The Submission - Amy Waldman [92]
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re wearing the same scarf as that day. You think I’m a bull—that I’ll see it and go nuts again?”
“I didn’t realize—”
“Did you say you were sorry? Sorry for what? I’m the one who’s supposed to be sorry, remember? Isn’t that why I’m here? So you all can humiliate me, make me bow down, kiss your ring or whatever?”
“No one made you come,” she said gently. Her face was pumpkin-round; her eyes, striking, hazel, long-lashed. “No one’s making you stay.” She was talking to him like he was the man on the ledge; it surprised him not to mind. He bent to stuff his possessions back in his bag, casting about for his next move as he did so. He was red-faced—he didn’t need a mirror to know it.
“I want to talk to you in private,” he said to Zahira. “Not so many people.”
“That’s not appropriate,” Malik said.
“How so?”
“Our religion believes in modest interchange between the genders. And her humiliation was public, so the apology needs to be as well.”
“In private,” Sean repeated.
“Not possible—” Malik started to say.
“We’ll go in there,” Zahira said, pointing to Malik’s office, “with the door open.”
Over Malik’s objections, Sean and Zahira rose, complicitly, to take possession of his office. A desk epic enough to protect her reputation dominated the room. Zahira seated herself behind it, folded her hands atop it. Sean took a chair on the other side. There were three TVs in the room. He tried not to watch.
“Before an apology, Sean, I’d like an explanation,” she said. Ever since she first spoke he had been trying to pinpoint what struck him as odd in her speech, and now he had it. It was the lack of accent. She sounded as American as he did. “What made you pull my scarf? Had you planned it?”
“No!” he said. “Your sign made me mad.” Aware how childish this sounded, he borrowed Debbie’s words: “But also, we don’t make women cover their hair in this country.”
“No, we don’t make women cover their hair.” She put the stress on “we.” It seemed to amuse her. “But women are free to choose to, as I did. No one’s making me do anything. My own father is against me covering. It’s my choice,” she repeated. “No one else’s.”
Sean’s eye wandered to one of the televisions, on which his passage through the bawdy gauntlet outside was being replayed. He looked tense, even fearful. Less brave than he had felt. He had imagined that moment of deciding to plow ahead as his version of Patrick’s charging into a burning building. Now he saw how foolish that idea was. Patrick was dead.
Zahira was watching the television sets, too: Sean’s arrival, the screaming SAFIs. After a few moments she picked up the three remote controls, one by one, to switch off the screens. Then she turned to Sean with a new gentleness and said, “So other than protecting women from themselves, Sean, what do you do with yourself? Where do you live—never mind, you said you’re homeless. Not forever, I hope. What kind of work do you do?”
He thought about his days hanging pictures and caulking tile. About the itchy suit—bought for Patrick’s funeral, repurposed for his speeches—that he was wearing. “I’m in transition,” he said. “You?”
A Columbia University student double majoring in literature and economics. The sting of “Bigot = Idiot” returned.
“You called us names,” he said. “Is that what they teach up at Columbia?”
“No, I thought that up myself. Maybe it was a poor choice. But I do think bigots are idiots. I’m not saying you’re bigoted if you’re against this memorial design. But I’d like to hear why you are against it.”
“It’s an Islamic garden!” he said. He struggled for words, again pilfered Debbie’s. “It’s a paradise for murderers. A way to take us over, to colonize us.”
“Really?” Zahira said. “I thought it was just a garden. Honestly, Sean, even if it has elements in common with traditional Islamic gardens, that doesn’t mean it’s a paradise. And if he were consciously trying to invoke the afterlife, how do you know he’s trying to encourage terrorists? For all you know he’s reminding Muslims that we’ll never reach paradise if we do what they