They made their way down the gentle, sloping lawn toward the path, and met up with it under the bridge’s pylons. The tide was low and the air had a decidedly fishy tinge to it.
“Look at this bridge,” he said. “What a magnificent achievement. Look at the pylons, they’re solid. And the cables could hold it up on their own.”
“I suppose I should be grateful we’re not discussing piston engines,” Beryl said.
Ramzi turned his attention from the bridge to his companion. He glared at her. “You know how much I admire these bridges, not just the engineering either, they are magnificent.” He slid his arm around her. They passed under the bridge and beside some soccer fields where elementary and middle school children battled it out. The shouts from the parents fought with the noise of the traffic on the bridge overhead.
Ramzi’s mission loomed before him, and the thought of it filled him with dread. The longer he stayed here, the harder it was to maintain his rage. Jihad had saved him from shiftlessness and had given him direction. Of course, he despised Beryl, but until he started to date her he hadn’t realized how much he missed a woman’s touch. Then, despite himself, Beryl had begun to mean something to him. In time, he began to know the infidel, and had developed a liking for many of them.
Beryl’s hand crept around his waist and she kissed his cheek as they strolled along. At the same time, he was fully cognizant that a war was being fought and he had chosen a side. Beryl was a weapon the Great Satan had abandoned in the field. He had merely picked it up where it lay and was putting it to good use.
They rounded a bend. “Let’s look for a place to eat,” Beryl said. There was a hilly section where man-made mounds of earth had long since become part of the landscape; grass and trees grew on them.
“Let’s eat up there on the plateau,” he suggested. “That way you can watch the view and I can watch the soccer.” Ramzi laid out the blanket and Beryl spread the food on it. She’d made sandwiches, brought sodas, and packed grapes into Ziploc bags. She’d gotten used to Ramzi not drinking alcohol, and had given it up herself. For dessert, she’d bought a pie at The Stork in College Point.
After they ate, Ramzi lay his head on her lap and stared at the sky. Several trees were just coming into blossom and filled the air with a heady but pleasant scent. Immediately, an image of Beryl on her knees before him, her mouth clamped firmly around his penis, came to mind. He remembered the fear he felt when she did it the first time. Ramzi had never hit a woman, but looking down on Beryl’s soft, shiny hair, her head bobbing at his crotch, he wanted to knock her across the room and scream, Have you no pride, woman? No fear of God?
Azis had given Ramzi absolution when he first warned him this would happen. They had prayed together. In the end, Ramzi grew too ashamed to face Azis. Perhaps God would forgive him. After all, he had submitted to serve Allah. But Beryl would go to Hell.
He feared telling Azis the worst. This abomination had given him the most intense pleasure of his life, while the shame crushed him. How could he ever speak with a decent Muslim woman again? Azis’s dispensation meant nothing. He was tainted, dirty, and the shame of it would never leave him.
“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Beryl said.
He turned his face toward hers and hoped his anguish didn’t show. “Not compared to you.”
“Flatterer.”
“Truthteller.”
“You are free next Sunday, right? There’s no reason to miss my mother’s party. You’ll enjoy it, it’s a fundraiser for the Jewish orphans of Kazakhstan. That’s your part of the world.”
Ramzi didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. “Oh yes, Pakistani Muslims and Kazakh Jews, we are almost brothers. And clearly we all look the same to the Jews of Scarsdale, New York.” He had bolted upright, his muscles tense and his neck throbbing.
“Oh Ramzi, this is America, that sort of thing doesn’t matter. Besides, the only religion I’ve seen you practice is the same one I do — lapsed. Lapsed Jew, lapsed Muslim, what’s the difference?”
Ramzi had no retort. In truth, he could not be bothered to find one.
“She wants to raise money to bring the orphans here for six months to get the medical help they need and to learn English, math, and Hebrew so they might get a better start in Israel. My mother’s getting on. She thought maybe you could teach them. We both could. Maybe we could move in with her and look after her and teach the Kazakh children. You speak Aramaic.”
“How do you know I speak Aramaic?”
“You told me, remember? The first day at school when you were lost and I told you some of our students were from central Asia.”
He’d forgotten. What other lapses was he guilty of? It was all too much for him. Great levivot and off tapuzim to die for was one thing, but no amount of knish was sufficient to entice him to embrace the Jews, except for Beryl, of course. Then Ramzi had the merest glimmer of a thought.
“All right already,” he said, taking pride in his mastery of New York speak, “I’ll come to the party. But only if you let me take your picture.”
Beryl laughed good-naturedly.
“Stand here,” he said, positioning her so that his shots would take in the undercarriage of the bridge.
While she fussed and clucked over her hair, he took a dozen photos, from all angles. Beryl wasn’t in half of them.
As Ramzi walked home on Liberty Avenue that same evening, he spied standing in a doorway the same man he’d recognized so many weeks ago at the paan sellers. As their eyes met, the man left the cover of the storefront and slowly approached, his right hand inside his overcoat even though it was much too warm to be dressed that way.
The man was called Mohammed, Ramzi recalled in a flash. He had been foolish and naïve to think he could avoid Azis. He would not get away that easily. The best he could hope for was that Mohammed had come to question his absence from the mosque. Mohammed’s expression gave Ramzi little reason to hope for the best. If he made a run for it now, he would die. He would never see Beryl again. Then he admitted the truth to himself: He had abandoned jihad. He was a changed man, an infidel, a fornicator. He wanted to live.
“There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah,” Ramzi said in greeting.
“The true believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are the sincere,” Mohammed said, closing the distance between them.
Ramzi knew the quote from the Qur’an, and the guilt it produced in him squeezed his chest like a vice. At first he thought to reply: Allah, most gracious, most merciful, but that implied a certain culpability, and so instead he said, “Allah is all-knowing, all-aware.”
He approached Mohammed, careful to keep his movements steady and nonthreatening.
Mohammed’s face flashed uncertainty, and taking advantage of this brief moment, Ramzi added, “I have taken a woman.” His tone meant to convey that this explained everything.
“A Jew,” Mohammed said, his mouth pulled tight with contempt.
“A whore,” Ramzi agreed, although it pained him to speak the words. “A controlling She-Devil to whom I must account for my every movement. And yet, Azis knows the value of the hussy and encouraged me to take her.”
“No man cowers before a woman. What have you become?” Mohammed’s small eyes narrowed to slits and his glare felt like a laser beam slicing into Ramzi. He moved toward Ramzi.
“I serve Allah through jihad. That is who I am,” Ramzi said, standing very still. He hung his head as if the shame of his dalliance with Beryl was tangible weight.