The Terrorist’s Son by Zak Ebrahim Read Free Book Online Page A

walking through the door at any moment, and that wewill be resuming our lives. But my father never shows up. And every day he doesn’t, I withdraw deeper.
    Within a year of the trial, donations to my family slow to a trickle and become difficult to live on. My father’s friends are still loyal to us (a deliveryman named Mohammed Salameh promises to marry my sister when she comes of age) but they’re more loyal to the jihad (Salameh will be sentenced to 240 years in prison for his part in the World Trade Center attack before my sister even enters her teens). We move around New Jersey and Pennsylvania constantly, usually because there’s been a death threat. By the time I finish high school, I’ll have moved twenty times.
    We always live in dangerous neighborhoods, without another Muslim family in sight. I get punched and kicked at school because I’m different, because I’m pudgy and don’t talk much. My mother gets taunted on the street—called a ghost and a ninja —because of her headscarf and veil. And there is no permanence to anything. Someone always discovers who we are. The word spreads that we are those Nosairs. The fear and humiliation return, and we move again.
    Amidst all this, there is the nonstop emptiness of missing my dad. His absence gets bigger and bigger until there’s no room in my brain for anything else. He’s not there to play soccer with me. He’s not there to tell me how to handle bullies. He’s not there to protect my mother from the people in the street. He’s in Attica State Prison—and won’t be out until I’m at least fifteen, maybe not evenuntil I’m twenty-nine. (I do the math in my head all the time.) I tell myself that I can’t count on him anymore. But whenever we visit him, hope returns. Seeing the family together again makes everything seem possible, even when it isn’t.
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    One weekend when I’m nine, my mother drives us across New York to Attica, which is on the far edge of the state, near Canada. The car’s an old station wagon with fake wood paneling on the sides. My mother has folded the back seats down so we can sleep or play or roll around if we want to. Ever since we left New Jersey, I’ve been bubbling over with nervous energy. This weekend we’re not just going to visit my father in some big, boring room where there’s nothing to do but play Chinese checkers. This weekend we’re going to “live” with my father. My mother has tried to explain how that’s possible, but I still can’t picture it. We stop for groceries along the way—somehow or other, she’s going to cook for us all—and my mother lets me buy a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies. The soft kind. When we get back in the car, I’m twice as excited as I was before, thrilled about seeing Baba and about the cookies. My mother looks at me in the rearview mirror and laughs. She never gets to see me happy anymore.
    Attica is massive and gray—it’s like the castle of a depressed king. We go through security. The guards inspect everything, even the groceries, which have to be perfectly sealed.
    â€œWe got a problem here,” one of them says.
    He is holding up the Entenmann’s. There’s something wrong with the box. It turns out that there’s a hole in the cellophane window on top, so they won’t let me take it in. My eyes start stinging with tears. I know that the minute we walk away, the guards are going to eat my cookies. They know there’s nothing wrong them.
    My mother puts a hand on my shoulder. “Guess what,” she whispers.
    If I answer, my voice will break, and I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of the guards, so I just look at my mother expectantly until she leans down and says these amazing words in my ear: “I bought another box.”
    I run across the grass toward my father.