The Submission - Amy Waldman [89]
She stared at him, then carried his French press and her teapot to the sink and began washing while she talked. Her back was to him, the water on. He strained to hear. “Not long after my family came here the American hostages were taken in Iran. My mother told us to lie about where we were from—not to tell anyone. And we still had to change schools because my brother got bullied. I had just turned eight, but I understood that people who didn’t know me hated me just for where I came from, and the only way to avoid it was to make myself invisible to them. For a little while I stopped eating—I thought I really could make it so no one could see me. So they couldn’t judge me, or punish me for something I couldn’t control.”
Mo had pictured Laila as the girl on the playground rushing in, fists balled up, to save the picked-on kid from the bully. Not as the picked-on girl herself, trying to disappear. “Stop cleaning,” he said, in a low, urgent voice. “This is too important.”
She dried her hands, stepped out of the tiny kitchenette, and began looking for a pair of small gold hoop earrings she had left on the table the night before. “So what’s going on in this country isn’t so new for me,” she continued. “But I decided that this time I wasn’t going to make myself invisible and let others define me. And I certainly wasn’t going to let them detain or deport people just because they were Muslim. I was making a lot more money at the law firm, obviously. But career didn’t matter as much as—those were my grandmother’s, I hope I didn’t lose them—”
He had put the earrings away in her jewelry box. He retrieved them and handed them to her. The way she tilted her head left, then right to put them on, shaking her hair away from her ear, reminded him of his mother. “But in a way your career has come out better,” he said. “Before you were just an associate in a law firm. Now your profile—it’s so much higher.”
She shot him a disgusted look. “Yes, high enough for people to call me a traitor. You’re missing my point, Mo.” She began to put papers in her attaché case. “I was willing to give something up even though I thought it might hurt me. Maybe the ad won’t help your career, but other things matter more. With this ad you’re defining yourself. You’re saying that you won’t let other people caricature you or other Muslims, whether they’re doctors, or taxi drivers, or accountants.”
“A lawyer, not a terrorist.” His joke earned only a scowl. “Sorry, but why not get one of those doctors or taxi drivers to do the ad?”
“You want someone else to do what you’re afraid to do?”
“I’m not afraid,” he said.
“Then do the ad. Do it as an American, because you don’t like what’s happening in your country.” There was a mental translucence to Laila. Mo could read in her face, before she spoke, when her thoughts tracked in a new direction. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “Your beard—you started growing it when you were overseas?”
“Yes …”
“And then worked on your design for, what, a few weeks when you came back?”
“Roughly, yes, but I don’t see—”
“And so by the time you sent off your submission, your beard must have been pretty well grown in, like it is now.”
He knew her next question before she asked it. “And the photograph you submitted with your entry—beard?”
A beat of silence. Of shame. Of considering actually lying to her.
“No beard.” He could claim he’d had no more recent photo, but she was right—that wasn’t the reason he had done it.
“It makes me sad” was all Laila said. Effortlessly she had nailed his effort to be a “safe” Muslim when it would help him; to be courageous or provocative only when he thought he could afford to, even if he sometimes misjudged. “Next you’ll shave for them.”
Her pressure was bruising and his mind rebelled, lashed out. Maybe she was sleeping with him only to secure his participation. Maybe she was conspiring with Issam Malik.
“Who did you have dinner with last night?” he asked.
“What?”
“Nothing, sorry.” His suspicions collapsed; his