“Happy birthday,” I said. Her seventeenth birthday was one week away, but she and I were celebrating it in the only time we had available to be alone. I wasn’t big on birthdays, mine or anybody else’s, but she was that special to me. She looked into me and said in her soft, slow, sultry way, “I love you more than my father.”
Time stood still. I couldn’t move. She couldn’t move. Even our eyes couldn’t blink. Even the boom of the 808 bass that shook the speakers on the outdoor sound system shut down. The turntable needle got stuck and could only repeat a piece of the beat. For a split second it seemed that even the fire-filled brilliant sun had blacked out.
Unique, her unusualness attracted me. Twelve clocks, ten phone cards, and a huge lighted spinning globe were the first purchases of my second wife, Chiasa Hiyoku Brown, as we moved into our new home in the borough of Queens, state of New York. I just took her to the stores where I knew the items she wanted to buy could be purchased, then watched as she walked around choosing carefully and intently. Of course I carried her choices, her boxes and bags, for her. She accumulated enough for me to go out and hail a cab and have the driver pop the trunk.
In her first-floor bedroom in our house, she lined her triple-A battery-operated clocks on the shelf after setting each one. They were all the same model, but she set each of them to a different time.
“Where do you want the globe?” I asked.
“One minute,” she said as she began pulling books from a big box, rushing to stack and organize them on the floor.
“I should have bought you a table for this,” I said as I realized she was using her books to build a stand.
“This is good enough. These are the books I’ve already read,” she said. She read them, but couldn’t leave them behind, I thought to myself. So I knew then how she felt about her books. I set the globe up on the book stand she built, plugged it in, and it glowed, colorfully outlining most of the territories on Earth. Helping her with these little things was a small task for me, yet like the moon, she glowed with a grateful smile.
On a short stack of same-sized encyclopedias sat her baby-blue-colored phone. Slim and feminine, it was curved nicely, with glow-in-the-dark push buttons. She called it her “blue phone.” It was her own hard-line hotline, with a separate number from our house phone or our Umma Designs business phone. Only she could use her “blue phone,” and that was on purpose.
“Daddy will call me tonight at eleven p.m. It will be the end of the night here in New York. It will be eleven in the morning over in Tokyo. It will be five a.m. in London, England, and eight p.m. in Los Angeles, California, and eight a.m. the next day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It will be three a.m. in Antwerp, Belgium and in Zurich, Switzerland and six a.m. in Johannesburg, South Africa . . .” She pointed to each clock that she had set. “And in Antartica . . .” she said . . .
I smiled and repeated, “Antarctica . . .”
She laughed and said, “I was just checking to see if you were listening.”
“So we bought twelve clocks, so you could know what time it is in all of these regions of the world,” I said but it was more of an observation than a question.
“Hai!” she said softly in her energetic way, meaning, “yes” in her Japanese language.
“Daddy never says exactly where he is. But he will tell me which country he is in. I look the country up on the globe so I know where he is and exactly what’s surrounding him, and what time zone it has. And if by chance he’s gonna be in a certain place for more than one night, and if he is willing to give me his phone number, I can use these phone cards, and that way I won’t run up a big phone bill. Then I can check these clocks to know exactly what time it is where Daddy is stationed. That way I won’t accidentally wake him when he sleeps . . .” She exhaled, not being used to so much talking except when she is excited about her father.
I just looked at her, attracted to her passion, yet very aware of her anxious and deep love for her six-foot-eight black-skinned African-American brute of a father, a man of fifty faces who only showed his daughter one, and she believed that was the only face he had. She spoke about him with great affection as though he was her teddy bear, and her anchor, and her hero. “Daddy,” who called her every other day, at any time he wanted to, with no consideration for our schedule or time zone, sometimes only had ten seconds of convo to share. He’d say, “I just wanted to hear your voice and be sure you’re happy and okay.” “Daddy,” who has a serious weak spot for his daughter, who he could hardly ever see in person because of his work. So he filled the absence of his presence in her life with presents. Expensive gifts given on each of her birthdays and on selected Christian holidays. He gifted her anything she asked him for with only one rule. She couldn’t ask him to come home on any particular day at any particular time. He would come on his schedule, unannounced and by his own choice. My wife marked time by her father’s presence and presents and absences. The presents were gifts that no young husband who, although he is a hard worker and is steadily building his business, could match.
“Daddy,” a general in the American military. “Daddy,” who had declared war on me when he realized his daughter’s heart had been swept away by a young Muslim man who was born on the other side of his world. “Daddy,” who played deadly games with my life because he could. “Daddy,” whose last words to me before I left Asia with his beautiful sixteen-years-young daughter who I wifed, were, “Take great care of my daughter or I’ll find you and kill you.”
Now his daughter, who is definitely my wife, lay naked on the hot floor beside me on her early seventeenth birthday party, stroking my joint with her pretty fingers, kissing me lightly with her pretty lips, hypnotizing me with her pretty eyes, and stroking my calves with her pretty toes. Saying she loved me more than him. My presence had outdistanced his presents. And our intimacy was an area where he naturally could never go. And our closeness was sealed . . . a bond never to be broken.
The metal tapping against the metal door unlocked time.
“Uh-uh, no . . .” Chiasa said, seductively.
No one was supposed to knock on my project apartment door. Even when my family lived here, no one did. And for the time that Chiasa and I had been coming here, no one else came, and no one else was invited. She licked my lips and her tongue fucking delighted me. Just as I moved to go in her, a voice within me ordered me to get up. Chiasa leapt up a fourth of a second after me and began collecting her clothes from the living room floor. I nodded for her to go into my bedroom. I stepped into my basketball shorts, then my jeans.
Easing up the metal shutter of the peephole, I saw hazel eyes, black lashes, and a red hijab. It was Sudana, a sixteen-years-young Sudanese girl who lives way out in the Bronx, but now she was standing alone on the other side of my door, in the dark, dangerous corridor of my Brooklyn project. Uninvited. I never gave her this address, and she had never, ever been here before. I felt a bad feeling as I quickly unlocked and yanked open the door.
“Umma,” was all I said to her. She smiled calmly and said, “Your Umi is perfectly fine. She’s still at my house with my mom at the women’s meeting.”
Relieved that my sudden and dark intuition was wrong and that this was not an emergency, and that my mother was safe, as she should be, I turned my attention to Sudana, waiting to hear her reason for coming and what she wanted.
“Are you going to continue to block the entrance, or will you invite me in?” she asked. Actually, I wanted her to disappear, leave, so I could get back to my wife. I knew I had to be cautious though, and careful and courteous. Sudana and my mother are close. Sudana’s father and I had done good business together. And for the time that I had recently been traveling in Asia, Sudana’s whole family had taken care of my Umma and my sister Naja for more than a month. I owed her . . . to be grateful.
I saw her eyes moving over my chest, admiring my body. In haste, I was shirtless, unzipped and beltless, sockless . . . I stepped back from the door so she could enter. I locked it behind
her, then quickly picked up my T-shirt and pulled it on. When I turned back to her, she was unwrapping her hijab, which in our faith, and in this situation was forbidden. There was no blood relation between us, and I was a man who could marry her, and she was an unmarried young woman. Her long hair was shining like she taxied over here fresh from the salon. She was watching for my reaction, now that she had showed me what I had never seen before. I gave off nothing. I knew she felt it. She moved her eyes slowly around the living room. First she looked back toward the front door. She paused on Chiasa’s kicks, neatly placed against the wall. She turned again, her eyes landing on Chiasa’s bangles lying on the counter next to the slingshot that she keeps strapped around her right thigh beneath the skirt of her yukata. She paused over the bento box Chiasa had packed and stacked with some foods for our “project picnic.” Then Sudana stood staring at the only half-closed bedroom door. She twisted her body slightly and her gaze landed on my nine-millimeter, then eased back onto me. She had a serious stare now that she had surveyed everything. Her eyes were moving over me. The love that she was searching for in me wasn’t there. My heart was full. And the scent of my wife’s and my lovemaking still hung in the stagnant air.
Perceptive, Sudana switched from speaking the English she had been using to speaking only in Arabic. She realized Chiasa was here with me, and somewhere listening closely. She also knew that Chiasa could not speak or understand Arabic . . . but of course I could. Chiasa remained quiet and out of sight. Even that aroused me.
“I need to speak some private words just for your ears,” she said in Arabic.
“You could’ve waited to tell me whatever you have to tell me when I pick Umma up from your house later on,” I said in Arabic. “It’s not smart or safe for you to just show up here.” I walked over and picked up her hijab. “Put it on,” I told her. Then I heard the shower splash on in my bathroom. My mind switched. I pictured Chiasa naked in the downpour. Can you do that same thing to me that you did to me on our first time? Chiasa had asked me.
“All this time I have been walking around believing that I was doing everything right and that these other nonbelieving girls were all wrong,” Sudana said. I didn’t like her referring to my second wife, who was not born into Islam, but who is Muslim by choice, as kaffir, meaning nonbeliever in Arabic.
Sudana continued in Arabic with soft but strong emphasis and attitude, “But I figured out, when you came back from Japan with wife number two, that these other girls must’ve been right all along—and I must’ve been wrong.”
“Sudana . . .” I interrupted her.
“No, please let me finish,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to say this for more than a month. I’ve been slowly getting up the nerve. I had been waiting for the opportunity where I could speak directly to you, just the two of us. But the chance never happened. We were always surrounded by so many.
“The whole time since you and I first met, I was doing everything you wanted and everything you asked me to do, and caring for your Umma as much as my own mother, even after you returned from Asia, shocking me with this second wife, acting all calm, cool, and casual.”
Sudana’s voice stayed in a controlled tone but her emotion was rising, so I let her get it all out. It didn’t matter. If anything she was saying was against Chiasa as my second wife, she was walking down a dead end.
I met Chiasa in the sky, somewhere over the Siberian mountains. She was asleep on a flight, wearing her naturally long cornrows braided like streaks of lightning. Between her breasts was a gold first-place medal. When Chiasa and I stood face-to-face and eye-to-eye in Narita Airport processing through customs, the thought that came to me, and dropped directly into my mind about Chiasa, was She seems like a gift from Allah. And, if Allah had given me Chiasa, only Allah could take her away, la kadar Allah (God forbid). Sudana would have to chill and learn that she couldn’t love me by force or keep a count or a scorecard somehow declaring herself the winner. True, I had always known Sudana is a beautiful Sudanese young woman who had feelings for me—but the timing between me and her was always off.
“You couldn’t see me. When I was covered, you overlooked me. So I wanted to give you a chance to see me clearly,” she said, holding the fabric of her hijab in one hand. “Take a look,” she said, peeling off her light jacket, the one I’m sure she had to wear to get past her mother and father and brother’s inspection and besides them, all of the Sudanese women at that meeting in the basement apartment of her house. Her red but sheer blouse showcased the cut of her satin bra and perfect figure. She spun around slowly, her jeans hugging her hips, her feet turning in her new red heels, which she wrongly and defiantly didn’t remove when she walked in here.
“Oh these,” she said, stepping out of those red heels. “Same as I stepped into them, I can step out of them.” Her toes were revealed, red polish dusted with crystals. I eased my eyes up and away from her feet. Still, she stood posing and clutching her new red Coach saddlebag.
“Here I am, Sudana Salim Ahmed Ghazzahli, from our country. Speaking our language, from our people, a believer, a muslimah same as you, mussulman. There can’t be anything wrong with any of that. I know those are things that you like; the same things that you love about your mother, Umma. The only thing left has to be that you didn’t see me. Because I was always covered, you didn’t notice that ‘Ana ahla minaha’ I’m prettier than her,” she continued in Arabic, referring to Chiasa by shifting her eyes to the back room. Then Sudana uttered, “I’m more beautiful than both of them,” referring also to my first wife, Akemi.
Chiasa came hurrying out the back bedroom in her black-laced bra and matching panties, her yukata half on, half off. In a frenzy she tied her black yukata and dove for her black Pumas.
“I saw Naja outside running . . .” Chiasa said, now down on one knee tying her laces.
“It couldn’t be Naja. I left her downstairs, indoors with Ms. Marcy,” Sudana said with confidence. “Naja told me that she missed Ms. Marcy,” she added.
She was speaking to my back ’cause I was already out the door. It didn’t matter what Sudana said. Chiasa has perfect vision. I was one hundred that whatever my wife said she saw, she saw. I had my little sister Naja in my first mind, my Nikes on my feet, my nine in my hand. I was on the stairwell. Bulbs were broken and it was darkened; I was headed down.
2. THE EXECUTION
Sometimes it’s in the wind when men walk by one another, moving in opposite directions. I could feel it way back when—that I would murder him. It was just a matter of time, motivation, and just cause. I could sense that he would throw me a reason.
Murder, not kill. A person could be killed in a car accident, or in a storm, or a fire, or by choking on a fishbone. Murder is different. It’s getting slaughtered with full intent. It’s getting gritty and gruesome—hacked up. Eyes plucked, punched, or blown out of their sockets. Sliced open and skinned. Organs ripped out from their flesh frame. Hands twisted off at the wrists. Neck severed from the head. Head blown to bits and pieces.
There are men who deserve to be murdered. To kill ’em would be too compassionate.
Ninety-seven aggressive degrees outside same day, in the same place, my old Brooklyn block, except now it’s 9 p.m. The sweltering orange sun refused to settle. The three-thousand-strong block party was officially over an hour ago. The fire department captain and the DJ were in an intense standoff. The captain had the authority, but the DJ had crowd control. Long as he was spinning the cuts, ain’t nobody leaving the jam.
The Brooklyn crowd shouted and roared with a rapping rhythm, “Don’t stop the music!” A suited public official over a megaphone kept reminding everyone of his name and status and crediting himself. He thanked everyone for coming to his “community event,” and repeatedly asked the crowd to break up peacefully so the cleaning crew could do its job.
Police posed up their power, stepping out of their parked cruisers where they had been slacking and snacking in the air-conditioning. One po-po pulled the plu
g and the speaker system went dead after a screech. But they had interrupted Eric B for President while Rakim was rhyming and hundreds of ’hood heads performed Ra’s rhyme in perfect sync, while others beat-boxed the beats.
From the wall where I was low-leaning, I peeped one cop who reached into his car to trigger the siren. He let the high-pitched sound leak a little, and then deaded it, but kept the red lights spinning. And now cops in other cruisers did the same, a chain reaction of lights and sound. Now there was movement. Now, even I was milling. My eyes speeding over grills and grimaces, T-shirts and kicks, jewels and scars, and watching all hands, all pockets, and all men moving—knowing, at least one of ’em was gonna get mercked, and die before midnight. The ’hood was all hip-hop. But, there was only one joint playing in my head, “In The Air Tonight,” by Phil Collins. The truth of the track, the lyrics and the music, accelerated my anger, as it mixed with my usual calmness and precision. Anger overtook me and then turned to pure fury. My state of mind was explosive. It was burning hot outside. I’m hotheaded, but now my heart is ice cold.
Nigga, not ninja. ’Cause ninjas manage their emotions, eliminate rage, and deliver with ease the takedown of the target at the opportune time, and without leaving a trace.
But this was too personal to organize, calculate calmly or put off for a wiser plan or perfect opportunity, and definitely not for another day. No matter what, in these moments, I could not separate myself from my fury.
Suddenly the moon eclipsed the sun and darkness dropped down disguised as a subtle gray, then drifted into deep black. I didn’t have my silencer on me, but my nine was tucked with one in the chamber. So heated out of my usual posture, I didn’t give a fuck about the boom of my burner, only about the execution.