Percussions

Part One: The Propagandist

His voice is clownishly light for a heavy-boned, strong-jawed man. He drawls through hard-to-pronounce Arabic names and twangs after each maneuver, shifting the way the pitch of a violin changes with less pressure on the fingerboard. I’ve never given much thought to the features of the American speech pattern until I came to Syria and observed how some young locals tried to imitate us, slipping in lines like, ‘Swot am saying’ and ‘Unnerstan’ me?’ in everything they said. They weren’t making fun, or anything like that. Nah. They were just tryinabe unnerstood. Thasswot it seemed like, y’all. But none of them was quite as fluent or as cadenced as this man sitting at my table.

I blank out the other sounds in the room— the low roar of conversations, the brief titters of some of the guests, and the banjo playing in the background—and listen to the clinks of crockery, it’s a symphony with long spells of surprisingly uniform meters. Returning to my date, who has just shown me his badge, I’m in time to hear him say I will be in direct conflict with my country if I persist with my activities. 

A waiter relieves his tray on our table with two whumps: a mug of goat milk for my date and a glass of punch for me. I wait for him to leave before I ask, “How will I be in ‘direct conflict’ with the United States?”

Jamal (if that’s even his real name) tells me that Zee-zee, the man I’m after is CIA too. It takes me a while to absorb this. When my sense of time and place returns, I realize my mouth is open.

“That man ordered my father’s… Wait. Are you saying…?”

Jamal shakes his head. He says Zee-zee had no hand in it. There are factions in The Group, cabals. He believes my Iranian boyfriend heads such a faction.

I down my drink and flick my tongue like a snake. I asked for punch. What is this? If they won’t put alcohol in punch, then why call it ‘punch’? It’s not really the drink that nettles me, but the way it feels like a second sucker punch. I came here to meet with an insider who promised to give me Zee-zee’s whereabouts for a price, not an Arab-American spy looking for Taffy.

The year is 2015, eleven months since US-led airstrikes began a cycle of reprisals that have so far resulted in three dead Americans and two British, all of whom were abducted in this country.

Jamal is caramel-complexioned and has thick-woolly hair bearding his face. His eyebrows look like something that a sandstorm disheveled above his eyes, one permanently higher than the other.

He says Zalawi is what they call a propagandist, an Islamic religious leader promoting an American agenda in the Middle East. The U.S. is in a propaganda war with terrorists and with Zalawi at the helm of The Group, they can now crush anti-western propaganda and promote their own. The long story short, they dictate the music. He leans back in his chair and lets me mull over his words. He looks full of himself. He probably thinks I’m thinking what geniuses they are, but I’m picturing the look on Taffy’s face when I tell him he once took instructions from America.

He asks ‘what’s funny.’

“America running terrorist groups.”

He says they’re not—running them. They’re guiding them. More importantly, they’re keeping tabs on them, from the inside.

“Why did Zee-zee invite Lester to interview him?”

He says it wasn’t ‘Zubi Zalawi’ who reached out to my father, one of his aides pretending it was at his behest, maybe, but not Zalawi. He says they hadn’t known my famous father was in Syria until he was abducted. From what he tells me, Zee-zee did everything to get my father released.

“Okay. So maybe it wasn’t Zee-zee who lured Lester to Syria with the promise of a rare interview. But even if it wasn’t, that doesn’t mean he hadn’t ordered his execution after he was caught. He could have done it to prove he was no sellout.”

Jamal brings his head forward and his voice down. He says some members of The Group weren’t happy with the way Zalawi ran things; they were the ones who made an example of Lester to gain the respect of the terrorist community and put their names in the Jihadist Yellow Pages. He says Zalawi forbade Lester’s murder, but the faction didn’t listen. That was the deed that splintered The Group.

“So who killed Lester?”

He says he doesn’t know, but he won’t put it past my Iranian boyfriend, who used to be one of Zalawi’s close aides.

I study his beard, all its combed length, especially the fluffs that end in feathery threads.

He makes me an offer: If I help them, they will help me find Lester’s killers.

“Help you do what?”

He gives a long answer to my simple question. From what I can decode, he wants me to be his mole.

He asks if I know what ‘Tafida Mo’ammar Abbas’ is planning next. I’m tempted to interject that Taffy’s middle name isn’t ‘mo hammer’; it’s ‘moo armor’. I don’t know what Taffy is planning, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell him. I explain that Taffy is a mere spear carrier. I’m the faction’s mastermind and sponsor.  “If I tell him to stop, he will.”

Jamal laughs. He apologizes for the difficult situation he’s put me in, says he’s touched by my readiness to take the fall for Taffy, and even insinuates that Taffy is using me. His speech is either conciliatory or condescending, depending on how we end this: if we shake on it and he lets me leave, it’ll be conciliatory.

I wrinkle my forehead. “Taffy is not using me. It’s the other way around; I’m using him to catch my father’s killers.”

He says that aside from Taffy parading me as a convert who has woken up to the ‘evils’ of her country, he is mooching off me. He says more but I’m not listening.

“Are you done?”

He isn’t. (I knew that.) He gives me my bio: I’m from Wisconsin. I majored in music and dance and currently teach music and ballet at a middle school in Madison, he forgets the name. I exercise regularly and have a passion for photography. And now, I’m an amateur filmmaker too. He knows I came to Syria to shoot a documentary to mark one year since my father’s execution. He says I was also looking for a change of scenery after my breakup with my cheating boyfriend, my one-time gym instructor. I’m a little surprised by the last part: it’s something he couldn’t have gotten from the internet. Why, I haven’t even admitted it to myself.

“I’m sorry. But where is all this leading?”

He ignores my question. Apparently, he’s not done with my love life. He says while shooting my documentary in Dummar, I met and fell for an Iranian chemist trained in Turkey. He speaks in a friendly tone but it feels like the verbal equivalent of showing me a holstered gun. He tries to get cozy by saying he’s part Lebanese, part Delawarean, but I don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s a Hollywood actor preparing for his next big role as a Taliban cleric, or a redneck with an unusual suntan. This meeting is so over for me. I just want to get away from him.

He reaches into his thobe, pulls out a brown envelope, and slides it across the table.

“What’s this?”

He wants me to look inside so I open it and pull out three photographs. Taffy is in each one. He has his arm around an Arab woman in the first; is laughingly throwing a child up in the air in the second; and is at the wheel of an old model Mercedes-Benz in the third, a covered woman by his side and two youngsters in the back.

He tells me Taffy has two wives and five children in Tehran.

I flip through the pictures, going back and forth, becoming more aware of his eyes as I do. Satisfied, I put them back in the envelope and slide them across. I keep a straight face, more embarrassed than shocked—Taffy said his wife died in an Israeli shelling at West Bank.

“I know about his wives. He told me.”

He smirks. He banters something about Taffy promising he would leave his wives for me. What in the world is making him feel so superior? Wipe that stupid smile off your face.

I lash out. I question his timing: Why surface now? For one whole year, the US government said nothing to me, said nothing to my mother. They didn’t think we deserved to know the truth.

He tells me to keep my voice down.

“Is it because I’m getting closer to the truth that you now deem it necessary to let me know my father was collateral damage in your fight against terror?” I say so many things I can’t remember what. I bury my face in my hands and sob. I feel hollow, hollow like a percussion instrument. I can hear my heart throbbing in my chest.

He mutters Marion Ursula Ashcroft, and says the U.S. government deeply regrets my loss’ like it’s an official statement. I jerk back my head, indignant, furious. What the fuck? My impassioned speech wasn’t a plea for pity. And I’m not looking for his apology either. Right now, if he wants to do something for me, he should just get lost.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take my leave.”

He amuses me with the role he expects me to play. I’m to report anything I learn about Taffy and his splinter group to him. He will find me, he says. Taffy’s exact location is not their main concern; they’re more interested in his accomplices, his operations, his sponsors, that kind of stuff. Or if he knows anything about the other Americans still being held hostage. He goes over what he expects me to say to Taffy when he asks about our meeting. He warns me not to say I met with an American spy because if I do, Taffy might begin to doubt my loyalty and my life would be in danger. He says it’s in my best interest not to appear to have softened on Zalawi. I can always learn the truth about what really happened to my father by snooping around Taffy’s video library. Terrorists always keep copies of their executions, all the scalps they’ve collected.

Fuck him. For people like him, all soldiers from Islamic countries not fighting on America’s side are terrorists. Well, Taffy’s not a terrorist. He’s a freedom fighter, a mercenary fighting on the side of the oppressed, whether it’s against Americans, Israelis, or Turks.

Jamal pulls his chair back and rises, and with a gentle nod, strolls to the exit. I remain in my seat, my lungs returning to their circadian rhythm. I had feared the afternoon would end with him bundling me into a waiting chopper from where I’d be flown to an American military base, where I’ll be held until I’m deported.

Does he honestly think I’ll switch allegiance just like that? Because I carry an American passport, same as him? Americans. So smug. I’m not surprised, though—that he left me, I mean. I won’t exactly say high and dry because I’m the bait now, the worm at the end of his fishhook. What he has accomplished is strapping me to one end, and dipping me in the river. He’ll be on alert for any tensions in the line. But how can I betray Taffy? After everything he’s done for me? When making my film was proving to be the hardest thing I’d ever tried, along he came and set up interviews for me. And even chauffeured me around. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have done those interviews, like the ones I did with the people who last saw Lester before he was abducted, and with those who worked at the local supermarket where he bought groceries. His intervention led to Lester’s neighbors, initially unwilling to speak to me, granting me interviews. A sad thing he’s married. I had looked forward to breaking the news that I was carrying his child, unsure of how he’d react.

Continued…

Culled from How Hamisu Survived Bad Kidneys and a Bad Son-in-Law