Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed

Author:Nawaaz Ahmed [Ahmed, Nawaaz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640094055
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2021-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

11

January 2004, Iowa: Seema, with Bill in tow, is immediately pressed into supervising sundry initiatives—volunteer training, phone-bank shifts, door-to-door canvassing. She’s a natural at this. Her allure is immediate, her enthusiasm infectious, and she projects assurance and authority.

From the very first day, they put in long hours—returning at night to the twin room they share at a motel on the outskirts, only to sleep, shower, and change. Bill is familiar with this pace from his long workdays at the start-up, but Seema shows surprising stamina. She’s up before him, as fresh as the day before, and he rarely sees her flagging.

He marvels at the effect she has on the other volunteers and campaign workers, reviving their energy and spirits. By the end of the first week she’s made herself essential to the Des Moines operations.

This is Bill’s first experience of winter and wide white landscapes, and his first time in the heartland, in an overwhelmingly White state. Everywhere they go, he and Seema stand out. They are confronted with looks of surprise, bemusement, and even overt distrust. Bill has never felt more self-conscious, the awareness sharpened by everything he’s discovered over the last year. It forces him to question, as he’s never done before, every interaction. Is it wariness he encounters, or calculation, forbearance, impatience, evaluation, condescension? The strain is wearying.

Seema has adapted well to this scene, suppressing talk of her usual grievances. “Do you see anyone else around who can defeat Bush? I’ve got to work with what I have.”

And what she has, an exotic glamour, she plays up subtly. Bill can’t say exactly what’s different about her in Iowa, but whatever it is, it’s working. The newer campaign workers, young and barely out of college, vie with each other for her attention, readily submitting to her leadership. Media events and interviews are enlivened, Seema bringing to them the feisty vitality of a hothouse flower. The senior campaign staff, overworked as they are, are grateful, even if they sometimes resent being crowded out of the picture. It usually falls to Bill to soothe their ruffled feelings, a task he’s good at.

“Remind me again what’s in this for me?” he asks Seema.

A joking voice but a nagging question since he allowed himself to be persuaded to join Seema on this trip. She’s taken three weeks off from work, feigning a family emergency. He has no one to answer to, and no job lined up yet, but he’s not the driven supporter of Howard Dean she is, nor is unseating George W. Bush his most burning desire. What’s he doing here then? To say he’s here for Seema, to say he can’t abandon Seema: how foolish, how foolhardy.

His last relationship—which ended a year and a half ago—was with Vanessa, a tax attorney, a Black Latina whom Josh had set him up with. And then had come Mame’s death, driving out any thoughts of dating, until he’d met Seema. Since then, Bill can count on one hand the number of times he’s

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