“Your parents want grandchildren?”
“More than anything. And with my brother gone, I’m their only child. But… I don’t know. I’m not ready. Maybe not ready… to give up my freedom? I mean, I feel like I’m just getting started. There’s so much to do.”
Fatima’s jaw hardened slightly, and for an instant her expression shifted into something both distant and intense. Then it was gone. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”
“So what will you do, then? Poetry? Activism? What’s next, where do you want to make an impact?
Fatima smiled. “Are you interviewing me now?”
Delilah laughed and took a sip of coffee. “Yes, those are good interview questions, thank you for the reminder. I keep forgetting. I don’t feel like a very good journalist with you.”
Fatima looked at her for a long moment. “Do you mean that?”
“I think so. I’m too sympathetic to what you’ve been through and what you’re trying to do. And I like you too much. It’s dangerous to get too close to your subject.”
“Has that happened to you?”
She was a good interrogator, Delilah noted. Or a good conversationalist — the skill set was similar. Sensing themes; assembling fragments; reflecting them back to draw the subject out. It was a role Delilah was accustomed to playing expertly, but she didn’t mind that for the moment the shoe was on the other foot. It suggested Fatima felt comfortable, in control.
“Maybe,” she said after a moment, thinking once again of Rain.
“Was that the relationship you were just talking about? The one that ended badly?”
A good interrogator indeed. Delilah laughed and said, “I thought I was supposed to be interviewing you.”
Fatima smiled her radiant, sad smile. “Aren’t you?”
“No, not at all, I’m afraid. So tell me. What’s next? You have your freedom, now how will you use it?”
There was a long pause. Delilah didn’t think she’d pushed too hard; after all, she was here under the guise of journalist, her job ostensibly an in-depth interview. She wished Momtaz served alcohol — even the most disciplined subjects tended to be more forthcoming after a few drinks. Environs less familiar to Fatima, someplace that might make her forget herself, would also have been helpful. Rain had used both techniques on Delilah back when they were still circling each other and probing for advantage — taking her to Phuket, getting her buzzed, reading between the lines of what emerged and exploiting it to his advantage. The memory didn’t sting. John was good, as good as she’d ever known. And she’d learned from the experience. In fact, she wondered whether she might be able to do something similar now.
Finally, Fatima said, “I don’t want you to print this, all right?”
Delilah nodded, wondering what was coming, pleased at the apparent expression of trust. “All right.”
“I don’t know what’s next for me. I feel like I’m… haunted. Haunted by what was done to my brothers.”
She paused again. Delilah noted the diction: not by what happened to her brothers, which would have implied a lack of agency behind their deaths, or at least de-emphasized it. No, instead, by what was done to them, with its focus on an implicit subject, an unspoken actor. The people who had sent the drones. America. The West.
“Why would you not want me to print that?” Delilah said. “Of course I won’t, but… ”
“Because it sounds so self-pitying. So grandiose. But it’s also true. I can’t let it go. What my family went through… no one should have to go through that. If I can do something to stop these murders — and they are murders — I have to. I can’t sleep if I don’t.”
It was unsettling to hear something so similar to the very refrain she had routinely deployed in response to John’s repeated insistence that she get out of the life. How could she ever sleep again after seeing the next televised news report of carnage at a Tel Aviv pizza parlor or shopping mall? Or of a rocket fired into a West Bank school? Or of, God forbid, a mass-casualty gas attack?
“I don’t think it sounds either self-pitying or grandiose,” Delilah said, feeling a sympathy that was both genuine and genuinely disquieting. “But what will you do?”
“Whatever I can,” Fatima said, her eyes distant again, and again Delilah was discomfited by the parallels with her own justifications, even her own words. She said no more than that, and Delilah found her silence faintly ominous, as well as disappointing. She wondered again how much more talkative Fatima might have been in a different setting, maybe after several drinks. She found herself warming to the idea, and wondering how she might implement it.
They finished their coffee and Delilah took some pictures — a westernized Pakistani, enjoying an evening out among others like herself. Fatima insisted on paying because Delilah had picked up the tab at Notes. On the way out, Delilah felt the eyes of every male they passed hot on their faces, their bodies. Some of the stares reflected no more than lust and a warped sense of entitlement. But in others, she recognized a resentment that bordered on hatred. For what? Because women had something they wanted but that they didn’t know how to legitimately acquire? Because they needed to denigrate and hurt someone else to reassure themselves they weren’t pathetic and powerless? Because a man could tolerate his own lack of status as long as there was a class of people he could remind himself was of lower stature still?
They paused outside the front door. Delilah would have preferred not to. The vibe she had picked up from some of the men inside had been ugly enough to make her wary of creating unintended opportunities for anyone. Not that she thought she couldn’t handle whatever trouble might come her way, but her way of handling it would likely expose her as something more than a civilian photojournalist — the same sort of thing that had gotten her in trouble in Paris with John.
“Sorry if I got a little intense,” Fatima said.
“To not get intense over what happened to your family, you’d have to be dead inside.”
Fatima nodded and looked at Delilah as though pleased she understood. “Yes. That’s exactly it. Exactly the choice they impose on us.”
Again, Delilah noted the active voice, the focus on the doer rather than the done. This was a woman who was bottling up a lot inside. Under the right circumstances, if a small opening could be created, some of those pressurized contents would leak.
Delilah heard the door to Momtaz and glanced back. Two young men were heading out, their stride fast and purposeful. She had noted them inside — close-cropped hair and dark facial stubble, ugly faces and expensive shirts. Their stares had been particularly hostile. Now their eyes locked on Delilah and Fatima, and Delilah saw the satisfied recognition, the pleasure of confirmation and ensuing confrontation. She felt a hot rush of adrenaline and thought, Merde.
“We can’t figure it out,” the taller of the two said, his English Arabic-accented, as they strode over.
There were two expected responses. One was, “What?” The other was silence. Either would betray nervousness, and therefore embolden the enemy. The correct move was a non sequitur, something incongruous that would momentarily occupy the enemy’s cognition while his brain tried to process the unanticipated response. So had she been alone, Delilah would have answered, “The square root of pi?” or “Given sufficient salinity, freezing does become more difficult, doesn’t it?” or some other wildly off-track comment, and then dropped the lead guy by attacking the throat, or the knee, or whatever other target of opportunity presented itself. An overreaction? She didn’t think so. A man’s natural ally was his upper body strength. To counter it, she had speed, surprise, and violence of action. A man’s strategy was attrition. Hers was blitzkrieg. In a drawn-out confrontation, a man could press his advantages and negate hers. She wouldn’t allow that. If she had to err, she knew which side to err on.