From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (17 page)

But these same abhorrent, flimsy people were how I met Ben Laden, my soon‑to‑be publicist and good friend. If it hadn’t been for Philip, perhaps I would be sewing bridal wear in some backroom in the garment district of Manhattan. Then again, perhaps sewing bridal wear would ultimately have been a fate preferable to mine.

Thinking about this moment in my life makes me wonder about fate. For most of my life I believed I was bound to a certain destiny, a purpose to exist. I believed that good things were in store if only I believed in myself. But look at what happened to me. For that matter, look at what happened to Ben. What did he do? An American native, Irish Catholic in fact. You’d think he’d have luck on his side. But because of some phonetic coincidence with the world’s most wanted man, Ben ended up losing most of his clients. He took a hit because of some other guy’s mess. Makes me suspect there is no such thing as fate. Only coincidence. Life is a series of coincidences. It was a coincidence that Rudy Cohn, Chloë’s stylist, happened to be at Philip’s studio that day, and that Philip had pitched my work to her, triggering a series of events that would lead Chloë to make a red carpet appearance in my inside-out dress at the
Grammys two years later (but for the performance of her hit single, “Chas-titty,” that same night, it would be Philip Tang 2.0 that she’d change into). My rise as a hot new designer was precipitated by Ben Laden’s loss of clientele after 9/11, coincidentally, and so I was given a dedicated publicist willing to promote me to the world. What great coincidences. So many random connections! And far too many mythical explanations for them!

I ask you, is it fate that I am in here and you are out there?

I shall devote today’s installment to the story of my bathing partner. I cannot, in good conscience, keep it to myself any longer. (I trust my special agent will know what to do with this information.) You see, over the last few weeks I have gotten to know this man, my bathing partner, and from what I have learned about his situation, I believe a mistake has been made. Just as a mistake has been made with me. I do not mean to abuse my writing privileges by indulging in what the officials here may deem a cryptic tangent, and so I will respectfully curtail this digression.

Riad S—, my bathing partner, had trained as a civil engineer but left his discipline for something nobler in his eyes. He became a bookseller, opening his own specialty bookshop with the small amount of money he had inherited from a distant uncle in Pakistan. The shop was in Birmingham, England. The uncle was a real loner, as I understand it, and so he left everything to Riad, his favorite nephew, the boy who was already so well traveled—Europe, the United States, the Middle East, Asia. It wasn’t as if the uncle didn’t have any other descendants. Riad came from a big family. But the uncle knew that by giving the money to Riad he was ensuring that it would not be squandered. And good for the uncle, because he was right. Riad opened his own business, the only bookshop of its kind in this working-class section of Birmingham.

Unfortunately, the shop was not much of a success, and Riad had to close its doors within a year. There were really too many factors to say why the shop failed. Now a failed bookseller, Riad gathered his very pregnant wife, packed their bags, and moved the whole family to Pakistan, a place he often mythologized. Why? Several reasons. For one, this is where his family was from. The S—’s of Islamabad. And Riad felt he could do some good in Pakistan, perhaps by returning to his career as an engineer. The decision was also one of faith. Riad, a practicing Muslim, wanted his unborn daughter to grow up in a country where she would be surrounded by other little Muslim children. And there was no shortage of those in Pakistan. As we all know, childhood can be such a cruel stint, and Riad felt it best that his daughter not grow up in a place consumed by fear. This was the age of fear, remember. Riad saw Pakistan as a second chance, a new way of life for his family, one where they could live comfortably numb. His wife could have a maid to help with the baby. And when the baby got older, she could attend a Muslim school with other little Muslims just like her. Life would be sweet in Pakistan.

And so the young couple moved to Islamabad, where the wife, we’ll call her Manal, did get her own maid. Riad was able to find work as an engineer, for the government. And the baby, born by a reputable doctor, was healthy and fat. And then there were three, plus the maid. But Riad had a weak spot. His empathy. After all his good fortune in his new country, he just wasn’t satisfied. Even as his boss at the government office, aware of Riad’s talents, showered him with promotion after promotion, would you believe that Riad still wanted more? Not more, I should say, but
less
. Riad longed to help the lesser off, the poor. Call it a hobby. We all have
those. There were plenty of corners in Pakistan for Riad to practice his new hobby. Which led him to travel outside of Islamabad, where the lesser off seemed to proliferate. He traveled to the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan and to the western towns bordering Afghanistan (a horrible place at the time, and even more horrible today, as I understand it).

What can be said? Riad had a soft spot for the poor. He was, in the classic sense of the term, a real “do‑gooder.” Eventually his empathy led him away from his career. He began to take more and more time off to travel to these impoverished areas, where he brought along, among other things, books. Literature. He still had a passion for books. He never gave up on them. (His words.) He frequented bookshops all over the country. Books were cheap in Pakistan, and he bought them in bulk, as he once had as a bookseller. Then he distributed the literature to these impoverished towns, where the people could barely write their own names. Though Riad claims never to have stepped foot in Afghanistan, his charity brought him into tribal-run areas in the north where the border between the two countries is somewhat blurry—where Riad may as well have stepped across the border. “What’s the difference?” his interrogators would say to him anyway.

And yet Riad wasn’t arrested in one of the poor districts or the dangerous tribal areas. Riad S—, of Birmingham, was in no way connected with weapons or jihad; in fact, he was promoting just the opposite—the word. Not just God’s word but poetry and literature—Islamic, sure, but also translations of English classics, like Charles Dickens. And he had help. Friends, translators, others involved in his cause. A whole caravan of book peddlers. No matter. You see, the man we perceive as a do‑gooder was to
others an antagonist. Throughout his travels he got on many people’s nerves. One such nerve belonged to a mullah who was up for reelection in some poor, shitty district. This mullah saw Riad as someone trying to undermine his campaign, administering foreign literature to eligible voters who couldn’t even read. The mullah had ties in the government, a cousin’s cousin or what have you, and it might have been as simple as placing a call, speaking Riad’s name into a receiver to so‑and‑so, who gave the name to so‑and‑so, and on up the chain of command. Well, what happened next wasn’t so pleasant, and it is the only part of Riad’s story that mirrors mine.

The knock on the door in the middle of the night.

So very much is in a name. Ralph Lifshitz and Donna Ivy Faske are nobodies, but Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan are gods. A name can bring happiness, fame, fortune, but it can also destroy you. Such was the case for my publicist, Ben Laden.

Ben was an architect of fame. He could build names into brands, and he operated with panache. He had everything to do with getting my own name exposure. Ben had been an established name himself in New York in the late nineties, representing all of the hot ethnic designers, mostly Asians. Doo Ri Chung, Derek Lam, Pho
⁽²⁾
, Yellow Bastard, and later Philip and Vivienne. But after 9/11 Ben felt the hurt, personally and professionally. His brother, Patrick Laden, a police officer twice decorated, was in the north tower when it fell. Then, without a minute’s notice, more than half of Ben’s clientele dropped out—most of the aforementioned, with the exception of Vivienne and Philip. All because of a name. When I finally worked up the courage to ring him, Ben was willing to take on even the smallest unknown designers. Though he would have taken me on Philip’s word alone.

We first met over dinner at Freeman’s. We were drunk by the time the appetizers were served. One Manhattan after the next, we talked about fashion, art, and all the latest gossip: which sellouts had an eyewear or fragrance deal in the works, who was
banging whom. By the time I dug into my pork chop it had gone cold. At the end of the night, out came the Macallan, and Ben couldn’t contain himself.

“Boy,” he started in, “you think I give a lick about what people think of me? Do I look like an Osama to you? I’m a gay Irishman from Queens. The youngest of four. Our name used to be McLaden, but my grandpappy dropped the Mc because he didn’t like being called Mac everywhere he went. In his day it was derogatory. He took an offense. This was at a time when an Irishman couldn’t get a cab in this city, let alone a decent job. My, how everything comes back around. So he changed the family name, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to change it back because some jihadi thinks himself Allah’s messenger. Disgrace my grandpappy? I’ve lived lies for most of my life, but when I came out to my parents in 1987, I said, ‘That’s it. No more.’ ” Ben took a swig. “Honest to God. That’s all we can be.”

“True that.”

“There isn’t a lot of loyalty in this business. Believe me, I’ve borne the brunt of it. But I’m a goddamn patriot first and foremost. I’ll be the first in line to wring al‑Qaeda around the neck. We’ll skip trial, verdict, what have you. And my brother, the hero…After all this, would you believe the FBI has been to my house? Do you know that I was detained trying to fly out of JFK. I missed London Fashion Week altogether. I never made it past check‑in. The clerk looked at me like I was putting him on. This is the age we’re living in. My job will be to shield you from all of this nonsense. The world as it is will not be your world. With me you won’t have to worry about a goddamn thing. Now where’s that rugged waiter? I’m running on empty.” Ben snapped his fingers and the waiter appeared.

“We’ll get the check,” I said, trying to inspire our exit. I didn’t want Ben to become any redder in the face. I’d soon learn that the scotch whiskey only came out when he talked about his namesake.

“Nonsense, we’ll have two more,” he told the waiter. He turned to me. “They made us wait forty-five minutes for a table, now they can wait on us forty-five minutes more. It’s an eye for an eye where I come from.”

“You come from Queens,” I said.

“I mean America, Boy. America.”

He was hungry like I was. His clients were still dropping out by the fistful, only he used that betrayal as fuel to salvage his reputation. He was a stand‑up, all-around, cutthroat guy’s guy. He had grit, guts, and gusto—the three Gs as he called them. His rough, leathery face had seen one too many hours in the tanning bed, and written in the lines around his eyes was the story of a man who wouldn’t be defeated.

Christ, Ben was born into this world just as we all are—with no say in his damned name. And he would help me make mine.

Philip opened his own boutique in the summer of 2003 at the intersection of Howard and Crosby—the crossroads of Chinatown and downtown chic. Opening Ceremony, Rogan, Chinese teashop, bad dim sum, and then Philip Tang 2.0. Philip had just been awarded best new designer in women’s wear by the CFDA, beating out Zac Posen, who came in second. They gave Philip one hundred thousand dollars for his promise. Me, a familiar face from Manila and a close personal friend, I got to share in Philip’s success. I spent the rest of that year helping him with his seminal fall/winter and spring ’04 collections. I sat front row at the shows with Ben, Vivienne, Rudy Cohn, and even Chloë. I was introduced
to editors and buyers alike as Ben toted me around on his arm like a trophy lay, displaying me throughout the tents in Bryant Park, the after parties at Hiro and Masquerade. It had been a year since my stroll down Forty-second Street had brought me face‑to‑face with menu man, my doppelgänger, in front of the Sovereign Diner. How it could have gone that way for me! I owe all I owe to myself, because I was not going to let it happen. I was not going to be a walking menu! And now I had Ben and a whole crew of important people who would shepherd me away from all that darkness.

I was also consistently working on my line in preparation for the (B)oy launch scheduled for the following winter. We were planning a small runway show for February during fashion week. Ben would make sure all of the right people showed, and after, depending on whether anything sold (which was unlikely for a first collection, even I knew that), I’d adapt whatever worked best into a line of knitwear that I could sell out of consignment shops. There was indeed a market for handmade clothing by new designers on a small scale. One couldn’t make a living off of it, but it was a way to get some notice. And if an editor was putting together a story on rising New York designers, particularly Brooklyn designers, Ben would make sure I got in.

Throughout the year Ahmed stopped by the studio intermittently to check in on his investment, or his “garden,” as he put it. “Look at all of these clothes! How our garden does grow! Didn’t I pin the tack on the camel’s ass? You and me together will take over the world!”