Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

The folder was pressed against my chest, the eagle close to my heart. I thought back to the early days with Ali Ansari, particularly after hearing him going on about foreign policy. I had been so indescribably afraid. It wasn’t a specific fear, of the sort that actual criminals might feel. It had been the fear of the unknown, the fear of the possible, which meant a fear of everything. Frequently I had thought: What if there was a recording device in the vicinity of Ali Ansari? What if there was an FBI informant in our midst? What if Ali Ansari was that informant? What if I got caught up in some investigation? I didn’t think that I would get taken to Guantanamo; but I also knew that merely being accused of a crime would be enough to destroy my life. Now I didn’t have a reason to be afraid. Now I had armor. Now I was under the shadow of the eagle. It was the feeling of safety, of having immunity, of being protected. I didn’t have to fear unseen authorities anymore. I was the authority. I could fly, free, anywhere. Armed with the most piercing gaze.

I went to sleep a little less troubled. Let Candace shroud herself with mystery; in time I would find a way to see into her as well.

* * *

The next day Mahmoud invited Marie-Anne and me for lunch at Pershing Square, a café located outside Grand Central, underneath Park Avenue. It was a hot and brilliant day and the restaurant had set tables out on the side street. Where we sat we were covered by a sliver of the shade from the cigarette box — shaped skyscraper of 120 Park Avenue (formerly Philip Morris International). In its lobby the Whitney Museum was having a traveling exhibition and there was a good deal of foot traffic on the pavement.

Marie-Anne looked beautiful in a white chiffon blouse with silver-belted black slacks that widened at the ankles and showed only the tips of her closed-toed heels. Her hair was pulled back in a hard ponytail, accentuating the line left in her jaw.

Conversation was as easy as the cool drinks. It was made even easier by the fact that all three of us had been at the same seminar in the morning, one focused on the liberation of Muslim women. The four American NGO workers had all presented different case studies about how to support Muslim women such that they weren’t reliant on patriarchal superstructures or held down by religious restrictions. Marie-Anne had been particularly interested in the idea of giving microloans to Muslim women.

“But my concern,” she said while forking her salad, “is that the women won’t pay back the loans and then the financial institutions that underwrite them will go bankrupt.”

Mahmoud dismissed the concern: “Repayment rates are very high.”

“But what exactly is the financial institution’s return?”

“The purpose of the loan isn’t to get a return. The purpose is to give a woman an opportunity to think highly of us.”

I sat up. “That seems kind of crass. ”

Mahmoud wasn’t having it. “Look, we’re all friends here. Let’s appreciate that charity is just a pretext. We need the women on our side. It’s the only way to win hearts and minds. And giving loans is the most humane way of accomplishing this. Would you rather that we go the French way in Algeria? Go and rip off their veils and clothes and order them to become Western? Because that will just earn us enemies. That’s not the American way. Money talks better than force. It’s not bribery if you call it liberation.”

“Does this actually work?”

“You give people freedom and they come over to your side. Why do you think when the British were building their empire they went around the world and freed everyone’s slaves? It wasn’t because they cared about black people. It was because it reduced the number of people who might fight against them. When I give a microloan to a Muslim woman today, it’s no different than when some British admiral raised a flag in Western Asia and announced that any slave who touched the mast would become free, irrespective of whether his master allowed it or not. We are getting their weakest on our side.”

Marie-Anne turned to me with a smile on her lips; stone in her eyes. It was meant to convey that I was being too skeptical and should tone down my rhetoric. I shut up and looked in the direction of the exhibition.

She faced Mahmoud. “That’s how you know you’re on the right side,” she said. “If what you do is increasing the number of free people in the world. Why shouldn’t we give unto others what our founders gave to us?”

“To the pursuit of happiness.” Mahmoud raised his glass. “May every Muslim in the world have access to it.”

Marie-Anne clinked back. “And also, too, to the rule of law,” she added. “Which can only be brought about through effective law enforcement and surveillance.”

Mahmoud chuckled. He put an elbow in my side and pointed at Marie-Anne. “Please tell me that I didn’t just fall into a MimirCo commercial.”

We all laughed. Marie-Anne patted him on the thigh and straightened his skullcup. “You didn’t fall into a commercial, because when you watch a commercial you still have an option. Here you are bound to commit, like you got my husband to commit to your little venture.”

“Fair enough,” Mahmoud said. “But as an employee of the State Department, I can’t do anything that’s unsanctioned.”

“You’re just building bridges,” Marie-Anne replied. “The bridges will remember you when your government gig comes to an end.”

I observed her. Just a few years ago she had been an impatient novelist and short-story writer, desperate to be published, throwing herself at the mercies of tenured university professors and washed-up hacks who advertised their self-published books on social media. And the only opportunities that had presented themselves had been inseparable from her having to become some hack’s secretary and mistress. Yet here she was now, in a far more lucrative field, making deals happen without having to whore her body out. I felt proud of her. Who would have thought that the business of war would be more feminist than the business of art?

Marie-Anne and Mahmoud discussed how MimirCo ought to go about getting the Wazirati contract. Mahmoud was frank with her: The Wazirati royal in charge of the Ministry of the Interior was facing unrest in a number of his city-state’s coastal villages, where due to the tribal nature of the families it was impossible for him to send physical spies. He needed eyes there and it didn’t matter if they were mechanical.

This news was met with urgency on Marie-Anne’s part. She started shooting messages off to her superiors.

Finding the conversation progressing this quickly and smoothly allowed me to relax. I put my hands behind my head and sunned myself like a lion. In the wild Serengeti of the world my lioness was on the hunt.

* * *

Midnight train back to Philadelphia. We had gone up coach; came back first class. The little cities of New Jersey sliced past us, enclaves for close-knit communities of immigrants to begin the slow and steady climb from anonymity to respectability. A teenager had been pushed onto the tracks near Edison and there was a four-hour wait. The EMT pulled up on a street not far from where we sat. I could see an old Indian woman in a sari trying to speak to the policemen. Marie-Anne called MimirCo during the delay, updating them further about the Wazirati connection. They were excited to send her to the Persian Gulf and asked how she had pulled off making the arrangement. She looked at me and smiled. She didn’t tell them the details. She just said she had been sitting on the jack of clubs.

The next few days Marie-Anne bubbled with a kind of lightness I hadn’t seen in a long time. She purchased a few bottles of Chianti Classico and we hung out on the rooftop of the building or went down to the river and secretly drank from a bottle in her purse.