Extraordinary Rendition

4

DECADES HAD PASSED SINCE the 1967 and 1968 riots in Newark, yet the corner of Broad Street and Raymond Boulevard still looked devastated. Byron remembered the grainy televised images from 1968 when, at a hamburger joint on Nassau Street while he was still at Princeton, he watched news footage of burning storefronts and overturned cars in Newark during the days after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. In the fuzzy, black-and-white images on the screen, National Guard troops ran chaotically back and forth. Black men stood on the sidewalks and streets, apparently unconcerned with the presence of the tense, obviously frightened soldiers. There were trash fires, smashed store fronts, and burning police cars.

Byron traveled to Newark on the PATH train from Penn Station in Manhattan to Penn Station in this old, eternally decaying city. From the station, he walked to the intersection of Broad Street and Raymond Boulevard. The Al Sunni Mosque glowed brilliantly in the early afternoon sunlight. The crescent-moon symbol fixed at the top of the dome glinted like a curved sword, dazzling.

He saw Khalid Hussein standing near the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the mosque. Just above Khalid was a horizontal screen, at least twenty feet long, on which sentences in English were electronically displayed, moving from left to right like a zipper-message strip in Times Square. The words All are welcome to worship Allah slid across the display board again and again.

Khalid was in a business suit, a somber, heavy-set man noticeably different in appearance and presence from his brother. Now that Byron had seen Ali Hussein three times, he believed there was a possibility that these two men were half-brothers.

Byron knew from his first meeting with Khalid in the diner in Union City that he didn’t shake hands. So Byron didn’t offer his hand as he said, “It’s good to see you, Khalid.”

“How is my brother?”

Byron had also learned that Khalid had zero interest in pleasantries. “Your brother’s a very unhappy man.”

Khalid’s voice was much heavier, far more determined than his brother’s. “Wait until we go inside to tell me more. I want the Imam to hear this.”

Without speaking, Byron walked at Khalid’s side toward the ornate entrance to the mosque. Khalid slipped an identity card through a slot on the fence, and the gate made a magnetic clicking noise as it disengaged from the frame. Between the fence and the mosque’s circular wall was a lush lawn, totally unique in this area of the city, where every bleak surface was either cement or tar. There were fresh, newly planted weeping willows on the lawn. As he walked, Byron touched in his pocket the piece of paper on which the night before he had written words from the ninth chapter of the Koran, words he had found himself reading several times on the train from Manhattan here: Those who were left behind rejoiced at sitting still behind the messenger of Allah, and were averse to striving with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way. And they said: Go not forth in the heat! Say: The heat of hell is more intense of heat, if they but understood.

Every night for the past several weeks Byron had steadily read three pages of the Koran, and from time to time he wrote down passages for no particular reason. Ali Hussein had recently been allowed, because Byron had persisted in asking permission for it, to have a paperback copy of the Koran, in English only because the government wanted to know precisely what its prisoner was reading. Byron wasn’t interested in books that interpreted or explained Islam, a subject to which he had never paid attention beyond what he’d read from time to time over the years in newspapers and magazines. Always with the instincts of a genuine student, he decided to read the Koran itself, without guidance, without preparation for what he might expect, and without any external explanation. What was it, he wanted to know, that this book said? More than two hundred pages into the text, he was baffled. He kept returning to earlier pages, reading out loud, underlining passages, and sometimes putting question marks in the margin. And now he had taken to writing down sentences and paragraphs. What did the words mean? The heat of hell is more intense of heat, if they but understood. In the two hours Byron was now allowed to spend with Ali Hussein on his trips to Miami, Ali had quoted the passage from memory, and it had taken Byron two days to find it. When he did, it was precisely as Ali Hussein had recited. Ali had even recalled the numbers of the separate books of the Koran, the chapter numbers within each book, and the numbers of the verse lines within each chapter that he repeated from memory.

The mosque’s interior was not as ornate as the outside walls and the bronzed, glinting dome. The inside was plain, almost utilitarian, with cinderblock walls, like a public high school cafeteria. Byron, carrying nothing, followed Hussein down a hallway. There seemed to be no other men in the building. Byron, when he had asked Hussein to make arrangements for a visit to the Imam, imagined for some reason that there would be as many guards protecting the Imam as Louis Farrakhan always seemed to have. Certainly Byron never imagined that he could simply walk through a door into the almost bare room in which the Imam sat at a simple wooden desk.

He was smaller and younger than Byron expected, probably no older than thirty-five. When Ali Hussein, at their meeting a week earlier in Miami, told Byron that he was certain his brother could arrange a meeting with the Imam (“Please do this for me, see him and convey my respects to him,” Ali had said), Byron had cruised through the miraculous Internet to search for more information about him. He easily located many entries, mainly copies of news articles and pictures of the man. The photographs were not posted by the Imam or anyone around him; instead, they were pictures posted by people Byron assumed were right-wing American men, who added messages such as “Is this bin Laden’s brother?” and “Put a hole-a-in-the-Ayatollah.”

The man was in a robe. He wore heavy glasses. He had a beard. Somehow he had the look and demeanor, Byron thought, of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. Byron nodded slightly, respectfully, not knowing if this was the proper way to greet a Muslim holy man. He waited for some signal that he should sit. Khalid translated the words the Imam spoke, “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Johnson?”

Byron was surprised that Khalid translated. On one of the Internet sites devoted to the Imam, Byron had seen and heard a video, obviously surreptitiously made, of him speaking in clear English to an audience. In that Internet video, the Arabic translation of what he was saying ran across the lower screen.

Although his face was somber, his voice almost had a lilt, was almost in fact effeminate. Khalid translated, “You have seen our brother Ali?”

Byron was uncomfortable. This was a strange setting-a bare room in a mosque. These men were also strange: a brooding man in typical American clothes and an Arabic-speaking Imam in a robe. This mosque, too, was for Byron otherworldly. He tried to convey nothing of his discomfort, but he was aware of the quaver in his voice. He wondered whether the other men detected it.

“Ali isn’t happy. And I can’t say that he looks healthy.”

And then the soft voice spoke, followed immediately by Khalid’s abrupt-sounding, harsh translation. “The people who did this to our brother are not good people.”

“It’s not those people who concern him,” Byron said. “Ali is very concerned about his wife and children.”

It was Khalid who answered, not the Imam. “They are well taken care of.” Khalid seemed to resent the question.

“But he wants to know where they live, what they’re doing, what’s happened to them.”

Khalid translated Byron’s words, listened to the Imam, and then translated. “You can tell Ali that they have been well cared for.”

“Ali isn’t asking that. He wants to know where they are, what their health is, what schools his children are in.”

Khalid didn’t translate. There was silence in the room. The Imam spoke, and then Khalid said, “What has our brother told you?”

Byron knew that he would confront this problem: he had explained to Ali, when Ali asked that he visit the Imam, that there was very little he could say to him about what Byron and Ali had discussed. Byron had tried to make Ali understand that there was an attorney-client privilege that made it impossible for Byron to tell anyone the words that he and Ali had exchanged. And Byron had explained that, if Ali gave him permission to tell his brother and the Imam what their conversations were, then the attorney-client privilege would be lost and Byron might be required to tell other people as well. He was certain that Ali, an intelligent man who had worked as an accountant, understood. But Ali simply said, “Please, just speak to my brother and the Imam. I want them to know that I’m here, I want them to tell you about my wife and kids, I want you to let them know that you are a life-giver, and that you were able to bring me the holy Koran.”

Byron spoke slowly: “I can’t tell you everything we’ve talked about.”

Again Khalid translated: “What has our brother said to you?”

“I can tell you this: that he was in prisons in Europe, or so he thinks, for two years, and then for years in a hot place, probably Guantanamo, in Cuba; that he has been very badly treated; that he doesn’t know what he’s accused of. And that he now has a copy of the Koran.”

The Imam spoke. Khalid translated: “What did he tell you about the Koran?”

“He said that it was life-giving water to read it again.”

Khalid said, “My brother was always very devout.”

“And he also wanted me to let the Imam know that he has read and understands at last the words of book nine.”

“What words in book nine?”

Byron removed from his pocket the yellow sheet of paper. He read aloud: “Those who were left behind rejoiced at sitting still behind the messenger of Allah, and were averse to striving with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way. And they said, Go not forth in the heat! Say: the heat of hell is more intense of heat, if they but understood.”

Suddenly the Imam, his voice sibilant and rapt, began reciting words in Arabic. It took almost a minute for him to finish. At the end, Khalid said, “The Imam asks that you let our brother know that the next lesson he must understand is in book eight, chapter six, the verses 55 through 62. Ali’s strength is in Allah, in the Glorious Koran.”

Byron had read enough about the Koran to know that its title was properly translated as the Glorious Koran, not just the Koran. He wrote down the reference that the Imam had given him. Book, chapter, lines of verse. 8, 6, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. He knew also that almost every edition of the Koran, no matter who the translator was, had the same chapter, verse and line number so that readers could all find the same text, just as the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays had common chapter, verse, and line numbers.

Then, somewhere outside the room, a bell sounded. Byron had seen a sign indicating that there were classes for children in the building, and the bell, although muffled, sounded like a school bell. There were no children in the building, no sound of children’s voices anywhere.

Khalid stood. Byron did as well. The Imam remained seated. “The Sheik sends his blessings to our brother,” Khalid said.

Three hours later, in his apartment, Byron turned to the passage of the Koran the Imam had mentioned. He had an old translation by a long-dead man who wrote in his preening introduction that he was Marmaduke Pickthall, the first Englishman who had himself become a Muslim to translate the holy text.

Byron read aloud: Lo! The worst of beasts in Allah’s sight are the ungrateful who will not believe. Those of them with whom thou madest a treaty, and then at every opportunity they break their treaty, and they keep not duty to Allah. If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember. And if thou fearest treachery from any folk, then throw back to them their treaty fairly. Lo! Allah loveth not the treacherous. And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip Allah’s purpose. Lo! They cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of armed force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside them whom ye know not. Allah knoweth them. Whatsoever ye spend in the way of Allah it will be repaid to you in full, and ye will not be wronged.

Byron typed these words into his computer. He had developed a habit of typing notes and sending them through the ether by email to himself, so that he had them in both his Sent column and his Old column. He printed out the passage. He planned to take the sheet of paper on his next trip to Miami to read to Ali. He felt it was part of his task to give this man, isolated for so many years from his family, his neighborhood, his surroundings, and his religion, some link to the world he once knew. And Byron believed he could never assess another person’s religion-life had taught him enough about the mysteries of religion that he long ago gave up considering Roman Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, even the Episcopal formalities of his youth, absurd or misguided or useless. They all mattered to billions of people in the world, and sometimes they mattered to him.

From the privacy of his loft apartment on Laight Street in Tribeca, where the sounds of huge garbage trucks and tractor trailers still rumbled at night on the cobblestone pavements of the old warehouse district, he gazed at the top of the Empire State Building. Shimmering red and blue lights were draped over its heights. He then read again: Lo! Allah loveth not the treacherous. And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip Allah’s purpose.

“What the hell,” he said aloud, “can this mean?”