Free The Submission by Amy Waldman Page B

crosswalk to sidewalk. He stood shaking with exhilaration. There were five thousand submissions. Other than a confirmation months back that his entry had been received, he hadn’t heard a word. But a Muslim had won. It had to be him.
    He taped the
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cover to his bathroom mirror that night, only to find the man in the balaclava looking back at him with cold, hard eyes. Executioner’s eyes. Mo couldn’t find himself in that picture, which was the point. The next day he enlarged his submission photo and pasted it on top of the
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picture. With the ugliness covered, he could pretend it was gone.

7
    There were no buildings, no roads, only burning dunes of debris. His brother, Patrick, was somewhere here and Sean was conscious of wanting, a little too much, to be the one to find him, and of fearing he might not recognize him if he did. They hadn’t seen each other in months, and Sean kept trying to call up Patrick’s face, only to realize, as they came upon damaged bodies, that the faces of memory and death might not match.
    Hours passed. Days. He couldn’t breathe well, couldn’t hear well—some new kind of underwater, this. Movie-set lights glared overhead, but the only true light came from the other searchers. Often, obscured by smoke, hidden by piles of rubble, the rescuers were only voices, but that was enough. Every time he put out a hand to take or to give, another was there, waiting. With time came a mappable order: the remains here, the personal effects there, the demolished cars beyond, the red sifters and the yellow ones, the tents and roster areas and messes and medics, the assembly line, a world more real to Sean than the city outside. Returning to Brooklyn each night was like coming home from war, except that it no longer felt like home. It amazed him what people talked about and what they didn’t, how clean their fingernails were, how pristine their routines. His wife told him he smelled like death, and he couldn’t believe this repulsed her. The dust he brought home was holy—he shook out his shoes and his shirt over newspapers to save it.
    Nearly two years later, the attack site was a clean-swept plain. Across the river in Brooklyn, the Gallagher house prickled with the energy of a campaign. Ten members of Sean’s family and as many of his Memorial Support Committee were crammed around the table, all its Thanksgiving leaves in use. Copies of the
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splayed under legal pads and two laptop computers. The poster board had been hauled out, the Marks-A-Lot marshaled for duty. Sean’s mother, Eileen, and his four sisters cleared empty plates and refilled coffee cups with grim efficiency.
    Frank, Sean’s father, was on the phone with a reporter: “Yes, we plan to fight this until our last breath. What? No, sir, this is not Islamophobia. Because phobia means fear and I’m not afraid of them. You can print my address in your newspaper so they can come find me.” A pause. “They killed my son. Is that reason enough for you? And I don’t want one of their names over his grave.” Another pause. “Yes, we found his body. Yes, we buried him in a graveyard. Jeez, you’re really splitting hairs here. It’s the spot where he died, okay? It’s supposed to be his memorial, not theirs. Is there anything else? I’ve got a long line of calls to take …”
    A voice from below: “You heard anything, Sean?” Mike Crandall was stretched out on the floor, his back having given out again. Retired from the fire department, he never missed a meeting, although sometimes Sean wished he would. His committee was a motley crew of former firefighters, along with the fathers of dead ones.
    “Nothing,” Sean said. He hated to say it. He was supposed to be the one with the lines into the governor’s office, to Claire Burwell. That those lines had gone dead convinced him, suspicious of power by nature, that the story was true, and to his shame this relieved him. A Muslim gaining control of the memorial was the worst