“What were you doing on the West Side?” I bark into the phone.
“I went to meet one of our contributors at the Federal Building,” Kathryn raises her voice defensively. “He was trying to locate some government documents and I thought I might be able to help.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You have to tell me these things!”
“Rashid!” she raises her voice in irritation. “I’m a grown woman, I have a job, why should I have to tell you everything?”
I pause, try to temper my tone. “Where is the Federal Building?”
“In Westwood, right off the 405 just north of the 10.”
I feel my stomach turn. I take a deep breath, change my tone so I will not anger her. “Were the children with you?”
“Of course not.” She is exasperated. “I went during school hours.”
“Please promise me something. I am very serious. Please just promise me.”
“What?”
“Please promise me you will let me know where you are going… on the freeways. Anyplace not on your usual trips to work or to get the boys.”
“What for?”
I know I am straining her patience. She bristles sometimes at what seem like simple requests. In Dubai I had asked her not to go out on the sidewalk in a tank top. She argued fiercely, told me not to try to control her, she was not a Pakistani woman. On the sidewalk she felt the leers of the Eastern men. When a Pakistani laborer asked her how much she charged, as if she were a common prostitute, she came home and changed her clothes, satisfied she had done it for her own reasons.
I take a breath, considering my reasons. “I lost my father when he traveled away from his usual route. I just want to make sure you’re safe.” I can sense her hesitating on the other end of the telephone, surprised I have mentioned my father.
“All right. I’ll try.”
“It’s just because I love you.”
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
I hang up.
I sit in my car outside an agricultural supply store. I can’t help but notice my hypocrisy. I am far from my usual routes. I haven’t told Kathryn a word about this trip. What if Kathryn is on the freeway during the time Ali has planned to act? I must make sure I know where she is. I must tell Ali we have to start very early in the morning.
I can’t bring myself to enter the store yet. So I turn on the radio. “You can have it all,” the advertiser promises brightly, “great beer taste and fewer calories.” If only my desires were so simple, satisfied with a mediocre light beer.
I change the radio station. “…as stocks closed lower. In other news, a State Department spokesman told reporters today the American presence in Afghanistan is bringing stability to the region. President Mohammed Karzai’s government is moving towards democracy. He warned, though, that Osama bin Laden is still at large, and the intelligence services are tracking other Al-Qaeda operatives such as Al-Zawahri and a man known as Abu Omar.”
I shouldn’t think too much about this. I need to go inside and purchase nitrogen fertilizer. I change the station again. The high end of my radio dial—which plays popular rock and roll from a station in Los Angeles—plays country Western music here just east of Bakersfield, two hours north and a world away from the city. I listen to a sad song about a U.S. soldier returned from the war in Afghanistan, fighting for God and country, only to return to a wife who had left him for another. “But our love for you is true,” the refrain repeats, “we give our thanks for what you do.” My stomach turns acidic. I step out of the car and slam the door, as if the singer might feel the force of my anger.
The store is an unremarkable single-story structure filled with tools and supplies for the vast farms of the central valley. Irrigation tubing, spare parts for tractors and fruit conveyors, pesticides, and, of course, fertilizers. I examine the aisles. I know the substance I seek will come in big white bags. I have seen these bags in the online videos, ANFO tutorials. Ammonium nitrate fuel oil. At the far end of the warehouse, a padlock secures an area enclosed behind wire fencing. Piles of 50-pound white plastic bags are piled neatly inside. I do not approach them. I busy myself examining irrigation connections, joints for delivering water to individual fruit and nut trees.
I move closer to the far end of the store and notice a few men in turbans. Their long beards and thin cotton kurta pajamas mark them as Punjabi Sikhs. I am surprised to see them here, appearing familiar with the piles of tractor tires and soybean seeds. I can understand their banter in Punjabi, can tell from the way they hold lightly onto the vowels at the ends of their words, that they are jatts; farmers, likely from Indian Punjab, the other half of my British-divided Punjab. They make their way through the pile of tires, arguing amongst themselves about the relative merits of each. When they have selected four, they stride up to the counter, set their purchases down in front of the counter and one fishes his wallet out from the pocket hidden in the side seam of his kurta. He pats his hand on his round belly, telling his companions he is hungry.
The door clangs. A Mexican man, dressed in blue jeans, a faded red t-shirt, and a dirty baseball cap steps in and allows his eyes a moment to adjust to the interior lighting. He walks to the counter and pulls a folded paper out of his pocket. The man behind the counter, who also looks to be Mexican, chats briefly with him in Spanish. The clerk eventually comes from behind the counter and starts to load up a battered metal trolley with goods. First a box of large O rings, some Teflon tape, and a faucet handle. Then he moves toward the back of the store. I meander down another aisle so I can continue to observe. The shop owner pulls on his key ring and pops the padlock opening the door to position the trolley for loading. He pulls a clipboard down from the inside of the fencing and reaches out to the customer. Knowingly, the customer reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, its outline visibly worn into the denim. He withdraws his identification, which the shop owner slides under the metal clamp on the board, and then copies down the information on the paper. He is following the federal requirements I have read about, the list should include the names and details of each customer buying nitrogen fertilizer.
I continue moving round the end of one aisle into the next, so as not to attract attention to myself. The shop owner asks “Quanto?” and the customer replies “Dos.” I hear the small white grains of chemicals crunch against each other as two bags of nitrogen fertilizer land on the trolley. This substance, which will spur green plants to grow bigger, will accomplish another purpose for me. Once I have altered it, the transformed material will respond to a small charge, growing almost instantly into a fireball. I have seen the blasts online. From a screen in the Hollywood public library I was bewildered to find the FBI had posted a video of their own experiment detonating a bomb similar to that used in the Times Square Bombing. Cameras placed at four different angles recorded the force, played back in slow motion, ripping one car apart, leaving only a smoking black frame, and flipping over each of four surrounding cars. The FBI even opened the video with a helpful graphic explaining the bomb included 250 pounds of ammonium nitrate and a remote controlled trigger.
My phone rings. I step outside into the parking lot to answer.
“Rashid?” Kathryn says. “Should I plan to make dinner for all of us? Will you be home? The boys have been missing you.”
“I don’t think so, the job is still going on,” I lie.
The top of my head grows warm in the midday sun. I look up at the blue sky framed by the powerlines running along the road. An airplane flies overhead, leaving a tiny silver vapor trail. No one fears the sky here in America. No one checks frantically for what the planes might drop from the sky.
“So you won’t be home today?” she sounds a little disappointed.
I imagine us around the table, a little cluster of relationships, love, biology. I ache for this, the simplicity of it.
“No. Not today. I think tomorrow.”
“All right,” she sighs. “Keep me posted.”
“Sure.”
I sit back in my car, avoid walking back in, I don’t want to attract too much attention to myself. The radio plays another song, “Through all the years, the babies and the tears, I just couldn’t imagine lovin’ this life without you…”
My palms are clammy as I call Ali.
“What is it?” he asks curtly.
“Can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Any of it.” I drum my fingers nervously on the steering wheel. “The store requires identification, they record all the purchases. I can’t get what you need.” I long for the easy excuses of my childhood, I can’t do it… it’s too hard, I had told my father when he pushed me to finish my math lessons in eighth standard. Of course it’s hard, he had told me, that’s why the teacher sends you home to practice, so it’ll get easier. He never let me give up. He always nodded in satisfaction when I delivered top marks at the end of the term—he expected, indeed, he accepted nothing less.
“You will find a way, brother. Your intelligence will guide you.”
“No, it’s more than that.” I close my eyes, set my jaw, “I’m pulling out, Ali.”
“No, it’s too late for that.” I can hear him smiling.
“Sorry.” I hang up the phone, set the car in reverse and jerk out of the parking space. A certain lightness buoys the car. That’s it. He has no authority. I can step out of his world, shut my eyes on his vision, sit around the table with Kathryn and the boys like nothing has happened. Suddenly ravenous, I pull into a fast food restaurant, order a hamburger, fries, hot and spicy sauce. I crush the wrapper when I have finished. My phone vibrates with a message.
I don’t recognize the sender’s number. No turning back. The lion has spoken. The phone vibrates again, this time the message contains an image. I see myself sitting, my hands to my heart, surrounded by a group of men, their arms networked to me, an older man at my side—the man who told me my fate was written. I feel dizzy, look around to see if anyone in the restaurant has seen my phone. I hold on to the tabletop to steady myself, look at the photo again. Given the perspective, I imagine Omar took the photo. I didn’t notice at the time. He took a photo of me, touched by his father, Abu Omar, the lion of Afghanistan.
I walk out of the restaurant, not bothering to clear my trash, my feet leaden. In the safety of my car, I call Ali. “Did you send me messages?”
“Messages? No. Our friend who helped with your document said he would provide you some encouragement.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Ali?”
“Allah’s will, brother. Do your shopping.”
My heart thumps in my chest, thinking about how I could explain that photograph if it landed in the hands of law enforcement. “And then?”
“Think of your father, habibi,” his voice suddenly tender, “think of how he was celebrating in a courtyard, holding a child in his arms, he was wishing well to the groom, showing his kinship to the family that had protected him during Partition.”
I am silent, feel almost naked—he describes the scene as if he had been there.
“The food had been prepared, the bride was inside, a string of lights flickered from the branches of an apricot tree to the courtyard wall.”
I bite my lip.
“And then with a single blast your father was gone.” Ali pauses, waiting. The silence is excruciating.
I try to breathe, but my lungs are tight, as when I used to race with my brothers down our lane, always trying unsuccessfully to match their speeds.
“If I do your shopping, then I want out. I’m done.”
“Yes, habibi,” his voice sounds relaxed, “then you will have completed your obligation.”
“And you will leave me alone?”
“Praise be to Allah, we are never alone, but then I won’t ask any more from you.”
The freeway rolls out smoothly before my tires. How easily I return to the store, the path laid clear, even as my phone rests on my thigh, suddenly capable of endangering me.
Perhaps I should tell Ali’s friend I am doing my part, before he does anything with the photo. I dial the message sender’s number, whatever his name is. I hear the rings as I see the almond orchards reach from the edge of the freeway seemingly to the horizon. “Congratulations!” a cheerful American voice calls out from the phone, “you have qualified to win a $500 gift certificate toward your next cruise.” I hang up, try the number again, hear the same message. Somehow he sent the messages on a telemarketer’s number. I shudder at this simple sleight of hand, wondering what other deceptions I may encounter.
Back in the parking lot I wait, hoping some idea will come to me.
Eventually two Punjabis leave the store pushing a 55-gallon drum of chemicals to the flatbed of a big late model American pickup truck.
“Sat sri akal,” I call out to them their customary Sikh greeting, stepping out of my car. They turn to look at me, responding back in kind.
I speak to them in Punjabi, trying to affect their village-style accent. I ask them if there is another agricultural supply store nearby. They look me up and down, my clean jeans and casual button down shirt mark me neither as a farmer, nor as one of them. After a moment, however, the elder of the two explains that north along the county road about five miles is another store, run by a gora, a white man, but the prices are more expensive. The other man then tells me his friend’s cousin also runs a store a ways further on toward Fresno. The first man frowns, telling me it is too far. I thank them and get into my car, speeding away empty handed.
I return to the freeway, stop at a fast food restaurant just next to the entrance ramp. In the parking lot, I open my trunk and reach into the bottom of my rig bag. I pull out an old pair of kurta pajamas. Sometimes, when the jobs are long, I wear them to sleep in. I head inside the restaurant, stepping into the bathroom to change my clothes. Quickly, I wash my hands and look in the mirror. I wet my hair and use my fingers to comb it into a center part, trying to look the part of a recently arrived immigrant. I step out with my Western clothes tucked under my arm and hastily order a soda. The passing of the day presses against me. I rush back to the car clutching my waxed paper cup and stuffing all of my cash into the hidden pocket in the seam of my kurta.
Before Fresno, I turn off the freeway and pull into a gas station, asking directions to the store the Punjabi farmers had mentioned. I follow the gas station attendant’s directions away from the freeway. I pass a modest Sikh temple, and a restaurant serving both Indian briyani and burritos. I think of the Punjabi Sikhs I knew from my childhood. They all called themselves jatts, they all emphasized their background as farmers, even if they had moved off their lands and made their living in transport or trading. Here in America, this community has not assimilated, they simply continue with their traditions on unfamiliar soil.
I come to the store, turn off the paved road into a graveled parking lot.
Inside, I walk up and down the aisles, collecting O rings, Teflon tape, and a faucet handle. I take my purchases to the counter. The Punjabi Sikh behind the counter moves his big frame slowly, as he examines each item, ringing up what seem to be arbitrary prices on an old cash register, the numbers on the keys almost completely obscured with dirt from soiled fingers. As he totals my bill, I glance around the store, reassuring myself that he also maintains a supply of ammonium nitrate fertilizer for sale. As I count out the bills to pay for my sale, I notice the relatively pale color of my hands, my clean fingernails. Although my palms have developed protective calluses from years of handling the tools of my job, I have kept my hands meticulously clean. My colleagues in Dubai used to tease me, claiming I was successful in picking up girls because they could never tell from my hands I was an oil worker.
I bundle my purchases in my arms and leave the store. In the parking lot, I unload them into my trunk, then reach down and scoop up handfuls of gravel, kneading them with my hands as my mother would knead dough for roti. Then I step to the edge of the parking lot, pressing my fingertips into the soil, taking care to dig deeply, until I can feel the earth wedge beneath my nails, so that I might look like I belong here, among this community of foreign farmers.
I stand, rub my dirty hands along the sides of my kurta, then halfheartedly brush it off so that I may share in the dull grime of the local look. Now I wait. My heart begins to beat faster as I think of what I am about to do. But I remain still. I think of my mother, I remember how she had perfected the art of standing stock still when directing our workers. Her motionlessness only heightened their sense of urgency as they respectfully hurried to carry out her instructions.
The cars pass periodically on the road, mostly pickups and occasionally transport trucks carrying crates of produce. Finally, a late model Ford truck pulls into the parking lot. A Sikh man gets down and slams the door behind him. He looks at me and nods.
“Sardarji?” I call out to him with the respectful title I learned to use as a boy with all turbaned men.
“Han ji?” he replies, stepping toward me.
“I need some help.”
He crosses his arms over the top of his belly and waits for me to explain.
“I need to buy something,” I say in Punjabi, careful not to pepper in English, as immigrants do after they have lived too long in the West. I describe that I have come to purchase supplies as my employer has directed me. He is a very difficult man, the eldest paternal uncle of my new wife. I want to be sure that he is happy with my work. I stutter with some of my words, shift my weight from foot to foot, exhibiting a genuine nervousness with this deceitful story.
The man grows impatient. “What do you need help with?”
“I’ve purchased everything he wants,” I gesture to the plumbing parts in my trunk, “except one thing. I’m supposed to come back with two bags of fertilizer.”
“So? You can buy it here. What’s the problem?”
I kick the ground, avoid his eyes to signal my deference to his position. “I don’t have the proper identification. My visa status is…is not…well you know…” I wobble my head a bit, “it’s not all proper and legal yet.”
“I see.” He says, recrossing his arms. “And he doesn’t know?”
“His niece was born here,” I try to explain, pulling up some horror story I heard from Indian rig mates years ago. “He said as long as I could arrange my immigration, he would arrange the marriage.” I pause, then look at him directly. “Please virji,” I call him brother, appealing to his larger sense of kinship.
“You just need two bags?”
I wobble my head again. “Han ji,” I confirm. “I have the money here.” I reach into my pocket and pull out two twenties and a ten dollar bill.
He opens his hand, his palm darkened by his familiarity with the soil, and accepts my money. “I remember how difficult it is when you’re new in this country. Meet me at the next intersection down the road and I’ll transfer it to your car. I know the owner here, he won’t be happy if he sees me buying for you.”
I return to sit in the driver’s seat, my heart racing. Slowly, I pull out of the parking lot, glancing in the rearview mirror every few seconds. I pull over just before the intersection. I alternate my view between the road I have just passed and the traffic sign in front of me. The bright red octagon commands me to stop. I think about pulling back onto the road and driving away. I should return to Kathryn and abandon this plan. I close my eyes and the image in my phone returns to me—Abu Omar with his hand on my shoulder. Perhaps I am not the one actually driving this car. I look again into the mirror and see the man’s pickup truck speeding toward me. My brother Majid would love these long straight roads, he would open up the throttle on his car and drive as fast a possible in his beloved car. If I do not take action, if I do not honor the family, I imagine the disdain and disappointment he will show me. At the last minute the car pulls off the road and stops behind me. The moment to avoid this transaction has passed. I should have driven off before he arrived. He does not get out of his car. He honks. I pull the latch to my trunk and step out of my car.
My car climbs the freeway through the mountains faster than the big rigs carrying goods to the grocery stores and strip malls of Southern California, but not fast enough that the highway patrol would have any reason to stop me. I recall Ali’s comments about American infrastructure, not a single checkpoint, not a single bribe to pay, just the wide open freeway. As long as I don’t give law enforcement cause, they have no reason, and more importantly, they have no right to search my car.
I altered my story slightly at each different supply store. The success of my ruse surprised even me. I feel an unexpected excitement about the full complement of plastic bags in my trunk, as if their latent power were propelling me up the mountain. I take the last sip of an energy drink and drop the empty can next to two others at the foot of the passenger seat. Within a few miles, I need to empty my bladder. I pull over at the next opportunity, onto one of the few roads along the 5 freeway not equipped with franchise gas stations or restaurants. I stop along the shoulder and get out of the car. Outside, I brace myself against the cold night air. I step around the idling engine and relieve myself in the ditch. I look down to make sure that I do not make my billowy clothes wet and then I look up. The stars shine with a brilliance I had not noticed from the car. I lean against the passenger door and force my lungs to expand with the cold air. I hear the cars speeding along the freeway behind me, but the mountain before me is silent, as if in homage to the stars in the heavens. As a child, when we visited a hill station on holiday, my father and I had stood out on the verandah and looked up at the sky. He explained that each point of light in the sky was really another sun, but so far away it appeared tiny. Does Allah live in one of those stars? I had asked him. He had smiled and pulled me closer. Allah lives in every star, beta, and in all the places in between.
I shiver under my thin cotton clothes. I retrieve my jeans and shirt, quickly strip out of my Pakistani costume. I glance up, pausing for a moment to hold my right hand against the flesh that covers my heart, thanking the memory of my father for that memory of the stars. From straight overhead I see a streak of light. Faster than the blink of an eye it falls in front of me. A shooting star. Spurred by the cold, I shove my hands through my sleeves and pull up my jeans, not bothering to fasten the buttons before I return to the driver’s seat. Protected from the wind and the cold, I button my shirt, wondering about the meaning of the shooting star. A sign? An omen? I glance at the dashboard, noticing the compass pointing south. The shooting star was oriented to the right. I know it burned up in the atmosphere, the bit of rock hurtling to the earth was consumed in a bit of brilliance, but if it had survived to fall to earth, I imagine, where might it have landed? Beyond the range of mountains before me, on the west side of the city, perhaps where the 10 and the 405 freeways meet.
Ali steps out of the door before I have even turned off the car.
“What took you so long?” In his agitation, he nearly trips over the edge of the concrete at the driveway. “I thought maybe something had happened to you.” The neighborhood is quiet. Darkness fills the big house where Ali’s hosts live. “It’s like fucking midnight.”
“So?” I am in no mood to chat with Ali. My hand trembles as I open the trunk, revealing a beach blanket spread across the width of the car.
Ali places a hand on top, feeling the mass beneath the blanket. “Enough?” he asks.
“Enough,” I confirm. We had discussed using twice the amount the FBI used in their videotaped field experiment.
“Al-hamda’allah,” Ali holds his palms up and gives thanks.
“Get me a couple of towels so that we can cover these up as we carry them in.”
“I only have one towel,” Ali says.
“Do you have a fucking bed sheet?”
He shakes his head. “A blanket?” he offers.
“Fine.”
The floor creaks as I step into Ali’s little backhouse. The place is littered with disposable aluminum cooking pans. I look around and wrinkle my eyebrows in question.
“You said we would need roasting pans,” he responds defensively.
“Yes, I said buy a half a dozen.”
“I went to a warehouse store. The smallest package was twenty four.” He starts to stack them up as I go to the darkened bedroom for the blanket. “In America, you have no choice but to buy too much.”
I flip on the switch, but the room remains dark. “Ali, the light doesn’t work?”
“The bulb burnt out. I have a flashlight.”
“It’s easy to change the bulb.”
“I know. But what is the point? I won’t be here to use it.” His words seem to slur together.
I fumble around in the bedroom until I feel the blanket under my hands. I pull it off the bed and head back outside. After I have carried in the third bag and stacked it near the stove, I notice Ali with irritation. “Can you help instead of standing there like an asshole?”
He just sits down at the table. I step back out, expressing my disgust in the darkness. When I finish ferrying the bags into the house, I look pointedly at Ali. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” He slumps back in the chair. “I took a muscle relaxant.”
“What for?” I pour myself a glass of water from the tap.
“Jihadis, you know, before they act, sometimes they take them.” He inhales slowly, “to cut the tension.”
“But you can’t do this now. You’ll need days to put this all together.” I need that interval, that time to figure out how to clear myself from this.
“I know.” His hands rest clumsily in his lap. “I just wanted to know what to expect. Anyway, I already got the other stuff.” He motions with his eyes toward a plastic shopping bag behind the front door. I look inside, see wires, plastic connections, electrical tape, and an outdated cell phone.
“Took me hours,” he sounds like his mouth is full of cotton. “Had to change three buses to get to the right hardware store.”
“What for? There’s a hardware store right down the street,” I snort.
“That’s one of those franchise stores. Too many security cameras.” He reaches into his back pocket. “And I needed to go and get this,” he pulls out a folded piece of paper and hands it to me.
One side is covered with a hand-drawn engineering design, with labels in English and Arabic.
“Can you make it? It’s our signature detonator.”
“I can see what it is, Ali, I’m an engineer.”
He gives me a leering smile. “I know, that’s why I was so happy to meet you.”
“No. I’m done. I’m not your tool.” I move toward the door.
“We’re all tools of Allah, brother. Don’t resist it.” He slams his fist dully on the table, then closes his eyes and slumps back in the chair, like a puppet released of its strings.
He looks ugly. His hair unwashed, and several weeks past due for a trim. I think for a moment that I hate him. That I want to beat him up for his childish sermonizing and tiresome opinions. I take a step back toward him. It would not be a fair fight. He is hardly more than a boy, and in this state, couldn’t even return a punch.
He cracks open one eye, smiles. “We need each other, Rashid. I can’t do this without you, you can’t do this without me.”
“I don’t need anything from you.” I turn and walk back into the night.
The early sun begins to chase away the darkness on my street. After two nights at home, the way seems clearer. I will talk with Kathryn’s father. I will tell him I have some information. He will know who to contact, what to do. This is his country.
I ride the elevator down to the parking garage. In the car, I look in the rear view mirror, catch the reflection of my eyes as I back out of my space. If only I could wash away some of the things these eyes have seen. Robert Capen, he will help. I’ll call him this afternoon.
Pulling out of the garage, I slam on the brakes as a man nearly jumps in front of my car. Ali. He raps on the window glass on the passenger side. I unlock the doors.
“What the fuck, Ali? Get in,” I hiss. I don’t want anyone to see him here with me. He jerks back into the seat as I peel out of the driveway.
“Nice building, Rashid.”
“What do you want?” I rack my brain, but can’t remember when I might have given him my address.
“I need a detonator.” He says matter-of-factly.
“That’s not my problem.”
“I think you don’t understand this situation.”
“No, Ali,” I slam my brakes at a stoplight, “I think you don’t understand. I’m done. I did what you asked. I’m sympathetic to what you’re trying to do, but I won’t give up my wife and children.” I look at him, feel unsteady even as I will my voice to sound forceful. “I’ll take you to your bus stop. And then…and then Ali, I don’t want to see you again.”
We drive in an eerie silence. My mind racing through my options. I need to call my father-in-law today. How to explain this to him? He can do something. Will I be arrested?
I pull up to a bus shelter. Ali looks at me, with something that looks like kindness. “I’ll see you soon brother, our fathers need your help, it’s not complicated.” He slams the door and I leave him.
The ferry will leave for the offshore rig in an hour, and the tools still haven’t been packed properly. I try to keep my mind on the checklist, hurrying so I will have time to make a phone call. My stomach rumbles, but the thought of food makes me nauseous.
At the vibration of my phone in the pocket of my coveralls I lose control of the tool in my hand, it clangs to the floor. “Fuck,” I mutter to myself, ashamed of my own weakness.
The phone again shows me an unfamiliar number. I open the message, another image sends fire through my veins. The little screen shows an office window, seen from outside. Through the glass I can see the outline of a woman holding her own breast in one hand, a little bottle in the other. Another vibration. Another message. She is a devoted mother, making your son’s milk. Keep them safe.
I flee to the bathroom, fumbling over Kathryn’s office number three times before I get through.
“Kathryn, where are you?...are you pumping?...why the fuck do you keep the blinds open?”
Kathryn replies defensively. But in my head I hear my father’s words: We don’t show our women, when other men see their flesh, they can’t help but lust. So we protect our women, keep them safe.
“Close the fucking blinds…and please, just be careful…” Of what? What could I say that she would understand? “I love you.” I cut the call before she can respond.
I dial another number. “You take a step closer to my wife and I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
“Habibi,” Ali says smugly, “no need to sound like a Hollywood film hero.”
“She has nothing to do with this.”
“Yes, your American wife must be innocent.” He pauses, “So you will make it for me?”
I exhale, bang my hand against the bathroom lock.
“Come to my place, now. Bring your tools.”
“You promise me she won’t be harmed.”
“I promise…on my father’s soul.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
I drop the phone in my pocket, turn and double over, retching into the toilet.