It was a cold, snowy day in December 2021. The heavy storm winds subsided during the night, creating an other-worldly stillness. Trees lined the boulevard to town, giant trees that pondered decades of memories of students trundling to campus with books under their arms.

Dressed in an aged wool overcoat, a black and gold scarf tucked inside the coat’s collar, and a black fedora whose brim he pulled down before venturing into the wilderness of the old neighborhood, the sixty-year-old native Iowan headed for the University of Iowa campus a mile away. He traversed the last porch step of the old house and made his move.

Professor Phil Clark ambled down College Street. Except for the crunch of six inches of snow under his feet, it was quiet on his walk to class. Mary had loved the snow, and he tried to remember why, but no answers broke through.

Tall and lanky, Phil walked with a short-stepped gait—a deliberate covering of the horizontal, patiently inching forward. He was part of the Writer’s Workshop, where students viewed themselves as the ultimate bohemians, perhaps the next Hemingway. Not a bother for the long gray-haired academic, who loved listening to their praise and rants about each other’s writing, sitting in a dark wood chair behind his oak desk, looking out over his flock. Yet, he scoffed at the emergence of pronouns. How are his kids going to learn to write if they use a plural pronoun for a single person. When Phil started teaching, if he called a person “they” it meant they had multiple personalities, not exactly a compliment. With increasing regularity, the changes in the world seemed nonsensical to the professor.

Phil left Schaeffer Hall on the grounds of the Pentacrest and headed east down deserted streets for the Historic District. The streetlights reflected piles of last night’s precipitation, mounded at the side of the road by snowplows.

Stopping at the organic food store, Phil sought out rolled oats, kombucha, flax seeds, a ribeye, and a cheap bottle of Port. He smiled at his purchases, anticipating a good night with a fire and a good book after crafting his supper in the tiny kitchen. Phil did not know that this night held surprises of a dangerous kind. He entered the front door of the Burford House—a historic structure, now, converted into several apartments across from a park, developed in the mid-1800s. The smell of the aging oak in the dimly lit house and the visual grandeur of its original windows provided a satisfying welcome.

Phil kicked the snow off his black rubber goulashes and headed across the oak floor to the steps leading upstairs. He paused at the foot of the banister and looked into the living room. Nestled in a high-back chair away from the cold evening windows, his friend, Khaled (K) Rahhal, held a book; The Last Lebanese, his niece, Zaina, had said it was her favorite. Beneath the Tiffany glass floor lamp, his head rested on the wing-chair fabric. Though the two did not share ethnic influences nor religious ideologies, the two did share a year of being good friends.

On a usual Friday, the duo ordered pizza at The Mill restaurant nearby, where they guzzled more cold beers than they should, and complained about their students. K tolerated Phil smoking stogies on the way home—laughing as they traversed beneath old-time streetlamps and a vintage bridge over a creek.

Phil watched K for a moment, decided he was alright, and avoided the creaks of the staircase to his second-floor residence.

His key slid into the worn, brass door lock of his living space and swung the door open to greetings from his Siamese cat, Jane. How are you doing, kitty? Ready for some food and a few strokes, eh? Placing his parcels on the kitchen counter, Phil reached down to stroke his roommate. She rubbed her head against his hand, purred, and squinted her blue eyes at him as if to say Daddy’s home.

The educator stoked the red-brick fireplace with a crumpled newspaper under kindling and a few logs strategically placed for airflow. Jane sat by the crouched figure and waited for what was to come. She seemed uneasy. As if she knew something was amiss.

Awakened by a metallic sound, Phil swung his gray flannel legs over the side of the bed. Jane sat on her haunches, her blue eyes looking towards the knock on the wooden door and a whisper from the hallway.

“Phil, someone is at the front door. Let me in,” K spoke in hushed tones, “let me in; someone’s trying to break in.” Phil and Jane moved across the wooden floor, wary of the situation. They recognized the voice of K; even in his panicked, low volume, his Lebanese accent identified who was calling them for help. Phil opened the door, and the fifty-year-old man rushed over the doorsill, his hair mussed, his nightshirt flowing behind him. The metal sound of the lock engaging did little to soothe his friend. He was freaked. K spoke rapidly, still in hushed tones.

“Who could that be? Did you flunk one of your heathens?”

“Don’t know and no, to answer your questions.”

“Well, what should we do? Call the police? Would you check downstairs? The front and back doors? Look out into the street for someone? This could be bad.”

Phil retreated to the far side of the combination living room/bedroom and grabbed his 9mm from the sock drawer. Armed and now wide awake, he moved to K’s side. “Stay with Jane—don’t need her in the middle of the fray, should there be one. Likely a whole gang waits for me in the foyer, and I have not prepared anything.” He smothered a laugh. “Calm down, K. I’ll be right back.” His door lock engaged behind him as Phil reached for the hallway light switch and descended the stairs, stopping at the landing and peering into the darkness for untoward beings. It was quiet. Was someone waiting for him?

Emboldened and feeling a little like Rambo, Phil crouched slightly and loaded a round into the chamber of his sidearm, sending another metal sound ricocheting against the plaster walls. He flipped on the next light and inched strategically along the wall: his Baretta at the ready, just in case. Satisfied there were no uninvited guests, he returned downstairs to its darkness and climbed to his doorway.

“Let me in, K. There were three guys, but I plugged ’em,” Phil announced through the door. “Not funny, in the least,” grumped K as Phil stepped into the room and picked up Jane. The fire still showed some embers, a comforting glow within the large room.

Setting Jane on the bed covers, Phil suggested, “Why don’t you place several small logs in the fireplace. I’ll pour us some Port. Honestly, I am concerned about the noise and will contact the police in the morning. Maybe they will agree to send a patrol car past our house the next few nights.” K laid the timber and pulled up a rocker closer to the hearth.

Settling into his favorite chair, Phil set two cordials of his new purchase on a side table between them. It was a familiar setting for the two friends. It settled the tension. The two took sips, watched the fire grow, enjoyed the rush of heat on their legs, and remained still. This was the place they debriefed each other after days of teaching at the University. This was home-base.

K broke the silence, waved his hand casually, “Sorry for getting so alarmed.”

Phil tried to downplay the incident, using humor as his weapon of choice. “No sweat. It’s disturbing. Maybe it was stoners who came to the wrong address and left as soon as they realized what they had done? Who knows? I’ll call the cops tomorrow.”

“I am still so…”

“I get it. You suffered a loss that has left you fragile. I’ll toughen you up yet, my friend! We need to drink more, cuss more…!”

Returning the humor, K laughed, “Bring it on, brother.”

Leaning forward in the chair, K mentally refreshed an incident from earlier in the day. “Phil, as I walked downtown on my way home, an older man held court on a corner. He spouted white nationalism slogans, declared all the political conspiracy theories… wore a red wat with white lettering. As I moved past the orator in his stained clothes, the belligerent man stopped yelling as if gathering his thoughts. He pointed his finger at me and waved at my obviously foreign attire—I decided to wear my traditional black, full-length Lebanese thwab and head covering, instead of my cowboy boots and the usual. The agitated heckler yelled, “You!! Go home. You are not welcome here!” “I took a quick glance back and he waved both arms at me and continued to shout. You don’t think he followed me home, do you?”

The pair returned to the silence of watching the fire, easy to be in each other’s company without chatter filling the air. The Port felt good. So did the moment. The chime clock atop a bookcase announced 11 o’clock. “Are we better? Let’s turn it in,” Phil suggested.

He listened for K’s door to close and lock.

Except for occasional faculty smokers, Phil stayed sequestered in his world. As a successful author, he had his active writing sessions to distract him, and as a professor, he had his teaching to challenge him. Until the loss of his “bride,” his life was not so insular. They had their circle of friends, who shared potluck dinners, bottles of wine, and rounds of laughter. Gradually, Mary’s neurological condition became worse. ALS continued its take over.

She could no longer practice nursing. Mary grew agitated at everything, especially people. It was devastating for Phil to watch, to care for her in those last months. She passed two years ago, and Phil’s muse changed from Mary to Jane—a poor substitute for his precious wife but a worthy friend. He sold their home and moved several blocks away to an apartment out of sight of their bungalow but close enough to feel her presence when he needed it. When he faced his lifelong periods of darkness, Phil longed for her reassurance, her smile, her grace.

The Arab community of Iowa City boasted considerable numbers of faculty members and students. They loved to commune in bars and eateries adjacent to the center of campus, the Pentacrest, with Iowa’s original, gold-domed capitol central to four magnificent buildings with massive columns and a flight of stately steps—dozens of towering trees surround the structures. K’s circle included engineering teachers like himself, who loved creative and festive evenings, reminding them of their homelands, far away from the black dirt of Iowa. Potluck dinners, bottles of wine, and rounds of laughter were weekend regulars. K’s niece, Zaina loved to cook. The twenty-year-old daughter of K’s brother, encouraged by her Uncle Khaled, gained permission to study in America, to study alongside K, to live together with K as her minder.

K loved to laugh—until the diagnosis that snuffed out their torch. Although the brain cancer, likely, began its destruction years earlier in Beirut; Zaina showed no symptoms before realizing the dream to be with Uncle K in America. Sure, she showed some signs of erratic movements, but her parents wrote them as awkward teenage development. Then she experienced a seizure.

The age-old Lebanese celebration of Tyre and South Festival occurred on that July evening. People danced, people read poetry, people played music from their native lands. Uncle K and Zaina smiled at each other moments before she collapsed on the ballroom floor. Zaina had a terminal brain cancer.

When Zaina moved into a hospice care facility, and K was unable to handle the emotions of staying in their apartment, he sought solace in the old part of Iowa City, away from house parties of their community that the two enjoyed during that year. He had remembrances enough of her jubilance, her strength without living in a constant reminder. He moved into an upstairs apartment across from an old park.

Phil and K did a dance. The only two residents of the domicile occasionally passed in the hallway or the staircase. Aside from furtive glances and mumbled hellos, the one who had already lost and the other in the process were not ready to officially engage the other. They were too damaged to open a social door. They were too vulnerable to begin a conversation. It was too soon. Their apartments held the refuge they sought, a cocoon of sorts. Sharing the entrapments of the downstairs living room and more had no appeal.

Near the end of daylight on a warm, blue-skied summer day, the two professors approached the steps of the Burford from different directions. Hello. Hello to you. Phil struggled with several sacks of groceries and his school bag. Recognizing his dilemma and the possibility of a not-so-funny ending, the two smiled at each other. K opened the door, and they crossed the physical and emotional threshold. They walked up the oak stairs to the second floor.

Phil set his sacks on the table by his door. K took several steps back. “How would you feel about a cold beer on the porch,” Phil posited to the younger man. K agreed, “Well, beer isn’t my first choice, but I think it’s a good idea.”

K had misgivings to trust a near-stranger with the details of his travails, the travails of his Bryan. Moments after deciding to unload his burden, words tumbled out and tumbled out and tumbled out. Phil understood the pain. When K became quiet, he opened a second Grain Belt and handed it to the trembling man. K learned of Phil’s tragedy, learned of his grief and devastation.

They sobbed the same tears. They spoke the same measured words. They gazed with the same soft eyes at the park: seeing nothing. They shifted in their seats—the same. All the same. The stigma of otherness fell away. They were amigos.

After the cans piled next to them, deciding they were open to more and needed some sustenance, the pair strolled down Burlington a few blocks to the iconic pizza and folk music joint, The Mill.

Time passed amidst long-missing laughter and casual banter; the two solved most of the world’s ails. They regretted aloud that there was no one to record their solutions. Stumbling down the broken concrete sidewalks and up the Burford stairs, the two shook hands and smiled. The bed was going to feel damn good.

Encouraged by his recent interaction with Phil, K felt the urge to reconnect with friends shunned for the past months. Together, they trooped to hospice with K, spent hours with Raina, and dreaded the fast-approaching day. Phil took a call from K, “Phil, you have to come up here right now. It’s happening!”

During his final hours, the two and a cadre of Raina’s friends consoled each other. Led away from the now cold room, the contingent of mourners walked quietly from the facility. An anguished Khaled whaled, “Habibe Habibe.” Indeed, he had lost his beloved niece.

In the darkness of the night, a grainy image from a smudged lens of the recently installed camera showed a hooded man pinning a note on the front door, “I’m going to barbeque the foreigner.” And rang the doorbell. K moved cautiously from the warmth of the living room fireplace, peered out the drapes—no one. With newfound courage, K approached the front door and found the written threat.

The cops took the incident more seriously. But wrote it off as an unfortunate fraternity prank.

During an unusually warm Saturday afternoon, the pair of friends sat on the front porch overlooking the park in their customary white Adirondack chairs. Excited that the fifty-degree temperatures and bright sun indicated the worst of the winter season may have passed, Phil and K shared Chardonnay and funny stories.

Dusk came on quickly. A hooded man walked down the sidewalk, nearing the old house. He abruptly stopped in front of the porch, conveniently out of the surveillance camera’s view, and began ranting. “Well, aren’t you two cute, sitting there with your self-righteous grins. Why don’t you get a room!”

Slightly drunk and emboldened beyond his usual limits, Phil responded, “Why don’t you stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Uncomfortable with the danger of the confrontation, K froze in place and shrank into his wooden chair.

Closing in, the hands of the ranting man remained in the broad pocket on the front of his sweatshirt until he suddenly pulled out a chef’s knife.

Phil removed his 9mm Baretta from his jacket pocket, carried since the last scare, and waved it at the man, shouting, “Hey, buddy. Move along!” Students walking along the sidewalks adjacent to the property stopped, stared, got out their phones, and excitedly created new videos to share on YouTube.

The hooded man suddenly moved towards the porch steps, jumped up the last few, and landed with a thunderous sound; his feet spread wide apart in a Rambo position, his hood fell off his head, revealing war paint smeared under his eyes. It was the bigoted street screamer, “Here I come!”

Phil fired two rapid shots, and the bigot hit the deck, badly injured. His body lurched forward, crashed unconscious to the surface, his torso resting against K’s lower legs, his hand still clutching the knife stuck into the floor. Phil rolled the man off his friend.

The videographers called the cops and approached for a better angle.

K turned away from the scene towards a far corner of the porch; his hands pressed against either side of his head. Stunned by the sound of his gun firing and the intense smell of gunpowder filling his nostrils, Phil laid his pistol on the porch railing. He looked at the crowd of students, “We’ve called 911.” He went to K and put a shaky hand on his shoulder. Neither spoke. The sounds of sirens became louder.

The man would survive, but the badly traumatized duo now had another horror.

For days, the pair stepped over the remnants of blood by the front door: an unwanted souvenir of the ordeal. It was time to act. They set a small can on the wooden floor of the porch, next to their chairs, and poured shots of Jose Cuervo. Phil lit his favorite Fuente. K followed suit.

Properly inebriated, K looked at Phil and gave him a nod. It was time to take control: place this memory further from the surface of their psyches. Phil picked up the can, stogies clenched between their teeth, the smoke wafting up the front of their faces. Smug smiles appeared as they walked towards the stain, now a faded pink.

Phil popped the lid with his wine opener and handed the pint-sized container to K, who poured its contents over the evidence. The paint oozed over the evidence as the blood seeped over the floor.

“Take that sum bitch,” Phil uttered. “Yeah, sum bitch!” K shouted.

The buddies hosted a party of a dozen revelers from both worlds, basking in the pleasure of a potluck dinner, bottles of wine, and rounds of laughter. Phil and K smiled at each other from across the living room. K lifted his hands to the ceiling, rocked his head as he laughed, and smiled at his friend as if to say I think we are well enough. Phil gave him two thumbs-ups.

Two Professors, the same, moved out and moved on.

 

 

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