Ahmed’s List

The characters in this book are purely fictional, as is its story. It essentially tells the tale of a young Yemeni Muslim, Ahmed, born amid the rubble of constant war near Sana’a, Yemen’s 2,500-year-old capital. Like many of his peers, he is thrust into the perverted beliefs of radical Islam, radicalized, recruited by Al-Qaeda, and eventually sent as a college student to commit murder and mayhem at Naval Station Great Lakes (located between North Chicago and Lake Bluff, Illinois, on the Lake Michigan shore)—a world away from Yemen.

In researching Ahmed’s fictional background, I found myself fascinated by the history and culture of Yemen. I found it to be a place most interesting and beautiful—wishing I had gone there in my earlier travels since the possibility no longer exists. Tragic wars, fought throughout its tumultuous ancient and contemporary history, have practically destroyed its people, its wondrous antiquities, and its humanity. Through Yemen, I experienced the ancient beauty and passion of Islam and its peaceful followers, as well as the ugliness and twisted passions of those who have been radicalized and who radicalize others in its name. Radicalism, wearing any label, is the antithesis of humanity.

Cockeyed optimist or teary-eyed pessimist? How do we stand as far as humanity is concerned? My outlook, whichever it may be, is expressed through the plot and ending of Ahmed’s List, which found its own unplanned way—as my plots usually do. Incidentally (but not off the subject), I believe in a diverse America and strongly disagree with those who would have it otherwise.

Enjoy the book.

Ahmed’s List

Chapter One

It was early in February 2010 on an already dark, bitter-cold evening in the small suburban town of Highland Park, Illinois. After a normal day at the office, Bruce and Sarah Benson turned off the lights, closed and locked the door, and made their exit into the public corridor. They were being watched.

An unseen, nervous pair of eyes cautiously peered around the hallway corner and watched them pull on their woolen hats and zip up their bulky, heavy winter coats as they made their way to the building’s rear exit. When Bruce hesitated and glanced back to reassure himself that they’d turned off all the office lights, the watcher quickly withdrew behind the corner—out of his sight. In turning, Bruce’s peripheral vision caught what he thought was a flicker of movement, but he often saw annoying, harmless floaters in his age-challenged eyes and he dismissed the flicker as nothing out of the ordinary. Bruce hesitated for a second to focus on the office door and smiled with amusement at the newly painted gold letters that spelled out BRUCE & SARAH BENSON, LTD., ATTORNEYS AT LAW.

Reassured that there was no light coming through the door’s frosted glass window, he turned again to follow his life partner—and new law partner—through the building’s rear exit to their cold and lonely SUV—stoically waiting in the dark after a long winter’s day of standing motionless in its designated space in the back parking lot.

Because they were about to leave on a week’s vacation, they wanted to be sure to turn off all the office lights and securely lock its front door. Not that they had anything all that important to protect, but their client files did contain personal information, which was their obligation as attorneys to keep confidential. Their forthcoming vacation (although with friends) was to be a quasi-honeymoon in celebration of their new partnership—a new kind of marriage. They had been happily old-kind-of married to each other for over fifty-two compatible years but had been in the law business partnership-kind-of-marriage for all of two months.

Their recently hatched, fledgling law partnership was newly nested in the now-dark and locked two-office suite, comfortably situated in this one story, multi-unit red-brick office building located amid the small downtown business district of Highland Park, Illinois. The suite was compact and sparsely-furnished but provided them with more than adequate space, given their plans for a small, quiet pro bono practice. To make things all the more attractive, unlike Bruce’s previously tedious daily commute to his law firm’s office downtown in the big city of Chicago, their current drive to work took all of seven minutes from their lakefront home, just south and east of the office. Highland Park is an upscale North Shore suburban community (population just short of 30,000) on the western shore of Lake Michigan, twenty-five miles north up that lakeshore from downtown Chicago.

After fifty productive years of intensive lawyering as one of Chicago’s leading civil and criminal litigators, Bruce had, a few months earlier, eased himself into a boring, activity-free retirement. He had retired from the successful city boutique law firm that he and a fellow ex-Assistant US Attorney had launched just over forty years prior. Sarah had herself, before her chosen full-time career in motherhood, practiced law for many years in one of the large downtown premier Chicago law firms. She recently succeeded in convincing her still-vital husband to screw retirement for a while and partner with her in this small town, low-key practice devoted to helping those who could not afford decent, experienced legal counsel. Sarah, like her husband, was full of vitality and blessed with good health. Both had aged gracefully, with the inevitable exception of those increasingly frequent, humiliating occurrences of pain and joint restriction resulting from annoying afflictions inescapably experienced by the elderly—the sixty-five-plus category to which they both resentfully belonged. Bruce had experienced the usual amount of height reduction over the years, but would still be considered tall at 5'11", and he retained the good looks of a much younger man, but with droopier eye-lids and gravity-pulled facial flesh. Sarah too was well preserved in mind and body, standing barefoot at 5'10''. She matched her husband in good looks and kept her black hair black to match her still relatively youthful face and figure. They were in truth a handsome, lucky couple, relatively unscathed by the ravages of aging.

Both of them deeply resented the term elderly as a generalized description of their age group, and they believed the stereotype attached to that word was totally inapplicable to themselves, as well as most of their contemporary friends. Sarah was convinced, and Bruce agreed, that their productive years were far from over, and she felt they would enjoy giving back to the community in this way. She had promised him; however, as a condition for his entrance into her endeavor, no amount of work would ever interfere with planned vacations or any other important occasions that might come up. They intended to live the rest of their active lives to the fullest, until nature bid them do otherwise.

Consistent with this promise, a welcomed trip to Costa Rica was on their current agenda, for which they would depart the following morning. The trip took on special meaning for them in light of their recent close escape from a terrorist explosion in Israel during their trip of the previous year. On the last day of a three week Middle Eastern excursion, they were enjoying a particularly good dinner with Israeli friends, Ari and Leah Stern. The well-known restaurant, jointly owned by an Arab and a Jew, was precariously located in an old Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. In the middle of a tasty ice cream dessert, an inexpertly placed terrorist bomb blew through one of the restaurant walls and slightly injured the couple sitting at the table next to them—one table nearer the explosion. The Bensons and the Sterns just happened to be in the restaurant at the wrong time, but at a table located in the right place by reason of (reader’s choice): the time of their reservation; their table location as selected by the maître d’; their proverbial number, which was apparently not yet up; the alignment of the stars; mischievous manipulation by one or several gods; predetermined fate; or just plain serendipity. The worst part of it (except for the minor injuries suffered by the couple at the neighboring table) was not being able to finish their ice cream—overly-sweet, with pastry—dessert.

They were shaken but fortunately untouched. A brush with Father Death like that was obviously an unnerving experience, but in the Bensons’ case, it reenergized their mutual enthusiasm for life and everything pleasurable the future still had to offer. They had never been the type that looked for trouble or danger in their travels, yet they would never go out of their way to avoid it. Thus occurred their decision to travel to the Middle East that year, 2009. They were subscribers to the clichéd belief that death only happens when your number comes up, and when it did, you couldn’t avoid it, no matter how hard you tried. It didn’t matter where you traveled. If your number was not ready to be called, Mr. Grim Reaper would by-pass you in search of the lottery winner.

So, they decided to take their vacation in the Middle East in 2009. Israel was then experiencing too many incidents of incoming rocketry from both the Hezbollah in Gaza and Hamas in Lebanon. Suicide bombers had committed recent attacks in a shopping mall, a bus station, a market, and various other crowded locations in Israel. Sporadic street killings at the time were not unheard of. But the Bensons had not been to Israel since they had taken the trip with their kids in the early 1970s, and they wanted to go back one more time. They also wanted at the same time to sail the Nile in Egypt and to explore the ancient archaeological city of Petra in Jordan. So, they went—simple as that—without a thought.

One might ask, however, what they were doing that night in the highly dangerous Palestinian area of Jerusalem.

Where should we go for dinner, Max? Bruce had asked their white-haired Sabra tour guide, when on their last night of vacation he picked them up at the prescribed time in front of the King David Hotel.

I’ll take you to the best restaurant in Israel—not too far from here. The Sterns vill meet you there, Max said, in English slightly tainted with a combined Hebrew-Yiddish accent. Don’t ask me vere it is, just enjoy the food and I’ll be right outside vaiting for you. An Israeli and a Palestinian own the place in partnership, as ve all—Israelis and Palestinians—should be. In another vorld, perhaps."

Max Charetz was born in Israel of German parents, well before it obtained status as an independent nation. Now, at seventy-eight, he was still almost six feet tall, heavily built, handsome and distinguished-looking, with thick white-tousled hair and a permanently desert-bronzed complexion. At the tender age of eighteen, in 1948, he became a tank commander in Israel’s army, Haganah. During that year, an overwhelmingly outnumbered Haganah and its small corps of makeshift tanks successfully fought off the hordes of the entire heavily armed Arab League. The League was seriously intent upon removing the young Jewish homeland from the face of the earth and shoving it into the sea. In 1948, when Israel declared its statehood, Max stood in the Knesset at the side of David Ben-Gurian, its first prime minister and Max’s godfather. Max Charetz served as a representative in the Knesset for four years, was thereafter appointed to head the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, and retired from that post to join its ranks as a guide—a living legend among guides. The Bensons were able to arrange his personal services through Ari Stern. So, when Max recommended a restaurant, no one would question his choice. The restaurant’s neighborhood had been quiet for months and, at the time, was (erroneously) deemed by the powers that be as unusually safe for tourists.

Ari, Bruce’s old Israeli friend from Tel Aviv, was still active in the Mossad at age seventy-four. He was born in Berlin, fortunately fled Hitler with his parents, grew up under British occupation in Israel, and fought (like Max) as a youthful member of Haganah. He became a commander in Haganah, which later became part of the Israel Defense Forces, and fought the Arabs and won in the 1948 War of Independence. In 1949, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion formed the Mossad to enhance Israel’s intelligence community. Nine years later, then a respected career officer in army intelligence, Ari was asked to join the elite Mossad, which he eagerly did. In 1960, he was chosen to participate with a group of agents in an operation to track down and apprehend key Nazi figures who had escaped arrest and disappeared into the world at large after the end of World War Two. In that capacity, Ari was part of Operation Eichmann, commissioned to find and kidnap Adolf Eichmann, the man who devised and implemented the plan to exterminate European Jews under Hitler’s (Eichmann’s) Final Solution. Ari was part of the historical crew that finally kidnapped and transported Eichmann from Argentina for trial in Israel.

Bruce and Ari first met later in the ’60s, after the Eichmann capture, when Ari was brought from Israel to Chicago to testify for the US government in a Russian spy case in which Bruce was the head prosecutor. They remained friends through the years and made it a point from time to time to see each other in various places around the world. Sarah and Leah, Ari’s wife of forty years, likewise had become close friends and mutually admired one another, mostly from a distance.

Ari had discussed security with Max before they decided on the restaurant, but on this rare occasion, their information as well as their instincts proved to be wrong. The Sterns were all too familiar with close calls, having lived in Israel for most of their lives.

Max was parked on the street just outside the restaurant when the bombing occurred, and he ran inside seconds after the blast both to see to the Bensons’ and the Sterns’ well-being and to provide assistance if any was needed. Fortunately, the bombing was botched by a radicalized Palestinian teenager, and though he injured a few of the diners, he caused very little damage. Max saw the young bomber running from the scene, and he was able to identify him for the police on his car radio as he swiftly drove the unhurt Bensons away from the scene. The sixteen-year-old terrorist from East Jerusalem was caught minutes after Max identified him, and the Bensons had a story to tell when they safely returned to their Highland Park home a few days later.

Because of their Israeli experience, Bruce and Sarah wisely decided henceforth to avoid traveling to places like the Middle East, where dangers lurk in every shadow (Why tempt fate?—another beloved cliché). Wherever a known possibility of violence existed in a foreign country, they vowed to steer as clear from the area as possible. Thus, they had chosen Costa Rica on this trip, to meet with Leah and Ari half a world away from the Middle East. Of course, they could not then have known that the Middle East was about to bring its perilous politics across the world to little old Highland Park.

Chapter Two

Bruce and Sarah had attended different high schools in Chicago’s northern suburbs, where they both grew up. Bruce’s family, the Bensons, of German-Jewish origin, moved in 1940 to Highland Park from Chicago’s fancier, southside Hyde Park neighborhood, just before the Second World War, when Bruce was six. When she was ten, Sarah Shapiro, of Eastern European ancestry (Latvia to be exact), moved to Glencoe with her family in 1945, just after the war. The Shapiros came from the higher-density, less-fancy Rogers Park neighborhood on the north side of Chicago.

Before the turn of the twentieth century, a few wealthy families of solid German-Jewish stock wandered from Hyde Park and its environs to discover a summer resort in Highland Park, where they decided to spend the summer. They liked it so much that after a few summers they found it more comfortable to build their own collective-type resort: a compound of summer homes, where they shared dining and recreational facilities and reveled away the summer’s balmy months together. After several summers, they commenced building separate substantial permanent residences and moved lock, stock and bagel to become year-round, full-fledged Highland Park residents. In doing so, they invaded that well-established, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Catholic community and forever destroyed its long enjoyed exclusivity. A happy multitude of wandering Chicago Jews of both German and Eastern European descent soon followed them. Those were the adventurers that had the desire and the money to flee the city’s ghetto apartment dwellings for the green grass, trees, and single-family houses of Highland Park and its neighbor to the south, Glencoe.

Many of the early German-Jewish settlers seriously pursued assimilation into the Christian community and, like an overcoat in a heat storm, shed their Jewish heritage. Attempting to separate themselves from the Semitic stigma and common anti-Semitism then prevalent in the United States, they ate corned beef with mayonnaise on white bread, unabashedly married their kids off to Gentile partners, and divorced themselves from as much religious identification as possible. Their natural affinity for each other, however, along with the ingrained aversion to Jews of their Christian neighbors, kept them together for all practical and impractical purposes. They remained highly successful in their business endeavors, many of which were interdependent, and they maintained their social clannishness in spite of themselves. Mainly because the Gentile country clubs in the area excluded them, they built one of their own, with another soon to follow. The second club accommodated the spillover from the first and also accommodated those of means more clearly identified with the Jewish community of Chicago. Bruce’s parents joined the first, Lakeside Country Club, shortly after their move to Highland Park, and the Shapiros joined the second, Idlemoor Country Club, soon after their move to Glencoe.

Having the advantage of professional training and the unrestricted use of Lakeside and its high-end Robert Trent Jones golf course during his early years, Bruce made the Highland Park High School golf team in his freshman year. He was popular in school and achieved outstanding grades, more than sufficient to get into the nearly top-ranked University of Michigan in Ann Arbor—which he did.

Unlike the Bensons, who practiced no religion, the Shapiros practiced Judaism Light. Shortly after they made the move to the suburbs, they joined a Reform temple and attended services during the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Unlike Bruce, Sarah attended religious school religiously, and at age thirteen she went through the motions of a Bat Mitzvah with temple ceremony, grandiose party at the country club, and all the trimmings. Unlike Bruce, she, like many enthusiastic Bat Mitzvites, thereafter observed the traditional parts of Judaism with her family, but left the religious parts to her two sets of grandparents, who lived in Chicago. Bruce’s family celebrated none of the High Holidays, followed none of the traditions, but celebrated a secular Christmas with elaborate tree and expensive trimmings.

In her senior year at New Trier High School, Sarah was the head cheerleader, homecoming queen, and valedictorian of her class. She had long black hair, large green eyes, and was fit and slim like an athlete—which she was. She was also a good golfer, but her cheerleading career eliminated participation in any other team sport. She, too, opted for the University of Michigan, although her parents wanted her to go to an Ivy League school.

During her freshman Orientation Week at Michigan, the week before the start of classes, she was introduced by a friend from Highland Park to a tall and handsome fraternity boy with short black hair, bright blue eyes, good teeth, a small (almost too small to qualify) Semitic nose, and a quick winsome smile. He had volunteered to squire new first-year students around campus during that week, explaining the history and functions of each stately old and contemporary new building identified with the different schools and classes they would be attending. As a male upper-classman, one of the obvious advantages of being a generous volunteer during Orientation Week was the ability to get a jump on the non-volunteer, later arrivers, in screening the new rookie freshmen females—an advantage fully appreciated by Bruce Benson. Bruce had spent his first two college years playing the field (as the saying goes). When he met Sarah, he knew he had moved up to pitcher and had hit a home run (without mixing metaphors) to take the lead in the game.

In the golden, olden days of the ’50s, many of those females attending college did so not only to pursue an ornamental diploma but, more importantly, to end up with the right guy and an MRS degree. Not Sarah. She wanted to study and conquer all the right courses, and remain free of the burdens of love and marriage until, down the line, she finished law school and was engaged in the practice of commercial trial law like her father. Sarah’s father was a senior partner in an old, respected silk-stocking Chicago law firm with an important local corporate clientele.

Upon first meeting, Sarah’s and Bruce’s personalities immediately clashed, and they became engaged in what looked like the ultimate battle of the sexes. She first viewed him as a good-looking junior with a personality that displayed a bit of over-self-confidence—but he was Jewish and quite attractive to Sarah. Upon further inspection, however, it became apparent that he was a Republican—a condition of evil and very hard for her to accept. He, to her chagrin, wore a pin on his beige cashmere sweater displaying, for everyone to see, his membership in the University of Michigan Young Republican Club.

I see you’re a Republican, Sarah said, drinking a Coke while glaring at the pin as he sat opposite her in the Michigan Union’s historic snack bar, a traditional, popular campus hang out. Their table, like all the others, featured multiple old and new initials, primitively carved into its wooden top since year one of its existence.

Born and bred, like my father before me. My dad was a delegate at the convention that nominated President Eisenhower. Why? Does that bother you? He took a swallow of his Coke and looked her straight in the eye.

She met his stare. It doesn’t bother me that you’ve followed your Republican dad’s politics, but it bothers me that you allowed him to lead you astray. My dad was a Roosevelt Democrat and loved the New Deal. It saved us from Hoover’s Great Depression and turned the country into a decent place to live again. Eisenhower was a good general, but he’s a Republican—although I believe he isn’t really— and Vice President Nixon is pathetic.

I admit to being under the influence of my father, but I, like him, do believe in smaller government, lower taxes, and less government spending. Roosevelt, Truman, and Adlai Stevenson only wanted the opposite—raise taxes and spend on government and welfare programs. Warren was a socialist, and now, thanks to the Russians, the government is filled with Communists

So you are a supporter of Joe McCarthy too? she said. Oh, my God. You are kidding me, aren’t you? You are putting me on, right? You believe—like our stupid president—in the widespread Communist conspiracy to overthrow the government, involving as coconspirators all kinds of movie stars, entertainers, authors, and playwrights.

Me, kidding? he said. Not only do I believe it, but there are a few suspicious homosexual, lefty professors in this university that should be investigated. You’d better keep your eyes open and watch what you say, or you may be the next to be called before Congress.

I’m going to run and join the Young Democrats, so I can oppose guys like you, who are ruining this country. I suppose you oppose Social Security, the public school system, and probably women’s right to vote. Right? she got up to leave.

Wait! Whoa! Don’t go. Sit! I am sort of putting you on. I’m really not that kind of extremist Republican. In fact, I’m really middle-of-the-road and not a bad guy. As you’ll find out, Michigan is full of sarcasm. It’s like they invented it here. You’ll learn to deal with it and maybe even enjoy it. I get my kicks from arguing politics, and you and I can have some good friendly arguments with each other if you let me. I wear this pin because it arouses all kinds of passionate conversation from both sides. I do really hate McCarthy. Let me walk you to your dorm, and we’ll talk about nice things.

You surely had me fooled. I’ll walk with you only if you take off that disgusting pin. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was fraternizing with the enemy.

He smiled, took the pin off, and put it in the front pocket of his newly cleaned and pressed blue jeans. There, that’s my peace offering, he said with a smile.

Accepted. She returned the smile, and her clenched-jaw facial expression, reserved for intense confrontation, quickly morphed into her usual prettier, bright-eyed, relaxed look of someone worthy of friendship.

They left the Union and walked eastward across State Street, past the aging classrooms of Angel Hall on their left and into a large, open, tree-dotted square. Criss-crossing the square, diagonal sidewalks headed in every direction led to a central point. There, embedded in the white cement, was a brass block M, the symbol of the university. The main library faced the M at the south end of the square, and located on its east and south perimeters were other classroom buildings. As the couple approached the shiny brass M, where all the diagonal walkways converged, Bruce explained,

"This is appropriately called the ‘Diag’ and is considered the center of campus. You can’t help but pass this point on the way to or from classes or when you are just wandering around town. Everyone locates everything with reference to the Diag. Everyone and anyone posts notices of events and information here for all to see. Meetings, demonstrations, and all kinds of college nonsense take place here. Romances begin and end here. It is a point of reference that somehow instills itself in the heart of every Michigander. Local legend has it that if a student steps on the M before taking his or her first exam, the student will flunk it. The only remedy for the curse would be to run naked from the bell tower when it begins tolling at midnight, to the puma statues at the Natural History Museum, and back to the tower before the ringing stops. So why don’t you step on it now and I’ll see ya at the tower."

Thanks for the tip. I wouldn’t think of stepping on it—ever, she said.

Sarah took it all in—the atmosphere created by the austere look of the surrounding stately classroom buildings and the library—an eclectic assortment of older and newer structures made of different materials and designs. The trees on the square, just changing into their multiple fall colors, were scattered throughout the grassy areas separating the skewed walkways. Signs and notices, some printed and some handwritten, hung from or stood against the trees: NOTICE—DOUBLE-DOWN DIRTY CLUB MEETING WEDNESDAY. College-type people strolled, stood around, lay on the grass—some in groups, some in pairs, or by themselves—enjoying the crisp fall air and the feeling of collegiate idealism, which now infused her totally enraptured spirit.

It just hit me, Bruce. I gotta say, I really get the feeling I’m a big girl in college now. Thank you—even if you are a Republican. I actually feel it in this place and time. God, I’m glad I came here. I know I am a stupid romantic, but I really feel it now.

What’s going on over there? he said, taking her arm. Let’s find out.

They walked over to the very center of the square and saw a typed document propped up on a card table with another lined page and several yellow pencils lying alongside. The typed document was a photographed color copy of the US Constitution, and the other page was a place for signatures. A large poster leaning on the table requested all who supported the Constitution to sign their names. There were no names on the document.

Yes. He paused to take it all in. "I read about this in the Michigan Daily. The American Civil Liberties Union put It there—liberals of your persuasion—to show how scared everyone is because of the House Un-American Activities Committee—afraid to sign their name to anything that might in some unknown way lead to the suspicion they may somehow be engaging in Communist activities—even an approval of the US Constitution, would you believe."

Will you sign it? she asked.

Nah. Look, nobody else did. Who knows how someone might interpret it?

Then neither will I, she said.

They walked and talked for the twenty minutes it took them to go up the long hill from the Diag to the women’s