It was strange, waking to silence, in such an uncomfortable, foreign environment. At home, they woke to the adhan every morning, ringing out from two dozen mosques in the neighborhood. Back in their coral house. With their two beloved children.
That all seemed like somebody else’s life now — finishing up her residency, worrying about what to make for dinner, eating alone with Fahd and Aamina most nights while Tariq worked late at his accounting firm.
That was before he started coming home from the mosque talking about American devils, and the inevitable war — any number of things Hala knew in her heart to be true. He rambled nightly about how the United States was a cancer, one that would spread and infect the entire globe if it was left unchecked.
And now here they were. The Wayfarer Hotel. Washington. The previous night she had nearly killed a man on the street. A petty thief.
The clock on the nightstand said four fifty. Hala slipped out from under the cheap hotel comforter and took the television remote to the foot of the bed. She sat there in her nightgown, flipping channels with the sound off so as not to wake Tariq.
It was the same story everywhere — CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. The Coyle kidnapping had become a national obsession, while the suicides at Dulles had already disappeared into the background. It seemed so incredibly apt to her. Systematic. What were two dead Arabs worth here, as compared to two white, wealthy American children? Everything had a price in this country. Everything. And these self-obsessed fools wondered why the rest of the world hated them?
As to whether any of these recent events had something to do with the lack of communication from The Family since they’d arrived, Hala could only guess. It had been four days of convenience store food and lying low in this dank hotel room, this cave, waiting for word that she’d begun to suspect might not be coming.
“Hala?” Behind her on the bed, Tariq stirred. “Ha-laa. Turn it off. It only upsets you.”
“It’s always the same,” she said. “Every single channel. The same babble, the same video.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why you should turn it off. Leave it off, my darling.”
She reached up to do it, but then stopped short when the light from the screen caught something on the floor. It was a glossy piece of paper, or a brochure of some kind.
Someone had slipped a note under the door in the night.
Even before she knew what it was, Hala’s pulse began to race faster.
“What is it?” Tariq asked. “When did it come? Who delivered it?”
“It’s from the Smithsonian,” she said, bringing it for a better look under the bedside lamp. “The Museum of Natural History. I’m sure it wasn’t there before.”
They unfolded it on the bed.
Inside, the brochure showed a map of the museum’s galleries and current exhibits, but it was nothing more than any ordinary tourist might pick up. There were no instructions or additional markings of any kind. And yet, wasn’t that exactly what she and Tariq were meant to be here — just any tourists?
“It says they open at ten,” she read off the page.
For Hala, the implication was clear. First contact had finally been made.
THIS WAS IT, then. Their mission had begun. Something involving the president’s missing children? That could very well be.
It was odd that they would be as much in the dark as everyone else in Washington. Odd, but also brilliant, wasn’t it? The Family gave them only as much information as they would need to fulfill their obligations — no more, no less.
At nine thirty, the Al Dossaris left their hotel and walked the glass and concrete canyon of Twelfth Street all the way down to the National Mall. They passed through the high-columned entrance of the Museum of Natural History just minutes after it opened, blending easily into the crowd of international tourists and school groups already clogging the galleries.
This was it.
But it wasn’t.
For the next two hours, they wandered in a perpetual state of anxiety and frustration. Hala passed by glass cases of preserved sea creatures, and fossilized remains, and African artifacts, never quite seeing any of it. She focused on the faces of the people instead, scanning for anything that might tell them why they were here. The waiting, the suspense, was becoming excruciating, almost impossible to bear.
It wasn’t until their fifth or sixth pass through the museum’s central rotunda that something finally happened.
A dark-eyed young woman with an ornate neck tattoo caught Hala’s gaze from across the room. She held it for several seconds and then looked away, ostensibly taking in the enormous bull elephant that dominated the space between them.
Hala stopped to regard the display, then looked back. Again, the girl was staring. Was she from The Family? Or was this just Hala’s imagination working too hard?
“Tariq?” she said.
“I see her,” he said. “Go. I think she wants to talk.”