The Book of Phoenix (15 page)

“I've mourned you,” I said. “I wept, beat myself up, cursed, bled for you. Then I
healed
. I buried you here.” I put my hand over my heart. “And now . . .”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I couldn't . . .”

“I loved a man named Kofi Annan,” I said, shutting my eyes again. I could see Kofi clearly. I remembered him over two lifetimes. He was dark-skinned like me and beautiful like the few African men allowed to star in 3D movies. But he was also humble and unaware of his beauty because he had so many more important things to focus on. He had a head full of rough black hair, and he stood an inch shorter than me. “The Big Eye took his family away years ago. And then they killed him years later because he tried to protect me. He died because of me.”

“Mmuo told me, Phoenix,” he said, looking at his hands. “I know everything. You don't have to tell me, again.”

“I lost you. I lost him,” my voice shook, and I wished I hadn't started talking. It was like scratching at a fresh scab. “I . . . I can't lose . . .”

“We have nothing to lose,” he said, taking my face into his warm hands.

He kissed me.

I saw Tower 7. The dining hall. We sat close to each other and he'd kissed me. It was fast. His lips were cool, and we'd looked at each other afterwards, first with surprise, then delight, then we'd veiled our faces with secrecy. SpeciMen were not allowed to pair unless the Big Eye deemed it good research.

Now, this kiss was not like the ones we shared in Tower 7. There was heat and humidity. I was able to wrap my arms around him and him around me. I was able to feel him. Saeed may have been lean, but he was strong. And unlike in Tower 7, this kiss lasted. Saeed could not eat fruit yet his mouth tasted like mangos. He pulled back from me, a surprised look on his face. Then his face broke out in a smile, hunger in his eyes. “Warm,” he breathed. “You're always so
warm
.”

I felt heated but it was not the type of heat I had come to know too well. This was something new and exquisite. My entire body felt like it was humming. My wings wanted to stretch and fly. I needed to get outside. I wanted Saeed to take me outside.

A knock on the window made us both jump. We scrambled away from each other. The doors unlocked and Mmuo opened the door on the passenger side. He peeked in and chuckled, shaking his head. Then he placed two grocery bags on the seat. He walked to the trunk and opened it and started loading in the rest of the groceries. Saeed opened his door and leaned out. “You need any help with those?” he asked.

Mmuo held up a hand, still laughing. “I think it best if you don't get up.”

Saeed glanced at his lap and then looked at me. I turned and looked out the window, embarrassed. It wasn't because Mmuo had caught Saeed and I being intimate. Mmuo was my family; he did not wish me ill. He would protect me, and I would protect him. What issue would he have with my closeness with Saeed? It was certainly nothing surprising or new. He'd known about us in Tower 7.

No. What I was embarrassed about was something more basic. Saeed was twenty-one years old and had lived a rough life both in Egypt and then in Tower 7. He'd told me that he'd been intimate with several of the Big Eye female guards over the years. This was why when I came along, they had hated me and told him ugly details about me and what I was.

But despite the fact that I looked and felt 40 years old, I was only three. I was still processing the intense feeling that had swept through my body. I'd felt whispers of it minutes before Kofi died, when I'd shown him myself and he'd touched my wings. I shivered. There was a sweet aching between my legs and at the tips of my wings. As Mmuo started the car, Saeed took my hand, wove his fingers between mine and grasped.

I looked at my hands grasping Saeed's and realized something else. I wanted to laugh out loud with relief. Instead I sat back and looked out the window. We passed office buildings and one had a large urban garden, full of sunflowers, tomato plants and possibly dasheen bushes.

I wasn't glowing. Praise Ani, I wasn't glowing. I was warm, not hot, and I wasn't glowing. This was good for Saeed and good for me. It was good for everyone.

I love books.
I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas. I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud. I love the smell of the pages, even of the newest physical books, which were so rarely made. These new books had stiff grey pages made from doubly recycled paper and were printed with vegetable ink that was 100 percent biodegradable and smelled strongly of spoiled broccoli. I loved them as I loved the 300-year-old books that threatened to crumble in my hands.

I loved the immediate page shift of digitals. The crispness of high-definition photo and print. Manipulating and flying' through information and story was my first real lesson in the art of flight. Before my own wings grew in.

And then there is the information itself—the stories, the voices, the worlds within worlds. When I was in Tower 7, I felt like I was everyone and everything. I was ignorant in my knowledge. Ignorance was my bliss. Even when they did their painful tests, the burning . . . I knew I could always return to my books. Not escape, return. I knew so much, but so little. You can have knowledge, but you are nothing without wisdom.

But this was what the Big Eye relied upon. They gave me whatever I wanted to read. They gave me top secret books and documents because I requested them; I didn't even know that these were classified materials. To them, I wasn't human enough to be a threat. I was their tool. I was nothing to worry about or fear. They saw me as they saw the Africans made slaves during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade hundreds of years ago. They saw me as many Arabs saw African slaves over millennium and how some still see Africans today. The Big Eye didn't think they needed to put a leash on me because my leash was in my DNA. They were the definition of arrogance and entitlement.

For several months I not only read about the towers, but I read about the history and proliferation of information, both oral and written. I was obsessed with it. And this led me to read about the biggest library in the world, America's de facto think tank: the Library of Congress. While in Tower 7, I'd never dreamed of going there. Escape never crossed my mind, not until Saeed “died.” But a part of me certainly wished to enter its walls.

Many hard copies of the downloads I read were stored in the Library of Congress. Especially when it came to information about the towers. The Library of Congress had the world's only Tower Records, they were located in its Special Collections and Archives. From what I'd read, these records even had their own room. What was most unique was that every record was kept as a hard copy. There were no digital files. And only one copy. The towers were places of intense stealth research; archiving and documentation were integral to their very existence, but so was keeping information close and within.

Now that I was awake and aware, I understood several things about the Tower Records. If the United States housed the only information there was about the towers, they could monitor control one hundred percent of who got to read these files. The second was that they clearly had something to hide. Why lock down information in this way if they did not? Thirdly, they didn't want people to know they had something to hide, thus placing the information in “public.” People knew where to find it, even if access was highly restricted. Fourthly, whatever they were hiding in these files was something they wanted to eventually destroy. One copy of a file on paper. Paper did not last forever. All it would take was a fire, or for the cooling and moisture system in the building to malfunction for a week, or a flood, or a thief. They were making these files easy to get rid of. I wondered about this, but had no answers.

It was shady. But this was what I now expected of my first and third country of birth.

It was my suggestion to go to the Library of Congress's Special Collections and Archives section before we formulated our plan of attack. I'd read plenty but not everything. I'd never thought to research myself. I'd never asked the Tower 7 Big Eye to show me the “File of the Phoenix.” I'd never asked to see the files on any of the speciMen. I wanted to see those now.

We'd discussed it over dinner at Mmuo's small apartment. Saeed was eating a plate full of crushed concrete, rust flakes, and rubble he'd harvested from a soon to be demolished building. Mmuo and I were eating egusi soup and pounded yam and fried plantain Mmuo had prepared. He'd learned how to cook from his older sister. I just wished he'd agree to wear clothes when he cooked. My belly still ached from quietly laughing as I watched him squirm and curse whenever droplets of hot oil from the pan hit his skin. Mmuo hated clothes so much.

“You don't have to be a member of Congress to get in there,” Saeed said, finishing his concrete. He had a pad of paper on the table and was doodling on it with a red pen. He was drawing circles and loops. He always did this when he was thinking. “The user cards that Mmuo and I have are for everyone.”

“But those weren't easy for either of us to get,” Mmuo added. “You have to have a license, passport or ID card,
and
submit to a background check.”

“So how . . . ?”

“Black market,” Saeed said.

After he'd returned from the Virgin Islands looking for Phoenix, Saeed had gotten a job teaching Arabic at a local Madrasah in New York. They hadn't been so impressed with his command of Arabic as much as they were with the stories he had to tell about Egypt. Parents brought their children to come hear him talk about the streets and how he'd survived. The imams at the Madrasah loved and embraced Saeed and gave him a room to live in along with his pay. It was here that he learned a bit of how to read in both Arabic and English. They asked no questions about his background but Saeed suspected that they knew he was some sort of speciMen. Saeed said he'd used all that he'd saved up over the months to buy illegal access to the Library of Congress before Mmuo ran into him that day. Saeed could barely read, but he felt the answers he needed were in this building. He hadn't known about the Tower collection.

Mmuo refused to tell me where he got his money. All I knew was that he had a lot of it.

“If I can meet with a contact, I have an idea,” Mmuo said.

When Mmuo had escaped from Tower 7, the nation's one and only black congressman managed to find him. Mmuo said the man was the most two-faced person he'd ever met. But he was one of those who used his bad for good. This congressman hated the tower projects and had promised Mmuo a favor.

Mmuo's rented solar-powered “smart” car had manual drive, a beat-up exterior, and nearly bald tires. “The rental car rep was a racist,” Mmuo said with a shrug. “The man even asked me if I knew how to drive. I saw plenty of fine vehicles in the lot but this one was all he said he had available. The idiot could have rented me a much nicer vehicle and made more money.”

It was a five hour drive to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

 • • • 

“I look colonized,” Saeed muttered as he gazed at himself in the mirror. I agreed. I didn't like European suits, and I certainly didn't like them on Saeed. The colors were a dull navy blue, the tie looked like a noose and he looked so stiff. Saeed didn't look like the African Arab he was.

“I feel like a robot,” Mmuo growled.

I stifled a laugh when I glanced at him. His suit was custom-made, covering his expansive long legs and arms. And it was grey. He did look like a robot.

It was 80 degrees outside, balmy December weather. I still couldn't understand why men in this day and age had to wear this outdated attire to look professional and respectable. These clothes were from cold times, before the climate had changed. Why couldn't the United States incorporate the world's fashions as the English language incorporated so many of the world's words? It was plain meshugana.

Our hotel room was small, but we had no intention of staying the night, so this was fine. After the long drive, I took a nap. Mmuo went for a walk. And Saeed quietly sketched fruits on his pad. We all had our ways of calming our nerves.

It was early afternoon. The Library of Congress was a few minutes' drive away. Saeed would take a quick cab there. We hadn't dared go to the building earlier to scope things out. The area was always under high surveillance, and we were fugitives.

I straightened out Saeed's collar and said, “It's for a purpose.”

“Doesn't make it right,” he only mumbled. Mmuo also muttered something, in Igbo. At least
they
didn't have to wear a burka.

Although Saeed was an Arab and thus would be profiled, he was the most safe-looking of the three of us. He was an attractive young man who could easily pass as the son of a wealthy businessman from Saudi Arabia. And that was what Mmuo was going to make him. Mmuo could not only walk through walls but he was also an intuitive hacker. If electronics were involved, he could manipulate them. This was how he'd gotten me to the 9th floor in the elevator in Tower 7, and it was how he “found” money now, outside of Tower 7. It was also how he was going to get us into the Tower Records. Not only could I read very very fast and remember all that I read, I knew how information was catalogued—from the old ways to the newest methods. I was our best bet in quickly finding what we needed.

However, I couldn't just slip and reappear in the Tower Records room. I'd read the Congress Library map many times and viewed the 3D image online. But the small room in the Special Collections library wasn't on the map. I could slip but I wouldn't know exactly where to come in and I couldn't risk being seen as I had been in Tower 1.

Saeed needed to escort me in to the Tower Records section. I was to be the meek hunchbacked Muslim woman with her curious, wealthy, politically influential husband. They would watch us, but they would let us in as they did so. Then Mmuo would cause the cameras to malfunction for ten minutes. I'd have to read fast.

A half hour later, Mmuo and I walked toward the White House. A storm was brewing and the air felt charged and smelled soily. It was probably raining somewhere nearby. The streets were busy as was the sidewalk. I could see the White House up ahead and a part of me wanted to stare at it. But that part was small. Most of me was focused and very aware of my black burka and hidden wings. There were men in business suits and women in high stylish heels, tourists with cameras and a few joggers. Almost everyone on the sidewalk was Caucasian. My wings itched. I missed Ghana. Kofi. I pushed the painful thoughts out of my mind. Saeed. Was he in yet?

Mmuo brought out his portable and looked at its round screen. “Almost,” he muttered to me.

“Ok,” I said. But how close was Saeed?

We were nearly at the White House.

“Nice weather, isn't it?” Mmuo said.

I met the eye of a man with sunglasses. He was jogging across the street, as we passed. I heard him jump onto the sidewalk not far behind us. I pressed my wings closer to my body.

“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I think we are overdue for some rain.”

“Long overdue,” Mmuo said.

His portable buzzed again, and we slowed down as he read. “He's going up the steps,” he whispered to me. “I hope that Congressman was telling the truth about his signature.”

“I thought you trusted this guy,” I hissed.

“I don't trust any black man savvy enough to become a member of Congress,” he snapped.

I sighed. “Sometimes all you can have is trust.”

There was now another man walking behind us. The man in front of us was walking too slowly.

Mmuo checked his portable again. He smiled and said, “Okay.”

I smiled too. Saeed was in.

We walked several more paces. The portable in Mmuo's pocket buzzed, and we stopped. We were at the White House gates. My heart was slamming in my chest as I looked at the elegant white building. This was not how I'd imagined seeing it for the first time. But then again, I'd never imagined I'd see it in real life. I glared at the symbol of all that had imprisoned me. I imagined it burned black, charred by my Phoenix-fueled flames.

There were seven men and one woman surrounding us. Just standing there. Four in black suits, one in jogging attire, the rest in street wear. Would they grab us? Shoot us? Not in this crowd. They knew who we were. Or maybe they were just profiling the tall African man and the tall crippled African Muslim woman in the burka. We perfectly fit the ridiculous profile I'd read so much about. In the capital and in other focal points of American society like Hollywood and certain parts of New York City, government officials were known for arresting minorities for no other reason than being a minority in an important place. Nevertheless, this time their profiling was dead on. We
were
terrorists.

“Sir, ma'am, please come with us,” the suited African man beside Mmuo finally said. He was almost as tall as Mmuo but much more strongly built.

“We won't hurt you,” the stocky white woman in jeans and a t-shirt said. Why did these people always think I was afraid of them “harming” me? But these people weren't the Big Eye. There was no hand grasping electricity patched to their chests. These were Secret Service. If I were a terrorist, shouldn't they have assumed I wouldn't “fear harm”? Shouldn't they have assumed I'd “give my life for my cause”? These people thought so little of minorities and terrorists. Deep down, they saw us all as cowards, no better than misguided sheep.

“Why?” Mmuo asked. I hesitated. This wasn't the plan.

“We just want to ask you a few questions,” the man behind us said. They all looked tense, as we awkwardly stood at the intersection. The signal flashed white and an automated female voice told us to walk. None of us moved. People started to impatiently maneuver around us.