The Persian Helmet

  Chapter 13: Mrs. Ebrahim

  Mrs. Ebrahim was easy to pick out in Starbucks. She didn’t have a laptop. She did have a hijab. Clare was thankful only her hair was covered. She didn’t know if she could bring herself to make conversation with someone whose face was covered.

  Mrs. Ebrahim’s face was entirely American looking, aside from the headscarf framing it, and she wore ordinary American clothes. Clare thought she probably had blonde hair. Her blues eyes looked strained. She was thin, and looked around 40.

  “Hello, Mrs. Ebrahim. I’m Clare Bower. Thanks for meeting with me,” Clare said, sitting in one of the comfortable leather chairs next to a small table. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  “No thanks, not now.”

  “I’ll just go order mine. Paying rent for the chairs, you know,” Clare said smiling as she got up.

  She ordered the most frou-frou drink she could find on the Starbucks menu, all frozen chocolate froth and whipped cream. A plain coffee wouldn’t set the right tone. Too serious and off-putting, too formal, might make the woman nervous. More nervous. She bought a couple of cookies too.

  “Have a cookie?” she said, placing everything on the little table.

  “No, no, thanks.”

  “So are you from Akron?” Clare asked. “I am. I grew up here, and went to Akron U.”

  “Yes, so did I. That’s where I met my husband.”

  “He died, didn’t he? Not long ago. I am sorry.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The truth is, when your son Ali showed up in Greenline a couple of times and then tried to snatch the helmet, the police tracked him down through the license plate on the car, and somehow found out some things. I don’t know what sources they have, but of course they got in touch with the Akron and Summit County law.”

  Mrs. Ebrahim did not look shocked or angry. She looked resigned.

  Clare continued, “As I wrote you in my letter, I found the helmet in a trunk on the curb on large object trash pickup day. Everybody had big items out on the curb, and nobody thinks anything of people taking them. It’s sort of an old custom here.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But obviously someone wanted to throw out the helmet, or at least the trunk, and someone wanted the helmet back. I want to keep the helmet, unless there’s been some mistake about it being thrown out.”

  “No, there was no mistake. I put it out.”

  She was silent for a moment. Clare drank her coffee. She’d asked for two extra shots of espresso to counteract all the sugar. She’d have to counteract the caffeine with extra wine tonight at Roxy’s.

  “But your son must feel some attachment to it.”

  “It was his father’s. From his father’s family, that is. It’s quite old.”

  “It’s from Iran?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did a little research on the web. It seemed to resemble other helmets identified as Indo-Persian. But they were all a little different. Definitely not mass produced.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “So you don’t feel that same attachment to an heirloom from your husband’s family? Perhaps one of his relatives would want it.”

  “I’d just as soon see it melted down for scrap,” the woman said vehemently.

  Clare was stunned.

  “Well, you could have done that, of course, and your son wouldn’t have been able to … follow it.”

  “I guess I thought it would go in a landfill and no one would ever see it again.”

  Clare wondered if Mrs. Ebrahim’s hostility had to do with a bitter marriage. But this was not something she could ask. Yet.

  “Um, are you — did you throw out other things? Antiques, or your husband’s things?”

  “I gave his clothes to charity, except the ones my son could wear. He’s quite a bit taller than his father was, though. I got rid of a lot of books.”

  Clare thought she could ask leading questions indefinitely, until Mrs. Ebrahim decided to go home, but it was hard to tell whether or not she was looking for someone to unload on. Roxy had told her that she often got more from an interview subject by waiting. Sympathetically, of course. And Clare did feel sympathetic. There was something simmering below the woman’s constrained surface, but she didn’t seem hostile toward Clare. If she had been, she wouldn’t have agreed to meet her.

  “This coffee is starting to kick in,” Clare said lightly. “I read that a few Starbucks around the country are adding wine to their menu. I think I’m going to want some after all this caffeine. But that’s like putting on the gas and the brakes at the same time. My heart or head might explode.”

  “I don’t drink alcohol. I gave it up when I married Mohammed.”

  “Ah. So you converted.”

  Mrs. Ebrahim made a sound that could have been a laugh.

  “Well, I was raised a Christian. I never said absolutely, or thought, that I gave it up, but I went along with him to a degree. It was more important to him than to me, and I agreed to raise our children as Muslims.”

  “So … you go to the mosque?”

  “I did. Ali still does. My daughter does not.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Clare thought.

  “How long were you married?”

  “Nineteen years. Got married right after graduating from Akron U. Well, he went on to grad school to get an MBA. I got a job in an office, and when Mo started his business, I went to work there.”

  “Is your family still in Akron? I mean your parents?”

  “My father died but my mom still lives here. Mohammed’s parents are still in Iran. He has brothers and sisters but they’re still over there too. But what you want to know is about the helmet. As I said, it’s an old family heirloom. Supposedly used in battle generations back. I don’t know. Ali thinks it was.”

  “Well, naturally he would like to keep it. But you don’t want him to.” Clare said this in a neutral tone.

  “It has some bad associations for me, not for him. Holy war, you know.”

  “No, I don’t really.”

  “It’s always a holy war,” she said bitterly.

  Clare hesitated. “To throw it out — such a beautiful object — you didn’t want to sell it, or send it back to Iran?”

  Mrs. Ebrahim seemed to compose herself again.

  “No. I didn’t want my son to think it was available. I never thought he’d go to such lengths to try to find it. I’m sorry for the trouble he caused for you, and the police.”

  “The police don’t really want to get him into any real trouble, or arrest him. He’s just a kid, no record, it’s really fairly trivial.”

  Mrs. Ebrahim leaned forward and said very clearly, staring into Clare’s eyes, “He is not just a kid anymore. He’s 19, and is capable of doing something worse than trying to steal that helmet. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is just 19, you know.”

  Clare gasped. “Are you saying Ali might do something like the Boston Marathon bombing? Of course the teen years aren’t easy, and, uh, he must be quite disturbed about his father’s death. Do you really have reason to suspect …”

  “Not yet. He … he sees this helmet as a symbol of his father, his Iranian heritage, his Muslim heritage. He wants to … immerse himself in it even more now that … his father is gone. He is at the mosque all the time. Some of the men there are trying to step into his father’s shoes. But I don’t want that. I don’t trust them. Ali thought Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother were heroes, and some of the people in the mosque agreed with him. At least, no one really spoke out against it.”

  “But it looks like you are part of it. I mean, you’re wearing the headscarf.”