The Terrorist’s Son by Zak Ebrahim Page B

“You think I’m going to hurt myself in there? You think I’m going to hurt my son ?”
    The first suit looks at her blankly. “The boy stays with us,” he says. Then he looks down at me with a poor attempt at a smile. “You must be”—he checks his notebook—“Abdulaziz?”
    Terrified, I start nodding and can’t stop. “Z,” I say.
    Ibrahim’s family comes through the apartment door now and breaks the awkward silence. His wife herds the children into the apartment’s one bedroom and commands us to sleep. There are six of us. There’s a colorful matrix of bunks for kids built into the wall, like something you’d see at the PlayPlace at McDonald’s. We lie in every available cranny, writhing like worms, while my mother talks to the police in the living room. I strainto listen through the wall. All I can hear are low grunts and furniture scratching against the floor.
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    In the living room, the dark suits have so many questions that it’s like my mother is caught in a hailstorm. She will remember two questions above all others: What is your current home address? And, Did you know your husband was going to shoot Rabbi Kahane tonight?
    The answer to the first is more complicated than the answer to the second.
    Baba works for the City of New York, repairing the heat and air-conditioning in a Manhattan courthouse, and the city requires that its employees live in one of the five boroughs. So we pretend to live in my uncle’s apartment. The police only showed up here tonight because of that little lie in the record books.
    My mother explains all this. And she tells the policemen the truth about the shooting: She’d known nothing about it. She hadn’t heard a single syllable. Nothing . She abhors talk of violence. Everyone at the mosque knows better than to agitate in her presence.
    She answers a barrage of follow-up questions, head high, hands motionless on her lap. But all the while one thought is banging inside her head like a migraine: She must go to my father. She must be at his side.
    Finally, my mother blurts out: “I heard on TV that Sayyid is going to die.”
    The dark suits look at each other, but do not answer.
    â€œI want to be with him. I don’t want him to die alone.”
    Still no answer.
    â€œWill you take me to him? Please? Will you take me to him, please ?”
    She says it again and again. Eventually the dark suits sigh and put away their pencils.
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    Police are swarming everywhere in front of the hospital. There is a rowdy crowd assembling of the angry, the frightened, and the curious. There are TV vans and satellite trucks. A helicopter overhead. My mother and Ibrahim are handed off to a pair of uniformed policemen who are openly hostile. My family is nothing to them. Less than nothing: the family of an assassin. My mother is shell-shocked and dizzy and, of all things, starving. The policemen’s anger is just one more thing she senses as if through a cloudy pane of glass.
    She and Ibrahim are brought in through an entrance at the far end of the hospital. On the way to the elevators, my mother peers down a long hallway, freshly waxed and gleaming under the stark lights. She sees a mass of people clamoring to get through security. Reporters are shouting questions. Cameras are flashing. My mother feels clammy and weak. Her head, her stomach, everything starts to rebel.
    â€œI’m going to fall,” she tells Ibrahim. “Can I hold on to you?”
    Ibrahim balks. As a devout Muslim, he’s not permitted to touch her. He allows her to hang on to his belt.
    At the elevator bank, one of the policemen points and says gruffly, “Get in .” They ride up to intensive care in hostile silence. When the elevator opens, my mother steps into the bright light of the ICU. A SWAT officer jumps to attention and levels his rifle at her