Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

The show faded out to advertisements.

Upon returning, the anchor introduced a pair of new studio guests. One of them was an old bearded man in traditional tribal clothing, sitting morosely with his arms folded. The other man was someone I recognized: it was Sajjad from the Pierre.

As the camera focused in on the anchor’s face, I saw a certain rapid blinking of her eyelashes and a twitch in her forehead. It suggested an imminent explosion. I started worrying about what Marie-Anne might have to face.

The attack didn’t take long to arrive.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we return to our program. We are here today with a private contractor working with an aerial intelligence-gathering program,” she said while pointing to Marie-Anne, “and we are now joined by Sajjad Shahryar, an Insanistani columnist and former member of the parliament, who has been advising the Pentagon on its plans to arm its surveillance robots. We also have in our studio Rahim Farid, a resident of the Insanistani tribal belt, who spent his entire life savings to come to Doha and talk about the killing of his son by a missile shot by an unmanned surveillance craft. We’ll turn to you,” the anchor looked at Marie-Anne, “and ask you what your response would be to someone like Mr. Farid here. Why would you feel the need to arm your robots with missiles?”

The first real fight Marie-Anne and I ever had occurred over Scrabble. We had played a long game and our scores were both in the high 300s. Marie-Anne was ahead. I only had one letter left: Z . She had just finished making the word EROS, leaving open a triple-letter score just above the E. I stuck the Z in the open space and won by one point. It left her horrified. She kept shaking her head saying that the correct spelling was zeroes. She was so adamant about rejecting my version of the spelling that she laid down an official challenge. We went and consulted the Merriam-Webster, as well as the American Heritage, and found that both spellings were acceptable. This made her cry. Her black mascara ran from the corner of her eyes and trailed along the outside of her face and met at the chin, giving her face a circular black outline. All night she cried, shocked that she had been beaten, shocked that I exceeded her in English. By morning time we had coined a new verb. Zeroed: the state of being defeated unexpectedly.

Zeroed was the expression on her face right now. As the tribal man looked at her with congealed, cataract-laden eyes, swimming in tears, Marie-Anne stumbled and stuttered. Her face was blank. She had nothing to say. She was lost.

It was Sajjad who had to step forward to save her. He made a long statement about the regrettable things that happened in wars, offered a brief apology to the old man, and reminded the anchorwoman that using drone technology to hunt terrorists was sparing countless lives and preventing violence from escalating. “I don’t think we want a situation in Insanistan where we have American soldiers in a face-to-face position with our citizens,” he finished.

The newscaster was adamant: “But no one has even determined if such action is even legal. And isn’t it unethical besides that? This man lost his son. ”

The intercession by Sajjad allowed Marie-Anne to recover from the ambush. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. “There are gray areas in war,” she said. “The question of armed drones is one of them, and people who know law should answer it. But just because its legality is not yet settled doesn’t mean that it is unethical.”

“Aren’t you simply saying that because your technology is ahead of the law you are free to do with it what you like? Even kill this man’s innocent son?”

The argument pressed forward, without balance, without rhythm, like a ping-pong match played on a triptych. Marie-Anne was more or less in agreement with Sajjad who, it was revealed, supported increasing the number of drones even more, “because it will reduce the financial cost of the war.” The old man who came to Doha to have his say tried to piece together a sentence in English, but Sajjad struck him down in another language.

The anchor, left by herself, tried another tactic, arguing that before sending a missile to execute someone, it might be wise to have a trial to prove guilt.

Marie-Anne jumped back in. “We aren’t dealing with people here — we are dealing with terrorists!” she shouted.

The final enunciation was evidently so painful for her that she decided to walk off the set. As she moved away against the protestations of the anchor, she tried to strip the microphone from her body; but it stayed on and continued relaying her muttering. I heard the words “hairy” and “thin-skinned” and “leper” before the wire on the microphone snapped and the camera and the sound connected back to the anchor.

The old man working the deli walked to the TV, his rag-wrapped fingers having intercourse with the glass in his hand. The TV showed a close-up of Marie-Anne. He reached out with the rag hand and touched the pulsating veins in her forehead. “That’s a crazy bitch.”

“Watch your mouth,” I replied. “That’s my wife.”

He looked at me with disbelief. Like he wanted to punch me. Having seen Marie-Anne flayed publicly, even embarrassed, I was already feeling vulnerable, and I was in no mood for a confrontation. I just wanted to get out of the deli, away from this man’s excoriating stare. I got up and leapt to the exit. My sudden move excited the owner and he followed me outside. To avoid any further conversation I ran into the bar next door. He stopped outside the entrance, probably reticent to enter an establishment with alcohol. I could see him through the glass. He was drenched in light from the lamppost above. He cupped his face against the door, dragging his grizzled gray hair on the surface, fogging the glass with his breath. Even though I was just inches from him, because of the darkness that surrounded me, the burning old man was unable to see me.

I walked to a stool and decided to wait him out. I should have never gone into the deli and aimed for camaraderie. Moderate Muslims, who were just playing the part of believers, couldn’t be friends with other Muslims. We could only report on them. The rest of the time we were better off in bars like this, separated from them, maintaining a safe and cautious distance from our marks.

* * *

When I came out of the bar, the deli was closed, the old man was gone, and I was properly drunk. Marie-Anne’s words rang in my mind. Hairy, thin-skinned lepers. I knew that if I turned on Fairmount, keeping the penitentiary on my right, I could follow it all the way to Pennsylvania and make it home in about fifteen minutes. But the other part of me, the vulnerable part, the part that had witnessed Marie-Anne dismiss a man whose son had been obliterated, wanted to go and hide. Without thinking, I started hustling down Broad Street, toward city hall.

That night I roamed around Philly in a much larger circuit. I wanted to see everything in the city. To delve into it. To experience its mysteries and hold its secrets in my heart and find joy in my discoveries. That was, ultimately, what it meant to have a home, to be familiar with everything in the space, familiar to the point of hatred, and yet still be surprised by what you might discover.

I headed farther east on Girard than I had ever gone. Once I reached Northern Liberties I went north toward Fishtown, parallel to I-95, its underside booming and rattling with each vehicle. There were only warehouses here, some stockyards, some parking lots full of bulldozers. I heard a barge creaking in the Delaware River. It carried the stench of trash. I saw in the distance, next to an abandoned warehouse, a dumpster lit on fire. There were maybe five or six people standing near it, rocking on the balls of their feet. A couple were close to the fire; the rest maintained an agreeable distance. I headed in their direction, to see into their eyes, to see their faces behind their hair, to see into their hearts. But they didn’t acknowledge me. They didn’t give me their face for an entry point into their person.