Tomorrow's Vengeance Read Free

promised me a tour. I’m Hannah Ives.’
    Safa’s pale skin wore the blush of a few too many minutes in the sun, but other than plum-colored lip gloss and something to darken her gracefully arched eyebrows, I detected no trace of makeup.
    â€˜Are you visiting, too?’ I asked. She looked so fresh, so young that I assumed she couldn’t be a resident.
    â€˜No, my husband and I live here. In one of the town homes.’
    I stared at her for a moment, temporarily speechless. Safa couldn’t possibly be as old as fifty-five! Had she discovered a Fountain of Youth somewhere on the property?
    As if reading my mind, she said, ‘My husband is a good bit older than I, as you probably guessed. I’ve just turned fifty-one, but Masud is sixty-eight.’
    I couldn’t believe Safa was as old as fifty-one, either, but decided to take her word for it. ‘My husband and I live in downtown Annapolis,’ I told her. ‘He teaches math at the Naval Academy, so we aren’t thinking about retirement just yet. When we do, though, I can think of a lot of worse places than Calvert Colony.’
    Safa’s eyes sparkled with interest. ‘Masud is a professor, too! He’s just retired from George Washington University, where he taught for many years at the Institute for Middle East Studies. When my husband first heard about Calvert Colony, we were living in Crofton.’ She folded her hands in her lap, was silent for a moment. ‘He came for a tour and he liked what he saw, but I never thought we’d actually make the move. It’s very unusual for Muslims to go into nursing homes.’
    â€˜Well, Calvert Colony isn’t exactly a nursing home, is it?’ I chuckled. After a couple of moments’ thought, I asked, ‘Why is that so unusual?’
    â€˜The Quran teaches that we must care for our parents as they cared for us as infants. Our children – we have two, a boy and a girl, both grown with families of their own now – are naturally Muslim. When Masud began talking about moving into a retirement community, the children were upset. Our daughter was completely opposed to it. She said
of course
she’d take care of us! But I know my daughter. Her main concern was that if she didn’t look after us properly it would reflect badly on her. “Look at Laila!” our friends would say. “There she is shopping at Bloomingdale’s, and she’s dumped her poor mother and father in a nursing home.”’
    â€˜Laila’s a beautiful name,’ I said.
    Safa nodded, reached down for her handbag and rummaged about inside. ‘This is Laila,’ she said, handing me a laminated wallet-sized studio photograph of a woman flanked by two children, the older one standing stiffly at her side, the younger, a toddler, leaning casually into her lap. ‘Laila’s not wearing a hijab,’ I observed as I handed the photograph back to her.
    â€˜She wears it for prayers,’ Safa explained. ‘But otherwise …’ She shrugged. ‘Laila tells her father she’s done the research and she believes that wearing the hijab comes from Arab culture and not from Islam. But she gave it up after September eleventh, so I’m certain that anti-Muslim harassment had a lot to do with it. Masud didn’t approve, of course,’ Safa continued. ‘Talking with my husband about the hijab is a lot like talking about abortion with a Tea Party wingnut. A lose-lose situation.’ She raised an elegant, beautifully manicured but polish-free finger. ‘Laila pointed out – quite correctly, too – that while the Quran requires modesty, it says nothing about keeping your hair covered.’ She smiled and was silent for a moment. ‘But when she started making trouble about the move to Calvert Colony, Masud turned that argument around on her. The Quran requires that we care for our parents in their old age, he told her, but