The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (31 page)

At that time in my life, the most important part of my future involved becoming a true American. But that goal did not come easily; I had to fight. I applied for citizenship at the state immigration office and completed all the right classes. But just when I had only one more hoop to jump through, I ran into a 180-pound roadblock named Miss Pritchett.

Miss Pritchett worked at the state immigration office, and her manner said she had worked there since baby Moses floated down the Nile. Miss Pritchett did not like Middle Easterners, she thought we had all crossed the Atlantic with our pockets full of oil money and took unfair advantage of American opportunities and freedoms.

In my case, she was right, though not in the way she thought. But that Kamal Saleem was dead. I was a new man sitting across the desk from her, pleading to make America my home. Still, at every interview, Miss Pritchett was nasty and belligerent, and each time, she refused to forward my application.

But Miss Pritchett did not count on the Velvet Hammer.

Victoria, the big-city mover and shaker, had friends in high places who had gotten to know me, both at the hotel and at church. She made a few phone calls, and soon the state attorney general and a state Supreme Court justice provided character references that trumped Miss Pritchett’s prejudice (which, even now, I admit was not entirely misplaced). Finally, at a ceremony in 1989, I raised my right hand and pledged my loyalty to America. Victoria and Dr. David were there. It was the proudest day of my life. Where I had once been ready to destroy America, now I vowed to watch over my adopted country like a father, serve her like a favorite son. When the immigration officer handed me a small American flag, I wept like a child.

But my joy that year did not last. Victoria was promoted to general manager, then transferred to Texas to manage another hotel. When she told me she was leaving, my heart broke, because I knew I was losing
the best friend I had ever had. But when she actually left, I realized I was losing much more than that.

3

Like a schoolboy with a crush, I followed Victoria to Texas. I knew she was out of my league, a lioness when I was nothing but a goat. She had never hinted that our relationship would ever move to romance, and I could not dream that she would want someone like me. But I could not bear the loss of her friendship, so I quit my job, gave all my household goods to the church, and moved my clothes to Texas. We picked up where we left off. But I had only been there a few months when she told me the hotel chain was transferring her again, this time to New Orleans.

I knew I could not let her go. I could not afford to move again, and if I did not gather the courage to tell her how I felt, I might lose her forever.

It was after midnight when I knocked on her apartment door.

“Kamal?” she said, pulling a silk robe tight around her slender frame as she opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

She seemed surprised, but there was something else in her eyes, something I could not place. Before I could lose my nerve, I walked rapidly to the couch and sat down. “Come here, Victoria. I have something to tell you.”

She sat down beside me, and I took both her soft hands in mine. “I love you,” I said. “I have loved you for a long time. But I could not tell you because you are so much higher than me, too good for me. But now you are leaving me again, and I could not let you go without telling you.”

When I stopped talking, I realized my heart was hammering inside my chest so hard I feared she would hear it. I looked down at my lap, holding her hands tight. I had seen her deliver bad news gently to other
people many, many times. And now I braced myself, waiting to be let down easy. But when I raised my eyes to look at her, I was shocked to see joy on her face.

“I know you love me,” she said through tears. “I love you, too. But I was waiting for you to tell me. I needed to hear it from you first.”

4

In November 1990, the Velvet Hammer became Mrs. Victoria Saleem. She took the job in New Orleans, and we moved into a white gabled house with magnolia trees in the yard. I loved the historic feel of the city, the French Quarter’s narrow streets, and the beignets—soft, light pastries that reminded me of Paris. But it did not take long before tragedy knocked on our door.

At home one weekend, the phone rang and Victoria answered. It was my youngest brother, Samir. Without any greeting or warm-up, he said, “Tell Kamal to call home. His brother Emad is dead.” Then he hung up.

Shocked, Victoria ran to the bedroom and told me the news. I snatched up the bedroom extension and quickly dialed home, my hands shaking as the long distance connection sniffed its way across the world. Hassan answered.

“Samir, it’s Kamal! What happened?”

“Emad is dead,” my brother said quietly. “He broke up with that Christian girl he was dating. She came here with a gun and shot him in the chest, right on Mama’s front step.”

“When! When did this happen?”

“Two years ago.”

Two years ago?
Had I heard him correctly? I looked desperately at Victoria, grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Did you say two years ago? Two years?”

“Yes. Mama asked me to call and tell you now.”

Anger consumed my brain, a cloud of orange fire.
“My brother died
two years ago and you are just calling me now?
What kind of people are you? What kind of
family
are you?”

I slammed down the phone and fell to my knees, sobbing, keening. Victoria knelt to comfort me as great, heaving bursts of grief pealed from my throat. “It is my fault! It is my fault!” I cried. “If I had let him come to America, my brother would still be alive!”

Several times since I had moved to the United States, Emad had asked to come and join me. But I had not wanted him corrupted by infidels; I had seen so many young Muslim men lured by American lusts.

Now, my heart melted like wax. And for the next three weeks, I did not leave the house. Sometimes, I stalked from room to room, wailing as though Pain itself had invaded my body and was pulling my insides out through my mouth. Sometimes, I lay on the bed in utter, stony silence.

If I had not been so selfish,
I thought,
my brother might not only be alive, but enjoying the freedom that is now mine.

I passed twenty-one days pinned under crashing waves of blackest grief. I could not eat. I was as the psalmist, David, who wrote of anguish so great that he cried even when he drank, his tears rolling down his face into his cup. Then one night, Emad came to me in a dream, appearing the way I remembered him, smiling, strong, and full of youth.

“Why do you cry for me, my brother?” he said. “It was not your fault. And where I am, I am happy.”

The dream released me from my guilt, but not from the pain of losing my brother whom I had not seen for more than ten years.

The following year, I was surprised when I opened my mailbox and found a letter from my father. While I lived in his house, he had gloried in my growing status with Fatah, then the PLO. But it was to me as if he was basking in a light not his own. He did not love
me
, but only the respect I earned him in the neighborhood. When I left Lebanon for Riyadh, I left him behind, cut him out of my life. No more stolen glory. Now after all these years, I held a letter written in his hand, black ink on air mail stationery, Arabic script flowing across the page like islands and streams.

I tore open the flap, pulse quickening as I shook out a single sheet. My eyes raced over the page. Routine family news, as though we had
never lost touch. Some Islamic exhortations and quotes from the
hadith
. Then, on a line alone, two words:
I’m sorry
.

That was all. No explanation. The words pierced my heart like an arrow shot from halfway around the world. I knew my father was approaching the winter of his life. Perhaps he wanted to right old wrongs, knit together the torn pieces of our past. But I did not know, because he did not have the manhood to say
why
he was sorry.

1

It was that letter and Emad’s death that in 1991 propelled me back to Lebanon. I did not want to lose another member of my family to time and distance. Victoria flew with me as far as London, and I flew on to Lebanon alone in the dead of winter, hiring a car to carry me home.

The second phase of the fifteen-year civil war had ended only the year before, and as I had expected, the jewel city of my childhood still lay in ruins. Burned out, bullet-scarred buildings. Sidewalks heaped with rubble. The blackened shells of cars. Syrian army patrols lurked on every corner, providing “security.” As my driver picked his way to my neighborhood, anticipation percolated in my belly. What would my parents look like? My sisters and brothers? How would my father receive me? The car dropped me at my parents’ building, and I climbed the stairs.

“Yah ibny!”
My mother stood at the door, tears streaming from her eyes.

I swept her into my arms. “Mama! I missed you so much!” My brothers and sisters streamed in from the living room and clustered around us.

My mother’s face had aged, but she was slimmer than before and seemed vibrant, full of life. I held her for a long time, and her familiar gardenia scent whisked me back to boyhood. I made my way into the
crowded entry, from brother to brother, sister to sister—laughter, hugs, a joyous homecoming.

Finally, I reached my father. “Welcome home, son,” he said.

His appearance stunned me. His brilliant black hair had gone a dirty white, and his moustache was thin and yellow. Where one of his arms had once been bigger than both of my legs, now the power had fled his body, leaving behind frail limbs and mottled hands that clutched and worried at a string of Muslim prayer beads.

That evening passed in a flurry of food and catching up on old times. Mama had cooked
yaknah,
my favorite, and served it on a huge platter with stacks of pita. We sat around the table on
tesats
, now crowded shoulder to shoulder because we were all grown. Fouad worked as an engineer for a company that installed commercial kitchen equipment. The company operated out of an underground garage, since its three locations in the city had been destroyed in the war. Ibrahim, who had grown a huge beard down to his chest, owned an air-conditioning and refrigeration shop. Omer had become a renowned chef and was opening Planet Hollywood cafés all over the Middle East and Europe. My youngest brother, Samir, worked as a rich family’s chauffeur. My sisters Amira and Sanaa were still married and busy having more children.

I shared about my career in the hospitality industry, how I had started as a bartender and worked my way into management. But I told my tale as one who shares his diary only after ripping out the incriminating pages. I explained my travels in Europe and the Middle East, but omitted Fatima, recruitment, and my fleecing of the sheikhs. I told of my settling in America, but left out my activities in
jihad
. I related the story of my accident, but kept dead quiet about my conversion to Christianity.

Throughout the chatter, I caught my father stealing glances at me. Where he had embraced me at the door, he now seemed cool and remote, sitting in his high place at the table, watching and smoking a cigarette. Finally, he spoke. “Why did you decide to go to America and never come back?”

“It was the war, Papa. Death. Oppression. It was no way to live,” I said. I flashed back to the ride in from the airport and added, “It is still like that here. You can smell it in the air.”

My father regarded me with hooded eyes. “If America is so great and you are doing so well, why did you not send any money?”

2

The next day, I went with my father to visit Emad’s grave. We took a
serviz
to the cemetery, and I watched through the window as my old world flickered past. Women in black
abbayah
hurried from shop to shop, heads down, their coats pulled tight around them. I did not see klatches of old men smoking or children playing in the streets. Was it the chill wind that kept them inside or the palpable hatred I could feel in the streets?

The cemetery was a sprawling, unkempt collection of marble headstones that rambled over the hills uncomfortably close to Sabra. A concrete half-wall topped with spears of black iron hemmed in the dead. When the
serviz
dropped us there, I hurried through the wrought iron gates, praying I would not run into Abu Ibrahim or, worse, Abu Yousef. That chapter of my life was as dead as the occupants here. I wanted to keep it that way.

A sharp wind sang through the tall pines standing guard over the headstones, which huddled in family clusters. In life, Lebanese people gathered around kitchen tables. In death, they regathered here. The war had accelerated that process, and as we wound our way through the cemetery, I saw many fresh graves.

Finally, we came to Emad’s, and when I saw his name etched in stone, black grief swept over me again, knocking me to my knees. I crawled to his headstone and clung to it, my tears tracing tracks down its front. In that moment, my grief swelled to encompass all things: a childhood lost, Mohammed and Yahya. A murderous faith, the blood on my hands. Half a life lived for the sake of death. Now my brother, half his life unlived, lying cold in the grave. Sobs tore from my lips, and in my heart I cried out to God for mercy and comfort.

Behind me, I heard the flick of a match. Lifting my head, I turned to see my father cupping a cigarette against the wind. When it was lit, he took a long draw and exhaled, regarding me with dry eyes as the smoke skated off into the trees. He did not say a word, but the look on his face spoke loudly: “It is all your fault.”

I knew then that some things do not change. I knew it again the next day when I went for a walk with my mother on the
corniche,
a high concrete walkway overlooking the Mediterranean. It was a gray day, and I trailed my hand along the blue metal railing that separated us from the splashing sea.

“You were always my favorite,” my mother said, smiling up at me over her
hijab
. “Many, many times over many years, I prayed for you, that Allah would keep you safe.”

I put my arm around her shoulder, bent, and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Mama. I prayed for you, too. I still pray for you.”

“Why don’t you come home, my son? Why don’t you move back to Lebanon, make a life here?”

“I cannot, Mama. I have a life in America now. I have a wife.”

My mother stopped walking and turned to me, her eyes suddenly dark. “Your wife is an infidel! Do not give her your seed. She will bear you a child that is impure.”

Just then, two young girls in
abbayah
strolled past us on the
corniche,
and my mother suddenly softened, linked her arm through mine and began walking again. “See? There are plenty of girls here who would love to marry you. Why should you stay married to that infidel woman when there are so many virgins to serve you and give you good Muslim children?”

At that moment, my heart broke for my mother. Islam would always cause her to sort human beings into opposing categories: virgins and whores, clean and unclean, worthy of heaven and worthy of death. Islam would always keep my mother shackled, a slave to an ancient hatred.