American Taliban (25 page)

ON OCTOBER 7
, Operation Enduring Freedom began with air strikes against military and terrorist camps, and Barbara, who had a map of the area on her desk, grew ever more anxious. John was somewhere in northern Pakistan, much too close to the war zone. Though on September 11 it had helped her to know that John was far from Brooklyn, now she wished he were living there again.

He might not even know that we’re at war, she said.

That’s what I worried about, Bill said. At first. But now, if he’s anywhere in the area, if he’s not far away in India, he’s hearing the bombs.

In newspaper headlines and lead stories on every television and radio station, Donald Rumsfeld announced the initial strikes successful. Not knowing what else to do, Bill e-mailed Noor to arrange a meeting, and instead of going to his office one day, he took the Metroliner to Penn Station, and then a taxi to the café on Mott.

It was early, the café was quiet, and she brought two coffees to the small corner table.

Business has been slow since 9/11, she said.

She took a vial from her backpack and sprinkled some into her coffee.

Cinnamon? Bill asked.

It’s called havaj, Noor explained. It’s a mix of several spices. John liked it. Would you like to try it?

I’ll pass, Bill said.

Have you heard anything? Noor asked but didn’t wait for Bill’s response.

It’s unusual for him to let so much time pass between e-mails. Before his final e-mail, he was writing every week, and he always remembered everyone, especially Ali, that’s my little brother. He would include detailed instructions for a new skating maneuver, and then Ali would practice hard until the next one arrived. He’s gotten really good. John’s a good teacher.

He impressed me in the beginning, and then he started scaring me, Noor continued. I worried that he was doing things for me, but I was mistaken. It had nothing to do with me. He was just going for full immersion, for the experience, for some kind of adventure. He had a sort of fantasy about becoming a great adventurer in the grand style of the nineteenth century. That’s how he explained it, anyway. And I think that’s what he’s doing. He’s disappeared into an adventure.

I hope you’re right, Bill said. Then he asked a series of questions. I don’t need an immediate answer, he said. I want you to take time to think about them: Did John ever mention training camps? Did he mention someone named Yusef? Did he say anything about fighting on the Kashmir border? About traveling to Afghanistan? About the Taliban? Had she been in touch with Khaled?

Noor answered the questions in the order they were asked. No and no and no and no and no and no, but Samina is probably in touch with Khaled. Khaled’s girlfriend, Noor explained. I’ll e-mail her. She’s in Paris this year.

Bill hadn’t heard of a Samina, but knowing that Khaled had a girlfriend, that he was a kid with the passions of other kids, was comforting. Do you know, Bill followed up, whether there were discussions of Islamic politics at the Sharia School?

I never attended classes, but I’ve heard Sharia students talk politics, though I don’t know whether you could call that Islamic politics. The students at the Sharia are from everywhere—Indonesia, Yemen, India, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan—so they talk about all these places.

Ten minutes later, Bill left money plus a tip on the table. If you hear anything, he said, you know how to reach me.

They shook hands, but then Noor surprised Bill and stepped forward for a hug. I’ll pray to Allah that he comes home soon.

He flagged a cab, gave the driver the address in Brooklyn, and leaned back to think. He hadn’t notified the school of his visit because he didn’t want to give them time to consider any particular position,
though by now, since 9/11, no Arab institution anywhere in the world was without a position. He planned to walk into the main office, present himself as father of a former student, and ask permission to observe a class.

The school’s administrator directed Bill to Brother Sami, John’s former teacher.

Your son, Sami offered, wasn’t here long, but he made himself noticed. An excellent student, his reading was varied and esoteric. He provoked the conservative mind.

In that, Bill said, he takes after his mother.

May Allah guide him back to safety, Sami offered.

The session Bill audited focused on the grammar of Arabic, and after half an hour of it, he left. Unlike his son, he had no interest in or facility for foreign languages. Of the school itself, he could say nothing damaging. They offered the instruction they promised. His son, he knew, could be trusted to find trouble on his own, but if he’d stayed in Brooklyn, he would have been all right. Now, too late, Bill wished he had taken a firmer stand against study in Pakistan. And he hoped that Noor was right, that John was having the adventure of his life, and that he would emerge alive to tell about it. He rubbed his forehead and eyes. This time, with his cracked cocktail of curiosity, bravado, misguided empathies, and taste for the strange, John might have gotten in over his head. But what more could Bill do? At a dead end, not knowing what else to do, he found himself wishing that he, too, could place his trust in Allah.

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan, Bill looked up at the skyline and saw only what wasn’t there.

AT HOME THAT EVENING
, Bill told Barbara where he’d been and what he’d learned. I’m waiting for more from Khaled, who’s getting in touch with a Yusef, John’s last contact. I also told the lawyer in Islamabad about this Yusef. And now I’m wondering what else to do.

Let’s go there, Barbara said. Right away. Instead of waiting for the holidays.

I thought about it, Bill said, but I want to wait a week or two. Here, John and his friends know where to find us. I also wonder what we could do there that we can’t do better from here. It’s not as if we know our way around Pakistan. It’s not as if we can go hiking into the mountains looking for him.

In two weeks then. Maybe we’ll hear from him in the meantime. He’ll want to come home for Thanksgiving.

He won’t want to miss your turkey, Bill agreed.

NOVEMBER 22, 2001
. It wasn’t yet dawn, and already Barbara was awake. So over sweatpants and T-shirt, she pulled on John’s high school hoodie. She’d put the turkey into the oven early, swim at the Y, return home to attend the fixin’s, John’s word. She would be home most of the day. She would be near the phone. She had become a woman who waits by the phone, addicted to the news, no matter how unpleasant. She went nowhere without her laptop, she checked her inbox too many times a day. She woke up to the papers, ended her day with the evening updates, and spent the night with Google, in search of the latest postings, while half the world was in bed, even if not sleeping. Sleep, a recent study reported, had become a commodity. More than half of Americans were losing sleep. Bin Laden had murdered sleep. Knowing that even after hours, death and destruction didn’t stop, not for the night, not for women and children, not for pity, justice, belief, Americans were having trouble sleeping. This country was at war, and even when there were no reports of anything particularly significant, there was death. Somewhere overseas someone’s son was dying. Somewhere in the world a mother would grieve. This kept her awake. She checked for e-mail. Thanksgiving was John’s favorite holiday, he had never missed a single one, and if he could, if he were anywhere near an Internet connection, he would send turkey tidings. Or he was on his way home to surprise them. He would walk
through the door in time for turkey and stuffing and pie. She wanted nothing so much as to see John demolish the turkey, leave no leftovers, eat the way only a hungry nineteen-year-old can. She made a pot of coffee. She checked for e-mail. If he could he would send holiday wishes. He would surprise them, arrive in time for turkey, overstuff himself with pie. He was perhaps the only person in the world who ate his pumpkin pie with chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream. She checked for e-mail. They wanted nothing so much as to see John demolish this turkey. She checked for e-mail. She rinsed and dried the turkey. She checked for e-mail. She rubbed salt into the cavity. She mixed paprika, cayenne, and sage in a small bowl. She poured in olive oil. She stirred. With bare clean hands, she thoroughly basted the turkey. She soaped and washed her hands again, dried them, checked for e-mail. She fiddled with the dial on the kitchen radio, found what she wanted. Reports of an imminent Taliban surrender in Konduz. She turned up the volume. Advancing Northern Alliance troops were hit with a sustained volley of Taliban artillery shells, the announcer said. The Alliance responded with a barrage of long-range rockets. U.S. forces continued to bomb Taliban front-line positions in Konduz. Contradictions were multiplying fast as Alliance and Taliban commanders, meeting in Mazar-e-Sharif, both claimed that the fighters would lay down their arms. Amid the turmoil and confusion, as winter drew near, aid agencies in Afghanistan were attempting to move in supplies for millions of war-weary civilians.

She chopped onions, celery, mushrooms, went to check—no, she stopped herself, it was too soon. She peeled carrots and sweet potatoes, couldn’t help herself, and checked for e-mail, but the headlines were the same: Alliance and Taliban commanders, meeting in Mazar-e-Sharif, continued promising that their fighters would lay down their arms. Surrender, she thinks, is good news if it means an end to senseless fighting and killing, an end to untimely deaths, on both sides, all sides. The fighters were only kids, John’s age. And then the bars of Alice’s Restaurant opened, too early in the day, she thought, which meant she’d hear it too many times that day, all day, though hearing it too many times on Thanksgiving Day was practically a family tradition, would be an American tradition if America could be said to have any.

With this song as their anthem, wearing bells and flower power and tie-dye, she and Bill and their friends had boarded the bus that took them from Boston to D.C. to march on the Pentagon and demand love not war.

With aching bellies, exhausted and undernourished, hundreds of foreign Taliban fighters boarded trucks destined for Mazar-e-Sharif, for surrender to the Northern Alliance. The agreement, brokered by generals, required the foreign fighters to offer themselves up as prisoners in exchange for the lives of Afghan Taliban. The agreement demanded that the fighters drive into enemy territory and surrender themselves and their weapons into the hands of General Dostum’s men, who would transport them for imprisonment in Qala-i-jangi. The agreement, Taliban leaders rationalized, would give these crazy foreign fighters what they’d come for, a chance to fulfill themselves in martyrdom. Sick with dysentery, thirst, and the hundred-mile trek to Tahkt, they climbed into the waiting Toyotas and stretched their useless legs, and hardly noticed when the next exhausted fighter climbed in and stretched out beside them, and the next one stretched out on top of them, all of them packed and layered and marinated in Toyota sardine cans, paid for by oily Soviet and U.S. greed. Relieved to be off their rubbery legs, relieved the terms of surrender were finally agreed upon, that the wait was over, the exhausted fighters hoped this jihad would soon be finished, that they would soon be delivered to their deaths or their homes, either one.

With flower power and flares, Barbara and Bill had marched on the Pentagon. With placards and chants and love, they protested the war and the draft, and still the senseless killing continued for years. Even after veterans spoke in front of Congress, condemned what they’d been sent to do, condemned having been implicated in the murder of civilians, even then, politicians in Washington insisted on staying the course, if only for appearances’ sake, so that the United States of America could continue to believe in its strength, could continue to prove itself a superpower. And so we didn’t get out without more
bloodletting, and when we finally did get out, we were quite certain that we’d never go to war again.

She chopped, she peeled, she washed, she cooked. The U.S. military, she read, was flying in hundreds of turkeys, and six hundred pounds of stuffing, and a thousand pies, and eleven flavors of ice cream. Our troops in Afghanistan will eat well. But where would John eat? In the basement, the deep freezer was stocked with Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream. She dressed and stuffed the turkey, put it in the oven, and hoped and willed John onto a plane, into a bus, into a taxi destined toward home.

Downtown New York City, in the rubble that was once the World Trade Center, ashes smoldered; sniffing dogs unearthed shoes, bones, teeth, arms, legs, fire-retardant items of clothing; fathers dug for sons and daughters; sons dug for fathers and mothers. For those who weren’t going home, didn’t want to go home, couldn’t think for what or to whom to give thanks, local restaurants announced that they’d be cooking and serving turkey, stuffing, and pie through the day. John would be returning to a changed world, a different America, and Barbara wondered what he knew. She worried about his judgment, about his misguided ideas, about his new friends and where they might have led him. She prayed against what she was afraid to put into words, that John had signed on to fight for what he thought was right, for someone else’s cause that he didn’t begin to understand. She turned to the television for more news.