The Submission - Amy Waldman [148]
“My parents idealized America. I know this from my relatives. I grew up hearing, over and over, how my mother had refused to come home after my father’s death. If she had, she would still be alive—I heard this all the time.”
The image changed. Now Abdul was watching, with intense concentration, his mother’s speech defending Mo at the public hearing. Mo could see Abdul’s lips moving ever so faintly, matching both his mother’s Bengali and the English translation provided by the man sitting next to her. Abdul had memorized the words. Mo didn’t want to think about how many times over the years he must have listened to them.
Abdul had applied to and been accepted at colleges in the United States, but under pressure from his relatives decided to stay in Bangladesh. America tempted him and scared him. Both of his parents had died there. This was reason to go, reason not to. Mo remembered how his own decision not to go home had curled him in bed. How many nights had Abdul spent in the same position?
“I sometimes feel each place is the wrong place,” the young man on the screen said softly.
The image on the screen cut to a gray-haired man—the same one who had sat at Asma’s side during the hearing—polishing a brass memorial plaque. Affixed to the side of the Brooklyn building where she had lived, it bore her name in English and Bengali, and her image. The man worked till it gleamed, placed a small bouquet of pink plastic flowers in a holder on the plaque, and put his hand over his heart.
Mo looked suspiciously at the camera, which had been removed from its case. So far it had brought only grief. And there was more: Molly had tracked down all the jurors and reported gently that most of them—Ariana Montagu, most of all—still felt betrayed by Mo’s abdication. Mo knew this but had worked to bury the knowledge. After deciding to give up, he had packed in haste and fled the country like a fugitive, leaving Paul Rubin to issue a brief statement saying that he had withdrawn. Reading some of the coverage from abroad, Mo had been flabbergasted by Ariana’s assertion that the jury was going to back him. The artist’s condescension toward his design, the scraps he had overheard from other jurors, Claire’s contention that only she had resolutely defended him—all had combined to convince him that the jury would never support the Garden. His face, as he read the interview with Ariana, had burned, as it did even now, at the prospect that he had misread his country as much as he had accused it of misreading him. From then on he shut out all coverage of the Garden. He didn’t want to learn facts that would make him regret his choices. In part, he was ashamed before Asma Anwar, before Laila, too: he had justified his decision to withdraw—to save himself—by saying his memorial would never be built. What if he had been wrong?
The camera was on, Mo seated near a monumental two-handled water jar carved from marble. Molly didn’t waste time with warm-up questions. “Why did you leave America?” she asked.
Mo hesitated, then began: “The memorial experience opened the world to me. I began to learn about Islamic architecture, and it became what would seem to be a lifelong interest. And there were so many opportunities abroad—India, China, Qatar, elsewhere in the Arab world. Architecturally it was more exciting to be abroad. The center of gravity had shifted, even if Americans didn’t recognize it back then. I guess they do now. And I figured I might as well work somewhere where the name Mohammad wouldn’t be a liability.” He forced a smile.
“Your instincts were right—you’ve done well.”
“Well enough,” Mo said with false modesty. He was better-known internationally than he had ever dreamed, and wealthy, too. And yet his gloss—that he had been pulled abroad by opportunity—was a false one. He had been pushed. America had offered his immigrant parents the freedom