Page 92 of Whisper

June 19, 2002

The sound of rain, of water dripping from the faucet, the toilet bowl filling after a flush, flashed David back to Thailand, every time.

He hadn’t seen it happen. Hadn’t seen Zahawi be smothered with the water, drowned, until Kris had interrupted and brought him back to life. But his mind could fill in the gaps, rewind reality and paint too-vivid pictures, working backward from the moment he’d appeared in the cell door.

Untethered, his mind worked overtime, building images from his memories, dredging through his soul for the raw material. He’d been through SERE school where Dennis had studied, had based his interrogation techniques on. He’d been mock interrogated, forced to sit nude while someone tried to crack him. It had been a game, an endurance test. He’d known there was an end, a point at which it would all evaporate. It hadn’t ever been real.

He’dneverthought of his father.

His memories fractured, a broken kaleidoscope, or the carved wood fractals of his childhood mosque, honeycomb filigrees of bursting sunlight, a million tiny rays. His father’s face, smiling at him after prayers, reaching for him, rubbing his head. His father’s face on a naked, piss-covered body, drowned in a puddle on a dirt floor.

He’d never put his father back into his life. Not in twenty-one years, not since leaving Libya, leaving Africa, and washing the sand and the sun and the memories away. He’d left it all behind, his history, his name, his religion.Everything. He couldn’t be an Arab in America, certainly not a Libyan, not when they’d arrived. Pan Am exploding over Lockerbie had still been fresh for most people, as was President Reagan calling Qaddafi the most dangerous man in the world.

Never mind that David and his mother agreed. Never mind that the worst victims of Qaddafi were the Libyan people.

To be Libyan in the nineties was to be the enemy. He’d seen it on TV, in the movies,everywhere.

He’d buried it all, fragmented the memories until they were grains of sand, blown to the corners of his soul.

September 11 had brought the world to a standstill, had shaken the foundations of the globe, and everything he’d buried had come uprooted. He’d worked sohardto become American, but in amoment, one morning, he’d turned right back into a dirty Arab, someone dangerous, someone suspicious, the epitome of theOtherin so many people’s eyes.

Collective blame was heaped on his and every other Muslim’s shoulders, the hatred of the Western world heaped on a billion people for the actions of nineteen men and the hatred of their small cult.

How could al-Qaeda undo the world so completely? Poison the minds of so many? Tarnish a people, and a faith, so entirely? How had their pain led them to dream about death, crave annihilation? Men like Bin Laden, like Qaddafi, like Zahawi and his best friend, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they ruined the world foreveryone.

And were ruining David’s world, spinning it around like a Ferris wheel that wouldn’t stop.

Kris had pulled him out of Thailand, pouring him into the jeep with Agent Naveen in the middle of the rain. He’d still been unbalanced then, still fighting to keep the past and the present right in his mind.

Ryan and Dan hadn’t come back with them. He’d thought they would. But Kris had said, when he got into the jeep, “Dan promised he’d watch them. He’s going to take over the intel analysis. Ryan… He’s taking over the facility.”

They’d shared a long look at that. Ryan, in charge of the detention facility, overseeing Zahawi’s interrogation.

Six hours through the rain, and they were back in the city. He and Kris had spent a full day in a rundown motel, turning off their cell phones and their satellite phones and making love until they couldn’t breathe, until they couldn’t think, couldn’t hear the rain turning to water being poured over a black hooded face. When he’d wanted to sleep, he’d rolled Kris over, slid into him again. When he couldn’t breathe, when the memories were too strong, he’d kissed Kris until Kris had breathed for him.

Twelve hours later, they were back in Pakistan.

He was sent to the streets, back to Islamabad and Peshawar, back to being undercover in the teeming masses. Pashto, Urdu, and Arabic washed over him. The sun, a physical burn, blasted him from above. He tasted dust and sweat, and walked between streets, between alleys, into and out of markets. Overhead, sunlight split into streamers between swaying bands of fabric stretched across alleys and market stalls. He moved from shadow to shadow, watching and waiting.

Living. Listening to the people around him speak of Allah every other sentence. Hearing the muezzins call the city to prayer, over and over again. Mothers and sisters moved around him. Fathers and brothers called to one another. Soccer balls rustled in the dirt. Tea and cinnamon floated on the air, above the sewage and the manure.

Pakistan, on the surface, wasn’t anywhere close to Libya. People pressed in on him from every side. Pakistan was full, crowded with humanity, whereas Libya was spacious, more sand and sun than people. Empty stretches of the desert concealed Libya’s secrets. In Pakistan, there were no secrets, only gossip and scandal waiting for the right moment.

But it was a Muslim nation, with the rhythms of Islam embedded in its bones, in its blood, and old men walked the street with their slow, careful gaits, watching the sky and waiting for the time to pray.

If his father had lived, would he look like this man, or that man?

He stayed out of the US Embassy from before the sun rose to after it set. He returned late, after driving for hours, shaking any tails he might have picked up, and blending into the obscurity of the millions and millions of other Muslim men.

Time was no longer linear. The past lived in his present, extruding from his pores, his lungs, his eyeballs. He was saturated in memory, in time, drowning in it. At the wrong moment, he’d hear a note, the lilt of Arabic, a portion of theazan, and be back in his childhood. Catch a glimpse of the sun burning the sky to the color of an overripe orange, the look in a stranger’s eye, or the skyward gaze of a man in prayer.

He saw his father in the face of every old man.

He had tostop. Focus. His mind was like a broken sieve, leaking everywhere.

Kris spent a lot of time with George, especially in the evenings, when they were in meetings with Langley and Washington DC. He needed Kris, his lighthouse, his anchor. He was drifting out to sea without him.

David tried to get back in tempo with his team. Since Afghanistan, since he’d splintered off and stayed by Kris’s side, a gulf had emerged between them. His team had been his family, his brothers-in-arms, even despite their wildness, the bloodlust that had seized Jackson and the others, and the way their colonel in Germany had talked about killingthose fucking Muslims. They were his family, as screwed up as some of them were.