Registration records showed that Mr. Atta stayed at the Casablanca Playa Hotel in Salou on July 16 and at the Montsant the next night. But the police do not know where he spent the rest of his time.
(New York Times, May 1, 2002)
Karen’s father slowly turns his head from the TV and fixes her with his eyes across the kitchen table. The TV is on during dinner, as always, in its alcove next to the refrigerator. It’s one of three in the house: a huge one in the living room and another small one in her parents’ bedroom. All three have been showing the same thing for the last two days, like all the televisions in the Netherlands, like all the televisions in the world. The towers fall over and over again.
He doesn’t say anything, but Karen can still feel his eyes on her. She just nods. He probably takes it as a gesture of surrender, an admission she’s been wrong to defend immigration, wrong to take part in her high school video project interviewing Muslims about the prejudice they encounter in Rotterdam. Wrong to have Arab boyfriends.
“Normal people like you and me who love peace and just want to live their lives,” he says quietly, not mimicking her. He’s not that cruel. She closes her eyes and nods again, hoping he will stop looking at her. He’s waiting for an answer. She won’t give him one, but not for the reason he thinks.
His point made, he turns back to his plate and twirls another forkful of spaghetti. Karen’s brother Anders noisily slurps the last strand of his through puckered lips. Her mother offers the breadbasket but Karen isn’t hungry anymore. The names and faces of the hijackers are being shown again, and now she’s sure. One of the nineteen faces on the screen is the guy she fucked on the beach two months ago in Salou.
There were final embraces and wishes of good luck as he left the safe house. He would not see these men again in this world. They’d finished their business a few days early, Osama having sent the message not just to go ahead but to hurry up before their plans were detected. Now, it was best that they disperse. He had four days until his flight out of Madrid. They suggested he lie low, rest up, get ready. Enjoy himself, they even said. Well, maybe he would.
It was a short drive down the Catalan coast in the rented Hyundai. He checked into the beachfront hotel and carried his athletic bag up to his room, which was clean, light, and sparse, with twin beds, desk, chair, bare tile floor. He made his ablutions in the small bathroom, unrolled his mat, oriented himself by the sun, and prostrated himself for the noon prayer. He murmured the prayer, hoping for peace to enter him. It was badly needed because for the first time in months, he was alone, his voice the only one praying. On his own, it was hard to drown out the background noise, a constant hum of voices drifting up to him from the palm-lined passeig maritim, along with the splash of waves and shrieks of bathers further off and Vespas puttering by just outside. He closed his eyes, prayed more insistently, and felt the world begin to disappear.
When the noise seeped back into his consciousness, he heard beneath it another sound, far off, a short burst like the whistle of a kettle quickly removed from the flame. His prayer trailed off, and he listened more closely. It was a human sound, human voices screaming briefly, then a few minutes later screaming again, many in unison. He checked his Casio watch. Every four minutes, the screaming returned. He went out to the balcony and scanned the view. Far out there on the point was a mad, twisted tangle of orange track: a roller coaster. He waited, watching a distant train climb the incline to the first drop. He listened to the screams again and heard joy in them, along with terror. These people were terrifying themselves for amusement. They had no idea what was coming.
He could stay and listen to it over and over. Or he could go out and experience it himself. A few minutes later, he was back in the car.
Fucking Salou. She hadn’t wanted to go that summer. Her friends had invited her down to Tarifa, at the opposite corner of Spain, where right now they’d be partying on the beach, watching the windsurfers.
“You’re too young,” her mother said.
“Petra was there last year, and she was only sixteen.”
“When you’re eighteen, you can do what you want.”
“This might be the last year we vacation as a family,” Karen’s father said, eyes on the road. Some family, she thought. Anders had his Gameboy plugged into the cigarette lighter so he could play nonstop from Rotterdam through Belgium and France to the Costa Dorada. Tinny explosions and gunfire leaked from his earphones while her parents chose the next CD. Her father imposed his love of Deep Purple and Focus, and her mother, when she took the wheel, was all Fleetwood Mac and Abba.
Summer traffic piled up and came to a near standstill. Next to them was an aging minivan with plates in Arabic, a large family crammed inside and voluminous baggage strapped to the roof rack. “Another one,” her father shouted over the music as the minivan pulled ahead. They were trying to merge into their lane, but he didn’t let them. “On their way to the ferry to Morocco or Algeria. Hope they don’t come back.” He was off on one of his stupid rants about how Europe was going to disappear, how all the women would be forced to wear burkas. “And my daughter wants to marry one of them.”
Karen knew not to take the bait. The two boyfriends she’d had in quick succession, awkward and courteous Amin, tall and goofy Yousuf, had been taken aback by her forwardness, which made them cute for all their macho swagger. She’d enjoyed flaunting them before her father’s radio-induced prejudices. If he’d been a little intelligent, he’d have seen they were less likely to cause trouble than the boys in her usual druggy gang. At any rate, both were obedient mama’s boys and had dropped her because their families would never have approved. You see, Poppa, it cuts both ways.
Once again, the opening chords of “Smoke on the Water” rattled the speaker behind her ear. She turned away from it, slumping against the car door to gaze out as the suburbs of Paris went slowly by. Ten hours to go.
The Port Aventura lot was almost full. Attendants in day-glow vests and straw fedoras motioned the Hyundai into a spot. He got out, crossed the blazing asphalt desert to the gate, bought an all-day ticket and found the end of the long line. It snaked through zigzag stanchions in the shade of a gaudy fake pagoda. A sign in English, Spanish, Catalan, French and German told him he had a two-hour wait for the highest roller coaster in Europe.
He watched the others in the line, families, adolescents, couples with skins in various shades of tan, pink and white, waiting patiently for their minute and a half of simulated peril. He closed his eyes as the line inched forward. This, the Dragon Khan, was for his edification, a necessary supplement to all the hours on the flight simulator, a way of helping him imagine the terror they were about to unleash, as well as demonstrating once again the empty frivolity of a civilization to be destroyed.
Or would it just be fun? He deserved some fun, didn’t he?
The padded restraints came down and latched the passengers into place. Some spoke loudly, others giggled nervously, others were grimly silent, wishing they hadn’t been talked into this, but too embarrassed after the wait to bail now. He was in the first car with three teenagers bolted in on his right. The train started to move. A slight dip and turn outside the boarding platform and they engaged the chain that started dragging them up the incline. No way out now. There would be no way out either in two months when it would be for real. He watched the vast sky the thin track was carrying them into and forced his nerves into line. This was good practice. They reached the top of the climb and tipped over into a small drop and a turn. Then came the real drop. He closed his eyes, felt his body try to pull free from the restraint, a lightness in his head. Is this what it would feel like when his soul left his body? The screams around him, in the scant seconds of dropping, stretched out into a wall of sound, and he saw before him the screaming faces of the people trapped in the tower as they saw the plane approaching.
Then they were upside down, and he remembered where he was, feeling the G’s on his body like everyone else. A few more twists and the air brakes slowed the ride. They coasted into the boarding station, where the next batch of riders had already taken up position. The restraints floated up with a hiss. He unbuckled his seatbelt, climbed out, stepped off the platform, and got back in line. He wanted more.
They pulled in at nine-thirty in the evening, but this was Spain, not the Netherlands, and the streets were lively. They trundled their bags upstairs to the timeshare where they’d spent two weeks every summer since Karen was a toddler and immediately went out again to eat.
Karen took a small bite of her calamari sandwich and put it back on the plastic plate. She watched the Passeig Maritim, where the slow, unending river of people, families mostly, flowed in both directions, eddies forming around those who stopped at ice cream stands and Top Manta sales or scanned outdoor cafés for empty tables. The cacophony of voices, Dutch, German, and English, was punctuated by giggles, guffaws, and occasional wails of unhappy children. Neon Ferris wheel lights blinked in sequence above the tops of the trees, and there were still people strolling on the beach. There was fun to be had, but the girls and boys she’d run the streets with here, summer after summer, had all probably moved on, free of their families, and now she wouldn’t know anybody. How would she survive two weeks here?
Karen watched her brain-dead brother play with his Coke bottle, and her mother with her copper hair like a halo of wires, nibble at her salad, and her father gobble his pizza, all four of them without a word to say to each other. Her brother would spend the two weeks with his Gameboy, barely noticing where he was. Her mother’s tan would turn to cowhide on the beach, and her father would go out every morning to the newsstand for his right-wing Dutch paper, De Telegraaf. She could hear him already, reading anti-Muslim editorials out loud as he did every evening at home.
“Coca-Cola,” said Anders to nobody.
Karen stood up, leaving half her sandwich. “I’m going to look for my friends.” Or for almost anything other than this, she said to herself.
“Don’t stay out late,” said her mother as Karen turned to lose herself in the crowd.
He found a palm tree to lean against a few feet from the bar, close to the chain-linked fence that delimited the outdoor disco, and looked at the beer in the plastic cup in his hand. Why had he ordered it? As a Muslim, he wasn’t supposed to drink it. But under certain circumstances, he was required to. Was this one of them? In Florida, it had been important to blend in, drink, eat pork, skip prayers, not go to the mosque, frequent strip clubs, and appear thoroughly lapsed; a bad Muslim. He’d gotten very good at it, too good perhaps because nobody was paying any attention to him here. Had he ordered the beer because he liked it? It was cold and fizzy and a little bitter and it relaxed him. It was forbidden, but was anything really wrong with it? He made himself stop this train of thought. Through small cracks like this doubt could sneak in.
But it was just a beer. After that time at the strip club in Orlando, he knew better than to drink anything with vodka in it. He’d started shooting off his mouth and the others had to get him out of there. That’s what they did, keep each other strong and in control. He missed them now, the brothers he’d found. How easy it was in their company to feel sure and secure, already gone, far above the world. Now he looked at these northern European kids with their cubatas and caiperinhas and wondered again why these infidels poisoned themselves. To dance? He watched the mass of dancers, all carried away in their brainless ecstasy, as the music zapped and swooped up and down over an industrial booming meant to shut out thought. How easy it was to program people’s bodies to such simple, totalitarian code. Programmed himself to the real and only code, he took it all in, trying to maintain a healthy level of contempt for it but also knowing he’d have to venture out there if he hoped to get laid. There were virgins waiting for him in heaven, of course. But what if there weren’t? He recognized the seeds of doubt again and eyed the exit. Maybe he should just go.
Then a girl was suddenly in front of him, shouting in his face, words he couldn’t make out, a smile stretched across her cheeks. She had shoulder-length hair dyed light purple, a sweet heart-shaped face, and radiant, perfect teeth. She wore a tremendously oversized sleeveless black t-shirt and a short red skirt. Like all women here, he told himself, she was a piece of meat, a whore. He’d seen them on the beach that afternoon, all showing as much skin as possible, some with their breasts out. He’d looked, sure he’d looked, with desire and contempt, as he was looking now. As long as contempt was there, he figured, the lust he felt would not condemn him in the eyes of Heaven. He would shortly win redemption a thousand times over.
He nodded, pretending to understand what the girl was shouting at him, and next thing, she took his hand and led him out into the middle of the writhing bodies. They were Dutch, Belgian, English, all six or eight years younger, but if he moved like everyone else, he wouldn’t be noticed. I’m not bad at this, he told himself, and anyhow it wasn’t really dancing so much as swaying slightly within the confines of the bodies packed around him, trying not to spill his beer. The girl kept shouting at him, in English or not he couldn’t make out over the detonating beats, though he caught her name, Karen, after she shouted it a third time. He assumed she was drugged, which later on might make things easier. That’s what they did, these decadent Westerners, fog their brains to hide from truth and make themselves easy to fuck. He bought them each two more drinks before she led him off the floor and out of the chain-linked enclosure.
“You wanna go down to the beach?” she asked, and it was the first time he understood more than her name.
He’d looked more interesting than anyone else at the disco, standing all alone there in his chinos and polo shirt, incongruously lost in thought. He was as much as a decade older than she was, but right away she could tell he was far less experienced. Dancing, he’d jerked and twitched and generally looked uncomfortable, but she liked that, found it endearing. When she’d asked him his name, he’d spoken so softly she could barely hear him, though the noise of the disco faded gradually as they walked. When she took his hands, went up on tiptoes and kissed him, he didn’t open his mouth. Okay, she thought, shy. That was kind of refreshing. Maybe he’d relax once they were away down the beach toward Cambrils where there were fewer hotels and people.
Her sandals dangled from her hand as they walked. “The sand’s so cool at night. Aren’t you going to take off your shoes?” Without a word, he bent down and took off his trainers. He wore no socks. She broke free and dashed the short distance into the lapping surf. “Come on.” She watched him hesitate, then carefully roll up his trouser legs just above the knee.
The beach was divided by breakwaters, and as they strolled down the damp sand, she pointed out which sectors corresponded unofficially to Germans, to locals, to gays. He just nodded. She pointed out the segunda linea apartment block where her family had their apartment. “They’re waiting up for me, but it’s okay. We get enough of each other during the day. My parents come out here early and grab an umbrella and a pair of beach chairs and sit there and have the same conversation they would have if we’d just stayed home. My brother looks for his friends and they spend the whole day at the video arcade. I used to have friends here too, but…well, I’m always looking for new ones.” She sidled up to him and smiled, but he didn’t return her look. Was he worried? “I’m eighteen, you know.” He nodded in acknowledgment but still didn’t meet her eye.
They were reaching the next breakwater, the one she liked. Just come out and ask him. “Have you ever made love on a beach at night?”
She took his silence for a “no” and gently pulled him down behind the granite blocks. “It’s okay,” she told him. “This is a great spot. Nobody will see us. Or if they do, they won’t care.” She kissed him again, this time working his mouth open. “It’ll be beautiful.”
He’d been starting to think maybe this wasn’t the best idea. He wasn’t supposed to talk to anybody, be seen with anybody, let alone do this. Her tongue was soft and lazy in his mouth, filling it with the taste of Coca-Cola and rum, and he was liking it. He felt his concentration, his discipline melting away. He’d been wrong to want this. Her hands were on his belt buckle now, his hands about to go hungrily for her breasts. Instead, he put his palms up and said, “Wait.” Immediately, he caught himself. That wasn’t good enough, he knew. It wasn’t a “no.” Did he intend to go on when he felt ready?
She certainly took it that way. She sat up next to him, her hand on his thigh. “It’s all right if we just talk for a little.”
Talk could be dangerous too, he knew, but he was sober enough to control things, to say just enough but not too much. “Egypt,” he said when she asked where he was from. And why not tell her a little more? “But I live in Florida.”
“Really? In Miami?”
“Further north.”
“I’ve never been to the USA. I really want to go some time. What are you doing there?”
“I’m studying to be a pilot.”
“Wow. Like an airplane pilot?”
“Yes.”
“Like, have you flown a plane?”
He hesitated. “Just practicing.”
“That must be exciting.”
He nodded.
“A lot of responsibility, though,” Karen said. “I mean, for all the lives on board. I don’t think I could handle that.”
He’d enjoyed the risk, but it was time to change the subject. “What do you do?”
She started talking about her family and Rotterdam and high school, which she hadn’t finished yet because she kept flunking math, and the documentary video she’d made with Piet and Katje on how the immigrant and refugee community deals with Dutch Islamophobia and how much she learned from the experience and all the beautiful people she’d met. He recognized it, the well-meaning pseudo-solidarity of Westerners which would not hold up under the shock it was about to receive. Now she was on about how she’d like to work in the movies, maybe as a director, dropping names of her favorites, none of whom he recognized. He nodded through it all, his mind elsewhere, on the movie Osama was directing and that he himself would shortly play a lead role in, that would be bigger than every movie ever made put together, and everyone would see it, and nobody would ever forget it, not like the disposable spectacles the decadent west manufactured to distract people from the injustices their governments practiced upon Muslims and its godless attack on Islam and he’d better not be actually saying all this aloud, no, she was still talking, a wind-up doll, her head full, he was sure, of western vanity and the detritus of junk culture and pornography and the illusory world where we are all individuals and special and beautiful. Her words flew by and none of them landed, except “beautiful.”
“It’s so beautiful,” she said, about who knows what, and used it again for the waning moon reflected on the waves, the lights of the fishing boats far out on the Mediterranean, and something started to boil inside him. These non-believers had no concept of the one true beauty, in all its harsh, demanding absoluteness. Soon, they would see.
“Anyhow,” she said, finishing whatever she’d been talking about, and looked at him. “Are you even listening?” He nodded vigorously, and the girl laughed. “Of course you weren’t. Who can blame you? You can tell me to shut up, you know.” She paused. “This is the best way,” wrapping her soft, warm body around him and moving in for a kiss he couldn’t avoid now or know where it would lead.
At first, it was okay. The guy wasn’t a great kisser, but he let her lead, roll on top of him, ease his cock into her, and set a slow, languid rhythm in sync with the waves. It felt like a nice take-that to her father. She came quickly as always and thought she’d try for another if he held out. But his face, when she looked at it, was a knot of contortion, his eyelids clenched, his brow almost meeting his cheekbones, his mouth a tight, angry grimace as his thrusts became more and more rapid and violent. “Hey,” she whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear. She felt him suddenly pull out and shove her off of him onto her back. Okay, maybe another position would work and he’d get done, she thought. She reached down to help him back in, but he’d gone soft. “It’s all right,” she said, reaching up to gently touch his face. It wasn’t the first time this had happened with a guy. But he didn’t smile back. He was scowling, snorting, his eyes wide and furious, and then his hands were on her neck.
Before he could apply any pressure, there was distant laughter down the beach. He jumped up and pulled his pants back on. Karen scooted away and stood up, facing him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she said. He didn’t seem to hear. He grabbed his trainers and set off barefoot up toward the passeig at a quick, automaton march, silhouetted by the streetlights. She shouted after him. “What were you going to do, asshole?”
Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around.
He had succumbed. He had given in.
He knew he’d be forgiven. He’d gotten away before weakening himself further. But he’d come so close.
He had let his body, the body he would soon discard, impose its will. He had allowed it to obliterate his mind, make him forget his mission.
It had only been a moment. But a moment was enough. Through small cracks…
But doubt had not seeped through. The struggle with his body was a test he’d succeeded in passing. Hadn’t he vanquished his body in the end? Hadn’t he controlled it?
If she’d screamed louder, if she’d attracted attention, everything they’d been planning, had been working toward, would have been lost. If she were following him now to denounce him to the Mossos d’Escuadra, he’d have single-handedly destroyed their holy mission.
But he had stopped himself. He might have felt like hurting her, but he had stayed in control. Hadn’t he?
He looked back briefly. She wasn’t following him.
The girl’s cunt had felt good, too good. And he’d held back on purpose. He’d allowed himself to feel no pleasure.
Now, he knew he was lying to himself. He’d wanted to finish. He’d wanted to lose himself in her. He had to admit it.
Then, it was his body that held him back. His body wouldn’t obey, wouldn’t release him. His body had saved him.
Or was he fooling himself now, trying to make sense of it, trying to make it fit what he needed to believe?
He shouldn’t be thinking about this at all. In that way, yes, his body had led him away from his purpose and was still doing so now.
He’d stay in the next day, not go out, not risk being seen by her or by anybody. The day after, he’d get up before dawn for the drive to Madrid. The Hyundai had no cassette player so he wouldn’t be able to play any of the tapes he’d been given at the safe house, of prayers and sermons to keep him strong. But he would stay strong.
Think only of what’s ahead, not what you leave behind.
Think only of what’s ahead, not what you leave behind.
Karen told herself she should leave, not risk his coming back. It had been stupid of her to shout after him. But after a few minutes, she stopped worrying about it. Something in his abrupt exit told her he was too ashamed, too humiliated, and more likely to just hide away, if she was reading him right. Not that she’d read him very well earlier. He hadn’t been all that attractive and had barely spoken the whole time, but he hadn’t looked dangerous.
Dangerous. What would he have done if he hadn’t realized there were other people around? If he’d tried to strangle her, would she have been able to fight back? He was stronger than he’d looked. Would she have ended up floating on the tide in the morning, a grim surprise for those who came down to see the sunrise over the Mediterranean? There are people who killed, she knew, but she didn’t think she’d ever met one. Maybe he wasn’t one. But what she’d seen in his eyes was bad enough.
Where had she seen hate like that before? The fans when Eindhoven played Ajax? The enraged faces of the anime characters her brother incessantly watched? Or her father that time when they stood behind a Muslim woman taking too long in the supermarket line, and he said between gritted teeth that he’d like to tear her hijab off?
No, nothing compared.
Karen didn’t want to cry, but she was crying. Don’t go back yet, she told herself. If they’re waiting up, I don’t want them to see me like this. There was more laughter down the beach. Someone was having fun. She lay back on the sand with a sigh, listened to the gentle wash of the waves, and looked up at the stars. The blinking lights of a plane crossed the night sky far above.//
About the Author
CARY BARNEY was born on Long Island, raised in Massachusetts, and has lived since 1991 in Spain where, retired from teaching, he writes poetry and short fiction. Stories have recently appeared in Teach. Write., Verdad, and Fiction on the Web. Poems have appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Third Wednesday, Danse Macabre, Big Windows Review, Quail Bell Magazine and California Quarterly. His book of poems Maritxu: A Love Story was published by Lemon Street Press in 2020, and a bilingual collection, Alza la vista/Look Up, by Ediciones Éride in 2024.
About the Author
Good stuff,
Charlie