The Submission - Amy Waldman [59]
Claire snapped off the television, not wanting to hear more. On edge all day, she slept poorly that night and came ragged to the next day’s papers. “VICTORY GARDEN!” screamed the Post. A Wall Street Journal oped called Khan’s design “an assault on America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, an attempt to change its cultural landscape. It would appear to be a covert attempt at Islamization,” the paper intoned. “Two decades of multicultural appeasement have led to this: we’ve invited the enemy into our home to decorate.” The members of Save America from Islam dominated cable news with well-lathed lines—their leader, Debbie Dawson, saying, “Muslims believe it is okay to lie to convert people to their truth.” And “Look at the history: Muslims build mosques wherever they’ve conquered. They could never get away with putting a mosque at this site, so they’ve come up with something sneakier: an Islamic garden, this martyrs’ paradise, it’s like a code to jihadis. And they’ve smuggled it in our memorial—it’s the Trojan horse.”
Bile burned up Claire’s esophagus, rose in the back of her throat, and stayed there, corroding her ability to speak or swallow. Focus on the design, not the designer, she had insisted, even as the governor told the families, if you don’t like the designer, you probably won’t like the design. Khan had played right into Bitman’s hands, or had the jury played into his by choosing, and in Claire’s case defending, him?
If the reports were to be believed, Khan had given life and form to an idea so powerful Muslims were willing to die and kill for it. Islamic extremists would fatten their fantasies of eternity beneath the same trees, along the same paths, that she and other family members walked for consolation. The possibility that his garden was meant to eloquently, wordlessly bolster believers lapped with oceanic insistence at the edge of her thinking.
Then she regained her senses. Every news outlet stirring this already opposed Khan because he was Muslim. They would do anything to stop him. This was just the latest pretext, a more palatable one for reasonable Americans than his religion alone. Once Khan explained his garden, answered the accusations, the fearmongering would lose its power.
The radio host Lou Sarge had an occasional sidekick, Otto Toner, whose role was to play the professional idiot. “I was just thinking,” he said onair. “Remember when the Russians bugged our embassy in Moscow? We built it, they bugged it, didn’t the whole thing go to waste—never got used? Am I right?”
“Right off your rocker,” Sarge said.
“Maybe this is like that—the same. Maybe they’re planning to plant bugs.”
“Of course they are, Otto,” Sarge said. “It’s a garden. You plant. And then come the bugs.” The hammy sound of a ba-da-bing!
“But you know,” Sarge said, shadows stealing into his voice, “even Otto’s right twice a day. Maybe there’s something sneaky, maybe they’re planning tunnels underneath. Or planting—putting—something dangerous in that memorial. I mean, how do we know the danger’s just symbolic here? Maybe this becomes some kind of base for them. I mean, has anyone really checked out this Mohammad Khan? Is he the Manchurian Candidate of Islam?”
The Gallagher clan was gathered in the living room, listening to the radio. Frank and Eileen. The daughters: Hannah, Miranda, and Lucy, the last two bouncing babies on their knees. The sons-in-law: Brendan, Ellis, and Jim. Sean.
“Bloody hell,” Jim said.
“What the fuck?” This was Brendan. “What the fuck?” Miranda put a hand on his knee, as if to physically tame his language.
Frank was watching Eileen. She was watching an invisible point on the wall opposite her. Her hand traced the same small circle on her thigh over and over, as if to burn through the fabric. Screams came from outside, where the youngest generation was playing touch football. The adults, on edge, froze. Sean, who’d been leaning against the wall, went to the window. A touchdown being celebrated. Tara, his four-year-old niece, had been given the ball to score. It