Man of the Hour (49 page)

A wave of panic went through the cafeteria. Five hundred-odd kids standing up, screaming and ready to bolt.

“Ho shit!”

“Oh my Gawwwd!”

“Get the fuck down from there, niggah!!”

David felt like the back of his head had been yanked off and his mind was emptying out.
What do I do here?
He looked to the main entrance and saw the horse-faced man pull out a small handgun and hit Tisha Cornwall full in the face with it when she tried to elbow past him. She sank to the floor, stunned, with her nose and mouth bloodied, while he held up the pistol proudly, ready to shoot anyone else who tried. At the other end of the room, the big bear-like man was bracing himself against the emergency exit, not showing a gun, but clearly implying he had one just by his implacable stance.

Fear pressing down hard on his bowels, David began to run through the possibilities for tragedy. If anyone tried to rush Nasser, he’d likely set off the dynamite with the toggle switch hanging on his belt, killing everyone in the vicinity. However, if the kids all attempted to run out the door at once, the horse-faced man would surely shoot several of them, the rest would trample one another, and the bomb might go off anyway.

“Come on, you sissy-ass terrorist motherfucker!” Seniqua was screaming taunts at Nasser, her pregnant belly waggling. “Get on down, so I can kick your faggot-ass!”

Merry Tyrone had her by the shoulders, weeping as she tried to hold Seniqua back. Kevin Hardison kept bobbing up behind the two of them, yelling: “Step to it, niggah! Step to it!” Nydia Colone was on her knees nearby, praying loudly. Obstreperous Q, Ray-Za, and five other boys were huddled in a corner, clearly formulating some testosterone-crazed plan to try rushing all the terrorists at once.

Lungs tightening, David realized he had to take control of the situation somehow. No one else would. He clambered unsteadily up onto one of the tables next to Nasser’s, raised his hands, and shouted at the top of his voice.

“AWWWRIIIGHT, PEOPLE!! CHILL!!!!”

Everything seemed to stop at once. Kids froze and fell silent. Nasser lowered his arms a fraction. Even the two older men at the opposite ends of the room looked up, interested in what he might have to announce.

But David, already streaming with sweat and pumping adrenaline, had
no idea
what to say next. His storehouse of comparable experiences was barren. All he had were his father’s words:
Nothing happens and then everything happens.

“What is going on here?” he yelled at Nasser.

The little man with the gun answered instead. “We are here because there is no other way to get your attention!” he called out in slightly stilted foreign-university English. “You are all too busy watching television! Muslim peoples are suffering all over the world and you do not care! You support our oppressors, because you are cowards and hypocrites! And you think you are heroes!”

His eyes searched the crowd of students, looking for someone who was following his message. Sensing he was throwing it over their heads, he tried to make adjustments.

“If you had a city here where only white people are allowed to work and own properties, you would call this racism!” the little man shouted out, trying to enunciate carefully. “But you are supporting it! You are supporting it because this country itself was based on racism and on the slavery of black people and the confiscation of land from the Indians. And then
you
invent terrorism by dropping the atom bomb in Japan and killing hundreds of thousands of women and childrens! So this is the only kind of language you understand.”

It was useless trying to talk to this one, David realized. The little man was clearly one of those people who are born hot.

Nasser was a better bet. He was young, David reminded himself, and still a little unformed. Perhaps he hadn’t turned himself into an absolute monolith of unappeasable rage yet.

“Nasser, why are you doing this?” he asked, turning and facing the boy as they both stood on tabletops some ten feet apart. “This is your sister here. These are your friends. Why would you do anything to hurt them?”

“These are not my friends!” Nasser spat out. “And my sister is a whore. You’ve made her that way!”

David saw Elizabeth shut her eyes as if to deny this was really happening. Seniqua shook a fist at Nasser and the rest of the kids in the room quietly seethed, ready to tear the visitors apart at the first opportunity. David glanced around the room, doing the simmer-down pat with his hands, hoping no one would jump up and do anything foolish that might get them all killed immediately.

“I’m not a whore, Nasser,” Elizabeth finally spoke up in a wounded voice. “My heart is as true as yours.”

“Then why?” Nasser stared down at her, his frail chest heaving over the dynamite. “Why, why, why?! Why do you act this way? Why do you betray me? Why is everything like this?”

For a second, hearing him sound so hurt and inarticulate made David feel a kind of fearful tenderness toward the boy. But the dynamite sticks were still wrapped around him.

“All right, enough.” The little man with the gun was trying to reassert control over the situation. “All Muslim children out of the room, except the sister. You take the message with you and tell everyone what we’re saying. Everyone else stays.”

There was a flurry of movement and about two dozen kids lined up by the door near the little man. There was Ibrahim Yassin, an eleventh-grader from Egypt. And Fatima Fayyad, a Lebanese freshman, and Mohammed Azzam, a junior from Iraq. And sneaking onto the end of the line, Amal Lincoln and Yuri Ehrlich.

Seeing them standing there, David felt hope drying up in his chest. Everyone else in the room was supposed to die. The knowledge came over him suddenly like a rush of wind. No, you had it wrong before. You weren’t supposed to die on a burning bus. That was just to get you ready. You’re supposed to die
here
. This is the last room you’ll ever see.

David clenched his fists in frustration. Come on, do something. A fighter fights. A writer writes. A teacher teaches.

He turned and looked over at Elizabeth’s brother, who stood on top of the next table, shoulders hunched, shivering slightly against the prospect of his own imminent dismemberment.

“Nasser,” David said, trying to appeal to him. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to go along with this. Think for yourself.”

“Think for yourself! Think for yourself!” The little man by the main entrance mocked him as he ushered the Muslim kids out. “That’s the difference between us. You only think for yourself. But we think about the peoples. We think about God. This is what you cannot understand, I know. To you, this is just crazy Arabs who blow themselves up. You don’t know what it is to make a sacrifice for something that’s bigger—”

“Okay, okay. I get it.” David put his hand up, hearing him, but not really acknowledging him.

He looked over at the big bearded man by the emergency exit, who was shifting slightly as if all this talk of Arabs blowing themselves up made him uncomfortable. Maybe this was more than he’d bargained for. But he wasn’t moving.

So David turned back to Nasser and reached down into himself for what felt like the last bit of courage he had left. “You know, I’ve got my people here too.”

Could he do this? He wasn’t sure. His eyes swept around the room, taking in all the students. Seniqua in her belligerent pregnancy, Kevin in his striped Gatsby shirt, Elizabeth without her skates. Kids who in one way or another had entrusted a part of themselves to him. Yes, he was supposed to look out for them.

“I’m willing to make a sacrifice too,” he said slowly.

In the gym upstairs, someone was bouncing a basketball.

Nasser looked over at him, not wanting the connection, but getting it anyway.

“Let everybody else go. I’ll stay,” David said wearily. “So there’s my sacrifice.” He waved his hand at the room. “These guys are my people.”

“Yin an deen nekk!”
the small man shouted, pointing the gun at David from some fifty-five feet away. “He’s not going to listen to you. He knows you play with his mind.”

“You got the power,” said David, playing out the gambit and not taking his eyes off Nasser’s. “You call the game. You’ll get just as much press coverage if everybody else leaves and it’s just you and me who get blown up when the building comes down. Come on. Let the rest of them go. Don’t make it about anybody else.”

But, of course, it was about somebody else. Not five hours ago, David had coaxed his son out of the bedroom, held his puffy little white hand, and promised him that everything would be okay from here on out.

And now he was throwing that promise away and it tore him up inside. Big man—so what? There was no such thing as a selfless sacrifice, he realized. In the end, someone else always got hurt.

“My life for their lives,” he said, struggling not to be overpowered by emotions. “Come on. I’m ready to go. Are you?”

The little man with the gun and the big bald man both started hollering at Nasser in Arabic at once.
“Wala al noor! Wala al noor!”

Nasser was starting to do a little worried-man shuffle on top of his table. Not knowing where to put his eyes. He glanced once down at Elizabeth and then back at the little man and then over at David.

“Come on, Nasser,” David persisted. “Let your sister out of here. She hasn’t done anything wrong. Just make it about you and me. I’m ready to go.
Are you?
”

Just saying the words was wrenching. How would Arthur and Renee make it without him?

“Wala al noor! Wala al noor!”
The little man was frantically gesturing for Nasser to throw the switch.
“Ya habela!”

“Come on.” David stretched out his hand to Nasser and edged toward the end of the table, like a pirate getting ready to board an enemy ship. “I’ll even stand next to you and we can hold hands when we go up together.
I’m ready to go when you are.
Just let everybody else out.”

His heart was jackhammering against the walls of his chest.

“Askat!”
The little man’s neck veins were popping.
“Wala al noor!”

Nasser was trying not to look at him. Trying to focus on anything else; the ugly green walls, the other students, the wretched, indigestible food on the plates. But his eyes kept slipping back to Elizabeth’s and then David’s. He was terrified himself, David realized. Not in any way ready to carry this out What he needed was a way to step down.

The pressure inside Nasser’s head was getting to be too much. The teacher yelling, Think for yourself,
are you ready to go?
And Dr. Ahmed screaming,
Turn on the light, throw the switch!
His temples were bursting and he felt like his skull was going to explode and rain bloody bits on his shoulders. His eyes went down to Elizabeth once more, as if drawn by magnets. Seeing her again, but seeing her in a new way.

All this time, all these years, he realized he’d only been seeing parts of her. But now it all came together and it frightened him to the depths of his soul. He saw his mother, his father, his half sisters, the baby who died before he was born, ancestors from the Monastery of Branches, and grandchildren who would never exist. He saw himself and he saw the future exploding. And all at once, it seemed unbearable and unholy to destroy this, to wipe out every last trace of the family. It was like disturbing the universe, to do this. Blotting out the stars. Drying up the land, so nothing would ever grow again. Do you dream anymore, Nasser?

Was this truly God’s will?

“Come on, Nasser.” David tried to remember the word he’d heard both brother and sister use. “Isn’t this really …
haram?
”

He saw Nasser arch his shoulders and then reach around behind his back, as if he had another detonator switch there. All together, the kids in the cafeteria started hollering and throwing themselves on the floor in terror and disgust.

And then time seemed to slow down and the noise seemed to die away again. Nasser’s arm began to circle back toward his front and David heard the unmistakable sound of adhesive being peeled off, a little bit at a time. Several bands of masking tape were clinging to Nasser’s fingers and as he pulled them away from his body, the dynamite sticks began to pull away with them.

Reacting out of instinct, David jumped off the table, came over, and stood beside Elizabeth, ready to receive the dynamite. The jackhammer in his chest had subsided, replaced by one tremendous thud every few seconds.

Here was a thing of moment. His heart was squeezed blue. He reached up to Nasser, beckoning to him, staring, forcing him to look down and make that connection again. For a few seconds, everything depended on maintaining the connection. Easy there, steady now. The dynamite was halfway stripped off with its red and green wires hanging out. Nasser finally lowered his eyes to David’s, locking in on him. Completing the circuit. Only this time, instead of looking angry or confused as David half-expected, the kid looked
relieved
. He didn’t want to handle this thing either.

David put one foot up on the bench and stretched out his hands. The tape, the dynamite, and the wires were just barely attached to Nasser’s body, a little over two feet away. David was already thinking about what he would do once he had them; what if one of the wires was loose and the device got tripped off anyway? Shouldn’t they just sit down at this point and call the bomb squad?

But then the connection was broken. A little firecracker snap echoed across the lunchroom and the light in Nasser’s eyes went dim. He turned in on himself and fell to one knee in front of his sister, blood spurting wildly from the side of his head.

Elizabeth let out a scream—a shriek heard across the desert—as Nasser collapsed sideways on the tabletop and blood sprayed onto the floor. The students all rose together and started to stampede toward the eastern end of the cafeteria, away from the little man who’d just fired the gun.

David tried to stand his ground as students went running by him going the other way, knocking into his arms and shoulders. Fifty-five feet away, at the main entrance, the little man with the gun was looking exasperated and furious.