The Way of the World Read online

  Cheney seems delighted. He shifts in his chair, and bears down: “We have done everything we could think of to make the nation safe. That’s our number one obligation. The, the oath that the president and I take when we’re sworn in up there on Capitol Hill is always to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And we’ve done everything within our power and within the Constitution to in fact pursue that objective.”

  Click. Usman turns off the television. “How about shut up!” he shouts at the set, but not loud enough to wake up Linas and David, both of whom are still crashed after a late Saturday night.

  He became a faithful Meet the Press viewer during his college days majoring in international relations, and has kept it up since, with his taste for knowing and forcefully debating what’s going on in the world.

  But something has changed. In the month since his arrest, he feels like, again, he’s living events—something he hasn’t felt this strongly since he stood, frozen, in the student center at Connecticut College on 9/11. A few hundred kids had gathered by dinnertime in the giant lounge in front of a large flat-screen TV. Kids were sitting in clusters, some holding each other, a few of the girls were crying. Usman, who had stayed in his room that morning, had heard by midafternoon that everyone was certain it was al Qaeda. He’d seen scattershot reports on the Internet of Muslims being attacked and Arab men being rounded up. As he walked into the large room, as a newsbreak flashed up: a Taliban official, ten feet tall on the screen, was at a podium denying responsibility on behalf of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Some kids booed. It was clear the official was lying, a proud, grinning man from South Asia in the region’s traditional dress, in a long high-collared shirt, baggy pants, the salwar kameez.

  Usman was wearing one, too; he wore it everywhere at college. Not that he would typically wear one back in Pakistan. At his private high school, the Aitchison School, they wore blue blazers and ties like little British gentlemen—the idea, in impoverished, racially homogenous Pakistan, was to be convincingly elitist. But freshman year spun him in a fresh, surprising direction, with the campus’s diversity dialogue fitting neatly with his genuine distinctiveness—as one of a few dozen Asian Muslims among nineteen hundred students. Usman took on the role of a representative of Islam in a Christian society and set about, with his usual ardor, building a visible identity and authentic posture. He put on the kameez, kept abreast of the burning debates inside of Islam, cultivated a small patch of hair on his chin, became vice president of the Muslim Students Association and, this year, its president.

  Looking at the screen, he would have traded it all for his Aitchison blazer. He felt like running, hiding. He could see in his peripheral vision that a group of kids were moving swiftly toward him. He froze—staring straight ahead—braced for the attack. This is the way of the world, he thought, the way it ends, the way he ends. Alarms exploded in his head—don’t look over, let them land the first blow, then fight your way out of the room. A girl, a big girl, was the first one in his face, nose to nose, an inch away.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, searching Usman’s eyes. “This must be so terrible for you.” He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. But then she was hugging him, and a boy behind her, a tall dark-haired kid, was saying, “If there’s anything I can do to help you, anything, just tell me, okay?” As others stepped up, offering sympathy and asking what they could do, Usman started to breathe again. One moment, dread; the next, a sense of renewal, even salvation—a sensation so strong that he wasn’t really sure if he’d ever felt at home in America until that moment.

  And that’s when he wanted to call his father. He knew how his father’s mind worked—he was paid to be cautious, to be wary, a worrier—and he wanted to tell his dad that it was a tough day, a terrible day, but things were going to be okay.

  He called a number in Baton Rouge, a number he got from his mother. Oddly enough, this was a few days into Tariq Khosa’s first trip to America since his fellowship in 1987, the year he and his family lived in Seattle. He didn’t have a cell phone—the number Usman called was a Louisiana State Police barracks where Tariq and thirty other senior law enforcement officials from Pakistan were housed for a two-week seminar, given by FBI trainers, on managing emergencies, both natural and manmade. Their schedule for the morning of 9/11 read, “Hijacking Plot Simulation,” and the two-dozen-plus Pakistanis, in causal attire, milled about their meeting room that morning, downing coffee and donuts, and started their morning’s work, talking about crisis management for hijackings.

  A state trooper burst into the room and told them that the Trade Center had been hit. Everyone flowed out into the lobby and gathered before a television set, thinking it was all a simulation. “These Americans are incredibly clever,” one of Tariq’s colleagues said, until another one ran to an open computer, checked the Internet, and raced back in, wide-eyed. It’s real. Moments later, the second plane hit, and soon the Pakistanis joined hands with the FBI agents and Louisiana state policeman, cops from across the world, comforting one another, watching every officer’s worst moment. The next morning, thirty Pakistani officers gathered in a brief ceremony, standing at attention in a moment of silence and saluting their American colleagues with tears in their eyes.

  It was three days later before an Amtrak delivered Tariq to New London, Connecticut, and a taxicab to Usman’s dorm. “Are we okay, my boy?” he said, filling the doorway. Usman leapt into his father’s arms, “Oh God, Dad, I can’t believe you’re here.” They talked without sparing breath for hours, Tariq telling of his experiences on 9/11—of the kinships formed in Louisiana—and Usman telling of the moment in the student center, and the sensations that were racing through him. A father and son, far from home. That night, a law enforcement chief from Pakistan slept in a Connecticut dorm room with his son, in a world gone mad.

  When they emerged the next morning, an amazing thing happened. Tariq Khosa—who had a day before his flight from Boston’s Logan Airport to Lahore—held a revolving tutorial in the dormitory. Some of the kids had heard about what Usman’s father did for a living; others heard that day. And they crowded into the dorm’s lounge area and asked him questions. “Who are the Taliban?” “Are there radicals in Pakistan?” “Do terrorists usually stage many attacks in a row?”

  Tariq explained it all—including the way the United States and the Saudis funded the mujahideen to challenge the Soviets, and how Pakistani intelligence officials helped build them into today’s Taliban, how there were currently extremist elements in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and how Tariq and his men chased these violent radicals into the no-man’s-land between the two countries. Usman looked on with pride. The Khosas, he thought. Just look at the Khosas now.

  Because, in fact, it was their world—violent, tribal, and faith-based, with its vast history and aching heart—that had now come to America.

  All of this is what Usman thinks about, sitting on the couch, refusing to turn Meet the Press back on. He likes to think about those few days at Connecticut College every 9/11—about his fear and doubt and then his moment of renewal. But this year it’s a need, a deep need. He feels himself drifting since his arrest. He’s more attentive to what people see when they look at him. He’s heard Cheney before, plenty of times. It never affected him much. Were Cheney’s views really informed by experience—had he ever actually sat, really sat down, with a young Muslim man, or anyone like Usman? Doubtful. Now, though, Usman knew, acutely, that views are no less powerful, or consequential, for being uninformed. He was captured by such views, literally, and had he answered any one of his interrogators’ foolish questions in a way that deepened their suspicion, who the hell knows where he’d be now? So he thinks of that girl wondering how he “must feel,” and really wanting to know, in order to push aside the fresh recollections of how he felt in the interrogation room, the feelings of helplessness and shame, which seem now to follow him everywhere.

  THAT NIGHT, ANN PETRILA CARRIES dishes to the sink and tells the boys the
re’s ice cream for dessert, that they can get it themselves after they do the dishes.

  This is part of Ibrahim’s education, now a month into his journey. Dishes, laundry, yard work. He resisted at the start. This is not work men do in Afghanistan. Ann’s response: “You’re in America now; men do everything here. Not like this at your home?” Ibrahim couldn’t help but laugh. “No, my sisters and mother do everything.” But Ibrahim dove in, and Ann considered it an important victory.

  As they all bring bowls of ice cream back to the table, she broaches the subject of the date. “Tomorrow, Ibrahim, is September eleventh—it’s an important day.”

  Ben leaps in, much to Ann’s delight, explaining what happened five years ago. “People, at school, might ask you questions tomorrow, Ibrahim. Or, even, you know, say things to you that might not be easy to hear.”

  Ibrahim looks at him, perplexed. “How do you mean?”

  “It’s a really emotional day, still, for a lot of people.”

  “Why?”

  Ann has been detecting, over weeks, that Ibrahim’s English might not be as strong as she thought. He’s a master of the mechanics of grammar—understanding the placement of commas and rules applied to prepositions in ways that remain a mystery her and Ben and to most Americans—and he speaks precisely, with what sounds like a hint of British reserve. But there are gaps in his comprehension.

  “Ibrahim,” she says, trying to bring it home, “al Qaeda attacked America and that started the war in Afghanistan.”

  He shrugs, and nods, seeming to have only a vague recollection of the September 11 attacks.

  Ann and Ben, both, are startled. “Why did you think people started bombing Afghanistan in the fall of 2001?”

  He looks at her evenly. “People were always bombing us, for my whole life.”

  Ann says nothing for a moment but feels a kind of chill. My God, she thinks, how could 9/11 barely register?

  Then she wants, urgently, to explain what’s been happening in the wider world, the world he’s in now, her world. She grabs the salt and pepper shakers and improvises a disquisition on religion—on how “your religion, Ibrahim, is facing a struggle between people who are more strict and less strict, and they’re different flavors, but both the same, both spices.”

  Ibrahim nods. “Oh yes,” he says, darkly, “I know about this. About some people who don’t follow the words of Koran.” Ann’s not sure what to make of his tone, whether he’s siding against fundamentalists or more mainstream Muslims. But she pushes on, trying to stress the invention behind so many religious distinctions and the common root of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the prophet Abraham. “The guy you’re named after, Ibrahim.”

  He looks at her with a half smile, not sure if she’s joking. Ben jumps in, mentioning a few boys from school whom Ibrahim has met—one Christian, one Jewish—and how they both have Abraham in their stories. Ben and then Ann tell the story of Abraham, the first Jew, and his covenant with God.

  Ibrahim looks at Ann and then Ben. He clearly has never been taught any of this. “This is very interesting,” he says, rising from the table, visibly agitated, taking his ice cream bowl to the sink. “Very, very interesting and amazing.” Then he disappears into the basement, as Ann and Ben now turn their astonished faces to each other.

  LIKE IT OR NOT, EVERYONE walks in George Bush’s shoes on September 11.

  It’s the way it works when any one person is so utterly blended into a moment in history, a date that repeats itself over and over, resonating through living memory until everyone who was alive that day is gone.

  Wearing those shoes, if they happen to be yours, is a kind of solemn obligation to the living, and to the dead.

  It was, after all, Bush’s day, too. Part of the American saga of this age is the improbable tale of a bully’s heart breaking. Everyone saw that. He’s always been a bit of a bully. Just ask his brother, Jeb, his mom, his old buddies from Yale. No one would tell you otherwise. And America detected that in him, along with the bonhomie and vengefulness, the insouciance and impulsivity. Gore, though lively in private, offered a flat public persona. That was a main reason why Bush was able to wrestle him into a virtual electoral tie; in a president, in this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them. Like a high-wire act with no net, Bush made it to the top mostly on pure nerve.

  Which he lost on 9/11. That was visible to anyone who saw him on the tarmac making his first timorous statements and speaking uncertainly at first before the rubble at Ground Zero. This began to turn when he grabbed the bullhorn. By the time he delivered the best speech of his presidency, two weeks after the attack, he was rebuilt, a chastened bully, who wiped away tears, brushed off the dirt, and was reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose.

  The moment was so cathartic for Bush it’s easy to see how it would be difficult for him to move past it. Seizing on the moment to set in motion policies such as the war against all terrorists, everywhere, or an excuse, finally, to get Saddam Hussein—efforts Bush led but had forceful company in creating—eventually caged him. It corrupted real emotion with tactical convenience.

  Big anniversaries—five, ten, twenty-five—are mileposts to stop and think, to reassess the journey up to this point and consider the path to the next milepost, far ahead.

  And that’s what many Americans are thinking about on this 9/11. All right, five years. Where are we now, where might we end up?

  Bush seems to be mindful of the subtlety of this process—a personal moment, replicated endlessly—and he treads lightly. He and the First Lady visit the World Trade Center site only on the night of the tenth, and without speeches or fanfare, they launch floral wreaths into reflecting pools in the footprints of the downed skyscrapers. With bagpipes sounding patriotic notes, they walk from the North Tower site to that of the South Tower, and after setting the wreaths adrift they return to their waiting car, which takes them to a private interfaith memorial service at nearby St. Paul’s Chapel. The service and a firehouse visit close out Bush’s day, and he says little to reporters other than that he’s heading into the fifth anniversary with “a heavy heart.”

  The next morning, Bush stays clear of Ground Zero. The loved ones of those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center gather there for the yearly ceremony of remembrance. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, leading an array of political figures, gently broaches the idea of moving past 9/11. “For all Americans, this date will be forever entwined with sadness,” he says in his closing remarks. “But the memory of those we lost can burn with a softening brightness.”

  Bush spends the morning breakfasting with New York police officers and firefighters on the Lower East Side. After this he heads to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to mourn with the families of those who died on United Airlines Flight 93. In a cold rain, out on the field where the plane crashed, he hugs survivors and talks with them, sharing emotions for as long as they want to talk. Bush concludes the day with a trip to the Pentagon, where he lays a wreath nearby the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 breached the building.

  It is understandable if Americans watching the live coverage of him moving, one among many, through the crowds of mourners, or gently titling back the wreath at the Pentagon, might wonder if this anniversary will mark a change. In the proxy relationship of a leader and a people, Bush seems, today, committed to allowing the native emotions of the day—shared national emotions, evolving steadily through the traditional process of acceptance and renewal—to guide him.

  But it is not to be. At 9:00 p.m., sitting in the Oval Office for what will be his most watched speech of the year, the president uses 9/11 once again to rage against America’s enemies and justify his policies, a ferocious rendering of a speech heard many times. “Nineteen men attacked us with a barbarity unequaled in our history,” he opens, sitting behind his desk, looking hard at the camera. “They murdered people of all colors, creeds, and nationalities—and made war upon the entire free wor
ld. Since that day, America and her allies have taken the offensive in a war unlike any we have fought before. Today, we are safer, but we are not yet safe. On this solemn night, I’ve asked for some of your time to discuss the nature of the threat still before us, what we are doing to protect our nation.”

  And on he goes from there, saying how we’ve learned the nature of our enemies, that “they are evil and kill without mercy—but not without purpose. We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam—a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent. And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations. The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century, and the calling of our generation. Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.” After that, he speaks of “not distinguishing between terrorists and those who harbor them,” like the Taliban, of how “the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat,” and how “just last month” al Qaeda was “foiled in a plot to blow up passenger planes headed for the United States.”

  Citation of the airliner plot comes at about seven minutes into the eighteen-minute speech, which is already well along in petulance, seasoned by a touch of self-defensiveness. The way his original emotions have been caged and corrupted is clear in each sentence. At this point, rating surveys show viewers switching the channel in significant numbers and turning off their sets.

  Moving on its own natural arc, the country is in the process of leaving Bush—his bullying impulse fused, permanently, with satisfying vengeance—in the scattering ashes of 9/11. That’s the story of this fall. The high purpose his angry words carried after the attacks, and in two elections since, is dissolving with each passing minute.