The Submission - Amy Waldman [100]
“Exactly,” Malik said. “The real extremism is among those opposing him. And if they succeed in forcing Mohammad to stand down, they’re likely to inspire attacks from so-called Islamic extremists.”
“It sounds like you’re making a threat,” Mo said. All of their hands were full with plates and glasses, and their inability to gesture imposed an awkward and inauthentic politesse.
Mo hadn’t seen Malik since the day they had presented the ad campaign. The loathing from that day returned now, accompanied by blame, no doubt unfair, but visceral anyway, for the sundering between him and Laila.
“But it’s true,” the woman in the yellow scarf interjected. “We need to warn everyone that the extremism of the opposition is fueling Islamist extremism. If we don’t, they’ll hold us responsible if something happens.”
“If something happens, from any quarter, he’ll be responsible,” Tariq said, pointing a judging finger at Mo. “You’ll have blood on your hands.”
“That’s outrageous,” said the woman in the canary-yellow scarf.
Suddenly everyone was yelling and interrupting one another so that their words seemed to be layered like the complicated, somewhat mystifying Middle Eastern dip the Gracie Mansion chef had put out on the buffet table. They also were still jamming food in their mouths because they had a whole day of fasting to make up for and the next day’s fast to prepare for, so the food was going in as fast as the words were coming out—jabbering then gobbling, jabbering then gobbling. The very eating seemed angry.
The mayor, seeing a group around Mo, had wandered over to join the conversation, then, hearing the clamor, retreated to the safety of his aides. He looked baffled that his moderate Muslims could be so hot-tempered.
“I guess I changed your mind,” Mo said to his father when he and his parents were free of the mansion. The cockiness in his voice was bravado. The argument had left him aghast at his own turbulent wake, suggesting that he was bound to disturb every space he entered.
“You changed nothing,” Salman said in answer. He sounded morose, even bitter. “I still think you’re making a terrible mistake. I think even if you win, you will lose. We all will. But you are my son; I had no choice but to defend you in there.”
17
“In any garden, more is happening than you know, than you see,” Mohammad Khan said. “Something is always changing, being changed, outside our grasp.”
His meaning evaded her. She reached toward him in an effort to understand. His hands settled on her head, jolting her inside, and he guided her sight to fibers rotting, leaves curling, aphids sucking sap, Japanese beetles gnawing petals, spider mites scorching leaves, oaks wilting … With microscopic vision, she saw it all.
“Death, it’s all death,” she said. “And no reason for it.”
“There is a reason.”
Wanting comfort, she leaned toward him, those green eyes, that soft mouth …
His beard pricked her awake, except that she came to alone in her bed, shaky with shame and confusion. Her subconscious, dispatched to ascertain his true nature, had instead ferreted out her own buried attraction.
He had not explained the reason for all the death. Cal’s death. The revelation had been so close. She wanted to erase the kiss and continue the conversation. But she couldn’t, for all her trying, will herself back to sleep.
It was 5:30 a.m. She tiptoed downstairs and out the back door. The sky was a vast canvas, pale, almost milky gray, the trees primitive black slashes against it. With all the concentration she could muster, she watched the rising sun shepherd tree branches and bark knots and leaf veins, every delicate particular, into being.
The white marble counter’s dark veins read like a map of country roads. As she waited at the bar, Claire traced the faint lines with a finger. The restaurant, Greek, painted in rich royal blue and white, recalled the summer when she took the bar exam, after which she and Cal spent two weeks in Greece,