About Face: The Story of a Pregnant Muslim Girl

By George Andreas

When a young Muslim doctor leaves war-torn Cyprus to study pediatric medicine in Chicago, she falls in love with a Jewish colleague. But before she can tell him the news of her pregnancy, they're attacked by masked gunmen who have stormed the restaurant in which they're having dinner. Knowing that honor killings are a real threat and terrified that her male relatives will discover her pregnancy, she leaves her wounded boyfriend and takes off for Wisconsin in search of safety. But in this vast and unknown country, she finds herself constantly looking over her shoulder—and when her uncle sends an assassin to find her, the possibility of survival becomes slimmer than ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543980950

Book preview

© George Andreas 2019

ISBN: 978-1-54398-094-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54398-095-0

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

BOOK 1.

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

Chapter 5.

Chapter 6.

Chapter 7.

Chapter 8.

Chapter 9.

Chapter 10.

Chapter 11.

Chapter 12

Chapter 13.

Chapter 14.

Chapter 15.

Chapter 16.

Chapter 17.

Chapter 18.

Chapter 19.

Chapter 20.

Chapter 21.

Chapter 22.

Chapter 23

Chapter 24.

Chapter 25.

Chapter 26.

Chapter 27.

Chapter 28.

BOOK 2.

Chapter 29.

Chapter 30.

Chapter 31.

Chapter 32.

Chapter 33.

Chapter 34.

Chapter 35.

Chapter 36.

Chapter 37.

Chapter 38.

Chapter 39.

Chapter 40.

Chapter 41.

Chapter 42.

Chapter 43.

Chapter 44.

Chapter 45.

Chapter 46.

Chapter 47.

Chapter 48.

Chapter 49.

Chapter 50.

Chapter 51.

Chapter 52.

Chapter 53.

Chapter 54.

Chapter 55.

Chapter 56.

Chapter 57.

Chapter 58.

BOOK 3

Chapter 59.

Chapter 60.

Chapter 61.

Chapter 62.

Chapter 63.

Chapter 64

Chapter 65.

Chapter 66

Chapter 67.

Chapter 68.

Chapter 69.

Chapter 70.

Chapter 71.

Chapter 72.

Chapter 73.

Chapter 74.

Chapter 75.

Chapter 76.

Chapter 77.

The Chapter 78.

Chapter 79.

Chapter 80.

Chapter 81.

Chapter 82.

Chapter 83.

Chapter 84.

Chapter 85.

Chapter 86.

Chapter 87.

BOOK 4

Chapter 88.

Chapter 89.

Chapter 90.

Chapter 91.

Chapter 92.

Chapter 93.

Chapter 94.

Chapter 95.

Chapter 96.

Chapter 97.

Chapter 98.

Chapter 99.

Chapter 100.

Chapter 101.

Epilogue

BOOK 1.

The story of a pregnant Muslim girl.

Chapter 1.

September 11 th , 2001. The whole world’s worst nightmare.

But my nightmare had started 36 weeks earlier, in January 2001.

The big guy, Dr. Ben Narciz and little me, Dr. Ayse Meh, were celebrating New Year Day 2001, with a long weekend. We were great together. We loved each other. It was the first day of the new century and the new millennium. Our hearts were filled with hope and happiness and our future looked bright. Less than six weeks later everything changed.

Now tombstones of strangers were all around me. There I was, alone, cold, lost in the Rosehill cemetery, unaware of time and drifting deeper into my inner thoughts.

Why did this have to happen to me? I was always good to everyone. I think I did everything that was expected of me. I never hurt anybody. Not to my knowledge anyway. Maybe I hurt somebody without being aware of it but who? How am I going to face my family now? Normally, I would run to them and everyone of them would do their best to help me. But now? How is my father going to react, what is my brother going to think? Maybe it’s best they never find out what really happened. They say what you don’t know won’t hurt you. But they also say the truth will set you free. My thoughts went back to the wonderful weekend of New Year’s Eve.

Would I be able to go through life with my secret growing inside me? The rain stopped but it did not matter. I was wet anyway and a wet person is not afraid of the rain.

After what seemed to be hours of sitting on the wet ground leaning against a big oak tree in the woods around the cemetery, I decided to get up and go find a phone and call my best friend and roommate. We shared an apartment in the nurses’ and resident doctors’ building across from the hospital. I needed clean and dry clothes, Dora would be understanding. I found a phone near the cemetery gate and called her.

"Dora. I need help.»

My god. Ayse, where have you been? Everyone here is worried sick.

How is Ben? Is he ok? I asked.

He is ok, he is in good hands. Where are you? Are you hurt? Can I come and get you, bring you home?

I’m ok... I’m fine but I need you to do something for me. Get me some clothes and my toiletries and bring them to me. I am not coming home. I am scared. I’ll tell you more later. Meet me tonight at 7 o’clock at the corner of Clark and Diversey

"But we----»

I hung up. I couldn’t talk anymore; my mouth and throat were dry, and tears filled my eyes.

I realized I was more scared than I was admitting to myself. I grew up in an environment where beating and sometimes killing was not that unusual. But an attack with guns and shooting random people was new to me. I could have been killed. Ben came so close to getting killed. I could not get out of my mind the hole on Ben’s side with the blood pouring out and his shouting for me to get out. Pushing me through the bathroom window before he collapsed.

It was only yesterday I had found out I was pregnant and arranged with him to meet up. I wanted to tell him the news, but things happened so fast I didn’t get the chance..

How would he have reacted, I really did not know. And now, would he survive his wounds ?

The father of my baby was fighting for his life and I could not do anything to help him. I could not even be with him without risking my own life. Not just my own life, my baby’s life.

I had to start thinking more of two lives in one body now and for the next 8 months. As a doctor, I knew, more than anybody, how dependent the new embryonic cells were on the mother’s well-being and anything that happened to my body reflected on the baby, from any drink or food I ate, to what was in the air I breathed.

I wondered how the surge of adrenaline, that was making my head pound and my heart race, was affecting the growing cells I called my baby. Science did not know exactly how maternal adrenaline worked on the embryo, but I was confident that many women in all previous millenniums overcame surges of adrenaline trying to survive and save the babies in their wombs. I will survive too.

I needed to find a place to hide. A place nobody would suspect. But this one question kept coming back in my mind over and over. Who was behind this attack and why?

I had been at this small restaurant with Ben for dinner when two masked men came and started shooting. At first I thought it was a random shooting but now I wondered. Ben and I had escaped into the bathroom during the mayhem. As we were opening the bathroom window I noticed Ben was bleeding from his side. He’d whispered to me he was all right and pushed me up and out the little window. I barely fit through it and thought maybe Ben would not fit. But he did not get the chance. I saw him collapse before I climbed out. As I ran, I heard more gunfire on the other side of the bathroom door. I was lucky to get away. But now I wondered if I was the one they were after. Who were these people? They did not say anything. They did not seem to be interested in money or anything of value. They walked in and before I realized it, they were heading towards us and a shot was fired. Ben moved very quickly with no hesitation, no words. If he had not move that fast and decisively, we would both be dead now. But why?

Whoever did this, I kept thinking, did not finish the job. He would certainly want to come back and finish it. Both Ben and I were not out of danger. I had to find a place to hide..

As I set out to meet up with Dora; my first encounter with her, two years earlier, came to mind. I was having lunch in the hospital cafeteria. She came and sat opposite me. I was both reluctant and excited. I knew from talking to other doctors that we both came from the small divided island of Cyprus. She’d come from the Greek south and I from the Turkish north. Finally meeting her felt bitter sweet.

My name is Dora Michaelides, she said.

Mine is Ayse Meh. I told her. To my surprise she started to laugh.

Why are you laughing? I said, taken aback, thinking I said something wrong.

Do you know what ASE ME means in Cyprus, in Greek, I mean? she asked.

No, what does it mean? I said.

It means LET ME BE". Like leave me alone. It’s kind of funny because you are so quiet, I have seen you around for a couple of months now and you just keep to yourself. It’s like saying to everybody around you ‘let you be; she explained.

After last night, I indeed wanted and wished the world would let me be. I wanted to be left alone.

My last name hasn’t always been Meh. It was Mehmetoglou but I changed it when I got to the United States. I wanted to blend in. I believe that if you go to a country to learn and benefit from what the country and its people have to offer, you have to embrace the culture and the language. That doesn’t mean you have to forget who you are or where you came from. You still must keep your identity, your faith, your principles; but you should be tolerant of others and their ideas and beliefs.

My family was five thousand miles away from me but they were also right there in my heart. My brother, my mother, and my father. Those are the only ones I call family because all my uncles, aunts and cousins, from both sides, lived far from us and also behaved distantly, in their ways especially in how they had treated my father. We were simple folk and quite poor. But I wanted to change that. After I studied hard and finished my studies and got my medical degree, I wanted to become a pediatrician.

That was my dream but in the new century, the new millennium, that dream was turning out to be a nightmare.

Chapter 2.

(Ben Narciz)

Ben Narciz was on several monitors and intravenous drips in the Memorial hospital ICU. He had lost a lot of blood and had spent many hours in surgery to stop the bleeding from his liver and to repair his perforated intestines. He was waking up now unaware of how many hours he had spent in surgery and the recovery room. He tried hard to focus, to clear his mind and to think but he was heavily medicated and could not understand what had gone on in that restaurant and, especially, why.

As a young doctor he had spent half his life trying to save the innocent and then later in his life trying to fight the guilty. He thought of the years he had spent as a military doctor in Israel saving wounded soldiers. Now along with his research lab he worked undercover counterterrorism in North America. Occasionally he and his best friend Phil were assigned by their select group, called prophylaxis, to do ‘field work’, against terrorists. It was always dangerous but he had never had any trouble until now.

Being in the ICU and wounded, was the first time in years he had felt vulnerable, and in danger. He was not sure if the attack was directed at him? Was his cover blown. Had Ayse found out more about him than he wanted her to know? She could not have betrayed him and even if she did find out something, she could not, would not. She loved him. Perhaps the hit in the restaurant was simply just an armed robbery. Or maybe they were going to come after him in the hospital? Was he still in danger? Or maybe this had nothing to do with him. He was tired but his mind was spinning; he felt he was getting paranoid. This must be a side effect of the pain meds. He shook his head and tried to turn to the side. Grimacing in pain he was relieved to see his friend Phil sitting there by his side checking something on his phone.

The last time he had seen Phil was two weeks earlier when they had finished a mission in Toronto. He felt safer knowing Phil was there. Phil and his brother, Larry, were the most vigilant men he’d ever known. Nothing would have happened to him if Phil was there, he smiled and closed his eyes and soon drifted off to sleep.

For a while it seemed quiet, and just the normal beeps from different monitors. Phil shifted his butt on the chair several times trying to get comfortable. He got up and stretched his legs and long arms. As he moved his chair to the other side of the bed, he heard a loud alarm beeping. The patient in the next bed started shaking. As the alarms were set off, several people rushed to the bedside. A nurse pulled the curtains around the patient in trouble. At six foot three and 250 pounds, Phil was in their way. He got up and move to the other side of Ben’s bed.

He had just contacted the office and their friends about Ben’s condition. After Ben’s surgery was completed, another friend, Dr. Silvers, gave orders to the nurses for Phil and Phil’s brother Larry to be allowed to stay at the bedside at all times.

Now the next thing they needed to do was to identify who those masked people at the restaurant shooting and what they were after. Phil asked the friends in their group prophylaxis to come to an urgent meeting asap.

The police may or may not find out what happened. What was important to him and to everyone in their group was to eliminate any threat, wherever it was coming from and for whatever reason.

He noticed Ben turn slightly in the bed and open and close his eyes. It was obvious to him that Ben was heavily medicated, and it would take a long time before he was well again to take part in the investigation.

They had worked together many times. Five years ago, Ben, of similar height and weight had struggled to carry him to safety, when Phil was badly wounded on the hills outside Hebron, in Palestine. But whenever he told Ben he owed him his life, Ben would shrug his shoulders or raise a hand and stop him.

Nonsense. If I’d left you there someone else would have carried you. Come on, your wounds were not life threatening. You only had shrapnel in your thigh, that was all. You would have made it. You don’t owe me anything. Plus you’d have done the same for me if I wasn’t able to walk.

Ben was that kind of a guy. Then there was the time when Larry, Phil’s brother, was taken prisoner by some rebel faction in the Sinai. It was Ben who crawled through the desert for three hours at night to get to the jihadist’s tents and free Larry after killing three terrorists. What was it about this girl, Ayse, that made Ben let down his guard? Why would he allow himself to become vulnerable? He’d met Ayse, only once and he had to agree with Ben. She was gorgeous but Ben could have and did have gorgeous women in his life before. What was different about this one? Perhaps talking to her would shed some light as to what was going on. Ben had told him she was from Cyprus but so what?

The loud beeping stopped. As the nurses started back to their stations one of them pulled the drapes back saying.

Sorry to alarm you, sir. Your friend is doing well but this guy here is quite unstable. We may have to run back and forth several times. Phil was tired but he could not, would not, leave Ben. He would only leave when his brother Larry, showed up.

Chapter 3.

(Ayse)

As I sat there my mind went over every detail of the last months trying to understand how and why Ben and I ended up getting shot at that restaurant.

In spring of last year, March 30th, I’d gone to Dr. Ben Narciz’s lab for the first time to ask for information on cystic fibrosis, one of the subjects of his research. I didn’t know what to expect but I liked his way of talking and his demeanor at that first meeting.

You are welcome to any of the information available at my lab, he’d said. Feel free to talk to my PhD fellows and with any of the people that work here. They are all good people.

Thank you, Dr. Narciz, I appreciate you helping me. I’ve got this presentation next week on cystic fibrosis. I stopped, a few moments of quiet gave me the chance to stop staring into his bright blue eyes.

I have an idea, he went on to say. Maybe I can do one better for you. Let me come to your presentation and after you finish your lecture, you introduce me and I’ll answer questions from your audience on the subject, to make it more interesting for everyone.

That sounds like a great idea. Thank you. I do have to ask my professor if I can do that but I think he won’t object. I will let you know for sure by tomorrow, I said, eager to come back the next day to his lab.

Two weeks later we were eating dinner in one of the best restaurants in town. He looked so different dressed up in a suit, so much more impressive than in a lab coat.

Tell me something about yourself Ayse. He’d asked. I didn’t know what to say I had always been shy and reserved especially out of the hospital environment.

There is not much to tell you. I am a small poor girl from a small poor country, trying to learn as much as I can about pediatrics so I can go back to my country to help needy children.

That is fascinating; which country? Are you from a big family?

No, there is just the 4 of us. My mother had to have uterine surgery after my brother was born so she could not have any more children. My father is older and they decided no more wives and no more children.

So your brother is the 4th member then?

My brother yeah, he’s back home now after graduating from college. He wants to follow my uncle’s career and become a police officer.

Which country are you from, you said a small poor country, that is definitely not Turkey.

No not Turkey. I come from the island of Cyprus.

That makes you so much more interesting to talk to. I never knew anybody from Cyprus. Perhaps we can go there together some day. I’ve spent a few years in Israel, but I have not gone to Cyprus.

Yes my country is split in two, as you probably know. I am Muslim and even though here I don’t wear a head scarf, I come from a very conservative family. My people, our whole village, are very conservative.

You mean traditional, don’t you? He smiled.

I smiled in return, but I was taken aback by his penetrating deep blue eyes. I had never met anybody with those blue colored eyes. It was uncanny. I feared this man but liked him at the same time. I told myself I fear every man. My parents instilled this fear of strangers in me from an early age, but, I reminded myself, this man is a professional. I shouldn’t have anything to fear. Everybody in this university and hospital had been so nice to me since I arrived and I had no reason to doubt their sincerity.

After a wonderful three course dinner, he asked me:

Would you mind if we take a walk outside for a bit, the weather is great today and the moon is out. And we can talk some more on our way back.

Of course, I said. I’d liked that, but you have to tell me about yourself too. I was surprised at myself for even saying that much, but I must have been emboldened by the wine we had. It was the first time in my life that I had drunk wine, but I enjoyed the richness of the red wine with my dinner, and the company of this man. We put on our coats and walked outside into the moonlight.

There is not very much to tell about me. I don’t come from an exotic country. I don’t really have an exotic name and I did not travel half way around the world to get educated to help underprivileged children. But I do enjoy learning and exploring new things.

I enjoy learning new things too. I said.

So it went on for the next several times we went out. I realized I was falling in love with him. Every night I kept trying to put the whole thing into some perspective, but I could not. I had never experienced anything like that before. How could this be happening to me now, I had trouble reconciling my previous life with all these powerful feelings I had now.

I spent a lot of hours over the next few months researching the man and his background. The more I learned about him the more I was impressed. I was able to find some medical articles he’d published and some newspaper articles about his family. I met his friend, Phil Pratt, who had nothing but praise for him.

Ben’s grandfather Archibald Narciz, left Germany just after the Nazis took control in 1933. He had come to the US via Ireland with a briefcase full of jewelry. His grandfather’s parents owned a jewelry store in Berlin, and he was able to keep the most valuable pieces. He’d realized very early that no place in all Europe was safe for Jews. Despite his brothers’ objections Archibald decided to leave Germany. He survived and his brothers perished along with all their possessions and inheritance.

Archie, as he liked to be called, had a favorite English word: diversification. He did not like ‘putting his money in just one suitcase.’ I did that once in 1933 when I left Europe. But I will never do it again.

Diamonds and gold were great but could be taken from you or stolen. Real estate was safe but social changes could devastate an area and sink real estate values. Select stocks and bonds gave good returns but their volatility was bad.

So Archie did all of them. When things went well, he made money, when things went bad, he made money in some of them. By the time of his death, in the late seventies he was a multimillionaire. He had only one child, a son who started a career in movies because of his good looks but who wanted to be a politician. He ran for one or another political office with his father’s money but lost every election.

Ben was born the same year his grandfather Archibald died. He was an only child and sole heir to the Narciz fortune. He had his father’s looks and his grandfather’s brains. His teachers vouched that one day the boy would become the Senator his father so badly wanted to be but failed to achieve.

Ben was in college when news of his parent’s death reached him. That fateful day, his father, an amateur pilot, was flying with Ben’s mother from their Palm Beach home to Marco Island. They crashed in the Everglades. Their bodies were never found.

In 1990 as a straight A graduate from college, Ben was admitted to the Medical School of Hadassah University in Israel. He graduated in 1994 but stayed in Israel for a few more years. I could not find out what he was doing in Israel, only that he had graduated from medical school at the top of his class and joined the military as a medical doctor.

In 1997, he left Israel and came to the Chicago area. He became a researcher at Chicago University, - based at Memorial hospital. That was two years before I got there, and three years before I met him.

A few weeks into my relationship with Ben, I decided to confide my feelings to my friend and roommate, Dora. He was becoming a part of my life. I was with him more than I was with anybody, ever.

I can’t say I blame you, Dora said. He’s smart, he is good looking, and you are smitten. So?

But I am afraid. I said, pacing the small dining-living room of our apartment, Don’t be ridiculous. You make a great couple, and, by the way he called here a couple of times last week and I know he cares about you from the way he says your name, Dora said.

You didn’t tell me he called!

He asked me not to say and...I knew you were meeting him that same afternoon anyway.

What did he say? I said knowing full well that she was always pushing me to socialize. I also knew that without Dora I would never have been able to have the luxury of a two-bedroom apartment. Dora was always so generous to me, both emotionally and financially.

Well, he wanted to know about other boyfriends and such and I told him not to worry--there weren’t any. I said you are all work and no play and that he’s a great influence on you, getting you out of your shell. I hope you don’t mind that I vouched for you.

It’s embarrassing, Dora, please. It’s so easy for you; you had boyfriends since you were twelve. I never even talked to boys till I was sixteen. And that was to fellow students in class.

I understand, but you are not in a small village in Cyprus, now you are in the US. And you know what they say. When in Rome do as the Romans do.

It is complicated, Dora. For starters, he is Jewish and I’m Muslim. So it’s not that simple and you know it, I said as I let myself plop on the old sofa we shared in our sitting room.

It is very simple. Dora walked over holding a plate with two sandwiches on it. Listen to me dear Ayse, please do not let the customs of a society stuck a thousand years in the past and only existing some 5000 miles away from here, dictate your life. There, I said it.

But

There is no but, if you love each other, then the two of you together will find a way through life’s obstacles.

I don’t know, Dora.

Chapter 4.

(Ayse)

Fear and danger. Which one comes first?

The rain had stopped but the clouds were dense and dark; maybe another downpour was coming. It was not cold enough for a snow storm. I had to find my way out of the woods and the cemetery and to a bus stop to get to where I was to meet my friend Dora. In my excitement the night before, running, I did not realize how far I had gotten. My clothes were dirty, my shoes muddy. I was always careful about how I looked. Now, as I stared down at my dirty clothes and muddy shoes it