The Terrorist

  Billy’s passport.

  His vital statistics. No longer vital, for Billy no longer lived.

  Vital only to Jehran.

  In most countries, it was illegal to travel without identification, the way in America it was illegal to drive without your license. In all countries, it was impossible to leave without your passport.

  In the dressing room, the knot of girls shrieked with laughter. “Jehran, this room is too much!” called Kyrene. “We just found your stash of emeralds!”

  “Those are fake,” called Jehran. “We don’t keep the real jewels here. Wear them if you want.”

  Laura could well believe that the real jewels were not here. Nothing here was real; it was a front Jehran must abandon for some dread reason.

  How Billy would have loved it.

  Escape! Flight! Chase! Danger!

  On his passport.

  Not even getting Kraft to agree to a macaroni franchise, not even finding out that the 007’s of Britain were working on his case, would have pleased Billy more. He, secretly, clandestinely, would bring a friend to safety across the sea.

  But it certainly wasn’t legal. She could not imagine her mother and father saying yes. Laura wasn’t sure she could say yes. There was something huge and awful about it, even though the passport itself was a slender pamphlet of a document.

  Jehran’s voice was thready. She was afraid of being overheard. Laura’s spine turned to ice. Could those men with their heavy mustaches be listening?

  “My brother,” explained Jehran, “wants to go home. He wants home more than anything on earth. He is so unhappy in England.”

  Laura could understand that. Living in somebody else’s world would be exhausting, year in and year out. Laura was exhausted and she was practically English herself; it was just plain hard to live in another country.

  “But going home,” said Jehran, “is possible only if my brother can make peace with the government. Otherwise he will be shot when he crosses the border. Shot like the rest of our family. My father and my brothers. My mother and my sisters.”

  Laura, who had spent weeks imagining the impact of a bomb, thought of bullets instead.

  “It is I who possess the family fortune,” said Jehran. “We have great wealth, and it is mine. Many are the men who would like such wealth. So my brother has chosen a husband for me.”

  That sounded reasonable. Jehran’s brother wouldn’t let her marry some American from Massachusetts who’d take her home to be a Congregationalist like Laura.

  “That man, my husband-to-be, will guarantee my brother’s safety so he can return home after I am wed.”

  Laura was totally confused. The last thing Jehran would want under those circumstances was an American passport. Besides, she’d be going home to get married. What was so bad about that?

  “This will happen in January,” said Jehran. “I will not yet be sixteen. The man chosen for me is a general in his fifties. I will be his third wife. His is a traditional household. I will be forced to wear a black robe like my servant, and have my face covered by a solid veil with eye slits. I will not be permitted to leave my house. I will not be allowed books to read or television to watch or a radio to listen to. Laura, you are too American to know what such a marriage means. It is living death.”

  Laura had begun to see death: the shape of Billy gone. What was living death?

  “My money would be his, and I would never be permitted to touch it. I would obey my husband, always, no matter how painful or cruel or wrong. I would have no purpose except to give birth to sons. If I had daughters, he would punish me and quickly get me pregnant again.”

  Laura felt as if Jehran occupied another planet, a place without gravity or sunrise. Perhaps if this arranged marriage occurred, it would be another planet, as strange and terrible as life without sunrise.

  Jehran clutched Laura, her thin child’s fingers biting into the flesh. “Trapped for life, Laura! Till I am buried.”

  Laura had just buried someone. It was so dark, being buried. She tried to think her way through this awful picture Jehran was drawing. “Is he … well … nice? Your fiancé?”

  Jehran lost her composure. Her voice hit each syllable like sticks on the rim of a snare drum. “It isn’t like that, Laura; don’t be so American! He’s fifty-four. He has other wives. He’s tired of them, and he wants a young beautiful girl with a huge dowry.”

  Fifty-four. A decade older than Laura’s father. Almost two decades older than her mother.

  “I must leave England, Laura. Before my brother can seal this marriage, I must get out! Hide myself inside another life, inside a safer country: America. I have the money, but not the papers. Billy’s passport would set me free.”

  The heavy draperies and tapestries of the room closed in on them, like the life Jehran wanted to flee.

  Kyrene, Bethany, and Con flung themselves on the bed with Laura and Jehran. “I have a new career goal,” said Kyrene, waving toward the dressing rooms. “I want to live like this.”

  Laura was trembling. She used the pillows to hide her face. So she had been right that the sullen soldiers downstairs were threatening. But not to Laura. They were keeping Jehran until they could purchase their way home with her money.

  “Shove over,” said Tiffany, squishing in. They shoved over.

  “Shove over,” said Samira. They shoved over to make room for Samira. Now it was a slumber party.

  “Who here is going with the London Walk Club to Scotland after Christmas?” said Con.

  “My family won’t be here, of course,” said Kyrene. “We’re going to Vienna for Christmas.”

  “Show-off,” said Con.

  “We won’t be here either, of course. We’re going to Morocco,” said Samira, “because it’s warm and we’re dying of sun deprivation.”

  “Well, I’m going,” said Con.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Jehran.

  Laura’s brain was exploding, trying to figure out how Jehran intended to use Billy’s passport. But Jehran, who was in danger, calmly discussed the London Walk Club program. Jehran must be used to hiding her feelings.

  “The London Walk Club is taking the train for a change,” said Con. “December twenty-eighth through the thirtieth, Mr. Hollober’s taking us to Edinburgh.”

  “Nobody cares about the London Walk Club,” said Tiffany. “Nobody has ever cared about the London Walk Club. Now, Jehran, the next thing you do at slumber parties is, you tell scary stories. Green monsters and creaking doors.”

  “Maniacs on the loose,” agreed Bethany, “breaking windows in the black of night.”

  The girls giggled happily.

  “Vampires lurking in closets that lead to hell,” said Kyrene. “I will tell the secret story of the London vampire.”

  In marriage, Jehran would dress like a vampire. A black shroud with eye slits. Nobody except her husband would ever see her skin. The husband who was forty years older. Who already had wives. The wives were alive. They lived there. Laura did not like to think of the logistics of their bedrooms.

  She could not understand the brother forcing a bad marriage on his sister, but Laura did understand wanting to go home.

  Home was your same old neighborhood, and your same old trees at the same time of year, and your same old holidays, and your same old school building. Home was the comfort of things staying the way they were.

  Jehran had arranged herself romantically against the pillows, her wonderful hair strewn around her. She’d have to cut her hair, thought Laura, to match Billy’s passport photo. And she’d have to wear jeans.

  She could not imagine Jehran in jeans.

  Laura curled into a ball, the metallic threads of the bedspread pressed into her cheek, leaving an Islamic pattern.

  Islam.

  You thought that religion was a pact between you and God, but it wasn’t. Religion was a group, and sometimes even a government. In some countries, religion was government by the tough and the cruel. Men who hated women.
Men who wanted women literally locked in their clothes and their houses.

  Laura would go home one day, to all that home meant, but Jehran was praying for the reverse: Please, God, never make me go home.

  And only Laura Williams could make it come true.

  The passports, thought Laura, are in Daddy’s bottom desk drawer. I suppose I could slip Billy’s into my book bag and hand it to Jehran at lunch on Monday. But—

  She was suddenly terrified for Jehran, facing the world alone, completely and forever alone. What if she, Laura, had had to come to England by herself? At fifteen? Gotten off the plane at Heathrow alone? No parent. No grown-up. No friend.

  What if she had to find a place to live, pay for it, figure out how to get groceries and how to cook them, and how to do laundry, and how to tell lies, hundreds of lies, lies she would have to remember forever, and never get wrong?

  Suppose Jehran landed at Kennedy Airport in New York. Jehran and thousands of other immigrants. Nobody would know Jehran was immigrating, of course. They would think she was eleven years old, a boy named Billy Williams going home to visit relatives, and—

  And there was a problem.

  Airplanes didn’t let eleven-year-olds travel alone. An unaccompanied minor had to be brought to the airport, where a grown-up would fill out forms and put the kid’s hand in the hand of the airline personnel. At the other end, the flight attendants did not just let the kid get off the plane either. The grown-up named in the paperwork had to show up.

  So Jehran couldn’t just buy a ticket and get on a plane as Billy.

  There had to be an adult in the escape.

  But who?

  Jehran’s adult—her brother—would never let her go. That was the point.

  And Laura’s adults—her mother and father—would never cooperate. They would say Jehran’s brother knew best, and the Williamses could not interfere in a private family decision, and they would never let Laura give away Billy’s passport.

  CHAPTER 11

  THERE WERE NO DECENT desserts for lunch on Monday. The cafeteria staff actually thought Rich Tea Biscuits qualified as dessert.

  “Rich Tea Biscuits taste like Animal Crackers,” said Con, “but they’re not as much fun to eat.”

  “Are you a head biter?” asked Jimmy.

  “No,” said Con. “If you eat their heads first, how are they going to feel pain when you eat the rest of them?”

  The Americans laughed. Laura enjoyed keeping Americanisms to herself, but Con had no selfish side and described Animal Cracker boxes with their little shoestrings.

  “I have to put some lipstick on,” said Laura. She pushed her chair back and wandered out of the cafeteria.

  Con was mildly surprised. She didn’t remember Laura wearing lipstick, or needing to restore it after lunch.

  Jehran’s choice to fix her lipstick surprised nobody, because Jehran was always perfect—hair flawless, scarf hanging just so, jewels glittering. Con paid no attention to Jehran.

  Mohammed paid attention to Jehran. And he paid attention to Samira, who was glaring at Jehran’s back.

  The girls’ room was relatively large and met U.S. standards for handicapped access. Nobody at L.I.A. had a wheelchair, so Laura and Jehran slid together into the extra-large stall.

  Jehran gave Laura a fat square English envelope of thin brown paper. Laura opened it to find a thick stack of English pounds. Her jaw dropped. It was a huge amount of cash.

  “You must buy the airplane ticket for me,” Jehran mouthed.

  Laura was not ready to think about buying tickets. She had not even come to the final decision to take Billy’s passport. Yes, it would be a good thing for Jehran. But was it a good thing for Billy? For her mother? For her father?

  Laura needed time to think.

  “I will go to New York,” Jehran whispered. “In New York, I will be surrounded by other foreigners. New York will be like London. Everybody else is a foreigner, too. And in New York, my English accent will help me, because Americans love English accents.”

  This was true, and Jehran’s accent made Americans think of castles and princesses.

  “All by yourself, though!” protested Laura. Even to Laura, New York on your own sounded scary. But for an Arab girl traveling under a false passport?

  “That’s what immigrants to New York have always done,” Jehran pointed out “Remember the immigration unit in American history?”

  London International Academy offered a year of American history because you couldn’t graduate from an American high school without it. Laura expected only American kids needing the credit would take it, but the class was full of foreigners. Laura was surprised that Jehran had taken it.

  “Italian and Polish and Irish and German immigrants!” Jehran whispered excitedly. “They were children when they crossed the Atlantic. If they could do it, I can do it.”

  When Laura studied immigration, it seemed to her that every immigrant was a thirteen-year-old sailing steerage on some hideous boat who, twenty-five years later, had become a millionaire and coached Little League.

  But it didn’t matter, because Jehran couldn’t travel as an eleven-year-old by herself—or himself, if she were Billy. Laura outlined the problem.

  Jehran shrugged. “You’ll have to come with me, then.”

  “Come with you?”

  “Ssssshh!”

  “What are you talking about, Jehran? I can’t just get on a plane and fly back to America. My mother and father would never agree to that.”

  “You won’t ask them. You’ll just come. When we land in New York, you’ll turn around and take the very next flight back to England. You won’t be gone twenty-four hours.”

  “Impossible,” said Laura.

  “This will be better, anyway,” said Jehran. “You’ll be my big sister, Laura, and you’re sixteen, so you’ll be my adult. I won’t be an unaccompanied minor, and there will be no paperwork. Besides, when I’m pretending to be Billy, my British accent would betray me. They’d know I’m not a boy from Massachusetts. This way, you will do the talking.”

  “Jehran, it won’t work. My parents would never let us do it.”

  Jehran was too excited to allow problems. “With this cash, you will buy us both tickets. Then all I have to do is get out of my house and away from my brother. I am confident I can accomplish that. With you, Laura, I can land in America without having to answer questions!”

  That was what crossing a border was all about.

  Questions.

  You’d show your passport in England, and go through the electronic weapons-search gate, and now show both your plane ticket and your passport, and then do it again before actually boarding the plane.

  At landing, you had to tell what you’d been doing abroad. Business travel? Vacation? What were your reasons? How much money were you bringing?

  Everywhere in airports were doors and guards and gates to ensure that only authorized people moved on.

  “Come back to earth, Jehran,” said Laura. “How could I be away from home for twenty-four hours? What would I tell my parents?”

  Jehran brushed this away with a flip of her scarf. “American girls are allowed to do anything. You have no morals.”

  “If that’s what you think of Americans, go to Brazil!”

  The bathroom door opened. Girls swarmed in, shrieking and giggling. Doors slammed, makeup was shared. It was enough noise so that the whispering could continue.

  Laura planned to call Jehran names, and end their friendship, and never speak to her again, but Jehran began to cry. “I’m so sorry, Laura. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I have great respect for American families.” The tears silvered her cheeks.

  How quickly I was going to abandon her, thought Laura, ashamed. “Don’t you see, Jehran, if I were gone twenty-four hours, my parents wouldn’t just telephone Mr. Evans. They’d telephone every police department in England. In Europe! In the world!” In fact, thought Laura, they would be scared to death. Could such a thing reall
y happen? Could fear for Laura explode in her mother’s face as the bomb had exploded in Billy’s, and kill her mother?

  “You cannot let me down,” begged Jehran. “Laura, I have nobody else to ask. Any day, my brother may say it has been arranged, and I am to leave. I will beg him to let me finish the school year, but a woman does not require education, so that will not matter.”

  But Laura could not vanish overnight. And no girlfriend, certainly not Con, would support her in a lie that involved an overnight absence. She started to hand the package of money back, but Jehran held up her hand, and her eyes were fire, sending off sparks. “I know what we can do!” breathed Jehran.

  Laura didn’t.

  “The London Walk Club,” said Jehran. “We’ll pretend we’re going to Edinburgh.”

  Regardless of Laura’s emotions toward Mr. Hollober, she had been forced to continue attending current events. She made a point of not listening, and then remembered she was trying to be less ignorant, so she listened after all. She made sure her hostile attitude stayed on her face for Mr. Hollober to see.

  Mr. Hollober discussed social customs around the world. In what country, and why, did people shake hands instead of bowing? In what country, and why, did well-to-do females wear ragged torn clothes (America) or drape cloth over their noses (Saudi Arabia)?

  Laura tuned in.

  “If a girl from an observant Muslim family were to fell in love with a Christian,” said Mr. Hollober, “or flirt, or expose her face or limbs or hair in front of men except her father and brothers, she would taint her family’s honor. She would be punished because honor of the family matters more than she does.”

  “What kind of punishment?” said Tiffany.

  Mr. Hollober said the family might shoot her.

  “Come on,” said Tiffany, not believing a word of that.

  Mr. Hollober insisted he was telling the truth. “Girls who tempt men are criminals. Girls who disobey their fathers and brothers are criminals. And criminals in Islamic countries pay with their lives.”

  So if Jehran disobeyed her brother, he would not yell at her. He would execute her.

  Laura kept her shudder inside. Trapping the shudder nauseated her. She was afraid of throwing up.