The Loop

July 30th

“Okay, my son, tell us again. And slow down. There is nothing so serious that you can’t take your time to explain it properly.”

My father was wrong about that in general. There were many instances where you couldn’t take the time to explain things properly. If you found yourself inside a burning building, for instance. In this case, though, he was probably right. I wasn’t rushing through my announcement because the house was on fire and we had to evacuate quickly, but because I was nervous and just wanted to get it over with.

“Father,” I began, “Mother, as you both know, the world is in a state of upheaval.” My parents nodded vigorously, reassuring me that this fact, at least, was not lost on them. I continued, “there is nothing in the Qur’an that speaks of times like these—times exactly like these, I mean to say.” I pushed ahead before my father could interrupt with something from the Qur’an or a Hadith that might be close enough to fit what was going on, if you were willing to stretch some definitions.

“Furthermore, I do not believe, as many at the Mosque and elsewhere have been saying, that these things that have been happening are signs of the end times. I believe that what is happening now is an unprecedented event, unforeseen by Muhammed or any other prophet, in Islam or any other religion.”

“What are you saying, child?” my mother asked. She wore a hard mask, but I could see that her eyes still held their characteristic warmth and love. I was reassured and I pushed on.

“I am no longer certain what I believe. And, until I figure it out, I will not be going to the mosque for prayer. I will be praying on my own time and in my own way.”

This overly formal way of speaking to my parents felt odd, even to me, but it was the only way I could be taken seriously by them. They were both highly intelligent, well-spoken people, and they expected—no, demanded—well-constructed sentences and thought-out arguments.

“My son, much of what you say is true,” said my father, ever the diplomat. “The world is going through a period of much uncertainty. It is in these times, however, that we need Allah and his guidance most, is it not?”

“Father, I believe you are right. But is it not true that Allah speaks into the hearts of men? Is it not true that he speaks to all of his followers?”

“So you believe yourself to be—what? A prophet?” asked my father. “Jaleel, I love you, but what you’re suggesting isn’t our way. Maybe your Christian friends feel that they have a personal enough relationship with their God that they can call him up and speak with him whenever they like, and never go to church and still be in His good graces. But you know that being a faithful Muslim isn’t just about your relationship with Allah. It’s about how you praise him. And that must be in accordance with the practices of the faith.”

“Your father is right,” said my mother. What a surprise, I thought. But that wasn’t fair. My mother was far more progressive and independent than was typical for many women in our faith. Both my parents were more progressive than most of their peers, in fact. That was a big part of the reason why they’d been attracted to one another, and why they had moved to America rather than stay in my mother’s native Pakistan or my father’s homeland of Nigeria. It was this openness that was why they were even entertaining this conversation at all.

Still, progressive as they were, and sure as I was that they would yield on this matter, I doubted that either of them would be so receptive if I told them the secret that I had held in my heart for as long as I could remember.

“Mother,” I said, knowing that while she might put on a show of acquiescing to whatever my father said, her influence over him was the true power in this house. “I’m not suggesting that I am stepping away from the faith, nor renouncing Allah, nor doubting the guidance of our Imam or the teachings of the prophet Muhammed. I am only saying that I need some time to myself to better understand my faith, and how the recent developments in the world play a part in it. I am certain I am not the only Muslim experiencing this right now, nor the only person of any faith.”

This was somewhat true; I had read online that church attendance in America had shot up to unprecedented levels in the past weeks, but I had the feeling that the inverse would soon happen. As people found that the answers to their questions couldn’t be found in the reassuring—or warning—words of some man on a pulpit, they’d become disillusioned with the whole mess, maybe for good.

My mother gave my father a pointed look that I’m sure she thought I couldn’t see.

“Son,” said my father, “I would be lying to you if I told you that I have not had questions of faith in the last two weeks. And I do believe it is up to each man and woman to find their own way to Allah. All we can do, as your parents, is try our best to guide you in the way we believe is best. No matter what you do, though, we will love you.”

“I agree with your father,” said my mother. “We love you. Take what time you need. Allah will not abandon you, and neither will we.”

“And after all,” said my father, “being too dogmatic can result in as much folly as being faithless. Just look at your uncle Talib for proof of that. I would far rather you take some time away from the Mosque and the rigors of faith than go down a path like he has.” His voice remained firm, but his eyes were sad. I knew the feeling. Thinking of uncle Talib was tough.

“Thank you father,” I said. “Thank you mother. I appreciate your understanding.”

“Now,” said my father, his face softening into a grin, “I believe you have obligations that are not faith-based. For instance, unless you leave right now, you’re certainly going to be late for work.” He smiled at me.

I looked at my watch. Oh shit, I thought, but did not say. Announcing that I wouldn’t be going to mosque was one thing, but swearing in front of my parents would have been a bridge too far.

“Love you, mom. Love you, dad,” I said, slipping into less formal speech now that the important discussion was over. I gave each of them a quick hug before running out the door.

I knew they were hiding their disappointment. I knew they would feel shame when they showed up to the mosque for prayers on Friday without me. I also knew they’d quickly get over it. Their love wasn’t just a farce, and it trumped everything else. Almost everything, I thought, thinking again of the deeper secret in my heart that I could never tell them.

———————

“Jaleel, what’s up, man?” asked Harper as I walked in.

“Not too much,” I answered. Lately she’d been weirdly friendly toward me. I had done nothing to earn or elicit this kind of warmth; in fact, the only interaction I'd had with her before she started being nicer was when I called her out for behaving rudely toward Christine. Why would my unkindness to her make her kinder to me? Was it sarcasm? I didn’t think so.

“How have you been?” I asked, trying to return her politeness.

“Fine, fine. I work here so I’m always doin’ fine. You must know that by now.”

“Of course,” I said, smiling.

“Full house in here today,” she said, nodding toward Christine, who was hanging out in the kitchen even though she wasn’t on the schedule and wasn’t in work clothes.

“Hey, Jaleel,” she said, noticing me for the first time. “I hope you’re not too much of a stickler for procedure. I’m just here to talk to Adam.”

I smiled. Finally, some progress for these two, I thought.

“Yes, actually,” I said. “I’ve already told Derek that you’re in the kitchen without an apron on. I believe he’s contacting the authorities as we speak.”

She gave me a quizzical look, as if assessing whether or not I was serious. It wasn’t that what I’d said wasn’t patently absurd, I thought, just that none of them were used to me cracking jokes—maybe didn’t know I was capable of it. Finally, she broke into a broad smile.

“Asshole,” she muttered.

“Where is Adam, by the way?” I asked.

“He’s just running a bag out to the dumpster,” said Harper. “Although he’s been out there for like five minutes. Maybe he fell in.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s another bag here. Maybe someone should take it out and check on him?”

They both turned to stare at me in unison.

“Right,” I said. “I guess that’s me elected, then.”

I tied the bag up and made my way around the prep station that dominated the middle of the kitchen and out the back door. I was pushing the door open with my back, and so was not facing Adam or the dumpster when I came outside.

“Adam, man. You out here?” I asked.

There was no response. I turned around, expecting to see Adam standing near the dumpster, but instead I saw him forty feet away, crouching down and looking at something on the ground at the far end of the gravel lot, right at the edge of the woodland that surrounded the restaurant on three sides.

“Adam!” I shouted to get his attention. “What’ve you got there?”

“Shit,” I heard him say, although not loudly enough that he could have meant it for me.

I approached slowly, trying to see around him. He wasn’t moving as he stared down at whatever it was, and he didn’t turn to face me as I approached.

“Jaleel,” he said when I got within five feet of him, “you might want to turn around and head back inside. You might not want to see this.”

There was no better way to get a person’s curiosity than to tell them they might not want to see something, I thought. I came around his left side and finally saw what he was looking at.

The object was lying in a depression in the earth probably five inches deep and two feet long. The depression was deepest at the point where the object lay, as if it had struck the ground forcefully at an angle and been brought to a stop by the friction of moving through the earth.

Adam pointed back toward the building. “See the lid of the dumpster?” he asked. I followed his gaze to where the large dumpster was backed against the rear wall of the restaurant.

“Uh-huh,” I managed. I noticed that the dumpster’s steel lid had a large dent in the middle.

“I figure it hit the dumpster, bounced up in the air, and came to rest over here.”

“Must’ve hit pretty hard,” I said.

“Mhmm.”

I came in closer and crouched next to Adam to inspect the object, although I was already certain what I was looking at by then. It was, to my eye, a perfect sphere of unmarred and uniform glass, or perhaps steel. The material was impossible to determine because of how perfectly smooth and shiny it was. It reflected everything in the distorted way of a funhouse mirror. It reminded me somehow of the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago. I remembered seeing it while on a trip there with my parents when I was very young. I remembered the funny shapes it turned everything into. I looked into the object on the ground in front of me, and couldn’t help but notice how much bigger the me in the object looked. Adam, too. Our reflections were larger than life.

“It’s like a mirror-ball,” he said. “Or a mirror orb? Yeah, I like orb better.”

“Have you noticed how … clean it is?” I asked.

“What do you mean? Of course it’s clean.”

I saw his point. It was impossible to imagine this object being anything but clean.

“Yeah, but … It crashed into a dumpster, bounced in the air, and then forced itself into the ground. I get it not being dented—it’s obviously very durable. But shouldn’t it have some dirt on it or something?”

“Does it look … familiar to you?” he asked.

I couldn't say that it did, but the entranced look on his face made me rethink answering; I wasn't sure he'd hear me anyway.

“It just feels like everything is coming together somehow. Like I know what this thing is. Like I've seen it. Like … did I dream this? Am I dreaming right now?”

I could tell that none of these questions were aimed at me. I didn't think he even realized he was speaking out loud.

He reached a hand out toward the object. His eyes had gone glassy and unfocused. My hand shot out instinctively and grabbed his. My heart was suddenly racing.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know … I thought I saw some dirt on it when you said it should be dirty. I don’t know what I saw. I don't know what I thought.” His eyes looked normal again, but he still couldn’t stop looking at the object. I found it increasingly hard to pull my own eyes away from it.

“We could, though, you know?” he said.

“Could we?” I asked, not quite sure what he meant.

“Of course we could. Why shouldn’t we?”

I was barely listening to him anymore, but that isn’t to say I wasn’t listening to anything, or anyone. There was a whispering voice in my ears. It was almost too quiet to register as speech, but my brain understood what it was saying.

Adam started reaching out his hand again and this time I made no move to stop him. A moment before his fingers made contact with the orb’s surface, I became suddenly aware of what was happening. I jerked my hands out, intending to push him away, but I was too late. His fingers touched the orb, the orb glowed violently bright for an instant, and Adam fell over on the ground as if dead. There was a ringing in my ears, like you’d expect in the aftermath of an explosion, only there’d been no explosion.

“Adam? Adam!”

He stirred slightly. My confidence that he was still alive having been restored, I focused once again on the orb, but it no longer held any special appeal to me. It looked somehow duller, less shiny, less perfect. There was no more whispering in my ears. I almost reached out my hand and touched it, feeling a sudden certainty that it was nothing but some sort of oversized ball bearing and that all I’d feel was some cold, smooth steel. Then I remembered that touching it had done something to Adam, and decided I’d better wait until he came to.

I didn’t have long to wait, but it was long enough for Christine to come out the back door, looking impatient and confused. When she saw us at the back of the lot, with Adam keeled over on the ground, her expression turned to one of intense concern. She rushed over, shouting something over her shoulder to someone, probably Harper, still in the kitchen.

She came to an abrupt stop a few feet away from Adam, who was now starting to sit up, but it wasn’t him she was looking at. She was staring directly over our heads at the orb.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

I nodded.

“And did he … Did Adam touch it?”

I nodded again.

“Oh, Adam.” She sighed and sat on the ground next to him. “What the fuck did you do?”

Finally Adam sat up fully, looking nowhere but straight at Christine, straight into her eyes.

“Chris?” he said. “I feel … different. I think you should touch it, too.”

I expected her to hesitate—I thought I would have if he’d given me the same directive—but instead she did exactly as he said, and without hesitation, as if she was already planning on touching it and his words had only reminded her of the fact. Once again the orb glowed, but not, I thought, as brightly as the first time. Again my ears started ringing. And, just like Adam had, Christine fell over sideways. Adam smiled at her.

“Why the fuck would you make her do that?” I asked, unable or unwilling to accept what I was seeing.

“It told me to,” Adam said simply. “Four charges left, Jaleel, and I want you to be one of them, too. You have to touch it.”

I must have stared at him for a full minute before the most startling thing about what he’d said occurred to me; he had spoken to me without opening his mouth.

Taking myself completely by surprise, I did as he suggested. It wasn't even like acting upon a compulsion, instead it was like watching myself from the outside. As soon as my hand met the orb—far smoother than I could have imagined, far colder than I knew anything could be—my entire perception was overwhelmed by a burst of noise and light unlike anything I’d ever known. It wasn’t coming from the orb, it was inside my head. It was primarily blue, but there were other colors as well. And the noise was violently loud, but pleasant, like being in the middle of a thunderstorm but knowing you’re perfectly safe and cozy in a well-built house. My mind tried to resolve the assault of light and sound into familiar shapes, and it succeeded somewhat; I thought I saw my parents. I thought I saw stars and comets traveling across the sky. I thought I saw a man made of shadow. I thought I saw a man with many arms and legs and faces. I thought I saw myself from the outside, floating in a void. Finally I saw a T.V. with the news turned on, and the headline at the bottom of the screen read “Body of One of Two Missing McArnold Women, Shannon Park, Found.” The images faded along with my memories of them as I woke up on the ground next to the other two.

“You have to find the rest,” I said to Adam, not entirely sure what I meant.

Well there’s one right there, he said, and again his mouth didn't move. He was pointing back at the restaurant, where Harper was just now emerging through the door and making her way toward us.

I smiled at Christine.

“Perfect,” she said, making no attempt to mask her sarcasm. As she said it, I could have sworn the air around me got colder and the whole world became darker for a moment.