BODY Chapter 11

Walking is forgotten dancing.

Do you want to go to lunch with me? Jack asked Noor. She said yes.

Walking, in its usual shape, is prose and dancing is more poem than prose, more dwelling than telling a story that stretches. Walking stretches. It moves and while it moves it blurs the scene, the world, the things you pass. Nothing can be set in stone; nothing is stable and focused on, but rather you focus on the movement itself. Like time. Some walking however is like the flitting of a butterfly, a movement that seems to be an accident of the up currents of air and the fragility of the creature which seems to be at the mercy of the air, like those people who jump from cliffs and fly on human made wings in canyons. They have to move with whatever air they are given. But they do have a direction. Don’t be fooled. Even a butterfly can have a very secret purpose, even when it seems to have no apparent purpose at all. It can be a kind of traveling along the road with a sense of directionlessness in the overt attitude. But we know that nothing is ever without its purposes. No one moves without a purpose of some kind without a direction of some kind. There is not casual and unmotivated action. It is only hard to establish its reasons, to know why.

            So to make a walk into a dance is to transform what would otherwise be, well, pedestrian and practical and efficient. To make it feckless and reckless. It becomes a dwelling though it is disguised as motion in a certain direction, a kind of clever ruse. Jack knew this. Oh let me go for a walk with you, when in fact I want to dance with you. It is meant to be duplicitous or it has so often been a kind of deception that it has that power. And it calms everyone nerves. They will walk with you when it would be unheard of, it would be impossible, it would be a violation of all that is proper and correct—to dance.

            Jack could crisscross the slumbering dreaming city, which has many organs, and find in the potholes polka dotting the streets and the scaffolding wrapping the buildings some energy as well as a sense of anger and intimidation. He could see the expulsion of disgust from the smokestacks of the human factories that sleep in all of the bedrooms. He understood the trash of the streets. What threatened and what might be a victim. He had spent many hours deciphering who was whom and what was what, who was innocent and who was guilty. It was his obsession and his practice, a kind of walking meditation that consumed him.

He looked at her: Everyday I walk this way for hours in the city, always in a new direction. Well, not always a different direction, but it is a different walk everyday nevertheless, even if it is the same direction. I want to crisscross the city, to map it completely with my feet and my mind, and to see everything that you are not supposed to see … even the things that are in the side streets and the alleys. Jack was speaking to her. She was silent and nodding. It was akind of listening that was really a holding breath. But Jack continued inhis best formal toneif voice, the carefully designed to be thought safe voice: If I walk three hours a day at 3 ½ miles per hour, then it is easy to see that I do 10 and ½ miles a day … he looked at her and smiled … but for the sake of argument we will call it 10. That means I do 300 miles a month. Take off some days for laziness, illness, or forgetfulness. So let’s call it 250 miles a month. In 12 months that means I might do around 3000 miles of walking in the city and what has it gotten me? I use it as my meditation.

            Walking alone is like dancing alone. It can be liberating and at the same time seem a little pointless. There is no memory of it that moves outside of your own mind. The sidewalk makes no record of it. The sky makes no record of it. It is as if you were to walk and leave no mark on the earth. But when you are with someone, then it is a different story. It has connection and something is expected of you, something true must be there because it will be kept.

            Could I usher her into this corridor that moves around the city. Jack tried to make his navigation as seamless as possible. Then we can let this or that building tree or dockside be the backdrop as we walk? It will be a slow crawl. That was what they called them a crawl, the staggering between bars and pubs. Jack felt the absence of her hand. It was not in his. He used his fingertips to scratch his palms nervously. He knew that her hands would be in his eventually, but first the adventure of moving up third street across Market and then not stopping and she would not stop I thought that this was going to be the first demarcation, a dividing line in our relationship which I had already began to call it. 

Somehow we got to Bush Street and the gate to Chinatown and began moving toward Broadway up Grant. The muddle of shops were enough to cast a fog. It can be poisonous on ordinary days, when you are not well. Cities can be full of unchastity and infused with morphine and sodden by alcohol. When you are alone, it can be tuneless as the worst pornographic reality. Oh how music saves us by fooling us that we are not the squeaky and grunting flesh machines of desire. But this same walk can be a gauzy romance when you are with someone. Jack thought. I have found this to be true. I was lost but now I am found. I was blind but now I see. Everything changes when the faces change. It can be the same street and the same shops and the same weather and the same noise and the smells don’t forget the smells of Chinatown they saturate my skin, but not in the usual bad way, but in a good way.

A city is made of trash and flesh, more than it is made of stones or steel or stucco or pavement or bricks. Look, the tourist is finding his way by pointing his smart phone like a weapon in the air. He will never get lost. Somewhere above us satellites are flying and mapping our every desire or every move. What is the use of a city if you never get lost?

Can you see Nob Hill that looms above us as you look up California Street and there’s Grace Cathedral. Somehow without noticing we have crossed the imaginary line into North Beach, like lost tourists at the unmarked borders of Iran or North Korea. La Folie blurts out its warning to anyone who wants to enter the otherwise dark alleys where the Le Fleurs perfume of prostitutes is carried on the wind in broad daylight. Suddenly upon us ancient women and men blossoming, twist toward the sun like slow flowers bursting into Tai Chi on the lawns of Washington Square up Columbus Ave past Telegraph Hill on the Right and past Russian Hill on the left, then we turned at Bay to get back to the Embarcadero to wind our way back to South Beach and to South Park hours late.

            But Noor said No. I can’t. I have to be back by 2. So I unthought that journey and created the next one. It might take us to China Basin at first. Then I looked up 3^rd to where the Museum was going to be wrapped in a green net package and of course covered by scaffolds, and rebuilt with a white box for years pretty soon—a love letter to the future, but just another scaffolding for us, for the present; everything is being built; nothing is finished. I cannot find anything that is finished. It is better to go to where the streets were quieter and to wrap ourselves in the Bay shore line along the Embarcadero. Perhaps it would be blustery and the wind would cause my arm to wrap around her shoulder as if it were high school.

After getting lunch at the waffle cart, they moved up third to the Buena Vista Plaza across from the museum. The sun told a lie. It made the day seem warm and sunny, like summer, like it should be. But summer was betrayed by a piercing wind. The wind came roaring up third from off the Bay.  The wind would crash into Market street and swirl just enough to pick up the loose wrappers and the trash from the gutters all along Third. The couple walked in some kind of innocence or ignorance, not thinking about what was happening. without verbal conversation for three blocks. After the freeway passed over their heads, they moved thoughtlessly through the long and distressed blocks in the south of Market, populated by people who stood for no good reason on the sidewalks watching the stream of traffic. Some cars would stop and throw the rest of the street into a panic as the arteries became clogged in seconds and frustrated drivers did what they could to evade the blockages. It was midday and the busyness of the street was at it capacity. Then as they walked in a sheepish silence a truck suddenly pulled into a place reserved for buses. The truck was nothing special until it sounded its horn and Noor looked at it. She saw a man. He was staring at her with a kind of dead look. For an eternal second it was the man who was hunting for her. The sight made her suddenly grab Jack’s arm. The truck squealed as it pulled away from the curb. We need to get out of here! Noor said. Jack was puzzled but felt the urgency in her voice. He led her into the plaza off the street. They found a quiet place near the Metreon. What was that? Jack said. I need to tell you the truth. Noor sat for a while and thought about what she was going to say.

Do you know who Malala is? Noor asked him. They sat in the center of the Buena Vista Plaza in front of the wall where the fountain with the quote from Martin Luther King’s speech carved in stone.  Jack awkwardly ate a waffle with fruit on it, while she delicately held a crepe with Nutella balanced on her thin fingers, not trying to eat while she spoke. In reality she was too terrified to eat anything. Do you know who Malala is? She said again. He did not answer. Malala is a girl. She is 16, from Pakistan, from Swat. She was shot in the head by the Taliban while she rode on a bus to school. She wanted every girl to go to school in the Swat, near where my family comes from, where they used to live. She wanted all girls to go to school. Now Malala lives in England. She was in the hospital for a long timed. She was in critical condition for a long time. I can still see her injury in my sleep even though her head was always covered by a scarf in the pictures. I know what it means to be injured.

It was  … her injury … her bravery … She was an inspiration to me to think for myself. Half my age and she was my hero. I decided to make my life different, but I was already doing that. I had begun to act for myself, to wake up. Malala did it in a place of great danger. I had the advantages of education and of living in a free country, in Canada. I was a not a complete slave to the desires of others. But I was being treated like I was nothing. I was nothing but a servant working for someone else. It was sad because it was my family. I don’t think they knew any better. They were just caught in a bind to keep the money coming and to keep the business going. It did not matter that they could not pay me. My work … I was essential for the survival of the family. I had to decide to leave that. I could see that it would never end. I had to get away.

            I made a mistake. I believed a man who told me I could be free if I went with him. He enslaved me more. I had to get away from him and then my family would not take me back. They couldn’t. And it was not long that I came here. I have fallen into the same place, the same hole. Only this time it is just the unraveling of my life that has create the trap. My own   I am hunted. That is the truth. She looked directly into Jack’s eyes.  You are not safe. No one around me is safe. I am hunted and the hunter already found me in Vancouver. And now he will find me here.

I have tried to hide, to become invisible. Do you know? That is not what Malala would do. I know that. She would not become invisible she would stand up and say that she deserves to be free and to be safe and to be happy. Even if she is a woman and even if she is an immigrant and even if she is hunted. She should not be afraid. No one should be hunted.  You need to know these things if you are going to be around me. I will not put anyone in danger because I am in danger. I will only tell the truth to them. Do you understand?

I understand. Where do you want to go now? Jack said. I need to go back to my job. They began to go back in the direction of South Park.

Jack looked directly in front of him. I was in Afghanistan. I was there for two tours. I was stationed at the air base, Baghram. I was in trouble once and the Captain told me to walk the perimeter. That means I had to walk around the airbase sort of on guard duty with my backpack. But it was a punishment. It is miles and miles of walking and it is dangerous. I was inside the fence. I had to carry a weapon. It was not what I usually did. Usually I worked on computers and things like that. Well, I walked the perimeter and everything went okay for a long time. Then it got late and I was still a long way from the barracks. I was getting kind of cold. It can get really hot, then really cold in the country. I got cold. Then I saw someone in the dark, or maybe I heard him first then I saw something move. So I pointed my gun in the general direction of what I saw. It was dark and there were some bushes nearby so I thought well maybe it was some kind of animal. I wasn’t too scared. But I was looking really hard like I was trying to see through the leaves of the bush or something. I wanted to see what it was and I crouched down. Then a man came up to the fence. He was very casual, like he was only taking a walk. But it was forbidden for anyone to be in that area. I knew that. Still, I did not say anything. I just watched and he came to fence with a tool of some kind in his hands. I thought, Oh shit, he’s going to cut the wire on the fence and come through. And then I thought and he probably has a lot of friends with him. I am up shit creek. So I thought I had to get the out of there. But I was surprised because he came to the place on the fence that was closest to me and stood there looking in. It was strange. He had his fingers in the fence just staring. So I stood up and shot him.

            Jack stopped walking and looked at her for a long time. Noor also stopped. She was stunned. I need to ask you something. Jack finally said. I need to ask you because you are from that country. Did I do the right thing?

            Noor looked at him. I’m from Canada.

BODY Chapter 13.0

  Monday 6/17, 5:30am

Jack showed up very early long before Zazen was set to begin. He was uncertain if the Roshi would be there. But after his problem last week, it seemed likely that he would be careful to be on time. The gate to the back garden was open. He sat in the garden while the sun brightened the sky, looking at the sand, which was covered with leaves. The wind had been high enough last night to bring even small branches down on the sand from the neighboring yards, the one with the large oak or elm or whatever it was responsible for most of the trash. It was very old, maybe the oldest resident of the neighborhood, Jack thought. But it was dying. It was dumping branches that were already dried out and the rest of the branches, the ones that were still attached, stretched like deformed arms and evil magician fingers upward, dry, cracked, gray, and almost leafless.

            The night had been sleepless. Jack had tossed for a while then he had given up. It was Keiko’s advice. If you cannot go to sleep in fifteen minutes, She had said, then get up until you feel tired. Don’t fight it. He had taken the Trazodone. It didn’t help. He was going to take more but got scared of overdosing himself or something. So he just sat in the dark for a long time. It was the dinner. It had been a disaster. He did not know why he had gone. He should have known better. He knew it wasn’t time for this. He had just started stalking to Noor. Now to be where she lived was just too much. He knew it as soon as the door opened and he saw Noor’s face.

Maryam had invited him. When he arrived he could tell it was almost as if she had played a trick on her friends. She was punking them and Jack was the nasty trap they had fallen into.  Noor did not know what to say. She tried to be nice. Clearly, Maryam had not told Sameer either. He was pissed. That was all there was to it. He hardly said a word. He ate nothing, but just glared at Jack the whole time he was there.

            Maryam introduced him. This is Jack. He rides with us to work everyday. I think we should get to know each other better. I want you to meet Sameer, my distant cousin and our landlord. Sameer did not even look at him. The landlord remark seemed to be a dig at him. And you know Noor, our cook for this evening. Sameer was silent and so was Noor. So Maryam was forced to provide the commentary and the entertainment. She became a talk show host. So Jack? What do you do? Where were you born? What is your favorite color? Any silly question she could think of. Then they started to talk about movies. Have you seen the newest superman movie? Maryam asked. I don’t get to go to many movies. Jack said. So what was the last movie you saw? Maryam asked pointlessly. It was in school. I was taking a class in film. It was monster movie. It was class on Horror movies. I think the last one was a couple of mummy movies. The old one from the black and white days and then the one with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weitz. So what is that about? It is about, well, …  the curse of the mummy’s tomb where the scientists that dug up King Tut’s tomb are hunted down by the mummy who guards it and kills them. But they get away from the mummy by well confusing him: he thinks that Rachel Weitz is his queen or something. So she is able to save them by getting him mixed up. Something like that. I also saw the other one so I get the plots kind of mixed up.

But, if I may be so bold, Maryam became a kind of lecturer, in a sense it is the confusion of love that saves the mummy stealers. I did go to college myself, in spite of the fact that I cannot get a job other than cleaning up after other people’s shit. Maryam said. It sounds like a good movie. I did see the Brendan Fraser thing, but I did not really pay attention to what was happening. I was too busy with my date as I recall. Well, Maryam said after a pause. And how did you do in the class? I dropped out. Jack said. I dropped out in the last week because I could not write the final paper. Maryam added. Well, when I was in school, I did write all the papers and I cannot tell you what good that did me. But yes, you should finish school. I must say you are older than I thought a college student might usually be. Well, Jack said with trepidation and with a determination. I was in the Air Force for a few years. He looked at the group to see what impression they might get from this. Did you bomb people in Iraq? Sameer said with some edge to his voice. I did not go to Iraq. Jack said. I worked on computers at an air base, paperwork mostly. I was a clerk. Sameer did not follow up on this. Noor was too tense to say anything. Maryam said That’s enough of old times. We live where nothing from the past can be allowed to diddle with the present. We must be new creatures! Maryam announced this. We are the new creatures. She said. There rest of the evening seemed to drag on until Jack finally thought it was okay to leave. On his way out he apologized quietly to Noor for coming at all.

Chapter 13.1

Hi! David said with unusual brightness. He had been there all along. Jack was startled out of his skin. David propped open the wooden door to the Center. I saw you here. I was not sure you wanted to see me. You should have knocked. Jack then answered,I was thinking. Yes you were. David said with some kind of energy that did not seem to match the morning. The session does not start for another half hour; maybe we have twenty minutes before the first people arrive. George will be here pretty soon to rake the garden. Do you want to be left alone? No. Jack said rather quickly. Okay. Do you want to go inside and talk in the interview room. David looked at him. Then we won’t be disturbed. Maybe that’s best.

The interview room was the small bare room where the Roshi spoke with each devotee, often during Zazen, bringing in one person at a time, to give them some kind of personal encouragement, sometimes a koan, sometimes a short lecture on their process. It was a familiar place for Jack. He had been there many times. Usually the Roshi seemed to be a little perplexed at him. Jack always felt he was not succeeding at getting even the most basic things right, the breathing, the concentration, nothing seemed to go right for him. Roshi had tried many practices. Counting, visualizing the body of the Buddha, colors, objects. It was a personal search each person must make individually, with their own personality and their preferences, he said, to try to find the process, the motives, the things that would bring about this focus. The first goal however, Roshi always said, is he not to fight it. Don’t let distraction become the enemy. It is not that important. It does not deserve the status of a real. Jack was fighting it much harder than most. He was too angry about not getting it. Roshi told him often. You do not fight your distraction; you watch your distraction. It is not something you cast out. This is not an exorcism. It is a witnessing.

David sat in his usual place and waited for a long while. He thought that this impromptu meeting might be about him, about this failure. His weakness might have been damaging to Jack; he could see that. He was sorry about that. David was ready to talk about that or anything else. But he let the silence fill the room first. Then he began. I am sorry. David said with a directness, a matter of fact openness. I want to tell you that. You did not deserve to be a part of that mess. It was my mess. I am sorry that George brought you into it. I fell apart or I have been falling apart for a long time I guess and that was when it hit the hardest and all the wires got crossed. You were there. You did not have that responsibility and I am sorry. David took a deep breath to punctuate the statement and waited again.

Jack hardly looked up at him.  He was staring into his own lap. Then he looked at David with a clear-eyed stare: I killed someone. Jack waited along beat for any response but hearing nothing continued. I don’t know who it was. It was a man with a face. I killed him with a gun. He left large gaps between the words while he thought. But the message was delivered with a noticeable lack of overt emotion. It could even seem at times to be a puzzled tone. It was in war. I was maybe in danger, but maybe I was not. Probably I was not. I might have killed someone who was innocent, just in the wrong place.

David looked at him for a moment. He was thinking of the proper way to respond. It was not an ordinary moment when a Zen response some kind of pushing toward act and away from conception might be important. Was it time to say something that might rearrange his thinking? If you see the Buddha, kill him! David felt somewhat too exhausted to be incisive.  He spoke with a calm manner: I think that you see a counselor. Is that right? David asked. Yes. Sometimes. I missed a few sessions. But yes. Jack said. Well, maybe you should be talking with that person about this. David looked at him with intensity. He purposely did not look away or veer at all from the direct gaze. The room was silent for a full minute before Jack continued. I know. I know. But I wanted to tell you that I think I know why I am so confused and distracted and such a failure at this. I have not been honest with you—or with anyone. I don’t think I can escape from the clutches of this confusion. It dogs me. And I know that Buddhism is about non-violence and about compassion. You talk about compassion a lot. I think that I am guilty of something that makes it impossible for me to rise above this mess and to be whatever it is I am supposed to be. Jack breathed heavily glad to be done with this confession.

I think you misunderstand Zen Buddhism. You do know that it was closely attached to martial arts to war to the Samurai and to many of the arts of war. Archery and sword play. David felt more comfortable in this kind of words of wisdom from the Roshi mode. He thought all the time that what he was saying was kind of useless except that it broke the tension and filled the space. The room was heavy before and now it was light. It has to be said that Zen was born not far from blood. David said this with some sense of disgust. Well, compassion, Yes. The proper road to enlightenment begins with compassion. Yes. That is there in the beginning in the early manuals of Zen, though I think that it was expunged in some cases by the great saints of Zen, even Dogen himself. It was thought that Zen itself was getting bogged down in conceptions like peace and love or shall we call it harmlessness. Gandhiji’s Ahimsa. It was being poisoned by Indian philosophical obsessions. Things like that. The Chinese are pragmatists and the Japanese modeled their Zen on that kind of practical attitude free of the sticky emotions. Zen for many means indifference to these human paaions and obsessions, even love. For many Zen compassion only means that everyone needs to become equally detached. We care that everyone is suffering but we see no relief to that except to free them from their attachment to the things of this world—both good and bad. But maybe I am being unfair. Many of the practitioners are trying to make Zen differently and to modify the practice. It does change with the culture and with history and such things. But do not be deceived: This history of violence did not end hundreds of years ago. DT Suzuki himself our beloved Rinzai master and the voice of western Zen was deluded and dismissed the fascist violence of the Japanese militarists in the 1930’s. It is not easy to find a clear ethical code on Zen because of the confusion, the fear of being conceptual, theoretical, of making some absolutist statement. And this inherent relativism has made too many people very comfortable in Zen, especially in the West and especially in California, and they do not want to sacrifice that freedom from judgment to express horror at even the most egregious sins. There are no sins in some people’s Zen. There is only act or reflection and reflection is bad. The sword must be moved without thinking.

I thought you were going to tell me something else. You sound like you hate your religion. Jack said. No one should love religion. David answered. It is dangerous to love religion without a critical eye. If you do, you will be sucked into a trap. David looked at him. They say religion was invented to make bad people do good things. If we did not have religion, a guy named Weinberg said, if we did not have religion, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. And we think religion is supposed to make bad people do good things. But more often religion only succeeds in making good people do bad things. David smiled. I would not explore the logic of that quote too far, but it gets at the basic point. Zen is not to be trusted. A good Zen master would say that. If you practice Zen, it is not Zen. Any good Zen master would say that. And such a statement is not just an annoying, and strangely childish, paradox. It is the truth. Zen must itself be killed in order to be Zen.

Roshi, I need your help. Jack stopped him. I have this burden. It is making it impossible for me to move forward. I am stuck. I have met a woman that I care about and I think it is going to be an obstacle for that. The psych counselor is useless. The drugs are useless. And I had no belief that Zen meditation would help.in the first place. I was told to try. But Now I think it is a possible way out for me. I cannot get through the first door however.  I cannot even empty myself of these old memories, these things that haunt me. Jack paused then asked directly. But before I quit everything I need to know what you think. Should I quit?

David looked at him. You know the Zen answer would be that you have already stopped Zen. Or something like that. Maybe I should tell you again the story that the Buddha was hopelessly stalled for six years before he discovered the true path. You have been at this for a couple of years at most. But let me tell you a story. If the cart does not go fast enough do not beat the cart beat the ox. That was what Dogen said. Well, we do not believe in beating oxen anymore I hope. But he had a point. If your cart does not go fast enough, do you blame the cart or do you blame the horse? You are blaming the cart. You are saying my cart is too full of crap. But we are all dragging carts that are full of crap. You have to look elsewhere for the answer. You have to realize that if you ever get the cart moving, it will not be empty. Buddha left his family. I do not know who can do these things anymore and be free from the spectres. No matter how much you wish to throw everything and everyone overboard, it will never be truly empty, not in this lifetime. It will always be your cart with your burdens.

BODY Chapter 12

BODY Chapter 12

The prisons are full

Faiz himself sat

and watched the hours flow

away in rivers of blood,

his blood and the blood of others

who had voices but no names.

The prisons are full of empty heartshells

like the abandoned shells

of so many sea creatures

stranded in the sandstorms on a sea floor,

a civilization full of houses

without occupants

filling the prisons.

                                    S

Coriander is the old world name for cilantro, the name that has attachments to Ariadne and to the thread that pulled a hero from the tunnels and from the jaws of death. You can look it up. Noor studied the recipes of Mexico. She discovered that Cilantro was not from the new world but from the old world. It was brought by the conquerors. It became a signature that was on everything that the conquered ate since, like the signature on a death warrant or on a birth certificate. Some signatures we carry with us. Eventually, we do not even know who the names are meant to identify. They are the ancestors. But imagine an army of conquerors who invade a place and become the fathers because they are the rapists and the seducers and the masters who must be obeyed. They are the ones who create a new race who in their way think they are healing the wound when they are compounding the injuries. The sources and the fathers and mothers and at best the gods and at worst the devils who have expelled us as if we were their breaths their voices spitting us into the future. And we are here because of them and we don’t even know who they are. That is why we have to study. We have to know what sent us here and what our mission is.

Noor cooked Mexican and tried to speak in a reassuring way to Sameer. But he was inconsolable. It had been this way for a few weeks something had clicked in him. The world was intolerable. But she knew that he loved Mexican food. So she looked it up on line and treid to make the food that he liked. Of course when she made it  it was nothing like the food at Chipotles or at that other place he went to, the one with the bar. The food resembled food from Pakistan or Afghanistan by way of French Quebec. It was something the Mexican might not recognize. But she said only you see this is the way it was invented. Nor rattled on while she moved the beans and the rice onto the plates with a sandwich of bread folded around some thin slices of beef and yogurt dressing on the side. The Spanish brought this food and the spices to the new world then they were still dominated by Islam and still loved the food with its spices folded in pita bread and the Pastor, the Carnitas, it is the same kind of skewered beef in a kebab or that is sliced into the Giro. It is all the same and it was forgotten in Spain, in Spanish cooking or it was changed, but the food, the recipes were maybe adjusted but it was preserved, the connection to the Middle East was kept in the Mexican food. It is the same.

            Every Tuesday Noor prepared dinner for Sameer. It was in a way part of the rent. She and Maryam were living in  a room that was attached to Sameer’s house. His family had always been a resource for immigrants. Maryam was a cousin and Noor was her friend. Her lack of papers was a problem but if she kept a low profile it would be okay, Sameer thought. Anyway, it was unthinkable to say no.

            It was almost 7pm by the time everyone was in Noor’s tiny apartment. It would be better to do this in your apartment Sameer. It is too small here and your kitchen is much nicer. Besides you never use it. It is a waste of a good kitchen not to use it. Sameer just stared into space. He was messing with the cd player. This is a piece of crap! He said. Sorry, I can’t afford anything better. Maryam shouted from the bedroom. Just don’t break it. She said. She walked into eb living area a larger room that combined the living room with its sofa and TV and the kitchen divided by an island in the middle where the food was laid out. It was too small for a real dining table. There were four stools against the counter that faced the stove and counter where Noor was preparing he food. Suddenly Sameer switched off the modern Qawwali. music. Enough of that Sufi crap! Sameer said. Oh I see we are going to get a lecture on culture. Maryam said with extra sarcasm. I don’t mind. Noor said. You wouldn’t. Here’s your scarf. Maryam pushed the scarf onto her head while she wriggled free of it trying not to touch it with her hands. I have chili sauce allover my hands. Stop it! 

            Sameer looked at the two playing and he breathed heavily. Looking at Noor and Maryam made him feel powerful, and guilty at the same time. He was responsible for them in some way. They were his responsibility because he was their protector. If they were going to succeed it depended upon him. It was like a family matter. He was in a way a father and in a way he was a husband and a brother he could not sort it out. What is love what is lust what is brotherly what is the piety of faith and duty? All this and the tumultuousness of the days. The confusion of politics and war where the enemies were there in his own body fighting it out. This is what is right and what is wrong. He felt that these women, these girls really, were not seeing the real tragedy of the world, the real nightmare of it. They were playing like children playing house. He was feeling something very heavy that had fallen on him in the last few days and weeks. It felt to him like a grave responsibility to be the one who realized the depth of the conflict and who must therefore act to make things better. If he did not act he did not think he could bear the guilt.

            Noor sat down and looked at the food. To her it was a miracle of color and smells that she had somehow produced out of what seemed to her mostly imagination. She saw that Sameer was distracted and seemed uninterested in eating He was always distracted these days. Noor wanted to bring him back to his old self, which was almost the complete opposite. When she first met him he was alive with energy and with ambition. He was in a great job with a great car and loved to go around town to clubs. She went with him a few times, always with Maryam. She was concerned in those days that he might be attached to her that he might be interested in her for something more intimate and she wanted to avoid this at all costs. It was for her enough that she had to figure out how to make a living and to live in this precarious position of being a person without papers in a new city. To have her friend and her landlord of sorts become intimate would put everything at risk. That was how she saw it. That was what experience had taught her. Don’t shit where you live! That was what Maryam said about Sameer.

But for Noor no man was ever simply going to forget about the possibility of sex. It seemed to be the other great lesson she had learned in Quebec. She thought she was working for a man there who was safe, who was married already, who hd children and a life, and who was so completely out of her world that the relationship seemed to be, but for him evidently it was not. She rubbed the top of her index finger gently along the ridge of the scar on her cheek when she thought of him. It was the mark of what men might be thinking for her. It was the signature of that man. So she made no preconceptions about what Sameer might be thinking. And she walked that tightrope of being friendly and not being too friendly. It was painful but the price of having this kind of relationship. She needed him to be a good friend and good landlord. 

Things are piling up. Sameer said somewhat impulsively. Maryam took the opportunity to look secretively at Noor in a sidelong glance that seemed to be saying Look out. Don’t say a thing! She arched her eyebrows and her lips were very tense. Have you been thinking? It was a question that seemed to be coming from someplace very deep. Sameer seemed to be almost an injured animal, almost ready to cry. Maybe it started with the war in Syria or with the Boston bombing or with the troubles in Egypt. Somehow he had made it through a dozen years or war in Afghanistan and Iraq without breaking. All those years in middle school and high school with the abuse of being considered just another Muslim and maybe a terrorist, all the jokes and the poisonous silliness had made him dead to his culture and its past. He did what he had to and survived. In fact, he had become agnostic about politics and religion, getting through school and getting the job he dreamed about, getting in the on the bottom floor of a great new company, and becoming successful by his mid twenties. Now in his late twenties everything seemed to be coming apart.

Noor looked at Sameer and felt helpless. Maryam looked at him and felt angry: You are not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. You did not grow up in Dagostan or somewhere else in the backside of Asia. You grew up right here. You are not some kind of twisted kid who can’t remember where he grew up and who will lose it when he feels a little anger. I am angry everyday. But I am not like some idiot who thinks he can get revenge for something he cannot even describe. And in service to a bunch of morons who have mapped out a strategy where they take no chances and other people get killed including children. And Syria is the worst because, there, people are fighting with the same people they used to live with in their own neighborhoods because they are Shia or Sunni or something else. It is not about god. It is about who gets rich and who runs things. That’s what it is always about whether you are in Kabul or in San Francisco. So you are rich, so you should just be rich and be happy.

If it was just like that, then where would you be? You are here you, live in this house, because our people and our blood mean something more than that. It means family and … other things … and God. Sameer was getting a little mean. You and Noor would be out on the street if it was just about what made me rich or what made me happy.

Could we stop and eat? Noor tried to get the attention back on the food. Maryam sat down on a stool and started to wrangled some food onto her plate. It looks good, Noor. She said. Sameer stood a moment and looked at them. He took a deep breath. I am sorry. I was … I had a bad time at work today. He sat down and the rom was silent for a long while. They ate and everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing, about how to break what seemed to be a genuine conflict. It was not going to be resolved with platitudes thought Noor. It was going to require honesty and honesty is dangerous. More dangerous than anything. It was a dangerous time. She always felt most prickled most alive to the danger. It was her intuition about possible danger that kept her from disaster she thought. So it was now a crucial time for care. Sameer was for her like an unexploded bomb. He would need careful defusing.

When the knock came on the door, Maryam jumped up as if she had been expecting it. I forgot to tell you. I invited someone else to dinner tonight. She then looked back with a strangely mischievous expression. Then she opened the door and let Jack into the room. Hi. he said.