Quadir Akram emigrated from Syria two years ahead of his wife Adeeba and their three children. He came to America on a vetted U.S. Visa to search for work and a better life. His hometown of Aleppo was turning from an idyllic city of relative peace into a battleground for a variety of forces. He sold his little one-man bakery for whatever money he could get and then borrowed and scraped together the rest of the funds needed to come to the U.S. But he could not afford to bring his wife and three children with him.
Quadir remembered the last few days together before he began the trek to the U.S. The fighting had not yet engulfed the entire city with the ashes of destruction. The all-consuming city-wide pyroclastic flow of heat and fire from the aerial assaults were still in the future. Some areas of the city were safe enough to allow people to live a quasi-normal life.
“Are you sure?” Adeeba asked Quadir as she tenderly raised her hand to touch his cheek.
She ran her fingers lightly through his dark brown hair. Quadir was an average looking, five-foot seven-inch, darker-skinned Syrian. To the rest of the world, he was practically indistinguishable from almost every other man in the area, but Adeeba thought he was the most handsome person she had ever seen. “Are you sure you can get us to the U.S? How can this happen? We will never have the money to get us all there.”
“I know, my love. I know. This can happen. I will make it happen. I have to make it happen for you and the children. Look at them playing. They don’t care about politics or economics. They want to play like little children. Already they have seen too much and know such pain. We have to make a better life for them. We need to do something before the war gets worse here.”
“But to go to America, Quadir? Do they even like Syrians? Do you think you can make enough money there to bring all of us over to you? You have a visa, but how can we all get one? There is no American Consulate here anymore. There is a limit on how many of us they will let into the country. What if we can’t get in?”
“We will. We must! Our family’s life is in danger. I will do whatever it takes. I promise this, Adeeba.”
The children were playing and laughing together with a handful of others in the park. “It should be like this every day, not constant fear of war.” Quadir whispered and added, “Someday soon, it will be for the five of us.”
They sat in silence for several hours, watching them play. Sitting together near their children was sometimes all the happiness they could hope for. Young ones had no worries, no lingering memories of how it was in the past, and no concept of fear of the future. Quadir wished he were a child again and relieved of all his adult responsibility and anguish.
The Akram family finally gathered themselves together and walked home for dinner. Quadir and Adeeba spoke quietly about the plans to liberate the whole family. They also talked about their never-dying love for each other. Their marriage was arranged, but they thought so much alike and shared so many family values it didn’t take long to fall genuinely in love. Neither one of them felt like talking about the real- probability that their plans might not be successful. They both understood it was a long-shot. “One step at a time, though,” said Adeeba.
They tucked the children into their beds with extra love and kisses. Quadir and Adeeba lingered over them as they kissed their little heads, enjoying the smell of freshly washed hair, then went to bed themselves and held each other all night long. He would desperately miss the warmth of her sleeping body next to him and the sound of her quiet breathing. Tears shone in his eyes. He let them run uninterrupted down his cheek, soaking into the pillow.
Within a week, Quadir was on a Cunard passenger ship en route to the States. I am grateful food is included in the passage, he thought, as he watched the mid-ocean waves roll on forever. I thought I would have to fast for the entire voyage after my little loaf of bread was gone.
Getting a job was much more difficult for a Syrian after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. He found scant support and only marginal living quarters with other Syrians in Little Syria near Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Quadir was hard working and accepted any job offering to pay him a wage, often significantly below the legal minimum.
He repeated the mantra, “Beggars can’t have the whole loaf,” and did whatever they assigned to him. His favorite position was as a dishwasher at one of the Syrian restaurants in the area. It wasn’t cleaning the dishes which satisfied him, but the opportunity to save on expenses by salvaging scraps of leftover food from the plates in the bussing buckets. Quadir brought them home to eat. He wanted more than anything in the world to get his family out of the increasingly war-torn Syria and into the United States. He often mused on how people thought the streets of Brooklyn were so rough and dangerous. Quadir wondered what they would feel if they lived in Aleppo. Brooklyn was a near paradise by comparison, and he wanted to bring his family to heaven.
The fighting in Aleppo heated up considerably in the short time Quadir had been in the States. The rebel group, Free Syrian Army (FSA), battled the regular Syrian Army for dominion and control, reducing his once beloved home city into a pile of ruins. Quadir was heartsick when he found historic sites were being disintegrated by the battles. His fear for his family increased.
“Lieutenant,” said Colonel Coopers, “I need you to find me a desperate refugee for an assignment. I need someone at the end of their rope and willing to do anything to resolve whatever issue they are facing. Use the PULSE system to find them.”
“Understood, Sir. Find a desperate refugee for an assignment using PULSE,” replied Lieutenant Rolands.
“That is correct,” Lance answered in proper three-way verification.
The list of desperate refugees in New York was lengthy, but as ordered, the Lieutenant scrolled through them all, searching for a profile of desperation that could motivate someone to do almost anything. He waded through a morass of people with financial issues, drug associations of one sort or another, and gang-related problems. The list went on and on in a litany of primarily self-imposed hardships caused by lousy decision making. He knew none of these would be a reliably useful tool.
Finally, Quadir Akram’s case file came up. Hard worker, never been in trouble either in the U.S. or in Syria, married and devoted with three children. Through intercepted text messages it was clear Quadir would do virtually anything to get Adeeba and their children to the U.S. A review of Quadir’s bank account showed he had about enough money to get to Coney Island and buy a hotdog, certainly light-years away from being able to bring his family over. It was clear his family would never make the trip. He couldn’t afford the airfare, let alone the necessary bribes. All the while, the fighting was heating up, and danger loomed like a dark monster in front of his family. Yes, Quadir was a very desperate man who could be manipulated.
“Colonel, I think I have our man. Would you like me to contact him and make an offer, Sir?”
“No, Lieutenant, give me his name and number. I want to do this one,” answered Lance. “Yes, I’m getting closer to Generalship,” he whispered to himself.
Lance enjoyed the new computer systems. In the old days, it would have taken months to find the perfect person for this purpose. The Protective Unilateral Security Evaluation computer network (PULSE) transparently received data feeds from every social media application, email system, licensing bureau, public and private security cameras, and all computers using the internet. If it could transmit electronic data, PULSE was monitoring it. Ostensibly the system tracked electronic communication and data patterns to predict and prevent another attack like the 9/11 event. However, it was capable of much, much more, including finding almost every bit of data on virtually every person in the United States, including their current physical location. Street cameras, selfies, and cell phone videos continuously fed it new information. They had created either a god or a devil.