Greg Hrbek - Not on Fire, but Burning

As he finishes speaking, it seems to Dorian that his parents are separated by a vast distance. He is right — and also wrong. Because even as Kathryn and Mitchell Wakefield foresee the coming schism (we are not going to view this the same way; we will not agree on what to do about this), they are also bonded, as atoms are bonded by the sharing of electrons, by the unstoppable empathy of mothers and fathers: they both feel the same pain and shame — and, also, the same exact hostility. Mitch’s imagination is under siege by a vision of himself chokeholding an eleven-year-old orphan so Dorian can bust up his face without interference. And Kathryn wants a phone number. She wants a number to dial and someone to tell off. A voice in her head already rehearsing the diatribe: Who the fuck do you people think you are? But that’s not my voice , she thinks back. That’s not me .

She says: “So you used a racial slur.”

“Yes, but—”

“In front of all those kids you said that.”

“Mom,” Cliff said.

“Did I ask you,” she said fiercely. “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Goddammit, Dorian. What is wrong with you—”

“Look,” Mitch says, “they ganged up on him.”

“Three against one,” Cliff specifies.

“Actually, four.”

Their father (taking a deep breath): “We should probably report this.”

“Report,” Kathryn says.

“To the police.”

“No way.”

“Kate, they assaulted him.”

“We are not calling the police. We are not going to get a kid from the camps mixed up with the police.”

“What would happen,” Dorian says.

But no one answers. None of them moves or says anything more for a long minute. Finally, Mitch gets up. To make some food. He lays a hand on Dorian’s shoulder. Then opens the refrigerator. At the sink, Kathryn has turned her back on them. She is looking out the window — and from the table, Dorian is looking at her. Both listening to the fragile shells of eggs being broken, one after another, against the rim of a bowl.

What would happen.

The question is on Will Banfelder’s mind, too. He has always been friendly with the Wakefields. When he crosses paths with one of them while driving on the cul-de-sac, he waves hello. In the autumn, when the lawns of the subdivision are overspread with red and orange leaves, should he see Mitchell with a rake and a bucket, he will walk across the road and start a conversation about the weather or the foliage further north. But maybe “neighborly” is the more accurate word for this kind of relationship. Truth is, he is not close with them. In a way, it could be said he doesn’t know them very well at all. So how can he blame them (any more than he can blame Dorian for ending that call yesterday) if they report this incident to the police. Put yourself in their shoes:

What if Karim came home bloodied and bruised — and you found out that three white boys had held him still while a fourth …

But that’s different . How? The two situations are not the same . Yes, they are: four kids versus one; you can’t argue with numbers. I’m not talking about numbers . What then. Power . Power. As in, who has it and who doesn’t. Right. The two situations are different because of the power dynamics . You learned nothing over there, did you. There wasn’t anything to learn . The war couldn’t teach you anything? It was senseless . You and your platitudes. Thirty years later and you’re no smarter now than you were then. That’s why you’re still fighting, and there’s still no end in sight. I’m not fighting . Yes, you are. You’re all fighting, every one of you, every single day. On desert sand and in corporate boardrooms, in the blogosphere and in the sphere of memory and even in the sphere of dreams. You are fighting this war in your sleep … While, upstairs, Karim Hassad stands at the bedroom window. Holding a smartphone as if it’s a kind of buoy keeping him afloat. Twenty-four hours have passed — a whole afternoon, night, and morning — since his touching of the command: SEND. There has been no response from Abdul-Aziz. He must have done something wrong. Or perhaps the picture was lost and the sheikh received only the words:

I DID THIS.

This.

A word referring to nothing: You did nothing.

But I did .

He is looking through the window at the place where he did it. Beyond the swimming pool. In the grass. Where the elements of the unfinished game — the little silver arches, the wooden balls and the mallets — are as motionless as objects in a painting. One mallet (mine, which I threw before hitting him) lies far away from the others. That is where. But maybe the sheikh received the pictures and the message made perfect sense. Maybe he understood what I did and why. But saw no worth in the action. You struck an infidel in the face. So what. What is this supposed to prove, Karim? (He can hear the voice, deep as the skies of Dakota.) It doesn’t change anything. You are no martyr. You are nothing but a boy with nothing … And yet isn’t this exactly what the sheikh had told them — Karim, Hazem, and Yassim — over and over again in the camp. That they were nothing, but there was no shame in this. For in their nothingness was a great power. It is hidden in each of you, he had said, this power — and he touched each of them in turn, touched a finger to the breastbone of each boy. You know about the atom and its energies. No? How particles of matter too small to even be seen, when properly influenced, can produce a power as strong as the sun. This is what God did on 8-11. It is said by the infidels that we used the power of the atom against them. My sons, do not believe that lie. There was no plane. There was no bomb. In a great explosion generated from nothingness by the will of the Almighty was that city of sin destroyed. As an example to us of the power of our own nothingness. Each of you is likewise an atom. And when you become a martyr, the power hidden within you will be released and you will become pure energy, the energy of God, and you will travel at the speed of the angels (which is fifty-thousand years to a day) along the celestial ladders, which the Qu’ran calls the ma’arej , feeling no pain, only a sensation like being carried on a wave, which will be a wave of pure and heavenly light, and the energy you have become will pass through the doorway held open for you and in this way, in a fraction of a second, you will find yourselves in another universe called Paradise.

He hardly slept last night. Between the grandfather clock and the pain in his face every time he rolled over. Now it’s early afternoon. Since the conversation in the kitchen, Dorian has been in his bedroom, in a sort of self-exile. At some point, he pulled down the translucent solar window shades; and now, lying on the bed — not in darkness, but in the kind of shadow that can only form when light is obscured but not extinguished by an occluding object — he is unable to keep his eyes open. He is asleep for two minutes and thirteen seconds when the landline rings: a mechanical trill. The waves of sound cause his eardrum to vibrate, but his brain is not processing the resultant electrical impulses. Which is to say: He doesn’t hear … In the living room, Kathryn takes the receiver from the base. F. MAHFOUZ . She doesn’t recognize the name, but the number is local.

“Hello.”

“Yes, hello. Is this Ms. Wakefield?”

“It is.”

“My name is Fawzia Mahfouz. I am calling to apologize for what happened yesterday. To your son.”

After a calculated pause, Kathryn says: “You’re one of the mothers.”

“Of Omar.”

“Omar.”