In the Language of Miracles (5 page)

ENGLISH
: If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.

Saying

ARABIC
: Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him speak benevolently or remain silent.

Saying of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon his soul

K
haled could not sleep. For close to two hours he fiddled on Facebook, trying to block out the whispers seeping through the wall at the head of his bed, Ehsan's voice distinguishable from Fatima's, the words muffled and incomprehensible yet audible still. His sister and grandmother were the only two capable of discussing today's events—what were they saying? He doubted his parents would talk tonight. He didn't check to see if his father had eventually joined his mother in their bedroom.

On his nightstand, his phone beeped, signaling a text message—doubtless from Garrett, the only one who would text him that late. Garrett's message showed a picture of the flyer.

Did you see this?

Yes,
Khaled texted back.

This Sunday.

Yes.

What will you do?

Khaled thought of possible answers to this question: Get out of town, stay in hiding, watch a
Star Wars
marathon. Instead, he typed,
Dad wants to go.

WTF? Why?

Wants to give a speech.

Bad idea.

I know.

Man. Your dad. Should be banned from contact with public.

Khaled sighed, put the phone down. Of course Garrett was right. Ever since Cynthia had left, Khaled had been wondering which was worse: walking into that service knowing that nobody wanted them there, or watching his father actually get up and address the crowd.

Samir had a track record of unfortunate public announcements. A year earlier, he had spoken to the reporters who showed up on their doorstep on the heels of the police officers who came to talk to his parents. Khaled had let the officers in and had watched as one of them walked into the kitchen, where Nagla, towel in hand, raced toward him, her face blanching even before he spoke. She listened, intent, her eyes searching his face, and then she quietly lowered herself to her knees by
the foot of the kitchen table, the towel in her lap, as if expecting a toddler to rush into her embrace. As the officer stooped down to talk to her, tears streamed down her cheeks, but her face remained expressionless, showing signs of only a mild surprise, a puzzled look that reminded Khaled of the way his mother sometimes stared at people who spoke too fast for her to catch up. He wondered whether she needed him to translate for her, whether the officer's English, like so many others', was beyond her grasp. But she did not. She had understood.

Standing in a corner, a terrified Fatima grasping his arm and sobbing, Khaled saw his father thunder down the stairs, almost tackling the officers, speaking so fast they barely had time to answer his questions. The other officer, the one who had stood in silence and looked around, grabbed Samir by the elbow and led him out of the kitchen and into the living room. Samir's questions spilled out in a mad rush. Where did it happen? Were there any witnesses? Did they check the surveillance tapes yet? Maybe someone put that thing in Hosaam's hand afterward. And how did Hosaam get to the park? He didn't have his car. Samir pulled at the officer's arm, wanting to lead him to the garage to show him, to prove to him that Hosaam did not have his car. Yes, he understood that Hosaam was dead, and Natalie, too, but how could they have found them in the park if Hosaam didn't have his car?

Khaled didn't pay attention to the reporters until later in the day, when his father left with a couple of officers, his departure accompanied by a plethora of shouted questions and clicking cameras. Khaled stayed in the living room, watching the reporters through the parted blinds as they set up camp across the street, cameras dangling from their necks and poised on their shoulders, lenses glimmering in the scorching sun. He did not know what else to do. His house had suddenly become alien. The police had evicted him from his room—Hosaam's room—as they rummaged through it. His mother, still sobbing in her bedroom, was in the care of Fatima, Aunt Ameena, and a couple of other ladies from the mosque, who
had rushed to the house as soon as they had heard the news. He felt he should be with someone—but with whom? There was no one to be with.

He knew his father had returned when he saw the reporters look up the street in unison. Stepping out of the police car, Samir ignored their shouted questions as he walked up to his front door. Khaled waited on the other side of the door for his father to get in. He did not. Khaled walked up to the door, slowly opening it, and saw his father's back as he walked away from him and into the throng of the reporters, saw him lift one hand up, silencing all questions, and then heard him speak.

What he said made the eleven o'clock news as well as the front page of the local newspaper. Bud Murphy, one of Khaled's high school classmates, uploaded a file of Samir's speech to Khaled's Facebook wall. Khaled watched only once as Samir urged the reporters not to come to any rash conclusions, not to publish any accusations until the police uncovered the truth. The whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding. He knew what they were thinking, what they were preparing to report, especially with victims so young, but he begged them not to condemn his son. Especially since he had heard someone had driven by the two kids as they sat in the park, had tried to pull Natalie into his car, and, when Hosaam came to her rescue, he had—well, everyone knew what happened next. No, he could not tell them who his source was. But he was sure Hosaam was as much a victim as Natalie. One day, he had begged them. Just wait one day before printing unsupported allegations so the truth could come out.

What came out the following morning was the police statement the sheriff issued after watching the tapes recovered from surveillance cameras that monitored the Summerset Park Visitors' Center. Ultimately Samir could not argue with that evidence. Instead, he sank down on one end of the sofa, covered his face with his hands, and wept.

That day the reporters returned. Khaled watched from his bedroom as they again hovered at the edge of the yard, quietly waiting. Soon
their cameras were clicking as they barked questions. Below his window Khaled saw Samir make his way to the reporters. His statement, again posted to Khaled's Facebook wall by Bud Murphy, was even longer than the previous day's. Samir was shocked, dumbfounded. He had no idea how something like that could have happened. Hosaam and Natalie had been friends since they were both toddlers. The Bradstreets were their closest friends. No, he was not aware of any mental problems his son might have been suffering. No, Hosaam was not a college student. He was going to go to college, of course, but he had decided to take a year off first. Yes, he had been speaking to his son, regularly, of course. Yes, Hosaam had still been living with his parents. They were very sorry. They were very, very sorry. He wanted people to know that he and his wife had not known, had not imagined . . . if there was anything they could have done to change things. If only they could . . . they were truly sorry. Khaled watched the footage of this statement on Facebook, read the forty-three comments left by his numerous Facebook friends and acquaintances, and then closed his Facebook account for good.

On the following day, the reporters showed up again. Samir spent the morning pacing the living room, occasionally parting the blinds to scowl at them. Fatima convinced her mother to get out of bed and walk down to the living room. There Khaled's sister sat next to their mother, coaxing her to eat a cheese sandwich and to sip tea with milk and honey. Nagla did not seem to hear Fatima speak. Khaled, sitting in an armchair a few feet away, watched as Nagla sat, back straight, hands folded in her lap, her eyes relentlessly watching Samir's every move. She had not slept since it happened, he knew, and her eyes were puffy, the hollows underneath them ashen. When Samir finally stopped pacing, he walked up to his family and explained, in short, hesitant sentences, that he felt he had to issue another statement to clarify things.

“Clarify what?” Nagla asked.

“Tell them we had nothing to do with this. Tell them he's really not . . . was not a bad kid.” He stood straight, looking down at Nagla, and, were it not for his lower lip trembling, Khaled would have thought he was issuing a simple statement:
We should eat at Olive Garden tonight.

Nagla got up slowly, took a few steps toward her husband, and started rapidly hissing at him. Her voice low at first, she talked so fast, Khaled was hardly able to catch up, his Arabic as slippery as his mother's English. He knew she was saying something about Samir's mixed-up priorities, about how he cared more about what people thought of him than he did about his own son who had just— Samir tried to talk back, but every time Nagla's voice grew louder as she inched so close to him, she had to look up to maintain eye contact with her husband. Khaled, going back and forth between watching his parents fight and watching Fatima watch them, did not have time to decide what to do before they all heard a shuffle outside their front door. Samir and Nagla fell silent.

Khaled got up and walked to the window. Peering between the edge of the blinds and the glass, he saw a young reporter in a yellow blouse, black skirt, and four-inch yellow heels standing at their front door. She had her back turned to the house and was motioning to her cameraman to come closer, apparently trying to shoot a segment right there on their doorstep. Nagla saw her and, before any of them could stop her, she rushed to the door and opened it wide. The reporter barely had time to turn around before Nagla lunged at her, grabbed her by the arm, and screamed at her in Arabic.

“Ayzeen menena eih? Mesh kefayah el ehna feih?”

The reporter started screaming. Samir, Khaled, and Fatima all rushed outside. Nagla dragged the reporter into the front yard, still grasping her arm as the reporter frantically tried to free herself from Nagla's grip. Samir got to Nagla first and wrapped his arms around her, constricting her movement, while Khaled started prying open her fingers to release
the reporter. She did, finally, but the release was so sudden that the reporter took a few hurried steps back, got her shoe stuck in the dry, cracked mud, stumbled, and fell. When Fatima made it to her, trying to help her up, the reporter, still screaming, pushed her back, knocking her down as well. Fatima got up and hurried inside while her father and brother dragged Nagla in, still yelling. By then the reporter's cameraman had made it to his colleague and helped her up. When the family was inside, before closing the door, Khaled took one more look and saw the reporters snapping pictures, both of their house and of the Bradstreets' next door. Cynthia Bradstreet was standing in her doorway, arms crossed, watching the commotion. He slammed the door shut.

An intern for the
Summerset Banner
shot the picture that graced the front page the next day. Khaled knew exactly who had taken it, because he had seen the intern climb on top of a parked Ford Fiesta, which was probably the only way anyone could have captured both houses together. Samir, on the left-hand side, pulled Nagla back into the house. Khaled waved one hand toward the reporters, and Fatima struggled to get off the ground. On the right-hand side, Cynthia Bradstreet stood in her doorway, one hand covering her mouth, the silhouette of Jim Bradstreet barely visible behind her. And to the very far left the legs of the reporter, being helped up by her cameraman, protruded low and angular while one yellow shoe could barely be seen as it stood, still stuck in the dry grass. After that picture was published, Samir did not issue any more statements.

 • • • 

For months afterward Khaled and Fatima had begged their father to move the family away from Summerset, to relocate them to a place where people would not stare at them whenever they walked down the street, where they could go to school each morning and disappear in the comfort of anonymity. Again and again, Samir had refused to
discuss the subject. Finally, apparently weary of his children's persistence, he had relented.

“Where do you think we could go?” Samir had asked. He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at both of his children as they sat side by side on the living room sofa. Nagla, sitting in her armchair, had remained silent.

“Anywhere but here,” Khaled answered.

“And what am I supposed to do with the practice I spent almost twenty years building?”

“You could start a new one. Doctors do that all the time. Or find a hospital job. You always said doctors who are employed by hospitals have it a lot easier.”

“If they start out this way, yes. But not after I've spent decades running my own practice.”

“Then start a new practice somewhere else.”

“Do you think it's
that
easy? Do you know how many years it takes to build a solid patient population?”

“Actually,
Baba
,” Fatima started, hesitated, and then went on, “you have been complaining about how many of your patients left. You know, after what happened.” She glanced at her mother. Nagla looked out the window into the darkness. “So we were thinking this might actually be a good time to move, since your practice—” she trailed off.

Samir stared at her, blushing. “So you're saying that I should move since I'm not making enough money here anymore, is that it?” he hissed.

“No,
Baba
, of course not. I didn't mean—”

“If I'm going to be discussing finances with my teenage kids, let me take this a step further. Did you ever think of the cost of such a move? Do you think I can afford to relocate my practice now? Buy a new house? Pay a double mortgage until God knows when this house is sold?”

“You can always put this house on the market first. It might sell quickly,” Khaled said.

“Oh yes. Because people would race to buy our house, knowing your brother's story. Houses with tragic histories always attract buyers that way, I presume.”