All We Have Left (27 page)

“Jesse! Can you check on the lasagna?” Yalda calls to me.

I nod and maneuver my way through a crowd of chattering people intent on their own culinary tasks to peer into the oven. The lasagna isn’t bubbling yet, so I close the door and go back to helping Sabeen spread tablecloths over the tables.

The Peace Center has been transformed. Green tablecloths cover the tables, twinkling Christmas lights hang from the ceiling, and a pile of wrapped gifts sits on a table. Tonight is Eid al-Fitr, which I’ve gathered is to celebrate the end of Ramadan, and the Peace Center has invited people in
the community to come celebrate. I’ve been here since four helping set up, and as Sabeen and I billow the last tablecloth onto a table, she says worriedly, “The thing about parties is you never know if people are going to show up, you know?”

“They’ll show up,” I say.

“Are you staying?” she asks, her eyes direct.

“I’m not sure anyone would want me here,” I say honestly. “I was just going to help set up and leave.” I didn’t have to be here tonight but I’d volunteered anyway.

“You can’t set up for a party and then not attend.” She smiles. “I’d like you to stay.”

I nod, trying not to show how good her acceptance makes me feel. I straighten and stretch my hands over my head. I catch Adam’s eye. He is standing on a ladder fixing a strand of lights, and he smiles.

Sabeen sees him, and he looks away, his smile fading. I’m embarrassed for some reason.

“Sometimes I think I have it easier, wearing the hijab,” Sabeen says, lighting the candle in the colorful lamp being used as the table’s centerpiece.

“Why?” My eyes are drawn back to Adam, and he looks so
good
with his jumble of dark hair and deep blue eyes that I swallow hard.

“Adam doesn’t look different; he got Mom’s light skin and blue eyes. I’ve always wondered if that makes it harder for him to be Muslim. People don’t expect it from him, so he has to go out of his way to prove what he is.”

I think about Adam’s cocky attitude and easy confidence and realize maybe it’s not easy at all, but a defense against a world that insists on seeing him as something he’s not.

“Anyway,” she continues. “I like wearing the hijab, so there’s no doubt about exactly what I am. When I cover myself”—she holds out her arms to indicate her long-sleeved sparkly shirt and matching ankle-length skirt—“no one can judge me by what I’m wearing, or the way I look, or by my bra size. You either like me for me, or you don’t. It’s as simple as that.”

“Do you date?” I ask suddenly, and she smiles at me almost in sympathy.

“No, Muslims don’t date. They marry.” She gives me a level look, and I realize she’s telling me something. “The way I see it, teenage dating sucks,” she continues. “It never lasts, and then you break up, and you mope around writing crappy poetry and generally feeling awful about yourself. After a while you find another guy, and it starts all over again. Why is all that pain worth it if you know it’s not going to work out?”

I’d heard some version of this from Teeny. She doesn’t seem to mind not dating, says it’s all BS that never ends
well
. Are they right? I cried about Nick for weeks, and while I didn’t write crappy poetry, I’d spent hours curled up in my closet listening to my sad song list and feeling sorry for myself. I never thought I was going to marry him or anything, so were the months with him worth the pain of the breakup?

“But how will you know what kind of guy is right for you if you don’t—you know—try out a few?” I ask.

“You make it sound like test driving a car! This is my heart, my body, we’re talking about. After I graduate from college, there will be time to think about the man I want to marry, and he’ll know I waited just for him, and I’ll know he waited for me.”

“But what if you fall in love without meaning to?” I ask, and I can’t help glancing over toward Adam who is laughing at something Jade has said.

Sabeen follows my gaze. “We can fall in love. We’re human, and it’s not like we have control over things like that, but …”

She looks at me steadily. “You just can’t do anything about it.”

“Can I talk to you?” I ask Adam a while later. People are starting to arrive, and Yalda and Adam and Sabeen’s father, a tall man with skin the color of light rust and salt-and-pepper hair, are greeting people at the door with a hearty “Eid Mubarak!”

We’re both trying to stay out the way of the last-minute frantic effort to cram all the food, some familiar, most deliciously exotic smelling, onto a long table, and I lean on the wall beside him.

“Sure, as long as you don’t talk to me about a big, juicy hamburger. Or pasta,” he says. He’s dressed in khakis and a
long-sleeved green shirt that still has straight-from-the-store creases in it, and I can’t help but notice the warm, deep boy-smell of him, soap, and something spicy.

I hesitate, wondering where to start. After our talk on top of the mountain, I feel better with him, but I’m still not sure we’re completely okay.

He turns to me. “What’s up?”

And I find myself pouring the story out to him, about finding the answering machine, and about Alia, and how if I could find her, maybe she could tell me what Travis was doing in those last hours before he died.

“Alia could be either a Jewish or Muslim name,” I finish. “If I knew which, maybe it could help me find her.”

“How old did you say she was?” Adam asks thoughtfully.

“On the tape, she sounds young, like my age.”

“I would say Muslim, then, if it
is
her scarf. A lot of Orthodox Jewish women cover their hair, but not until after they’re married. Or maybe it was just an ordinary scarf she decided to wear that morning and she wasn’t religious at all.”

“I suppose,” I say in frustration, “that her name might not mean anything either. People name their kids all sorts of things. I mean, you’re ‘Adam,’ which isn’t a Muslim name. Maybe she’s Christian, and her parents just liked the name ‘Alia.’”

“But Adam is a Muslim name,” Adam says, amused. “You’ve heard of Adam and Eve, right?”

“But that’s in the Bible,” I say.

“Adam and Eve are in the Quran too,” he says. “Muslims respect the original Jewish Torah and the Christian Psalms and Gospel, and believe that all three religions worship the same God. Basically Islam just continues where Judaism and Christianity left off. The Quran talks about a lot of the same stuff as the Bible, like Abraham, Moses, Noah and his ark, and John the Baptist. Even Jesus.
Especially
Jesus. We don’t believe he was the son of God, but we do believe he was a very important prophet.”

“Oh.” I’d never really thought about what Muslims believed, but somehow I’d thought their religion was completely different from Christianity. “So who the heck is Allah, then?”

He laughs. “What’s the Spanish word for ‘hello’?”

“
Hola.
” I stare at him in confusion.

“The Spanish word for God?”

I think a moment, and then shrug.

“It’s
Dios.
In French it’s
Dieu
. In Arabic, it’s
Allah
. It’s all the same God.”

I nod, wondering if my dad knows this. How could he not? How could I not, before?

“So how do I find this Alia? Assuming she’s Muslim?”

“What, just because I’m Muslim, and she’s Muslim, you think I know her? There’s like 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, you know.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Joking, Jesse, I’m joking.” He puts his head back against
the wall and closes his eyes. “You said Alia was from New York City, right?”

“I’m guessing she was, since she was in the towers so early that day.”

“Well, we used to live there, before … we had to leave. My dad still knows a lot of people in New York. He’s always going there. I’ll see if he can ask around about her.”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure.” He flashes me his dimple. “Why not?”

We both know why not, and I smile gratefully.

A chorus of phones begin ringing, many of them with a strange, haunting trill. People stir and reach for them, a murmur of excitement filling the air.

I raise my eyebrows at Adam as he takes out his phone and hits a button.

“It’s an app,” he says, showing it to me. “It has alarms to let us know when we can eat, and when to pray.”

His screen shows a compass with an arrow pointing toward the front of the building.

“When we pray, all Muslims face Mecca,” Adam says. “While Muslims may be pretty cool, we’re not geographic prodigies, so the arrow tells us which direction to pray, no matter where we are. Sabeen’s got a prayer rug with a compass in it that she keeps in our car because she’s always losing her phone.”

A woman offers me a bowl, and I reach for a fat, juicy date.

“Think fast!” Sabeen cries, and tosses a water bottle at Adam, who catches it easily.

Around me, people are uncapping the bottles and chugging thirstily.

“I could maybe not eat all day, but I can’t imagine not drinking,” I say.

“You get used to it,” Sabeen says cheerfully, coming up to us. “Honestly”—she lowers her voice and leans close to me—“the worst is at the end of the day when your breath starts stinking and you can’t even eat a mint. You just
know
you’re gross, but there’s nothing you can do.”

She glances at Adam, and suddenly they say in a chorus, “The smell of a fasting man’s breath is like perfume to God!”

“It’s what my dad always says when we complain,” Adam explains.

“Feel free to eat, my friends,” Adam and Sabeen’s father calls, but most of the group follows him to the front of the room, the women with uncovered hair winding scarves around their heads.

“First, we pray,” Adam says, and grins widely at me. “Then we eat.”

We stop in a corner of the stairwell for Julia to rest for a moment, kicking aside abandoned stiletto heels, jackets, and a coffee cup so we can stand out of the way against the wall.

Someone has a radio, and we hear the murmur of “planes, planes hit
both
towers” go through the crowd.

“That explains the smell,” one man says as he passes us, typing furiously into his BlackBerry as he walks. “It’s jet fuel.”

“My God, we’re breathing jet fuel?” someone else asks.

I reflexively pull my shirt up over my mouth and nose. I wish I’d thought to dump water on my shirt before I gave it all away. Travis has already told me that I should take my scarf off and wrap it around my face, but I won’t. Not now, when I need to feel brave and strong more than ever.

“How could planes hit both towers?” I ask as we start down again with Julia. “It’s a beautiful clear day. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Accidents happen,” Travis says under his breath. He looks exhausted, his blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

“How could it be an accident?” the man with the BlackBerry asks. “It’s not like they could miss seeing the towers. One plane,
maybe
, but not two.”

I’m silent, because I know he’s right. Someone must have deliberately flown those planes into the towers. How could someone do something like that?

“It’s those damn Muslims again,” someone says angrily from behind us.

I say loudly, “You don’t know that. Why would Muslims do something like this? It’s against everything we believe.”

A woman in a no-nonsense suit with tennis shoes over her panty hose glances back at me, and her eyes widen as if I just sprouted horns and a tail. Suddenly I’m a danger because I’m wearing a head scarf?

Is this the way it’s going to be?

Please God, please don’t let it be Muslims.

Julia sags against us.

“Just leave me,
please just leave me
,” she has been murmuring over and over again for the last couple of flights.

I hear the scattered clapping and hum of excitement ahead of us a full flight before I see the first fireman. We all drop to single file as a group of them comes up the stairs. They look
exhausted, in heavy pants and boots, their coats open to show blue sweat-soaked T-shirts emblazoned with the FDNY shield, lugging axes, hoses, crowbars, and oxygen tanks.

I lock eyes with one of them, a young guy, probably in his twenties, and he has clear blue eyes and gingery bangs matted with sweat, and his helmet keeps slipping over his eyes. He’s breathing hard, but he manages to nod at me. I feel scared for him, but so, so happy that he’s here with me on the stairs, even though he doesn’t say anything.