Homeland Elegies(97)

“You dug under walls when you were a kid?”

“In the village. When my mother would lock me and my sisters in the room until we prayed. I dug a hole so we could come and go. She never even knew…”

“I don’t think it’s about keeping folks out, Dad.”

“So what’s it about?”

“Giving them a thing to fixate on. It’s classic storytelling. A visible, tangible goal. That’s what gets an audience rooting for a hero.”

“Tangible?”

“Every good story has the same shape. The beginning establishes a goal, the more tangible the better. In the middle we watch the fight toward that goal. The end is what happens when it’s been reached, or when reaching it’s finally failed. What I always say when I teach is: the longer the middle, the better the story. The middle is when we still don’t know the outcome. That’s when we care the most about what’s happening. The longer you can keep the audience engaged in the pursuit without actually resolving that pursuit—that’s real mastery.”

“So maybe he doesn’t want a wall.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. As long as there isn’t a wall, he’s got an antagonist. The people stopping him from building it.”

“It’s like a game,” he said.

“A game?”

“You know, a match. It’s most exciting to watch when you don’t know who’s going to win.”

“That would be the idea.”

“What a joke,” he said, heading back to his bowl of marinade.

But it wasn’t until the night we got home from Wonewoc that Father finally admitted his feelings about Trump had changed. He confessed that he didn’t recognize the man he’d known a quarter century earlier. Perhaps the pressure and criticism that any president had good reason to expect had warped what was ill prepared and vulnerable in him. Maybe it was true that he wasn’t cut out for the job after all, and now the country was suffering because of it. He twisted off the top of the last unopened bottle of beer we’d bought at the Kwik Mart, sipped, and paused. Then he finally came out and just said it: “Trump was a big mistake.”

*



I hadn’t seen Sultan in half a decade, maybe longer. Since then, he’d found religion, which made him the object of some considerable derision on Father’s part, at least from what I gathered whenever I heard Father on the phone with him. They spoke so much, so regularly, I could only have imagined just how tiresome the constant ribbing must have been to Sultan. Apparently, he gave as good as he got on the other end, but still I wondered why he put up with it.

Father and I drove to the airport the next day—Saturday, which was also my birthday—and waited in the food court for Sultan’s flight to land. At one point, Father left to make a phone call, or so he announced with somewhat more formality than was either usual or necessary. It all made sense when he returned after ten minutes bearing gifts: a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt and a chocolate croissant. “I was going to get you a book, too, but I couldn’t figure what kinds of things you read anymore.”

“The sweatshirt’s great, Dad.”

“You don’t have one, right?”

“I do not.”

“And I know you love chocolate croissants.”

“Well, I mean, for breakfast.”

“You can eat it tomorrow.”

“Also nice to know what’s for breakfast a day early.”

Father shrugged. “There he is,” he said, looking up at the bank of televisions above us.

“Did his plane land?”

“I meant Dave—but yeah. Looks like it just landed.” Alongside the blue screens showing arrivals and departures, another showed David Letterman holding forth as a guest on some daytime set in Burbank. “I really don’t know about that beard. I’m glad your mother never saw that.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have been on board with the beard.”

“She would have hated it.” Father’s chuckle gave way to pregnant silence. I could tell he was remembering her and thought I could almost see her image in his eyes. He smiled: “Like that time she called his doctor…”

“Called whose doctor?”

“Letterman’s. She never told you? When he had quintuple bypass? This was maybe, I don’t know, twenty years ago.”

“I think I remember him having bypass, nothing about her calling…”

“She cold-called NewYork–Presbyterian intensive care. Pretended she was a physician on his team. She asked me exactly what I would say if I were calling from out of town to get an update on a patient.”

“You’re kidding.”

“This is Dr. Akhtar looking to get an update about Mr. Letterman’s condition,” he said, mimicking her. “Your mother could be a very charming woman when she wanted to. She had the name of one of his doctors from the newspaper. Asked for him directly.”

“And?”

“‘Oh, of course, Dr. Akhtar. We’ll get him your message right away.’ Very deferential. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rings. There he is, on the phone. One of Letterman’s specialists. Who then spends five minutes running her through the procedure in the operating room. Where they started, where they ended. What his condition is now. I’m listening on the kitchen phone. Trying not to laugh,” he said, laughing now. “She really never told you?”