Man of the Hour Read online

  And so they’d started talking instead, Youssef just throwing haddiths and sayings of the Prophet at him at first and then moving on to stories about the Holy War he’d fought against the Soviet oppressors in Afghanistan, where CIA advisers had given him special weapons training. Nasser couldn’t help but be impressed; his own career as a warrior had begun and ended with throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in the streets of Bethlehem. But here was a brother who’d truly taken action and put his life on the line for jihad. Gradually, they started spending more and more time together: sharing meals, going to the mosque on Bond Street, occasionally even catching an American action movie (providing there was nothing overly haram in it). Until eventually, they were almost like father and son, and the Great Bear asked Nasser if he was ready to take a physical step for jihad too.

  “No, I haven’t lost heart,” he said, watching a squirrel ran along a telephone wire. “I am still for jihad. There’s no element of doubt.”

  “Then why don’t you find a place to put the hadduta?” The Great Bear picked up his sandwich again. “All this time we’ve been saying we should do something to one of their politicians, but then when the opportunity comes along you do nothing about it. How could you not have thought of that? It’s as if God ordained it. Is there something wrong with your brain?”

  “I don’t know.” Nasser lowered his eyes, feeling abashed. “I was caught up, worrying about things. Worrying about my sister.”

  The Great Bear stared at him a moment, rubbing his lips and curling up the corner of his mouth, as though he was about to spit. Yes, Youssef had spoken about setting off a bomb before, but that had just seemed like a vague and rough idea. Seeing the bald man’s blood on the wall the other night had suddenly made it vivid and real to Nasser. Anything was possible.

  Youssef seemed to let his annoyance ebb away a little. “You know,” he said finally, looking around and making sure no one was passing too near them on the sidewalk. “I am thinking how we could get the hadduta into the school when there’s so much security around for the governor.”

  “How?”

  “Well.” Youssef watched trucks making the turn toward Tillary Street, heading to the Manhattan Bridge. “Maybe we could put the hadduta in your sister’s book bag,” he said finally. “Then when she goes to school on the day the governor visits, there’s a big boom in the classroom. We make a very big statement for all the televisions.”

  “Oh.” Nasser, who’d been listening carefully, suddenly felt his blood pressure drop. “I don’t think I can do this, sheik.”

  “No?”

  “No, no. Definitely no.” Nasser put his bag down and pushed himself off the car. “This is my sister. I could never let anything happen to her. She is the last one I have left since our mother died.”

  Youssef sighed and looked away for a moment Then he reached into his shirt pocket, took out the bottle of nitroglycerin pills, put one in his mouth, and washed it down with another swig of soda.

  “My friend, have I ever told you how I got my scar?”

  Nasser’s eyes went to the ugly red line of flesh that could be glimpsed through Youssef’s open collar.

  “No, not this.” Youssef touched his chest. “This is my bypass. They let the janitor do this at the hospital in Cairo. I mean this.”

  He pointed to a short white scar under his left eye.

  “I’ve wondered,” said Nasser.

  “This is from the war against the Soviet infidels in Afghanistan. One of their soldiers, a devil really, shot me in the face when I stood up in a foxhole.”

  “Really?” Nasser had been staring at the scar for six months, afraid to ask about it.

  “Yes, he thought he’d killed me, but it was only a graze wound. And then I rose up and shot this devil right through the heart.” Youssef smiled and stroked his graying beard. “Ah, that was a great victory for Muslims, little brother. I’m sorry you were born too late to be part of it.”

  “I’m sorry also,” Nasser said, sticking out his lower lip.

  “Muslims came from all over the world to take part.” Youssef put an arm around Nasser’s shoulder. “Egypt, Bosnia, Pakistan, Syria, even Gaza, where I am from. And this was perhaps the most glorious part of all. Most brothers my age never have a chance to prove themselves. Their lives are compromise and compromise and compromise. They don’t understand how it’s necessary sometimes to be drastic.”

  “Like my father,” Nasser said glumly.

  His father had never fought for anything. He was a coward. He’d spent his life giving away the things that mattered most: his land, his country, and now his daughter.

  “I know,” said Youssef. “We’ve spoken of this before, how most men of my generation only know how to live on their knees.” He squeezed Nasser’s shoulder. “But now you have the opportunity to take a stand, my friend. To prove yourself. To show you know what it is to be drastic.”

  “But my sister. I could never do anything to hurt her.”

  “Well, perhaps there’s another way.” Youssef hunched his shoulders and put the screw top back on his soda bottle. “Maybe you’d prefer not to be involved at all. This is okay. Not everyone is cut out to be a big hero. Perhaps there are other useful things you can do for the cause. Like handing out pamphlets at the Israeli embassy.” He began to chuckle. “Or playing the pinball again.”

  Nasser watched him for a second, feeling dim and ashamed. Yes, he understood this was another test, to see if he was fit to be a warrior, to see if he would submit to something greater.

  He looked out at the traffic again. He saw the bread-truck drivers, the bus drivers, the taxi drivers like himself and the Great Bear getting yelled at by passengers. Ordinary men caught up in a meaningless existence. He’d go out for coffee sometimes with other Arabic and Pakistani drivers at a diner near the mosque on East 96th Street in Manhattan. Men who’d been doctors and lawyers and heads of bureaucracies back home, but were reduced to scrounging for tips and desperately trying to scrape together $240,000 to buy their own medallion for a cab. They’d sit there, listening to News of the World on public radio and discussing affairs of state, which they could never hope to affect themselves. It was not for him, this life. He wanted to be part of something better. To belong to the company of warriors.

  He looked back at Youssef. “No, I am not afraid,” he said. “I want to fight. I want to be part of this. I just don’t want my sister to be hurt. This is not asking too much. Anything else I’m willing to do all by myself.”

  “Then eat something, thanks be to God,” Youssef said, pointing to the bag still sitting crumpled on the hood of the car. “You’re going to need your strength.”

  4

  A MAN SHOULD FINISH anything he starts.

  Nasser’s words were still echoing in David’s mind as he knocked on Renee’s door at quarter past six that evening. He was jangling inside, standing there, wondering whether to kiss her or not. How forward were you supposed to be with your ex in the midst of a divorce?

  Chains rattled, bolts shot back, and the door opened. Renee stood in the doorway, red hair spilling down over her shoulders, a green terrycloth bathrobe parted slightly at the waist showing off her long dancer’s legs, Upper West Side twilight slanting into the room behind her.

  “You’re late,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

  Kiss or no kiss. “I know. I’m sorry. The kids, the trains.” He stepped past her into the living room. “I fucked up. I should have called.”

  “No, no, it’s okay.” She let the door close behind her and leaned against it. “It’s just me acting crazy again. I mean, you’re always at least twenty minutes late, so I try to allow for that. But tonight I started thinking something might have happened because it was more like an hour. I got scared you might’ve gotten mugged on the train and lost your wallet and then the muggers would have had your money, your keys, and your old address off your driver’s license, so they might come here first.”

  “It’s all right.�
� He moved to comfort her and cut off the speed rap. “There were no muggers.”

  “I know, I know.” She was wringing her hands. “I told myself that. I said, ‘Renee, you’re just acting paranoid again. He probably just got delayed and he’s going to be hungry by the time he gets here.’ So I started to make you some pasta. But then I remembered you like to take Arthur out to dinner, so I threw half of it out and ate the rest. So I’ve been waiting for you, feeling bloated and guilty. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “It’s good to see you, Renee.” He touched the side of her face and kissed her cheek.

  Even in her manic phases, she could break his heart. She was so anxious to please, yet she couldn’t stop clawing at herself.

  David took a moment to look around the place. Eight hundred ninety dollars a month for two little bedrooms looking out on 98th Street and Broadway. It was odd, what David missed about living here. Dust motes falling through the air. The poster of Dame Margot Fonteyn in Swan Lake over the couch. The garbagemen moving the Dumpster on the street at five in the morning, the car alarms, the radiators knocking, the way you could catch a glimpse of the Hudson if you stood right by the window and turned your head at a particular angle. The little moments of love that flickered like sunlight between the buildings.

  “So anyway,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m good. I can tell I’m getting better,” she replied, a little too brightly. “The new medication is really working for me.”

  “What’s it called again?”

  “Clozaril.”

  “And what does it do?”

  “It really helps me settle down and focus my thoughts. The only downside is it can kill some people. But so far that hasn’t happened. Knock wood.”

  Knock wood. Her brave, girlish smile pierced him again. It happened every time he’d come to visit these past four months. Those lingering shafts of love. He still felt guilty about his decision—their decision—that he should move out just before the end of the last school year, leaving her alone with her meds and their son. But he couldn’t take it anymore: the unpredictable mood swings, the paranoid fits of jealousy, the vicious fights and weeklong silences. He needed a break, he’d told himself, just to recharge his batteries. He was sure he’d be back before the Fourth of July.

  But instead, the separation had taken on a momentum of its own and Renee had started seeing someone else. So now everything seemed to be conditional. The state of their marriage, her mental stability, and most important, the question of what all this was doing to their mutually beloved son. It killed him not to be there when Arthur woke up in the morning.

  “You look good,” she said, brushing his wrist with her fingertips.

  “You look better.”

  In fact, she looked stunning. She was always at her best just lounging around the apartment. She could take an ordinary Bloomingdale’s bathrobe and set it on fire by wearing it just so. The problem was whenever she got herself dressed up to go anywhere, her nervousness would get the better of her and she’d put on too much mascara or put her lipstick on crooked.

  “So what have you been up to?” he asked, following her into the middle of the living room. “Any more auditions?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m trying out for Herbert Berghoff next week. The Stella Adler people said they didn’t have any room for me, so I have to work up a monologue. Do you think I’m too old to do one of Laura’s speeches from The Glass Menagerie? Maybe I should read for the mother, Amanda, instead.”

  “I’m sure you’ll knock them on their asses either way.”

  Renee and her tryouts had always been a double-edged sword to David. On the one hand, it was good to see her getting out of the house and trying to build an identity for herself. On the other hand, he feared the cumulative effect of all her rejections.

  She’d always been auditioning for things and trying to find herself, ever since he first met her in grad school. Always looking for some surrogate parental approval. First, she was a ballet dancer, then she applied to the School of Visual Arts, thinking she could be a painter. Later, she gave songwriting a try, and when that didn’t work out, she decided to take up acting at the age of thirty. And the truth was, she was pretty good—if not particularly outstanding—at everything she’d tried to do. But what worried David was how hard she took each little failure to break into the big time. She’d lost her elasticity and stopped bouncing back from her disappointments. Instead, she’d started drinking and sinking deeper into her ineffable “moods,” until David finally got her to a psychiatrist.

  With the medication, she was certainly doing better these days, smiling, laughing, being more responsible, sometimes even joining David and Arthur for their boys’-night-out dinners. But David still quietly fretted about the black abyss that always seemed ready to open at her feet. A part of him wanted to say, Fuck all the bad history, fuck all the old

  fights. Let me move back in and take care of you and Arthur. But then he’d remember the complicating boyfriend and the image of a plate flying at his head.

  “So you still seeing that guy?” he asked. “The musician, what’s his name?”

  “Anton.”

  “Right. The saxophone player.”

  Anton was a rich kid from her class at Columbia, someone she’d been seeing casually before she hooked up with David. Naturally, he’d started calling her as soon as word got around about the separation. How had Renee’s friend Rachel described his music? Adult contemporary, that’s right. Sort of like Kenny G., but freer. Musical wallpaper, David thought grimly, based on the one tape he’d heard.

  “So how’s it going with him?” he asked, with studied nonchalance. The last he’d heard they were about to break up.

  “It’s going okay,” she said, digging a toe into the burgundy carpet. “We get along, most of the time. He’s doing very well with his session work. He’s gotten a bunch of commercials lately, and you know those corporate jobs pay really well.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, he’s thinking of relocating out to L.A. to take advantage of how hot he is at the moment.”

  “Oh?” David felt his scalp contract. “So what does that mean?”

  “Well …” She turned halfway away from him, as if she could soften the impact of her words by not speaking them directly. “He asked me if I’d consider going out there with him.”

  It took a few seconds to sink in.

  “So what did you tell him?” David asked. He could hear the struggle for calm in his voice.

  “I said I’d have to talk it over with you. I couldn’t go without Arthur.”

  David cleared his throat and squared his shoulders, realizing he was rapidly approaching one of life’s sad junctures, where pain becomes unavoidable. The only questions were how much and how long. At this moment, all his reasons for leaving disappeared and like a child he wanted only to be back here, with her, with them. He wanted that old feeling: lying on the bed with Arthur between them, listening to the ice cream truck chiming outside, the sun sinking between the buildings, the shafts of light fading as the child drifted off to sleep, his breathing heavier and heavier, as the sky turned arterial pink and then gray, and then finally black.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Renee …” David said.

  But before he could say any more, Arthur came bounding into the room, a little redheaded love bomb in a Batman T-shirt and Gap jeans. He flung himself into David’s arms and started roughhousing, pushing his father back onto the old brown couch which David and Renee had carted up from Ludlow Street one bright ambitious afternoon eight years ago.

  “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! I was playing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in my room! I just cut off the Green Knight’s head and stuck it on a pole!”

  “You mean you started without me? How could you?!” David slipped his big sausage fingers into the boy’s armpits to tickle him while Arthur giggled maniacally and tried to scissor his father’s head with his skinny piano legs.

  He didn�
�t dare show the boy how upset he was at the moment. Ever since the separation, Arthur’s little spirit had become almost as fragile as his mother’s. His teachers told David the boy almost never talked in school, and sometimes he banged his head against walls when he was upset. His sleep was full of nightmares about scary clouds and threatening rocks. And he’d developed an absolutely terrifying case of asthma, which could come on without warning.

  “Easy, you guys,” Renee warned them. “I don’t want to make another trip to the emergency room.”

  David, remembering the helpless feeling he had the first time his son started coughing uncontrollably, let go of the boy.

  “It’s all right, Mom,” said Arthur, flushed and wheezing a little.

  My boy, thought David, I can’t let you go. In so many ways, Arthur reminded David of what he was like as a small child. Full of great tales of heroic medieval knights and glorious Nordic slaughter, but afraid to leave the sidelines to play in the Saturday morning soccer games in the park.

  “So are you ready?” asked Renee.

  No, David wanted to say. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to give you up, I’m not ready to give this up. She might as well have casually proposed taking his vital organs to Los Angeles without him.

  “Here.” Renee was hauling up Arthur’s blue-and-red Power Rangers backpack and dropping it in David’s lap. “I packed his inhaler, his pajamas, his good night book, soy milk in case you ran out …”

  “I didn’t run out,” said David, rising.

  How had his life come to this pass? These weren’t supposed to be his themes, separation and dissolution. He thought his life was going to be about doing Great Things—turning students’ lives around, saving the Western canon, maybe one day writing a great book of his own—not about watching his family fall apart. He couldn’t allow this to happen.