Marwan

            And then two tall ugly buildings to the south. Atta hated skyscrapers – people piled on top of each other. “Hideous.” He made a face. “Like what goes on inside them. Hey – Marwan. You have to look at them.”

            But I could not look at them. “It’s like seeing your own tombstone. Let’s go somewhere else.”

            Jarrah mugged for the cameras of the fat tourists in jeans and sneakers as we pushed through their sweat stink onto the elevator, holding our breaths until we were disgorged into the street. I had already had enough of New York. No matter where we looked that day, we found filth – not just wrappers and cigarette butts but a coating of grime on everything, which only a flood like Noah’s could have cleansed away.

            So it was not a high point when Atta led us down some steps into a hole in the sidewalk that smelled like my unwashed laundry did when I let it sit for two weeks. Atta handed me a coin, and I followed him to a turnstile and watched him insert a similar coin into a slot. The turnstile spun as he pushed on it, and let him through. I was about to do the same when three monkeys scrambled down the stairs and leap-frogged over the turnstiles, scattering to the right and left toward places I could not see. This gorilla show so startled me that I dropped my coin – not into the slot but onto the floor, where it rolled on its edge for fifty feet until it stuck in a wad of bubble gum still fresh enough to hold it.

            Atta gave me another coin and I forced my way through the turnstile. Suddenly the whole place shook and a train slid into the station. Doors opened and people poured out and slammed me into a pole. Atta yanked me through one of the doors. If he had not, I would not have gone into that car for all the sneakers in China.

            I am from desert people. This was not civilized.

            Coming up the stairs at the end of the ride, I gasped for air, and then choked on what I had drawn into my lungs. When I finally straightened up, I saw in front of me the bases of two buildings embossed with high narrow arches like a crocheted antimacassar.

            “You shit!” I snarled at Atta. “Why did you bring me here?”

            “I didn’t bring you here,” Atta said. “Allah did.”