The Submission - Amy Waldman [104]
“Their rooms are too far away,” she said, irritated that he had invoked them at this moment. Yet she still couldn’t bring herself to remove his hand, until memories of their dinner conversation intruded and her desire clicked off. She twisted away from him and tried to look bored. “I’m just—not ready,” she said. He seemed unperturbed, as if he didn’t care how far they went. She pulled her shirt on and her skirt down, and saw him out, turning her cheek to him when he bent to kiss her.
“Be strong, Claire, and don’t forget to put on the alarm.” A half sob nearly escaped her. It was the first protective gesture from him, from anyone.
The motion sensors did their work, making him cross a field of light as he walked to his car. He disappeared down the driveway. She had been shaped, was being shaped, not only by those she met on her journey but also by how she lost them.
18
Fourteen headscarf pullings across the country; twenty-five Muslim self-defense squads patrolling in response. Eleven mosque desecrations in eight states, not counting a protest pig roast organized outside a mosque in Tennessee, but including the dog feces left at the door of a mosque in Massachusetts. Twenty-two Muslim countries expressing concern about America’s treatment of Muslims and its media’s portrayal of Islam. Six serious threats to American interests abroad by Islamic extremists vowing retaliation for the persecution of Khan. And, most worrying for a country previously free of indigenous jihadist terrorism, three thwarted plots at home.
These bulletins, these confounding facts, came to Paul at all hours, from all quarters. So did the opinions they fostered. The FBI and NYPD, in rare harmony, suggested that Paul cancel, or at least postpone, the public hearing because it might inflame passions further. A member of the president’s National Security Council argued the opposite—canceling the hearing “would not play well in Peshawar.” State Department officials agreed that the hearing might help the global campaign for Muslim “hearts and minds,” unless the hearing’s ugly tenor damaged it. The governor insisted that the public needed the catharsis of tension that a hearing could provide. “Some conflicts have to be fought out, rather than papered over,” she said, which prompted New York’s mayor to accuse her of sanctioning violence. The president, who had once owned a baseball team, suggested trading Khan (“He withdraws, then we make him a goodwill ambassador to the Muslim world”) or sending him to the minor leagues (“His memorial gets built, just in some other town or city”).
Paul’s trusted yellow legal pad was proving useless against these competing claims. Both canceling and proceeding with the hearing were perilous, unpredictably so. Stress, having already diminished his appetite, now stole his sleep, shortened his fuse, and prompted Edith and the household staff to speak in uncharacteristic hushed tones. His home took on the quality of a deathbed watch, an ominous ambience for a man newly feeling his age.
In his study at midnight, Paul flipped through his files on the memorial and came across the paper that had first revealed Khan’s name. Ever since he had pulled it from the envelope, he had been unsuccessfully trying, in one form or another, to stuff it back in. His efforts at containment had bred only more chaos. Maybe the answer, he thought now, was to let chaos, let chance, be history’s architect. He was, by profession, a gambler, albeit one who operated with society’s respect. The young love of risk, which had drawn him to his banking life—it was resurgent now. He took a quarter from his pocket, assigned heads and tails, and flipped. George Washington gazed into the distance, as if to see how the nation he founded would manage this pass. To start, by allowing the public to vent its spleen.
The strain on Mo, which had built by the week, then the day, now seemed to intensify by the hour. As the hearing approached, rumors pulsed in malevolent syncopation: the United Arab Emirates had “bought” rights to the memorial;