Midnight and the Meaning of Love (6 page)

Just then a man dashed out of the building shirtless, jumped in the car that was blocking us, and peeled off, no acknowledgment or apology, straight New York ghetto style. Mr. Ghazzali waited five seconds and then drove on.

“So you need someone to make sure that your mother and sister are secured. You need a driver who will go inside if he doesn’t see them waiting where they are supposed to be, and someone who will not pull off before they get inside safely at night.”

“Yes, Ahki,” I answered, appreciating not having to exchange too many words about a simple but important plan.

“And the reason they are staying in a hotel instead of with their new friends is—?” he asked, checking my face and quickly moving his eyes back to the road.

“I don’t want to burden you with my family. I just wanted to hire your car service because I would feel more comfortable knowing and trusting the person who is transporting my mother and sister. I can pay for the whole thing in advance. I don’t know exactly how many days I will be gone, but I’m trying to keep it under one week.”

Mr. Ghazzali pulled over. “Get out,” he said calmly.

His command threw me off for a second. Then I reached for the handle and opened the taxi door. With one foot in the cab and the other on the curb, I pulled out a small stack of bills and peeled off a five to pay him for taking up a brief time in his cab. He didn’t move to accept it. I thought maybe it was not enough and that somehow
the small amount had insulted him. So quickly I peeled off a ten and extended my arm again.

“I don’t know the story of your life, young brother. But I can see that there are no friends in your world. You say you want someone who you can trust, yet you trust no one. No man can do his time alone on this earth. This is why we have the Muslim brotherhood. I invited you to our mosque, yet you haven’t shown your face there at Jumma prayer. Is there anything that unites you and me other than this paper money?” he asked me with a stern stare at the measly ten dollars.

I went deep inside my own mind. My father had everything—land, an estate, money, power, family, and friends. In fact, the Muslim brotherhood met on our property, men bent in daily prayer at our mosque, whose children attended the madrassa at our estate, whose wives worked and entertained with my mother. But something did go wrong. And it went wrong enough for me to be standing in the streets of the BX and living in the projects of Brooklyn and grinding on American soil, not the rich earth of the Sudan, where I, my mother and father and father’s father and father’s father’s father and so on were born. If my father, a brilliant and bold, degreed, rich, and successful man could not win and rely on the trust of men in the end, why should I expect it now?
My father is so much better than I am.

“I don’t know, Mr. Ghazzali. The Holy Quran says that ‘Allah is sufficient.’ ” I answered with the only truth that came to mind right then.

“Yes, and your mother’s name is Umma, a powerful name.
Ummah!
That word means ‘the community of Muslim believers.’ The believers have got to stand together, worship together, protect together, fight together, and eat together.” He searched me for a response. I didn’t have one.

“It’s only a few days. Your Umma and sister are welcome to stay in our home. My wife already loves your mother and young sister. My daughter Sudana admires you, so of course she loves your mother. It is only you standing on the outside. Let me be a help to you.”

“You know well that my Umma cannot sleep in your home where you have two grown and unmarried sons. And then there is also
you
, Mr. Ghazzali.” I looked him in the eye.

“Of course, but there is a separate apartment downstairs. Your mother and my wife were planning to have a women’s business there,
remember? Umma can use that apartment. It’s well furnished, with a small kitchen, a separate entrance, and a separate key,” he told me calmly. I listened but questioned his eagerness in my own mind. I think my seconds of silence insulted him somehow. “Sure, you can choose to put your family in a hotel. There they will be surrounded by kaffirs (nonbelievers), unmarried or married, untrustworthy either way,” he said with a stern sarcasm.

“How much do you rent it for?”

“Eh?”

“Your basement apartment.”

“Six fifty. Per month,” he said, exasperated, and as though he pronounced the first figure that popped up in his head and had never really rented out his basement before.

“Okay. I’ll bring you six fifty tomorrow plus the transportation fees.” I got out and shut his taxi door, leaned in, and handed him now a twenty-dollar bill. He took it.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see you as the prime minister of the Sudan one day. So much power, business, and intensity in such a young brother,” he said.

“Good night,” I told him before walking away.

It was well after midnight when I carried my seven-year-old sister on my back to our Brooklyn apartment.

Umma said, “She should really walk on her own two feet.”

Naja said, “But Umma, you two have been out having fun without me. Can’t I at least get a ride on my brother’s back?”

“Out having fun,” Umma replied softly, in her way. Then she looked at me and said, “You see?”

Naja clenched me tightly with no plans of climbing down before the elevator reached our floor and she was “delivered” to her bedroom.

Umma was right, as she usually is. Naja is our protected princess who has no real idea of worry or struggle or stress. I thought that was good. I planned to protect my sister and keep her hidden away from those things that should never be revealed to little girls. In our traditions, a young girl lives under the protection of her father and brothers until she becomes a young woman. Then the father and her brothers will marry her into the protective care of her tried and tested, carefully chosen husband.

As I looked into Umma’s eyes, so striking behind her
niqab
that shielded and covered everything else, I could see and feel that she was worried. I thought to myself,
Umma, don’t you worry. If you are uneasy, I will not move one inch from your side. I will stay right here with you.
But Umma noticed me noticing her, and she cleared her worries and lowered her gaze.

Tuesday, May 6th, 1986

We made Fajr prayer together, my mother, sister, and me, followed by a warm and comfortable breakfast. Umma and I did not discuss the details of my Japan trip until after Naja was safely seated in the school bus to Khadijah’s Islamic School for Girls. Naja waved as the bus eased off. She was so happy this morning because she had her sitter, Ms. Marcy, Umma, and me all escort her to the bus. Usually Umma and I are already on our way to Umma’s job and Naja is left in the care of Ms. Marcy and walked directly into the care of the teacher who travels with the students on the bus. But today Umma would not report to work until four in the afternoon. She had switched her schedule for this week with a coworker from the night shift. She and I both agreed that there was more planning and work for us to do than time to do it. She also wanted to complete some products for me to deliver to Umma Design customers before I left for Japan.

“When you go to see the jewelers again today, you should also select a gift for your father-in-law,” Umma said. She slid an old, high quality jewelry box across the table.

“Why should I? He stole my wife,” I answered swiftly yet respectfully. I opened the box. It was a Rolex Datejust. The hands of the clock were paused in time. The crystal was cracked. I had never seen it before.

“Your wife is his daughter. Our family has not ever been able to meet and greet him properly. We haven’t offered him anything. Yet he gave me such a lovely daughter-in-law. You just have to go there and ease his fears. Once he sees you and discovers how respectful you are toward him, and sees how much Akemi is in love with you and you with her, his heart will soften toward you. If it does not soften toward you, he will certainly soften his heart for his daughter. Remember that even though we feel sad and insulted and ashamed that Akemi is not with us, he stole her away out of love more than cruelty.”

I was not focused on feeling any sympathy toward Naoko Nakamura. I was keeping him right where he needed to be in my mind just in case I had to do him something …

I slid the box containing the Datejust in my pocket.

“Umma, I thought I saw worry in your eyes late last night. You know I won’t go anywhere if I see that.” I was watching her closely.

“I was just tired and I was also thinking too much. After you told me on the train about the arrangement with Mr. Ghazzali, I wondered if he had asked his wife first, if it was okay for me to stay with them while you are away.”

“I didn’t give him a chance to speak with her first. I rode in his taxi with him and we talked it out right there. He was on his way back out to work for the night.”

“I see,” Umma said, sounding hesitant. “You know the Ghazzalis are new friends to our family. It has been good for me because Temirah Aunty doesn’t ask me personal questions. It is as though our friendship began from the moment I took her and her sister’s and daughters’ measurements for their garments for their nephew’s wedding. And she and I have moved forward from there without ever looking back or discussing the past. I appreciated her for that reason. If I go to stay over there at her house, it may all very well change.”

“Then come to Japan with me,” I said with a smile. I was serious and sincere. She pushed away and hit me on my shoulder as though the idea was ridiculous. “We have spent every penny of almost one hundred thousand dollars on our new house and I love it. Now we have minus three pennies left!” She laughed. “You go on and get your wife, and Naja and I will stay at Mr. Ghazzali’s. Naja will be excited living in a house with such a big family, and her Arabic will improve, I’m sure.” Umma brightened all the way up to reassure me that she was okay.

“You know, Umma, even though you and Mrs. Ghazzali have become friends, I handled this as straight business. It’s their house, but it’s a separate apartment, separate entrance, separate key, and
rent.
”

“I know you have made it right for me. And I know their basement apartment is very nice. It is where Temirah Aunty and I plan to have our Sudanese women’s group meetings. So I am sure it will be fine.” I stood up from our kitchen table where Umma was seated. I needed to grab my things and head out to the diamond district.

In my room I stood still thinking. After twenty minutes or so, I began flipping through a short pile of papers I had concerning my wife. In a small notebook that I rock daily in my right pocket, I jotted down what little information I had on Akemi.

The first word I wrote was
Kyoto
, the place where Akemi was born. The second note to myself was Kyoto Girls’ High School, the
place the MOMA art exhibit event pamphlet said Akemi attended school. The third note was the address Akemi had given me for her father, Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan. The fourth note was the address that her father had written down for himself on our wedding documents: Ginza, Tokyo, Japan. Those were my clues. I shoved the notebook in my pocket.

Reluctantly I pulled out the letter that Akemi had written to me and had delivered to Cho’s, where I worked my weekend job, on the exact day that she went missing. She had written it all in kanji. Maybe she had explained herself in those pages, or left the name and address of where her father was about to drag her. She knew I could get the letter translated into English, the same way that I had arranged for her marriage documents to be translated into Japanese, and the same for our marriage contract. I pushed her letter into my back pocket. I wanted to know what it said. Yet I didn’t want to know what it said. Either way I was gonna go get her, regardless. In a last-minute decision, I grabbed Akemi’s diary off my desk, secured my diamonds, and headed out into a blue-gray cloudy day.

By noon I had sold one of my three, three-carat diamonds.

“Where did you get them,” the jeweler asked, eyeing the gem through his loop, which was lodged in his right eye.

“From Africa,” I said, knowing the continent was so huge, that my response was the same as not answering him at all.

“How much will you give me for each of them?” I asked him, without any eagerness in my voice.

We settled on fifteen thousand dollars for one diamond. He pushed hard for a package deal on all three of the diamonds. He also tried to position his pitch as though he was somehow doing me a favor by buying the gems from me, insinuating that they were stolen and he was relieving me of my illegal goods. I smiled at the slickness of his angle, glanced around at the arrangements of counters offering
hundreds of African diamonds for sale. I assured him that the three diamonds in the palm of my hand were not the stolen diamonds, and that right now, only one of these precious stones was available for him to purchase. I sold him one, watched his fingers as he counted out my payment in cash, all hundreds. I saw how each pile of bills that added up to five thousand dollars was half an inch high. When my stack reached one and a half inches high, I left the diamond district with my pockets fat and the whole day in front of me. I had the watch repaired and wore it, like my father had worn it years ago.