Degrees of Intimacy Ch. 08

"He died. He was killed by the bastard... bastard... He was one of those... And I was... I feel so very, so very..."

Hamid held her sobbing body to his equally naked body, gaining comfort somehow from this shared misery. He wrapped his arms around her back and felt the tears rise in his own eyes as they did on so many occasions this last year.

But for him, this was the first time he had cried in the presence of anyone outside his immediate family. He was ashamed, as any man should be, for expressing his emotions so nakedly and so pathetically when surely the impact of that tragic event should have lessened somewhat by now.

When he'd first learnt of the destruction of the World Trade Center, his foreboding about his brother's involvement made his own horror much deeper and more intense than that of his friends. He was angry, angrier than he thought possible, when some people cheered the event as a kind of Islamic revenge on the evils met upon the Palestinians. There were people, real people, involved in that horror, who in no way deserved to die on a day when their only crime was to have gone to work.

But he also felt a guilt that he had alerted no one of his fears on the day he last spoke to his brother, six months before. That feeling of guilt worsened when it was confirmed that his brother was indeed one of the perpetrators of that crime. It was he who was amongst those terrorists who had booked a flight on the plane that hit the South Tower so soon after the first collision.

He had to endure many questions and interrogations about his brother's role in the crime. First from the local Moroccan police and then, with subtlety and persistence, from the mysterious Americans who detained him and the rest of his family. At the end of it, his father was forced to sell his business and the family name was no longer to be associated with the factory Hamid had known all his life.

Hamid could no longer tolerate the weight of guilt that tormented him. He finally confessed to his surprisingly sympathetic American interrogators that he hadn't notified anyone of his fear that his brother was engaged in some dreadful plot. And then he felt guilt that he had, in some way, betrayed the confidence of a brother who was now just cinders in a city he had never visited.

Marianne was surprised by the intensity of Hamid's sorrow. In some strange way, it seemed almost to exceed even her own. She and Hamid rocked together on the narrow bed, their tears commingling, while Marianne reflected that perhaps Hamid too had lost someone on that dreadful day. She never suspected how very different was the role played by the object of Hamid's loss to her own.

"There! There!" she repeated again and again, astonished to find such an unlikely ally in grief.

But she was also happy that it could be expressed in such an intimate way. Although she had no idea how few degrees of separation there were between the perpetrator and the victims of that awful tragedy, she certainly appreciated the degree of intimacy she felt for Hamid at that moment.