The Submission - Amy Waldman [147]
“So many things evaded Paul’s grasp in that period,” she went on. “It was a strain for him, and for me, having to watch. But in the end, what he believed needed to happen did. That wasn’t an accident, not entirely. He deserves credit.”
“It’s an awfully convenient way of looking at things,” Mo said. “Everything he did was right, even the things that were wrong, because it all turned out well in the end. For everyone but me, that is.”
The tinge of embarrassment in Molly’s face made Mo regret his self-pity.
“She loves him,” the cameraman said. “Loved him, I guess.” Both Mo and Molly looked at him in surprise. “Sorry,” he said, halting now. Red. “It’s just—that would color her view of what he did.”
Molly gave herself over to a radiant smile, briefly forgetting Mo, then turned back to him: “She’s right that it did turn out well for others. Issam Malik’s in Congress, you know.”
Mo did, because Malik had the gall to solicit him, regularly, unsuccessfully, for campaign contributions. Before entering the House, he and Debbie Dawson—who had become his sparring partner when Sarge became unreliable—had taken their gladiator act on the road, feeding the global appetite for debates over whether Islam was a threat. Dawson, having written three international bestsellers about the threat of Islam, was especially popular with India’s Hindu nationalists. Mo still loathed Malik—for turning on him, for implying that he had brought on Asma Anwar’s death. But everyone then had claimed to be honoring the dead woman’s memory, Mo included.
As if following his thoughts, Molly turned to Asma next. Laila Fathi had tried to keep Abdul in the United States, so she could raise him herself, Molly told Mo. But she had no legal rights, and no support in the Bangladeshi community. He had returned home to be raised by his grandparents. Mo, trying to absorb this information, remembered Laila holding the wailing boy at the scene of the murder. She had said nothing, when Mo called to tell her he was withdrawing from the competition, braced for her disappointment, about trying to keep Abdul. Did she know then she wanted to? At the time he had been preoccupied with his own decisions, never thinking she might be making one of her own. Now he remembered her silence on the phone when he said he was leaving the country and wondered if he had blown up the bridge behind him.
Once she had asked Mo if he wanted children.
“Later,” was his reply, which was the truth. Later had never come. Work had been his child, his partner. And yet the more buildings he added to his name, the more hollow a frame they seemed for his life. Every real relationship over the years had sputtered out, his stretches alone lengthened to something like permanence. What he had with Laila, the briefest, most indelible of his entanglements, had been both created and destroyed by his memorial.
“Laila,” he said. The name caught in his throat. He coughed. “Laila Fathi. Did you speak with her?”
“Yes,” Molly said, “we can show you—” Her magic fingers went to work, summoning ghosts. In a few seconds Laila would be on his wall. This mirage of a memory—it might dissolve if he came too close.
“No,” he said, abrupt. “No. Let’s move on, I can’t give this my whole day.”
On the way to seeing Mo in India, Molly had gone to interview Abdul in Dhaka. This footage Mo agreed to watch. The young man’s face was warm-hued, thick-browed, and sorrowful. Mo couldn’t remember what Asma looked like. He had never seen an image of the father. A fund had been set up for Abdul after Asma’s death, even though, with her compensation money, he needed little. But Americans horrified by her murder—after watching her speech, they felt as though someone they knew had been killed—gave anyway, and Mo was among them. Then, consumed with his own departure, he forgot the boy.
“I don’t remember New York,” Abdul began. “I was two when I left. I came home with my mother’s body. And all this.” The