Lightness of Being…

“Who are you? Where are you taking me? Where’s Chris?” 

The new agents, who were roughly untying him, paid no attention to his questions. He was glad to finally stand up. Blood was rushing to his limbs and his head felt woozy.  

“Please say something” he pleaded as they handcuffed him and led him away. 

A flash of blinding light hit him as they stepped outside. It took him several moments to adjust to the harshness of sunshine. He looked around and realized he had been held at an abandoned Warehouse. He shook his head in wonder. Didn’t the Feds have proper facilities to host us? 

The agents led him to a white nondescript van and roughly pushed him in the back. Two guards were already waiting inside.  

Zack was filthy. He hadn’t taken a shower in what could have been years and he felt a certain nasty odor emanating from him. He turned to the guard closest to him. He was a young looking small framed White guy, with thin lips, a goatee, and a nasty arrogant vibe around him.  

“Do you know where we are going?” Zack was desperate.

“Let’s just say you are going for the ride of your life” 

“What happened to Chris and Joe?” 

“Awww..little Arab (Pronounced AyyRaab)  punk has a crush on big Ole’ Chris huh?”

There was nothing little about Zack but he kept his cool. 

“But we had a deal” Zack was confused “They said they might let me go!” 

“Let me guess you volunteered to spy? We don’t need you to spy on us. We got hordes of your people coming in everyday begging to get a chance to prove their patriotism. As if!” 

 Zack felt an icy hand close itself in the depths of his gut.

He swallowed a fearful lump and silently began to pray.

“Please don’t let it be Gitmo, Pease anywhere but…” 

{-} 

 His relationship with Jenna had taken on a rollercoaster ride of its own. They went from tumultuous fighting sealed with passionate love making, to bridled anger seething with passive aggressiveness to a war of silence broken only by snide hurtful comments hurled from one end of the room to the other. 

Jenna had tried. She really did. She even attended a community dinner with him, “perhaps understanding his religion and ways might help us form a better relationship, if only for the sake of Hannah.”

But she couldn’t relate to anything in that small claustrophobic community. The first day she sat in a corner, on the other side of the building, far away from her Zack. She had six month old Hannah on her lap, and watched as the women around her cheerfully ignored her. Summayya had stopped by to introduce herself and talk to her a bit, but she was inevitably interrupted many times and finally excused herself to go help in the kitchen. 

A well meaning lady came up to her, and proceeded to tuck in her stubborn golden mane into the small scarf she had awkwardly put on her head. Jenna hated to be touched by strangers, her personal space was sacred and this woman reeked of a strong odor of spices that made Jenna almost puke.  

“Who does she think she is?” 

She watched in distaste as children ran around uncontrollably, and mothers who only told them half-heartedly to stop. 

The food was sloppily served and older women kept cutting in the already endless line.   She had a feeling of being stuck in a chaotic zoo, and couldn’t stand the disorganization she was witnessing. Disorganization in her dictionary was a synonym for blasphemy.

 “Is this how they worship?” 

 She had walked to the bathroom but couldn’t get passed the door. There were puddles of water everywhere and women were happily splashing around.  

She went home dejected with a painful throbbing headache.  

{-}

The more Zack sought refuge in his community, the fonder Jenna became of her church. Her big awesome Cathedral filled with her lovely saints, gorgeous stained glass, and long endless ceilings. She felt at home in the polished ordered pews where men and women worshipped together side by side like God had intended them to. She noted smugly that all the children were nicely tucked away in a youth room with age appropriate activities planned out for them. Men and women sang like angels, and knelt to pray, they did not get on the floor with their hands and feet groveling like savages. She felt a certain calm in her princely church, and realized that she could never leave her blond blue eyed Jesus for the Unfathomable foreign God belonging to Zack.  

{-} 

It was like they were strangers and they had just realized it. After three months of sleepless nights, cleaning vomit and drool, burping, nursing, diapering, and comforting her little baby  Jenna was more than ready to go back to work. 

“Work? Why do you want to go back?” Money was never an issue for them. 

“You don’t expect me to be a housewife, do you?” horrified. 

 “You want to leave her in a daycare?” incredulous.  

“So what’s so bad about daycares? I grew up in one!” defiant. 

He rolled his eyes restraining himself from pointing out where her obviously neurotic control freak behavior stems from.  

Zack didn’t waste any time. He had resisted company hopping in the past decade and stuck to a small but promising startup. He was now one of the senior managers and had built a solid reputation with his white South African CEO and President.   They had a running joke about being brothers from the “motherland”’ and the African Americans working for them always shook their heads at the sight of an Arab and a short jovial White man speaking fondly of their “back home” Africa.  

Zack arranged to work from home three days a week, so that he could stay with Hana’a. He hired an older Moroccan lady to help take care of Hana’a and assist with some cleaning and cooking. Him and Jenna were fast morphing into solitary islands living out their own self imposed solitude.  

{-}     

“That’s it, I am leaving. I can’t take it anymore.” Jenna was busily packing her bags.  

“What about my baby?” Although the move was hardly surprising Zack was still thrown off.

 “Our baby” she corrected pointedly.

Hannah was about to turn 3 and she was daddy’s little princess personified.  

“You can’t take her. You won’t right?”

 “I have to. I am her mother. We can make custody arrangements. My lawyer will call you.”

“Let’s not involve lawyers please.”

Zack knew that the standard custody rulings already favored the mother; the fact that he was a Muslim would certainly not help matters.  

“Look” Zack tried again “You can move anywhere you want. I will come follow you. I will live in the same neighborhood that way we can share Hannah without disrupting her schooling.” 

“You can’t follow me Zack. I need to move on. I can’t tell my next husband oh by the way my Ex is our neighbor, just pretend he doesn’t exist.” 

“Then leave her with me. You can’t separate us. She loves me. She will never get over it.” 

“Oh she will. She is too young to remember anyway.” 

“Honey, please, let’s work it out. I will even go to counseling like you always wanted me to. Please anything for my Hana’aa please.” 

Jenna relented to letting Hannah stay with her dad from Tuesday to Thursday (while Jenna is working anyway); and staying with her from Friday to Monday.  She moved back to her own parents’ home about an hour away.  

Zack  felt little pieces of him die as he watched his little Amira (princess) being taken from him every single week. He worried incessantly. Would they feed her pork? What would the constant confusion do to her when she grew up? Would they take her to church? He knew they would, and he couldn’t blame Jenna after all it was her religion.

What was I thinking when I married her in the first place?  

{-} 

They came for him like a scene from the movies. Thirty FBI cars were roughly parked all over his perfectly manicured lawn, his driveway, and even his neighbor’s property. They came like thieves at the pitch hours of the night, right before dawn. They kicked the door and swiftly proceeded to create mayhem in his picture perfect home.

Even in his sleepy state he had enough sense to throw on some clothes before he went downstairs. 

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND DON’T MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVES” An agent waved a gun in his face, bellowing unnecessarily. 

Zack did as he was told, feeling like he was trapped in a macabre nightmare. 

His only thought was “Alhamdullillah (Thank God) it’s Sunday and Hannah is safe.” 

They turned his house upside down, even unnecessarily removing boards from his kitchen floor to search underneath. Some took to his well tended garden and uprooted flowers and herbs. 

For what? He thought sadly.  

They took his computers, printers, CD’s, empty floppy drives and even his entertainment system.  

He sat huddled in a corner, a gun pointing directly at his temple, watching everything he had worked so hard to build falling apart. 

For the first time in his life he understood his insignificance and swallowed the bitter reality of his fragile existence. He felt like God was playing a cosmic joke on him, right as he was making his way back to him, he yanked everything from under his feet. 

 The sky peeled itself in a torrential downpour as they led him away. He couldn’t help but smile at the sheer irony.  

 {to be continued}