Chapter 71
I walked stiffly through the university gates at a quarter past midnight, carrying myself with a cervine vigilance.
The campus was dark, deserted. A swampy heat straddled the night, miserably humid from the rain that morning, the grass still moist and dewy with drops.
I told my dad that I was staying at Milan’s.
It was strange to admit, but I was fidgeting with excitement.
Every step I took vibrated with a cool, bright rage.
I felt like I was shifting the ground beneath me.
Heathrow Hall sat apart from the main buildings, down a series of steps that dropped at a gentle decline. I’d never needed to go there before—besides the grand hall, it housed miscellaneous undergraduate administrative offices, including the president’s.
I was following the winding path when a tall figure came toward me. I froze but then saw it was Edgar from Milken’s workshop wearing a black shirt with the words “JEWISH STUDENTS SAY NOT IN MY NAME” in hot-pink letters.
“I didn’t know you were Jewish!” I said.
He joined me on the stone path. “What?”
“I said I didn’t know you were Jewish.”
“Oh.”
We stared at each other.
“Are you going to the thing?” he asked.
“Yeah, at Heathrow?”
He nodded and we walked together. Because I didn’t know what to say, I asked, “How’s your novel about the Afghan women going?”
“Not good. I had a girl from Azerbaijan in my last workshop. She said she thought I shouldn’t be writing about Afghan women.”
“What does Azerbaijan have to do with Afghanistan?”
“I don’t know.” He met my eyes uncomfortably. “But she was a woman of color and I didn’t want to do anything offensive so I stopped working on it.”
I knew he was speaking to me as a woman of color, but honestly I couldn’t keep up with everyone who was a person of color now. I studied him under the lantern light, his floppy brown hair, sad green eyes. He was definitely white.
I patted him on the back. “You can tell her that a Black woman who has nothing to do with Afghanistan gave you permission to write your novel.”
He didn’t laugh though I was joking. “Okay, but I don’t think she’ll buy it. Hey, you were in Professor Ford’s workshop this semester, right?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. “It’s fucked what they did to her and the other professors. I never got a chance to take her class.”
“She’s amazing.” I’d sent her an email yesterday saying I’d heard the news, that I was incensed on her behalf. Of course, it bounced back since I’d sent it to her university email.
“Who’re you taking in the fall? I think I’m stuck with Milken again.”
“I’m not coming back in the fall.”
Edgar turned those sad green eyes on me. “Whoa, why not?”
“Money.”
Nodding gravely, “It’s terrible, the whole money thing. We should really go back to a barter system.”
Across the lawn, I noticed an encampment. “Decoy tents,” Edgar explained. “To confuse the cops.”
When we reached Heathrow, an old, grim-looking building with flickering lantern sconces, there were about twenty people standing outside. Most were reporters. I recognized one from the student newspaper, but the others looked older, in their thirties, like real journalists.
As we passed, one of them asked, “What’s going on?”
I looked at Edgar, not knowing if we were allowed to speak. The scale of my lostness sliced through me. How in over my head I was.
“Nothing yet,” Edgar said. “But stick around and you’ll see.”
My excitement from before revealed itself as a bizarre manifestation of my anxiety. I pushed open one of the big mahogany doors. It whined loudly under my hand. I jumped at the sound even though it was just what an old door sounded like.
We’d taken only a few steps down the hallway when we saw two students in black masks arguing with a security guard on the staircase. “You need to go, all right?” one of them said. “You’ll be locked in if you don’t leave. You need to go home.”
The security guard, angry at being directed, shoved the student. The student shoved back while the other student tried to intervene.
I touched Edgar’s elbow, instinctively. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “They’ve got it.” Almost on cue, the guard stormed down the steps and out the door.
“You must take over buildings a lot,” I said.
Edgar shrugged. “Nah, but I did watch a movie about it once.”
Voices floated from down the hallway. We followed them until we reached the grand hall: rows of foldable chairs, silver bleachers, a large stage.
The walls were dark wood broken up by a string of big arched windows.
The ceiling was a cream barrel roof with elaborate moldings.
The ancient architecture made what we were doing feel even more illicit, and my excitement returned, its long legs crawling up my neck.
About thirty people sat on the bleachers making posters, including Ryen and the actress.
I didn’t understand why Ryen was there until the actress giggled at something he said, her hand covering her mouth.
It infuriated me, the sight of them. Had I ever been that brazen?
Nia and Tristan came through the doors then, carrying grocery bags.
Instead of food inside, there were ropes, chains, a hammer, and a drill.
I had no clue what all that was for. I waited for Tristan to acknowledge me, but he acted like I was a corpse he was calmly sidestepping on the sidewalk.
Throwing up a lazy wave, Nia said to me and Edgar, “They’re making signs to hang out the windows if you want to join them.
” I was insulted that she and Tristan got to lug around hammers for some secret mission while I was being relegated to arts and crafts.
Yes, I liked arts and crafts, but I could also do things with a rope.
Edgar and I sat on the cold bleachers. I’d never taken over a building before, but it seemed like drawing bubble letters on construction paper wasn’t a big part of it.
I thought people would be running frantically around, circles of sweat under their armpits, spitting into bullhorns, police sirens approaching in the distance, windows crashing in with government bats.
The activity was more hushed. People went in and out of the room with an air of stern efficiency, more like running a machine than sparking a revolution.
I drew “DEATH>>>CONCESSION!” on a banner in purple block letters, then snapped a photo to send to Anwar. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. I knew the violence had worsened in the West Bank. But there was no more room in my heart for worry, so I only hoped.
By 1 a.m. there were over seventy people in the hall.
When I looked through the window, more than a hundred people were gathered outside: flashes of checkered kaffiyehs, baseball caps with hoods pulled over them.
Word was traveling fast through our network.
The press would file their stories in a couple hours to run early in the morning.
Despite seeing reporters outside, it just then hit me that we were going to make the news.
I swelled with a renewed sense of significance, holding my bubble-letter sign.
Nia climbed onto the stage with a bullhorn. Her voice shot straight through the chatter, clear and deep. I stared at her shimmering pink mouth, recalling how I’d found it with mine before she pulled away, erasing me with her wrist.
“HEY. Everyone!”—pounding her fist against the wall to win their attention, voices dropping off one by one—“Thank you all for being here. A special shout-out to our Georgetown, GW, and Howard family. I went to HU, by the way!” She thrust her hand in the air, HU, YOU KNOW.
“What we’re doing is courageous, but it’s also risky.
Your presence proves your commitment to a free America, a free Palestine, to universities that don’t bend the knee to an undemocratic government, and a campus that doesn’t aid Israel in its genocide.
It shows a dedication to the teachers who put their necks on the line for us and who are being punished, the students here on visa who have more to lose than most of us.
I know everyone’s tired. But they need us to be tired.
Democracy dies in darkness. We’re seeing it also dies in broad daylight. ”
She took a long pause. I saw then she was shaking, saw the dark rings around her eyes. She didn’t look afraid but possessed.
“Some have volunteered to do night watch so the rest of us can sleep. We have food, water, and first aid kits in that back corner. We have allies who are graciously surrounding the building.” She gestured to the protestors outside the window.
“In a minute, Liana will talk to us about our rights and what to do if the cops turn up—essentially, we’re not resisting arrest. She’ll also run through what to do if things turn violent.
Then I suggest you get whatever sleep you can because the lock-in will be made public early in the morning.
I’m hopping on the phone to negotiate with the school at nine a.m., to demand they do everything possible to win Aisha’s swift release from detention, reinstate the jobs of the fired teachers, revive the DEI office, and end federal oversight over the school.
Prepare to be here through commencement weekend.
If you have any questions, those of us wearing black shirts can answer them! ”
Someone asked, “What are we gonna do for the graduation? They’re gonna kick us out.”
“The plan is to stay until they either agree to our terms or forcibly remove us. Now that we have a solid number of people inside, we need volunteers to barricade the doors and windows.”
My hand went up to volunteer at the same time Tristan’s did. He put his hand down, but it was too late. While three other groups were tackling the South, North, and West building corridors, myself, Ryen, the actress, and Tristan went to barricade the East entrances.