The Submission - Amy Waldman [77]
“Terrorist lover!” he heard a woman scream at a cop, who said, almost kindly, “Ma’am, I’ve got four kids; the only thing I love is my paycheck.”
Their politeness was killing him, as was his back. Lifting his head to check on the police, he saw a silent group of counterprotesters standing on the sidewalk. Most, but not all, looked Muslim—headscarves on the women, beards on the men, dark skin. They held signs: WE ALSO ARE AMERICANS and ISLAM IS NOT A THREAT and MUSLIMS DIED THAT DAY, TOO and BIGOTS=IDIOTS. It was that last sign that flooded Sean’s brain with red, which also happened to be the color of the headscarf on the woman holding it. Rubin wanted him to be less crude? He scrambled to his feet and stalked over to her. “Are you calling me an idiot?” His spittle flew; his voice cracked; he didn’t care. “You’re calling my parents bigots? A bunch of Muslims killed my brother. Why aren’t you out protesting them? Have you ever held up a sign that said, ‘Murder in the name of my religion is wrong’?”
“Of course it’s wrong,” the woman said steadily, “but discriminating on the basis of religion is wrong, too.”
Her placidity, so provoking, made him want to provoke her in return, to get a rise, and the most provocative act he could think of was to tug back her headscarf, and he reached out, some small part of him also wanting to see what was so valuable it had to be covered, and caught the edge of the scarf as she stepped back in fear, so that the scarf came forward, a little roughly, maybe he blinded her for a moment, maybe his hand brushed against her head, then a police officer was separating them, or rather holding back then handcuffing Sean, and reading him his rights, bundling him in a van with his committee members and the SAFIs, who were still chanting “No Muslim memorial!” and flashing him wide smiles and thumbs-up, and at the station the others were taken and quickly processed and released, while he was held for arraignment on a misdemeanor assault charge along with a miscellany of shoplifters, public urinators, and trespassers before being released on his own recognizance.
Debbie called his pulling the headscarf “a stroke of genius.” Outraged liberals called it a stunt. None of them would believe he hadn’t planned it. His determination to escape the script served only to affirm it.
His chest housed a hard ache. At home, his mother greeted him with pursed lips and a silent shake of her head.
“It looked pretty bad,” his wet-eyed sister Miranda whispered, to which Sean said, “Well, fuck that,” and went up to shower. But he avoided his own eyes in the mirror. He’d out-Debbied Debbie, and it didn’t feel all that great.
14
The Committee to Defend Mohammad Khan, the Mohammad Khan Defense Fund, the Mohammad Khan Protection League—all of them lacked only one ingredient, which was Mohammad Khan. He didn’t want to compromise his independence, didn’t want to shoulder any donors’ associations, didn’t want to be some radical-chic pet, a Black Panther with a beard in place of an Afro, but they organized on his behalf even without him, staged press conferences, plays, fund-raisers, and seminars in his name. And parties, including one that Roi asked, or rather ordered, Mo to attend. Its host was a film producer whose Hamptons house Roi had designed. “People want to be in the room with you,” Roi said, then sent his regrets as soon as Mo agreed to go.
The party, in a vast, dimly lit, high-ceilinged apartment at the Dakota, was packed. Through enfiladed rooms currents of guests flowed onward without cease, carrying Mo and Laila—in a dress whose tornpetal layers made her look like a pink peony—with them. Strangers plucked Mo out of the processional to introduce him to other strangers, then returned him, like an unworthy pebble, to the stream. Champagne was passed for toasts no one could hear.
“You know Bobby, right?” De Niro nodded as if to say that yes, Mo did.
“I’ve been a great supporter of the Palestinian cause,” a British baroness told Mo meaningfully.