Free City of Strangers by John Shannon Page B

friends at all at Kennedy! Not one!”
    There was a choked sob. Jack Liffey had had his eye on the mother’s pain at that instant so he missed the heave as the boy jumped to his feet. He bolted out the front door, leaving it open.
    “Billy!” She stood up, but her own emotion ran down before she got far. She stood forlornly on the tiny porch for a moment and then came back inside and closed the door softly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Liffey.”
    “Jack. Mr. Liffey was my dad.”
    “He’s not usually like this at all. I’ve been thinking for some time that I should pull him out of Kennedy. It seemed like such an opportunity for him when it came up, but I always had mixed feelings.”
    “Is his father paying?” He wondered if that was an impertinence, but she didn’t seem to mind.
    “It’s a scholarship I heard about at work, but the kids there are so snobbish. I think he’s been trying to please me by staying. He’s a very giving boy. I wish he’d learn to please himself more.”
    “It looks like he’s starting to learn,” he offered.
    She nodded. “Or cracking under the strain. Are you sure I can’t get you something, Jack?”
    “I’m sure, but have something yourself.”
    “I believe I will.” He helped her open a bottle of Chilean cabernet in the cramped kitchen, and she told him that she drove her son over the hill to the school every morning before going on to work as a secretary in the fund-raising department of the Braille Institute near L.A. City College. He sniffed the wine on the air as she held a big goblet and he was sorely tempted. The wine wasn’t the only temptation going, of course. She touched his arm briefly as they went back to the living room and his skin burned where her fingers had been.
    “When Billy calms down, I’d like to talk to him again. Do you think that would be all right?”
    “I’d like that,” she said. And it seemed more of a response to what he’d really been asking.
    * * *
    Hassan drove the beat-up old panel truck like a rodeo cowboy on a bull. Away from Sheik Arad, he wore a permanent grin, as if a bawdy joke had just occurred to him. But Fariborz did not think the tall, thin man had ever heard a bawdy joke, or would know what to do with one. Fariborz had to cling to the door handle and a big strap bolted to the floor where a passenger seat had once been. The only seat was the driver’s seat.
    “Western-inspired socialism has failed,” the man called over the roar of the old engine. “Nationalism has failed. Islam has shown that it is the only force in the world that can fill the great vacuum. Praise Allah.”
    “Praise Allah. How did you end up in America?” Fariborz asked.
    “Had to get out. I was just starting at Hassan the First University in Settat. My namesake. That’s near Casablanca. We formed an Islamic association the first month.” He grinned. “Some of us issued a declaration for an end to kings and other backwardness. And we declared for shari’a law and an Islamic republic. They shut the whole university down the next day.”
    “I thought Morocco was an Islamic country.”
    “Of course. This is a Christian country. What would happen if somebody declared mandatory poverty and turning the other cheek, eh?”
    He did seem to have a sense of humor. “I see what you mean. But why come to America?”
    “My father was a poor artisan. He hammered brass in a shop in the souk in Marrakech and sold it to tourists. Tray tables and other junk. He saved his money for years to make a better life for me. He saw it all going up in smoke, and he was furious at me. I had a cousin in Detroit, so I was sent to stay with him and study at a community college for a while. Detroit is the Arab capital of America. That’s were I met the sheik. He saved me from a life of drifting along with the secular tides.”
    Hassan sat back in the torn and patched bucket seat and clung to the wheel with both hands. The rest of the truck was a litter of oily tools and cable.