Garage Sale Diamonds (Garage Sale Mystery) (14 page)

29

Friday, 9:03 PM

At dinner with Mahmud’s family, Ahmed could scarcely stifle his longing glances toward Khadija. Her charming smile, her graceful movements, her delicate hands—she fascinated him. Because of his bleak future, this woman could never belong to him, yet his attraction to her intensified every time he saw her. Did the way she smiled back acknowledge his interest? Under other circumstances, he would speak to her father about a marriage contract, but with his death a week away, he struggled to push away her alluring distraction.

As Ahmed excused himself after dinner, bidding polite farewells to those at the table, Khadija touched her napkin to her lips and stood also.

“I must work on my lesson plan for Saturday’s class,” she announced, gliding gracefully out the door. Mahmud glared as the two left. Zayneb studied her plate, hoping their attraction would not point Khadija toward the same wrong path she’d chosen. Worse, what if her daughter should emotionally substitute this attentive foreigner for the father whose love she could never win?

Ahmed placed a hand on the stair’s newel post, motioning Khadija to precede him up the flight. In a friendly gesture, she placed her graceful palm atop his hand and asked, “Did you read any part of the book I gave you?”

Electric currents shot up his arm from the feel of her hand on his. The powerful, strict taboo forbidding touching between men and women not of the same family seemed impossible to shake.  Amazed that his voice sounded normal instead of the strangled words he expected, he answered, “I read half and will finish the rest tonight.” He needed to say more to lengthen the time they stood together. “How…how do you summarize this American culture you teach, this freedom?”

She thought a moment and gave him a beautiful smile as the answer came to her. “Question everything—everything you’ve been told or taught. Don’t let anybody do your thinking for you. Use your own mind. Discover your own conclusions and, when you do, act on what you have learned. If not, you’re just somebody else’s robot.”

Intrigued by her words, with a boldness he hardly believed, he placed his other hand gently atop hers. She didn’t pull away. “Could…could you please give me an example?”

Several possibilities crossed her mind before she picked one. “Okay. You know about the 9/11 events in this country. Their handlers brainwashed those terrorists into thinking they’d earn the world’s respect while glorifying their god. In fact, the world sees them as maniacal radicals murdering innocent, unprotected men, women and children with no chance to fight back and in the name of an equally crazed religion. In war, armed soldiers can defend themselves in a fair fight. But in terrorist attacks, victims have no chance, so killing them is easy. Not brave but cowardly. Men allowing others to use them to accomplish such awful acts aren’t thinking for themselves; they are slaves to manipulators who waste their lives in this shameful way.”

Stung by her words, Ahmed recoiled. She saw this change immediately, wondering how a simple truth produced this unexpected effect. To soften her words she focused her hazel eyes upon his. “If we think for ourselves, we will know what to do when the time comes, and it may be very different from what we thought was right when others manipulated us.”

At that moment Mahmud lurched into the room. They disengaged their hands on the banister just in time. “What’s the delay?” he growled. “Why are you lingering here?”

“I have a stone in my shoe.” Ahmed fumbled with his foot, allowing Khadija to reach the top step before he followed at a respectful distance. Mahmud snorted unmistakable anger.

Moments later, Ahmed closed his bedroom door and clutched his head in his hands as if to prevent his brain from exploding out through his fingers. He’d arrived in McLean crystal clear about his life’s mission and confident about commanding this assignment with skill for the sole glorification of his god. But this delicate, intelligent woman threw open the door to a hornet’s nest of new thinking. He sat heavily on his bed, logically and emotionally disoriented. His head swam. The last of the structured world he thought he knew had changed at the bottom of those stairs.

As he hung his clothes in the closet to prepare for sleep he double-checked the doll, right where he left it behind the suitcase. He lay down on his bed, forearm covering his eyes, trying to put it all together, but the enormity overwhelmed him. He felt a wave of fatigue. He’d face those problems tomorrow. Sitting up in bed, he opened Khadija’s book to read the second half, as he’d promised her. But after the first few pages, the open book fell aside as his eyes closed and he drifted into a fitful sleep spawning a disturbing dream.

He and Khadija smiled on their wedding day, pledging themselves to each other before their friends and their god. Next they were alone together in their home. Nothing stood in the way of their hungry love and its long-awaited expression. But as they kissed, men from the terrorist cell pounded on the door. Ahmed and Khadija dashed up the stairs to escape as the men splintered the door and burst into the house. Mahmud led the men as they thundered up the stairs after the newlyweds. Ahmed and his bride rushed into the upstairs room, locked the door and hid in the wardrobe. They heard the room’s door smash open, feet shuffling, voices shouting and furniture banged about. Mahmud said, “We’re leaving explosives for you to strap to your body. You know your duty. We’re ready to complete our task. Come downstairs wearing the bombs or we’ll kill you both and finish the job without you.”

He heard the men leave. He tried to get out of the wardrobe but found it locked. He leaned back and pushed with his feet to open the doors. When he reached back to pull Khadija out with him, she was gone. Instead she lay on the bed, covered in blood, her legs sticking out from her twisted skirt. He ran to her and shook her. Her eyes fluttered open. They were green, not hazel. He leaned close to hear her whisper, “Seek truth, use your mind, think for yourself and listen to your heart.” As her dead body slid to the floor he realized next to her lay the still, small body of their baby. How could they have a child on their wedding day without consummating their love? Yet there lay their tiny infant in a pool of her own blood, eyes staring.

Horror, confusion and agony of ripped-away love formed an anguished cry that rose in his chest and erupted from his mouth. “NO!” he heard himself scream.

Jerking him from this tormented sleep, the loud rapping on the door was real this time. Ahmed blinked as he rose onto his elbows. His body felt clammy. Mahmud’s voice called from the hallway. “Ahmed, are you all right?”

“Yes,” he groaned. “Another bad dream, that’s all. Sorry.”

After a moment, he heard his host move down the hall. He sat up to look at his watch: 9:30. Still haunted by the dream, he picked up Khadija’s book. He would finish it tonight.

30

Friday, 9:41 pm

After rapping on Ahmed’s door in response to his guest’s outcries, described as another night-mare, Mahmud walked further down the hall to his daughter’s room and knocked on her door.

She had just pushed her lesson plan aside, leaned back in her desk chair and rubbed her eyes when she heard the knock.

“Khadija?” Her father’s stern voice caused her to sigh. What would he belittle her about this time? “I must talk with you. Now, Khadija!”

Could she stall him until morning? No, he’d pound on the door until she let him in, getting angrier by the second. And when angry, he could turn mean.

“All right.” With resignation she unlocked her door.

Mahmud stepped inside, closed the door and spoke in a low, forceful voice. “Khadija, I want you to stay away from Ahmed. This is a direct order. This is my house and he is my guest. He is here on important business and not to be distracted. You are five years past your eighteenth birthday. I fulfilled this country’s legal requirement to provide for you until then, although you disappoint me every day. I let you stay on here out of charity but need only an excuse to throw you out of my house, so don’t even think of disobeying this order. Stay away from Ahmed. Is this clear?”

For years she’d wanted to leave this house to share an apartment with a girlfriend, but the fear on her mother’s face when she spoke of moving stalled that plan. To her father she said, “I have shown your visitor good manners. How long is he staying?”

“That is none of your business. He is my guest and he will stay as long as I want him to stay. A lot longer than you’ll stay if you dare disobey me. Do you understand what I want?”

“Yes, I know what you want,” she answered. But was it what she wanted?

”Good. And you understand the consequences if you fail to obey me?”

“I hear you.” Unblinking, she returned his intimidating stare. Grinding his teeth with rage, he stormed from her room. She closed and locked the door after him before sinking onto her bed.

No tears flowed; her emotional wounds had long since scabbed over. Their failed relationship began way before she ignored his demands to wear the hijab, use no makeup and wear loose-fitting, body-disguising clothes. He’d already stopped caring about her by the time she’d started first grade. Devastating as this rejection felt to a little girl yearning for her father’s affection and approval, at least her mother’s love had never wavered. For this she owed her allegiance.

Khadija remembered being rocked on her mother’s lap. “It’s not our fault,” she soothed her child. “Your father…he doesn’t know how to show his love for us. You are precious and intelligent and beautiful. Let’s try to forgive him because he can’t seem to help himself.”

Seven years later, thirteen-year-old Khadija showed her father her straight-A eighth grade report card. Rather than praise, his words cut hard. “What an insult! This shows you obey your school but not me. In my house my word must be law, but you argue, pretending to ask reasonable questions. You defy me. You’re lost to Islam. You’re…you’re a filthy American.” He spat out the last word. “Legally, I must allow you in my house now, but unless you respect my wishes, that will end one day. And look at you,” his lip curled in disgust. “You even look like your mother.”

When 9/11 stunned America in 2001, Khadija and her mother gasped in horror at the TV scenes unfolding, but her father seemed delighted. He exulted in the planes exploding the skyscrapers. When the smoking buildings pancaked to the ground, he jumped to his feet with a grin and a triumphant fist in the air. Khadija and her mother exchanged startled looks at this display.

Khadija understood how a naturalized American citizen might feel dual loyalties to his native country and his adopted one, but her father’s reaction showed no affection at all for the U.S.A.

She forgot his anti-American behavior until another incident ten years later. After the stunning news of Bin Laden’s death on May 1, 2011, her father moped for days, becoming more irritable than ever. Only little Safia escaped his verbal wrath. Khadija shared her country’s post 9/11 concern about safety from terrorists, foreign or domestic, but clearly her father did not. Was her father’s distaste for the U.S.A. and his family merely that of a discontented Middle-Eastern ex-pat—or something else?

She knew passion for a foreign cause had compelled Irish-Americans to donate funds to the IRA. Jews in America helped those in Israel. Was her father’s loyalty similar? Yet those other causes didn’t wreak havoc on American soil while Islamic radical extremists did. Was her father aiding such terrorists? Circumstantial evidence pointed in that direction. But if so, was it for terrorism in the Middle-East or here in the United States?

Why couldn’t he be more like Ahmed? she wondered. Both men sprang from Middle-Eastern roots, but their guest liked her even though her father did not. Ahmed listened attentively to her ideas and asked questions about American culture. This built confidence that she could appeal to a Middle-Eastern man after all, just not to her father.

She wanted to punish her father for wounding her with his rejection. Withholding her affection didn’t get his attention since he didn’t love her anyway. Defying him did. Even such negative attention felt better than no attention at all. Would Ahmed defy and punish her father?

A plan formed in her mind. She’d return Ahmed’s obvious interest in her. If trust developed between them, perhaps she could ask him to find out if her father covertly aided terrorists.

Khadija sat upright as a daring new idea struck her. What if she married Ahmed? She smiled at the satisfying slap-in-the-face this would deliver to her heartless father.

DAY THREE

Saturday

31

Saturday, 6:32 AM

After his chilling dream the night before, Ahmed realized how cherished this beautiful creature had become. So real was his nightmare—from the happiness of marriage to Khadija to the ghastly home invasion and her sickening murder—that he arose early on Saturday morning needing assurance she still existed. He dressed to appear by 7:00 at the breakfast table in order not to miss her, but as he put on shoes a rustling noise caused him to turn as a note slid under his bedroom door. He retrieved and opened it.

Ahmed,

My father tells me not to talk to you again but I think we have more ideas to discuss. If you agree, let us meet at the McLean Library today. You can walk there in 20 minutes. I enclose a map, but if you get lost, ask anyone for directions. Since you attend to business during the day, I suggest 4:00 this afternoon. Please hide your “yes” or “no” answer under the blue flowerpot on the table at the end of this upstairs hall. Thank you.