Patrick Flanery - I Am No One

A new box arrives, this one, identical to the first three, contains all my bank records and IRS returns, beginning from the year in which I first met Fadia. This is not in my mind, surely, and yet, how easy it would be for me to order back statements, to pull up copies of my returns, to make the theater of my brain suspend its disbelief in the film projected on its internal screen, in the fiction — is it fiction? — that the projectionist has chosen from the reels at his disposal. Fiction or documentary? Campus melodrama or spy thriller? In what genre am I trapped?

I appear to be free for now, however imperfectly, and I give thanks for that at least, although I sometimes wake in the night shouting, asking to be released. Perhaps all I need is to see open country and an expanse of sky. I have not returned to Rhinebeck since Thanksgiving weekend and cannot recall when I last spoke to my mother. From the past two days there are dozens of missed calls from Meredith on my phone. I log into my computer, I read Meredith’s plaintive emails but find no energy to reply. I look in my sent mail and discover messages that I myself appear to have written — not unlike the messages I supposedly wrote to my student Rachel — but once more I have no memory of writing them. There is an invitation from Meredith to join her and Peter for a Christmas Eve party at their apartment. My mother will be there, staying for several days, Peter’s parents as well. I should feel free to come early on the day. I think of going upstate instead, absenting myself, but the desperation in Meredith’s tone tells me I should simply accept, which I do. She replies in seconds, offering to send a car. No, on Christmas Eve it makes more sense to take the subway, traffic will be impossible. She replies again, offering that I could come early in the day and stay over, but no, I thank her, I would rather sleep in my own bed.

The night before Christmas Eve I spend alone, eating Vietnamese takeout and watching Blade Runner , the director’s authoritative final cut, which seems to make Deckard more unambiguously android than the other versions I have seen over the years. Once, almost twenty-five years ago, when I was still a graduate student, I flew into Los Angeles one night for a conference. As we penetrated the clouds a landscape of orange lights, glowing through the darkness and smog, came into view, so much like the one Ridley Scott conjured that I imagined for an instant we had flown into the future. Can I see my own place in the system? Can I, unlike Deckard, know what I am beneath the conscious fiction I present to others as well as myself? Will the true instinct seek to express itself if placed under threat? What is it that I think I might be? An android, no, certainly not, but what is Deckard if not (or not only) an android? A revolutionary, an insurgent, a sleeper agent. Perhaps in walking blindfolded through this country of my birth, this motherland I love, the home I want more than anything to find homely, heimlich , the zone of my greatest familiarity, I will eventually begin to see with other eyes.

The cawing of crows in wet winter air was England for me, and that crying through bare limbs over lawns which remain green beneath an occasional frost, moss growing dense on all that is still, never failed to hollow me out, leaving a husk of melancholy. In Oxford I avoided going out after dark. I feared the damp streets in greasy orange lamplight and the unpredictability of English men, the surges of violence that seemed to come from nowhere. For wearing a tuxedo, a colleague claimed he was attacked one night after a High Table dinner at Lincoln College, beaten on Ship Street in the center of town as bystanders observed, egging on his assailants, who had no interest in his money or possessions. It was all about class. That is a country in need of revolution, or perhaps every country now is, throwing over the old, the ossified, all the systems we use to destroy ourselves and our world. Burn it all to the ground, only save the art and the archives, the libraries, the knowledge of our past, and then build something better.

For a moment I allow myself to relax to the bleat of taxi horns. I exhale. I feel the warmth and dryness of the sheets when I wake on Christmas Eve day. I touch walls that have never been damp.

After so long with no word, I open my email and see a name that makes my heart flip. I click, hold my breath, and scan down the screen before returning to the top to read once more, slowly:

Dear Jeremy,

Forgive me for contacting you like this and please, accept my apology for not replying sooner. I read the emails and messages when you sent them but in your absence I did not know at first what to say, and still I do not entirely know how to think about what has happened between us, or what you did to me, and yes, I do think of it in that way, that you did this to me. Although I was a willing party, the balance of power, I think, means consent could not have been freely given, not absolutely, if you see?

I am making good progress on my DPhil. My parents are well, and my father talks of returning to Cairo, if a deal can be struck with those who are now in power.

I am writing because I think you should see your son, who has a few words, and sometime soon is certain to ask questions about his father. Whether next year or the year after, the day will come, and when he does ask I do not want to tell him that I have lost touch with you. If we came to New York, would you see us? Would we even, perhaps, be able to stay with you (most of my father’s accounts are still frozen, and the money you give me, for which I am grateful, would not stretch to this kind of travel)?

I need to make clear that I do not envision the recommencement of some kind of relationship between you and me, or at least only insofar as we

are

related, as the parents of Selim, but I also do not want to stand in the way of you having a relationship with our son. It seems unfair to both of you — to him especially — if I were to prevent that.

Please will you tell me what you think, and how it might work? I would like to come for New Year, if that is not too presumptuous. There are other issues to discuss, potentially, which would be better done in person, things to do with the longer term, and what I see as the necessity of Selim’s protection, and his multiple nationalities. I hope that is something we might sort out in America. Do you understand what I mean? I hope so.

Yours ever,

Fadia

I write back immediately, knowing as I do so that Fadia’s message has been read, and whatever I type, perhaps even in the moment I type it, will be collected, reviewed, and judged.

Dear Fadia,

Please, do come, as soon as you can. I have transferred additional monies into your account to pay for the flights and whatever else you may need. Say if you need more. Come for as long as you wish. You may stay here, on your terms. There are two unused rooms, a guest bathroom, and you would be free to come and go as you wish. I understand all that you imply, at least I think I do, and I can only say, for now, that I apologize for what I did and yet, if there is a hope of knowing my son, I cannot feel regret about what happened, except for the way it has affected you. It is my hope that my daughter will want to meet you and Selim, and my mother as well. If you give me your new number I will phone you.

With all good wishes and sincerity,

Jeremy

As I click SEND it occurs to me that in inviting Fadia and Selim here, I may unwittingly be putting them in as much peril as I believe myself to be in, that all three of us might disappear if suddenly collected together again in one place, on American soil. Who is to say they will even be allowed entry? Nonetheless, with a selfishness I recognize as habitual, I am consumed by joy. All the way to Columbus Circle my heart is humming, a song in my mouth as I walk up Broadway in the winter twilight and then pause as I did on Thanksgiving morning to see what is playing at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. There is the face of that government whistle-blower, eyes downcast, advertising a documentary about his revelations, and while I stand looking at the green-hued poster I hear a voice behind me.