Man of the Hour (6 page)

“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.

“We’ll talk,” Renee said anxiously, watching Arthur get to his feet and put his sneakers on.

“We’ll have to,” said David.

“Nothing is etched in stone.”

David looked over her shoulder and saw the sun had gone behind the neighboring buildings, bringing long shadows into the living room. “Oh, look,” he said. “The light is going.”

5

NASSER AND ELIZABETH HAMDY
lived in what their father, George, called “the best-maintained home in Brooklyn”—a plain redbrick three-story house on Avenue Z with a postage stamp–sized lawn and a concrete driveway. Every weekend he spent hours on that lawn: mowing, weeding, trying to raise tomatoes in the tiny garden, and clearing away empty bottles crackheads had tossed on the grass. All in the name of convincing his old Italian neighbors that he was just like them, and not some dirty Arab. Completely unaware of how much he was actually irritating them.

Just before seven o’clock in the evening, Elizabeth sat cross-legged and barefoot on her bed in her second-floor bedroom, writing in her paisley-covered diary.

“I saw you.”

Nasser stood in the doorway, wrapping his tie around his finger and then unwrapping it.

“You saw me what?”

“I saw you today at school, without your
hijab.
”

“And I saw you too.” She pushed the diary off her lap. “What were you doing there?”

“I was talking to someone.”

“Yes, I know. You were talking to Mr. Fitzgerald, my teacher. Why were you bothering him?”

He leaned against the door frame, pulling on his lip. “I don’t like these things they do there.”

“Nasser, I thought we talked about this already!” She threw down her pen and stood up. “You are not my father and you are not my mother. We are not living on the West Bank. You can’t control me like that!”

“I am only trying to protect you. People might not think you’re a proper Muslim girl.”

“I don’t care what people think. This is America!”

“But what if you dishonor the family?” He turned away from her and looked down at the floor.

“Don’t put all that weight on me! I’m just a regular girl!”

By now, Father had come upstairs, drawn by the sound of his children’s voices. He was a thick-waisted man just starting the long march down into the valley of true old age. His eyes were tired and his hands were callused from unloading crates at his grocery store.

“So what is the big problem here?” he said. “Why are my children at war with each other?”

Nasser ducked his head and moved farther into the room. Elizabeth stared after him, with her hands on her hips.

“It’s nothing. Just Nasser being stupid again.”

Father tried to smile, but it looked as if he was in mild discomfort. Yes, he was getting old. He’d carried his brother and sister across the Jordan when he was sixteen and had carried the rest of the family ever since. Back across the river when he was twenty-one and the relatives in Jordan got tired of having them in the house, and then on to the terrible refugee camp where he met Mother and struggled for years to save enough money to bring the family to America. And then once he got everyone here, he’d spent seventeen years of eighteen-hour days running the little shop on Stillwell Avenue. Scraping and saving. The newest shoes he owned were three years old. He meant well, but every word out of his mouth made Nasser stiffen his spine.

“Be kind to your big brother. He’s still trying to find his way.”

He came over and kissed Elizabeth on the top of the head. Then he tried to pat Nasser on the shoulder, but the boy moved away.

Father pretended not to notice. “We should be happy,” he said, leaving the room. “Come downstairs soon. Dinner will be ready and I want to pray.”

Elizabeth stared at the doorway, thinking:
yes, we should be happy.
But somehow they hadn’t been these last few years. Not since her crazy brother had moved back from the Middle East.

She tried to tell herself it was not at all Nasser’s fault. That some of the changes he’d brought with him were good. Religion, for instance. Before he’d come back, the five of them had been living like a regular little American family—her father, herself, her stepmother, Anne, and the two young girls, Leslie and Nadia. Beer in the fridge, hot dogs on Saturday night, and no one cared if she wore a miniskirt to school. But as soon as Nasser showed up, their home turned into a little outpost of Islam. Out went the beer, down came the miniskirts, and forget the Saturday-night hot dogs—this was not
halal.
Everyone except her stepmother was expected to start praying five times a day.

And the funny thing was, her father went along with it. Her father, who drove a Chevy and smoked Marlboro Lights, started going to the mosque all of a sudden. At first, Elizabeth thought it might have just been guilt over being separated from Nasser for so long. But lately, she was starting to think there was more to it than that. A certain wistfulness came over her father when he prayed, as though he was yearning for a connection with something he’d had before. And what was even stranger was that sometimes she felt herself yearning too.

“You know, you’re starting to drive me crazy with all this tradition,” she said. “What were you doing outside my room at four-thirty this morning?”

“I was calling the morning prayer. I thought you wouldn’t want to miss it.”

“I need my sleep.” She picked up a pillow and thought of throwing it at him. “Did that ever occur to you? I’m still in school.”

“I am sorry.” Nasser started fumbling with that rusty key he kept on the chain around his neck. “I am thinking you are right. Maybe I’m being too strict with you. I should trust that you are being good and true.”

“Well, yeah. Right.” She stood before him, braiding her hair.

“It’s just—how do you say it?—it’s worrying me to see how the children grow up around here. With all the licentiousness and danger. I look at you and I think of our mother sometimes, God be merciful and rest her soul.” He pressed the key to his lips. “I think how she is not around to help you know the right things and so this is my job instead.”

“You think she would have been so worried about whether I was wearing a head scarf?” Her fingers kneaded strands of her hair together.

“This I cannot tell you.” He smiled and then dropped the key again, letting it dangle in front of his tie.

A mystery. The whole family was a mystery to her. Especially Nasser. There were so many things he never talked about—his friends, his time in Ashkelon prison, their mother. Even after five years under the same roof, she sensed there was a side of him that she had never quite seen.

“You’re too much, Nasser. Really you are.”

“I know.” He picked up one of her Rollerblades and ran a finger along its wheels. “But this is not what I want. For you to be so mad at me. How can I make it better?”

Elizabeth tried to keep scowling, but it was no good. He could be so sweet and bewildered at times. And there was too much she wanted to know from him.

“You promise me you won’t show up at school like that again?”

“Yes, this is a promise.”

“God, I don’t know what I’m going to say to Mr. Fitzgerald.” She decided to hold on to her irritation for just another second, to make him squirm a little.

“Don’t say nothing. He’s not in your family.”

“Yes, but he’s my teacher. He’s helping me apply to colleges.”

Nasser narrowed his eyes as if he were about to object to this too, but then he caught himself and put the Rollerblade down on the floor. She could tell he was thinking about something serious. She recognized the expression from looking in her own bathroom mirror, and seeing the resemblance again made her feel warm and protective toward her brother.

“Hey,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Soon is your birthday. Is this right?”

“Yes, the week after next.”

“So I am thinking I want to get you something. I like to take you shopping. Next Tuesday.”

“I can’t do it Tuesday.” She sat down on her bed. “I have a field trip to the museum.”

He looked down at her knees, with his face pinched in concern. “But this is the only day for me,” he said. “The rest of the time I am working, working, working, like a crazy man. On Tuesday, I can buy you anything you want.”

“Anything?”

He sucked in his cheeks and looked down at the Rollerblade on the floor. “How about the pads and helmet? I see you skating sometimes without a helmet. You need protection.”

She crossed her arms. “Nasser, a good set of pads and a helmet from Canal Skates can cost you a hundred fifty dollars. You know that, right?”

He swallowed. “Whatever,” he said.

One of those unconscious Americanisms he’d picked up without realizing it. He always ridiculed her for being too Western, but slowly it was happening to him too. He just didn’t know it. Sometimes she’d catch him humming a song from the radio or strutting around in the pair of Timberland work boots their father had bought him for his last birthday. These little moments embarrassed him terribly, but secretly they made her feel closer to him.

“Well,” she said. “I guess I could skip the class trip. It’s not like it’s for credit or anything. Everybody cuts sometimes.”

“Exactly.” He bowed his head and then looked up. “So this is a deal? I take you shopping Tuesday.”

“Yes, it’s a deal, Nasser.”

“Very good, very good.”

He smiled in relief and came over as if he was going to embrace her. But at the last second, he pulled back and just shook her hand instead. All this for a birthday present. My brother, the alien.

“I’m glad you don’t go to the museum and see these immoral pictures and statues,” he said. “These are the bad influences.”

“You’re so weird.” She stood and screwed up one side of her face, ready to go downstairs. “I think you need to get a girlfriend.”

“This is not appropriate,” he told her.

6

THE WONDER WHEEL
stood motionless against a crystalline blue sky and the Cyclone roller coaster was silent. Nasser and Youssef sat in the Plymouth, parked some three hundred yards down the street from Coney Island High School.

“How are you feeling?” said Youssef. “Are you good?”

“My stomach hurts,” said Nasser, who had a McDonald’s bag in his lap and wore the maroon windbreaker with dark slacks and a white shirt.

“It’s only natural.” Youssef was fussing with wires and two sticks of dynamite in the book bag at his feet. “I was nervous before every military operation I was ever involved in. This is completely all right. It keeps the mind sharp.” He put the bag up on the seat next to Nasser and took out an alarm clock. “Here. Put your finger there for a second. In the middle of the dial.”

Gingerly, Nasser put his index finger on the meeting point between the hour and minute hands while Youssef inserted a wire through the back of the clock. Inside his head, he was in a state of narrowly controlled hysteria.

“There,” said the Great Bear, putting the cover back on the clock and placing it back in the bag, very carefully. “We’re all set. Give me my hamburger.”

Nasser took out the squarish yellow Styrofoam box and handed it to his friend. It was 1:25. In twenty minutes, the seventh-period buzzer would go off, and hundreds of students would spill out onto the sidewalk in front of the school, where carpenters were building a wooden stage for the governor’s visit in two days.

“You know, I was asking the imam the other day if this kind of food is
halal
,”
said Youssef, opening the box and taking out his Quarter Pounder.