Amriika (44 page)

“You’re staying for dinner, I hope?” Rumina said to Darcy.

“Yes, my dear,” he replied, “but the food is courtesy of Santa Monica Caterers today. I asked your man to keep it in the fridge.”

She said, “Oh, wonderful. I bet it’s something special,” and went towards the awaiting Ramji.

Darcy headed off to the drinks cupboard in the kitchen, saying, “Meanwhile I’ll have a little thirst-quencher.”

After dinner Darcy sat on the floor reciting Persian poetry, drinking and telling the story of the love of his life, while Ramji, sitting across from him and also on the floor, found himself not listening but growing tired, and trying to pay attention to Michel helping Rumina with the dishes. Why am I so stupidly jealous of him? Rumina loves me and no one else, I know that, and he is already engaged.…This morning Ramji had watched from the window as Rumina got into her car, and saw that she had wrapped a scarf around her head. It wasn’t until the middle of the day that the thought went searing through his mind: Was she beginning to cover her head
again
, in the traditional way? Had Shirin’s photo last night struck a chord of guilt in her? The path of the godless is lonely, Ramji, you knew that. But when Rumina had come in the door that afternoon, her head was bare.

Darcy’s demeanour was odd. Usually when he drank he was reflective, digressive, dryly ironical. But this occasion took him to a private, unshared memory, into those corridors he hadn’t visited in a long time, in which resided his one-time love, because of whom he’d apparently suffered scorn and ostracism. As the evening drew on he entered into a long and bitter denunciation of the Community. Finally he said, “Saqi,” speaking to an imaginary cup-bearer, the Persian poets’ beloved bartender, “give this old propagandist his last draught and send him on his way into the moonless night.…” He received baklava and coffee instead.

Naaz and Amir came to pick him up, and seeing his state as he
clambered unsteadily to his feet, she scolded, “Bapa, look at yourself, what kind of example are you setting?”

It seemed a most ridiculous statement, but she had just come from a morally uplifting and exorbitantly ticketed lecture-dinner. Her sari was blue-black and glittering.

Darcy responded, “My dear, my time for setting examples is long past.”

The next morning, after Rumina had left, Ramji sat down with Michel and heard the rest of his story. Afterwards Michel kept mostly to himself, going out once for a short walk, and Ramji sat down at the computer and prepared a fair copy of the complete narrative.

Michel first explained why he had stopped working for the Movement (with the exception of that one trip he had taken to Dar). He had become bored with collecting signatures at subway stations and shopping malls; there didn’t seem to be any end in sight to their campaign against Iran. After a while, he was not even sure of the authenticity of some of the photographs of torture victims that he showed. He just did as he was told. Sometimes there would be other people doing the same, from other organizations, or other countries. Meanwhile his family was very concerned. His brothers and sisters, and his parents, had all settled down where they were, and two of his nieces were grown up. He was thirty. And so he agreed to join his uncle’s pharmacy in East Lansing, and then moved with his uncle to Ashfield, Michigan.

The community of Shamsi Muslims in Ashfield, Michel said,
was small and intimate, with seven families, who were originally from India, Pakistan, Uganda, and Tanzania. Three families, including that of Michel’s uncle, had coordinated their move into the town in 1989, and there was at first some resentment among the townspeople against these “Muslems.”

There was a little bit of harassment from town toughs, in the form of silly notes pinned to the mosque door, or hooting of truck horns during prayers. The Community people had to modify their ways, become discreet. During the Gulf War they displayed the usual tokens of patriotism — yellow ribbons on trees, photos in the display window of two local boys serving in the army. Some weeks later three men entered the mosque and quickly mooned the congregation before fleeing. Michel’s uncle — who was rather hot-headed — went to Detroit and bought a Winchester rifle and a pistol. If this is how they want to play it, was the feeling among some of the men, then so be it. The situation improved, however, and the town’s dignitaries came to the Community’s festivities next time around, and all seemed well.

Then the Phantom affair broke.

The Book and Video Haven in Ashfield specialized in war, science fiction, and porn, with a bit of racial bigotry thrown in. One day, the display window of the store, usually filled with Rambo-type images, was laid out with copies of K. Ali’s
101 Letters
, with a crude sign saying:
THE HIDDEN TRUTH ABOUT ISLAM — AN INSIDER’S VIEW
. Apparently Stokes, the bookstore owner, had himself crossed the border into Canada and purchased there a few hundred copies.

The Community at first protested and went to see Stokes. They were rudely turned away. They went to the town council and the
police, all to no avail. Then, one Thursday, three days after the books first appeared in the store, a large demonstration took place. Three hundred people from nearby areas, including Detroit and Windsor, Canada, were present. Angry speeches were made, and there were a few calls to burn down the bookstore. An action committee was struck, which included Michel. It met once, the night of the protest, but nothing came of the meeting. At the demonstration, however, Michel met two of his comrades from the Movement, Roy and Pierre, both of whom had gone with him to Dar. It was an amazing coincidence, though Michel did not make much more of it then. They had come from Ann Arbor to observe the proceedings, they told him. They too apparently had left the Movement.

Then late Friday night the bookstore was bombed; events took a frightening turn against those who had spoken out at the demo. But Michel was certain now that Roy and Pierre’s presence in town had been far from a coincidence; the Movement had to be behind the bombing, it was just the sort of thing it would do, to draw attention to Islamic extremism. When he called the number in Ann Arbor which the two men had given him, he found that it was not even in operation. Who would give heed to his suspicions? Not the government, surely. He was onto a hot story but was himself under suspicion. He took a plane to Los Angeles from Detroit to look for Mr. Darcy of
Inqalab
. It was Mr. Darcy, after all, who had exposed the Movement’s activities in Dar once before.

“The activities in Dar es Salaam did not involve bombing or any such crimes,” Ramji observed.

Michel, seated across from Ramji, looked down, shook his head. “But you don’t know the Movement. Roy is no ordinary guy, I know that he used to go on the more active assignments.”

“Which involved bombing places and so on?”

Michel nodded.

“Still, you have only a suspicion.”

“That’s why I came to
Inqalab
.”

“What did you think it could do for you?”

“Publish my story. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything else for me — after that I’m on my own.”

It was late. Michel had gone out for a long walk. Rumina was on the couch, absorbed with a recent preoccupation, writing in what she called her Swahili notebook. Ramji sat in front of his computer monitor screen, musing.

So finally this is the story. And we sit here in the silent night, hostage to the events it describes. Electron images on a screen, really, put there by the fingers of this man.…And Michel, whose story this is, is out strolling in the street, thinking what? I wish I knew. The first part of his story has the ring of truth to it, it corroborates Darcy’s own version of the Pork Riots, and there’s the plane ticket and other evidence. But the last, the crucial part, hangs together with the rest by the sighting of two people and a suspicion. If there was a truth to that suspicion, surely the authorities would pay heed and dig it out. And, if necessary, a story in our magazine would provide the incentive. Isn’t that why he came to us, after all? I only wish all this was somewhere far away and not here in my own home.

But suppose if that last part of the story were a lie.…Michel had grown into the household. You wanted to help him if he was
in trouble. How do you imagine such a person making a bomb, planting it outside a bookstore window, causing a blast that would kill three innocent people?

After the action committee in Ashfield have met, some of the younger members (three, for instance, is a good number) get together to form an even tighter group: outraged at the treatment of the Community and their faith by townsfolk, they will do something about it. They call upon Michel’s boasts of assignments abroad with a secret organization, and he shows them how to make a bomb. Late one night, when the protests have died down and things appear to have gone back to normal, they plant their device outside the bookstore and await the results
 …

But then evidence of the bomb-making would be found, surely — some place where it would point a finger at him and his friends? He could always say it was planted there by the Movement …

Rumina appeared behind him, said, “You look sad,” put her arms around him. “What is it?”

“I don’t quite know … it’ll go away.” He took one hand and fondled it, kissed it. The idle screen in front of him, he noticed, was now showing a calming aquatic scene.

“Anything I can do to make it better?”

“I don’t think so …”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t mean it that way —”

She tried to pull her hand away, but he wouldn’t release it. She tugged harder and their eyes met, hers flashing, his pleading. Don’t change, his told her, don’t become like that — and she thought the better of it and came closer, her face level with his.

“It’s Michel’s story, isn’t it? Why have you kept it from me, and why is it so hush-hush?”

“It’s almost finished — you’ll be the first to read it when it’s done. It’s not hush-hush. It’s just that I —”

“All right. I’ll wait.”

She eased herself gently from his hold and went away, and he stared after her, his heart pounding. Perhaps you’ve already guessed, he thought. Perhaps you already know.

T
hey had failed to watch the news last night, and so a headline in the morning paper’s front page caught him with a jolt:

Ramji passed the paper over to Michel, across their breakfasts, with the item of interest facing up, and Michel took his time reading it, before looking up and saying quietly, “They haven’t named me,” then adding a little more strongly, “They’re completely on the wrong track. Asif only spoke out against the book.”