The Submission - Amy Waldman [95]
Late in the afternoon, Mo took a cab to the studios of WARU, where a young man of jaundiced affect led him into an anteroom and asked if he wanted tea, coffee, or a soda.
“Nothing, thanks,” he said.
“Water? It helps if you have a bit of nerves.”
“Why would I have”—nerves, Mo started to protest, then, embarrassed at the rasp of his voice, the taffy quality of his speech—“No thanks. Really, I’m fine.”
“Well, well, well, are you well?” It was Lou Sarge, and without preparation he guided Mo into the studio. They sat in facing chairs. The microphone hung between them like a reverse periscope, an eye tunneling down in search of something. The studio was dark, a paling salon: a place that sucked out the color.
Agreeing to the interview was not Mo’s idea but Paul’s, yet another demand masquerading as a request. “You’ve got to go into the heart of the opposition,” Paul insisted. “Show them you’re nothing to fear. Get Sarge on your side and you neutralize a lot of the craziness out there.” He offered no tips on how Mo was supposed to get a man who routinely described Muslims as “raging ragheads” on his side.
Sarge put on earphones so he would know when the commercial break was over and seemed to sink so deep within himself that he forgot Mo was there. In the soundproof studio, a hostile womb, Mo heard only his own breath.
“So, Mohammad—may I call you Mohammad?” Sarge asked at last.
“I prefer Mo. That’s what everyone calls me.”
“So, Mo, here’s how it’s going to work. Come a little closer—I don’t bite. We’re going to chat for a few minutes, and then we’ll take some calls. You won’t be able to hear the calls—we find it’s too confusing to guests to be trying to track what’s going on outside the studio—so I’ll relay the questions. Just talk into the mic, but no need to tongue it. That’s it. We’re glad you came on. Did they offer you anything to drink?”
Mo, not having expected Sarge to be so charming, so friendly, was disarmed. They had a few minutes while the commercials ran, and Sarge began talking about his background, how he’d briefly dabbled in architecture—“Buckminster Fuller—type stuff”—before becoming a radio host. “My designs were straight out of the future,” he said, “but that’s a hard sell in the present. It’s hard to be an architect on your own—you must know what I mean. You can’t just sit in your room and draw, it’s like trying to make children through masturbation. You need someone who wants to build the things, which really just means they believe in them. I couldn’t get people to believe. I know what you’re thinking: I’m pretty good at getting people to believe now. But that’s just it—I was selling the wrong thing. People didn’t want my designs, they wanted my voice. They wanted my courage. I’m not scared, and everyone else is—scared to speak because they’ll be called anti or phobic or racist or whatever. You have to attune yourself to the historical moment, sense the current of time, where it is”—he held his hands up as if he were parceling the air—“and then adapt to it. Spoon with it.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Mo said, tired of the monologue, wanting to conserve his energy for the show.
“All right, time to suck up to the sponsors. Three new ones today alone. We put the word out you were coming on and everyone wanted in.”
Having sucked up, Sarge addressed his listeners. “We’ve heard a fair bit about Mohammad Khan on this show, if you know what I mean, and today I’m pleased to tell you we have the man himself. We can talk to him instead of about him, get answers straight from his mouth. He’s an architect and, well, we all know his religious background, and he’s a New Yorker—born and raised?”
“Uh, Virginia originally. But a longtime New Yorker.”
“So what did you feel, really feel, the day of the attack?”
“I felt devastated, like all of us. Like