The Brothers (26 page)

The week I met with Luis, a federal appeals court had heard the defense argue—as it had repeatedly in written motions—that the trial should be moved from Boston. Between the saturation publicity and what she called “the six degrees of connection,” argued Judith Mizner, the public defender’s appellate chief, justice in Massachusetts could not have the necessary “appearance of justice.”

It was not a large state, and the Boston Marathon was a very large event in it: one after another, potential jurors had said that they knew someone on the witness list or someone who had been at the finish line or a first responder, or they worked for a company that sponsored the marathon or a hospital that treated some of the victims. As if to underscore the effects of saturation publicity, one of the judges had asked a prosecutor about “the video of the defendant placing a backpack at the site of the explosion.” This was a video that, if it existed, had never been shown to the public—a fact the prosecutor failed to point out. The following day, one of the prospective jurors also made reference to having seen this purported video.

To my surprise, Luis, who seemed to have perfected the political art of speaking with detachment about anything, waxed passionate against moving the trial. “It’s an attempt to strip us of our dignity all over again,” he said. “If someone has the audacity to hurt our community, they should have the
cojones
to face us back and to explain.” Did he really think he would get an explanation from Jahar, who was not likely even to testify at his own trial? Luis admitted that he did not. After a few minutes, we circled back to April 2013. The afternoon of the marathon, Luis had been planning to go to the finish line with his family. He had not much wanted to, so they had been slow leaving the apartment. Luis had stepped back in to turn off the television—and on it, had seen the explosions.

I expected him to say that if he had been less reluctant to attend the marathon, he or any other member of his family might have died. But instead he said, “If I’d made it to the finish line, he would have seen me with my family. Would he have stopped? I just keep thinking of that small tiny chance that the whole thing could have been prevented just by being there.”

On Friday evening, four days after the bombing, Luis was standing at CNN’s temporary set in Boston’s Copley Square talking with Anderson Cooper. He heard a producer say that the younger brother had just been captured, and he thought, “They are going to drop me now.” Then he heard Anderson Cooper say that Jahar was in custody—and Luis was still there, at the very center of things, on the news. The crowd around them began chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” What Luis really wanted to say was, “We got him, I’m going to Disney World”—he felt that much the winner at the moment. He might have failed, four days earlier, to prevent a tragedy by his mere presence, but now, by his mere presence, he had become intimately involved with bringing evil to justice. He did not give voice to any of that, but instead, with suitable grandeur, he did what Anderson Cooper had not done: he made a sweeping motion to include the chanting crowd in the shot.

This might have been what he had anticipated that morning, when he felt himself floating, like he had been pulled out of his body: his own moment of glory. And this was not only his moment of glory but, in the fervor of all those chanting people, the glory of his time, his place, his country, the vastness of all that it stood for, against the vastness of all that threatened it. “The one thing I hold dear and I cherish,” Luis told me on a frozen afternoon in Boston nearly two years later, “is the chants ‘U-S-A!’ flooding the airwaves—and I forever got to be a part of that moment.” No wonder he did not want to let it go.

Every nonfiction book is difficult in its own way. The difficulty with reporting this book was fear. People were afraid to talk to me because they had been questioned harshly by the FBI, because they believed they were in personal danger, because they feared bringing trouble to those they cared about, and because they had been disappointed by seeing their words quoted in simplistic, sensationalist, and misleading reports. I am grateful to those who placed their trust in my project in spite of these deterrents. This includes several people whose help was invaluable but who have asked not to be named in this book or to be acknowledged as sources.

In addition to them, and to those whose names appear in the book, I am thankful to the people who helped me grasp the context of the events I was describing.

In and about Dagestan: sociologist Alexei Levinson, anthropologist and my former colleague Konstantin Kazenin, the brave and inventive Dagestani journalist Zakir Magomedov, and especially Grigory Shvedov, human rights activist and editor of kavkaz-uzel.ru. Asya Tsaturyan and Nikita Bezrukov were my Moscow hosts extraordinaire: I got a room of my own and a set of Dagestan connections.

In and about Kyrgyzstan: my research assistant in Tokmok, Alexandra Ryabova; University of Colorado Boulder doctoral students Caitlin Ryan and Austin Cowley; and especially their teacher Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, now a professor at Indiana University. Elizabeth’s expertise was invaluable, but her encouragement and understanding of this project were worth even more.

In and about Boston: Nick and Ruth Daniloff; Graham Fuller; ACLU Massachusetts staff attorneys Jessie Rossman and Sarah Wunsch and Privacy Rights Coordinator Kade Crockford, who has followed the Boston Marathon bombing case doggedly and seemed never to tire of explaining the intricacies to me. My Columbia MFA Writing Program intern Elina Mishuris systematized conspiracy theories and tracked down far-flung leads. Melissa Ludtke helped me with contacts and advice, as did Krystyna Colburn and Ellen Todres Gelfand, both of whom also gave me shelter. Svetlana Boym did what she does best, which was challenge everything I have to say and tell me to read Hannah Arendt. Julia Zagachin was the person who instructed me to drop everything and write this book.

Several journalists shared information with me generously: Alan Cullison of
The Wall Street Journal
, Simon Shuster of
Time
, Fatima Tlisova of the Voice of America, and the great Bruce Gellerman of WBUR.

I have been fortunate, at Riverhead, to work with the best team in all of publishing. I think that Becky Saletan might like me more than she likes deadlines, and I hope to God that never changes. My agent, Elyse Cheney, is the best advocate a writer could have.

Vera Shengelia tracked my every move when I was in Dagestan, and then handed this tedious task over to her husband, Ilya Venyavkin. In fact, they’ve had my back for years. And nothing I do would be possible without Darya Oreshkina, who gives me both my home and my freedom. She also made the maps for this book.

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1
. In Arabic, the “highest part of paradise.”

2
. Martyr (inshallah).

3
. Abbreviation for “Peace be upon him.”

4
. Nation; community; a people.

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