The Submission - Amy Waldman [133]
“It’s just me,” she said softly, as if they’d known each other forever. In fact, she realized, for all her quarrying of him, they’d never met. “Alyssa Spier, New York Post.” For a moment he looked blank, as if he didn’t recognize her name. She felt crushed, even though she knew most readers didn’t check bylines. Then anger dawned in his face.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” he said.
“What are you going to do? Are you going to withdraw?”
Khan ignored her, walking off in long, measured strides, and she scurried to keep up with him, feeling like a cartoon mouse. “Do you feel responsible?” she asked. “For Asma Anwar’s death?”
He heeled on her so abruptly it gave her a sharp fright. After what she’d written about Islam and violence, it would be almost funny, she thought, for a Muslim—especially this one—to go postal on her.
“You, of all people, are asking me that?” he said. “You’re the one who pushed her out into that street. You were probably there, transcribing every bloody detail. You and your paper have done everything you could to make it open season on Muslims.”
“No, you did, by entering the competition, by insisting on your right to win, even though it offended so many Americans, hurt so many of the families’ feelings. So are you going to withdraw?”
“Offended so many Americans? Was that what you said?” Khan said. He was moving toward her. They were only a couple of feet apart, giving her no choice but to walk backward. “I am an American, too,” he said, continuing to advance on her. “Put that in your paper. I, Mohammad Khan, am an American, and I have the same rights as every other American.” She peddled backward; he moved toward her. “I am an American. That’s the only quote I’m going to give you. I am an American.” She glanced over her shoulder—a few more feet and he would have waltzed her right into Hudson Street, but she couldn’t say that was his intent, that he had any awareness at all of their location, only that he kept moving toward her and she kept moving back.
“I am an American. I am an American.” One more step and she was off the curb. “I am—”
“Wait a minute!” she said, coming to a stop so suddenly that he nearly bumped into her. She narrowed her eyes. “You should be grateful to me. If I hadn’t broken this story, they would have buried your memorial—you would never have known that you won.”
“Bullshit,” he said. He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. “It would have come out regardless.”
“But I’m the one who brought it out. You should be grateful.”
Khan put his hands on his hips and looked up. Alyssa took a step back and saw that he was smiling. She looked up, too, to see a crescent moon so slight it was as if a fingernail had scratched the sky.
NY1 kept replaying the same story on Asma Anwar’s death, but Sean watched it each time as if it were new. Kensington wasn’t far from his parents’ house in Ditmas Park—less than half a mile—but the footage made it look like India. Hundreds of Bangladeshis milled in the street in anticipation of her exodus, then cried and shouted at the news of her death and the terror of a killer among them. He knew Bangladeshis lived nearby—brown-skinned women in headscarves sometimes trailed overstuffed handcarts down his parents’ block—but he’d never known there were so many of them. He kept returning to when Asma Anwar went past him leaving the hearing. He’d said nothing to her. He wished he had told her she was brave. He wished he had apologized to her for pulling Zahira Hussain’s headscarf, for his fear was that his own destructive impulses had unleashed, given license to, more murderous ones. Debbie was sure a Muslim had killed her, but Debbie’s facts coincided miraculously with her opinions. He wondered who would raise Asma Anwar’s son.
He wandered downstairs. His mother was alone in the living room, working a needlepoint. In the white light of the sole lamp, the frozen set of her features made her look more marble than flesh.
“Sit with me a bit,” she said, and he did. He heard the clock’s listless tick. The rattle of ice being