most backward portion of this battered land. Everyone knew they represented a permanent residency in the United States. A first step toward U.S. citizenship. The liberty to come and go without restriction or fear. The freedom to take any job, go anywhere, live a life without bombs and terror and nights concealing deadly shadows.
“Of course we want them,” Sameh heard himself say. Though the words squeezed his heart until he could not take a breath.
Miriam responded in English, “You would do this thing? Leave Iraq?”
“For Leyla? For Bisan? For you? How could I not?”
It was Bisan, his jewel and joy, who said, “Can you live with this, Uncle?”
“No,” Leyla said. “He could not.”
Miriam went on, “Abandon your work for justice? Give up on finding these four missing people? Sacrifice their chance of survival? It would kill you, my husband.”
The silence was a fabric of love and sorrow that knit them together. Sameh breathed deeply, taking it in. These women held him in such esteem, they would give up a hope so intense none had ever spoken the words. Because of him.
Marc said, “We’re not sacrificing anyone.”
All eyes turned his way.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You said it yourself,” Miriam said. “They will attack you just as they would Sameh.”
“This threat is real,” Leyla said. “I feel it in my bones.”
Marc took his time responding. He ran his hands along the damask tablecloth, smoothing the crease between his plate and the table’s edge. “Maybe this is why God hasn’t spoken to me when I’ve asked him what I should be doing with my life.”
“No,” Leyla said, shaking her head. “No.”
“I know I’m not the same man I was before my wife died. Some days, it pretty much feels like I’m just treading water. Counting out hours that don’t mean anything.” He stroked the tablecloth with a steady cadence. “You four should go to America. Start your new lives. I will continue here-”
“No,” Sameh echoed.
“Major Lahm hasn’t been threatened. He could be my connection-”
“No,” Miriam added her own response. “How could we do this thing and live with ourselves?”
Marc looked at her. Even from this angle, Sameh knew the young man’s gaze carried an ancient’s grief. “Think of Bisan. Give her a future. Go. Let me…”
Bisan slipped from her chair and walked around the table. When she stood beside Marc, she was tall enough to look him in the eye. She spoke scarcely above a whisper, “No.”
Sameh thought of all Bisan had endured, of the father who went out and never returned. Of the friends she had lost. The families destroyed or banished to a multitude of lands. He saw all this in the young one’s face, and found his throat had become so tight he could not speak.
Miriam asked, “What if God has not spoken to you because he does not need to?”
Marc stared from one woman to the next.
Leyla nodded slowly in agreement. “What if you are already doing his will? Here, in this room, with us?”
Marc breathed in, but said nothing. Sameh understood all too well. These women held a force strong enough to silence him.
Miriam went on, “God does not want you to sacrifice yourself. God wants you to live.”
Sameh forced himself to ask the question for them all, his voice hoarse with emotion. “What of the missing four?”
Leyla said, “They are in God’s hands.”
Miriam nodded slowly, her eyes on Marc. “Just like us.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
M arc insisted on taking a taxi back to his hotel. It was late, he said, and everyone was tired. To Sameh’s surprise, Miriam agreed. There was a regular taxi service owned by a neighbor, and they entrusted even Bisan to his drivers. They made arrangements to meet Marc for another morning prayer service at the church. They said their farewells, finished cleaning up after dinner, and went to bed.
Sameh lay next to his wife, listening to Bisan softly sing in the next room. When the child had been five, she announced she would like to sing her mother to sleep. Even though Bisan was the one in bed and her mother was seated beside her. The child had seen how her mother needed comforting. Bisan still continued the practice, often falling asleep in the middle of a song. Tonight, before Sameh drifted away, he dreaded the night when Bisan was not there to heal his heart with her song.
After the service the next morning, Sameh took them all to breakfast at a nearby shopping center. It had been bombed and rebuilt and recently reopened. The restaurant included a shaded veranda on the mall’s top floor. They looked down on rooftops and minarets and the green fronds of palm trees. A faint scent of eucalyptus wafted upward through the traffic fumes. A wall fountain played the music of water. The chatter from surrounding tables was subdued and the laughter comforting. There were such havens popping up all over Baghdad, places where it was possible to momentarily forget the danger and the din waiting beyond the barriers.
They were supposed to be at the hospital in two hours, to begin the formal process of rejoining the families with their children. Sameh had intended to use the breakfast to describe for Marc what had happened with Hassan the previous day. See if this uncommonly perceptive American could shed light on the confusion and the unwoven strands.
But before Sameh could start, Marc said, “Every day I spend here reveals something new, a tiny glimmer of a secret. I wake up filled with things I urgently want to understand better.”
Leyla asked, “Such as?”
“Well, like the difference between Shia and Sunni.”
Leyla and Miriam glanced at Sameh, who replied, “It is easiest to understand if you look at parallels within the West’s Christian communities. You have the Protestants, which are segmenting more every day. Then there are the Pentecostals and the free church movements. And you have the Catholics. And the Orthodox. And on and on. Now, consider how it would be if I, an Arab, asked you to explain the differences.”
“I probably could explain some distinctions, but certainly not fully.”
“Many lives have been lost in the conflict between the Christian divisions. Many wars fought. Yet now there is mostly peace. Of course we still argue among ourselves. But nowadays these are mostly polite arguments. There is little bloodshed. And here lies a very real difference between the Western mind and the Arab. For you in the West, the past is over. Finished. Mostly forgotten. For the Arab, it is now . The past does not merely live. The past defines the present.”
Leyla added, “For many Arabs, the Crusades did not end centuries ago. They are still with us today. This very moment. It is the reason many Arabs will never fully trust a Westerner.”
Bisan’s voice picked up the conversation with a cadence that suggested she was reciting a lesson from school. “The division between Shia and Sunni dates to the death of the prophet Mohammed, and the argument over who was to lead the new Muslim nation. Sunnis insisted that the leader should be elected. But Shias argued that the leaders should come from Mohammed’s own family. The Sunnis won, but Shias insisted on following Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, a man named Ali. Ever since then, Shias have refused to recognize the authority of elected Muslim leaders. They follow a line of imams who trace their lineage back to Mohammed.”
“Like Jaffar,” Leyla said.
Sameh went on, “This quarrel is not something from the past. It is here and it is now. The conflict is a dreadful legacy that still tears at the heart of Islam. Conservative Sunni clerics describe the Shias as outcasts. Evil. People to be destroyed at will. The Shias remain persecuted minorities in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Yemen, and Syria.”
“Enough,” Miriam said, waving her hand toward the view. “This is no discussion for such a lovely morning.”
