Part 13 (1/2)

Mr. Levy destroys the moment, saying, ”Well, what else can we talk about? Giants Stadium. Did you catch the Jets game yesterday? When that kid Carter fumbled the kickoff, I thought to myself, Here we go again, just like last season. Here we go again, just like last season. But no, they pulled it out, thirty-one to twenty-four, though you couldn't relax until that rookie safety Coleman came up with the interception in the last minute of the Bengals' final drive.” This is presumably Jewish comedy, which Ahmad ignores. In a more sincere voice, Levy says, ”I can't believe you're seriously intending to kill hundreds of innocent people.” But no, they pulled it out, thirty-one to twenty-four, though you couldn't relax until that rookie safety Coleman came up with the interception in the last minute of the Bengals' final drive.” This is presumably Jewish comedy, which Ahmad ignores. In a more sincere voice, Levy says, ”I can't believe you're seriously intending to kill hundreds of innocent people.”

”Who says unbelief is innocent? Unbelievers say that. G.o.d says, in the Qur'an, Be ruthless to unbelievers. Be ruthless to unbelievers. Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten G.o.d. They think to be themselves is sufficient. They love this present life more than the next.” Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten G.o.d. They think to be themselves is sufficient. They love this present life more than the next.”

”So kill them now. That seems pretty severe.”

”It would to you, of course. You are a lapsed Jew, I believe. You believe nothing. In the third sura of the Qur'an it says that not all the gold in the world can ransom those who once believed and now disbelieve, and that G.o.d will never accept their repentance.”

Mr. Levy sighs. Ahmad can hear moisture, little droplets of fear, rattle in his breath. ”Yeah, well, there's a lot of repulsive and ridiculous stuff in the Torah, too. Plagues, ma.s.sacres, straight from Yahweh to you. Tribes that weren't lucky enough to be chosen-put them under the ban, show them no mercy. They hadn't quite worked out h.e.l.l yet, that came with the Christians. Wise up-the priests try to control people through fear. Conjure up h.e.l.l-the oldest scare tactic in the world. Next to torture. h.e.l.l is is torture, basically. You really can buy into all this? G.o.d as supreme torturer? G.o.d as the King of genocide?” torture, basically. You really can buy into all this? G.o.d as supreme torturer? G.o.d as the King of genocide?”

”As the note attached to Charlie said, He will not deny us our recompense. You mention the Torah, in your own tradition. The Prophet had many good words for Abraham. I am interested: Did you ever believe? How did you fall away?”

”I was born fallen away. My father hated Judaism, and his father before him. They blamed religion for the world's misery-it reconciled people to their problems. Then they subscribed to another religion, Communism. But you don't want to hear this.”

”I don't mind. It is good for us to seek agreement. Before Israel, Muslims and Jews were brothers-they belonged to the margins of the Christian world, the comic others in their funny clothes, entertainment for the Christians secure in their wealth, in their paper-white skins. Even with the oil, they despised us, cheating the Saudi princes of their people's birthright.”

Mr. Levy heaves another sigh. ”That's some 'us' you've worked up, Ahmad.”

The traffic, already congested, slows and thickens. Signs Say NORTH BERGEN, SECAUCUS, WEEHAWKEN, ROUTE 495, to the Lincoln tunnel. Though he has never done this before, with or without Charlie, Ahmad follows the signs easily, even as 495, at a spasmodic crawl, performs a complete loop, bringing the traffic down the Weehawken cliff to the level of the river. He imagines a voice at his side saying, Easy does it, Madman. This isn 't rocket science. Easy does it, Madman. This isn 't rocket science.

As the roadway descends, mobs of other vehicles are being funneled in from feeder roads south and west. Ahmad sees above the car roofs their eventual common destination, a long face of tawny stonework and white tiles framing three round archways for two lanes each. A sign says trucks to right. Other trucks-brown UPS, yellow Ryder, motley tradesmen's pickups, tractor trailers chuffing and squealing as they tug forward their mammoth loads of fresh produce of the Garden State on its way to the kitchens of Manhattan-press right, working their way a few feet at a time, and braking.

”Now is the time to jump out, Mr. Levy. I can't stop once we're in the tunnel.”

The guidance counselor puts his hands on his thighs in their mismatched gray trousers so that Ahmad can see he isn't going to touch the door. ”I don't think I'll get out. We're in this together, son.” His pose is brave, but his voice is hoa.r.s.e, weak.

”I'm not your son. If you try to get anyone's attention I'll set off the truck right here, in the traffic jam. It's not ideal but it'll kill plenty.”

”I'm betting you won't set it off. You're too good a kid. Your mother used to tell me how you couldn't bear to step on a bug. You'd try to get it onto a piece of paper and throw it out the window.”

”My mother and you seem to have had a lot of conversations.”

”Consultations. We both want the best for you.”

”I didn't like to step on bugs, but I don't like touching them either. I was afraid they'd bite, or defecate on my hand.”

Mr. Levy laughs offensively; Ahmad insists, ”Insects can defecate-we learned that in biology. They have digestive tracts and a.n.u.ses and everything, just like we do.” His brain is racing, battering at its own limits. Because there seems no time left in which to argue, he accepts Mr. Levy's presence beside him as something immaterial, half real, like the sense he has always had of G.o.d being closer to him than a brother, of himself as a double being half unfolded, like a book with its two sets of pages bound together, odd and even, read and unread.

Surprisingly, here at the three mouths (Manny, Moe, and Jack) of the Lincoln Tunnel, there are trees and greenery: above the traffic jam, as its tangled seethe of brake lights and directional lights blink on and off, an earth embankment supports a triangular piece of mown gra.s.s. Ahmad thinks, This is the last piece of earth I will ever see, This is the last piece of earth I will ever see, this little lawn that no one ever stands on or picnics on or has ever noticed before with eyes about to go blind. this little lawn that no one ever stands on or picnics on or has ever noticed before with eyes about to go blind.

A few men and women in blue-gray uniforms are standing around the edges of the coagulated, forward-inching traffic flow. These police appear to be benign onlookers rather than supervisors, chatting in pairs and basking in the reborn, but still hazy, suns.h.i.+ne. For them this jam occurs every weekday in these hours, as much a part of nature as sunrise or tides or the planet's other mindless recurrences. One of die officers is a st.u.r.dy female, her cap allowing her bundled fair hair to show at her neck and ears, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pus.h.i.+ng against the s.h.i.+rt pockets of her uniform, with its badge and bandolier strap; she has attracted two uniformed males, one white and one black, their teeth exposed in l.u.s.tful smiles and their waists heavy with dangling weapons. Ahmad looks at his Timex: eight-fifty-five. Forty-five minutes have pa.s.sed in the truck. It will be over by nine-fifteen.

He has maneuvered the truck to the right, expertly using his mirrors to exploit the merest hesitation in a vehicle beside him. The jam, which felt for a while impenetrable, has sorted itself out into lanes feeding into die two Manhattan-bound tunnels. Suddenly, Ahmad sees, only a half-dozen vans and autos are between him and the right-hand tunnel entrance. There are a U-Haul ten-foot rented van and then a lunch wagon in quilted aluminum, all b.u.t.toned-up and latched against the moment when it unfolds its counter and activates its kitchen to feed unfastidious crowds from the sidewalk, and a number of ordinary autos, including a bronze-colored Volvo station wagon holding a family of zanj. zanj. With a courteous wave Ahmad bids the driver slip in ahead of him into the line that has formed. With a courteous wave Ahmad bids the driver slip in ahead of him into the line that has formed.

”You won't get by the booth,” Mr. Levy warns him. He sounds tense, as if a bully is squeezing his chest from behind. ”You look too young to be driving out of state.”

But there is n.o.body in the booth built to hold a toll-taker. n.o.body. A green light flashes E-Z Pa.s.s PAID and Ahmad and the white truck are admitted to the tunnel.

The light inside is instantly strange: tiles not quite white but a sickly cream form close walls around the double stream of trucks and cars. The noise thus contained generates an echo, an undercurrent that slightly dampens it, as if with a watery distance. Ahmad feels himself already to be under water. He imagines the Hudson's black weight overhead, above the tiled ceiling. The artificial light in the tunnel is ample yet not cleansing; the vehicles move, at the speed of the slowest, through a kind of blanched darkness. There are trucks, some so vast the tops of their trailers seem to sc.r.a.pe the ceiling, but also automobiles that in the metallic scramble at the entrance have mixed themselves in with die trucks.

Through his winds.h.i.+eld Ahmad looks down through die back window of die bronze station wagon, a V90. Two children seated backward look up at him, hopeful for entertainment. They are not neglectfully dressed but in the same carefully careless, ironically gaudy clodies diat white children would be wearing on a family expedition. This black family was doing well, until Ahmad waved diem ahead of him into line.

After an initial spurt, a glide into the s.p.a.ce won at last by the untangling of die congestion outside the tunnel, die traffic flow is balked by some unseen obstacle or stickiness ahead. Smooth progress has proved to be an illusion. Drivers brake, brake lights glare. Ahmad finds himself not ungrateful for the slowdown, the stop and go. The downward slant of die road surface, which was unexpectedly rough and b.u.mpy for a surface that never saw the weather, threatened to carry him and his pa.s.senger and their load too quickly toward the tunnel's nadir, beyond which lay the theoretical weak point, two-thirds of the way through, where, he was advised, the tunnel will bend and be weakest. There his life will end. A s.h.i.+mmer like a heat mirage has possessed his mind's eye: diat triangle of tended yet unused gra.s.s hung above the tunnel mouth hangs in his mind. He had felt pity for it, so unvisited.

Clearing his dry diroat, he uses his voice. ”I do not look young,” he explains to Mr. Levy. ”Men of our Middle-Eastern blood-we mature quicker dian Anglo-Saxons.

Charlie used to say I looked twenty-one and could drive the big rigs without anybody stopping me.”

”That Charlie, he said a lot,” Mr. Levy replies. His voice sounds tight, a hollow teacher's voice.

”Would you rather I did not talk, as the time draws near? It is possible that, though fallen away, you would like to pray.”

One of the children in the back of the Volvo, a girl with her bushy hair up in two curious round b.a.l.l.s, like the ears of that cartoon mouse once so famous, is trying to attract Ahmad's attention with smiles; he ignores her.

”No,” Levy says, as if even that monosyllable hurts to get out. ”Talk away. Ask me something.”

”Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d. Did your informant know what has happened to him, in this uncovering?”

”For now, he's vanished. But he won't make it back to Yemen, I can promise you. These p.r.i.c.ks can't get away with everything forever.”

”He came to visit me last night. There seemed a sadness to him. But, then, there always has been. I think his learning is stronger than his faith.”

”And he didn't tell you the jig was up? Charlie was found early yesterday morning.”

”No. He a.s.sured me Charlie would meet me as planned. He wished me well.”

”He left you in sole charge.”

Ahmad hears the scornful tone and a.s.serts, ”I am am in charge.” He brags, ”This morning, there were two strange cars at the Excellency lot. I saw a man who had the loud voice of authority talk on a cell phone. I saw him but he did not see me.” in charge.” He brags, ”This morning, there were two strange cars at the Excellency lot. I saw a man who had the loud voice of authority talk on a cell phone. I saw him but he did not see me.”

At the girl's instigation, she and her little brother press their faces against their curved window with pop eyes and contorted mouths, to make Ahmad smile, to achieve recognition.

Mr. Levy is slumping in his seat, feigning insouciance or cowering beneath images in his imagination. He says, ”One more screw-up from your Uncle Sam. The fuzz was busy getting cups of coffee, telling dirty jokes to each other over the intercom, who knows? Listen. There's something I need to say to you. I f.u.c.ked your mother.”

The tile walls, Ahmad notices, are glowing a rosy red in the reflection of so many taillights coming on as people repeatedly brake. Cars jerk forward a few feet, and brake again.

”We were sleeping together all summer,” Levy goes on when Ahmad does not reply. ”She was fantastic. I didn't know I could fall in love with anybody ever again-get all those juices flowing again.”

”I think my mother,” Ahmad tells him, after consideration, ”sleeps with people easily. A nurse's aide is at home with the body, and she sees herself as a liberated modern person.”

”So don't get all bent out of shape about it, you're telling me: it was no big deal. But it was to me. She became the world to me. Losing her, it's like I had a big operation. I hurt. hurt. I'm drinking too much. You can't understand.” I'm drinking too much. You can't understand.”

”No offense, sir, but do understand,” Ahmad says, rather loftily. ”I am not thrilled to think of my mother fornicating with a Jew.”

Levy laughs-a coa.r.s.e bark. ”Hey, come on, we're all Americans here. That's the idea, didn't they tell you that at Central High? Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans; there are even Arab-Americans.”