“No one will hear me. On video.”
“That’s why you’ll wear this mic under your abaya.” She hands me a small silver rectangle with a clip on one side. “It’s Bluetooth connected to my laptop.”
I take the mic and rotate it in my hand. “If I don’t go through with it, will you be mad?”
“No, ’cause you will go through with it.” She scoots to another chair, one facing only me and the corner behind me. Lifting her niqab right up to her forehead and then flipping it back, she speaks. “Here’s why you need to do this: It’s not only for you. It’s for me, too.”
Her face is intense, with eyes open wide and mouth tight. “I’m planning something to help my sister. Something big so she can come back here to the States, with her son. Something that will blow up big in the media, in my bastard-in-law’s face. So you doing this is my trial run. It’s the first strike in the war against fake-holy shits.”
I nod. She lets her niqab drop, then the eye screen.
? ? ?
Dad: You’ll fail. And maybe you’ll fail and fail and fail again. But then each fall will teach you how to make a new wing. Your rise will be on that many more wings.
I initially position myself near the doors, by the summer travel books display. But the entrance security guard is not doing a good job surveying me discreetly, and I’m afraid he’ll start tracking me tracking Farooq, so I grab a book and move into the closest aisle.
Maybe a black cloak and face covering isn’t exactly the best disguise. Maybe in Saudi Arabia but not here.
I open a book on Istanbul and read about the Harem at the Topkapi Palace. A labyrinth of three hundred rooms housing, no, make that caging, the wives and concubines of the sultan. I feel nauseated, thinking of Sausun’s sister.
At the height of Ottoman power, one thousand women were kept in the Harem is what I’m reading when Farooq comes in. I put the book on a shelf and straighten up, feeling as though I’ve been released from something.
I turn on my phone cam and step behind him. He pauses when he gets a few yards from the coffee shop and picks up a book from a table that has a sign saying SUMMER GRILLING. He isn’t reading but looking at the coffee drinkers in the shop. I can tell the moment he spots Sausun because he tilts his head and peers closer at his book.
A burst of bravado washes over me.
I go around to the bookshelves opposite to where he’s pretending to read. Holding up my phone, I fit the camera lens in a gap in the books at my eye level. I zoom in and fix on his face.
The face I’ve been hiding from is on my screen. It’s wide with squinty eyes and a slack jawline.
I record for a bit and then step back out as he begins to move toward the coffee shop, book in hand, Guys ’n’ Grills.
Sausun looks up as he steps into the shop. She nods. He must think it’s at him because he nods back at her. But it’s my cue that he’s in front of the BARGAIN FINDS sign. I move out from behind him and look him in the face for the first time.
His eyes widen considerably.
Will he know it’s me? I stop moving, the bravado retreating on seeing the hand holding the book. I feel it under my shirt again, and my insides seize against the memory.
I can’t do this. It’s like letting him have access to me again.
“Excuse me, sister,” he says, waving me away with his book, like I’m ugh.
Sister?
“I’m NOT your sister. NOT in your family, NOT your sister in Islam. I have NOTHING to do with you ’cause you’re a big, empty HUSK of NOTHINGNESS! Trying to get in my pants, oh Mr. I-memorized-the-whole-Qur’an-so-I’m-untouchable? This guy is a pervert! An attempted rapist! This guy here!”
Who am I, screaming uncontrollably now and blocking him as he tries to get away? I’m me and Sausun’s sister and the thousand women locked in the Harem. I look at Sausun, whose eyes are probably crinkled, and I wiggle my eyebrows at her. The security guard comes up and is reaching out for me, but I dodge him, which gives Farooq the opportunity to escape through the nearest doors.
I’m not done. No way.
I chase him with my abaya held up high over my jeaned legs with both my hands, the black cloth bunched around my hips. I don’t know how far the mic can go with capturing sound, but I hope it gets most of my ranting.
“You’re a disease! A cancer! Herpes! An oozing slime fest! HOW DARE YOU ACT ALL HOLY? YOU DON’T KNOW HOLY! HOLY IS RESPECTING GIRLS! I AM NOT UGH! NOT WORTHLESS! I’M A GIRL! A GIRL!”
He’s at an intersection with a red light. Part of me wishes he’d get hit by a car, but another part doesn’t want to see him coddled by paramedics.
I pause in my yelling. What if he stops and turns? What if he takes me on instead of running?
Then, I decide, I’ll take him on too.
I shake off all the feeling of ickiness he creates in me, every bit, and it rolls off like it’s oily gunk. And then I stop. A few feet away from him, as his right foot is stepping off the curb and his head is looking both ways to make a run for it, I stop because it’s gone.
The disgust I feel at me is gone. The gunk of self-blame dissolves to leave just me standing there.
Only when he gets across the street does he turn to look back.
And he sees me. Me, Janna Yusuf, because I lift up my face covering.
He runs.
? ? ?
Sausun comes out and joins me on the sidewalk. We watch his retreating back. He’s slowed his running to a getaway gait.
It’s almost pitiful.
“I feel amazing,” I say.
“There’s no way I can upload that,” she says.
“Are you telling me it was a fail?”
“A spectacular fail.”
“But I faced him, Sausun. I’m not scared of him anymore.” I tighten the grip on the abaya still gathered around my hips and look at her. “I can’t believe it. I’m not scared.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t get anything that I can use to build a story. There’s no evidence.”
Ugh. I hate that word.
But there’s something happening inside me. It’s like what Sausun described in the basement of Dad’s house, this feeling of wanting to grind the monster into the ground. Is this what strength’s like?
“It feels good right now,” I say. “It feels like if I see him again, I’m strong enough to death-stare him.”
“That’s great, but where does that leave us? Or take us?” She turns to me. “He’s still a predator. You blew up on him, but he’s going to find the next girl, or maybe there are already other girls—did you ever think that? Without a record of something, we can’t put a stop to him.”
I look away from her. He’s gone now. I can’t see him, literally or figuratively. I want to enjoy this moment, exult in it, but then there’s Sausun.