, you won’t have to fear.”
He gives me an avuncular smile and moves to me. With a little heave he lifts the double pile of newspapers and sets them on the floor. Sitting next to me, he exhales a sigh. “Kathryn, you should be proud of yourself. After all you’ve been through, you still hold on to an idealism. I’ve been in the news business a long time. We’ve printed every kind of barbarism, and crooked political deal, every corrupt self-interested banking scheme and bombing the world can dish up,” he thumps his hand on the stack of newspapers. “I have achieved a nearly perfect cynicism about the world. I hate all systems almost equally, I maintain dismally low expectations of any politician, businessman, military leader. I’m almost never disappointed.”
“So then why do you bother with any of it?”
“I figure, the only thing I can depend on, the only actions I can control in this world are my own. I no longer care if the paper is elevating the debate, or illuminating the conversations of our subscribers. I know my job is to send out ink on paper everyday that gets peoples’ attention, so we can sell those peoples’ attention to dish soap manufacturers and car dealers.” He picks up a newspaper and lets it flop back onto the pile. “But what matters to me is the people in my newsroom. Do they take pride in their work? Do I create a place where they can feel respected, where they can do their work without interference, where they can learn from each other? If my reporters go home and can’t use me as an excuse to beat their wives, or drink an entire six pack, if they can take their paycheck and go out for dinner on the weekends, I figure I’ve done my job well enough.” He runs a hand over his thinning hair. “Saving the world, and perfecting systems…that’s not my job.” He looks at me, reaches out to take the paper from me. “It’s not your job either. Your job is to take the best care of your boys that you can. Bring me some good stories so you can keep a roof over their head, and then show them love even though they live in this world where you can see hatred and violence everywhere you choose to look.”
“But what about the rule of law? Doesn’t that mean anything to us as a country? Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”
“Certainly nice if you can get it. God bless the ACLU and the human rights watchers. If they continue to do their work, and you continue to believe in the law, you’re probably on the right track.”
I squeeze my hands until my knuckles turn white.
“Kathryn, don’t think so much. We can only carry little bits of the world on our shoulders, not the whole thing. Take care of your bit.”
“Take care of my bit.” I nod, release my hands.