The Book of Jonas (6 page)

Then he wonders which number he was.

“I think that I was number five,” he says. “Of the eighteen.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It just feels right.”

He walks down the high school hallway. It’s late in the day, after hours, and Jonas has been in the library since the final bell. He has been reading once again about the Bible. He has become obsessed with it.

He has learned that the original son of God, prince of peace, savior of the world, was Caesar Augustus, that these honorifics were bestowed upon him by the Roman senate. This increases Jonas’s admiration for the early Christians, for their acts of defiance, appropriating the emperor’s titles to their crucified leader, an act that virtually guaranteed their own executions. And even though Mrs. Martin has told him repeatedly that the Book is the inerrant word of God, that it contains only historical facts, the more he learns, the more he comes to believe that the writings themselves live in metaphor, that they seek not to convey factual information, but to reveal larger truths. He comes to believe that by insisting on taking them literally, Mrs. Martin manages to simultaneously denigrate the scriptures and paint herself a fool.

And so he walks down the hallway after hours, considering the meaning of spiritual truth, the enlightened path, and suddenly there is one of them, the big kid with freckles, standing next to the lockers and laughing with several of his friends.

They have been waiting for him.

“Hey, Apu,” says the freckled kid, sneering, and shoves Jonas into the bank of lockers, holds his head against the wall, reaches down to try to do something with his underwear.

Jonas is flooded with despair. Something snaps, something in his mind. Whatever has allowed him to remain passive and afraid snaps like a thread. He feels it, feels the change, as his entire body becomes one single, collective muscle.

He lifts his knee hard into the kid’s crotch, grabs a finger and pulls it back, yanking his arm, trips him to the ground. The freckle-faced kid becomes an object, a talisman through which Jonas focuses his rage.

He grabs a textbook from the floor and slams it edgewise down into the face, listens to the bridge of the nose snap, watches twin rivulets of blood flow over the mouth, spreading a red stain on the shirt. The freckled kid lies prone on the ground, holding his face, and Jonas stomps on his knee with both feet, jumps on it up and down, over and over, trying desperately to break the leg. The kid’s friends struggle to pull Jonas off, but he breaks free and kicks the freckled kid in the head, opening a gash along the top of his skull.

From nowhere a teacher reaches in and, now with the help of the freckled kid’s friends, grabs Jonas and holds him down, pinning his outstretched arms to the ground.

He is assigned to the school psychologist. There are concerns about post-traumatic stress.

The next day he goes and talks with her. He is surprised by what they don’t know about him, by his constant need to explain himself in a way they might understand.

“Where did you get that scar,” she asks, looking at Jonas’s arm.

“I once fought a lion,” says Jonas, “and he gave me this.”

She is not buying it, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, she asks how he feels.

Eventually, she will tell him that he is fascinating to talk to, that she wants to help, but that her field of expertise does not include him, his “situation,” she will call it. But she knows someone, someone good, someone experienced, someone Jonas really needs to see.

“Based on what has happened, we can get a court order,” she says. “But I prefer you go voluntarily.”

And that’s when he starts going to see Paul.

But in the meantime, Jonas is happy to sit in her office and chat, and the conversation gets him out of gym class.

Another memory, like a faintly recalled dream. He is walking home from somewhere, across the rough, upturned sod, his breath forming the only clouds under the bright sun. As he approaches the house, his mother comes out the back door carrying a jug of tea and an earthenware cup. He vividly remembers that when she pours the tea, two streams come out: the liquid filling the cup, and the steam drifting up in a hazy mirror image, mingling with their breath.

Later, his father arrives, eclipsing the front door’s rectangle
of light as he stoops to enter it. He is bearded, and wearing his shalwar, and carrying a large duffel. He has fractured memories of a meal, of his father smoking a pipe at the head of the table. They laugh, but it’s an uneasy laugh, as though they know that it is all just temporary.

After dinner, his father disappears into the back room. As his mother clears up, he rises from the table and creeps down the brief passageway, past a low, wooden bench, to peek his head around the corner and look into his parents’ bedroom. His father is laying his things out on the floor, shirts and belts, and the plump duffel is open and leaning against the wall. In his memory, the interior of the bag glows as though filled with fireflies, but he knows this is a trick of his mind, looking backward, long after he has peered into it and seen that it is filled with money.

“Hey, get out of here, you little thief!” says his father, laughing. But this is where memory plays another trick. For is it a hearty, honest laugh? Does it not contain some hint of apprehension? Of frustration at the broken secrecy? Of irritation? Of anger? Or perhaps even hidden admiration for his son’s stealth, entering the room without being noticed?

It is impossible for him to tell, to look back and see clearly, and each attempt he makes to do so, to clarify his memory, sharpen its lines, results only in further blurring the picture, smudging it like a clumsy child playing with finger paints.

The second time he makes the news, a reporter phones him after getting wind of his story. The city has apparently become home to a sizable population of “displaced persons,” which has temporarily made it the subject of the national news cycle.

“People would be really interested,” says the reporter. “How you came here, how you’re making a life for yourself.” Noting Jonas’s reluctance, the reporter tries to generate a certain level of excitement, and ends up sounding like a game-show host when he says, “After all, you’re a success story!”

Jonas wants to ask about all the others, the “sizable population.” He wants to scream. He wants to tell him to go to hell.

In the end, he hangs up the phone on him, leaving the article to be written using different sources, other people, before referring obliquely to “countless others who live right here in our own area, some of them too traumatized to speak about their experiences.”

This time, he doesn’t bother wondering which one he is.

The fight lends him an air of credibility, of danger. He is suddenly someone not to be fucked with. He learns of another
refugee who attends the school, Hakma, a Kurd, who has lived in America since he was two years old. He does not have Jonas’s accent, but shares his dark skin and hair, and they hit it off instantly. Hakma does not remember his brief time as an infant in Kurdistan, but injustice suffuses his soul. They pal around, meeting up after school to walk to one or the other’s house and sitting conspiratorially across from each other in the cafeteria.

Students begin to talk to him. Girls seem to like him, mostly, he thinks, because he looks so different from the towheaded boys they usually know. He has sharp features, which he claims are the product of generations spent in the wind and mountains, pale green eyes, and ink black hair. He learns to cultivate an aura of mystery, of danger, hinting at past experiences and feats without ever coming right out and describing them. Some of his classmates think it is all an act, a reputation built on air and a lucky punch, while others are reverential. He is invited to parties, and often, because he looks older, he is able to buy the beer.

His grades fall.

His teachers describe him as well-adjusted.

But there are events about which he refuses to speak.

Paul says, “Maybe you can tell me more about that.”

Jonas signals his reluctance in one of two ways: either he
talks purposefully about other things, real things, imagined things, or some combination of the two, or else he is silent, fixing his gaze on the floor in front of him and waiting for the subject to shift of its own volition.

“This is important,” says Paul.

“Did you know,” says Jonas, taking a quick, deep breath, “that as a young boy I met the Dalai Lama?”

“Really,” says Paul.

“Really,” says Jonas. “A brave man, Mr. Lama. Very brave. For him to travel to our village, as he did. We were not always particularly tolerant of other perspectives. But he came, paying no heed to the potential danger. He stood out, to be sure, in his red-and-yellow robes, and his shaved head. He was a sight, I can tell you.

“It was the planting season, and I was out in the field, as we all were at that time of year. Mr. Lama, he came walking up the road, up from the river. I do not remember, exactly, whether he came by himself, or whether he was accompanied by others. Now that I think about it, though, I realize he must have had others with him, some sort of retinue. There is a fine line between brave and foolhardy, is there not? Mr. Lama would not have traveled to us alone. That would have crossed the line into foolishness.

“But I remember him, not his accompaniment. He walked up the road in his bright robes and his shaved head, walked right out into the freshly turned field, walked until he stood directly in front of me. And he looked down at me and smiled. Then he said something to me that I will never forget.”

“Jonas,” says Paul.

“He said, ‘Just as the seed you sow today will grow to feed
your village, so shall you, my young friend, grow to nourish the world.’”

“Jonas.”

“And then he took my hand in his…”

“Jonas.”

“And he held it, and…”

“Jonas, we were talking about the last time you saw your sister alive.”

“Yes,” says Jonas, fixing a dull gaze somewhere in the space between them. “Yes. Mr. Lama liked her very much, as well.”

Another memory: It must have been spring, the gullies filled with meltwater, and they have finished supper. His father stands up and strokes his beard, then goes outside, muttering for Younis to follow. There has been talk all winter. Talk of something big happening, some change, or threat, but he is so young, and it is nearly impossible to reconstruct from the scattered clues of memory. They make their way down to the river, his father several steps ahead, and then they turn onto the river road, walking upstream.

“I’m going to show you something,” says his father, “and I want you to remember it.”

They walk along the packed stone road, and after an hour they take a break, stooping to drink from a shallow pool near the shore. Out in its middle, the river flows savagely, but it is
placid along the bank. The tempest out in the center seems to be totally unconnected to the calm water gently lapping the rocks beside their feet, and yet he can watch a stick or a leaf drifting near the shore, suddenly swept up into the rapids, dancing wildly away.

Eventually they come to one large, flat stone balanced on top of another, forming a distinctive, crooked T shape at the edge of the river, the water roaring around the base.

“See that rock?” asks his father over the river’s din, pointing. “Remember that rock. Memorize it, so that you will know it when you see it again.”

They turn west, away from the river and toward the mountains, white-capped and imposing. When they come to the base of the foothills, the sun is low in the sky, and his father points to a thin path, little more than a faint wear in the stone and dirt, that leads away and straight up the hill, weaving around a large boulder and disappearing into a hollow in the hills.

His father looks up at the half-formed trail and then down at Younis. “Two hours’ walk up this path there is a cave,” he says. “If anything ever happens, go there.” He looks up again at the mountains, impervious and assured and unconcerned. “I will meet you if I can.”

The letter, when it arrives, is expected. It is in a thick manila envelope that hints at packets of information enclosed, forms
to be filled out and returned. He is happy to receive it, grateful even, but not surprised. Conversations had occurred, things had been arranged, and he had received a phone call the week before, explaining, in congratulatory tones, what was to come.

He fills out forms. For everything he needs to do, there seems to be a corresponding form. It began even before he completed the landing card on the plane the day he arrived. It began with a visa application. Then something called a relocation agreement. Then, early on, an application for the health insurance that would eventually pay for his visits with Paul. Some of these forms he completes with the assistance of a volunteer from the Friends International Assistance Society, but quickly his ability to fill them out by himself improves.