Free What in God's Name: A Novel by Simon Rich

bucket, beating a large, misshapen drum. Her dress was black and sack-shaped, and she was screaming.
    “There are four thousand child slaves toiling in Bangladeshi factories! They toil at their looms for eighteen hours a day in sweltering, windowless bunkers. If a child leaves his workstation he is shot in the face by a member of the Chittagong Army! Is that justice?”
    The crowd yelled “No!” in unison.
    “He is shot in the face! ” the woman emphasized.
    Laura realized with panic that everyone but her was wearing black. Her armpits prickled with perspiration. The flyer hadn’t said anything about a dress code.
    She took a deep breath and marched intrepidly into the fray. A glowering girl made eye contact with her, and Laura seized the opportunity, blurting out her standard introduction.
    “Hi, I’m Laura!”
    The girl handed her a flyer and kept on walking, shuffling her way through the crowd. Laura noticed that the back of the girl’s shirt pictured the face of a screaming Bangladeshi child. Beneath the child, in red block letters, a caption read simply: “Justice?” She wondered how quickly she could leave without appearing to be insensitive.
    A bony palm gripped her shoulder. When she turned around, an emaciated girl was addressing her in a squeaky falsetto. “Is this your first die-in?”
    Laura swallowed. Had she inadvertently joined some kind of suicide pact?
    “What’s a die-in?”
    “It’s when you simulate death,” the girl explained. “To protest the unjust deaths of others.”
    A large gong sounded, and the skinny girl’s eyes suddenly widened.
    “It’s starting!”
    Laura watched in horror as the screaming protest leader unfurled a banner (“This many Bangladeshi children are murdered each week”). And before she had time to think, she was lying on the filthy sidewalk, her right check pressed into the pavement.
    Several feet away, Sam Katz shifted uncomfortably and tried to make sense of his situation. He didn’t even know what this particular protest was about. He had been on his way to the library when an enraged girl thrust a flyer in his face.
    “Do you care whether children live or die?”
    Sam flinched. “I guess I’d rather they live?”
    “Then do something!”
    She muscled him into the center of the crowd, and the next thing he knew he was lying on the ground, surrounded by strangers and lonelier than ever. He’d been at NYU for a whole week, and this five-second exchange with the protester was the longest conversation he’d had yet.
    Near his face a loudspeaker blasted a Bangladeshi song. It was loud, atonal, and full of screaming.
    “Takana! Murti! Takana!”
    It was crazy music and Sam realized, with panic, that it was going to make him laugh. He bit his lip. He’d been working so hard to pass himself off as a real New Yorker; yawning at the sight of tall buildings, ignoring celebrities on the street, writing in his Moleskine notebook, and sneering whenever anyone smiled at him. It seemed to be working. But if he laughed right now, in front of all of these smart political types, his Oklahoma origins would be plain for all to see.
    “Takana! Takana! Takana!”
    Sam clenched his jaw. The instruments had cut out—and now the song was just pure a cappella screaming. He could feel the laughter rising uncontrollably in his throat, as unstoppable as a pepper sneeze. He was about to give up the fight when he heard a high-pitched giggle coming from about six feet away. He craned his neck and spotted a girl wearing an odd brown sweatshirt, with her hands clamped tightly over her mouth. She flashed him an embarrassed smile, and he smiled right back, forgetting that he was supposed to sneer, forgetting he was in New York, forgetting practically everything.
     
    “That’s it?” Eliza asked. “That’s the whole clip?”
    Craig nodded. “That’s it.”
    “What ended up happening? You know, after the protest?”
    “The Chittagong Army continued to gain strength,” Craig