The Submission - Amy Waldman [76]
His game was off, his speech short. “It wasn’t enough for Khan to demand his rights as a Muslim. Now his garden has rights, too …” The cheers were scattered, irregular, as if people couldn’t hear well. The microphone’s feedback was distracting. When he said, “We all know the Constitution matters, don’t we?” there were uncertain roars, a few boos. “We just don’t think it’s the only thing that matters,” he finished. Some applause, at least, but tepid.
When Debbie strode onstage, a SAFI volunteer moved in behind her to wave the flag. A battery-powered fan placed in front rippled back her long hair. “I want us to be clear that we are fighting for the soul of this country,” she bellowed. The crowd, its hearing suddenly acute, roared. “For generations immigrants came to this country and assimilated, accepted American values. But Muslims want to change America—no, they want to conquer it. Our Constitution protects religious freedom, but Islam is not a religion! It’s a political ideology, a totalitarian one.” More roars. Sean rocked a little on his feet, unhappy that her broadside had revealed his to be utterly forgettable. She moved on to leading a cathartic, rousing cry of “Save America from Islam! Save America from Islam!”
At the chants, which were meant to cue the lie-in, Sean raised his right hand in the air and blew a whistle. He was important again. His committee members and the SAFIs bunched around him like excited schoolchildren, then smoothed into perfect marching-band rows as they moved into the street.
Sean’s original vision had been constricted by a series of compromises. The governor claimed that she had no power to get them permission to protest on the site itself. “So the gates are open to Khan, but not to us,” Debbie said, with satisfaction. She had a knack for turning any setback into proof of her worldview, any disagreement with her into evidence of dhimmitude. “Fine, we’ll block the street,” she said next, as if it had all been her idea, not Sean’s. But even getting permission to do that in such a sensitive spot had required concession: the police wanted, in advance, the names of all those planning to be arrested. Now Sean, who had earlier been absorbed in watching the crowd, realized the police had already closed the street, which was as empty of cars as the weekday church parking lot where they had practiced. There was no blocking to be done.
With less gusto he blew again, and the marching band became a drill team: some five hundred well-spaced people kneeling as one, the move meant to mimic, then mock, Muslims praying: instead of touching their heads to the ground, they stretched out on their backs. “Giving Allah the Navel,” Debbie called the move.
“Protect sacred ground!” his members chanted.
“Save America from Islam!” the SAFIs chanted.
Sean, after surveying the weave of bodies, lowered himself into a cloud of SAFI perfume and his own sweat. The ground beneath his back was hard, the sky above a piercing blue, smooth as newly made ice cream. A day as clear, as beautiful as the one that had brought the attack, a gift of a day, but irritation was stuck somewhere in him like a pebble in a shoe.
“You are blocking a public street,” a police official said through a bullhorn. “I’m going to count to one hundred, and by the time I finish, you all need to disperse. If not we will begin making arrests.”
The tight scripting struck Sean now as enfeebling (“ … forty-three, forty-four, forty-five …”), their defiance as nothing more than managed submission. His secret hope had been that maybe the police wouldn’t arrest them at all, would refuse to follow orders, choose patriotism over duty (“ … sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one …”). But listening for the sound of the blue wall cracking, all he heard were police boots scuffing. And then: “ninety-eight … ninety-nine … one hundred. Time is up, ladies and gentlemen,” and, “Please stand, sir, let’s not make this difficult, thank you, appreciate