The General and the Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (30 page)

John put his hand on Jen’s shoulder. Their little urchin was ready to rumble, an old basket at her feet full of high dollar American electronics with a pile of torn rags on top. She was watching Kim and Abdullah and looked up at him. “Sam better not try that shit with me.”

He had to laugh at her. She was such a kick-ass warrior. “If I ever go into international problem solving on a regular basis, Jennifer, I want you to be my communications officer.”

“Okay,” she said, as if that had been understood all along. She shouldered the basket, walked over to Abdullah and Kim and tugged on Kim’s sleeve. “We need to go.”

Kim climbed off Abdullah’s lap, then he looked across the room at John. John nodded to him to go. Gabriel walked up, slung an arm around his shoulder. “You okay, boss?” John just shook his head and watched Kim walk out of the hotel, trying out a slinky female walk that was more Milan that Tunis, and adjusting his hijab. Gabriel reached down and kissed him. “It’s the worst thing in the world, isn’t it, watching somebody you love walk out the door and into danger? Sometimes, back in the day, I’d get this hollow feeling in my throat, watching you leave for missions when I couldn’t watch your back. You couldn’t even kiss me good-bye. It was like you were walking out the door with my heart in your pocket. I knew they wouldn’t tell me if something happened to you, but I figured I would know. My heart would start beating funny. Or maybe it would stop beating at all if your heart stopped.”

“If we could go together, that would be the best way, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do. In a helicopter, maybe. As long as the kids are okay.”

“What was it Cody Dial told us? Life just keeps getting harder. I don’t know why we expected anything else.”

“Never occurred to me we’d be turning over the baton to a boy who still likes to wear cherry lip gloss and a little girl with freckles on her nose. Couple of general’s kids, they’re probably comparing notes over who had it worse growing up! I need to call Juan tonight. I’m gonna set my watch for 0300.”

“I’ll get up with you. I want to check in with Billy. He’s been on his own a long time.”

Gabriel turned, gathered the rest of the crew up, and moved them to the table. John walked over to Abdullah. “You okay, kiddo? You aren’t looking too happy.”

He shrugged, ran his fingers up and down the strings of his cello. “It’s weird,” he said.

John pulled up a chair. “What’s weird?”

“It was like, when we first got back to Cambridge, after you and Gabriel rescued Father? I felt so out of place. I didn’t look right, I didn’t speak like the other kids, I hated the snow and the cold. I kept thinking, if I could only get back home, I would feel right. Then I went to New York for school, and the planes and shit, and next thing you know, my face looks like the faces on the wanted posters. It got so I was afraid to leave the dorm. I just kept thinking, this isn’t my place, I don’t belong here. I love San Francisco, though. I’m happy there, but I had this idea in the back of my mind that home was still Kuwait, Al-Jahra. And then when I got here? I mean, I know it’s not the same. But the men are speaking Arabic on the streets, and everybody’s smoking, and the women look at the ground when I walk by, and I’m a stranger here. I mean, really a stranger. I don’t belong here, I don’t belong there, where do I belong?”

John watched his beautiful face, the glossy black hair and beautiful dark eyes. Abdullah had a smile as wide as the sky, though John had not seen it nearly enough in the last week. “You belong in America, kiddo, or anywhere else in the world you want to plant your flag. You belong in your father’s house and you belong in my house. Maybe even wild San Francisco. You might belong in Kim’s garage, though it makes my stomach knot up to say that.”

“You don’t mind? About me and Kim?”

“No, of course not. Though you both seem very young to me. Very, very young. I’m having a hard time remembering you’re grown up. I want to sit you down and give you a serious talk about something, I don’t even know what.”

“Yeah, I know. I can tell.” Now he got to see that beautiful smile. “I promise… I was going to promise I would take care of him forever and protect him, but maybe I better not. He doesn’t want to be taken care of, and nobody can protect him from himself.”

“He wants to be loved, I think.”

“So do I. I can promise to love him, now and forever. I don’t know if I can live with him, not if he keeps throwing on hijabs and running out into the streets like some….”

“You look so much like your father, Abdullah, when he was your age. I was twenty-one, I think, when I first met him. Maybe twenty. I had a massive crush on him, did you know?”

Abdullah held up both hands. “TMI, Uncle John! Don’t even go there.”

John laughed and got up from the chair. “I’m ready for another concert. You are a world-class talent, Abdullah. Have I told you that today? That you are a musical genius?”

“Yes, Uncle John, thank you. And it means a lot to me, even though your favorite music is the Ultimate Barry White Collection. I just tell myself that you are uneducated and I have plenty of time to train you.”

“Well, I’ll be looking forward to that. Don’t play so long you miss dinner.”

He bent over the cello, drew the bow across the strings.

The traditional Tunisian dinner Mr. Aziz’s staff prepared for them was a beautiful spread, rich and spicy with the scents of grilled peppers and garlic and tomatoes, bowls of couscous and eggs and grilled lamb. John was happy to see a dish with scrambled eggs, since he was very sure he would not be able to eat more than a couple of spoonfuls until Kim and Jen were safely back in the hotel.

Abdullah’s music was rich and sorrowful, with an Eastern sound John was not familiar with. Mr. Aziz stood just inside the door, listening to him. John walked over to join him.

“He is extraordinary, isn’t he?”

Mr. Aziz nodded. “It sounds like the music of the Bedu, the music of the caravans.”

Abdullah finished the piece, put his bow down and rose. Eli pulled out the chair next to him at the dinner table. “That was brutal, man. Like Ancient Carthage set to music. Did you write that?”

Abdullah nodded.

Daniel passed him a plate. “That was fucking brilliant, Abdullah.”

“It was like, I could hear the elephants. I could hear the chains around the ankles of the slaves. Is that wild, or what? It’s like you made the whole deal come to life.” Eli passed him a bowl. “Couscous with peppers and onions. So how do you do that? Write music like that out of the blue?”

Abdullah piled his plate with food. “I think of a situation, the people, what’s happening, how everybody feels. And the music, that’s the sound of the emotions, the way everybody’s feeling.”

“What was the situation for that music you just played?”

“You know what happened to Hannibal in the end?”

“You mean when he died?”

“Yeah. That was the music when the troops were closing in. He was betrayed to the Romans, and he killed himself before they could take him. Poison.”

“Brutal,” Daniel said again. “But beautiful.”

“It was a good death,” Eli said, and Daniel nodded his agreement.

“Hannibal was the most brilliant military strategist,” John said. “A wild and original thinker.”

“That’s what you say about Kim,” Abdullah said, and John closed his eyes. “He’s got a wild and original mind.”

“Yes. Yes, he does.”

Sam had his chin in his fist. He’d been staring at the wall after eating two platefuls of Tunisian food. “I think it looks good short,” he said. He looked around, realized the entire table was staring at him. “Jen’s hair,” he said. “It looks good.” Gabriel bit down on his lip, put a strong hand on Sam’s shoulder for comfort and solidarity.

Back upstairs in the suite the boys draped themselves over the hated couch. Abdullah was in the middle, his arms spread along the top and his head back, eyes closed. Daniel was on the end, sitting sideways, his head on a bolster and his bare feet on Abdullah’s thigh. Eli was upside down, his head on the leather polka dot of an ottoman and his feet propped up along the back. Three black-headed boys, sitting on a couch, and they looked like a piece of Middle-Eastern performance art. “I can’t believe Kim isn’t here with his camera,” John said. “I’d take a picture myself, but I don’t even know how to turn that thing on.”

He looked at the book Eli was reading. It was Volume One of an English translation of Ibn Battuta’s
Rihla
. He had a copy of a book on his lap called
The Adventures of Ibn Battuta
by Ross Dunn. “Kim brought these with him,” Eli said. “This is so wild. Can you believe this guy?”

“In that YouTube video about the Elephant Clock they used the words from the
Rihla
to narrate the pictures,” John said.

“That’s what made me want to read about him.”

Daniel was scrolling down through photos of his pretty Jemma on his phone. “Hannibal’s always like this. Has been since Ranger training. He gets some ancient bee in his bonnet, and next thing you know, he’s sleeping with twelve dusty paperbacks.”

John sat down next to Eli, and the boy put the book down on his chest. “What are you planning to do when we get home?”

“I’m going back to work,” Daniel said. “I got diapers to buy. But I’m gonna take a couple of weeks off, go see my babies.”

Eli looked at him, then back at John. John watched his face, the indecision. “Have you guys been together since Ranger school?”

“Since Basic,” Daniel said. “Hannibal only came out to Algeria because he didn’t want me to go alone. I know you don’t want to go back, dickhead. You can tell me. I’m not gonna freak.”

“That wasn’t the only reason I came.”

“I know. But just so you know, I think you need to make an alternate plan.”

“Yeah?” Eli was frowning now. “Why’s that?”

John put his hand on the book sitting on the boy’s chest. “Have you thought about school? What would you study if you could go back to school?”

Eli’s face shaded bright red. “Okay, this is gonna sound wild, but Islam is really so cool, you know? Real Islam, I mean, not the local jihad bullshit. The history of the Islamic world. The travelers, the crazy inventors, the architects and artists and shit. Holy shit, camel caravans through the Sahara! Can you believe that? That’s what I want to study.” They all stared at him, speechless, and he continued. “And I want to learn Arabic.”

John had a glimpse just for a moment, young Hannibal Green in his Boy Scout uniform, his nose buried in an old copy of
Lands and Peoples
. “You want to come back with us? I live right next to the university. UNM in Albuquerque.” He watched Eli’s grin light up the room like the sun, and then he remembered Gabriel whispering in his ear, when John had just told Abdullah he could move in with them, that he was going to build a barracks in the back yard if John offered a berth to one more lost boy. He looked around the room.

Gabriel walked over to the couch, slid his warm hand down the back of John’s neck and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Come back to Albuquerque with us, Eli. General Mitchel will hound you into the grave if you don’t get your degree.”

Daniel looked up at them. “Did he make you go to law school?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “That was my mother and my wife. The general made me get my undergraduate degree in history. I just wanted to know what he was talking about, because half the time I couldn’t keep up, you know? And I couldn’t find a college degree in badass helicopter flying.”

Eli and Daniel looked up at this. Daniel said, “You have a wife?”

Gabriel rubbed his chin. “I had a wife. We’re getting a divorce.”

“I thought you and General Mitchel have been together like forever.”

“We have been. Not always in the light, though. It used to be you couldn’t be in the army and be gay. We had to hide it.”

“Because of DADT?”

Gabriel shook his head. “It used to be illegal. Like against the law, and we would have been arrested and court martialed and thrown into jail. DADT was supposed to be us being free to be ourselves. But it turned into a different kind of jail.”

Eli fell back down on the couch. “That is as stupid as getting thrown in jail for holding a picture of the elephant clock.”

Daniel wasn’t ready to let it go, though. “So you got married? How come?”

Gabriel looked at John a moment, his face full of regret. “I wanted a family, kids. I wanted to have a real life. I thought that’s what I had to do, what I was supposed to do. Now I think I was just impatient. But I have the most amazing kids in the world.”

“So your wife, is she pissed off?”

Gabriel sighed, his hands on his hips. “Yes. Very pissed off. And my kids are mad at me and confused at the whole thing. But it’s more than that. We’re all a little heartbroken, you know? That we’re not going to be a family anymore. Because I loved being the daddy. I loved taking care of everybody. And they all want to know why that isn’t good enough. Why loving them, taking care of them, wasn’t enough. But it got so I was walking into the house and looking around for a man who was living across town, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore, the loneliness, trying to live without him.”

“Wow. That’s intense. What are you gonna do?”

Gabriel looked at Daniel, then he looked at John and smiled, his dark eyes wild and beautiful and deep as forever. “There comes a time, you have to stop running, stop pretending, and just be the man you were meant to be. It doesn’t matter what it costs, because to not be that man, that’ll cost you your soul. What am I going to do? I’m going to love him until the stars fall out of the sky.”