The Ruins of Us (25 page)

It was warm in the basement, and Faisal could feel a thin line of sweat spring from his hairline and along his upper lip. The sentences ran through him like blood, warming him, moving through him to his core, settling against his viscera. Frequently, he would fast the day after hearing the sheikh speak, not out of piety but because he could not fill himself up any further. His body felt like a conveyance for power, for will, not just a bony, tendoned mass waiting to be rested and fed. On the days with the sheikh, he barely noticed his body.

“Or the twenty-two people who died at the Palm Court compound, or at the Dorrat al-Jadawel. The newspapers and the television stations love these events, but why do they not give the same attention to the Muslim children dying on the streets of Basra, or in the Gaza Strip? Why do they not call the soldiers of the occupation murderers, as they do the jihadis who are working to reclaim Muslim lands for the believers? And they call them terrorists, the men who defend the bilad al haramayn, the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. But what greater terror than having this holy land ruled by al-firqa al-dhalla, those who have strayed from the path?”

Ibrahim asked so many questions that Faisal could not answer. The sweat moved down his face and settled around the top of his thobe’s collar, soaking it to transparency. Sandals sussed against the linoleum floor. The smell of body odor moved through the room as the men shifted in their chairs.

“And remember that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him, said to eliminate unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula, so these ‘criminals’ are merely following the Prophet’s directive. Why do the al-Saud encourage jihad outside of our borders, in Afghanistan, even in Iraq, but here at home, they discourage us from fighting by the Word? Again, they are afraid. They fear the strength of the truly pious, because they themselves are corrupted. It is as the martyr Sheikh Issa al-Oshan said: that we must first fight the forces of evil here in our own country before we can dream of combating it elsewhere. When will it end? I ask you, King, you of the al-Sulul, the hypocrites, when will it end? We are slaves to American interests. We send our young men there, and they return with American whores for brides. In this way, they break our bloodlines and compromise our faith. They return, ready to sell their countrymen on a dream of progress created in Washington, DC, among the imperialists, in New York among the homosexuals, in Hollywood among the Jews. I say: La!”

Though he stared straight ahead at the sheikh, Faisal felt as if every man in the room was looking at him, pitying him his interloper of a mother. He stood up too quickly, knocking the tea service over. It clattered to the floor, and the others turned to look. The sugar cubes disintegrated in the pool of tea. He rushed to the door, up the stairs, hurrying past the maid and Hassan’s mother to the courtyard gate. Outside, the three cats were still there, resting against the concrete blocks of the wall. The street was empty and dark, so he sank against the wall until he was sitting in the dust. He crossed his arms over his knees, then rested his head on top of them. The sheikh’s words were like a hand across his face:
American whores
. In the taunts of his classmates, he could imagine jealousy of his family’s power, but Ibrahim’s contempt for families like his was fueled solely by the belief in their moral degradation.

Sheikh Ibrahim knew his family situation—everyone in Al Dawoun did—so the comment was not made coincidentally. Was he angry at Faisal for some reason? He wished that Rosalie had been part of the bride exodus of the eighties, when the novelty had started wearing thin for the Americans who had married Saudi men in the seventies—when they realized that the Ghassans or Muhammads they’d met and loved in Phoenix or Los Angeles were not the same men at home in Riyadh. So the American women packed their bags and fled their ill-conceived lives. They left their children behind because it was the law, and even the FBI couldn’t help them get them back. Their departure had been all over the papers. Rosalie kept the clippings; he’d found them one day while going through the hall closet in search of corkboard for a school project. He was certain the fault lay with America’s relentless openness, its insistence that all people could commingle and intermarry and have children of all colors. In America, it seemed that there was no sense of tribe, no respect for blood and tradition. People ran around falling in love with all types of people and ruining lives in the process. But no one ever seemed to consider the consequences that the children, the products of these marriages, faced.

From behind the wall, Faisal heard the front door slide open against the tile and the sound of women’s voices. He tried to rub the tears from his face but they were already dry. He hoped they hadn’t left tracks against his cheeks. Scrambling to stand, he felt the rough concrete of the wall rubbing hard against his skin, pressing through the thin material of his thobe. The courtyard gate opened and there was Umm Hassan and her daughter Nura, followed by the cook, who was also their driver. Nura was still in the process of putting down her niqab, and he felt guilty for catching her unaware. Umm Hassan gave him a vexed look and mumbled something to Nura, who stood there holding the veil in front of her face, waiting for him to go away. Behind them, the new group member slipped out the gate, nodded to them, and hurried down the street.

“Ana assif,” Faisal apologized.

He turned and walked quickly toward Majid’s car. He didn’t want to see any of the other group members. All of the little things he had done to secure their respect over the last year seemed meaningless now. He moved to the passenger side and leaned against the car. A breeze moved the leaves of the banyan tree that grew out over the sidewalk. The moving leaves made a
wish
sound that reminded him of the summer his family stayed outside of Damascus with Dan and his wife, who had rented a large house there. They’d gone to visit the Americans and had stayed for a week, the adults drinking wine on the roof of the house while Faisal built towns from the rich mud beneath the
wish-wishing
grape arbor. Mariam was three years old. Rosalie had developed a habit of holding his face between her hands and giving him a kiss on the nose each morning.
Wish-wish.
Back then, Faisal had loved his mother so much, he had nightmares about her dying.

“That was quite an exit you made.”

He turned to see Majid, teeth glinting like a half moon set in the dark sky of his face. He was trying to think of something to say in response when they heard a scream. Without a word, Majid turned and ran back toward the corner. In the darkness, his head and hands and feet were lost, his movement marked only by the whiteness of his thobe. Faisal glanced the other way down the street and then followed his friend toward the corner. He heard Nura and her mother shouting before a flurry of male voices drowned them out. Then, breaking glass, a car alarm, slamming car doors, and engines screeching to life. Now he could definitely hear Umm Hassan shouting La! La! Hassan! As he got closer to the corner, he saw Majid waving him back.

“Go! Get in the car,” Majid hissed.

Faisal ran, careful to keep his sandals from flapping against the pavement. He opened the passenger door and fell into the seat, and with a spin of the wheels, they were off, going the wrong way down a one-way street, away from Hassan’s house.

“Al-Mabahith,” Majid said. “The secret police. I’m pretty sure. They loaded them all into a Suburban and drove away. One of the policemen smashed the windshield when Hassan tried to get in his family’s car.”

“Was Ibrahim still in the house when you left?”

“Yes. He was answering questions.”

Faisal covered his face with his hands and spoke into his palms, his breath hot against his face.

“So they have him. He’s going to jail, then?”

“It’s impossible to know. The Interior Ministry doesn’t exactly broadcast these arrests. They could keep him for months before anyone verifies that he’s in custody.”

“Do you think someone tipped them off?”

“Maybe Hassan’s maid or driver, if they were unhappy. It could have been someone in the group.”

“They’ll torture him,” Faisal said, his voice wavering. “Just like they did with your uncle. We should follow their truck and see where they take him.”

“Are you crazy? We won’t be able to help Ibrahim if we get arrested too. Tonight, we’ll go home. We don’t want to arouse suspicion from our families or anyone else. But tomorrow. Tomorrow we will make a plan.”

“Should I call the National Society for Human Rights? Or the Arab Human Rights Group? They are always trying to monitor these arrests. You know, keep the pressure on the authorities.”

“Where do you think you are? Switzerland? You think the royal family listens to anyone telling them when and how they should arrest people? No, you shouldn’t call them. We don’t need them interfering with our problems.”

Majid was driving fast toward the Diamond Mile. The big boulevards had emptied out, the urgency of streaming headlights gone. Al Dawoun was stern in the darkness, resigned to the quiet of the dead hours before dawn. Faisal’s heart was still somewhere up between his ears, thumping loudly. He tapped his fingers against the car door, wondering what would become of Ibrahim. Would they beat the soles of his feet until they bled? Would they pull out his fingernails or shave his head? Would they keep him in jail for months, years even, without telling anyone that he was in custody? Faisal was afraid, but he would never show this fear to Majid. It would be like laying your neck down before a tiger. Faisal sighed, long and shallow so that it made no sound but clouded the window where he pressed his cheek. He wished he could tell Abdullah, since he would probably know who to talk to about Ibrahim’s situation. He wished for the long-ago time before his parents had become unknown quantities. For that moment when he’d stepped off the Swiss Air flight and felt his father’s whiskers against his face, when Faisal had thought he knew how his life would be.

As they pulled into the long driveway of his house, he caught a glimpse of another car tucked into the shadows growing across the concrete from the base of the house. The moon had risen, exposing a slice of silver hood. Majid brought his car to a stop. Faisal knew who owned the car. It was Dan Coleman’s. After spending dozens of slow Al Dawoun nights tailing Dan as he made his sad rounds around the city (Safeway, the barber shop, the camera repair shop, and saddest of all, the Gulf Hotel, where he sat alone in the lobby reading what appeared to be, from Faisal’s lookout behind the valet station, outdated guidebooks to world capitals), Faisal intimately knew every scratch on the car’s body. Bumper: a thin one, long and white as a bone. Windshield: a crack like fractured ice. Passenger door: teacup dent. The car’s body was always white with dust, and
B-Corporation
was stenciled in green on the driver’s door.

“We should probably try to stick close to home for the next few days,” Majid said. “They might be looking for others.”

“Call me if you find out anything about Sheikh Ibrahim. Masalama.”

“Wallahi. May God protect him. Good night, brother.”

Faisal slammed the car door. Surely Dan knew that his father was at Isra’s house.

Behind him, he heard Majid roll down the car window, bang twice on his car door. “Hey,” he said. “Whose car is that?”

“No one. Probably A’m Nadia’s.”

“Since when does a Baylani drive a Hyundai?”

“Go home, ya Majid. Don’t let your imagination get away from you.”

To Faisal’s relief, Majid backed slowly out of the driveway, waved, then turned east toward his neighborhood.

As he opened the front door, he heard the low movement of voices, and then he saw two figures come out from behind the colonnade that separated the foyer from the dining room. There was his mother, comfortable enough in the presence of a man who was not his father that she could stand around chitchatting with him without even putting on her headscarf. Faisal dug his nails into his palms. He switched on the foyer light. Dan Coleman stared back at him, his mouth pursed, his large body eating up the space between Faisal and his mother. Dan scratched the bone of his nose, as if he needed a minute to think about why Faisal might be standing there in his own house at that particular moment.

“It’s after ten o’clock,” Rosalie said. “Where have you been?”

Her voice was anxious in a way he’d expect from mothers, but it sounded overwrought coming from her. Over the last week, as things had gotten worse between her and Abdullah, she had been wholly preoccupied with his father’s whereabouts, not Faisal’s. Before he drove up, she probably hadn’t even noticed that he’d been gone. Something was wrong in the way she was standing, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. She was holding a blue file folder.

“Out. I’ve been out.”

“I just came by to give some papers to Abdullah,” Dan said. “I thought he’d be home.”

“Well, when you found out that he wasn’t, you should have left.”

“I was just about to.”

“Sure. Ma’alesh.”

Faisal put his chin at an appropriately indifferent angle, though in truth he was disturbed. Whatever had happened, Faisal didn’t like this secret meeting with Dan. What did his mother expect him to think?

“Faisal, it’s OK. Look at me. Dan just drove up a few minutes ago. He brought this with him, for your father.” She brandished the file folder.

Faisal turned toward her. She had a sphinx face. Expressions moved across it like cloud shadows over the dunes. He looked at Dan, whose permanently sunburned skin made him look agitated. He had tiny veins around his eyes that seemed about to burst. Where was Abdullah when he was needed? The constant monitoring of his family’s actions had tired Faisal out. If he were Majid, he would assume a calculating look, let them know who was in control. He would have some sharp, witty remark that would shame both of them in a way that still left them somewhat grateful. But he was not Majid. No matter how hard he tried. He walked past them into the kitchen where the air was cool and smelled faintly of sandalwood.