Commune of Women (7 page)

Ondine whips to the back of the room and picks up the receiver. The line is dead. She jiggles the hook, the way she’s seen people do it in movies. She has no idea why. It never seems to work for them and it doesn’t work this time, either. “It’s dead.”

“What about cell phones?” Betty persists. “Have you tried your cell phones?” They rummage in their bags. Several minutes of punching buttons and futile listening, while spinning to all points of the compass, ensue.

“Dead,” Ondine says, at last.

“Mine, too.”

“Mine, too.”

Sophia has the wisdom to let this moment of deepened discouragement pass without adding to it.

“We can talk about this later. We have time.” She glances up at the round institutional wall clock above the door. “It’s 12:34. We’ve been in here approximately four hours. That’s barely time for the police to send an e-mail to the FBI.” She smiles at her little exaggeration. “Let’s not worry about what’s outside the door right now. Let’s just get ourselves as comfortable as we can, for the time being...and as quietly as possible.”

Heddi is about to say something when an eerie sound interrupts her – the high-pitched anguish of their awakening patient. They all rush to her as a body, until Sophia warns them off.

“Ladies, let me handle this. Just go about your business. There’s plenty to do. Get yourselves cleaned up. Strain the drinks. See what else you can dig out of the cupboards...”

She turns away to attend to the patient. The rest of them stare at one another like lost sheep.

It’s Heddi who rallies them. “As I was about to say, let’s introduce ourselves, and then see what we can do to get this place livable.”

They’re taking turns in the bathroom. Each woman goes in looking like an extra from a Hollywood horror film and comes out, in due course, looking fairly normal – blood washed off, hair combed, clothes straightened, lipstick applied. It’s funny that even under the worst of circumstances women use their lipstick.

Sort of like Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. Or Betty, arranging flowers while her family all moved out.

There are just some things the mind fixes on as necessary or pleasurable, even if they’re absurd, or even destructive.

But even as they’re moving around, restoring themselves and organizing things, Betty’s feeling a growing sense of unease. Heddi’s been trying to train her to listen to her feelings. She says Betty just represses them, which allows the unconscious obsessions free reign. Something like that.

When Betty really stops to think about it, though, it’s pretty simple. She’s missing her routine. At home, it’s time for the soaps. She’d put her feet up, have a cup of coffee and watch the afternoon sun lighting up the arrangement in the west window – autumn leaves and chrysanthemums, this month. Maybe have some buttered toast, or a cookie or three.

Before, it would have been the time just before the kids got home from school, the calm before the storm. Since the mass exodus, it’s just been a time to blot out her mind.

It’s funny, realizing that no one in her family will even know she’s in this mess. Larry will probably even talk with his friends over a beer about the big terrorist standoff at LAX, without even realizing she’s out here. Sam calls her every day, sweet boy, but if he doesn’t get her he won’t worry about it. And Serena...well, if she knew, she’d probably be glad.

Another thing that’s bothering her is being in a room without windows. She’s so used to the light. Not her view, particularly, since it just looks out into shrubbery and asphalt. But the light comes in and spotlights her arrangements – and there’s a sense of depth, too. Like there really is more life out there, if she wanted to go and find it.

But in here, with the blank walls, she feels like there’s no future, no prospect to look out on or even imagine. There are a couple of travel posters pushpinned to the walls. One shows a sunny beach, palm trees and a serene blue ocean, and the other must be some place in Europe. There are half-timbered houses and a gray, grudging-looking sky not made any more pleasant by being peppered with bullet holes.

The posters don’t help. They make her feel even more trapped. She’s even had the sensation that the room is getting smaller, as if the walls are actually squeezing in on her.

She never realized that the simple light of the sun was so important to her. Even if she never really wanted to go out into it, it was always there as a potential.

What’s her potential now, she wonders?

Will she survive to sit in her living room and feel lonely, ever again?

Even loneliness would be a pleasure, compared to this sense of sitting inside a trap. It’s the frightened animal in her – that’s what she’d tell Heddi if they ever got to have a session again.

She’s sitting here and what she’s feeling is something inside that doesn’t want to die – but that is aware of death, very near.

For a gal whose biggest excitement is finding plastic daffodils on sale at K-Mart, this new sensitivity could almost be thrilling, if it weren’t just flatly paralyzing her.

No one has come back for her.

On the monitors, she can see where the Brothers are. They have rounded up a few dozen hostages in the food and shop area back near the gates. It is a smart idea because they can eat and stay there for a long time.

As for her, she is starving. Her stomach is grumbling. She wants to urinate and then eat, in that order. And she wants to do it now.

This is very silly, considering that a few hours ago she expected to die. And now, all her idealism is reduced to animal cravings by a full bladder and an empty stomach. She wonders if philosophers and theologians ever consider that in their revolutionary theories?

The monitors are very boring. Dead bodies do not do much.

She did see one body move, throw off a leg that was wrapped around it and begin to crawl. She could not tell if it was a man or a woman. It crawled right off the screen and has not reappeared on any of the others. She can see the patrols moving along from screen to screen on a regular basis, though. So she expects they will find this survivor before long and shoot it.

On the monitors there are a few pockets of survivors, mostly out in the gate areas beyond the food court. She does not think the Brothers care if they get to them or not. They have what they want – hostages and an opportunity to make the world listen.

Other than that, it is just quiet – very quiet, the way a city never is. She keeps thinking the police will charge in at any second, or that Jamal will come back to tell her to join them.

Or maybe, the door will creep open and that crawling thing will crawl in here with her and she will have to shoot it.

Allah-God, it has been a long day! She has been making sit-ups and jumping jacks to awaken herself.

It took her almost two hours, with so many monitors, before she realized that there is a television set over on the left. So now, she is watching the news, which is being broadcast live from where, but LAX! So she is learning what the world is thinking about them and what they do.

Making the news is a pretty blonde with a microphone in her hand, looking concerned. It is strange how America wants to be fed its television news by attractive blondes. And how these women try to look intellectual and as if their emotions are involved.

Part of the reeducation of the American people needs to be focused on this: could you bear to have your news delivered by an ugly, older woman? Someone with dark hair and an accent? Someone with a brain?

It would seem that nobody really cares if she sleeps or not. The “Brothers” –
ha!
– have not checked in with her once. They’ve forgotten all about her – even Jamal, apparently.

She could go and find them but that is forbidden. She was ordered to stay here.

Too bad for them! If the cell phones worked or if they would just come by to see her, she could tell them all that is happening – of which there is plenty.

Some things she can see on her monitors, and some on the television. All of it is relevant to them, if anyone were interested.

“By now, the entire world has seen the amateur video taken at the time of the attack: a camera trained on happily departing vacationers recorded the moment when, suddenly, the doors behind them are filled with terrified, running, shoving people,” the newswoman begins. X watches as the footage is replayed again. At first, the human flood is silent but urgent. Then, a second wave emerges, screaming, their faces contorted in terror. And finally comes a third wave, bloodied, limping, staggering, their faces blank with shock and their mouths opened for screams that will not come.

Only by seeing what is written in those faces can anyone comprehend what has happened. The reporter’s words just slither in one side of the brain and out the other, but those faces speak a language any human can understand: their eyes have looked upon the face of Death.

“Security cameras, too, have captured the initial assault. However, as the assailants are masked, it will take some time to establish their identity. The van in which the terrorists arrived, and which they left abandoned at the curb, has been determined to be stolen. The FBI is presently disassembling it on the spot, in an effort to find the smallest clue.

“One hopeful note: the possible identity of the assailants may be linked to a scrap of paper found trampled in the gutter near the van, with the printed heading
UCLA Kultur Klub
.”

X feels as if the blonde woman has just reached straight through the screen and punched her in the stomach. How could they have been so careless? And if the police know about the Klub, what will happen to Father Christopher and the Iman? She reaches for the wastebasket, just in time to capture a stream of vomit.

As the afternoon progresses, she watches the rescue of three groups of people – all of them out at the international gates ready to board when the attack came. To be rescued, they simply come down the covered ramps and then, down roll-away stairways, the kind in front of shiny airplanes in old movies.

Of course, there is more to it than that because there are helicopters hovering and SWAT teams behind barricades, and armored trucks making an avenue for the people to escape. The blonde newswoman is obviously thrilled with the drama of it all.

X expected, then, that the police would invade the terminal – but still, nothing.

The authorities have tried several things, however. They have shouted through the front doors with a bullhorn, demanding the release of hostages and the immediate surrender of their group. They have sent in robotic drones, but they could not get through the tangled bodies in the halls. They even sent in a negotiator, but he lost his nerve halfway down the concourse and retreated. Twice, SWAT teams have swept the front lobby, removing bodies but have gone no further.

Then, the negotiator came back. On the monitor, she watched the way he moved. He was clearly badly frightened. But then, who would not be? He made it all the way back to where the hostages are – and the Brothers took him hostage. They did not even listen to him. In fact, they gagged him and sat him on the floor against a counter.

She thought the approach of the police would be far more aggressive.
Is
it the hostages? Or is there some other reason they hesitate?

She also has seen both the Imam and Father Christopher interviewed on the television early in the evening. Both of them looked very frightened. Father Chris had a large blue bruise over his right eye. Did they abuse him, when they questioned him?

It’s the eleven o’clock news now, and she is sure they will show them again. Yes, here’s Father Chris now, the same clip, saying, “We started the Kultur Klub in an attempt to bring warring factions together. We hoped that, on the basis of their shared tragedies, these young people would begin a dialogue that would aid, in some small way, in overcoming fundamentalist prejudices and in bringing peace to the Middle East and other parts of the world.”

The Imam looks even worse. Because he is Islamic, she is sure that the questioning has been far more severe for him. He looks haggard. There are big blue circles around his eyes. Under his brown skin, he appears pale and bloodless.

“These young men” – he does not mention X, the woman among them, a typical Islamic prejudice against the female – “have experienced terrible losses in their lives. My only hope in bringing them together was to replace with love the bitterness and hatred they carried in their hearts towards other religious and ethnic groups.”

She believes the Imam and Father Christopher had good intentions in founding their Klub. What the Klub became was not their fault. In fact, they would have known horror at what the Brothers were planning – and they must be very discouraged now.

This much is sure – they succeeded to help all of them bridge their bigotry towards each other. The individual stories in group sessions, the oral reports on the situations of each of their peoples – these aided their mutual understandings. They began to see that they are not the enemy to one another. They understand, now, with Ibrahim’s guidance, that they have but one common enemy.

At first, this frightened them. And it repelled them, that they were being carried in the bosom of their enemy. Then, through days and nights at discussion and planning, they began to see this as a tremendous advantage. They came to understand that Allah-God, as they call Him now to please all their religions, has placed them strategically.

They realized that He has given them a mission that they must carry out. At first, they had no idea what the mission might be.

They all realized that ideology without action is hypocritical and cowardly. They understood that the political is personal – this they knew from most painful individual experiences. What they did not know, and what took the longest time and the most argument, was the nature of their action.

When finally they decided, the men tried to discourage her from participating. “A woman has no place in violent action,” they said.

“Tell that to my dead mother and Aunty,” she would respond. “Or to your own.”