From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (7 page)

“Don’t mind Yuksel. He’ll be working in there while we have our breakfast.”

“Is there something wrong with his face?” I asked, in the politest tone I could muster.

“He’s just happy. Come, take a seat at the piano.”

Ahmed went to the kitchen area, where he prepared some coffee. His odor began to dissipate. I sat at the piano as directed, resisting the urge to press on the keys. Even while not being played they seemed to produce music with their silence. I pressed my foot down on one of the pedals and felt the piano’s drone.

“I play myself,” Ahmed said. “Mainly show tunes. Go ahead, try me. And I’ll tell you if I can play it.”

I decided I would humor him. “How about something from
West Side Story
?”

He stopped what he was doing suddenly, and his face turned rather serious. It frightened me.
“
Dare is a place fur’uzz,” he sang. “Anyplace fur’uzz
.
” His fingers lightly tapped the air.

It occurred to me that this didn’t prove he could play the song, or the piano. “Soomewheeeeerre. Soomehooooww.”

“Nicely done,” was all I could think to say.

“See, I told you I could play anything.”

“Indeed.”

Ahmed poured the coffee and brought it over to the piano.

“Boy,” he said, “since we’re going to be in business together, allow me the privilege of your full name.”

“I was named after my father, actually. Boyet Ruben Hernandez.”

“It already sounds famous! As I said last night, I have no doubts about the limits of your success. You’ll go far, my friend. Here’s to you.”

I raised my coffee, then took a sip.

“Now may I inquire—and forgive me if I’m being rude—where you are from. Wait, don’t tell me. This is a little game I like to play. I call it ‘country of origin,’ just like it says on the passports. I will start with your accent, or lack thereof. I detect a slight U.S. colonization in your speech. You’ve learned an American English, not British, from a very early age. Perhaps even simultaneously with your native tongue. Your English is nearly flawless, but there is a slip in the pronunciation of your Fs as Ps. Only sometimes. It’s your tell.”

I must say I was insulted. I took pride in how I’d been able to suppress my native tongue. Ahmed came closer, beckoned me to
stand, and began to size me up. “Then there is your height. You’re a petite one. A man-child. But you have a big spirit. An unnameable proudness without a hint of entitlement.” He latched on to both my arms and smoothed them over. “There are your hairless arms, and under your shirt, a chest bare like a woman. Your legs are smooth too, as if you just shaved in a warm bath moments ago.” I swallowed the bitter taste of Colombian bean. He leaned in closer to where I could feel the baked air of his nostrils. He examined my face from the front and then the profile and said, “No beard, a whisper of a mustache. I know your people well. No one can say ‘
puck
it’ with more brio than the
P
ilipinos. Am I right?”

I nodded, relieved as he let go of my arms. He patted me on the shoulders and returned to the kitchen.

“I spent a lot of time in your country in the early nineties. Manila and the southern provinces. It’s a wonderful republic. My business takes me all over, especially to countries in economic and political turmoil. I don’t have to tell you. Labor’s cheap and the resources are for the taking. Ninety-three was my best year. I made a million dollars in Malaysia. It was very hard to do at the time. A lot of people said it couldn’t happen. But I made my million. Ninety-four was not so good. I went through a painfully expensive divorce. It dampened much of the previous year’s successes.”

I should have stopped myself right there. I should have put down my coffee and excused myself. How could I have been so naive? For if I only knew then what I know now! That the U.S. Department of Defense does not take these things lightly. That an innocent conversation on origins could be used as sufficient evidence to be detained by the Department of Homeland Security, or as conclusive evidence of conspiring by DoD, depending on who
you ask. I should have inquired into
which
southern provinces Ahmed had spent time in and, more specifically, had he ever been to western Mindanao (immediate red alert). Everyone knows that’s where the Abu Sayyaf Group
²
(DoD-certified terrorists) rage jihad in an attempt to stake out an independent Islamic state in the middle of the Pacific. If only I had inquired, maybe I would have felt fear of this man, and I could have gotten the hell out. But I swear to you, I did not know then what I know now. According to the defense secretary’s schema, my situation in Ahmed’s living room resembled a known unknown—that is to say, I knew there were some things that I did not know, and that was okay by me, at the time. I saw no reason to pry into Ahmed’s business or past.

“Sheela took the business and the flat in London,” he continued. “She would have gotten custody of the kids too, but we never had any. It was better that way, for their sake. She had an incredible lawyer, a Jew. Israelson. They called him ‘the Shovel.’ I suspect she was balling him. I prepare the paninis now.”

I was distracted by Ahmed’s somber tone as he lamented over his marriage. He had me feeling sorry for him, and so I put aside any lingering suspicions. Instead, I turned my attention back to the piano, pressing the keys. What a simple man I was!

Ahmed shouted something from the kitchen that was hard to ignore. “Fucking Allah of prickdom! My hand! My fucking hand!”

“What happened?”

“I burned my fucking hand on the damned panini maker.”

Yuksel came running in from the other room with his head
down. “Hee,” he seethed. Ahmed shouted something at him in Arabic and Yuksel opened the freezer and brought out what looked like a frozen pork butt. Ahmed smacked it out of Yuksel’s hands. The quick devil ran to the bathroom, then emerged with some gauze and a rusty first-aid kit. Now I felt sorry for Yuksel too. Even in a situation where someone had been severely burned he was incapable of showing any emotion besides glee. He must hurt on the inside, I thought, but how could he show this to the rest of the world?

“Boy, my apologies. Why don’t you distract yourself while I bandage this inflammatory. Please, keep fiddling with the piano. Lunch will be ready in a moment. Perhaps when I am done nursing my hand I will play something for you, yes?”

Yuksel tended to the wound, applying ointment and wrapping Ahmed’s hand with gauze.

“Gently, stupid,” Ahmed instructed.

After Yuksel finished he was directed to the other room once more. I watched him pace back and forth from afar, muttering something under his breath. He had a damaged soul, I was almost sure of it. The memory of this reminds me of someone here in No Man’s Land, one of the other prisoners who gets his own cage, as I do, during rec hour. This rabid dog ambles to and fro in almost the exact same manner. He’s not quite right in the head and has been honored by the guards with a nickname of his own: Retard.

Despite the drama the panini burn had provoked, I found Ahmed’s sandwich to be quite satisfying, though I couldn’t help but notice that the panini contained a good deal of ham. What little I knew then of the Islamic community I had learned through television, watching the conflict between the Philippine army and the Islamic jihadists in the south unfold into mayhem. And so I
wasn’t too well versed in Muslim custom. I did know, however, that they prayed facing Mecca a couple of times a day, and that pork and booze were outlawed at some point in their history.

I watched Ahmed devour his panini. I looked back over to where the frozen pork butt had landed on the floor. Condensation was building on its plastic wrapping. My curiosity over Ahmed’s dietary practices became too much. I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I had to ask about the swine. “This is delicious, Ahmed. Is it ham?”

“Boar’s Head.”

“Mmm. Wonderful. Pardon my ignorance, but I thought as a Muslim you weren’t allowed any pork.”

“Ah, I know how I must appear. But Boy, please, don’t be fooled by my dress. I do not fear Allah. And as for the Qur’an, I can’t say that I’m much of a fan. This garb I am wearing is just my house gown. I’m no Muslim. Maybe once upon a time. Now I’m just a Canadian.”

I let the last bit float in the air. Even though I had never met an actual Canadian, it was all too obvious that Ahmed was lying. So obvious, in fact, that I thought he was testing me to see if I’d call his bluff. It’s hard to finger what I felt next, but I was suddenly compelled by something juvenile, and the only move that could put my unease at rest was to trap him in his own lie.

“What part of Canada did you say you were from?” I asked.

“I didn’t.” Ahmed’s mouth was full, so he politely covered it with his hand. “Why? Are you familiar with the area?”

“Me? No. I’ve never been to Canada. I don’t even have a proper winter coat.”

“You won’t need one. Layer. Layering is the key. I’m from a
little corner in Nova Scotia. A mountainous region where the sun stays up for six months at a time. At the end of this six months it goes down in a glorious sunset. Everyone comes out of their homes—huts and igloos, what have you—and we all watch it descend. It lasts for forty-five minutes or so. And then we have six months of night. Complete darkness. Crime goes up during this half of the year. Such is Canada.”

“Fascinating,” I quipped. “Doesn’t sound like Canada at all.”

“Rest assured. It is.”

After a while I took to his BO the way one gets used to the aroma of a New York subway car. We collected measurements. Aside from Ahmed’s bulbous gut, which was absolutely disgusting, he was actually in decent shape. I wrapped my tape around his body with haste. Arms, legs, inseam, chest, waist, neck. The figures began to shape the garment in my head. I envisioned the cut and color, then the inklings of a pattern.

Confident now in what I was doing, I stood behind Ahmed and spoke to him through the mirror that he had propped up against the piano. “I want the suit to be snug,” I said. “Cinched at the waist. That doesn’t mean tight. I want to retain the classical shape of the male torso but work with the contours of your body. I don’t want the suit to look too young. It should be distinguished. I want it to mold with your age. Not work against it. A lot of this will rely on the right pattern and color.”

“Yes, yes. I think that sounds wonderful. Go on.”

“I want to try one suit double-breasted. You’ll wear it with a wide tie. A suit for conducting business. Like you were saying last night. The second one will be completely different. Perhaps a one-button with a big opening. What do you think? You have a long
torso, so we’ll position the button a little higher than usual, above your navel.” I showed him where. “It’ll normalize your proportions and cover your stomach. You can wear it to a business meeting late in the day, and then go straight out for a fine dinner. It’ll be versatile. Chic yet easy and uncomplicated. After dinner you can take off the tie and go out for a drink. At the bar, a woman brushes her nails against your lapel. ‘Hard day?’ she says. And then she leans her head on your shoulder and whispers something seductive into your ear. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ ”

“Boy, this is why I picked you. I knew you knew more than you let on. How did I know? I’m no idiot. And even if I were, I would still see that before me stands a fashion genius. Eh? When I saw that beautiful gown up in your room, I thought to myself, a man who can design such a thing of beauty must know a thing or two about everything else in between.”

He then called over to his assistant in Arabic.

Yuksel reappeared with a white envelope. Inside was payment in full. Twenty-five hundred dollars in cash. Ahmed never handled money.

My memory fails me here. What I did with the rest of the day is one big blank. Funny how we can only remember certain things. It’s what my special agent calls selective significance.

An addendum to my earlier theory on memory, vis‑à‑vis thought thoughts. To recollect everything in one’s past is to hold oneself to an unreachable standard. It just can’t be done. The sponge that is the mind will gather details that are interesting, odd, pleasant, etc. A new experience will have all sorts of these attributes, and so the mind remembers them with or without a conscious host (the person). We may not be able to recall these
memories right away, as was the case in Spyro’s reflection on his incident with the rock from childhood. And we certainly can’t recall the darkest memories without meeting some sort of resistance, like trauma. It occurs to me now that in day‑to‑day existence events simply don’t have much significance, and therefore we forget the majority of our lives.

My special agent seems to understand all of this. He’s been very patient and accommodating.

Strange. I think in another life we could have been friends.

I don’t have to tell my special agent how suits are made. He’s a very well-dressed man, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned. During our first reservation he wore a single-breasted light wool suit, quite breathable during the month of June. Now that it is nearly August he’s switched into a light cotton summer affair. In the left breast pocket he keeps his silk hanky tastefully folded. The sleeves show just enough cuff. The jacket hemline rests perfectly at the top of his thighs. For a man of his size, proportions need to be balanced just right.

Back in 2002, I knew something about proportions. They were foremost in mind as I sketched out my ideas for Ahmed’s suits. The two designs I settled on were throwbacks to the sixties: thin lapels, snug sleeves, pants cuffed above the ankles. The double-breasted suit would be cut with a light gray wool in a plaid pattern. For the other, the black one-button, I would stitch Ahmed’s initials in gold onto the left breast pocket. It would be a little something extra for my new client, the defining touch of the jacket.