Page 115 of Whisper

His cell phone, lying next to his head, buzzed. Every soldier whirled, pointing weapons at him and at the phone.

“It’s a CIA officer calling,” he said slowly. “Please answer it.”

“Shut the fuck up!” The sergeant gave him a love tap with the butt of his rifle, slamming the stock against his cheek. His face ricocheted off the ground, gritty sand coating his mouth, his nose, his eyes. He tasted blood. “You want us to pick up the phone and blow ourselves up?”

Another soldier had disappeared back to the Humvee with his credentials. David saw him on the radio, frantically gesturing to David and then to the creds, lying on the passenger seat. After a moment, he jogged back to the sergeant and whispered in his ear.

“You fucking wait right there,” the sergeant spat at David. “Fall back,” he grunted to his men. “Keep eyes on him.”

Nine minutes passed as David tasted his blood and smelled the fetid fumes of Baghdad’s streets. Felt the dirt and the filth seep into his body. Felt the hatred of the American soldiers burn into him, and felt the weight of their half-squeezed rifles pointed at his head. Never, in his whole life, from Afghanistan to Somalia to escaping Libya, had he felt closer to death.

He breathed in and out, keeping his eyes closed.Kris. You will come. You’ll always come. I didn’t answer your call. You won’t ignore that. You’ll come for me.

Another voice rose inside him, a voice he recognized, and yet did not. It sounded like his father, but not. Like the voices of a thousand old men and old women combined, like wisdom and experience and age. Like humanity, but more than humanity.

Call on me, and I will answer you.

His breath faltered. His gasp blew a puff of dust from the street. Sand collected on his bloody lips.

If Allah should aid you, no one can overcome you.

Years.It had been years and years since he’d prayed. The last time he had was before flying out of Egypt, before heading to America. He could barely mumble through the tears, then. He’d never had to pray without his father beside him.

In America, his mother turned deeper into her faith while David spun out into the waters of MTV and football and his first fumblings with another boy.

Allah, he whispered. How did he even begin? What did he even say? What did you say to someone you had ignored for decades? Had turned your back on? What did you say to your God who had let your father be taken and killed?

Tears burned through him following a burst of rage, white-hot agony at the memory. The afternoon when the men had come, had dragged his father out of their house. His mother, sobbing, trying to plead with them. The Mukhabarat had backhanded her, pushed her down. His father had tried to break free, tried to run back. He was like an animal, desperate to get to his wife, to get back to his home.

“Dawood!” He’d screamed. “Dawood!La hawla wala quwwata illa billah!”There is no power nor strength save in Allah.

The Mukhabarat had punched him, knocked him down again.

A week before, his family had celebrated David’s tenth birthday. His father had given him prayer beads and a djellaba, a mini replica of his father’s, to wear to the mosque. He’d loved it, had worn it night and day, trying to look like his father. All he wanted, when he was nine years old, was to be the perfect replica of his father when he grew up.

“Dawood…” His father had locked his gaze on him, lying on the sandy ground, blood splattering his white djellaba. “Habibi…”

Those were his father’s last words to him. The men, the Mukhabarat, had grabbed him and shoved him in their car, driven away.

He had become his father, beaten and bloody in the street, put on the ground by another man.

“What the fuck!” Kris’s shrill screech, his outrage, shredded the memory. David’s eyes flew open. He was still on the street, still cheek-down in the blood and the sand.

But not in Libya. In Iraq.

And Kris had come for him.

“Put yourfuckingrifles down,” Kris shrieked. “Put them fucking down, now!” He held his ID in front of him like an indictment, like a warrant for the soldiers’ souls. A proclamation, declaring they had done fucked up. “He’s fucking CIA, you assholes!”

One of the soldiers, a young private, helped David stand. The kid was maybe eighteen. Maybe younger. He had baby fat in his cheeks and pimples on his nose. When David looked like that, he’d been at football practice, watching the track team in their running shorts. He’d gone to high school dances. He hadn’t held a rifle.

“Sorry,” the kid mumbled. He wouldn’t look at David.

Kris appeared at his side, his hands everywhere, putting David’s clothes back to rights, running over his skin, holding his face.

“You fucking assholes hit him,” Kris snarled. “What the fuck!”

“We’re on high alert,” the sergeant growled. “You know that. You put it out.”