Page 256 of Whisper

“Can you go to Gmail? I need to check something.”

Kris pulled up the internet browser and typed in the email address and login information Dawood recited.

A single email waited in the inbox.

Re: Confessions, sent by Behroze Haddad.

“Is that your son? The boy you adopted?”

Dawood nodded. He swallowed hard. “I told him everything the night before I met Dan. Who I really was. How I came to the mountain. He was just a child when I arrived. I was the stranger who showed up and became the healer, and then the imam. I stitched his arm closed twice, cleaned and bandaged so many of his cuts and bruises. He was the only one of his family to survive.”

“Where is he now?”

“I sent him to Islamabad to study to be an imam. I made him swear he would never pick up a weapon, never follow the path of violence.” Dawood exhaled shakily. “I told him about you, too. About my husband.”

Kris blinked. “I wonder what he’s said.”

“Read it to me?”

Kris clicked on the email. He started to read, but his voice choked and he stopped, unable to continue. Tears blurred his vision. He held the phone for Dawood to read.

Baba,

I am filled with a thousand questions.

I knew you always had secrets. When we were kids, sometimes we would make up stories about where you came from. Since you always stared at the moon, I told everyone you were from there and had fallen to earth, and you were trying to climb the mountains to get back home.

I think, in the end, I was the closest in our guesses.

You have always told me my jihad is of the heart. That my challenge, my entire life, will be to love unconditionally. To love like the Prophet, peace be upon him, when all I want to do is rage. Be angry, or hate.

I thought I was angry and struggling when you left me in Islamabad. I kept to my studies, and I’ve tried to follow your teachings: my jihad is of the heart. I should alwayslove.

You did not tell me that, in time, answers would arrive. That I would understand one day why I have loved as hard as I have, even through the pain, the anger. Why still, to this day, you remain a fixed point in my heart, a man and a memory I constantly turn to for guidance. Your absence has been a wound that I have not been able to close, Baba.

I want to know more about who you are.

And I want to know Kris, too.

Teach me, Baba. I have so much more to learn.

You said you may never respond to my email if the worst were to happen. If you are reading this, know that I have prayed for you every day since you sent your email, and I will continue to pray for you every day going forward. Your name will always be on my lips for Allah.

You have my love, Baba. Always.

Behroze Haddad

Dawood turned into Kris’s neck and wept.

Chapter 37

McLean, Virginia

September 23

They walked hand in hand down the soft trails of Pimmit Run Stream Park. The leaves were turning, gold and ocher and tawny umber, rust and cardinal floating above them, beneath them on the damp earth of the park. A stream trickled through the center, babbling over stone and fallen logs.

“What will happen to your brothers in Yemen?”