Forgiving Ararat (26 page)

“Listen,” I tell him, “I’m sorry about what happened to your mother and grandmother. I’ll do anything I can to make it better. You’ve got to understand, it was the government, not us, who put her in jail. We had no control—”

Ott slams the gun so hard into my side that I lose my breath.

The road ends at a crumbling cinderblock building protruding from the ground like an ugly scab with windowless walls standing barely one-story tall, pocked with black streaks of mold and a leprosy of flaking white paint. It resembles the shell of an abandoned industrial building and looks out of place in the country. The cloying stench of manure and mushrooms make the air heavy and difficult to breathe.

We pull to a stop about twenty yards away. With the headlights illuminating the building, Tim leaves the engine running, pulls his gun, and goes inside. Ott waits nervously in the car with me until Tim reappears at the door and waves all-clear, then disappears inside again. Ott climbs out and orders Sarah and me out with him. Pretending to fix my suit jacket, I stall for time.
This may be our only chance.
Ott is standing at the end of the open rear door, his head turned over his shoulder looking at the building; the engine is running, but he could easily stop me if I tried to climb over the seat.
I have to get him away from the car.
I gently place Sarah into the footwell where she’ll be safe. She stirs and looks up at me; under the dome light on the roof of the car, her eyes reflect back her love for me, as though she knows what I am about to do and she’s thanking me for risking my life for her. She’s trying to be so brave. I love her with all my heart. Tears fill my eyes.

I climb out of the car, shaking. Ott’s waiting for me but still looking at the building. He’s only a few inches taller than me and not nearly as intimidating as Tim. I decide what to do. I place my left hand on the door frame for balance and then, with all my strength, I thrust my knee up hard into his groin. He doesn’t see it coming and instantly collapses to the ground with a sucking groan.
It worked!
I slam the rear door closed, jump in the driver’s seat, and hit both locks with my elbow. As I reach around the steering wheel with my left hand to shift the gear selector into reverse, Tim comes running from the building at full speed, covering the ground so quickly that by the time I step on the accelerator, he’s already even with my door and he’s pointing his gun straight at me through the window. Time slows again, slicing the final moments of my life into small frames to be archived for the rest of eternity, decoupling memory from reality and reaching back to everything before—to the hands that bathed me when I was delivered from my mother’s womb and hugged me as a young child, to my husband, my family, my friends, my daughter...to the moments and the memories that had become Brek Abigail Cuttler. But just as Tim is about to fire, Ott lunges up at him from the ground, causing his gun to bark harmlessly into the air.

Suddenly there is life, and perspective accelerates to real time, to the blur of adrenaline and the desire to live. The car roars backward, toward home and safety, toward all we had created. I’m racing backward so quickly and the path is so narrow that I lose control and we careen into a tree with a terrible jolt. Sarah starts wailing. I slam the gear shift into drive and stomp again on the accelerator, steering straight for Ott, who is on his knees aiming his gun at us. He fires four shots. The car slows and becomes less responsive, and I realize he’s shot out one of the front tires. For a fraction of a second, I think of swerving to avoiding hitting him because he has just spared my life twice; but we are frozen in time, Ott Bowles and I, controlled by instinct and the will to survive. I accelerate straight for him but he rolls out of the way at the last second and the car plows into a manure pile. Determined to win our freedom, I rap the selector into reverse again and stomp on the accelerator. There’s a loud explosion and the rear door window shatters into a hailstorm of glass pellets. Ott is sprawled on the trunk with half his body sticking through the rear window, his gun pointing down at Sarah in the footwell, both arms outstretched and locked, police style. I hit the brakes and bring the car to a stop.

“Don’t make me do this!” Ott yells at me. “Don’t make me do this!” His chest is heaving, every muscle tensed.

“Do it!” Tim shouts from the other side of the car, his eyes wide and crazed, intoxicated by the violence. “Do it now!”

Ott hesitates, and in that moment of indecision I shut off the engine and hand Ott the keys over my shoulder.

“Take it,” I say, my voice quivering, just above a whisper, desperate to calm him down. “Please. She’s just a baby. Take it.”

“S
o, how long have you known Holden Hurley?” Ott Bowles asked the well-dressed, dark haired, bearded man seated across from him at the small cocktail table. He asked this question while sipping a beer and following the major league baseball game playing on a television over the bar.

“Two years,” the man said, exhaling smoke from a cigarette, uninterested in the game.

It was late afternoon, on a bright, summer Saturday, and the bar was deserted. Ott was not yet of legal age to consume alcohol, but Trudy, the owner of the bar built against a mountain on Route 26 between Huntingdon and Altoona, served her customers without regard to age and, for this reason, Ott had been there many times. Trudy was a large woman with flaming red hair, and this afternoon she sat behind the bar watching the game and waiting for customers. The man sitting across from Ott was obviously of legal age but he sipped club soda through a straw.

“Yes!” Ott said, clenching his fist as a runner crossed home plate. “Bottom of the ninth, and the Pirates just scored, they’re coming back!” He swallowed a gulp of beer and belched. “You got to admit, Sam,” he said, “that Hurley’s one weird dude.”

“He is a bit eccentric,” Sam said, “but he’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. He could build a computer out of cereal boxes and sell steaks to vegetarians.”

Ott studied Sam’s blue eyes and dark complexion and laughed. “That’s true,” he said. “But, I don’t know...I think he actually dreams he’s Hitler when he’s asleep. He’s got some pretty extreme ideas.”

“He’s not such a bad guy,” Sam said, taking another drag on his cigarette. “Everybody has dreams, and dreams sometimes become reality if you work at them long enough. He’s been good to me. I owe him.”

Ott picked up his beer and turned back to the baseball game. He didn’t like talking about Holden Hurley and wished he hadn’t even brought him up. He enjoyed the camaraderie of The Eleven enough, and the military training and the paintball war games they played—and the way everybody treated him like a celebrity because of his family’s past—but he couldn’t understand the president of The Eleven’s rabid hatred of Jews and blacks—it was just this kind of extreme racism that made people believe the Holocaust actually did happen. Sam’s defense of Hurley meant he was probably just as radical. “Where are you from?” Ott asked, changing the subject.

“New York.”

“No, I mean your family. What kind of name is Samar Mansour...French?”

“No, it’s Palestinian, actually.”

Ott examined Sam more closely. He could see the Arab face now—the steep nose, beard, and dark skin, but where did those blue eyes come from? Ott had never known an Arab, and he couldn’t imagine somebody like Holden Hurley doing anything to help one. Hurley hated anybody who wasn’t white and a Christian. Maybe it was because Sam seemed more European than Middle Eastern, with his aloof attitude, articulate speech, and pressed blue cotton dress shirts and black pants—more like a Londoner or a Parisian. “When did your family come here?” Ott asked, looking back up at the baseball game.

“My dad came over when he was about your age. He was one of the Palestinian refugees...his parents were killed by the Jews during the war in 1948.”

Ott glanced at him, then back at the game.

“Most Palestinians stayed in the Middle East,” Sam continued, “but after the war my father got a job carrying equipment for an archaeologist on a dig in Jerusalem. He was a professor from over at Juniata College; Mijares was his last name. I think he was Argentinean. In any case, he was very wealthy, and very generous, and he liked my father; I guess he thought my dad was pretty smart, because he offered to send him to college here, all expenses paid. My father accepted. He attended Columbia University, married an American woman, and stayed. I was born in New York.”

Sam waved for Trudy to bring them another round of drinks.

“Be right there, honey,” she said, pulling two glasses from under the bar, grateful for something to do.

“Just another refugee story,” Sam said to Ott. “Not very different from your own.”

Ott was thinking the same thing. He finished his beer, accidentally dribbling a little onto his t-shirt. “You know my story?” he asked, reaching across to another table for a bar napkin.

“I know all about you,” Sam said. “Brian and Holden told me a little, and I’ve done some research on the Rabuns too. I’ve spent a lot of time doing research in Germany, actually. People don’t realize it but Germans and Arabs have a lot in common.
Das ist warum ich beginnen wollte, Sie zu kennen
.”

A look of surprise flashed across Ott’s face. “
Sie sprechen Deutsches
?”

“
Wenig
.”

“
Wieviele Male sind Sie nach Deutschland gewesen?
”

“
Ich habe ein ungefähr Jahr dort verbracht
.”

They stopped speaking in German when Trudy brought the drinks to the table.

“You boys want anything from the grill?” she asked. “I can fix you some burgers.”

Sam shook his head, no. “You want anything, Ott?” he asked, “I’m buying.”

“No, thanks,” Ott said.

“You boys just let me know,” Trudy replied, a little disappointed. She returned to her stool behind the bar to watch the game.

“Too bad about Brian, wasn’t it?” Ott asked.

“Yes,” Sam said. “He was pretty young to have a heart attack, and in good shape. I guess you never know.”

“The funeral was tough; Tim and his mom took it hard. On top of everything else, I guess Brian had everything mortgaged to the hilt and stopped paying his life insurance. They have to sell their house and the mushroom farm to pay off their debts. Tim’s been staying with me for awhile.”

“He’s lucky to have you as a friend,” Sam said. “It must have been hard on you when you lost your grandmother. She was a great woman; I admired her a lot. It wasn’t that long ago, was it?”

Ott nodded uncomfortably, losing eye contact. “About a year now, I guess—less than a year after she got out of prison. Prison killed her. We were real close.” He looked out the window painfully, filled with grief and pent-up rage, then back again at the baseball game. “How come I never see you at any of the meetings?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’m not exactly a member,” Sam said. “The Eleven supports what I’m doing, and I support what they’re doing.”

“What
are
you doing?” Ott asked.

“I’m making a documentary proving the Holocaust was a hoax.”

The Pirates scored another run on the television. Sam looked up, but suddenly Ott was no longer interested in the game. “So
you’re
the one?” Ott said, amazed. “Brian told me he knew somebody making a documentary about the Holocaust, but he wouldn’t tell me anything more than that.”

Sam turned from the television back to Ott and grinned like the player who had just scored the run. “It’s been a secret,” he said, “but now that I’m finished, Holden thought I should talk to you and maybe you could help. That’s why I wanted to meet with you today.”

“Can I see it?” Ott asked eagerly.

“Sure, soon.”

“Are you some kind of filmmaker? How many documentaries have you done?”

“No,” Sam said. “I was just finishing my Ph.D. in history at Juniata, actually—as a recipient of the Mijares Fellowship. The documentary is my first; it was supposed to be part of my dissertation, but the head of the history department is a Jew and, for obvious reasons, he wasn’t too happy with my subject or my conclusions. He gave me the option of picking a new topic or leaving school without the degree. I left. Holden heard about it and he and The Eleven have been funding the project for two years. Now all I need is some money to get it distributed.”

“Wow,” Ott said. “I give you credit for taking on one of the most controversial issues in the world. But it’s going to be pretty tough convincing people the Holocaust was a hoax. Don’t get me wrong...nothing would make me happier than finding out it was a lie, but I’ve seen the pictures and read the histories. I’ve been to some of the camps too. My family built the incinerators. There’s a lot of evidence out there to disprove.”

Sam frowned. “But you don’t really believe your family, or your countrymen, would murder millions of their own people in cold blood, whether they were Jews or not, do you? It doesn’t make any sense; the Germans weren’t barbarians, they were Europeans. I’m a student of history, Ott, and as a student of history, I’ve learned that the men who leave a mark on this world are the ones who turn black into white and white into black; it’s along the border between opposites that we find the energy to create and to destroy.” Sam crushed his cigarette in the ashtray on the table as if illustrating his point. “Atoms split and fuse into world-changing bombs; tectonic plates shift and new continents are formed; politicians make peace into war and war into peace; religions turn sinners into saints and saints into sinners. Have no doubt: the actions of men are good or evil depending upon which quality we choose to see.”

The beer was hitting Ott now, and he was beginning to enjoy himself. He felt a warm tingling in his lips and forehead. Sam wasn’t the extremist he feared after all; he was a rational thinker, a man who used logic and reason. Ott liked philosophical discussions, and the challenge of talking to educated people; he believed he could do well in college, and he was even thinking about going, maybe to a university in Germany. He hadn’t done much of anything in the year since he graduated from high school, except hang out at the mansion in Buffalo or at The Eleven’s training compound in the woods near Huntingdon. Most of The Eleven were just disgruntled local men, unemployed or underemployed; they drove pickup trucks, drank beer, loved guns, and hated Jews and blacks but couldn’t tell you why. Although Hurley was an extremist, he had taken Ott into his confidence and shown him how to use The Eleven’s sophisticated satellite telephones, encryption technology, and remote computer servers that would ensure secure communication when the race war Hurley dreamed of finally started. Maybe, Ott thought, he would study computers in college. He liked the precision and unambiguousness of math, and computers gave him the unconditional acceptance he craved.

“Think about all the great men,” Sam continued. “Einstein demonstrated that mass is energy and energy, mass—that’s turning black into white and white into black. Galileo demonstrated that the earth orbits the sun. Columbus demonstrated that the earth is round. Moses demonstrated that the Law is the only way, then Jesus came along and demonstrated that love is the only Law, and later the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, came along and convinced the world that the Law is the only love. All black into white and white into black. In the entire history of the human race, of all the billions of people who have lived and died, we remember only a few thousand at most. These are the men who demolished prevailing beliefs and formed new worlds using contradiction as their chisel. That’s why they’re remembered . . . and that’s how I want to be remembered.”

“Interesting,” Ott said. “I agree with you, but that still doesn’t prove the Holocaust was a hoax.”

“Two outs,” Sam said, glancing up at the television. “I know you, Ott,” Sam said. “I know what you want. I’m just like you.”

Ott looked down, embarrassed.

“I’m not a religious zealot, and neither are you” Sam continued. “We’re practical men. My mother was a Roman Catholic, and that’s how I was raised; I converted to Islam purely for authenticity. The simple reality is this: In 1948, the Jews evicted Arab families from their homes and re-created a state that didn’t exist between the year seventy and nineteen forty-eight. Think about that. There was no Israel for one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-eight years. What happened to the Jews in the nineteen forties to change all that?”

“The Holocaust?” Ott said.

“See, I told you we think alike,” Sam said. Ott smiled. “Now, the Jews base their claim to Palestine on a four thousand year old legend of self-serving hearsay—an alleged oral promise supposedly made by God to Abraham. There’s no writing, no deed, no nothing; just a single Hebrew man’s claim that God told him the land was his and his descendents’. God didn’t tell the rest of the world about the deal; he didn’t say a single word about it to the other people living there; he supposedly just whispered it to
one
man, who happened to be a Jew, who happened to want to live there. If that happened today, and this guy showed up in court to claim his land, he would be laughed out of the place; but since it happened four thousand years ago, and one of the guy’s ancestors wrote it down in the Bible, some people believe it must be true. Amazing. That’s a pretty thin reed to build a country on, but it’s not by any means unprecedented. Every civilization, and every conquering power, has claimed their land as a matter of Divine Providence; that’s what leaders need to say to motivate their people to kill other people, and that’s what leaders and their people need to say to each other to soothe their consciences.

“Now think about this: For nearly two thousand years, this alleged promise from God wasn’t enough to restore Palestine to the Jews. If God really wanted the Jews to have that land, don’t you think he would have made sure they had it? He is, after all,
God
. So, again, any rational human being would conclude that the claim that God promised the Jews a home in Palestine is a fabrication, pure and simple. But the Jews have been clinging to it for two thousand years, because they really want that land. Then, in 1948, they finally get their chance.

“There’s no dispute that many millions of people were killed during World War II; it was an ugly, horrendous war. And there’s no doubt that the Nazis, like the Soviets, had prison camps and they did their share of mass killings of all sorts of people for all sorts of despicable reasons. It’s also true that your grandfather’s incinerators turned thousands of bodies at those camps into ash. But the big question everybody’s eager to overlook in indicting an entire nation for genocide is what kinds of bodies were processed in those incinerators, and how did they die?