Redeployment(59)

The Special Assistant tried to calm us down. I gave him a tight smile.

“I understand why she said that,” I said. “But… sometimes I can’t sleep at night.”

That wasn’t true. Most nights I slept like a drunken baby. I noticed a slight look of panic on the Special Assistant’s face and pushed forward, determined to get out of the corner they’d boxed me in.

“I see the dead,” I said, letting my voice quaver. “I hear the explosions.”

“No one is disrespecting what you’ve been through,” said the Special Assistant, definitely panicked now. “I’m sure Zara had no intention of disrespecting you.”

Zara, whose face had held a lively anger moments before, looked surprised and, I think, saddened. At first I thought it was because it disappointed her to see me playing the game. It didn’t occur to me that she might simply be feeling sympathy for me. If I’d known that, it would have made me angry.

“And I had no intention of threatening her,” I said, feeling very clever. “But the damage was done.”

The Special Assistant gave me a long stare. He seemed to be determining just how big a liar I was before deciding on a course of minimum liability. “Okay,” he said, doing a Pontius Pilate–style washing motion with his hands. “So—a rational observer might conclude there was ample reason for both sides to be offended.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” I said, allowing myself to appear calmer. We were in the realm of claim and counterclaim. I felt on firmer footing.

Then Zara explained her concerns in a slightly cowed voice. The “justifiable anxieties” of her fellow Muslims and the degree to which they felt they needed to band together and “move aggressively against intolerance.” She explained herself not as though presenting her case, but as if apologizing for her overreaction. It surprised me, what my so-called sleepless nights had done to her sense of grievance. The spark she always had in class discussions was gone. When she finished, I graciously accepted her rationale for feeling threatened and said I’d moderate my words in the future if she’d do the same. The Special Assistant was all approving nods. He told us, “You two have a lot in common,” and we suffered through a little talk about how this was a teachable moment, how if we could get past our anger, we could learn so much from each other. We agreed to learn much from each other. And then he recommended, strongly, that I look into the health services that the college could offer regarding my sleepless nights. I said I would, and we were done. I’d escaped.

We walked out of the office and out of Converse Hall together, emerging into the sunlight. Zara had a dazed look about her. Around us were students heading to class or to breakfast. Since it was Amherst, there were even a few *s playing Frisbee or, as they would call it, “throwing around the disk.” The morning had a healthy, vibrant cast to it that played oddly against what had happened.

We stood there for a moment before Zara broke the silence.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“Know what?”

“About what you’ve been through. I’m sorry.”

And without another word she walked away, swishing her legs under her dress and dissolving into the sunlight streaming in from the east.

As she faded, so did my relief at evading punishment, leaving me with what I’d done. She had, perhaps inartfully, asked me a genuine question. I’d given her nothing but lies. And now she had whatever guilt I’d dumped on her. To leave her with that, I thought, was cowardice.

I ran toward her, cutting a diagonal across the grass, pushing past other students, and planting myself directly in her path.

“What the f*ck was that?” I said.

It clearly wasn’t something she expected. The whole morning, perhaps, had been like that. Unsettling.

“What?” She shook her head. “What was what?”

“Why did you apologize to me?”

I could hear the anger in my voice and she stared back with amazement, perhaps with a little fear. But she said nothing.

“You think the big bad war broke me,” I said, “and it made me an *. That’s why you think I said those things. But what if I’m just an *?”

My breath was still coming quick—the aftermath of the run—and I was full of energy. My fists were balled tight. I wanted to pace back and forth. But she was still, sizing me up, colder every second. And then she spoke.