Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

That was his new elsewhere, where his mind was as they arrived at the parking lot exit. Tamir reached for his wallet, but Irv was the quicker draw.

“Next time’s on me,” Tamir said.

“Sure,” Irv said. “Next time we’re exiting National Airport I’ll let you pay for the parking.”

The gate rose, and for the first time since they’d gotten in the car, Max spoke up: “Turn on the radio, Dad.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“In the guy’s booth.”

“The cashier?”

“Yeah. The radio.”

“No.”

“Something big happened.”

“What?”

“Do I have to do everything?” Tamir asked, turning on the radio.

Entering in the middle of a report, it was impossible to understand at first what had happened, but it was clear that Max was right about its size. NPR’s back was straight. Reports were coming in from across the Middle East. It was early. Little was known.

Jacob’s mind raced to its place of comfort: the worst possible scenario. The Israelis had launched an attack on Iran, or the other way around. Or the Egyptians had attacked themselves. A bus had exploded. A plane had been hijacked. Someone had sprayed bullets in a mosque or synagogue, swung a knife in a crowded public space. A nuclear blast had vaporized Tel Aviv. But the thing about the worst possible scenario is that by definition it can’t be anticipated.

* * *

Other Life was happening even when no one was present. Just like Life. Sam was in the Model UN’s General Assembly — at that moment, his mom passed him a note: “I can see over the wall. Can you?”—but the ruins of his first synagogue were shimmering beside the foundation of his second synagogue. Scattered among the rubble were the fragments of his stained-glass Jewish Present, each shard illuminated by destruction.

The Hilton’s International Ballroom was arranged in concentric arcs of tables and chairs to resemble the UN General Assembly. Delegations were dressed in regional garb, and some of the students attempted accents before one of the facilitators called a moratorium on that very bad idea.

The Saudi delegation’s speech was wrapping up. A young, heavily naturally accented Hispanic girl in a hijab spoke with quivering hands and a weak, trembling voice. Julia hated to see nervous children. She wanted to go to her, give her an inspirational talk — explain that life changes, and what is weak becomes strong, and what is a dream becomes a reality that requires a new dream.

“And so it is our hope,” the girl said, clearly grateful to be reaching the end, “that the Federated States of Micronesia comes to its senses and behaves judiciously and with speed to turn over the bomb to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is all. Thank you. As-salamu alaykum.”

There was some light applause, most of it from Julia. At the front of the room, the chairman — a facilitator with a goatee on his face and a Velcro wallet in his back pocket — spoke.

“Thank you, Saudi Arabia. And now we’ll hear from the Federated States of Micronesia.”

All attention shifted to the Georgetown Day delegation. Billie rose.

“Kind of ironic,” she began, asserting her nonchalant dominance by pretending to sort through her papers as she spoke, “for the Saudi delegate to tell us what to do, when it’s illegal for her to swim in her own country . Just saying.”

Kids laughed. The Saudi delegation shriveled. With affected drama, Billie leveled the pages against the desk and continued.

“Fellow members of the United Nations, on behalf of the Federated States of Micronesia, I would like to address what has become known as the nuclear crisis. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines crisis as”—she swiped her phone into consciousness and read—“‘a difficult or dangerous situation that needs serious attention.’ This is not a crisis. There is nothing difficult or dangerous about our situation. What we have here, in fact, is an opportunity , which Merriam-Webster defines as … just one second…”—the Wi-Fi was crappy, and it took her longer than planned to load the bookmarked page—“Here we go: ‘an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done.’ We didn’t choose our fate, but we don’t intend to shrink from it. For years, for millennia — or for centuries, anyway — the good people of Micronesia accepted things as they were, understanding our diminished existence as our lot, our burden, our fate.”

Julia and Sam sat at opposite ends of the delegation. As Julia drew a brick wall on a yellow pad, she replayed the morning’s phone call with Jacob: her lot, her burden, her fate. Why did she feel a need to do it right then, like that? Not only had she shot from the hip when she should have spoken from the heart or at least held her tongue, she had risked Max and Irv getting caught in the crossfire. What did they hear and understand? What did Jacob have to explain, and how did he do it? Were any of the three going to mention the call to Tamir and Barak? Was that the whole point? Did she want it all to blow up? Her wall now covered three-quarters of the page. Perhaps a thousand bricks.

Billie continued: “Things are about to change, fellow delegates. Micronesia is saying enough . Enough being pushed around, enough subservience, enough eating scraps. Fellow delegates, things are about to change, beginning, but most certainly not ending, with the following list of demands…”

In the remaining space, between the top of the brick wall and the edge of the page, Julia wrote, “I can see over the wall. Can you?” She folded it in half, and folded that in half, and had it passed the length of the delegation. Sam showed no emotion of any kind as he read it. He wrote something on the same page, folded and refolded it, and had it passed back to his mom. She opened it, and at first couldn’t see anything he’d written. Nothing in the space above the wall, where she’d written. She searched the bricks themselves — nothing. She looked to him. He put his open hand in front of him, fingers spread, then flipped it palm-up. She turned over the yellow paper, and Sam had written: “The other side of the wall is no wall.”

As the rest of the delegation was struggling to catch up with her radical departure from the agreed-upon script, Billie was smashing the rhetorical ceiling: “Micronesia shall, henceforth, have a seat on the UN Security Council; be granted NATO membership — yes, we realize we are in the Pacific — and preferential trading status with EU, NAFTA, UNASUR, AU, and EAEC partners; have an appointed member on the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee—”

A facilitator ran into the room.

“I’m sorry to interrupt the proceedings,” he said, “but I have an announcement. There was just a major earthquake in the Middle East.”

“This is real?” one of the chaperones asked.

“Real.”

“How major?”

“They’re calling it historic.”

“But real like the nuclear crisis? Or real real?”

Julia’s phone vibrated with a call; it was Deborah. She shuffled to the corner and answered, while the model crisis gave way to the real real one.

“Deborah?”

“Hi, Julia.”

“Is everything OK?”

“Benjy’s fine.”

“I got scared when I saw your name come up.”

“He’s fine. He’s watching a movie.”

“OK. I got scared.”

“Julia.” She took a long breath, to extend the period of not-knowing. “Something horrible has happened, Julia.”

“Benjy?”

“Benjy is absolutely fine.”

“You’re a mother. You would tell me.”

“Of course I would. He’s fine, Julia. He’s happy.”