“Are you okay?” Hendricks cut in. “My, it’s getting late. Or should I say early. Epic session there. You’ve been half-asleep for much of it.”
“I didn’t remember a magician,” Zal said.
“Funny, neither did I,” Hendricks said. “We rarely got this far into it. It’s nearly done.”
“What happens to the magician?”
Hendricks paused, skimming ahead with his eyes. “He’s killed. Beheaded right then and there. Those were his final words.”
Zal nodded. Somehow it made sense, context out of context, and yet how startling it was. That must be the key. There was magic, there was miracle, there was madness, all untethered, and all one. It was this moment, this moment before.
“Dangerous times” were Zal’s final words before he fell asleep next to Hendricks, eyes half-closed, also too lazy to make it to his own bed.
“They were,” Hendricks muttered, agreeing, though only he was referring to the world of The Persian Book of Kings.
When Zal awoke the next morning, his mind was full of dream refuse he could not easily shake off. Maybe he had listened more than he realized. In his head, there were warriors with bodies like tree trunks on horses with shields and swords; women weeping, women of incomparable beauty, broken; there were wars, weddings, and births; and there was nature, birds — one great bird, greater than the rest, who was holding him in a giant nest in a forest that felt all too familiar. He imagined himself as Zal, the Zal, from his royal birth to his abandonment in the wild, his bird-raised upbringing to his warriordom. He wanted so badly to be great, to be fearless, to look at all the chaos around him and have direction. He wanted to lead and declare and denounce. He wished he could write himself into the lines of that ancient azure-colored book in front of him, the book he could not read, for which Hendricks, in order to read, had taught himself the mother tongue of that one woman he had loved, slowly over time, in her honor.
In Zal’s head, he was animated like a comic book superhero, a foot taller maybe, perhaps fifty pounds heavier, radiant and rough, a man greater than men, fighting something he couldn’t quite make out, but a force of evil. He tried to make out what the menace was, tried to refocus into the dream world again, and although he wasn’t sure it was from his dream, or inspired by any of the epic’s verses, he suddenly saw it clearly: a magician. A magician with a face the color of bronze, teeth whiter than silver, and wild eyes of an otherworldly gold. The magician was at the gates of a great building, laughing wildly into immaculate blue skies. And Zal, great warrior Zal, was watching. He wasn’t laughing — not because he couldn’t (this Zal presumably could), but because he was angry. In this momentary fantasy, the enemy was, for reasons he could not understand, Silber.
“I’m not normal, am I?” he said out loud one afternoon, days later.
Hendricks, who was watering plants at that moment, was unsure who it was directed at. But who else. “What?” he called, even though he was fairly sure he heard.
“I’ve never been normal and I’m never going to be normal,” Zal announced. “And really, did I want all that stuff? Love and my own home and a job and wife and kids and all that stuff?”
“Oh, Zal,” Hendricks said, coming over to him and reaching for his shoulder, attempting to draw him into an embrace.
“No,” Zal said, backing up. “It’s okay. It’s better this way.”
“You can stay here as long as you want, Zal,” Hendricks said, the only thing he could think of saying. “We can get rid of your apartment even, if you’d like. It doesn’t mean you’re not normal. .” But the way he said normal, more softly than the rest of the words, expressed a world of other things.
Zal shrugged. “It won’t matter. None of this will matter. I didn’t make any difference. I wasn’t of any consequence. I know that. I can prove that.”
Hendricks tried to nod as he took in those clashing words, but he found himself slowly shaking his head. “Are you okay, son?”
Zal paused and looked out at the blaring September sunshine. “I don’t know. But I do know that’s not the point. I know that doesn’t matter.” He paused again. “I know that now. So in a way, I guess I am okay.”
September 10, 2001. Zal woke from a dream that was all audio, all questions and answers, like a radio quiz show, all answered by the voice of a man he did not know. Question: How does anyone know one exists? Answer: You know when you cease to exist. Question: How does anyone know you were ever there? Answer: It becomes evident once you disappear.
He shook it off and sat up and turned on the TV. When he saw Silber, somehow he felt no surprise. It made perfect sense that his would be the first face before Zal that day. Silber was on The Early Show that morning, chatting about the stunt, but not quite himself: he was strangely dressed like a sober businessman, in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. There was nothing showman-like about him. No Silberisms in his speech even. Zal listened closely and was only partially amazed to hear their conversation about Asiya and the meaning in bits and pieces.
Silber: “I think they’re buildings that New York has never known what to do with. What do they symbolize? Money? Sure, money. But there’s all sorts of firms there, shops, restaurants, bars, everything. You have all walks of life, working away halfway up to heaven. What’s more New York than that? And so it is a symbol of the city. A symbol nobody ever really bothered to recognize but now will have to. . once it’s gone. I think most people don’t even think about it in our skyline, but once it’s gone they will — it’ll be like a person with a limb missing. Sometimes you have to take away something, if even just momentarily, for people to appreciate it, to really see it, read it, understand it, get the meaning. Do you dig me?”
The news anchor was smiling widely and vacantly. “Mr. Silber, thank you for being with us this morning. We wish you the best of luck.” She turned to face the home audience. “And if you’re not fortunate enough to actually be at Battery Park, in lower Manhattan, tomorrow, you can catch Bran Silber’s Fall of the Towers live on our show tomorrow morning, 8:30 a.m., when we begin our coverage. We can’t wait, Mr. Silber!”
“Thank you,” he said simply, with the smallest of winks.
So what was there for Zal to do but contemplate attending? He imagined Asiya in her cell—her cage, my God—noticing the date, closing her eyes and keeping them closed till tomorrow’s time was up. She would be sitting cross-legged, like a swami cut off from the world, blind and deaf, and yet ready. She wanted him to be there, he knew that. Since she and he had failed, had not been able to stop the thing from happening, what difference did it make to be “safe” or in the line of fire? It was all over. Might as well have front-row seats, he thought she’d be thinking.
And so for the first time in days, he got up, dressed, shaved, and put on shoes.
“Where are you going?” Hendricks wondered. He himself had taken many days off to be with Zal.
“I’m going away, Father,” Zal said, and then clarified, “For a while. Till tomorrow. I want to do some things, take some walks, go to the apartment, maybe stay the night there.”
Hendricks shook his head, not buying it. “Does this have to do with Asiya?”
Zal shook his head. “No, really.”
“Does this have to do with the Silber act?”
Zal sighed. “Partially. Yes. I want to be there. Tickets are sold out, so I’d have to get there before, way before. Anyway, I want to see the scene, what they’re up to. Really, I feel better. This is a good thing.”