“I’
LL PUT YOU
through to Dr. Siddiqi’s office,” the secretary said.
“Siddiqi here.”
Leela studied the Music School from a telephone booth across the street. “Dr. Siddiqi, you don’t know me. My name is Leela Moore and I have a post-doc and a teaching position at MIT, but the reason—”
“Your name is familiar. Mathematics and music? Renaissance violins and lutes, yes? This interests me, because of the Persian connection. I’ve heard something about your work—”
“Yes, that’s…I’m surprised that you’ve heard. I’m flattered. But that’s not why I’m calling. Forgive me for interrupting, but this is urgent. I’m calling about Mishka Bartok.”
“Ah. This is all so terrible, so terrible.”
“You know what’s happened?”
“I am in shock. Yet I cannot say I was totally surprised.”
“Dr. Siddiqi,” Leela said with alarm, “could I come and see you? I’m very close to the Music School. Could I come and see you right now?”
“Nothing in the Qur’an forbids music,” Dr. Siddiqi explained.
“It is only in
hadith
, the commentary.”
“
Hadith
?” Leela repeated.
“Something like
midrash
in the Jewish tradition. Scholarly commentary. Debate.
Hadith
is used to argue both sides of the case. I explained this in my seminar, I explained it to Jamil Haddad, but fanatics are not interested in facts. They have no interest in history. They do not understand the evolution of beliefs and customs. For them, what is,
is
, and has always been that way.” Dr. Siddiqi sighed heavily. “A student like Jamil Haddad is poison. He can infect a whole class. When I learned he was the suicide bomber, I felt ill but I was not truly surprised. Do you know what I felt next, after horror and nausea? I am embarrassed to tell you. I felt relief. Now I am rid of him, I thought.”
“I never met him,” Leela said. “I know nothing about him. I’d never even heard his name before I learned he was the bomber.”
“Michael Bartok never spoke of him?”
“Unfortunately, no. There was a whole…There were things he could never talk about. It was too confusing for him, too painful.”
“I was distressed by Jamil Haddad’s hold over him, but I saw it begin. I saw the very moment when it began. It was because Jamil knew the Abukir family and he recognized Michael as an Abukir. It was as though he had hit Michael with a stun gun. But I know nothing of his personal details apart from that moment. We always talked music.”
“I knew something had happened. He changed. He was moody. There were absences, more and more of them, always unexplained, so one night I followed him. He went to that mosque in Central Square. I think he must have gone often.”
“Yes. He did. I also go to the mosque in Central Square. It is not only jihadists and suicide bombers who go.”
“It has a very bad reputation.”
“It takes just one rotten fish to make the whole barrel smell. Many people who are proud to be good Americans and good Muslims worship at the mosque in Central Square.”
“You said you knew what had happened to Mishka.”
“I did?”
“On the phone. You said it was terrible but you weren’t surprised.”
“I was talking about Jamil Haddad. He had the jihadist’s obsessive cunning. He would use anyone to further his cause. I’ve been afraid he might have used Michael Bartok. I haven’t seen Michael since then.”
“He’s disappeared in Beirut.”
“Beirut! He fled the country? That is not a good sign.”
“It’s going to look like that, isn’t it? I don’t think that even crossed his mind.”
“You knew he was going?”
“No, not beforehand, but he left me messages. He was going to meet his father. Dr. Siddiqi, do you have any contacts in Beirut?”
“I am Iranian by birth, not Lebanese, but yes, I have some contacts in Beirut.”
“Thank God. Mishka checked into the Beirut Dunes Holiday Inn a week ago. He called me twice from his room. I have his voice on my answering machine. His check-in was recorded on videotape at the hotel. A few hours later, supposedly, he checked out, or someone checked out in his name. The hotel will only give videotape access to the police. Do you think—?”
“I think I could.”
“I’ve made a copy of all the information I have, including the phone number of Marwan Rahal Abukir, the man Mishka
thinks is his father. Also transcripts of Mishka’s phone calls. It’s in this envelope.”
“I’ll do what I can, Dr. Moore.”
“Leela.”
“Youssef.”
“Will you call me as soon—?”
“I will.”
“There’s another problem,” Leela said. “My phone’s being tapped so when you call, if you’ll just say the music’s arrived—”
“Your phone’s tapped? I think mine is too.”
“Yours too?”
Dr. Siddiqi shrugged. “I go to the mosque in Central Square. Jamil Haddad was in my class. I’m Iranian, though I had to leave Iran years ago. I’m used to surveillance.”
There was a message on Leela’s answering machine. It was Youssef Siddiqi’s voice. “Your music can be picked up tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.”
In the music library at precisely ten o’clock the next day, Leela could scarcely breathe. “What have you found out?”
“I have a friend who has a friend who is a policeman,” Dr. Siddiqi began. “He has seen the tapes and he’s sending me copies. He says the person who checked out is not the same as the person who checked in.”
“I knew it. When do you think—?”
“The tapes are coming express.”
“Not that we’re going to recognize the person checking out. But it will be something to go on. Some evidence to report to the embassy and the government.”
“Another thing. The policeman friend of a friend traced the Abukir address from the phone number. He put the place under surveillance. Marwan Rahal Abukir has also disappeared. His
brother Fadi blames the son. The family believes the so-called son was a scam, a CIA set-up to kidnap Marwan because Marwan recruits suicide bombers.”
“I’m sorry, but Dr. Siddiqi is not in his office today,” the secretary said.
“I’m puzzled,” Leela said. “I’ve been expecting a call for a week now. He should have a package for me. It’s rather urgent.”
“We’re puzzled too, Dr. Moore. He hasn’t called in sick and he hasn’t even collected his mail. We’ve called his home and no one answers, and he doesn’t answer his cell phone either. We think there must be a death in the family.”
Leela stood in the phone booth across from the Music School. It felt familiar.
She dialed the number of the house in the rainforest in Australia and let the phone ring ten times. There was no answer.
T
HE WEEKS MOVED
heavily and slowly.
There was a note from Berg to say they had got the grant. Leela should have felt pleasure. She felt nothing.
There was a note from Berg to say they needed to meet.
She sent an answer back through campus mail:
Dr. Berg: Am working on something interesting: the years at the dawn of the thirteenth century when the oud was becoming the lute. Investigating the density of the wood and the curvature of the ribs in construction. The math’s provocative. May seem like I’m off on a tangent, but I believe it’s related to the structure of the early violins. Too involved to be interrupted at this point. Will get back to you when I’ve got more data. Leela.
For the Nth time, she called the Music School.
“We still haven’t heard from Dr. Siddiqi,” the secretary said.
“We can’t understand it. I’m afraid you can’t leave a message because his voicemail’s full.”
Leela felt drugged. She wanted to sleep all the time. She felt as though she were living in somebody’s dream.
The forsythia had long ago turned from gold to green and the oaks were in dense full leaf when she came home, late one
night, to the fast red blinking of the signal on her answering machine.
She hit PLAY.
She heard a female voice with a strange accent. She had to replay the message to catch the words.
I’m calling about the quandongs
, she heard.
F
ROM THE PHONE
booth in Harvard Square, by the subway entrance, Leela could see the beginning again: a couple, indifferent to crowds, kissing passionately; a street musician or two. She watched the couple, book bags pressed awkwardly between them, heedless of trucks careering close and of the buffeting of students as they passed. Just so had she so brashly, so recklessly kissed Mishka. That was a lifetime ago. On all sides, time fell away steeply. She felt dizzy and leaned against the wall of the booth. When someone answered the phone, she could not speak.
“Hello?”
“It’s Leela,” she said, she rehearsed saying, she intended to say. “I got your message.”
“Hello?”
“Your message about the quandongs,” Leela said.
She heard static. She heard underground rivers, she heard the wash and shush of the Pacific, she heard the Daintree in full cyclonic flood. She was stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere with crevasses on every side. How would any message get through?
“Is anyone there? Is that Leela?”
“Yes. It’s Leela. Is that Devorah?”
“Leela?”
“I got your message, Devorah. Can you hear me?”
“Leela, it
is
you. I’ve got good news.”
Leela closed her eyes. She could feel the overspill of the Daintree on her cheeks. She could feel floodwater rising. I’ve been stranded, she wanted to explain. Siddiqi’s vanished. The air is humid with menace. I can’t reach Cobb, he won’t contact me, and he’s the only one who might know what’s happened, who might help. When I called you weeks ago, no one answered. I’m lost. I’m flotsam. I’d given up even dreaming of rescue.
She could not speak.
“I’ve been in Sydney,” Devorah said. “My publisher has a friend who’s a lawyer. She’s with Human Rights Watch.”
Leela could hear music. On the sidewalk, there was a man with a guitar.
“I gave her everything you sent me,” Devorah said. She spoke of tapes, the Holiday Inn tapes, the Beirut tapes, which the lawyer had managed…and the man who checked out of the hotel, who had claimed to be Mishka but wasn’t, who had been identified…She spoke of the American ambassador in Australia, who had been deeply embarrassed, Devorah said. He had promised to intervene.
Leela listened but all she could hear was Gluck. The phone booth was full of Gluck and there was good news. She was watching the man with the guitar. He sat cross-legged on the sidewalk. There was a felt hat in front of him and pedestrians were dropping notes and coins as they passed by. A dollar bill fluttered and drifted away. The man did not notice. He looked blue. Everything looked blue. Leela could not see the blue man’s face.
“In Baghdad,” Devorah said.
“In Baghdad?” Leela tried to concentrate.
The man with the blue guitar was no longer playing Gluck. Leela could not quite hear what he played. She pushed the door
of the booth open a few inches and mostly heard the hubbub of traffic interlaced with a thin thread of song. The tune sounded vaguely Middle Eastern. Baghdad Blues, Leela thought. The Baghdad Rag.
“Apparently procedural errors,” Devorah said, and Leela was conscious of a lack of mathematical diligence on her part. If she could calculate the angles of divergence, if she could measure precisely the gap between the dastgah system and the Western tonic scale…
“Major embarrassment to the Americans at this point,” Devorah said. Extradition proceedings, she explained. Extradition proceedings were under way. “Though this will take time,” Devorah said.
The man with the guitar stood up. He was saying something. He made exaggerated words with his lips as he moved toward Leela. He rapped on the glass door of the telephone booth. He was mouthing a message through the glass.
“Still under heavy suspicion,” Devorah said. She said something about conditions…extradited on certain conditions…
“What?” Leela asked the man who was rapping on the door.
“He will be kept in detention,” Devorah said. “The Australian Government has to guarantee…”
Taking far too long
, mouthed the man with the guitar.
“Going to take time,” Devorah said. “We don’t know how long. But the main thing is, he’s alive and they’re sending him home.”
“He’s alive!” Leela called through the glass. “They’re sending him home.”
She felt laughter descend like a great bird that sank its talons in her shoulders and shook her. The man with the guitar looked alarmed.
“Leela?” Devorah said.
“How long…?” Leela asked. The words choked her. Another bird, the sobbing bird, had come.
“We don’t really know. Two weeks, the ambassador thinks. He’s promised to take a personal—”
The man rapped on the door with a coin.
“Two weeks,” Leela told him. She shouted. “Only two weeks!”
The man with the guitar shook his head. He tapped his finger against his skull.
Crazy
, he mouthed. He made a sweeping gesture with one arm, an ironic and elaborate bow.
“Leela?” Devorah said.
“I’m coming,” Leela said urgently. “I’ll fly out. I want to be there when he arrives. I’ll bring his violin.”
“I’ll meet you,” Devorah promised. “Call me as soon as you have your flight.”
The man with the guitar was writing something with his finger on the glass. He turned. He was walking away, but he had left his hat full of money by the curb.
“Wait!” Leela called. She felt panic.
She hung up and raced after the musician. “Wait!” she called.
The musician looked over his shoulder. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he shouted, startled. “Quit following me!”
L
EELA’S EYES WATERED
. She was jetlagged. She could remember the sequence—the flight to Sydney, the meeting with Devorah, the flight on to Adelaide together, the interminable drive through scrub and desert—but she could not remember what day it was. She felt groggy. She had never seen such a sun-bleached landscape, so full of nothing.
“This is the place,” the lawyer said.
“This is nowhere.”
“That’s the idea. This is Camp Noir.”
“Camp Noir?”
“That’s what I call it.”
Devorah touched Leela’s arm. “Mishka’s in there,” she said. “We’re going to see him.”
“I have to warn you,” the lawyer cautioned. “This is going to take time. We have several levels of security to clear.”
Sharp lines of light—the sun striking the razor wire—buffeted Leela like a shower of bright arrows. She shaded her eyes. The light crisscrossed the steel mesh and threw motley on the five of them. They were in something resembling a cage of chain-link steel.
“Second level,” the lawyer explained, as the steel gate behind them rolled shut. There were closed gates ahead. On all sides, they were wrapped in steel mesh. Above, the sky was
cloudless blue. The blinding disk of the sun burned Leela’s skin. “Don’t touch the wire,” the lawyer warned.
Leela watched shimmering diamonds and shadow diamonds ride in harlequin formation across her arms and across the faces of the two men whom they did not know and across Devorah and the lawyer who had told Leela and Devorah, “Call me K.”
“Kay who?”
“Just K. As in K for kangaroo court. K for Kamp Noir. This is an off-the-record assignment, and K’s my off-the-record name.”
Leela was curious. “What are your on-the-record assignments like?”
“Same. But we operate on multiple tracks and some of my methods and contacts are definitely not on the record. The less you know about me, the less trouble for all of us if things don’t work out.”
They were waiting for the guard to push the button that would open the next set of gates.
“How long do they leave us here?” Leela asked.
“As long as the whim strikes them,” K said.
“They place bets on us.” The tall man with the bruised eye mimed the tossing of a coin. He caught the invisible disk with his right hand and slapped it against his left arm. “They bet someone will get tired enough to lean against the fence.” He barked with laughter and made a mushroom gesture with his hands. “And then pouf! Barbequed Aussie.”
“We’re broiling already,” Leela said. “This heat is unbelievable.” She was engaged in a futile attempt to ventilate herself with her shirt, flapping it out and in, fanning her skin.
“We should have worn hats or brought umbrellas.”
“They would have taken them back there anyway.” The man gestured over his shoulder at the first security building. He must have been in a brawl, Leela thought. There was a swelling
purple contusion around one eye. “Those guys up there in the towers have no objection to heatstroke in the cage. Cuts down on the nuisance factor, which is us.”
“Believe me,” K said, “it can be a lot worse. I’ve stood here in a thunderstorm. I was afraid I’d get fried by lightning.”
“What happened to your eye?” Leela asked the man with the bruise.
“I made a mistake back there.” The man touched his cheekbone tenderly, experimentally. “I tried to stop them confiscating my glasses.”
Leela was shocked. “Can you see?”
“Things are blurry.”
“Bastards,” K said. “I deal with this all the time. You’d think I’d get used to it.”
“Can’t we report them?” Leela asked.
K and the tall man laughed. Leela felt light-headed with the heat. The tall man’s laughter rose like a dandelion puff and floated up to the ceiling of the cage.
“Security at detention camps is outsourced,” K explained.
“No one’s accountable,” the tall man said. “I’m Kareem, by the way.”
“Leela. How come you have an Australian accent?”
“Because I’m Australian,” Kareem said. “Born here. This is Rashid. He wasn’t.”
“Hi, Rashid.”
Rashid raised his eyes for a moment and lowered them. He half nodded.
“Rashid’s stopped talking,” Kareem said. He mouthed a word at them:
Depressed
. “His brother Abu’s in there. Been there three years now. No charges.” He mimed elaborate sewing actions with his fingers and an invisible needle and thread. He mouthed more words:
Sewn his lips together
. “I’m related to
both of them by marriage. We’re second cousins, or something like that. Who’re you trying to visit?”
“My son,” Devorah told him. “My son Mishka. Why do you say
trying
to visit?”
“Because that’s the routine. We wait one hour, maybe two, maybe three. We get X-rayed, we get body-searched. And then we may or may not get to see Abu.”
“Oh,” Devorah said, stricken.
“Look!” Leela said. There was someone coming out of the desert, walking steadily and swiftly toward them, his feet barely touching the sand. He was wearing a loose white shirt that drifted about his body like smoke. He was carrying something.
“Look at what?” K asked.
“That man,” Leela said. “And it’s an oud.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The man with the oud.”
“Mirage,” Kareem offered. “Happens all the time in desert air.”
The man in the white shirt, the man with the oud, kept coming closer.
“I can see him,” Kareem said. “Man with a shotgun. He’s real enough, mirages always are. But he could be fifty miles, a hundred miles from here.”
The man in white was almost at the wire. “Mishka!” Leela called.
“Don’t touch the wire!” Kareem shouted.
Leela blinked. The man in white was no longer there. “Mishka
is
here, isn’t he?” she asked K. “We
will
see him.”
“Technically, yes,” K said. “That’s my information. He’s been extradited, he’s arrived, and we’ll be able to see him. Eventually. Though not necessarily today. Nothing happens fast in this system.”
Devorah put a hand over her mouth.
Leela pulled down a shutter in her mind. On the long flight out, she had shoved all her sensory memories in a trunk and pushed them down hard and turned the key, but the trunk had sprung leaks. She woke from a dream of making love and Mishka’s smell was on the travel pillow and in the air. How is Mishka? the Qantas steward asked, and there he was in the seat beside her but when she touched him, he turned into someone else. He was seeping across the edges of every frame. He was always coming towards her. He always vanished when she touched him. Expect nothing, she warned herself.
She wrote a zero in the dust with her sandal.
She erased the zero with her foot.
Beyond the next guard house, where the visitors had to take off shoes and belts, where they had to pass through another scanner, they were directed to an outdoor waiting area surrounded by steel-mesh walls. The walls were high and topped with jagged harm that caught the light. Picnic tables and benches were scattered about, all seats taken. Kareem and Rashid squatted, Middle Eastern style. Devorah and Leela sat on the ground, cross-legged. K remained standing.
“You can’t sit,” Kareem warned. “Ants. They’re vicious biters.”
“I don’t care,” Leela said. “I’m too tired to stand,” but within minutes she was leaping up, frantically brushing at her thighs.
“Here,” someone called from a table. “We’ll make room.”
“How long have you been waiting?” Leela asked.
“All morning. Not counting the time in the cage.”
“I don’t know if I can stand much more of this,” Leela said.
“You will,” said the person who had made room. “You’ll learn. You don’t have a choice.”
“None of this matters, Leela,” Devorah murmured. “It’s worth the wait.”
Two names were called.
Leela watched the people who went forward. She noted that they did not permit themselves excitement. They disappeared through a door.
The rest waited.
There were more names called and there was waiting.
Kareem and Rashid were called.
“Good luck,” Leela said.
“Thanks,” Kareem said. “You too.”
There was more waiting.
Devorah said, “I’ve just remembered something funny and sad. When Mishka was little, he had an imaginary friend. I think he must have been four, and by the time he was five, yes, once he got his violin, the friend disappeared. But I would find him sitting on the veranda staring into the trees. He’d put his finger to his lips and say
Ssh! If you make a noise, Yixel won’t come.
”
“Yixel?”
“That was the name of his imaginary friend. And then he’d warn me:
Yixel won’t come if you’re with me. He only comes when I’m all by myself.
I’d watch him from inside the house and he could sit there for hours. I’d see him smiling. I’d see him talking to Yixel.”
“Visitors for Michael Bartok,” the megaphone announced.
A small cry escaped Devorah’s lips.
“Don’t show emotion,” K warned.
Leela told herself:
Stay calm. If we behave ourselves, we’ll be rewarded
.
The man at the desk beyond the steel door looked them over. “Michael Bartok can’t see you today,” he said. “He’s too ill.”
“I need to talk to Colonel Shulton,” K said.
“Colonel Shulton’s not available,” the man said.
“Will you let the colonel know I have a message for him?” K persisted. “I believe he would consider it urgent.”
“Oh right,” the man said. “You’re on chatting terms with the colonel.”
“Something like that.”
“How do you know Colonel Shulton?”
K smiled. “I’m not sure the colonel would like me to answer that in public.”
The man on the desk looked at her warily.
“May I borrow a page of your notebook there, and your pen?” K asked. She reached for them and the man did not stop her. She scribbled several sentences down. “Could I have an envelope?” she said.
“What?”
“It’s a private message. I know the colonel wouldn’t appreciate your taking it to him unsealed. Thank you.” K licked the flap. “I think he’d be grateful if you would deliver this now.”
“The colonel’s ex-military,” K explained, sotto voce. “Earns twice as much managing this joint as he ever got in the army.”
“How do you know him?” Leela whispered.
“I don’t. I know people who do.”
“The thing is,” Colonel Shulton said, facing them across his desk, “he’s not in the best condition for visiting.”
“What does that mean exactly?” K asked.
“A certain amount of PID. He’s under medical care.”
“What is PID?”
“Post-interrogation disorder. From before he was shipped to us. He had some crucial information and they got it.”
The colonel seemed to change shape. He was a balloon man. His mouth opened and closed. Devorah fainted. Leela and K helped her to a chair. There was a window behind the colonel’s desk, a black glass square. Leela could not see through it but she was certain that Mishka was there. She could hear the sound of a violin.
K produced a letter. “The American ambassador has taken a personal interest,” she said. “I think you had better let us see the prisoner. Mistakes have been made.”
“Well, hmm,” the colonel said, skimming the letter. “He’s in the infirmary. I could perhaps let you visit very briefly. You will have to be escorted by armed guard.”
“We accept,” K said.
There was a body under the sheet. The head was bandaged and the face was turned to the wall. Tubes from a drip feed were taped to one arm.
“Mishka,” Devorah said, and there was a slight movement of the arm. The fingers halfway made a slack fist and then went limp. Devorah touched the shock of hair above the bandage that covered both ears.
Leela watched the hand flinch again, watched the fingers curve and then droop. She reached for them. It was as though the hand had no bones. She laced her fingers through those of the hand beside the bed. “Mishka,” she whispered. She pressed the back of the hand to her lips. She felt for the hard little circles on the pads of Mishka’s fingers at the chord-playing tips. She frowned. There were no calluses.
She leaned over the bed and the figure groaned and turned. Devorah cried out. “This isn’t Mishka,” Leela said.