In the Language of Miracles (26 page)

By the time he reached the clearing no one was seated anymore. People were stretching their necks, looking at the commotion in the front. In the back row, Bud was standing on top of one of the chairs, laughing, and, his phone in hand, capturing the commotion on film. He would post it online so that everyone could bask in Samir's humiliation, in Khaled's. Khaled ran alongside the edge of the crowd. He found Garrett, grabbed him by the shoulder. Garrett turned around.

“Hey, where have you—Jesus Christ, what happened to your face?” Garrett asked.

“Get Bud's phone,” Khaled said, pointing to the back. Garrett turned, saw Bud, and nodded, heading his way.

Khaled ran to the front. The closer he got, the tighter the throng of people seemed to be around a center that he knew held his family. Getting nearer, Khaled could hear his father's voice.

“I just want to say a few words!” Samir pleaded.

“
Baba,
wait,” Khaled yelled, pulling at people's arms, trying to reach his father. Craning his neck, Khaled glimpsed Imam Fadel, who seemed to be struggling to lead Samir away from the crowd. Khaled searched for his family and saw Fatima's braid ahead, heard his mother's words, in Arabic, louder and clearer the closer he got to her.

“Kefaya ya Samir!”
Nagla yelled.
“
You're making a fool of yourself.”

“Let me be, Nagla! I just want to talk.”

“No one wants to listen to you!” she yelled again.

“
Baba,
please,” Fatima's voice came. Khaled, hearing his sister, plunged into the middle of the crowd.

“Get your stupid father out of here,” someone shouted at him on his way.

“I'm trying. I'm trying,” he said.

He had almost made it to his father when Samir, breaking free of the imam's grasp, made a dash toward the podium.
“Baba!”
Khaled hollered, but he could no longer reach his father. He couldn't even see him, nor could he see his mother or Fatima. Quickly, Khaled jumped on one of the seats and then, hopping from one seat to the next, made it to the center of a row only a few feet from the podium. His father had reached it, was holding his speech in his hand, tapping on the microphone, bending down to look for its power button. “I just have a few words to say! Is this so wrong? Can't you listen to me say only a few words?” A couple of feet away, Reverend Fielding was holding Jim back, words sputtering from his mouth. Around Samir, everyone gathered: Nagla still yelling at him in Arabic, “You're making a scene!” Fatima still pleading. Imam Fadel had made it there, as well, and was trying to pull Samir away while everyone else around him talked, some trying to restore order, some shouting at Samir, others gathering around Jim. In the back, still holding the young tree, Cynthia was talking to Pat, sobbing as she spoke. The calm that had presided a few minutes ago had imploded, releasing a
constant hum of noise interrupted by occasional shrieks from Samir and Cynthia, who stood on opposite sides of the crowd, each surrounded by a group of people, the space between them empty, a no-man's-land promising imminent conflict.

Khaled looked around. The cameraman, probably taking his cue from Khaled, was up on a chair as well, filming the whole thing. Khaled, desperate, looked at his father: his face sweaty, his shirt out of his pants, his tie crooked. The speech he held in his hand was crumpled now, but he still held on to it, still tried to yell louder than anyone else, still tried to reach for the microphone. “If you would just let me speak! Only a few words!”

“
Baba,
enough!” Fatima shrieked, her voice much louder than usual yet hardly loud enough to break through the noise erupting around her.

Khaled stared at his sister. He had to do something.
“Baba!”
he shouted, trying to get his father's attention.
“Baba!”
Nothing.

Khaled jumped two rows to the front, made it as close as he could to the podium. He tried to think, looked down, and saw he still had his hoodie in one hand. Holding it by the sleeve, he lifted his arm and started swinging the hoodie in circles. A few people noticed him and watched, waiting. His father, struggling with those closest to him, was not looking. The cameraman still did not see him.

“Hey!” Khaled yelled. “Hey!”

The cameraman turned around. Now his lens was pointed at Khaled. Khaled kept turning the hoodie in the air, the circular, rhythmic motion reminding him of the whirling dervishes he had once seen in a street festival in Egypt. In the blazing heat, the hoodie provided a gentle breeze that might have cooled him down, had the motion not made him sweat even more. He looked around, saw he had gotten everyone's attention, even Cynthia and Jim's, even Fatima and his mother's, and, yes, even Samir's. Slowly, Khaled let his arm come to a stop, brought the hoodie down.

He wanted to say something, felt everyone was expecting him to, but did not know what to say. Even if he had known, he was too out of breath to speak.

So he waited, like everyone else.

They all waited for something major to happen. Khaled remembered Ehsan's assertion that God would take care of things, so he waited for some sign from God saying that all would change, that all would be better, perhaps. He looked to the sky, up between the trees whose branches intertwined on top of the podium, expecting to see something. Maybe rays shining through the branches and onto the podium. Maybe thousands and thousands of monarch butterflies, suddenly lifting off from their habitats in the middle of the trees, jubilant in their successful migration back from the south. For a moment, looking up, he thought he saw something moving, and he believed that this might happen still, that God might make it happen, that He might intervene to stop this humiliation, to send him a message, a sign, a flock of butterflies summoned just for him, like the single cloud that gave Muhammad shade or the crow that gave Solomon news of the Queen of Sheba. The sea splitting to let Moses and his people pass. The ground spouting water under Ismail's heel. Nature, controlled by God, just to serve him.

Ehsan would deem this possible. Ehsan would see it happening. Ehsan might even have the power to make this happen.

Then again, she might not.

Looking up, Khaled saw nothing but the blinding sun shining through the moving branches. Looking around, he saw faces watching his. He had caught their attention, yes, but he could do nothing else, because he controlled nothing. He did not control the butterflies, nor did he control the movement of the wind to make it shake the branches violently enough to send every nesting bird flying. He could not even make his own father stop humiliating himself, just as his father had been incapable of making Hosaam turn into the son he had imagined him to
be. He knew perfectly well that there was absolutely nothing he could do, but somehow all those around him still looked at him, still expected him to have the answer to it all, just because he had stood on a chair and waved a hoodie around. Even Cynthia had stopped crying and was looking at him. Even his own parents stared, as well as the imam and the reverend. He looked behind him. Garrett was standing next to Bud, who still held his phone up. They were both watching him. Khaled, looking first at Bud's phone, then at the newsman's camera, realized he was finally in control—everyone was waiting for him to act.

But he did not know what to do.

And it struck him, standing there on the chair, cameras and eyes turned toward him, that this was not the defining moment of his life, that, for better or worse, that moment had happened exactly a year ago, that Hosaam had controlled it, and that all he could do from then on was react. Which, in a way, made him just like his grandmother, whose prayers were calculated to regain control by beseeching the All-Powerful to act on her behalf and shield her from whatever life threw her way.

But life was trying to snuff him out of existence. A year ago, his brother had pulled a trigger and unleashed a hurricane that had been pummeling Khaled ever since, snatching him off his feet and tossing him in the air, twirling and twisting him about, watching him grope for an elusive ground.

He would probably remain suspended in midair for the rest of his life.

There was nothing he could do. A sudden exhaustion overcame him, an urge to surrender to the winds.

Standing there, a couple of hundred pairs of eyes fixated on him, Khaled understood why Ehsan prayed. Why she hoped for control yet accepted having none. Why she embraced the private peace that surrender evoked.

Surrender, he told himself.

Surrender.

Or—he paused, looking around him, forcing himself to meet people's eyes—learn to ride the winds. Learn to fly.

He looked for Fatima and his eyes found hers. She nodded once, then pushed her way to her father and spoke to him, in Arabic, so quickly and with such a heavy accent that even Khaled could not understand her. But Samir did. Khaled could see it from the way his father's face blanched, the way his mouth gaped. Khaled jumped off the seat, made his way through the crowd, which had fallen silent and, seeing him approach, had cleared a path for him. He reached his father at the same moment Jim did.

The two men stood staring at each other, their pleading looks eerily similar.

“I just—” Samir started. “I just—”

“I know, Samir. I know what you're trying to do. But now is not the time.” Jim's voice was shaking, not with anger so much as with an emotion that Khaled could only recognize as exhaustion.

“I wanted—”

“Not now, Samir. Please.” Jim looked at Khaled, who walked up and held his father by the arm.

“Let's go,
Baba
.”

“But—”

“Men fadlak, Baba,”
Fatima pleaded, pulling at her father's other arm. “Please.”

Khaled and Fatima, each on one side of Samir, pulled him away. He resisted at first, but then Khaled's eyes met his, and Samir's look turned into one of wonder that made Khaled feel as if his father had not recognized him until just now. Khaled wished he could tell his father what he had only now realized: that they were all trying to undo something that Hosaam did, hoping that, by their hands or by God's, fate would change course and all would be well again. But they were damned no matter
what they did, not by God, but by a nineteen-year-old boy who had lost the will to live, and, perhaps, by their own failure to see it coming, to prevent disaster rather than scramble in a futile attempt to change the past.

First surrender. And then learn to fly.

Slowly, Khaled, Fatima, and Samir made their way out of the crowd, passing by the tree that still lay on its side, Cynthia standing by it, her face buried in one hand. Nagla, following her family, paused, and, for a moment, Khaled thought she was going to walk up to Cynthia—but she did not. Instead, Nagla overtook her family, headed toward the car.

Khaled did not turn around to see if people were watching them, nor did he remember to check if the cameraman was still shooting footage of his family. He aimed for the car, kept his eyes on it, and ignored the aches he started to feel shooting up in various parts of his body, from his calf to his shoulder, from his right palm to his temples. Behind him, he heard Bud yell something about his phone, heard Garrett's “It was an accident, I'm sorry!” and grinned, for the first time today.

A few feet from his father's car, he stopped, allowing Imam Fadel to take his place. Slowly, the imam and Fatima led Samir to the car, and Khaled watched as they sat him down in the passenger seat. There Samir stayed, both legs out of the car, shoulders and head down. The imam knelt by his side, talking to Samir, leaning close to his ear as he spoke, reminding Khaled of how Ehsan used to recite the Qur'an in his ear whenever he woke up crying in the middle of the night, softly humming the verses to drive away nightmares, her breath brushing against his temples.

Khaled saw his father's face through the glass of the opened passenger door. Samir had stopped talking, had stopped wiping his sweat, letting it now run down his cheeks and forehead. His face seemed older, ashen, and Khaled noted for the first time how his father, when looking up, seemed to have a sagging double chin, and how the corners of his
mouth twisted down, as if he were about to cry. As the imam spoke, Fatima, who had been standing behind him, turned toward Khaled. He nodded. She, walking around the car, whispered something to her mother, who looked at Khaled and, grabbing her purse, walked up to him, followed by Fatima.

“What did you do to your face?” Nagla said, reaching out to touch Khaled's cheek. Her hand was shaking.

“Nothing, Mama.” Khaled pulled away from her. Nagla opened her purse, rummaged through it, and pulled out a disinfectant wipe.

“Here,” she said. “Let me clean this up.”

“I'll do it, Mama,” Fatima said, grabbing the wipe from her mother's hand. “You go back and take care of
Baba,
will you?”

Nagla glanced at her husband, then, sighing, back at Khaled.

“I'm fine, Mama. Just go.”

Khaled and Fatima watched her walk away before Fatima took the wipe to her brother's face.

“Ouch! Just give this to me,” Khaled said.

“What did you do, walk into a tree?” Fatima asked as she watched him try to clean his face. She had been crying, and her lower lip was still trembling. She bit it.

“It seemed like the better option,” Khaled said, nodding toward the crowd behind them. Fatima chuckled. Her eyes and nose were red.

They made their way to the car together, Fatima walking up to her mother, who sat in the driver's seat. Imam Fadel was still talking to Samir, who took occasional quick glances toward his son and daughter.

Khaled paused a few yards from the car, looked up at the trees. One tree close by had a trunk that must have been a good five feet wide. Khaled traced the branches with his eyes, from top to bottom, all the way to the roots and then up again. The tree was magnificent, a fortress immune to wind, the ideal harbor of a small miracle.