American Taliban (5 page)

It’s good for you, she said, to have the occasional experience of civilized adult life.

She liked seeing him in a suit, his hair combed, appearing in public as a mensch, one of several New York words she dropped, though she wasn’t really from New York.

So Barbara would have him where she wanted him, in D.C. The general election was coming up in November, she was planning to
host her usual fund-raiser at their Adams Morgan house, and she would try to engage him in various tasks, his contribution to the cause, she would call it. And he would be stuck at home on crutches, without wheels. He could hear her voice in his head. Even if your body isn’t fully operational, you have your mind. She lived in his head, and without wheels, there’d be no escape. He had to get away from D.C. and Barbara.

HE WAS EMERGING
from sleep when Barbara and Bill arrived, bearing his MP3 player, his laptop, the
Tao
, the Dylan, the Burton biography, Zone bars, and Katie trailing behind. John welcomed the company, but he was especially happy to have his music and his books for later, for when he would be alone again. He dreaded this long night in this place of the sick and the dying, but, he reminded himself, it was only one night and now he had his music, and, for the next hour, his parents and Katie.

Checkout is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, Barbara reminded him. I’ll be here, she promised, with a wheelchair at 8:30.

A wheelchair, John protested. What’s wrong with crutches?

The doctor, Bill explained, doesn’t want you to put any weight on your broken arm, at least not yet. In a week or two, when the fracture is on its way to healing, he’ll prescribe crutches.

You’re on hydrocodone, so you’re not feeling pain, Barbara pointed out. But that’ll change when you come off it. Give it a rest, and you’ll be as good as new in a few months. Deal?

Barbara’s bustling eased over his initial discomforts. Katie’s natural sociability and teasing took care of the rest, and in a matter of seconds, following a hug and glad you’re okay, she engaged him in the usual banter, a kind of tacking, the zig and zag of skateboarding.

If you’d been in water instead of on concrete, she teased, you might have gotten worked, but you’d still be walking.

Yeah, John agreed, drowning is preferable to broken limbs because then I might still be afloat, at least until I washed up on some shore somewhere.

Please stop, Barbara said. Both sports are extreme, and you’re both either fortunate or not to have parents who are willing to live with risk.

John gave Katie the sign, which she returned; they touched pinkies,
a truce. She settled in at the foot of the bed, and Barbara and Bill left them alone, to make wheelchair arrangements and sign papers, they said.

What now? John asked, and Katie understood that he was asking about her future plans, about how winning would affect them.

She shrugged, making light of it, for which John liked her.

Same old, she said. I guess I’ll keep working at Jamba Juice, maybe take a class at NCCC, though I can’t figure out in what. My dad wants me to take business. And I’ll keep practicing whenever I can. As first-place winner, I qualify for the Championship Surf-Off and I need to stay in good form for that. Sylvie’s parents want her to go to a four-year school, but she wants to stay on and practice.

And Jilly?

I don’t know, Katie said. She won’t talk to me, which is too weird. Her mom says she’s too upset to talk. I feel bad, but I don’t know what else I could’ve done. One of us had to place third. But still, I’m sorry for her.

John wasn’t sure what Katie could have done. Refuse the prize, perhaps. Or better yet refuse to continue without Jilly in the water. In the heat of the moment it would have been hard to predict how things would turn out, and Katie couldn’t have known that she’d place first. So it really wasn’t her fault. So what was he holding against her? Perhaps she didn’t have to celebrate quite so victoriously, given what happened.

Why? Katie asked, watching his face. Do you think I should have done more?

John shrugged. He didn’t know, he wasn’t sure, but this was a good example of what was wrong with competition, judged as it was by a collective, awarding not the best, but the face that best served its image. He didn’t know how Katie could have helped being that face, or how she could have prevented Jilly’s penalty, but having seen Jilly surf, they both knew there was something less than truth involved in Katie’s win. He didn’t want to, shouldn’t have to say it, but Katie wouldn’t let him off. She stood facing him, hand on hip.

You have to answer the question, she said, in a bossy teacher’s voice.

John felt cornered, badgered. He shrugged. He looked away, opened the Dylan book, but Katie waited.

Only you really know, he finally said.

After which Katie became quiet; he could tell she wanted to leave. Seeing her unhappy, he regretted what he’d said, tried to take it back, but it was too late. Katie excused herself to find a restroom. She returned
ten minutes later to say that Sylvie was picking her up out front in a few minutes. She gave John a whisper of a hug, and hours later he was still wrestling with his own bad conscience. He had made her feel bad. For no good reason. He should have apologized right away. He had wanted to apologize. She had done nothing wrong.

UNABLE TO SLEEP
, he plugged his laptop into the hospital’s DSL and went online. He might as well catch up on the latest chat-room conversations, which he’d missed. He might as well catch up on his lapsed correspondence.

Josiah had forwarded a chat session on the similarities of the stories of Genesis and those of the Qur’an. Thought you’d be interested in this one, he wrote.

John was interested. He’d started participating in this chat room in April, when he was reading fast and hard for World Religion, but he hadn’t kept up with the conversations or his research or his summer reading. He had not even gotten to Pagels’
Gnostic Gospels
, scheduled for the end of his second week in June. He was way far behind.

He opened the file. Josiah and Naim and Ahmed and Ibrahim had participated, and also someone new named Noor. It started with Naim criticizing Genesis’ version of the Ishmael story, and Naim, John knew, really knew this stuff.

I read a convincing argument, Naim wrote, that it was Ishmael not Isaac Abraham went to sacrifice. According to this scholar, Isaac wasn’t even born yet. But Genesis gets chronology wrong all the time. As proof, this scholar offered the fact that God’s blessing to multiply as the sand came true for Arabs not Jews. There are 100 million Arabs in the world and only 10 million Jews.

John paused. The proof seemed sort of unkosher, backward reasoning. But the idea that it was Ishmael not Isaac who was the intended victim made a lot of sense plotwise. At least from what he knew about the plot of Genesis. He wondered what Mr. G would say about this. They’d read the Binding of Isaac in class, discussed how awful it would have been for Isaac; also for Abraham, someone added.

Exactly, Mr. G had said. A lot of readers and critics found the story difficult and wrote about it, including the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. So if you’re still in the market for your senior topic, I recommend his famous problemata, published in
Fear and Trembling
. Before settling on his own topic, John had considered Kierkegaard.

Naim went on to criticize Sarah’s infamous treatment of Hagar and, in response, Ahmed cited the orthodox explanation that God made Sarah do it because he wanted to test Abraham’s faith. Sounds like rationalization, I know, Ahmed wrote, but Abraham’s journey into the desert took him to Mecca and the Ka’ba, so there was a reason for the abuse.

But you know, Noor interrupted, the details and especially the chronology are only important if you interpret the stories literally. I think of them as ancient myths that are useful to explain why we do things, sort of like fairy tales. Hagar’s quest for water, for example, is now part of the hajj ritual. My mom says that the reenactment of her desperate search celebrates Islamic motherhood.

No one responded to Noor’s comment, perhaps because she was new and they didn’t know her yet. Noor dropped out, the conversation drifted to other things, but John wished she’d stayed, and that the discussion had gone further. It intrigued him. He’d have to pursue it on his own. Maybe add Kierkegaard to his reading list. He sent a poke to Noor, introducing himself as Attar, student of Arab literature, got no response, looked at the bedside clock, and guessed that it was too late for her. So he opened his Summer-Reading-List, a file saved on his laptop. He reviewed the books on the list and regretted having read so little. He’d never updated the list, never got to the Corbin. So Barbara was right. He’d slacked off, and now it was mid-August. He would have to make up for June and July. Renew his commitment to reading and knowing. Revise the list. So he settled in to work. He added the Qur’an. He added Kierkegaard. He was pretty sure Barbara’s copy of the book was still on the shelves in D.C. He would read it. He would become Knowing John. As promised.

SHE WAS A FORCE
, a hurricane. Somehow, between hospital visits and daily life and sleep, she’d also cleaned his room, unhooked his clothesline, put away his clothes, arranged his books in neat piles on a bench at the foot of his bed, and purchased a long stainless-steel tray table on wheels. Most impressively, she’d had a temporary ramp installed over the stairs that led up to his room. In a day.

Awesome redecorating, Mom.

Barbara took his appreciation in stride. This room needed it. You’ll probably spend more hours here in the next few weeks than you have all summer. But, she continued matter-of-factly, it doesn’t have to be all work. The general outline of our schedule will, at least for the next few weeks, give shape to yours. Mornings, when your father paints, you can read and work. I might be in the garden or out running errands. If you want anything in particular from the shops in Duck or Kitty Hawk, let me know the night before. We’ll eat a light lunch together at noon. Afternoons you can travel with us, if you like. We might have drinks with friends, or go to the beach, or play tennis—I hope you’ll want to join us for some of this, even if only as a spectator. And, of course, Katie and the girls will visit.

Today we’re playing doubles with the Winograds at four, she said, and I’ve proposed you as scorekeeper since it seems we’re all either in our menopausal moment or experiencing early Alzheimer’s. So we’re counting on you.

John understood that this was Barbara’s way of keeping him socially engaged, despite his immobility. He rolled his eyes, as was expected of him. He’d please her this once, keep score, after which he’d have to reassert his independence. He was eighteen, and he wouldn’t spend his evenings watching his parents play.

Before he could settle in, Barbara announced lunch on the screened porch. Bill steered the wheelchair down the ramp and through the house to the porch, moved John’s regular chair out of the way, and the wheelchair into its place. Then he followed Barbara to the kitchen.