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Legacy - 36. Protective Custody - Altaf El Tahari
Friday, March 27, 2043 - One Week after the Assassination
I wasn’t sure when I became aware of being awake. It wasn’t like waking up from a dream. No, this was different. I slowly became aware of myself, but my thoughts were jumbled and I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten here - wherever ‘here’ might be. Actually, perhaps the most disquieting thing about my situation as I regained consciousness was that I had no idea where I was.
With great effort, I tried to concentrate on what I could remember. I knew I was Altaf El Tahari, the Secretary of Health of the United States of America. No wait . . . something had happened. David Reynolds had been assassinated and the vice-president took over. No, that wasn’t right either. The vice-president had been killed too and the Speaker of the House was now the president. That’s right, Marvin Schroeder was now the President . . . and he’d appointed me his Secretary of State.
But why did he do that? Gradually, I remembered - Karen Richards was dead. She’d been assassinated in Israel along with the Israeli Prime Minister.
Then it suddenly came back to me and I sat bolt upright in bed. I’d been on my way to Israel to smooth over our relations after Paul Manning had apparently tried to assassinate the Palestinian Prime Minister - not that I believed the Israeli’s story for a nanosecond. Nevertheless, Paul had been killed in the action. But fuck, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the plane landing in Israel, let alone what happened afterward. Where the fuck was I?
“Altaf, are you OK?” I head a vaguely familiar voice call out through the fog of my mind. “Altaf?” I heard the voice say again and then I felt the mattress shift under me - it felt like someone had sat down next to me - and I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I jerked away from the hand and, finally, opened my eyes to find myself staring into the eyes of a dead man.
“Paul?” I asked in disbelief.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Lieutenant Paul Manning responded with a look of concern in his eyes.
“Perhaps I have,” I answered, but it didn’t really sound like me. My throat was parched and my voice came out more as a croak than anything. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
“What do you mean, I’m supposed to be dead?” Paul asked innocently enough.
“That’s what the Israelis told us,” I replied. “They told us you’d been killed in a gunfight . . . that you tried to assassinate the Palestinian Prime Minister.”
“No, no,” Paul answered, “There was a brief moment when I thought I was dead, but I was shot with rubber bullets. The whole thing was staged. The Prime Minister was certain he could trust the men who guarded him, but his security chief wasn’t nearly so sure. He used a decoy . . . a Palestinian agent dressed as an armed Orthodox settler, to flush the traitor out. As a precaution, he replaced all the ammo with rubber bullets to reduce the risk of anyone getting killed. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Don’t you mean the wrong place at the wrong time?” I asked.
Shaking his head, Paul responded, “No, there was indeed a traitor in the Prime Minister’s midst. The traitor had a secondary firearm . . . a real gun with real ammo . . . and it was that gun that I spotted aimed at the Prime Minister. I didn’t need to think twice about it . . . I aimed my own side weapon at him and took the fucker out.”
“Your kids were right,” I commented. “They insisted that if you shot the Prime Minister’s bodyguard, that’s exactly who you intended to shoot.”
Rather than say anything, Paul just grinned, but then he got a more serious look on his face and asked, “You came here because of me, didn’t you?”
“We had to do something, Paul,” I replied. “This is some serious shit, you know? The Israelis were telling us that you tried to assassinate the Palestinian Prime Minister. This is what they were telling the world. It sure as Hell looked like we sent you over specifically for that purpose. As dangerous as it was, we felt it necessary to send a clear message that we were taking this whole thing with utmost seriousness. Placing the U.S. Secretary of State in harm’s way was certainly a way of doing that.”
“Ouch!” Paul exclaimed. “I’m really sorry about that. However, I know I was meant to come here. Had I not been in the right place at the right time, the Palestinian Prime Minister would have been killed. I prevented what could well have touched off a global war.”
“Or you could have started one,” I pointed out.
“We’re both where we need to be to prevent that from happening,” Paul replied and, thinking of what Cliff told me in his visitation, I agreed with Paul, although I didn’t tell him so.
When I failed to say anything else, Paul asked, “Who ended up taking the fall?”
“Trevor dutifully fell on his sword,” I answered, as I’d gotten the word while in flight.
“Fuck!” Paul responded with a grimace. “He’s the last person Schroeder should have ditched. He needs Trevor right now, more than ever.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I replied, knowing that whomever the President chose to replace Trevor, they couldn’t possibly have one tenth the expertise or experience that Trevor did.
“Where exactly are we,” I asked, “and how in Hell did they get me out of a G23 limo?”
“You’ll have to ask our hosts,” Paul answered. “I’ve been told we’re in a safe house of some sort in an ‘undisclosed location’, and that they aren’t telling me for my own safety, but it’s obviously as much for theirs.”
At that moment, as if on cue, the door to the room we were in opened and in walked a few men including one I recognized as the Palestinian Prime Minister.
Rising to my feet, and nearly falling back down as I felt light-headed, I approached the Prime Minister and extended my right hand as I greeted him, “Mr. Prime Minister.”
Rather than shaking my hand, however, the Prime Minister pulled me into an embrace and kissed me on each cheek, as is the Arab custom. “Dr. El Tahari,” the Prime Minister replied. “It’s always nice to see you, even if under such unusual circumstances.”
“What exactly are the circumstances?” I asked, “and why am I here? Where is here, by the way?”
“Come with us and we will get some breakfast,” the Prime Minister answered, “and all we know will be revealed in due time. I cannot tell you where we are just yet, however. Not even I know,” he added with a laugh. “It is for our own safety and for the safety of those who maintain this facility. The one thing I know is that we are not in Israel, nor are we in Palestine, and that we are safe here,” he chuckled as my eyes registered my surprise.
As we walked down a long, narrow corridor to a room where breakfast awaited us, I asked, “Why was I taken, and how in the world did you get me out of a G23 limousine?”
“You were brought here for your own safety,” the Prime Minister answered. “The current Israeli government has been compromised, as has yours. Although the corruption is limited, it extends to the highest levels and we do not know whom we can trust. We would not have taken you except as a last resort. We had information that led us to believe you would not survive your stay with the Israelis.”
I gasped on hearing this and so the Prime Minister added, “Do not worry, Dr. El Tahari. You will be safe with us.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” I asked. “How do I know your government has not been compromised as well?”
“You don’t,” the Prime Minister answered, and then went on to say, “Indeed, as your friend may have told you, one of my own bodyguards tried to kill me. It would be extremely naïve of me to assume that he was the only mole in our operation.
“The bottom line is that you can trust me. I can’t say the same of my counterpart in Israel. The interim Prime Minister . . . the man who will very likely be the next Prime Minister once the Knesset meets, is himself embroiled in this mess.”
Registering my look of shock, the Palestinian Prime Minister added, “Don’t be so surprised, my friend. The interim Prime Minister of Israel was, until recently, an ardent foe of the peace process. He only changed his position so as to gain a cabinet position. It is very ironic, then, that his support was instrumental in the peace process reaching fruition.
“Unfortunately, it was never his intent that the accords be implemented and it was his willingness to resort to any means necessary that made him a perfect target for other enemies of peace, although I seriously doubt even he knows who his collaborators really are.”
“And you do?” I asked in disbelief. After all, the U.S. had the best intelligence organizations around. The CIA was second to none and the NSA had capabilities no one else possessed.
“Keep in mind that it’s a lot easier for a Palestinian to infiltrate organizations like the Taliban than for an American . . . even if they are a Muslim.” The Prime Minister answered as if reading my thoughts.
“I’ll grant you that,” I agreed, and then asked, “So if you know who’s involved, why not make it known, or at least share the information with those of us you can trust?”
“That is exactly what I am doing with you now,” the Prime Minister replied with a smile that was genuine.
As we ate our breakfast, which was surprisingly tasty, the Prime Minister filled me in on what his agents, with help from Mossad, had been able to piece together about the recent terrorist attacks and assassinations. Much of it was conjecture but backed up by solid evidence. That a major world power would stoop to assassinations and terrorism was kind of hard to swallow but, as the Prime Minister pointed out, similar actions had been taken with far less of a reason.
“And you really think they would risk a war with America to avoid unrest at home?” I asked incredulously.
“Altaf, you experienced the Taliban firsthand,” the Prime Minister answered me. “What do you think?”
I only pondered the question for an instant before I answered, “In a heartbeat . . . still . . . I need a lot more to go on than conjecture. Your evidence is compelling, but it’s not enough. I need something concrete. I need a ‘smoking gun’ . . . something I can take to the United Nations and use to build a case for international sanctions or, as a last resort, military action.
“And God help me, I need to find a way to bring those responsible to justice without taking on a billion or more people,” I added.
“It is that desire of yours, my friend,” the Prime Minister responded, “that tells me I was right to put my trust in you. It is a shame that Schroeder is the President now. David Reynolds was a great leader. Without him we would never have gotten this far. Without him I do not know if Middle East peace will survive. Many of us on both sides of the struggle, however, feel the consequences are too grave for peace not to succeed. Making peace work is the best way we can honor the memory of a great man.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I replied, “If only we can keep Schroeder from blowing it up before it has even begun. If only we can keep the enemies of peace from having their way.”
Thinking back to my original question, I asked, “By the way, how did you manage to break into my limo? After all, the chassis is made with a carbon fiber composite that’s stronger than diamonds, and the windows are diamond . . . a ten-centimeter diamond-silicone laminate, that is.”
“Laughing, the Prime Minister replied, “You must remember that the Jews have been involved in the diamond trade for centuries and are quite adept at cutting diamonds.” Then seeing the perplexed look on my face, he laughed and added, “Yes, there are Israelis here, too, but we did not break into your limousine. We have agents in the United States who are working closely with agents in your government. We obtained the security codes to your vehicle from them, allowing us to simply override the door locks.”
I was amazed. Once locked down, only an order from the President himself was supposed to be able to override the security of the G23. It was more than a little disquieting to think that someone within the NSA or the CIA had compromised my security yet, had they not, I might well be dead now. Once the current crisis was resolved, we would obviously need to improve our security measures considerably.
“So how is your family, Altaf?” the Prime Minister asked in an apparent attempt to lighten the mood.
“My mother is well,” I answered. “She finally retired from her job as the Director of Nursing at St. Vincent’s Hospital, but she still volunteers on the Pediatric Oncology unit.
“My sister and her husband recently became grandparents themselves, as my niece had her first child . . . a boy . . .”
“But didn’t your nephew and his husband adopt a child a few years ago?” the Prime Minister asked. I was surprised - not only had the Prime Minister acknowledged my nephew’s homosexuality, but he’d shown he saw my adopted grandniece as being on a par with my new grandnephew.
“Yes, of course,” I responded, “and as much as my adopted grandniece means to my mother, there’s nothing like the birth of a child.”
“Yes, of course, Altaf,” the Prime Minister acknowledged. “But the intent of my original question was to ask about your family, Altaf . . . your immediate family. How is your husband, Randy, and how are your children? How many children do you have, anyway?”
“Randy just became the Secretary of Health,” I informed the Prime Minister, although I suspected he already knew. “He was appointed to my old job when I became the Secretary of State, and our friend, Kevin Williams, took over Randy’s old job as the Surgeon General. Of course neither of us have had much time to become acclimated to our new jobs.”
Laughing, the Prime Ministered interrupted, “I’ve been the Palestinian Prime Minister for more than five years and I’m still not acclimated.” He then asked, “And how are your children? I read about young Brandon officiating at the Reynolds-Kimball bar mitzvahs. How is Ishmael? He is in medical school, no?”
I was amazed that the Prime Minister was so aware of my family, particularly when I knew very little about his. “Ishmael is in his residency at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,” I answered. “He is studying to become a neurosurgeon.”
“After all you guys went through with him, you must be proud,” the Prime Minister replied and, again, I was amazed at just how much the Prime Minister knew about my family. Yes indeed, we had gone through a lot with Ishmael in the days after he came into our lives . . .
~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~
Sunday, January 23, 2028 - Fifteen Years Earlier
I slowly opened my eyes to see my lover, my husband, smiling back at me. I couldn’t help but smile briefly before leaning forward to give him a quick peck on the lips.
“You been up long?” I asked in a sleepy, raspy ‘just woke up’ voice.
Shrugging his bare shoulders, Randy answered, “Not long . . . maybe five or ten minutes. I was just enjoying watching my husband sleep.” He then leaned forward and gave me a short but sweet peck on the lips to match my own. “I would love nothing more than to make endless love to you, but my bladder’s about to burst.”
“You’d better do something about it,” I replied. “If it burst, you’d probably bleed to death and then I’d have one hell of a mess to clean up.”
“You said that with such a straight face,” Randy responded, “I’d almost believe you really meant it.” Randy then pounced on top of me and tickled me mercilessly - at least he tried to, but I’ve never been ticklish and after Randy got tired of his failed attempt, I took advantage of the situation and flipped him over, returning the favor.
Randy, however, is very ticklish and, hence, I had him giggling like a schoolgirl in no time. “Cut it out!” he squealed. “If you don’t stop, I really will pee the bed.”
Letting up on the tickling, I looked down into my husband’s beautiful, hazel eyes and planted yet another kiss on his full lips. What started as a simple, closed-mouth peck soon turned into a full open-mouth, tongue-on-tongue expression of our passion. Sure, we both had morning breath, but the love we felt for each other was overpowering.
The feeling of our distended bladders and our trapped members between us was more than either of us could take and it wasn’t long before we were spent. With a teenager living with us, opportunities for making love were fleeting. One thing we didn’t need to worry about was being interrupted on an early Sunday morning - early by a teenager’s standards, anyway.
“Short but sweet,” Randy said as we both sat up in bed, and then he added, “Let’s take a shower, and then we’d better get breakfast ready.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied with a yawn as I stretched, my arms held high over my head, our combined cum still glistening among the hairs on my chest.
After relieving our bladders, we stepped into the bathtub together and helped each other wash up under the spray of the showerhead.
Freshly washed and appropriately attired in cords and polos - our usual winter weekend attire, we headed downstairs to see what we could throw together for Sunday brunch. Before fostering Brandon, we generally went out on Sunday mornings. I was a clinical epidemiologist at Georgetown University and Randy was doing a Surgical Oncology fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. When we first moved to the Washington, D.C. area, we lived in a small apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in a traditionally gay part of ‘The District’. It was very convenient for both of our jobs and afforded access to some of the finest dining in the region. It made little sense for the two of us to prepare all our own meals and so we often went out.
That all changed when Brandon came to live with us a little over a year ago. We weren’t really ready to be parents, both from an emotional and a financial standpoint, but Brandon desperately needed someone to provide stability in his young life. He was exactly the sort of gay youth we had vowed to take in when Randy and I said our wedding vows. If we’d waited until we felt we were ready, we would have probably never come to honor our vows. Fate brought Brandon to us and, in the end, we were delighted to be able to be there for him. He was a wonderful young man and very mature for a sixteen-year-old. He was the light of our lives.
Taking on the responsibility of raising a teenager was another matter entirely, however. Although Brandon had no problem with living in Adams Morgan, it wasn’t exactly the best place to raise a family and our apartment was entirely too small for the three of us. With major help from Randy’s parents and making use of a substantial portion of the money I inherited from my father, we went house shopping and bought a large six-bedroom colonial in Bethesda, Maryland. The sale price was well over a million and way more than we could afford, but it was a house we could grow into. More importantly, Walt Whitman High School was considered to be one of the best public high schools in America. With the number of youths we hoped to foster, the savings associated with sending our kids to public schools would more than pay for the up-front cost of buying our house.
“How’s Eggs Benedict with lox sound?” Randy asked as I got the coffee going.
“It sounds wonderful,” I replied, well aware that the eggs we were using were controversial. The hens that laid them had been genetically altered to produce yolks with virtually no cholesterol, and the eggs themselves were irradiated to remove any possibility of the transmission of infectious diseases such as salmonella. Although not ‘natural’, as far as Randy and I were concerned, they were the safest eggs around. It wasn’t long before the house was filled with the smell of smoked salmon.
“Something sure smells good,” our bleary-eyed foster son stated as he entered the kitchen, clad only in a colorful pair of bikini briefs - a style that had recently become popular.
“Hey Bran. Sleep well?” Randy asked.
“Like a log,” Brandon responded as he poured himself a mug of coffee.
“By the way, I need to borrow the car this afternoon,” Brandon added as he took a plate from my husband containing two Eggs Benedict and hash browns. “Kevin and I have a lot of work to do on our History project.”
“A lot of work, huh?” I teased our foster son. He and Kevin had recently started dating and I strongly suspected that Brandon had more in mind than working on their History project.
“We won’t be doing anything you guys wouldn’t have done at our age,” Brandon answered with an innocent-looking smile, causing both Randy and I to blush. At sixteen, there wasn’t much we hadn’t done, but we weren’t about to tell Bran that.
Throwing Brandon the keys to his Acura, Randy asked, “How about bringing in the paper?”
“Oh man, I’m not even dressed,” Brandon replied, but then thought better of it and added, “I’ll throw on some jeans.” He ran up the stairs and appeared less than a minute later clad only in jeans without even a belt to hold them up. Zipping up his winter coat over his bare torso, he went out the front door, barefoot into the snow, leaving Randy and I shaking our heads. What was it with teenagers, anyway? Were Randy and I ever that lazy?
Tracking water into the house, Brandon pulled the Sunday copy of the Washington Post out of the protective plastic wrap it came in and gently threw it onto the kitchen table. Being closest to it, I grabbed the front section and handed the rest of the paper to Randy, who quickly extracted the Sports Section - a section in which I had no interest whatsoever. After hanging up his coat, Brandon grabbed the Comics before sitting back down at the table.
It was as I was finishing reading the editorials that the phone rang.
“I wonder who that could be, calling on a Sunday morning?” Randy asked.
“It’s prolly Kevin,” Brandon responded as he reached for the receiver. “I left my phone upstairs, so he’s calling the land line.” Grabbing the receiver from the phone on the kitchen wall, he answered, “Hello?”
Seeing a stunned expression on young Brandon’s face, it was evident that it wasn’t Kevin on the other end. Pulling the receiver away from his face, he said, “It’s Ms. Willington . . . for you guys.” Karen Willington was Brandon’s social worker with the Montgomery County Office of Child Protective Services. As I was on Brandon’s right and he had the receiver in his right hand, he handed it to me.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hello,” Ms. Willington answered. “Am I speaking to Dr. Bernstein or Dr. El Tahari?” She asked.
“Please, Karen,” I responded, “You should know by now that it’s just plain Altaf.”
“Sorry to sound so formal, Altaf, but I have someone with me,” she explained. “Ordinarily I would call you in private but we’re short-staffed today and I don’t want to leave him alone.
“He’s a boy . . . a fourteen-year-old boy named Ishmael. He’s the son of the imam at one of the more conservative mosques in P.G. County. He was caught trying to steal food at the food court in Montgomery Mall this morning shortly after it opened. Apparently, he managed to hide himself in the mall overnight.
“Ordinarily we would have turned him over to P.G. County CPS,” she continued, “but when we started talking about sending him back to his parents, he became inconsolable. Eventually he told us his father threw him out of the house, and he told us why. I can’t repeat what his father said when we called to attempt reconciliation.”
“I take it Ishmael is gay?” I stated more than asked.
“His father caught him in bed with another boy and went ballistic,” she answered.
“A story I can relate to very well, personally,” I replied.
“I knew you’d understand,” Karen Willington replied. “You and Randy would be the perfect foster parents for Ishmael.”
“How did you move so quickly?” I asked. “It’s not even been three hours since the mall opened.”
“I still have a ton of paperwork to file but, in a case like this, an emergency placement can occur very quickly,” she answered. “Ishmael is very fragile right now. He needs a sympathetic home more than anything and, since you already have a foster license and given your interest in taking in gay youth . . .”
“I’m no fuckin’ queer!” I heard a young voice shout in the background.
“As you can see, we need someone to help him sort out his sexuality,” she added.
“He may very well be straight,” I responded. “Boys his age often experiment and that may have been all he and his friend were doing.”
“I know that, Altaf, but who better to help him find out than a young Muslim man who’s been through the same thing?” She was right about that - for two years I avoided my best friend, Fareed, because I had great difficulty accepting my own sexuality. Whether young Ishmael turned out to be gay or straight, he needed someone to give him acceptance as he sorted it out on his own.
“I’ll have to discuss it with my husband, and with Brandon,” I responded.
“Of course,” she replied. “I have a ton of paperwork to process anyway, but please get back to me this afternoon, one way or the other . . . even if you haven’t reached a decision. I have to know if I’ll need to find another emergency placement. He needs one-on-one care right now. I can’t place him in a group home.” What she was telling me, without saying so directly, was that he was a suicide risk.
“I’ll get back to you within the hour,” I agreed before I hung up.
“So I’m gonna have a foster brother?” Brandon stated more than asked.
“Only if you and Randy agree to it,” I replied.
“It’ll be cool,” Brandon replied. “I always figured you’d foster more kids someday. I just hope Ishmael can accept living with a Jewish father and a Jewish brother.”
“And gay ones at that,” Randy added.
Remembering how I initially feared Randy’s friendship because I’d been taught to believe the Jews were our enemy, I realized just what we might be facing. “Just what we need,” I responded, “a self-hating homophobic, anti-Semitic teenager.”
“You always did like challenges,” Randy answered.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” I asked and, rather than say anything, Randy simply nodded his assent.
Looking back at Brandon, he answered, “I came from a large family. It’s been way too quiet around here. Count me in.”
By the time Karen brought young Ishmael over to meet us, it was after four o’clock and Brandon was over at Kevin’s working on their ‘History assignment’, which was probably just as well as it might have been overwhelming to meet all three of us at once. Besides which, if Ishmael really was anti-Semitic, being exposed to Brandon at the same time as Randy and me might not have been such a good idea. Although we were members of Beth El of Bethesda, a Conservative congregation near our home, Brandon was raised in an Orthodox household and he chose to continue to wear a yarmulke, as he had all his life.
Ishmael was a very handsome boy with a medium dark complexion, curly black hair and enough ‘peach fuzz’ on his upper lip nearly to qualify as an actual mustache. He was certainly tall for a fourteen-year-old, looking to be an inch or two over six feet. He arrived with nothing more than the clothes on his back and, hence, we were going to need to go shopping for him, and soon!
After introducing Ishmael to us and explaining who we were, Karen gave Ishmael her card and told him to feel free to call her any time, day or night. Upon closing the door behind her, before we even had a chance to open our mouths, Ishmael said, “So you’re the faggots I’m gonna be staying with?”
Cringing, I turned around and said, “Ishmael, it really doesn’t matter to us whether you’re gay or straight, and it shouldn’t matter to you that Randy and I are gay. We are here for you in your time of need and if you’ll give us a chance, we will be with you until you graduate from university . . .
“Fat chance of that happening,” Ishmael stated in a sullen, angry tone.
“Ishmael, of course you’ll go to college,” Randy responded as he approached our young charge. “There’s no reason you can’t do or become whatever you want to,” he added as he reached out and squeezed Ishmael’s shoulder, but then Ishmael violently threw Randy’s hand off him.
“Get your hands off of me, you filthy Jewish faggot!” Ishmael screamed at my husband.
“Ishmael, please,” I said quietly. “I know a lot of what you’re going through. My story’s a lot like yours. I’m not saying you’re gay but, when I was fifteen, my mother caught me in bed with my best friend. She took both of us to see the imam in our small village in Pakistan, thinking he could help cure us. Instead, he issued a fatwa and sentenced us both to death by stoning.
“Fuck!” Ishmael said under his breath so it was barely audible. I was getting through to him!
Continuing, I said, “My parents had a heated argument that night about what to do. It wasn’t until years later that I learned the truth about what they decided. They both knew they had to do something or I would die, but my father realized we could never escape as a family. He stayed behind with my sister and her husband while my mother took me to live with her sister in America. They sacrificed their marriage to save my life.”
“What happened to your friend?” Ishmael asked.
“His parents took the word of the imam as law, even though my father offered to have my mother and me take Fareed with us. He was stoned to death the next morning and, unable to find a cemetery that would bury him, his parents had him cremated and they sent his ashes to me.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Ishmael said, a little louder this time. “And I thought it was bad being thrown out of the house. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Jared.”
“You can imagine what it was like to receive my friend’s ashes in the mail. At first I lashed out at Randy in anger, as I knew he could never understand, and I feel guilty about that to this day . . .”
“But I understand, Altaf,” Randy interrupted. “You were lashing out at me in anger over Fareed’s death . . . not because of anything I had done.”
“What you did for me was incredible,” I replied. Turning back to Ishmael, I explained, “Randy sought help to get me through my ordeal. He went to his rabbi, who in turn put him in touch with a local imam who helped us both to deal with the loss of my first boyfriend.”
“The imam knew you were gay?” Ishmael asked in disbelief.
“Not only did he know we were gay,” I replied, “but he knew why Fareed had been killed and then cremated. He offered to give Fareed’s ashes a proper Muslim burial. It was an offer we took him up on.”
“But how could you be with a Jew?” Ishmael asked with disdain.
“Like you, I was raised to believe the Jews are our sworn enemy,” I answered. “The truth is, there’s a lot of hatred on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian debate and plenty of blame to go around without stereotyping everyone into one category or the other. Randy, for one, believes the West Bank settlements should be dismantled and the land given back to the Palestinians for the purpose of establishing a Palestinian State. He gives generously to an organization that supports that position.
“Our other son, Brandon, is the son of an Orthodox rabbi and was raised to believe that the land of ancient Judea and Samaria was given by God to the Jews, which leaves no room for compromise. Since coming to live with us, he’s slowly accepted that there needs to be a middle ground if the killing is ever to stop, but we still argue about what that middle ground should be. I believe, as I’m sure you do, that there is land inside Israel proper that belonged to Palestinian families for generations, and that that land must be accounted for before any just negotiations can begin.”
“But the same could be said for land inside India, Pakistan and Bangladesh,” Randy interrupted. “You can’t hold the children responsible for the sins of their fathers, so to speak.”
“The Jews should all be driven into the sea!” Ishmael responded.
It was certainly going to be a long night, and then some . . .
~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~
“Yes, we had some tough times with young Ishmael,” I reiterated to the Palestinian Prime Minister. “At first he hated Randy and Brandon because they’re Jewish, and he hated me because I was married to a Jew. He gave us a hard time because our food was kosher rather than hallal, even though the two are basically equivalent.
“He hated all of us . . . and himself . . . because we were gay. He had a difficult time accepting that he was gay in the first place, but Brandon made it difficult for him to ignore the issue.”
“How so?” Paul asked.
Laughing at the memory, I responded, “Brandon almost never wore a shirt around the house, even in the dead of winter. In fact, most of the time he paraded around in nothing but his bikini briefs, claiming we kept the temperature way too hot for his tastes. On more than one occasion we caught Ishmael blatantly staring at him, but we never made anything of it. Brandon, on the other hand, teased Ishmael mercilessly. Sometimes he’d stand up and model the way a body builder does. Other times he’d do a belly dance in front of Ishmael. Ishmael called Brandon every name in the book but, in the end, they bonded as only brothers will.
“They truly had far more in common than they had differences and so they became the best of friends. It took time and it was a very difficult adjustment for Ishmael but, once he came to accept his homosexuality, he looked up to Brandon as his big brother and mentor. By then we’d taken on yet another boy . . .”
“Jonathan?” The Prime Minister asked.
“Yes, Jonathan,” I answered, again amazed at how much the Prime Minister knew about my family. I definitely had some catching up to do regarding the Prime Minister’s family. “Before long, Ishmael was the one serving as the big brother to Jonathan and the other boys we took in,” I concluded.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
This time it was Paul who answered, “We stay here until it’s safe for us to leave. In the meantime, I’m going to try to get a message to Jeremy Kimball that we’re OK.”
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4
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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