"No, but"-her hesitation is fraught, like the pauses in soap operas-"there are leaks. Things get out before they should."
"What"s getting out?" Beth asks, knowing that bland ignorance was the way to open up Hermione, with her itch to lord it over her sister.
"Nothing, darling. I of course can"t say." But, unable to bear Beth"s silence, she goes on, "Internet chatter is up. We think something"s brewing."
"Oh, dear," Beth says docilely. "How"s the Secretary taking it?"
"The poor saint. He"s so so conscientious, the whole country on his shoulders, I"m honestly afraid it might kill him. He has high blood pressure, you know." conscientious, the whole country on his shoulders, I"m honestly afraid it might kill him. He has high blood pressure, you know."
"He looks pretty healthy on TV. I wonder, though, if he could use a slightly different haircut. It makes him look belligerent. It puts the Arabs and the liberals on the defensive." She can"t chase from her mind the image of one more oatmeal-raisin cookie-how it would crumble in her mouth, her saliva leaving the raisins for her tongue to find and fiddle with before she bites down. She used to settle with a cigarette for a phone chat; then the Surgeon General kept telling her it was bad for her, so she gave it up and gained thirty pounds the first year. Why should the government care if the people died? It didn"t own them. That many less to govern, she would think they"d be relieved. But, oh yes, lung cancer was a drain on Medicare, and cost the economy millions of productive work-hours. "I suspect," Beth offers helpfully, "a lot of this chatter is just high-school and college kids making mischief. Some of them, I know, call themselves Mohammedans just to annoy their parents. There"s this boy at the high school Jack has been advising. He thinks he"s a Muslim because his deadbeat father was, at the same time ignoring this hardworking Irish-Catholic mother he lives with. Think of what our parents would have said if we"d brought home Muslim men to marry."
"Well, you did the next-best thing," Hermione tells her, paying her back for the haircut criticism.
"Poor Jack," Beth continues, rising above the slur, "he"s been knocking himself out to get this boy out of the grip of his mosque. They"re like Baptist fundamentalists, only worse, because they don"t care if they die." A born peacemaker-maybe all younger sisters are-she reverts to Her-mione"s favorite subject. "Tell me what he"s especially worried about these days. The Secretary."
"Ports," came the ready answer. "Hundreds of container ships go in and out of our American ports every day, and n.o.body knows what"s in a tenth of them. They could be bringing in atomic weapons labelled Argentinean cowhides or something. Brazilian coffee-who"s sure it"s coffee? Or TERRORIST.
think of these huge tankers, not just the oil, but, say, liquid propane. That"s how they ship propane, liquefied. But think of what would happen in Jersey City or under the Bayonne Bridge if they got to it with just a few pounds of Semtex or TNT. Beth, it would be a conflagration: thousands dead. Or the New York subways-look at Madrid. Look at Tokyo a few years ago. Capitalism has been so open open-that"s how it has to be, to make it work. Think of a few men with a.s.sault rifles in a mall anywhere in America. Or in Saks or Blooming-dale"s. Remember the old Wanamaker"s? How we used to go there as children with such happy hearts? It seemed a paradise, especially the escalators and the toy department on the top floor. All that"s gone. We can never be happy again- we Americans."
Beth feels sorry for Hermione, taking everything so much to heart, and says, "Oh, don"t most people just b.u.mble along still? There"s always some kind of danger in life. Plagues, wars. Tornadoes out in Kansas. People keep going. You go on living until you"re made to stop, and then you"re unconscious."
"That"s it, that"s just it, Betty, they"re working on stopping us. Everywhere, anywhere-all it takes is a little bomb, a few guns. An open society is so defenseless. defenseless. Everything the modern free world has achieved is Everything the modern free world has achieved is so fragile." so fragile."
Only Hermione still called her Betty, and only then when she was miffed. Jack and her college friends called her Beth, and after she was married even her parents tried to switch over. To erase the little slip-up, Hermione courts her, trying to enlist her in her own infatuation with the Secretary. "He and these experts we have try to think day and night of worst-case scenarios. For instance, Beth, computers. We"ve built them into the system so that everybody"s dependent, * *32:
Three.
not just libraries but industry, and banks, and brokerage houses, and the airlines, and nuclear-power plants-I could go on and on."
"I don"t doubt it."
Hermione entirely misses the sarcasm, going on, "There could be what they call a cyberattack. They have these worms that get by the firewalls and plant these applets, they call them, that send back covert messages describing the network they"ve penetrated and paralyzing everything, scrambling what they call the routing tables and getting by the gateway protocols so that not just the stock market and traffic lights but everything freezes-the power grids, the hospitals, the Internet itself, can you imagine? The worms would be programmed to spread and spread until even that television you were watching would go on the fritz, or else show nothing but Osama bin Laden on all the channels."
"Herm, honey, I haven"t heard anybody say "on the fritz" since Philadelphia. Aren"t these worms and viruses being sent out all the time, and the source turns out to be some pathetic maladjusted teen-ager sitting in his grubby room in Bangkok or the Bronx? They make a little mess for a while but they don"t bring the world down. They get caught and put in jail, eventually. You"re forgetting all the clever men, and women too, that design these firewalls or whatever. Surely they can keep ahead of a few fanatic Arabs-it"s not as if they invented the computer like we did."
"No, but they invented zero, as you may not know. They don"t need to invent the computer to wipe us out with it. The Secretary calls it cyberwar. That"s what we"re in, like it or not, cyberwar. The worms are already out there running around; the Secretary every day has to sift through hundreds of reports that tell him about attacks."
: 133 :.
TERRORIST.
"The cyberattacks."
"That"s right. You think it"s funny, I can tell from your voice, but it"s not. It"s deadly serious, Betty."
This Shaker chair is beginning to hurt. They must have had different body types back then, the Quakers and the Puritans: different philosophies about comfort and necessity. "I don"t think it"s funny, Herm. Of course very bad things can happen, some already have, but-" She forgets what the "but" was to preface. She thinks of walking with the portable phone into the kitchen and reaching into the cookie drawer. She loves the texture of these particular ones; that only one old-fashioned corner store left on Eleventh Street sells. Jack picks them up for her. She wonders when Jack will be back; his tutorials seem to take longer than they used to. "But I"m not aware of too many cyberattacks lately."
"Well, thank the Secretary for that. He gets reports even in the middle of the night. It"s aging him, it honestly is. He"s getting white hairs above his ears, and hollows under his eyes. I feel helpless."
"Hermione, doesn"t he have a wife? And umpteen children? I saw them in the paper, all going to church at Easter."
"Yes, of course he does. I know that. I know where I stand. Our relationship is purely official. And, since you"re being so provocative-and this is very very confidential-one of the areas we get most reports from is northern New Jersey. Tucson, and the Buffalo area, and northern New Jersey. He"s very tight-lipped-he confidential-one of the areas we get most reports from is northern New Jersey. Tucson, and the Buffalo area, and northern New Jersey. He"s very tight-lipped-he has has to be-but there are some imams, if I"m p.r.o.nouncing it right, that distinctly bear watching. They all preach terrible things against America, but some of them go beyond that. I mean, in advocating violence against the state." to be-but there are some imams, if I"m p.r.o.nouncing it right, that distinctly bear watching. They all preach terrible things against America, but some of them go beyond that. I mean, in advocating violence against the state."
"Well, at least it"s imams. If the rabbis start in, Jack"ll have : 134 :.
Three.
to join up. Though he never goes to temple. He might be happier if he did."
Hermione"s exasperation breaks out: "Really, "Really, I wonder sometimes what Jack makes of you; you don"t take I wonder sometimes what Jack makes of you; you don"t take anything anything seriously." seriously."
"That was part of the attraction," Beth tells her. "He"s a depressive, and he liked my being such a lightweight."
There is a pause in which she feels her sister resisting the obvious rejoinder: she is no lightweight now. "Well," Hermione sighs down there in Washington. "I"ll let you get back to your soap opera. My other phone is blinking red; he wants something."
"It"s been good to talk," Beth lies.
Her older sister has taken the place of her mother in not letting her forget how much is wrong with her. Beth has let herself, as they say, "go." A scent rises to her nostrils from the deep creases between rolls of fat, where dark pellets of sweat acc.u.mulate; in the bathtub her flesh floats around her like a set of giant bubbles, semi-liquid in their sway and sluggish buoyancy. How has this happened to her? As a girl she had eaten what she pleased; it had never seemed to her that she ate more than other people, and still doesn"t: the food just sticks to her more. Some people have bigger cells than others, she has read. Different metabolisms. Maybe it was being marooned in this house, and the house before it-on Eighteenth Street, and the one before that, a half-mile closer to the downtown, before the neighborhood became too bad-marooned by a man who abandoned her without appearing to. At the high school each day earning his living, who could fault him for that? As a young wife she used to sympathize, but as she aged she came to see how he dramatized everything, leaving in the winter dark and not home : 135 :.
until long after dark with his extracurricular duties, his problem students, his emergency sessions with delinquent parents. He would come home depressed because of all the problems he couldn"t solve, the poor lives lived in New Prospect to no purpose and now being pa.s.sed on to the children: "Beth, they don"t give a f.u.c.k. They never knew structure. They can"t imagine a life that goes beyond the next fix, the next binge, the next sc.r.a.pe with the cops or the bank or the INS. The poor kids, they"ve never had the luxury of being kids. You see them come into the ninth grade with a little hope left in them, a trace of that eagerness second-graders have, a belief that if you learn the rules and do the drills you"ll be rewarded; and by the time they graduate, if they do, we"ve knocked it all out of them. Who"s "we"? America, I suppose, though it"s hard to put your finger exactly on where it goes wrong. My grandfather thought capitalism was doomed, destined to get more and more oppressive until the proletariat stormed the barricades and set up the workers" paradise. But that didn"t happen; the capitalists were too clever or the proletariat too dumb. To be on the safe side, tiiey changed the label "capitalism" to read "free enterprise," but it was still too much dog-eat-dog. Too many losers, and the winners winning too big. But if you don"t let the dogs fight it out, they"ll sleep all day in the kennel. The basic problem the way I see it is, society tries to be decent, and decency cuts no ice in the state of nature. No ice whatsoever. We should all go back to being hunter-gatherers, with a hundred-percent employment rate, and a healthy amount of starvation."
Then Jack comes home depressed because the problems beyond solving are getting to be boring, and his gestures at solving them a mere routine, a shtik, a job, a con job. "What really gets me," he would say, "is they refuse to grasp how bad off diey are. They think they"re doing pretty good, with some flashy-trashy new outfit they"ve bought at half-price, or the latest hyper-violent new computer game, or some hot new CD everybody has to have, or a ridiculous new religion when you"ve drugged your brain back into the Stone Age. It makes you seriously wonder if people deserve to live-if the ma.s.sacre masterminds in Rwanda and Sudan and Iraq don"t have the right idea."
And by letting herself get fat she has disqualified herself from cheering him up like she used to. He never would say so. He would never be rude. She wonders if that is die Jewish in him-the sensitivity, the burden, a sense of superiority really that tries to keep his sorrow to himself, getting up early and going to the window rather than wake her up with it by staying in bed. They have had a good life together, Beth decides, pushing herself up from the tiny hard wood-seated Shaker chair, bracing herself with a hand on the back, taking care not to tip it with her weight. That would be a pretty sight, sprawled on the floor with a broken pelvis, unable even to reach down and tug her bathrobe down for the paramedics when they came.
She must get out of her bathrobe and go do some shopping. They are running out of basics-soap, laundry detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, mayonnaise. Cookies and snacks. She can"t ask Jack to buy all these things on top of picking up the microwave meals from ShopRite or takeout from the Chinese place whenever they keep her at the library until six. And cat food. Where is is Carmela? The cat doesn"t get stroked enough, she sleeps all day under the sofa, depressed, and runs around like a wild thing at night. It was wrong in a way to get her spayed, but then if you don"t it"s wall-to-wall kittens. Carmela? The cat doesn"t get stroked enough, she sleeps all day under the sofa, depressed, and runs around like a wild thing at night. It was wrong in a way to get her spayed, but then if you don"t it"s wall-to-wall kittens.
She and Jack have had a good life together, Beth tells her- self, getting a living pushing pencils-tapping computer keys now-and being pleasant and helpful to people. This was more than Americans in the old days had been allowed to do, slaving in the mills when cities still made things; people are so afraid of the Arabs, but it"s the j.a.panese and Chinese and Mexicans and Guatemalans and those others in these low-wage platforms who are doing us in, putting our workforce out of work. We come to this country and pen the Indians into reservations and build skysc.r.a.pers and superhighways and then everybody wants a piece of our domestic markets, like a whale being gutted by sharks in that Hemingway story; but that was a marlin. The same idea. And Hermione has been fortunate too, landing an important Washington job with one of the administration"s key players, but it"s ridiculous the way she goes on about her boss-the savior of us all, to hear her tell it. You get a spinster mentality from stopped-up hormones, like those nuns and priests who turn out to be so cruel and wanton, not believing any of what they"ve been preaching, to judge from their actions, molesting these poor trusting little children trying to be good Catholics. Getting married and learning the sorts of thing men do, the way they smell and behave, at least is normal: it releases frustrations and quenches ridiculous romantic ideas. On her way to the stairs and her bedroom to change into street clothes (but what? is the problem; nothing is going to disguise a hundred extra pounds, nothing is going to make her look snappy on the street again), Beth thinks she wouldn"t mind peeking into the kitchen to see if there"s something to nibble in the refrigerator even if she did just have lunch. As if to suppress that impulse she lets herself flop back into the La-Z-Boy, and levers up the foot-rest to ease the throb in her ankles. Dropsical, the doctor calls them, where Jack once could circle them with his thumb and middle finger. No sooner stuck there in the chair"s embrace, she realizes she needs to go pee. Well, ignore it and the need goes away, her life"s experience has taught her.
Now, where did that TV remote get to? She picked it up and clicked the TV off, and then her memory is blank. It"s frightening, how often her mind is blank. She checks both chair arms and with an effort peers over the arms to the celadon carpet that man sold her, thinking for the second time that day of Miss Dimitrova and her stretching exercises. It must have been balanced on an arm and then slid down into the crevice beside the cushion when she just flopped herself here instead of going upstairs to dress. The fingers of her right hand explore the tight crevice, the vinyl imitating cowhide from the old Wild West days that probably weren"t so wonderful if you were there, and then those of the left hand the crevice on the other side, and they do encounter it-the cool matte length of the channel clicker. It would all be easier if her body wasn"t so much in the way, pushing the cushion so tight against the chair arm she had to be careful of catching a nail on a seam or something metal. Hairpins and coins and even needles and pins collect in these cracks. Her mother was always sewing or mending something in that old skirted plaid armchair by the window at home to catch the light, the deep wooden sill with its dotted-swiss curtains and tray of geraniums and view of greenery so lush it kept its moist places right through the middle of the day. She points the remote and clicks it to Channel Two, CBS, and the summoned electrons slowly gather, making sounds and an image. The background music on As the World Turns As the World Turns is subtly more orchestral, less wispily pop, than that on is subtly more orchestral, less wispily pop, than that on All My Children All My Children-woodwinds and deep strings mixed in with the more ghostly sounds, a knocking like hoofbeats fading in the distance. Beth can tell from the excited music and the expressions on the faces of the young actor and actress who have just spoken-angry, eyebrow-knitting, even frightened expressions-that what they have just said to one another was momentous, pivotal, a parting or a murder agreed upon, but she has missed it; she has missed the world turning. Beth could almost cry.
But life is strange, the way it comes to the rescue. Carmela, out of nowhere, comes and jumps up on her lap. "Where has Baby been?" been?" Beth asks in a high ecstatic voice. "Mama has Beth asks in a high ecstatic voice. "Mama has missed missed you!" In the next minute, though, she impatiently pushes the cat, settling in on the expanse of warm flesh to purr, off her lap, and struggles to rise again from the La-Z-Boy. Suddenly, there are too many things to do. you!" In the next minute, though, she impatiently pushes the cat, settling in on the expanse of warm flesh to purr, off her lap, and struggles to rise again from the La-Z-Boy. Suddenly, there are too many things to do.
Two weeks after his day of graduation from Central High, Ahmad pa.s.sed his commercial-driver"s-license test at the testing facility in Wayne. His mother, who had allowed him in so many respects to raise himself, accompanied him, in the battered maroon Subaru station wagon she uses for driving to the hospital and for hauling her paintings to the gift shop in Ridgewood and what other display venues she has, including various amateur shows in churches and school auditoriums. Winter salt has eaten away at the lower edges of the cha.s.sis, and her careless driving and the hastily opened doors of other cars in parking lots and spiral-ramped garages has taken a toll on the sides and fenders. The front right fender, victim of a misunderstanding at a four-way stop sign, was patched with Bondo body filler by one of her boyfriends, a significantly younger man who dabbled in junk sculpture and moved to Tubac, Arizona, before the patch could be smoothed and painted. So it stays a raw and rough putty color, and in other spots, mostly the hood and roof, the paint, exposed outdoors to all weathers, has faded from maroon to the tint of a peach. His mother seems to Ahmad to flaunt her poverty, her everyday failure to blend into the middle cla.s.s, as if such failure were intrinsic to the artistic life and the personal freedom so precious to infidel Americans. She contrives, with her bohemian wealth of bangles and odd clothing, such as the factory-blotched jeans and vest of purple-dyed leather she wore on this day, to embarra.s.s him whenever they venture together into public.
That day in Wayne, she flirted with the elderly man, this miserable minion of the state, who administered the exam. She said, "I have no idea why he thinks he wants to drive a truck. It"s an idea he picked up from his imam-not his mama, his imam. The dear child calls himself a Muslim."
The man behind the desk at the MVC Regional Service Center in Wayne looked troubled by this gush of maternal confiding. "There can be steady money in it," he brought out, after thought.
Ahmad perceived that words came painfully to the public servant, spending a resource within him that he felt to be precious and in short supply. His face, foreshortened as he crouched at his desk, under his winking fluorescent tubes, was subtly deformed, as if it had once been rippled by a harsh emotion and then frozen. This was the sort of hopeless creature his mother lavished her flirtations upon, at the expense of her son"s dignity. The man was so dimly alive in his spider web of regulations that he failed to appreciate how Ahmad, though old enough to apply for Cla.s.s C CDL, was not yet quite man enough to disown his mother. Conscious merely of the woman"s impropriety and possible mockery, the man s.n.a.t.c.hed from the applicant"s hand the completed physical examination form and had Ahmad thrust his face into a box that had him read, one eye at a time, letters in various colors, telling red from green and both from amber. The machine measured his fitness to drive another machine, and this administrator of the test had been frozen into a kind of wrath because doing his job day after day had transformed him into yet another machine, an easily replaced element in the workings of the merciless, materialist West. It was Islam, Shaikh Rashid had more than once explained, that had preserved the science and simple mechanisms of the Greeks when all Christian Europe had in its barbarism forgotten such things. In today"s world, the heroes of Islamic resistance to the Great Satan were former doctors and engineers, adepts in the use of such machines as computers and airplanes and roadside bombs. Islam, unlike Christianity, has no fear of scientific truth. Allah had formed the physical world, and all its devices when put to holy use were holy. Thus Ahmad, with such reflections, received his truckers" license. Cla.s.s C required no road test.
Shaikh Rashid is pleased. He tells Ahmad, "Appearances can deceive. Though I know our mosque appears, to youthful eyes, shabby and fragile in its external trappings, it is woven of tenacious strands and built upon truths set deep in the hearts of men. The mosque has friends, friends as powerful as they are pious. The head of the Chehab family, just the other day, told me that his prospering business has need for a young truck driver, with no unclean habits and firmly of our faith."
"My rating is only a "C," " Ahmad tells him, backing a step from what he senses is too easy and swift an entry into the adult world. "I can"t drive out of state or carry hazardous materials."
He has been enjoying, in the weeks since graduation, living with his mother in a condition of idleness, working his desultory, harshly lit hours at the Shop-a-Sec, faithfully performing his daily salat, venturing to a movie or two and marvelling at the expenditure of Hollywood ammunition and the beauty of its explosions, and running in his old track shorts through the streets, sometimes into the region of row houses where he had walked that Sunday noon with Joryleen. He never sees her, just girls of similar color with her way of sauntering, knowing they are being watched. As he flies through the run-down blocks, he remembers Mr. Levy"s vague talk of college and its vague but grand subject matter, "science, art, history." The guidance counselor has come by the apartment, actually, once or twice, but, though friendly enough to Ahmad, was quick to leave, as though forgetting what he came for. Without listening carefully to the answer, he asked Ahmad how his plans are coming and whether he intends to stick around here or to go out and see the world, the way a young man should. This sounded curious coming from Mr. Levy, who has lived in New Prospect all of his life, except for college and the spell in the Army that American men used to have to do. Though the doomed American war against Vietnamese self-determination was progressing at this time, Mr. Levy was never a.s.signed to leave the United States, remaining in desk jobs, a fact he feels guilty about, since even though the war was a mistaken one it offered a chance to prove his courage and to show his love for his country. Ahmad knows this because his mother talks to him now and then about Mr. Levy-what a nice man he seems to be, though not a very happy one, and underap- predated by the school administrators, and no longer of much importance to his wife or his son. His mother lately is unusually talkative and inquisitive; she takes more interest in Ahmad than he has come to expect, asking him, whenever he goes out, when he is coming back, and sometimes acting annoyed when he answers, "Oh, sometime."
"And when might that be, exactly?"
"Mother! Get off my case. Pretty soon. I might poke around over at the library."
"Would you like some money for a movie?"
"I have have money, and I just saw a couple movies, one with Tom Cruise and one with Matt Damon. They were both about professional a.s.sa.s.sins. Shaikh Rashid is right- movies are sinful and stupid. They are foretastes of h.e.l.l." money, and I just saw a couple movies, one with Tom Cruise and one with Matt Damon. They were both about professional a.s.sa.s.sins. Shaikh Rashid is right- movies are sinful and stupid. They are foretastes of h.e.l.l."
"Oh, my, how holy we"re getting to be! Don"t you have any friends? Don"t boys your age usually have girlfriends?"
"Mom. I"m not gay, if that"s what you"re implying."
"How do you know?"
He was shocked. "I know."
"Well, all / know," she said, combing her hair back from her forehead with the bent fingers of her left hand in a swift gesture acknowledging the dishevelled nature of this conversation and signalling a willingness to end it, "is I never know when you"re going to pop back in."
Now, with somewhat the same testy tone, Shaikh Rashid answers, "They don"t want want you to drive out of state. They don"t want you to carry hazardous materials. They wish you to transport furniture. The Chehabs" firm is Excellency Home Furnishings, on Reagan Boulevard. You must have noticed it, or heard me mention the Chehab family." you to drive out of state. They don"t want you to carry hazardous materials. They wish you to transport furniture. The Chehabs" firm is Excellency Home Furnishings, on Reagan Boulevard. You must have noticed it, or heard me mention the Chehab family."
"The Chehabs?" At times Ahmad fears that, wrapped in his sensation of G.o.d standing beside him-so close as to make a single, unique holy ident.i.ty, closer to him than his neck-vein, closer to him than his neck-vein, as the Qur"an expresses it-he notices fewer mundane details than other people, unreligious people. as the Qur"an expresses it-he notices fewer mundane details than other people, unreligious people.
"Habib and Maurice," the imam clarifies, with an impatience that bites off his words as precisely as his beard is trimmed. "They are Lebanese, non-Maronite, non-Druze. They came to this country as young men in the "sixties, when it looked as if Lebanon might become a satellite of the Zionist ent.i.ty. They brought some capital with them and put it into Excellency. Inexpensive furniture, new and used, for the blacks, was the basic idea. It has proved successful. Habib"s son, informally called Charlie, has been selling merchandise and performing deliveries, but they wish him to play a more significant role in the office, now that Maurice has retired to Florida, save for a few summer months, and Habib"s diabetes takes an increasing toll on his stamina. Charlie will-what"s the phrase?-show you the ropes. You"ll like him, Ahmad. He"s very American."
The Yemeni"s feminine gray eyes narrow in amus.e.m.e.nt. To him, Ahmad is American. No amount of zeal and Qur"an studies can change his mother"s race or his father"s absence. The lack of fathers, the failure of paternity to keep men loyal to their homes, is one of the marks of this decadent and rootless society. Shaikh Rashid-a man slight and slim as a dagger, with a dangerous slyness about him, implying at moments that the Qur"an may not have eternally pre-existed in Paradise, to which the Prophet during one night-journey travelled on the supernatural horse Buraq-does not offer himself as a father; there is in his regard of Ahmad something fraternal and sardonic, a splinter of hostility.
But he is right, Ahmad does like Charlie Chehab, a thickset six-footer in his middle thirties, his swarthy face deeply creased, with a broad and flexible mouth much in motion. "Ahmad," he says, giving the syllables equal weight, broadening the second "a" as in "Baghdad" or "mad." He asks, "So what"re you mad about?" Expecting no answer, he goes on, "Welcome to Excellency, so called. My dad and uncle didn"t quite know English when tiiey named it; they thought it meant something excellent." His face as he talks expresses complicated mental currents like disdain, self-disparagement, suspicion, and (with lifted eyebrows) a good-humored awareness of himself and his listener being placed somehow in a compromised situation together.
"We knew English," his father beside him protests. "We knew English from the American School in Beirut. "Excellency" means something cla.s.sy. Like "new" in New Prospect. Doesn"t mean prospect is new now, now, it was new it was new then. then. If we call it "Chehab Furnishings," people ask, "What means that, "Chehab"?" " He softly hawks the "ch," a sound Ahmad a.s.sociates with his Qur"an lessons. If we call it "Chehab Furnishings," people ask, "What means that, "Chehab"?" " He softly hawks the "ch," a sound Ahmad a.s.sociates with his Qur"an lessons.
Charlie stands a good foot taller than his father, and easily encircles the older, paler man"s head in his arm and gives him a fond hug, a harmless enactment of a wrestling hold. Thus cradled, old Mr. Chehab"s head looks like a giant egg, hairless on top and thinner-skinned than his rubber-faced son"s. The father"s face is somewhat translucent and puffy, perhaps because of the diabetes Shaikh Rashid had mentioned. Mr. Chehab"s pallor is gla.s.sy but his manner is not sickly; though older than, say, Mr. Levy, he seems younger, plump and excitable and willing to be amused, even by his own son. He appeals to Ahmad: "America. I don"t understand this hatred. I came here a young man, married but my wife had to be left behind, just me and my brother, and nowhere was diere the hatred and shooting of my own coun- try, everybody in tribes. Christian, Jew, Arab, indifferent, black, white, in between-everybody get along. If you have something good to sell, people buy. If you have job to do, people do it. Everything is clear, on surface. Makes business easy. From the beginning, no trouble. We thought in the Old World to set our prices high, then be bargained down. But n.o.body understands, even poor zanj zanj come in to buy sofa or easy chair, they pay the price on sticker just like in grocery store. But few come. We understand, and put on the furniture prices we expect getting-lower prices-and more come. I say to Maurice, "This is honest and friendly country. We will have no problems." " come in to buy sofa or easy chair, they pay the price on sticker just like in grocery store. But few come. We understand, and put on the furniture prices we expect getting-lower prices-and more come. I say to Maurice, "This is honest and friendly country. We will have no problems." "
Charlie has released him from his hug, looks Ahmad in the eye, for the new employee was his height though thirty pounds lighter, and winks. "Papa," he says, with a snarl of patience. "There are problems. The zanj zanj weren"t given any rights, they had to fight for them. They were being lynched and not allowed in restaurants, they even had separate drinking fountains, they had to go to the Supreme Court to be considered human beings. In America, nothing is free, everything is a fight. There is no weren"t given any rights, they had to fight for them. They were being lynched and not allowed in restaurants, they even had separate drinking fountains, they had to go to the Supreme Court to be considered human beings. In America, nothing is free, everything is a fight. There is no nmmak, nmmak, no no shari"a. shari"a. Let the young man here tell you, he"s just out of high school. Everything is war, right? Look at America abroad-war. They forced a country of Jews into Palestine, right into the throat of the Middle East, and now they"ve forced their way into Iraq, to make it a little U.S. and have the oil." Let the young man here tell you, he"s just out of high school. Everything is war, right? Look at America abroad-war. They forced a country of Jews into Palestine, right into the throat of the Middle East, and now they"ve forced their way into Iraq, to make it a little U.S. and have the oil."
"Don"t believe him," Habib Chehab tells Ahmad. "He says this propaganda, but he knows he has it good here. He is good boy. See, he smiles."
And Charlie does more than smile; he laughs, throwing back his head so the horseshoe arc of his upper teetb is displayed, and the grainy muscle of his tongue, like a broad worm. His flexible lips close upon a contemplative smirk; his eyes, watchful beneath his thick brows, study Ahmad.
"How do you feel about all this, Madman? The imam tells us you"re very pious."
"I seek to walk the Straight Path," Ahmad admits. "In this country, it is not easy. There are too many paths, too much selling of many useless things. They brag of freedom, but freedom to no purpose becomes a kind of prison."
The father interrupts, speaking loudly. "You have never known a prison. In this country, people have no fear of prison. Not like Old World. Not like Saudis, not like Iraq before. "
Charlie says soothingly, "Papa, the U.S. has the biggest prison population in the world."
"Not bigger dian Russia"s. Not tJian China"s, if we knew."
"Plenty big, though-going on two million. The young black women don"t have enough guys to go around. They"re all in jail, for Chrissake."
"They are for criminals, the prisons. Three, four times a year they break into store. If don"t find money they smash the furniture and make s.h.i.t everywhere. Disgusting!"
"Papa, they"re underprivileged. To them, we"re rich."
"Your friend Saddam Hussein, he knows prisons. The Communists, they knew prisons. In this country, die average man knows nothing about prisons. The average man has no fear. He does his job. He obeys the laws. They are easy laws. Don"t steal. Don"t kill. Don"t f.u.c.k another Mrs."
A number of Ahmad"s cla.s.smates back at Central High broke the law and were sentenced in juvenile court, for having drugs and breaking-and-entering and DWI. The worst of them thought of court and jail as part of normal life, holding no terrors; they were already reconciled to it. But his wish to contribute this information to the debate is stifled by Charlie"s saying, with a clever stretched expression that simultaneously seeks peace and yearns to make his clinching point, "Papa, what about our little concentration camp down at Guantanamo Bay? Those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can"t even have lawyers. They can"t even get imams who aren"t snitches."
"They are enemy soldiers," Habib Chehab says sulkily, wishing tlie discussion to end but unable to surrender. "They are dangerous men. They wish to destroy America. That is what they say to reporters, even though they are better fed by us than ever by the Taliban. They think Nine-Eleven was a great joke. It is war for them. It is jihad. That is what they say themselves. What they expect, Americans to lie down flat under feet and make no self-defense? Even bin Laden, he expects being fought back."
"Jihad doesn"t have to mean war," Ahmad offers, his voice shyly cracking. "It means striving, along the path of G.o.d. It can mean inner struggle."
The elder Chehab looks at him with new interest. His eyes are not as dark a brown as his son"s; diey are golden marbles, in watery eye-whites. "You are good boy," he says solemnly.
Charlie claps his strong arm around Ahmad"s thin shoulders as if to express solidarity among the three of them. "He doesn"t say that to everyone," he confides to the new recruit.
This interview takes place at the back of die establishment, where a countertop separates some steel desks and, beyond diem, a pair of frosted-gla.s.s office doors from the rest of die building. All the rest of the s.p.a.ce serves as a showroom-a nightmare room containing chairs, end tables, coffee tables, table lamps, standing lamps, sofas, easy chairs, dining tables and chairs, footstools, sideboards, chandeliers hanging thick as jungle vines, wall sconces in various metallic or enamelled finishes, and large and small mirrors from stark to ornate, their frames gilded or silvered amalgams of leaves and chunky flowers and carved ribbons and eagles in profile, with lifted wings and clasping talons; American eagles stare back above Ahmad"s startled reflection, a lean boy of mixed parentage in white shirt and black jeans.
"Downstairs," says the short, plump father, widi his gleaming arched nose and pockets of tired dark skin below his golden eyes, "we have the outdoor furniture, lawn and porch, wicker and folding, and even some aluminum cabanas, screened to set yourself off from the bugs in the back yards, for when the family wants a change of air. Upstairs is for bedroom furniture, the beds and bedside tables and bureaus, dressing tables for the lady, armoires for where there aren"t enough closets, chaise longues for the lady to put up her feet, upholstered side chairs and stools for the same relaxed mood, little table lamps softer, you know, to go with what should happen in a bedroom."
Charlie, perhaps seeing Ahmad blush, says gruffly, "Used, new, we don"t make tfiat much of a distinction. The price tag tells die story, and die condition of the piece. Furniture isn"t like a car; it doesn"t have a lot of secrets. What you see is what you get. Where you and I come in is, anything over a hundred dollars we deliver free in any part of the state. People love that. It"s not like we get many drop-in customers from Cape May, but people love the idea of free."
"And rugs," says Habib Chehab. "They want Oriental rugs, as if Lebanese are from Armenia, from Iran. So we keep selection downstairs, and any on floor you can buy and we clean. There are special carpet places along Reagan, but people believe in our bargains."
"They believe in us, Papa," Charlie says. "We have a good name."
Ahmad smells arising from all this ma.s.sed equipment for living the mortal aura, absorbed into the cushions and carpets and linen lampshades, of organic humanity, its pathetic six or so positions and needs repeated in a desperate variety of styles and textures between the mirror-crammed walls but amounting to the same daily squalor, the wear and boredom of it, die closed s.p.a.ces, die floors and ceilings constantly measuring finitude, the silent stuffiness and hopelessness of lives without G.o.d as a close companion. The spectacle revives a sensation buried in the folds of his childhood-the false joy of shopping, the tempting counterfeit lavishness of man-made plenty. He would go with his mother up the escalators and through the perfumed aisles of the last, failing emporium downtown or, trotting to keep up with her energetic strides, embarra.s.sed by the mismatch of her freckles with his own dun skin, across tar parking lots into the vast s.p.a.ces of hastily slapped-up hangars in the "big box" style, where packaged goods were stacked up to the exposed girders. On those trips, narrowly aimed at replacing a certain irreparable home appliance or some boys" clothing his relentless growing demanded or, before Islam rendered him immune, a long-coveted electronic game obsolete within a season, die motlier and son were besieged on all sides by attractive, ingenious things they didn"t need and could not afford, potential possessions that other Americans seemed to acquire without effort but that for them were impossible to squeeze from the salary of a husbandless nurse"s aide. Ahmad tasted American plenty by licking its underside. Devils, Devils, these many gaudy packages seemed to be, these towering racks of today"s flimsy fashion, these shelves of chip-power expressed these many gaudy packages seemed to be, these towering racks of today"s flimsy fashion, these shelves of chip-power expressed in murderous cartoons prodding the ma.s.ses to buy, to consume while the world still had resources to consume, to gorge at the trough before death closed greedy mouths forever. In all this wooing of the needy into debt, death was the bottom line, the counter where the diminishing dollars clattered. Hurry, buy now, since the afterlife"s pure and plain joys are an empty fable.
There were goods for sale in the Shop-a-Sec, of course, but mostly bags and boxes of salty, sugary, deleterious food, and plastic fly-swatters, and pencils, made in China, with useless erasers; but here in this great showroom Ahmad feels himself about to be enlisted in the armies of trade, and despite the near presence of the G.o.d of whom all material things form the mere shadow, he is excited. The Prophet himself was a merchant. Man never wearies of praying for good things, Man never wearies of praying for good things, says the forty-first sura. Among these good things the world"s manufacture must be included. Ahmad is young; there is plenty of time, he reasons, for him to be forgiven for materialism, if forgiveness is needed. G.o.d is closer than the vein in his neck, and He knows what it is to desire comfort, else He would not have made the next life so comfortable: there are carpets and couches in Paradise, the Qur"an affirms. says the forty-first sura. Among these good things the world"s manufacture must be included. Ahmad is young; there is plenty of time, he reasons, for him to be forgiven for materialism, if forgiveness is needed. G.o.d is closer than the vein in his neck, and He knows what it is to desire comfort, else He would not have made the next life so comfortable: there are carpets and couches in Paradise, the Qur"an affirms.
Ahmad is taken to see the truck, his future truck. Charlie leads him beyond the desks, down a corridor dimly lit by a skylight strewn with the shadows of fallen twigs and leaves and winged seeds. The corridor holds a water cooler, a calendar whose numbered squares are scribbled solid with delivery dates, and what Ahmad will come to understand is a dingy time clock, with a rack for each employee"s repeatedly punched time cards on the wall beside it.
Charlie opens another door and there the truck waits, backed up to a thick-planked loading porch beneath a projecting roof. A tall orange box with each edge reinforced by riveted metal strips, the truck shocks Ahmad, coming upon it for the first time; his impression from the loading platform is of a great blunt-headed animal that is coming too close, nosing up against the platform as if to be fed. Its orange side, dulled a bit by road dirt, bears in a slanting indigo script outlined in gold the word Excellency Excellency and then, beneath, in block capitals, home furnishings, and, smaller, the store"s address and phone number. The truck has double tires behind. Its bulky chrome side-mirrors protrude. Its cab is attached to its box of a body with no s.p.a.ce between. It is grand, but friendly. "It"s a trusty old beast," Charlie says. "A hundred ten thousand miles and no major problems. Come on down and get acquainted. Don"t jump, use these steps over here. The last thing we need is you breaking an ankle your first day on the job." and then, beneath, in block capitals, home furnishings, and, smaller, the store"s address and phone number. The truck has double tires behind. Its bulky chrome side-mirrors protrude. Its cab is attached to its box of a body with no s.p.a.ce between. It is grand, but friendly. "It"s a trusty old beast," Charlie says. "A hundred ten thousand miles and no major problems. Come on down and get acquainted. Don"t jump, use these steps over here. The last thing we need is you breaking an ankle your first day on the job."
Ahmad feels this area is somehow already familiar. In the future he will come to know it well-the loading platform, the parking lot with its cracked concrete baking in the shimmering summer heat, the surrounding low brick buildings and cluttered backs of row houses, a rusting Dumpster in one corner from some long-defunct enterprise, the half-heard oceanic sound of traffic waves swishing by on the four-lane boulevard. This s.p.a.ce will always have something magic about it, something peaceful not of this world, a strange quality of being under magnification from some high vantage. It is a place G.o.d has breathed upon.
Ahmad descends the flight of four thick-planked steps and stands on the same level with the truck. A badge on the driver"s door says Ford Triton E-350 Super Duty. Ford Triton E-350 Super Duty. Charlie opens that door and says, "Here you go, Madman. Climb in." Charlie opens that door and says, "Here you go, Madman. Climb in."
The cab holds a leathery warm reek of male bodies and stale cigarette smoke and cold coffee and the meat of Italian sandwiches eaten on the move. Ahmad is surprised, after the hours studying the booklets for the CDL with all their talk of double-clutching and downshifting on perilous slopes, by the lack of a stick shift on the floor. "How do we shift gears?"