The simple metal rhythm of a darbouka wafts from the stage, reverberating against the auditorium walls and quieting the chatty crowd. An instrument of festival, according to the press packet. Backstage, a singer runs his fingertips along the fabric of the curtain that separates him from the media gathered to witness his return. A furtive glance beyond the partition tells him they are all younger than he, here for the news value more than the memories. Here not so much from interest, but because they were assigned to cover the story. After nearly thirty years, he shouldn’t have expected anything else, yet it makes him anxious, wondering how they will react when he walks out, whether they will accept his return to the mainstream in the spirit in which it’s offered, or if they’ll want him to conform to the myth of who he once was. What questions will they ask when they have the chance? He and the producers have gone over the possibilities a hundred times, but still he dreads the open session they have planned to conclude the event, and wishes they had agreed to keep it to just the announcement and a couple of songs. His fingers, when he looks at them, have formed into a C chord against the drapes, as though he held a guitar. The instrument would give him comfort right now, its heft just right, its shape caressed into his body the way it did all those years ago, when he would relax onto a wooden stool, unplug the amp, and play the music that linked to his heart, and the crowd’s. That sound seems a universe away. The guitar once blessed him with the flexibility to perform solo, or with a band, even with an orchestra. The darbouka is, by comparison, of a stricter philosophy. It proclaims itself in isolation, in defiance: it was not made to harmonize. What he craves at this moment is his old twelve-string, and a bass guitar to back him up. A piano. A sax. Some kind of accompaniment.
As he strains to listen, he feels the vibration of every tap upon the drum skin, and he feels terribly alone. Nothing to be done about that. The emcee has tucked his notes into his jacket pocket. The producers from the record company have gathered, waiting to file out to the dais. The event manager smiles and waves at him as she approaches. She shifts the headset mic from her lips and asks if he is ready. The audience has become restless again. Just the way it used to happen. He reminds himself he is no longer that other person. He is Ahmed Ali now.
I: Let each one of you speak the truth… —Ephesians 4:25
The drummer quickens the tempo — a hail of fingers evokes images and sensations of another time and place: tapestries embroidered in abjad script, men reclining on cushions debating their interpretations, the pungent scents of tobacco and coffee accenting the conversation. How Johnny Mars once loved the intricacies of this culture; they seemed to offer a pathway into experiences and ideas the western world refused to acknowledge. But now he resists the sound. He does not want to enjoy the occasion; he does not wish to indulge. He wishes the sound would stop, and begins to hum to himself, rocking back and forth in his seat in the rear of the auditorium, a futile effort to silence the music. The house lights dim and a spotlight washes over a bearded man in a sharkskin suit on the stage far below. He wears sunglasses, but removes them as he approaches the microphone. The man waits for the darbouka to retreat into a softer cadence, and begins his speech with arms spread, as though blessing the audience. “I believe you all know,” he says, “how much the world has missed the voice and the incomparable music of Ahmed Ali for these many years.”
Mars stops humming and sits up straighter. He scribbles the speaker’s words on the notepad that came with the fact sheets and studio shots, and appends the quote with editorial. “Lie!” he whispers as he writes, and then underlines it twice. The world, he corrects, is wise to this PR stunt. No one has missed Ahmed Ali. It’s Zan Williams they’ve come to London to see. He exhales in disapproval as the emcee dabs his forehead with a handkerchief and continues the introduction. Mars’s noise catches the attention of a woman a few seats over — the only other guest relegated to the last row — and she stares at him. Mars returns the look for a second. The woman wears her blond hair draped over one shoulder, the way his sister-in-law used to. The vision frightens him. He turns away and strains to see past the heads of the journalists given preference over him. As if thirty-five years in the business didn’t count for anything. He’d tried to convince a twenty-something in glasses and a blue blazer, who claimed that his name wasn’t on the credentials list, that he belonged inside. She acted as though she’d never heard of him, or Zan Williams, and threatened to call security. She wouldn’t budge when Mars dropped names from concerts and albums of decades past, and mentioned his weekly column on the Pink Toaster website. She’d never heard of that either. Mars protested until her supervisor intervened — there were still a few unclaimed seats, why not let him in? Then she handed him a folder of marketing materials, welcomed him as though there had been no argument, and politely directed him to the gulag of the twenty-fifth row.
The resemblance to Erica is striking, hauntingly so. Of course it reminds Mars of Freddie as well, of the couple’s shared sense of adventure. They were so young, so naïve about the evil the world can conjure. He composes himself and tries to connect with his neighbor. “Damn,” he says to her. “You can’t see anything from here. Might as well be sitting behind the stage.” She stares again for a few seconds before gathering her papers and bag and making her way to a seat a few rows closer to the stage. Mars watches as she asks about the lone open spot, then sidesteps past retreating knees and toes to squeeze in. What did he say that was so offensive? He notices how hot it is in the room, and pulls at the collar of his denim shirt to let the air cool his neck. The suit onstage isn’t done dispensing hype. He gushes over Ali’s new release — his first in nearly thirty years — titled Moon and Star. He describes Ali’s recording company and talks of more music to come. He gestures to the curtains behind, which open to a multimedia Ahmed Ali exhibit, including slides of the singer dressed like a mullah, leaning against a doorway. Ali with a thin mustache and goatee gazing pensively into the camera. Ali in the lotus position in front of a fountain.
A huge closeup of Ali lingers on the screen as the other images fade. The bearded man applauds. Mars gets up so he can see the ones down in front, the reporters from the Times, Rolling Stone and the other legacy rags, the cream of music criticism, the ones who decide what will be popular each year. They are applauding too, sacrificing their journalists’ impartiality before the conference even begins. There is a part of him that wants to be in that first row, laughing and smiling along with them, claiming a percentage of the celebrity. He, as much as anyone, helped Zan Williams achieve stardom. But they’ve never allowed him access to their circle, never respected what he’s written. He belongs down there with them, but they will never admit it.
There are other people he doesn’t recognize. He can see they are too young to remember what Zan Williams meant to the world, to its conscience. Certainly they don’t understand that allowing this impostor, this Ahmed Ali, to bathe in their admiration is an insult to the music he once believed in. Finally the singer comes out. He is dressed all in white — loose pants and a jacket with a mandarin collar, and sandals on his feet.
“Of course,” Mars whispers to no one this time. “The façade is complete.” Ali walks to the center of the stage, where a dais has been set up. Three more men in neat beards and dark suits, identified as producers and managers, join him. Mars doesn’t bother to write their names down. He is too busy watching Ali, looking for traces of the man he used to be. The singer motions for the audience to sit, and they obey.
“May the peace of Allah be with you,” he says. “Today I rejoice that He has seen fit to allow me to make music again.”
But Mars remains standing. He shakes his head. It shouldn’t be this easy. There should be an apology first for what he did to his fans three decades ago. For the betrayal of his philosophy, and of his way of life. For how he’d slammed the door of fundamentalism in the faces of the millions who believed in the freedom and equality he preached in song — the fans who had become the artist’s disciples, searchers for a mystical truth that seemed to lay just beyond the music’s horizon. Williams said almost nothing about his decision to quit the music business at the time. Just a note sent to entertainment magazines saying he had canceled his concert tour and was retiring. Had there been a tragedy? An injury to his voice? But his management offered no explanation. When Williams finally granted an interview, he was a different person — aloof and preoccupied. He had taken a new name and gone into seclusion. His past life and his dozens of recordings, he said, had been blasphemy. Those frivolous pursuits were an affront to Allah. He took a Muslim wife and proclaimed he would devote the rest of his life to study and prayer. Ali looks as though he is about to speak again, but pauses, shading his eyes from the stage lighting and peering in Mars’s direction. He smiles for a moment, looking down at the assembly, and then returns to his rehearsed comments.
“I feel wonderful about singing of life in this fragile world again,” he says. “And with my new album I hope to bridge the differences that often divide us.” Mars clenches his fists. A marketing campaign. Politically correct nonsense. No apology, no deference to the past. Why did he expect Ali to say anything different? He feels the deceit within the words crawl over him, and begins to tremble. There is a truth inside him, aching to be let free. Mars squints through his wire-rim glasses at the figure in white, trying to control the emotion raging inside. But it has to be released, and he lets his words flow with the vindictiveness of lava.
“Then would you say your denouncement of your music thirty years ago was a mistake?” he shouts.
The interruption stuns Ali, and he takes a step back from the microphone. A mountain in a security guard’s jacket moves into the row of seats toward Mars. The man sitting at Ali’s right pushes himself up and leans into his mic.
“We will have time for questions in a few minutes,” he says. “But first Ahmed would like to discuss his new album.” The guard comes within a few feet. Mars sits down, folding his arms and turning inward like a scolded child.
II: Follow the inspiration sent unto thee —Yunus, 10:109
The man Ahmed Ali sees through the mist of spotlight is a throwback to another decade, an anachronism — he wears a denim work shirt and Levi’s; strands of hair dangle from the middle of his balding head to his shoulders. His clothes aren’t so different from the way Ali used to dress when he first began performing. He had hair to his shoulders too, a tapestry of curls that cascaded from his head and that reflected the moods of his songs as he performed, bouncing and swaying as if he were underwater. But the years and the discipline of Islam urge a more conservative approach. That this man in the back row still wears the uniform of dissenting youth might have been a pleasant surprise to Ali, had he not disrupted the conference. He sees the stranger is an island, alone in distance as well as fashion. Ali watches as the man shrinks into a cocoon of himself, and senses he is troubled by more than just a few words uttered so many years ago. He holds up a hand to the guard to stop him. The question isn’t unfounded. Probably half the reporters in the crowd plan to ask some version of it. The departure from public life had been abrupt, and now his return is, he is sure, nearly as surprising. He turns to his producer.
“This seems as good a time as any to talk about it,” he says.
“Are you certain? We were going to get them excited about the new album first. Talk about the future, remember?”
Ali turns back to the audience.
“I want to answer that question,” he says. He watches the journalists in the front row lean forward into their notepads and recorders. “The answer is…no. It was not a mistake. It was the right thing for me to do at the time.” He pauses for a second to look over his shoulder at the enormous photo of himself in contemplation still floating on the screen. “I was lost. My life was a waste. I needed to change everything. Perhaps, when I made the decision not to perform any longer, I was too zealous, too willing to sacrifice for my new life. I might have been harsh in speaking about the time before, but I was not wrong.” Ali looks into the thick of the crowd. The faces are blank, uncomprehending. In his peripheral vision he sees his producer waving at him below the surface of the dais to stop the digression and get back to the script. He nods that he will. But not yet. “I’m not sorry about it,” he says, “if you’re curious. For a long time I didn’t miss making music. My new life had so much to fill the hours. It was like morning, awakening me every day to its beauty.” Now the producer has his chin in his hand and is staring at him, his eyes begging. This is just what he had warned about, allowing the press conference to become a referendum on his life and religion. Some of the reporters have their hands up, hoping to sneak in more questions. Ali puts his palms up to signal they’ll have to wait. “As you see, it’s pretty easy for me to get sidetracked, especially into something that’s so important. We can talk more about this a little later.” He looks out again at the man in the back. “I thank you for raising the issue,” he calls to him.
He returns to the prepared remarks — about simple songs, by a simple man — music of love and truth. For a moment it sounds much the way he had spoken about his music thirty years ago, but back then it was the search for truth. A subtle difference. There is only one truth now. Ali calls on the marketing expertise he honed on the concert circuit three decades past, and moves smoothly into details about the album release and negotiations for a brief tour. He is excited, he tells the gathering, about the possibilities, although as he says it, he remembers what traveling and performing had done to him before. It was on his second tour, on the west coast of the States to promote a new release, that the success of his first album mutated. Validation of his music became an illusion of fulfillment. Suddenly, no one disagreed with him. If he wanted a stage light moved, it was moved. Adjustments in the arrangements weren’t disputed. He was always right. If he needed a joint before the show, someone brought one to him. Women waited for him backstage, and he took them — two, even three at a time into his hotel room, and later opened the doors and paid for enough wine and food for a roomful of people — acquaintances and strangers — to last the entire night. When the others finally left, he continued the revels by himself, substituting cocaine for companionship. It felt like falling from a place so high he could never hit the ground, transporting him from the struggles of his early career. Days and weeks had no meaning. There were entire concerts he could not remember. The thought of it now disgusts him. He is grateful to Allah for the chance to rescue his life. As Ali speaks, he looks sideways at his producer — this conference, and the comeback tour, were his idea. He would have preferred to stay in the studio, away from the scrutiny.
III: Do not let the sun go down on your anger —Ephesians 4:26
When the advance copy of Moon and Star arrived at Pink Toaster it went where all the unwanted submissions went — on the counter next to the coffee maker in the break room. Mars made his once-a-week visit to the office and couldn’t believe it hadn’t gone directly to the ’zine’s regular music critic, or been snapped up by one of the other staffers who nabbed every stray piece of music before he knew it had come in. He slipped the case into his backpack like he was stealing jewelry, and brought it back to his apartment. At last Zan Williams had come out of retirement. The name change meant nothing — how could such a musical genius be anything but true to his art, still pertinent, more than ever, to popular song? Mars shut the window in his single room and turned the volume high. He parked himself to listen and revel in the sound, anticipating he’d write a review that would make it clear to the neophytes he was forced to share online space with what music could be — what it should be.
But two bars in he knew it was not music, but some kind of sermon, blatant proselytizing, the musical equivalent of televangelism. The truth’s not open to debate / and when you die / you won’t get by on a lie / and your repentance will be too late. This wasn’t even Christian rock, borrowing chords and riffs from other genres, and altering the words to moralize. It was just a man, a cappella at times, at others accompanied by a simple drum or flute. Where was the intellect, the sophistication that had inspired him before? Even high, the music did nothing for him. This was someone pretending to be Zan Williams, trying to cash in on the artist he remembered. Mars took the CD out of the player and flung it against the wall.
“Give us back our Alexander Williams!”
He obsessed over it for a week, and then he knew what he had to do. But the magazine’s publisher said he simply couldn’t, wouldn’t shell out that kind of money to send him across the Atlantic for the uncertain return of a story about a forgotten folk-rock hippie.
“What the fuck, Mars?” the publisher said. “Dude’s old enough to be a member of AARP.” Mars almost hit him then. This kid — this pretender — would have been bussing tables if it weren’t for his father’s money. Instead he called the shots, and the ’zine profiled the popular noise of the moment. It dismissed rock, relegating it to a webpage called “Retro Stars with Johnny Mars,” buried well down the content menu and cluttered with ads for personal trainers, dog walkers, and credit repair. If it hadn’t been for Mars’s long-ago friendship with the publisher’s father, he wouldn’t even have that. Fine. He would pay for the trip himself. It was too important not to. He booked a flight on a discount carrier, and endured a sleepless overnighter jammed into a middle seat. He found lodging in an old guidebook he’d kept since his college days. There was space in the room for him and his suitcase, and that was all. At night he listened over and over to one of the old Zan Williams CDs that he’d brought with him. How good it was to hear Williams’s voice again, good to be transported back to a time when it seemed Mars’s future would be an idyllic mix of song and commentary and respect from his peers.
He forced himself to listen to the rest of the new CD again through ear buds, making notes about the voice, the instruments, and in particular, the lyrics. At last Ali’s intent became clear. The next morning he went to a coffee shop and spent hours online, doing what he had to do, gathering the evidence he needed to indict his former idol.
And with Ali nattering on about concert venues, and the audience drinking it all in, Mars knows the time is right to expose this fraud for what he is. He stands again. He sees the guard coming for him, and knows there will be others, and that this time they will get physical. The heat of the room envelops him once more. His breathing quickens and he feels his skin burning. The hall begins to spin around him, and for a moment he forgets in which direction the stage lays. But he will not be silenced. He bellows above the singer’s words.
“You say your way of life is about peace, but all over the world it brings violence and war. It murders innocent people. How can your music defend that?”
The man on the dais next to Ali rises and places his fists on the table. He leans forward as if preparing to berate the critic, but the singer puts a hand over his. The producer sits down, and Ali speaks.
“You can say that my beliefs support violence, just as you can say that many other beliefs support violence. History is filled with examples. In every faith, there are some who believe violence is the answer. I do not. We could debate this all day, but please, we are here to talk about the music.” Mars has the contradiction he was hoping for, and pulls printouts of magazine clippings from his back pocket. For a second he pauses — sees himself as a Judas. No! It was Zan Williams who betrayed us! He unfolds the papers and holds them far enough away so his tired eyes can focus. A bead of sweat runs from his forehead, down his cheek, like a tear. He reads:
“When terrorists held a group of American workers hostage and beheaded two of them, you were asked what you thought of the crisis. You said, and I quote, ‘Their deaths are regrettable, but necessary. It is important to focus the world’s attention on the plight of our people.’” He shakes the paper and repeats, “Necessary!” The guards reach Mars and each one takes an arm. He struggles against them to continue reading, but the papers fall to the floor and under his seat. Ali puts his hand to his chin, mimicking the thoughtful portrait behind him. The producer stands. “This is old news,” he says. “We’re not here to talk about what happened so many years ago.”
IV: The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self —Bukhari hadith
Ali watches as the man undulates like a giant worm in the grasp of the guards, unable to free himself. He sees the reddening face, the locked muscles of his neck. The producer leans over and asks, “What is this one so mad about?” Ali senses it is not anger, but pain. He holds out a hand as though to heal him, and tells the guards to let him go. They release the man, but station themselves at the ends of the row. The producer signals an aide over and tells her to call the police.
“No,” Ali says, “No. I don’t think we need to go that far. Besides, how would it look in the media? They’ll say I wouldn’t face questions about my past.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
He looks out to the back row and addresses the man. “Mister…”
“…Mars,” the man finishes. A few people in the crowd snicker. Someone to the side muffles a bigger laugh. “It’s short for Marsden.”
“You know a great deal about me. To be honest, I don’t recall saying that. I do remember it was a very difficult time for many people. But if I did say it, then I’m sure Allah has forgiven my indiscretion. I pray that others can find it in themselves to forgive as well.”
“Let us rejoice in the music,” the producer says, “and forget the differences of the past. They will get us nowhere.” But Ali does remember those words. The comments replay in his conscience as he lies to the crowd. What else could he have done? His people were upset over the persecution they suffered in response to incidents thousands of miles away. Some protested in the streets of London. The community leaders urged him to speak in their defense, and when he agreed to go to the media on their behalf, they pressured him to take a hard line. It was not something he’d planned to say. He wished he could somehow take it back. He’d hoped the years would be enough to bury the comment, but there is always someone digging.
Ali looks into the faces of the crowd. They want more. They always do. When he was touring they didn’t just expect him to address their concerns, they wanted him to tell them how to think about the issues, even to decide which issues were worth discussing. It hasn’t changed, he sees. If only people would let him be what he is — a singer and nothing more. Now this man, this Mars, is trying to affix the mantle of belief on his shoulders; trying, like his fans once did, to anoint him a prophet — of truth, of religion — it makes no difference. Ali feels an urge to lecture them on the irony of why he’d converted. It had appealed so much because it wanted him as a follower — it did not ask him to lead. Allah simply reached out His hand and pulled him in.
***
Zan Williams floated ten thousand feet above the ground. His first solo parachute jump, in cloudless, perfect weather. For a few seconds he surfed the wind, scanning endless vistas over southern California farmland, the rush of air cleansing his mind, its roar exiling his troubles. It was as dreamlike as his days on drugs, and he stretched his body wide to experience it completely. But when he pulled on the cord to open the chute, nothing happened. He twisted from fear, but managed to reach the reserve cord. He pulled. But again, the chute didn’t respond. He plunged into panic — began to claw at the pack on his back, trying to rip it apart to free the jammed chute, but he could barely touch it. He kicked at the air, convulsed his body as he watched the stunning scene below become a passage to hell. Seconds remained. He screamed and begged, calling on a God he had not spoken to since childhood.
“God! God! Please save me! I’ll be yours.” And at last he began to cry, the tears burning his eyes under the goggles. He shut them so he wouldn’t see the earth rushing up. It was what God had been waiting for. The reserve chute somehow worked its way out of the pack and caught the air. Just a few hundred feet off the ground it jerked Zan Williams higher, dislocating his shoulder in the process, but then cradling him back to a field of alfalfa, as though carried in God’s palm. He had made a promise, and for once he would keep it. It was clear this was a sign. He turned to the Bible, to the Catholicism of his youth, searching for a path by which he might fulfill his pledge. But in the months that followed he did not find the answers. So much was ambivalent. So many passages had been perverted by people seeking to manipulate the meanings. Faith beckoned, yet evaded him. And throughout it all, the business and the fans continued to demand more from him. Another album, another tour; you haven’t been in the studio for months. Then his brother, Steven, delivered the solution in the form of the Quran.
“Read this,” he said, “and you’ll know the truth.” And in that text the doubt and questions were eliminated. In the Quran there was no room for uncertainty — the way to Allah was as humble and beautiful as a flower turning its face to the sun. Zan Williams understood why he was placed in such peril in the sky; he knew and accepted his destiny, and a few weeks later prepared a statement for the public. But since then it had been a struggle. At first the joy of worship was enough to fill the void, but in less than a year the passion faded. The rigidity of study and prayer bored him — he no longer felt Allah flowing into him. Instead he felt shackled to a life of obligation.
The emptiness left him melancholic. His old songs played in his head, like an orchestra, far away, offering him a means to fill the silent hours of contemplation that were supposed to be reserved for prayer. Even during Salat he heard the music trying to drown out the recitative. His fingers itched to touch the strings of his guitars, to feel the cool of piano keys. He eventually sold all the instruments to resist their temptations. He consulted with local clerics to seek a solution. He didn’t want to give up either world. Why did one have to win out over the other? Their only advice was to pray even harder. That calmed him for a few weeks. But at a charity event he ran into a woman he had known from his former record company, and another old itch afflicted him. The affair with her lasted two years, and was followed by others, all with women outside his faith. Even as he debates Mars, he pauses for a second to think about a rendezvous he has planned for later, after the dinner that is to follow the conference, with a young staff member at the ad firm for the new release. His wife, so devout, has no idea. Even the producers suspect nothing. The hypocrisy of it all has long since ceased to matter. Only the thrill remains.
“I hope, Mister Marsden, that I’ve answered your question,” Ali says. “Yes, I’ve made some mistakes. We all have, I’d guess. But I certainly don’t want the people here to get the impression I’m some kind of fanatic. I’m a bit too old and mellow for that kind of thing.” Enough people in the audience laugh at the joke to make Ali smile. They are still with him. “Now,” he adds, “I really must insist you hold the rest of your questions for the time allotted.” The guards turn toward Mars. They seem to be relishing a chance to do their jobs.
V: I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go —Job 27:6
He’s getting away with it. Ali hasn’t answered the question at all, not to Mars’s satisfaction, and the crowd is ignoring the issue, preferring, as they always do, to sit back and let someone else take the risks. He wants to continue the inquiry, to push harder, but he won’t be able to say much before the guards are on him. He will have to wait for the right moment. Mars sits back down and reaches under the seat for the printouts. He takes out the notepad again, burying his head in it in hopes the guards will be placated and shift their attention elsewhere. For now, he plans to continue the fight online — in his column. He composes passages. He will polish them tonight in the room and send the article back to the states in the morning. He’ll start with how Zan Williams sold out his fans thirty years ago, and how Ahmed Ali is trying to sell them out again by passing off an album of dogma as music. Don’t believe it, he writes. Like me, you may have once been a fan and believed his lyrics were honest, that his music promoted love and tolerance. But you can’t trust him anymore! Mars flexes his hand to stop it from shaking. That’s a good start. He’ll demand the kid run the column immediately, with a link on the homepage, instead of lost among the filler. If he doesn’t, Mars will take it to larger, more prestigious publications. Maybe he should go to them to begin with.
The press conference goes on around him. Ali finishes discussing the album and the tour, and asks for a guitar so he can perform one of the cuts from the new release — an apparently impromptu performance, to the delight of the audience. But Mars isn’t listening. He is on his third page, writing about the contradictions that pervade every aspect of Zan Williams’s life. He says his is a religion of peace, but when he was put on the spot, he supported violence against innocents — Mars has the quotes to prove it, no matter what Ali says now. He retrieves the second printout and studies it for a few seconds. Another drop falls from his eye to the sheet. An isolated incident, from an inside page of a newspaper, reported a few years after the turn of the millennium. Nothing so profound as airplanes hurtling into towers or gunmen mowing down innocent concertgoers. Volunteers for food relief in the Afghan highlands, a young man and his wife, both too naïve to understand the danger they courted. He was twenty-two; she, only nineteen. Captured, tortured, and when the ransom demand wasn’t met, beheaded on video. Johnny Mars had a brother too.
He writes with a violence of his own now, pressing his pen into the notepad so hard it tears through to the next page. Mars wipes away the moisture that makes it difficult to see. He feels the same nausea as he did on the day he learned of it. He rises again. His hands and knees will not keep still. Ali is in the middle of his song; the audience is rapt. Mars shouts, “Tell us about the murder of innocents! Tell us how your religion of peace isn’t responsible for that!”
The guards take hold of him almost immediately and drag him toward the side aisle. He keeps on screaming, “It’s all a lie, isn’t it?” They grasp him tighter and one of them pulls his arms behind his back as though he is going to handcuff him. Mars starts to shout again, but the other guard slaps a hand over his mouth. They take him down the stairs and through a side door, and then into a service hallway, where some press packages are stacked on a folding table. When the door bangs shut the second guard shoulders Mars against the wall and pounds a fist like a sledgehammer into his stomach. Mars clutches his midsection and goes limp, spilling the display as he collapses into the lotus position on the floor. He looks down to see Ali peering up from the covers of a half dozen folders, each face with the same placid smile, the same vacant eyes. It takes him a couple of minutes to recover, and when he does, he picks one of the folders up and holds it at arm’s length, and feels the anger within him succumb to an icy cold.
VI: Kindness is a mark of faith —Muslim hadith
The crowd turns to watch the commotion. Some of them gasp; a few, recognizing the man from his previous disturbances, begin to laugh. But several of the reporters call for Ali to answer questions about the remarks he made all those years ago. He rests his guitar on the floor and stands.
“We should be concerned for that man. He is troubled,” he says. The outburst brings the images of those days back to Ali, but they are too painful a memory to consider for very long. The statements he released had been the proper response — a message of tolerance and healing offered to a world in agony. It was what had been expected of him. It’s pointless to go on singing. Ali leaves the guitar and stands at the microphone. “I apologize, but I think it’s best if we end the press conference here. I know I promised to take your questions, but in light of the disturbances… I’d like to get some rest. I hope you understand.”
“Do you know that man?” a reporter shouts. Others want to know about his past comments, about his conversion in the first place. Two reporters run up the aisle to the emergency exit and try to locate Mars, but one of the guards comes out and blocks the doors. Ali signals to the rest that he won’t cooperate. “I’m too tired,” he says. “This is not the right time.”
The producer comes over and puts his arm around Ali, and leads him off stage, telling him over and over that he has done the right thing. “I want to go home,” Ali says. “I have to think about whether I’ll make it to the dinner later.” But if he doesn’t, it will be impossible to slip away for his rendezvous with the young staffer afterward. She is a recent university graduate, blond and lean, all of maybe twenty-three. She knows nothing about his past in America, nothing about the things he’s said in public. She knows there had been atrocities committed in those long-ago days — on both sides — but other than that she is not clear on the details, not sure who was responsible and why they did it. Ali’s aides accompany him toward the front of the building, where his limo waits. He stops the procession.
“No. Find another way out of here. The reporters are probably hanging around the entrance, and I don’t want to have to face their questions right now.” A member of the building’s security crew says he knows a way, and he leads the group into a maze of hallways that ring the auditorium. An aide calls and has the car drive around to the back.
As they turn into a dim passage at the rear, they come across Mars, sitting on the floor, strings of hair matted to his forehead, still recovering from his encounter with the guards. One of the big men stands over him. “He won’t bother you now,” a guard says to Ali. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“Are you all right, sir?” Ali asks. Mars doesn’t answer.
“The police should be here any minute and we’ll have him out of your way.” Ali stops in front of the man and looks down, as though studying the past.
“Leave him, Ahmed,” the producer says. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”
“I don’t want him charged.”
“What?”
“After we leave, just let him go. Tell the police it was a misunderstanding.”
“Are you certain?”
“Please… Don’t argue with me.” Ali stands, waiting. He does not expect an apology or a thank you, but he wants the man to speak, if only to rant about the wrongs he had perceived over the years, and compare him to the man he used to be, or to threaten to haunt him, haunt his conscience, for the rest of his life. He wants to hear something from him, rather than be left alone with thoughts and memories, with all the people whom he knows can never understand. But Mars only stares at the folder in his hand, grimacing as though carrying on a debate in his head. His hand trembles wildly, until it falls, the sound reverberating off the walls like a distant gunshot.
“A broken promise,” he says, and begins to laugh. The producer and another aide take Ali by the shoulders and usher him away.
At the door to the back of the hall Ali steps through, and then pauses before continuing on to the black car, where an immaculate driver in a cap with a patent leather bill smiles and waits, holding the door open for him. Beyond the driver and the car are the backs of nearby buildings, defiled with graffiti, some of it profane and targeted at Muslims. He looks over the structures into the London afternoon, a typically gray sky overlaying the blue. He remembers that he hasn’t seen the sun for a long time. It seems as though to see it is not so much a right as a privilege.
Joe Ponepinto is a Seattle area writer and editor. He is a senior editor at Orca, A Literary Journal, and the author of the novels Mr. Neutron and Curtain Calls, as well as dozens of short stories published in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. His new book is Reader Centered Writing, a collection of essays focused on understanding the relationship between what writers want to write and how it appeals to reader psychology. He is thrilled that his story has finally found a home.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 