Haniya, by this point, had stopped wearing hijab, but this was not an easy journey. She’d been independent-minded and rebellious the moment she could stand on two feet, and as a teenager had started a website with photographs displaying the difference between worship facilities for men and women in various mosques around the US: women’s prayer spaces baking with no windows or air-conditioning or only one dirty sink to perform wudu. My parents and the imam were far from pleased. This defiance continued into college, when Haniya started a Muslim women’s group at Michigan. Most of her activism involved combating misogyny, sexual violence, and domestic abuse, and I know Haniya received a great deal of online vitriol, both from Muslims and their just-as-strident Islamophobic counterparts. She was caught between the imperative to defend her faith, which was precious to her, and to try to change the things within that faith community that she saw as unjust. She claimed that Peter, raised Irish Catholic, had been instrumental in helping her through this crisis.
“He would always say I should approach my faith and my relationship with Allah on my own terms and doing it any other way would not be keeping true to myself. Then we started praying together. He even read the Qur’an.”
“Peter? Read the Qur’an? And prays with you?”
“Don’t say it like that. He’s different than you think, Ash.”
“I’m only attempting to assimilate new information.”
While staying the weekend in the guest room of my condominium, Haniya met up with a few college friends while Peter and I attended a Wizards game, where he filled my ear with his plans to use proprietary models I’d created for him to start a hedge fund. This was indeed news, as that line of financial speculation was not for the amateur, but he claimed he had multiple investors and a “major, boffo, super-god of the PR world” on board. On their last night, we ate a barbecue dinner in Adams Morgan. While Peter kept halal and ate chicken, Haniya had a taste for the food our parents would never let us eat growing up and greedily sucked the meat off a rack of ribs. Our talk eventually turned to the legislation. She asked: “Can I take a look at what you’re proposing?”
After becoming curious about my work, Haniya wrote her dissertation on the intersection of economics and democratic systems in a changing climatic regime. She now works at the Eunice N. Foote Institute, a think tank dedicated to climate policy. Similar to Dr. Pietrus, she harbors great skepticism that any policy would sufficiently address greenhouse gas emissions other than governments putting a heavy thumb on market forces. I called up the white paper on my phone, and while she skimmed with her thumb and snacked on ribs with the other hand, Peter made his feelings known:
“Problem is we gotta think of this as an engineering problem, not a social one. Why can’t we fix poverty? Why can’t we fix our schools? Because those shits are tough-as-balls social problems with complex moving parts. But shoot a guy to fucking Mars? Hell, that’s just getting the math right. So why don’t we just pump some volcano dust into the air like all these scientists say and chill the planet out? Snowpiercer that shit, bro.”
“It’s certainly a proposal that gets more serious attention with each passing year.”
“Oh Christ, look at your fucking face, dude. What’s the problem?”
“Almost too many to name. Also, if I recall, Snowpiercer was a disaster narrative.”
“What disaster? Four-fifths of that train was dope! You heard Ed Harris.”
In due time, Haniya finished scanning the white paper. She gave me two pumps of her dark eyebrows.
I noted: “You disapprove.”
“No, look, I support anything at this point. But in the past five years alone IT infrastructure, like data centers storing VR worldes, has eaten the gains of the IRA. Global energy growth is outpacing decarbonization. That’s why we liked the shock collar or even Randall’s Green Trident. Price signals got a bad name because they were often badly designed, but without a stick, these companies can keep finding ways to bring their carbon to market. They win by stalling. Red states erect non-economic barriers, which has led to this uneven buildout of clean energy, and even as we bring down fossil fuel use, they just get cheaper, which keeps the market healthy. Carbon will always be useful, so unless you make it expensive or illegal to burn, those interests will find a way to do so.” Peter was staring at her with his mouth slightly agape. Haniya looked at him: “What? Stop being weird.”
“Mama, you’re so fucking sexy and beautiful, I want to put my fist through a wall.”
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. Once back at my condominium, Haniya and Peter drank heavily, and when I left them in my living room to go to bed, they were kissing quietly on the couch. In my bedroom, I put in earbuds and listened to the sound of rain. I thought about how there will always be something about me that finds happiness too painful.
Which brings me to my final conversation regarding the white paper. On Saturday, January 20, while the rest of Washington streamed to the Capitol to witness the swearing in of Mary Randall as president, I took the train north. Dr. Pietrus had agreed to meet me halfway between New Haven and D.C., and I arranged for a small conference room at a Hilton hotel. A concierge showed me to the secure space where a pitcher of ice water, two glasses, two legal pads, and two Hilton pens were arranged in flawless symmetry. I passed the time by exchanging text messages with Seth. We were in the middle of a minor disagreement because I hadn’t invited him to meet my sister and Peter when they were in town.
I texted: I’m not comfortable with you meeting them yet. You’ll simply have to accept that.
Seth replied: I feel like you’re not comfortable with anything until someone forces you to be comfortable with it.