1.

This is my favourite spot. The Oberoi hotel in Bombay and its precisely landscaped interior lawns and light fixtures that glow like veneers. It’s true that Muslims are fanatic about gardens. All our kings obsessively tended to their greenery — from Delhi to Baghdad to Cordoba, the trail of conquerors is pruned. Now it’s shawarma shops: tahini sauce and tender meat, hungry students, cab drivers, late-nite drunks. What happened to our greatness? How did we go from conquerors to Uber delivery, from emperors to 7/11?

One year ago, I was still in Toronto when I had my last stab at greatness. Starved after an Al-Anon meeting, I was in a slit of a shawarma shop. Meat and vegetables on the left side steaming in metal pans, and on the right, a short bar and mirror reflected the servers back to themselves.

There was always a new kind manning the counter. Usually Pakistani, often Somalian, the occasional Arab. That day it was a disdainful Persian too elegant for fast food. I’d run inside after rain began, heavy with heat at the start of the summer, which, before I’d realized its strength, was up to my ankles. My loafers — caramel butter suede with a hand-stitched apron and pegged soles; let’s not talk about the price — were soaked. My feet squeaked.

I’d rushed to the Al-Anon meeting after my shift at the store I owned and needed my blood sugar calmed before seeing Natalie so I didn’t make things worse. I’d dressed in white chinos she liked and a navy polo she didn’t, both on sale from a small boutique, still over a hundred dollars each, and a gold bracelet Grand Seiko watch I’d taken from the lost and found box at my last summer job ten years ago. The polo was a little tight but broadened my shoulders. Its tight cuffs maximized my biceps. I flexed my foot and enjoyed cool air where the sole bent away from my instep.

We were to celebrate our second anniversary. I prepared to fight. On the phone her voice was tight and curt. I predicted what she was going to say later by the way she spoke now. A bad sign: exhausted at upcoming exhaustion.

I needed to go straight into the fight with Natalie. That was the way I was then. I hadn’t learned how to be honest with myself, not like now, and I wouldn’t admit that action — headfirst into battle with Natalie — was my way of dealing with anxiety. Anxiety about Natalie, sure, but about everything; death too, as ambitious as that sounds. Back then I believed if I wasn’t always applying force onto the world I was dead. The puttering engine of mine powered me by telling me no matter what, I needed to act. That to do was the way to live.

A small Mexican man, five-foot-two and drunk, swaying, a glob of garlic sauce on his pimpled chin, broke off from his pack and stared at me staring out the window at the big raindrops. He touched my arm to confirm I was real and moved back to his group. The group shuffled to seats near the door and I took their place at front so the Persian could hand me my shawarma. I gobbled the tube down, careful to have my arms extended so no sauce would drip on me. Raindrops burst against the ground, scattering water like seeds. Weather was my proof of God. That’s what we were taught: if the weather change was abrupt, it was him. A girl in Grade 5, chubby with pink cheeks, once told me when it rained Jesus was spitting on us.

“You’re that guy,” the Mexican said. He spoke confident. Garlic sauce breath and sharp cologne. He was up to my rib cage and his drooping eyes, eyelashes almost covering his dilated pupils, the whites streaked red, locked onto me.

I was halfway through my meal. His gelled black hair caught the overhead lights in their short-spiked stalks. The Persian behind the counter continued his assembly line. The Mexican’s friends turned to watch. All three wore tapered light wash jeans, clean fades, T-shirts with surf or skateboard brands. All new but their shoes were scuffed and torn. Cheap. “Salam alaykum,” the Mexican said to me.

I had no idea who he thought I looked like. And it was difficult to get mad at this casual confusion since likely he’d been at the end of it millions of times. His menace broke into a goofy smile. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, his breath beaming across at light speed. Garlic with cologne and the meat stench; my wet foot sliding around my leather loafers, the woozy yellow walls.

He showed me his cellphone, which was on the Instagram page of a very familiar face: Abdul Mohammed.

Oh, Abdul.

Abdul had been in the news most of my life. Even before we met it felt like I knew him. When we were both fourteen he was arrested for shooting an American soldier in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo Bay. For the next decade he fought to get out of Guantanamo. After much legal squabbling between countries he was released a few years ago.

Since gaining freedom he appeared on the news and in public regularly, building a social media following by always willing to be a smiling spokesman for the Muslim experience in the West. He’d moved from a shady character accused of striking the heart of America to creating a profile as a respected figure of civic society, buoyed by a multi-million-dollar settlement from the Canadian government for their handling of his ordeal.

He wasn’t wholly embraced. He angered many by not disappearing. But his insistence on remaining public kept me in awe.

Even now, after all that happened, after what I know, after what Abdul did to me, his fury fills me with admiration.

I’d always been envious of him. I’d actually met him very briefly two years prior, but could barely speak when I did. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of knowing him. He’d grown up a few streets over. He could have been a neighbour, a boy I played soccer with. He could have been me. But he’d held so much power. He’d cradled a noble force by shooting that soldier and becoming part of history. He’d wrangled death.

Almost as long as I could remember Abdul in my life I’d been been anxious with death, worried about the shape it would take, its hue, colour, shading; the way it could manifest out of nothing to change all. It was truth, ice-cold water on a hot day.

It was the leash pulling me through life. No matter what was happening, death’s light would always be there.

The Mexican played a video from Abdul’s page, which was like the dozens I’d watched before. Abdul sat in a car, thick hair swept back, speaking directly into the camera. No sound but white text on the screen said: Should your Wife NEED to work? (17.3K views). I hadn’t seen this one. Me and the Mexican watched the muted clip together. I didn’t mind being confused for Abdul; he was handsome.

The Mexican’s friends laughed and turned away, leaving him with me. Hanging on the wall behind us was a photograph of the Mogadishu skyline, with a dull, blue sky reaching over short white buildings. A white with ponytail and flip-flops entered and ordered a chicken shawarma. Another photograph behind the cashier declared the skyline Damascus in small letters. The white was the tallest in here, his ponytail half the height of the little Mexican and he wasn’t wet anywhere except his fat pink feet.

“May God be with you,” the Mexican said, now in English.

The rain stopped: like that, as if the channel changed. The white’s red goatee sparkled, the Mexican left me.

I checked my watch on the inside of my wrist: 7:00 p.m. There was early summer light. A blue wash before a brief gasp of pink at sunset. I was going to be late to see Natalie.

The Mexican knew who I was more than I did. Now, a year since that meeting, I know that confusion was the last warning — if I’d seen its light it would have led me to safety.

Or, that’s false — what happened was always going to happen and the Mexican was no prophet, no more no less than Abdul; Abdul whom I’d always known.

So, really, whatever light I missed that day with the Mexican, the phantom life I didn’t lead meant nothing, because the ending — me, here, in a hotel bar — was guaranteed. Abdul was always with me.