Diaspora and Islamic Studies. He was originally from Nigeria, with a Ph.D. from Oxford and a slew of prominent journal publications. His inaugural lecture, “The African Roots of America,” had just been announced in the campus newspaper.
I started to tell all this to Alice, but I saw she had out her cell phone and was photographing the noose and the leaflets littering the ground. And now I saw they were not just on the ground. As the rising sun burned off more of the mist, I could see that the trees around the paths of the central quad, their leaves yellowed and falling in the freshening breeze, had this garbage stapled to the trunks and more were blowing across the grass. I wondered how many more were spread around the campus in addition to this central area. There would be a lot of clean up necessary. Just then I saw two more campus police cars pulling up just beyond the quad at the parking circle.
Well, since this could reasonably be interpreted as an attack on our new colleague, I thought I’d better call my Department Chairperson, Dr. Adelaide Winters, and get her over here. Adelaide was Professor of Women and Religion. Nearly sixty and solid, both in mind and body, she was normally quite unflappable. I knew that for a fact. We’d had plenty of turmoil in our department in the last two years, the kind of turmoil that would flap anybody, including three deaths. Adelaide had held firm. But this hideous stunt might flap anybody.
I took my own cell phone photo of the noose, sent it as part of a text to Adelaide’s cell, waited a minute, and then dialed her.
“What the hell?” was her cheery greeting.
I stepped away from where Alice and now three other campus police officers were standing around the tree conferring, and I spoke briskly.
“Adelaide, that’s a photo of what’s hanging from a tree here on the main quad. That’s not all. There’s a bunch of white supremacist leaflets scattered around that I think could be targeting Dr. Abubakar and his lecture.”
She didn’t waste a lot of time.
“I’ll be there. Ten minutes tops.” And she hung up.
Ten minutes. I looked longingly at the building diagonally across from where we were standing. It had a coffee shop in the basement. I couldn’t face any more of this without coffee. The idea that I would suddenly seemed absurd. I gazed at the small knot of campus cops and then trotted over to them.
“Anybody want coffee?” I asked, in as matter-of-fact a voice as I could manage.
Alice looked up at me. The side of her mouth quirked up for only a second, and then it resumed its hard line. If my coffee addiction gave Alice even a moment of wry amusement right now, it was worth it just for that. Well, I mean, no, it wasn’t totally worth it just for that. Get serious, I told myself. I needed that coffee.
“Sure, Kristin,” she said dryly. The three other cops, guys I had seen but didn’t know, just said, “Yeah,” and kept up with their own conversation. I knew how Alice liked her coffee. I asked the others what they liked and jogged over to the coffee shop. Thank heavens they were already open. I got six coffees. Adelaide would be upset with or without coffee, but she’d be less upset with coffee.
When I got back with the drinks in a cardboard coffee-carrier, I could see Adelaide in the distance, barreling toward the main quad at quite a clip. She had on her normal garb of dark, flowing dress, and over it, the brilliant, red, wool cape she normally wore instead of a coat. The fabrics billowed out behind her like a parachute, and her grey, grizzled hair blew in all directions, making her look a little like Einstein in his later Princeton years. She held her briefcase to her chest with both arms and was using it kind of like a shield against the rising west wind. I quickly distributed the other coffees and took a couple more big gulps of the dark French Roast in my jumbo cup as I watched her hurried approach.
Then she stopped and stood stock-still as she stared at the noose. That’s why they do these stunts, I thought, these miserable white supremacist jerks. To shock and appall and make you ask yourself what century you’re living in. To try to put cracks in the veneer of civilization, cracks that can be widened, they hope, and so then they can try to force a farcical “white” re-write into the fissures.
Adelaide came up to me, her normally pale face even paler.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she said, watching now as Alice climbed up on some kind of folding ladder. I handed Adelaide a coffee and she drank almost half in one gulp. Not a bad idea. I swigged some of my own. It helped with the rising gorge.
Maintenance had showed up in one of their small, three-wheeled vehicles while I was watching Adelaide approach. They must have provided the ladder. Alice cut the rope that held the noose and dropped it into the hands of a campus cop I did recognize. Mel Billman, often partnered with Alice, had also arrived. I could only see the back of his tall, muscular frame, and it was rigid. Mel was so tall, he might have been able to cut the noose down without a ladder, but I was sure Alice had insisted on being the one to do it. I was glad they had gotten it down before swarms of students and faculty were about, gaping and photographing the noose. But then, wouldn’t the twerps who had hung it have already taken photos and blasted them out? Sure they would have. It was the point. God, we needed to find them and get them expelled. I felt my anger rise again as Alice turned, and I saw her face. She was as grim as I’d ever seen her, and we’d been in a lot of grim situations together before.
Alice walked quickly toward Adelaide and me, taking her notebook out of her back pocket.
“So?” she rasped out, looking angrily at us. But it wasn’t us she was angry at.
I turned to Adelaide, who said, “You tell her, Kristin. It’s your idea.”
“Oh, sure, of course you’re the one with the idea,” Alice ground out. “So, you have an idea, Kristin. What is it?”
I took the flyer out of my pocket that I’d picked up from the ground and handed it to Adelaide. Alice already knew what it said. Adelaide took it and inhaled sharply, her eyes narrowing in disbelief. I explained to Alice about Dr. Abubakar being hired in African Diaspora and Islamic Studies and especially the title of his inaugural lecture.
I took the flyer back from Adelaide.
“I think it is pretty clear Dr. Abubakar’s lecture title has got some of our campus white guys’ shorts in a twist. They can’t stand the thought that Africans might have contributed anything to building this country.”
Alice snorted. I was glad to hear it. Alice had a whole range of snorts she used expressively. This one showed what she thought of these white guys and their shorts. To me it said she was now less shocked now and more her normal, bitchy self.
“What’s Diaspora Studies?” she asked Adelaide.
Adelaide frowned. “Well, as I understand it, and believe me I’m learning a lot from Dr. Abubakar’s work, diaspora refers to forced migration or slavery. People in this field study why that happened and the influence those who have been forced to migrate have had on the cultures where they end up. So, it’s very international.”
“Huh,” said Alice, writing on her pad.
“You better tell him, this Muslim guy, straight away,” she said, without looking up.
Adelaide and I looked at each other with dawning comprehension. Yes, of course we had to, or rather, she had to as his department chair. It would be horrific if he heard about this hateful act from the campus grapevine. What a way for him to get introduced to the university community. But again, that was the point. Make
