Midnight and the Meaning of Love

  But I was not a new warrior and I wasn’t falling for that shit.

  Resisting his command, I eased up, holding the table in both of my hands. Without hesitation or notice I suddenly rushed into Sensei, backing him up and ultimately pressing him against the wall with the weight of the table. My strength was greater than his. My arms and my wingspan were longer and more powerful.

  Then Sensei dropped down to the floor and leaped through my legs with the ease of a frog. Before I could turn or release the table and clear myself from its fall, I could feel the blow to the back of my neck, and I fell forward against the falling table. I broke my fall and rolled over backward and was up on my feet in an instant. Sensei had ran toward his kunai, which was lodged in the opposite wall. He seized it and threw it again. It landed in my left shoulder and the blood came quickly. Immediately I pulled it out and precisely threw it at him the way that he had taught me to wield it. He jumped midair to avoid the spinning kunai, but it caught him in his ankle. He dropped to the floor. Before he could raise himself, I jumped on him, tackled, and held him from behind. My forearm was around his throat. My leg was much longer than his and I used it to pin down his ankle purposely at the point of his injury. I knew that shit had to be hurting him, but he didn’t make any noise, still struggling using only his body. I loosened my grip on his throat intentionally and used my left hand to undo his knot. I used his own hair to choke him instead. When it was clear that I had the best of him, I dragged and then yanked him by his hair to the wall. He twisted his dragging body, loosening himself from the hair choke by spinning. He stood up.

  In his eyes I could see the impact and damage of my dominance over him in this one, fourteen-second encounter. But Sensei did not count himself out. I saw his eyes shift toward the bloodied kunai lying on the floor. As he dived to grab his weapon, I seized the rope that was mounted on the wall.

  As Sensei attempted a kunai toss from the lying-down position, my swift movement landed my foot on his wrist, my big toe pressing against his ulnar artery, causing the kunai to be released. As he grabbed my ankle with his left hand, I moved my foot off his wrist and kicked the kunai across the floor in one swift motion. Now he used both hands to capture my feet, causing me to lose my balance. I went with the fall instead of breaking or resisting it, threw my weight against him and tied him up with his rope, using the method that he had once taught me and successfully and used against me also.

  When you conquer a man’s mind, he’s finished. Sensei knew there was no reason for him to struggle further at this point. His ninjutsu rope style was so expert that the more an opponent struggled, the more the ropes trapped and confined him.

  When I had him trapped and secured and in the posture of a fetus, I rolled over facing him. The pressure on my shoulder shot through my body and I was only now noticing the blood streaming from my shoulder slice.

  “What the fuck?” I asked him politely.

  “You learned well,” he said calmly, although his chest was still pulling in and out. His rapid breathing seemed to come from his anguish more than from the difficulty of our encounter.

  Sensei’s face was strangely empty. I would say it was a 180-degree difference from the faces that black men make when we battle, kill, or hustle hard, like in a basketball game or fight. Our expressions are dramatic and contorted, but not Sensei’s.

  “You are so ungrateful. You are the reason why master teachers returned to the mountains and shut their mouths and died with their techniques unknown,” Sensei stated.

  “What?” I asked. I really didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I wasn’t even clear if this wasn’t just a combat test during a private lesson. I did know that his anger felt real. Yet he obviously wasn’t trying to kill me. He could have easily thrown that knife through my heart. But he was definitely trying to hurt me, shake me up some. His kick to the back of my neck came with full intent and traction. It hurt.

  I stood up, ignoring his senseless accusation. I picked up the first-aid kit from the floor, where it was busted open. I closed it, sat it down, and kicked it over toward him. “You want me to put something on that ankle?” I asked him politely. “No, put it on your shoulder instead,” he said with a half smile. He had put that kit out here on the table preparing for my private lesson. So he must have planned to attack me, hurt me, and then patch me up, I thought to myself.

  The alcohol bottle had rolled into a corner. I went and got it, cracked it open, and poured it onto Sensei’s sliced ankle. I know it burned but he didn’t flinch. I opened the first-aid kit and grabbed the gauze and wrapped and taped his ankle nicely. I grabbed another piece for myself and stood. I left the training area and walked to the locker room.

  In the locker room I took off my dogi and tended to my shoulder. It was still bleeding but I didn’t consider it nothing severe. I just protected it from infection, splashed on some alcohol, and wrapped it. I changed into my street clothes. I fastened my watch and saw that I had a whole hour and forty-five minutes remaining for this private lesson. All that shit between me and Sensei happened in less than fifteen minutes. But I considered that Sensei wouldn’t want to continue with today’s lesson, being that I was sure our encounter had not gone how he had planned it. I took my heat from my dojo locker and tucked it in my waist beneath my shirt and also retrieved my cutter, then returned to the training room to see what was happening with Sensei. I picked up his bloodied knife and began cleaning it off with alcohol.

  “Untie me,” Sensei ordered.

  “First tell me what is going on. Is this the class for today, my private lesson?” I turned up the table and laid the clean kunai on top.

  “It’s your turn to do the telling,” Sensei said, still serious even though this time he was defeated instead of me. “I have been telling you everything I know. You have been telling me nothing. You are ungrateful and arrogant in the worse kind of way.”

  “Arrogant?” I said, surprised. I didn’t see myself that way. I worked hard to be calm, restrained, and quiet. There was no conceit in me and I never show off. I wondered if men confuse confidence with arrogance. Sensei’s charge seemed false, so I said nothing.

  “Your distrust of your teacher is arrogance. Your acceptance of my knowledge while being completely unwilling to make any kind of exchange of your own knowledge is arrogance,” he said.

  “Your knowledge is in exchange for payment. This is the reason you charge student fees, right or wrong, Sensei?” I reminded him.

  “Again, arrogance,” Sensei repeated his accusation.

  I reached in and cut his rope with my cutter. It sliced through the thick, rough rope like butter. I didn’t want my weapon to be invisible. I wanted Sensei to see my blade and yield.

  “Carrying a gun when your hands and heart and feet and mind are already trained in death is arrogance also!” he continued.

  “You don’t live where I live,” I answered him calmly and with absolute confidence.

  “Do you think an Asian man can set up a training camp in the middle of Brooklyn surrounded by dark bodies, clouded minds, and troubled souls and survive without knowing something about the streets?” Sensei asked in an unfamiliar melody, his voice holding even one moment and then rising suddenly before falling flat again.

  “Don’t you realize that every teen out here who ever saw even one Bruce Lee movie wants to test my skill?” he asked strangely.

  “What does this have to do with me?” I questioned him sincerely.

  “If there is a man or woman out here in this chaotic world who is willing and capable to give you the information you need to not become a forgotten statistic and victim, the least you can do is respect him,” he said calmly. “Humble yourself,” he commanded in a more forceful voice.

  “I do respect you. I spend most of my free time here training under you, Sensei.”

  “So what proof is there that you trust me any degree more than any other adult who walks past you every day without a word to you or concern for your life or deat
h?” he asked.

  I thought carefully about his question. I guess I didn’t come up with an answer swift enough. Now Sensei stood up from the floor and casually stated, “You owe me a new rope.”

  “No problem. See you at class tonight, Sensei. I hope you’ll be feeling better later on tonight.” I turned to exit, bored with Sensei’s indirectness. I had so much mess on my mind that I could not decipher his brainteasers.

  “Do you really think that you can do Japan all by yourself, without a friend or ally or even a basic understanding of the language or culture?” He was speaking to my back, but I heard him loud and clear. His question caused me to break my stride for half a second, but then I picked it back up again and continued walking across the floor to leave, believing that Sensei was trying to delve deeper into my business than I wanted to allow him.

  “Miss Akemi Nakamura called me,” Sensei said coyly. “She called me on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. And she even phoned this morning, Thursday.” Sensei knew these words would stop me completely, and they did.

  I turned to face him, genuinely surprised at the completely unexpected news. I had no way to measure how much Sensei knew and how much he didn’t know about my wife, her father, and our situation. I had wanted to move in complete silence and anonymity as usual and on purpose, but now there was a path connecting my sensei and Akemi’s father, which meant that any unexpected action I took against her father, if investigated, would lead back to me. Whenever something deadly occurs not performed by one person alone and not concealed from every single other living being, the threat of its being uncovered is extremely high. I never want to strike in this situation. I was being reminded once again that the battle between me and my wife’s father had to remain a battle of the mind, a thought battle, no blades or gunpowder of fists or feet even. My mind understood my situation; still it was difficult for me to fully accept.

  “What did my wife say to you?” I asked solemnly.

  “Oh, you trained her well. She was particularly polite yet quiet. She didn’t say much, just asked if you had been to the dojo, and if you were here at that moment. I asked her to leave her telephone number. She refused, saying only that she was calling from Japan.

  “What time did she normally call you?” I asked, thinking.

  “She called at a different time each day. Then today when I told her you were not here yet, she became desperate. She left the telephone number for a friend of hers who she said speaks English. She asked me to pass it along to you so that she and you could arrange a way and a time to talk.”

  “Will you give it to me?” I asked, knowing Sensei now had the upperhand.

  “Of course I will, but it would have been better if you had told me what was happening from the beginning, so that I could help. I waited every day this week for you to say it to me yourself. I wanted you to say it to me because you trust me, because you have known me, because I have trusted you, because I have trained you, but you did not. And then today you walked in here and revealed how little you think of me, by announcing that you would be out for one week. You underestimated me, as though I could and would never piece together what was happening.”

  Some seconds slipped by with silence. I figured this was the point where I was supposed to apologize to Sensei. But, for me, it didn’t feel right or real. I wasn’t sorry that I had learned the way of the ninja from my teacher and followed it so closely that I became offensive to the man who taught it to me.

  So I said instead, “Sensei, please tell me what I need to do, how I need to train to set everything right with you and me. When I get back, I’ll do it. I’ll work hard at it.” This was my compromise.

  “I have a feeling that you’re not coming back. I have a sense that this is the last time I’ll see you.”

  “Impossible,” I said with certainty. “I’ll be in class tonight at eight.” I smiled, then turned to leave.

  “You have one hour and thirty-nine minutes remaining on today’s private lesson. First follow me to my office for that phone number.” I followed him, glad that he didn’t require me to press or beg him for Akemi’s information.

  “Here.” He slid a book across the table to me. I picked it up. Never Surrender: The Unauthorized Biography of Naoko Nakamura, An American Nemesis. I studied the book cover, then looked up at Sensei.

  “Your wife’s friend who speaks English is named Iwa Ikeda. She lives in Tokyo. Her telephone number is written inside on the bookmark.” Immediately I opened the book and I checked for her name and number. I found it.

  “In Japan, males call female acquaintances by their last name as a form of respect, unless the lady introduces herself by her first name. Then it’s okay to use it. When you phone, you should address her as Ikeda-san, instead of by her first name.” Sensei taught me something I did not know.

  “I have one more thing for you.” He stooped down a bit to open a drawer close to the floor. He handed me a second book; Peculiar People: The Japanese Way was the title.

  “You will need to learn the Japanese way if you want to remain married to a Japanese girl and her family. Japan is a different society than America. Their way of thinking and living is completely different down to the smallest detail. If you try and reason with a Japanese person without knowing the Japanese way, you will lose.” Sensei reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “Here is the card of a good friend of mine. He runs a dojo out in Takadanobaba. He has about one hundred fifty students. If you need to train or work out or if you need some help, just mention my name and he will open doors for you.”

  “Takadanobaba?” I repeated the six syllables.

  “It’s a prefecture in Tokyo. You are going to Japan, aren’t you?” he asked. Now Sensei was being direct, but I needed time to figure out my strategy before just giving up all of my well-guarded information.

  “I’m just gonna give this girl Ikeda-san a call and speak with my wife. Akemi’s just worried because she has been calling me at home and not getting through because my whole family has been working hard, sometimes even two jobs,” I explained.

  “I see,” Sensei said with slight suspicion. Ignoring my indirect denial, Sensei added, “Before you go, let me caution you. Japan is a magical place, completely unique. Many foreigners go there and never want to return to their homes.”

  “But you are here in the US, Sensei, and you have not ever mentioned returning home,” I challenged him. My words were true.

  “Be sure to read both of those books. In Japan there are more than thirty-five thousand suicides each year. The Japanese people look upon suicide differently than the Americans. I am mentioning this to you because your wife’s voice sounded sad and it became sadder each time that she contacted me.” He gave me a serious stare. For the first time in all my encounters of today, I became afraid. I turned away from the mind search he was conducting on me. Instead I flashed through the pages of one of the books in my hand. I wasn’t reading. It was just a diversion.

  “I didn’t leave Japan because it was not magical or unique to me,” Sensei said and then paused. “I didn’t return to Japan because the Japanese way is hard on the Japanese. We are expected to all do the same things the same way, and when one of us is different from the majority, we pay a heavy price, sometimes with our lives. Your wife, in choosing you and coming from the background that she comes from and the place where she was born and raised, has done something extremely different, and I am sure that many of the people closest to her are making her suffer because of it. I hope that you don’t take her life lightly. After meeting and listening to and watching her, it seemed that she did trade it all in for you.”

  I lowered my head, an unusual but honest reaction.

  “My own brother is one in that huge suicide statistic. He was born mentally challenged. He was different. Japan did not open its heart to him. He was isolated and ignored until he decided that death was better than life. I came here to America bringing along everything that is great about Japan with me,
and leaving the rest behind.”

  Sensei placed his hand on his chest and said solemnly, “In my heart, I have to believe that there is hope for the underdog. Every day I awaken, I want to stand beside the man who is not expected to win.”

  Without regard to either of our injuries, Sensei led me in an intense one-hour session on “resisting torture,” the separation of the mind from the physical pains and desire that your body is experiencing during torture. My sensei’s lessons were incredible to me. I could actually feel the warrior within myself strengthening. And despite anything that my Japanese teacher may have believed, I was showing him respect my way; by listening intently to his instruction, following his example, and mastering even the smallest details of his techniques.

  Chapter 19

  SUDANA SALIM AHMED AMIN

  Standing still on my Brooklyn block, something I don’t ordinarily do, I waited for Naja’s school bus to pull up. Although lots of kids were getting back from school, Naja’s bus was green, not yellow, and stood out because it had “Khadijah’s Islamic School for Girls” displayed on the whole of one side.

  “Where’s Ms. Marcy?” Naja asked smiling.

  “Your big brother is here instead,” I teased her. “C’mon.” I held her hand and walked her over to the cab waiting on the curb where I had been standing. Umma was inside, the meter was running, and their suitcases were in the trunk.

  “Hey, where are we going? Umi Umma!” Naja crawled into the cab and threw her arms around Umma, causing her to push back against her seat. Naja kissed all over Umma’s face as Umma laughed and tried to gently push her off. Naja’s book bag fell onto the cab floor. I closed their door and then jumped into the front seat. The Bangladeshi driver’s experienced eyes surveyed me carefully. Without words he let me observe that I was not supposed to be in his front seat. Without words I remained, pulled some cash out my pocket, and began counting it to calm him down.

  I directed him to Umma’s job and instructed him to wait. By then the meter read $19.50 so I peeled off a twenty and handed it to him. “Wait here, I’ll be right back and pay you double. My suitcases are in your trunk, so don’t pull off.” I let him see me looking at his driver’s identification number and photo posted on his dashboard.