“You think there is a problem here. So you give me names and we will see.”
Several had put Sadik Zabara on their lists — a bold gesture indeed, since Zabara was well known for editorials that announced the end of the bin Laden era and called out for a new leader of the jihad.
The greatest shock of all had come when Sitwa’s editor had told him to contact Zabara with an offer of employment.
Zabara smiled broadly and put his hand on Sitwa’s arm. “I am honored to be here and write for Al-Arabi.”
The baby started to fuss, then cry.
Zabara’s wife comforted her. “Otac, otac, otac…”
The child kept crying.
“Such a young child.” For middle-aged parents, Sitwa was thinking.
“Ah.” Zabara smiled. “She is our niece. The daughter of my wife’s younger sister.”
Sitwa didn’t need to ask. The child’s mother would not have let her daughter go abroad with her aunt and uncle if she were still alive. In all likelihood, both of the child’s parents had been lost.
“Otac… What word is that?” Sitwa asked.
“Oh, it is just a child’s word.” Zabara rubbed his hand on the child’s head as the mother tried to silence her. Suddenly Zabara grimaced and clenched his fist; once, twice, and then a third time.
“Is your arm all right?
“Oh, yes. No problem. Too many hours on airplanes.”
“I have a car waiting. We have a flat for you on Spruce Hills in Walthamstow, just off of Forest Street. It’s near Walthamstow Central Station. Very easy to get around.”
For centuries, the East End of London was the first stop for migrating people moving into Great Britain. It was near the docks. New immigrants would get off the boat and immediately settle in the nearest neighborhood. But the Olympics changed the city. Where tenants had once lived at arm’s length, now there were large plazas and stadiums. Now the new immigrants wandered farther in from the river, huddling in neighborhoods of similar others. For Bosnian Muslims it became Walthamstow. It had become a haven for the growing Muslim population of London.
“Is it near the paper?”
“No. The paper is, unfortunately, on the other side of the city. But your flat is on a main road and within a short walk of the Victoria Line. The paper is just a few blocks from the Ravenscourt Park tube. Once you get the hang of it, you will be fine.”
Zabara smiled as he pushed the cart through the doors and followed Sitwa, who carried on the conversation while talking over his shoulder.
“Besides, there is a restaurant just a block away from your flat that serves begove corba.” Sitwa wasn’t from Sarajevo and knew about the lamb stew only from what he was told, but he wanted Zabara to become comfortable with his new life.
“Really?” Zabara glanced at his wife.
Sitwa saw the ghost of a smile flit across her face.
“Yes, indeed. The restaurant is called Jehzh Café.”
“I am sorry about our flights,” Zabara said. “We were delayed almost a day in Vienna. Apparently, Lufthansa had made an error with our tickets.”
Sitwa had wondered why the trip had taken so long. He had expected Zabara the day before.
“It still is difficult coming out of Sarajevo,” Zabara continued.
His wife followed, quietly whispering to the little girl.
Perhaps her English is not very good, Sitwa thought as they cut across the roadway to the pickup point. He began frantically waving his arm.
“There is our driver.”
He pointed to an old Volvo station wagon parked at the curb. Upon seeing Sitwa, the driver jumped out and opened up the hatch.
“It is good to have you at Al-Arabi, brother.” Sitwa lifted the first bag into the car. Like the others, it was heavy. It had to be. It, and the few others, contained all of this family’s possessions. “And I must say… we are particularly excited about the invitation you have received.”
Zabara nodded thoughtfully. “Indeed.”
CHAPTER 15
The neurosurgery critical-care ward at Walter Reed Bethesda remained filled to capacity, as it had since the first IED injuries began to arrive in 2003. Head trauma had left countless soldiers in deep comas, the breathing machines continuously beating to a constant rhythm of inhale and exhale.
“WRNMMC?” Robert Tranthan smiled as he mumbled to himself. “Only the military could reduce Walter Reed’s merger with Bethesda to WRNMMC.”
Tranthan had never been to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before, but the neurosurgery floor quickly gave him a sense of the weight of the war. Most of the patients were young men with expressionless faces, shaved heads with long, horrific, Frankenstein-like scars over their skulls. A few were young women. The face of war had changed, IEDs being entirely nondiscriminatory.
“Excuse me?” he asked a doctor in the hall.
“Yes?” The neurosurgeon looked understandably impatient. She was on the twelfth hour of a fourteen-hour shift.
“I am trying to find out the status of a patient.”
“Are you a member of the family?”
“No, but perhaps you can tell me where the doctor is?”
Dr. Reynolds’s eyes narrowed. “What do you need?”
Tranthan could have summoned the rear admiral in charge to come out on the floor to help him. But one thing the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency didn’t need was to make this unplanned, unannounced visit to Walter Reed Bethesda become a public event.
Tranthan took his voice down a notch. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I said something I shouldn’t have. I am told that a young lady who worked for me was up here. She was injured in a blast in Qatar.”
Instant recognition sparked in the doctor’s eye. “Oh. Yes. She’s in room 604.”
“Might I ask about her condition?”
“You know about the amputations of her legs. She has a traumatic brain injury with a loss of memory from the concussion caused by the blast.”
“You’re the doctor?”
“I am the resident neurosurgeon. Dr. Anne Reynolds.” She held out her hand, in a very indifferent way, while tucking a chart under her arm. Clearly, to her the patient mattered far more than a “VIP” visitor.
“Thank you, Doctor. I’m Robert Tranthan.” Tranthan paused, not wanting to identify himself further. He shook her hand. “You say she had memory loss.”
“Yes, very common with traumatic brain injury. When she was first evaluated, they gave her a GCS score of six. Her Rancho is level five, but that may be very generous.”
“Forgive my ignorance. What do those tests mean?”
“Initially, we judge the severity of the brain injury by the Glasgow Coma Scale. Just with fourteen out of fifteen, she could have significant memory loss. She was a six.”
“Good God.”
“The Rancho Los Amigos Scale judges her present status.”
“So what is level five?” Tranthan had known it was bad, but he felt physically sick as the doctor explained.
“Our fives wander. They float in and out of conversations. Sometimes, briefly, you can get their attention, but their memories are all over the place.” The doctor was looking over Tranthan’s shoulder, only partially engaged in the conversation.
“Will she get her memory back?”
“I couldn’t predict that.” Dr. Reynolds reached over to the rack of charts and pulled another one from its slip. “She just came in. Her memory is spotty but somewhat recovered for her life before the explosion, but at best only up to a few months before the injury. She’s a blank slate about what happened. My guess is that she will get some of her memory back, but never all of it.”