Midas

19

Nuri Al-Bazaad liked driving American cars.

They were so quiet. When you rolled up the windows all the way, you couldn’t hear a thing. It amazed him every time because it was like being in a small room shut off from the rest of the world. You could see what was going on in that world, you could sense the mayhem, the corruption, the evil all around you, but you couldn’t hear any of it. And it couldn’t touch you. You were sealed off and removed. Safe. Protected.

Everything was soft and spotless inside American cars, too. It must be very similar to being in heaven, Nuri decided. So clean, so far away from the pain of the world, so comfortable and relaxing. He couldn’t wait to go to heaven. Nuri did not like it very much on earth where everything was so filthy and rough and corrupt. Where women exposed themselves and tried to be like men, and nobody had respect for anything or anyone, and everyone was in so much pain. So much awful, awful pain.

Nuri turned up the volume on the car radio now. Not too much, just a little. Just enough so the gentle strings washed over him like a soothing bath. The sound systems in these cars amazed him. It was like having an orchestra playing in the backseat. You could hear the resonance, the timbre in the music. Nuri thought there would have to be beautiful music in heaven, too. He couldn’t imagine it more beautiful than the surround sound coming from the four speakers in the rented Buick.

Nuri was never bored sitting in a car like the one he waited in now. How could you ever get bored? he wondered. As the music played, he slid the front seat back and forth. It moved so easily forward and back, up and down. He was parked now, he had to wait for the people to come out of their house, and he was becoming a little anxious. Not because he was worried about what he was going to do but because he was anxious to drive again. He was very impressed with the smoothness of the ride, the way this car barely felt any bumps, the way it seemed to glide over any obstacle in its path. He had to give credit to the American roads, which were paved and solid and built to last. Not at all like the roads at home, which were hardly even roads; they were ruts for wagons. They were filthy and ragged and bumpy. They were not like the road that led to heaven. That road would be like an American highway: long and straight and smooth and beautiful.

More than anything else, Nuri liked the heating system that warmed the car. He would turn it all the way up and blast himself with hot air until he would be dripping with sweat on even the coldest day. He still had childhood memories of his cold desert home, of lying awake at night shivering, of thinking he would never be warm again, of his father beating him when he had the temerity to ask for a blanket. “Men do not need blankets,” his father would say, and then slap, hard across the face. “Men do not fear the cold.”

Nuri told his father that he wasn’t afraid. But he was. He was very frightened of the cold. As a child, he thought it would freeze him in place, that it would make his blood a solid block of ice the way it did with water, and that he’d be unable to move. He told his father he didn’t need a blanket and he never asked for one again, but he was always afraid that one day the cold would come and take him. It’s why he kept moving. Why he was always running. He wanted to stay one step ahead of the cold.

It would be warm in heaven, he knew. Warm like a rented Buick, driving along strong, sturdy roads with beautiful surround sound music everywhere.

He slouched down behind the steering wheel now, lowering his chin to his neck, his shoulders hunching up tensely, his eyes peering over the top of the dashboard.

They were coming out of the house.

Moving to their car. All of them.

Holding hands and looking happy.

Yes, yes, they were leaving. They were finally leaving, all together.

Life was very good. The heat was blasting and the music was sweet and they were finally emerging from their home.

Nuri started the engine of his Buick, waited until the other car pulled out of the driveway, then he gently put his foot down on the gas pedal and drove carefully after them along the uncrowded street. He shifted into drive, pressed down harder on the accelerator, and stayed with them, always twenty feet or so behind. Always there but never seen.

As he made his way past the manicured lawns and the young boys playing basketball in their driveways and the occasional bundled-up jogger, Nuri Al-Bazaad was very pleased. He knew he’d be in heaven soon. He knew he’d be far away from the squalor and the misery that lurked behind these suburban doors. That lurked behind all doors everywhere. And as he adjusted the thick seat belt that went around his waist and swung over his chest and back, he knew, too, that soon everything would be warm. The explosion he was going to set off would blow warm breath all over him, blow hard enough to make sure his blood could never freeze, hard enough to make him rise into the air and carry him along the beautiful, straight, glimmering road.

All the way to heaven.