Rashid waits in his chair, looking through the glass into the empty visitor’s room. He runs a hand over his neatly trimmed hair, reaches—out of habit—to tug on a beard long gone. He can’t remember the last time he felt so at ease. He hears the clank of a metal door and Kathryn comes into view, carrying her purse and a manila envelope. A prison guard follows her, standing in the corner where he can observe them both.
“I appreciate that you’ve come,” Rashid says as she sits down in the chair on the opposite side of the glass. “I know it’s a long flight from the west coast.”
She nods. Fidgets in her seat as she takes in his appearance through the glass.
“It’s not bad here,” he presupposes her question. “I have time in the library and outside every day.”
“And the other people?”
“Mostly they leave me alone. Since I’m not white or black or Latino, I don’t have a place in their gangs.” He decides not to tell her more than this. She doesn’t need to know about the constant possibility of violence in the prison, the taunts and slurs he endures. He doesn’t seek sympathy from her. “How is Michael?”
“He’s fine. He decided to give up his apartment and he’s staying with me temporarily.” She pauses as if deciding whether or not to tell him something. “He’s planning to use some of your money,” she inhales, “to go to Pakistan.”
“Really?” Rashid’s heart leaps inside his chest. “Finally he’ll go back to see where he comes from.”
“He’ll see where you come from.” She frowns, looks directly into Rashid’s astonishingly clear eyes. With his graying hair, in the wrinkles of his forehead she can see the likeness of Rashid’s father, and in the fullness of his lips she sees the familiar curve of her son. “I’m thinking to go with him.”
“So you can see my family?”
“I just think it’d be safer if I went with him.”
Rashid sets his hands on the table, resting one on top of the other, almost gracefully. “God is great. My family will welcome you both.”
She sits quietly, observing the calm in his movements, the gentleness of his voice.
“Will Andrew go as well?” he asks hopefully.
She shakes her head. “Andrew…Andrew will need some time and some space to know what he feels. He’s hardly speaking to me.”
“Of course. He’ll come back to you, don’t worry. A son will always return to his mother. He has no choice.”
His words, simultaneously soothing and stinging, penetrate the protective emotional barrier she had carefully cultivated on the long car ride from the airport. She lowers her head, sighs. “Somehow I can’t believe how all of this has transpired, so beyond my control. What more could I have done? Could I have made it different in some way? I wish we’d just had a normal family life, I wish we just could’ve raised our sons, been normal people worrying about small things.”
She looks up, leans her forehead against the glass. He can see tears in her eyes. He sets his fingers against the glass, as if he could wipe the tears away.
“Kathryn, it was all written. What I had to do was terrible… terrible. So now it’s my responsibility to pay the price for that. There must be justice. But there’s nothing any of us could’ve done to make things different.” He finally allows himself to reach his other hand through the small opening where the glass meets the table. The guard leans in, alert. And she accepts the gesture, reaching her hand to touch his.
“Almost Morocco,” he whispers.
“What?”
“This is almost as sweet as my dream of meeting you in Morocco. At least here I have nothing left to hide, nothing left to fear.”
She closes her eyes, focusing only on the sensations in her fingers where they touch his.
“What’s in the envelope?”
She inhales deeply and pulls her hand away. “Well, you’d asked me to bring you news of the boys and me,” she pulls a stack of printed papers out of the envelope. “It’s not exactly news.” As she lifts the envelope, something falls out, metal clinking against the table top. She picks up a gold band, triggering a ripple of recognition in his body. Setting the papers aside, she picks up the ring and presses it between her palms. “This is yours, you should have it back.”
Wordlessly he opens his palm, with something approaching disbelief.
“No passing objects,” the guard barks.
She flinches, nods, slides the ring onto her own index finger.
“Thank you,” Rashid whispers. “Please wear it.”
She takes the papers in her hands. “This is something I started writing in the last few weeks, trying to….” Feeling exposed, despite the glass, she presses the papers up against her chest. “Do you want me to read you some?”
“Of course.”
She sets the papers back on the table, bites her lower lip, takes a breath. “Kathryn answers the phone,” she reads. “The man asks where Rashid is. She recognizes the man’s voice, her husband’s manager. ‘You should know where he is,’ she says, ‘you sent him offshore for a job.’ He tells her she better call him. She sets the phone down, confused. When she hears a knock at the door, she opens it, surprised at the serious expression of a man in a suit. ‘Are you Kathryn Siddique?’ he asks. ‘I am agent Roberts, FBI. I need to talk to you about your husband.’ She tries to close the door…” Kathryn pauses, looking up to see if Rashid recognizes the story.
He presses his eyes shut. “Can you ever forgive me?” He looks again, into her silence.
She reaches her hand to her heart. “It’s the only thing I can’t…” slowly she sets her hand in the space beneath the glass. “Forgiveness is the only power I have to make things different.”
She closes her eyes.
He nods.