Seeking Omar Nassim: A Tale of the Arts Department

CAUTION: Socially sensitive themes

“What time is it?” Professor Urquardt muttered. The ICE guy failed to respond, sucked at his McCafe. His boss had recently vented to FOX about Taco Bell posting its five-star menu in “Mexican” instead of the (presumptive) King’s English, so she figured the Starbuck’s grid was beyond the agent’s pay grade/PSAT. The Campus Coffee Commune had a socialist/lesbian/global optic the fed likely didn’t want immortalized the second Melissa hollered “La Migra!” The one Spanish phrase most of these Gen-Plussers knew aside from the Taco Bell menu.

“Look, shithead,” Melissa followed up. “Detained dissident, deported dissident, dead dissident – I know it’s pretty much all the same to you. But he’s about as close to fucking family as I can tolerate, and isn’t you assholes packing him onto a plane to Venezuela or El Salvador or wherever you send dangerous old Syrian ethicists primo FOXbait these days?”

“You should probably watch yourself, Dr. Urquardt,” Agent Oatman murmured in as ominous a tone as he could muster. “We’re already looking into your department chairman’s documentation, and you might think about your pals Professors Aboud and Zhao, and maybe your queer friend, too. Shit, even this Mason person was on the FBI radical watchlist.”

“In 1968. Professor Mason flipped off a Chicago cop who was busy clubbing women and students, and it wound up in Time. No fucking wonder J. Edgar and the Zoo Crew were hemorrhaging blood and bile. Too bad she was born here, cause that means you can zip it up, Jagfuck. Oh, and Assistant Professor Cooper spent half his high school career hauling carcasses around his dad’s slaughter plant and concussing half the male teen population of Nebraska for the home team, which kinda probably explains a lot. So, yeah, let’s you and him have a discussion of the new gender politics. The fuck time you got?”

“You’re pretty cocky,” Agent Oatman growled. “There’s still a lot of questions about your role in that protest last year, that whole mess that almost got civilians killed.”

“I helped stop a global trafficking ring, and I’m the only civilian who almost got killed,” Melissa reminded him more tersely than she intended. “Though the county cops did a reasonably good job of escalating a peaceful protest into a game of student whack-a-mole.”

“Yeah, and you and your people did a wonderful job of obstructing ICE operations – we never were able to get the ringleaders of the riot, despite the Sheriff’s assistance. Your fucking indoctrinated students took all the credit, knowing they were looking at misdemeanors. Well, like Nick Nolte once said, there’s a new sheriff in town, as your Professor Nassim found out.”

“Eddie Murphy,” Melissa grunted. “’There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name’s Reggie Hammond.’ Jesus, you’re even whitewashing 48 Hrs.”

“Keep it up.” Bon mots expended, Oatman fell silent.

9:07, Professor Urquardt recorded with a furtive glance at her phone in the passenger door pocket. Nothing got past these valiant new stalwarts of the domestic security, except the occasional young soccer player shipped off to a terrorist blackhole in El Salvador for his “Mom” tattoo or Latino MAGA donor who thought his hand-stamp bought him immunity. But beyond ensuring some peace and quiet for the balance of the “stakeout,” her frothy banter with Agent Oatbag had provided some crucial intel.

Saanvi Deshpande had long been naturalized, and Malik Aboud and Wei Zhang had by sheer workload steered clear of the campus political fray (at least the currently relevant one impacting the White House’s West Bank real estate prospects). Malik had had some major connections via the FBI’s art crimes branch, but post-Comey, the Bureau floodgates had opened to anybody with a gun and a lack of solid male role models. Thea and Ethan faced a different threat, the federal assault on DEI, not only on admissions equality, minority grants, and women’s, multicultural, and LGBTQIA studies programs, but potentially also on administrators and faculty who ruffled the Right’s white sheets.

In an effort to keep the federal spigot flowing and prevent a mass exodus of liberal arts, social sciences, engineering, and biomedical talent, the new and now palpitating University president had agreed to the warehousing, sale, or scrapping of several pieces deemed by The Power to pose threats of inclusion, dissent, or misguided amore between consenting parties, from Ethan Cooper’s iconic scrap metal installation The Abattoir of Ideas (an abstraction of man’s deadliest tools and weaponry assembled about a Godzilla-scale brain and a purported affront to the Second Amendment and great American defense contractors) that had anchored the Wrightson Hall common to the recent Humanities Atrium centerpiece Horsemen Assemble, whose Revelations/MCU-inspired motif wasn’t quite abstract enough to dispel speculation that Horsemen No. 1 bore a rudimentary resemblance to a renowned reality show host/head of state, Horseman 2 evoked a certain exploding eCar manufacturer/Ghost of Apartheid Past, and Horseman 3 an international oligarch-cum-power equestrian who tended to ride reverse bareback. Death was determined to be Death despite the viral Stephen Miller memes.

The University of Guelph had readily accepted both pieces, Professor Urquardt suspected out of academic empathy and antipathy toward the raucous neighbor to the south who’d declared Canada the 51st state and added Canadian snowbirds to a roster of U.S. foes that now included the diffident and possibly Greenland-allied Eastern rockhopper penguins of Heard Island..

The short of it was, Melissa’s options seemed severely limited, and so here she sat with a guy Hoover might even have called a little extra, waiting for a ransom pickup and potential return of the benign if candid old man the feds had wanted to disappear on their own terms.

She glanced down at the device in the side pocket. 9:09.

Melissa now wished defiant pride hadn’t deprived her of a McFlurry…

**

So.

“As a patriotic citizen of the Renewed United States, I cannot stand ideally by while a foreign-born terrorrist mole and enemy of the State continues to bombard the woked libtards on our esteamed campus with insurrectional messages glorifying HAMASS and blasfeeming our Holy Land. I have placed terrorrist Omar Nassim under Citizen’s Arrest, and will willingly surrender him soully into the custody of ICE on the following conditions:

The Terrorrist Nassim will be extraditiously deported to await the justice of President Nettenyahoo and his Jews.

All federal funds will be cut off to the University, whose Woke Agenda and mongralization of modern education has desgraced a once fine instuition.

A reward in the form of $250,000 will be deposited in a Venmo acc delivered by ICE at a time to be specifyed at a time of my choosing. If the Deep State FBI or local police are brought in, I will despose of the Terrorrist Nassim my self.

I am intrusting you to pass this on to ICE because I do not have their personnel number and bcause I know U want nothing bad to happen to the Terrorrist Nassim. Ill call you. You call ICE.”

“I pray this isn’t a student,” Chairperson Deshpande murmured, pushing the note carefully across the blotter with a stylus pen. “It speaks ill to our English Department, as well as the U.S. educational system in general.” The socioculturist leaned back and regarded Professor Urquardt. “Do you believe this person?”

“Not in the way you meant, though I would’ve been more suspicious of this level of nearly flawless ignorance ten years ago.” Melissa grunted, slipping the laser-printed letter back into its manila envelope. “But, yeah, I think this psycho redneck has Professor Nassim. Omar probably went along peacefully – he’s fucking 76, and he’d know his best chance of surviving would be to play this out. The guy sounds like a sincere lunatic – I think he feels he’s doing his nationalistic duty, and is dirt-stupid enough to think ICE will play along.”

“Or perhaps not so stupid,” Saanvi suggested. “Look at the recent incident of Albrego Garcia. Based on a specious, if not stultifyingly sophomoric misidentification of a tattoo, this father, according to the White House a week ago, the victim of a tragic injustice. Now, the president, for no conceivable reason, has backtracked on his blunder, and the man may die in a Salvadoran prison. Do you see any mass public call for Garcia’s return, or even his survival? Dr. Nassim’s value to the administration is as political currency and retaliation against academic freedoms? A quarter million for one old immigrant scapegoat/example, with the added plus of bragging rights that the administration secured his freedom if only to send him back to an uncertain and irrelevant future? I would assume the revamped Homeland Security would rather have Nassim back alive than dead, and if your citizen kidnapper is what he purports to be, he may believe ICE would pay the money and look the other way for a patriotic bigot. What are you asking?”

Melissa shrugged. “Normally, I’d say ICE should go fuck itself, and I know, down-deep, even President Joosten would silently agree. And you. I certainly don’t want to draw these maggots back to campus. And I don’t want you or Zhao or Malik to put your necks on the block. But…”

“You believe you need ICE to bring Omar back alive, even it will be to deal with the consequences,” Saanvi concluded serenely. “If you want my blessing, I believe you know you don’t require it, though I appreciate your consideration. If you want absolution, I can assure you you that isn’t necessary. Of course, I understand your motives, even if you understand that in our socio-politically polarized academic community, not everyone may.”

The department chief smiled briefly, in that manner that no longer maddened but now slightly unnerved Professor Urquardt. “Unless there is anything else you require?”

Melissa flashed a retaliatory smile and shook her head vigorously. “Off to deal with the devil.”

**

“It’s 9:13, case you’re interested.” Agent Oatbag grunted. “I’m beginning to think this whole thing was a joke, or our citizen lost his nerve.”

The ICE man had used “citizen” without a micron of irony. Melissa worried for a moment the fed would pull the plug, even if anyone in the new and improved DOJ felt inclined to lift a pen over an elderly Middle Easterner, even a dead one, if worst came to it.

“C’mon,” she growled. “You got somewhere to be? Chicago Field Office raiding a kindergarten tomorrow?”

“Y’know?” the agent turned, eyes deader than his smile, and leaned menacingly over the console. “Fuck you, Professor.”

“Go for it, or try,” Melissa grinned, the old pressure building behind her eyes. “Manhandling a woman is executive privilege, Chief, but if you wanna test your credit rating, we can see who winds up in the St. Mark’s ER with a bag full of ice and whatever I manage to break off.”

The ICE agent fell heavily back in his seat, fingers squeaking on the steering wheel. Melissa glanced down, suppressing a good old-fashioned “I thought so.”

9:15.

“Hey,” Professor Urquardt breathed, peering into the darkness by the park bike rack where they’d dropped the Immigration Retrieval Funmeal with its $250,000 gift. A hoodied figure coasted by on a e-scooter, and the arched bag disappeared in a flash.

“Fuckety fuckshit!” The ICE unit roared into life as Oatbag squealed the wheels and performed a two-phased “J” on the cracked, narrow street. He completed the “U” without taking out the burgundy Caravan or the teal Cooper hugging the curb across from Redbud Park.

“You fucking see him?” the agent demanded, anxiety creeping into his tone for the first time.

“Up there, I think,” Melissa shouted hoarsely. “Yeah! Turn at the Casey’s, the, uh, gas station at the next corner! C’mon!”

Oatbag nearly took out a soft maple as he woke the shit out of the redneck juggling a pair of Casey’s family-sizeds into his Ram cab. As he came out of the oversteer, the fed cursed and stomped the brakes before colliding with the black Econoline idling in the middle of the treelined residential block.

As the unit’s bumper demurely pulled short of a kiss with the panel van’s fender, Oatbag’s headlights caught the trio approaching from the nearby sidewalk. The men aggressively guiding their companion toward the curb were young -- late teens, early ‘20s, baggy jeans, black tees. The bag over the third, smaller man’s head stymied a definitive description. Oatbag was out of the car, side piece drawn, and Melissa virtually kicked the door open.

“Fucking freeze right there! ICE!”

Two of three immediately halted, the third stumbling slightly through no fault. In standard gray sweats, he could have been anyone from Jimmy Hoffa to Elvis to Omar Nassim.

“Wait,” the taller of his two captors drawled. “Dude, you say ICE?”

Agent Oatman grabbed his arm and slammed him against the black van.

“We’re like, from here, Officer,” the second, hairier youth protested fuzzily. He suddenly turned to Melissa, giving her the full scan typical of most first-day freshman pseudo-alphas. “Hey, I know you, right? Yeah, hot art prof…”

Professor Urquardt felt a certain petty satisfaction as Agent Dickweed bounced the kid lightly off the van. She rushed to the bagged man, who was wobbling blindly in the spring darkness, and yanked the hood free. Though his eyes were invisible behind the fogged lenses, the boyish face and blond love patch were giveaway enough.

“Shit!” Melissa hissed. Oatbag pivoted, and he staggered back a step.

“What…the…fuck…is…this…shit?” the agent addressed the boys in a nearly inaudible, homicidal growl.

“It’s my birthday,” the “abductee” gasped, wiping his glasses on his shirt tail.

“Hah?” Oatman demanded.

“It’s Eric’s birthday, bruh,” the tall one informed the Boomer with a sigh. “He’s 21 – street legal. Zach and I wanted to take him for a celibatory drink, but he said he was cramming for a final, soooo…”

“You detained him,” Melissa muttered, turning to Oatman. “C’mon – we gotta see if we can catch up with Scooter Boy.”

Oatbag stood, legs apart, panting slightly. “You shitbags have interfered in a major investigation. A life’s at stake.”

“That’s sweet,” Professor Urquardt cooed. “Dude, what’re you gonna do – ship these brainstems to your buds in El Salvador? Look, wrong time, wrong place, and the clock’s running. Hey, morons, you smell like you started the party a few hours ago. Why don’t you Uber this shit?”

“S’okay,” Zach assured her. “I’m the destinated driver.”

“Fuck ‘em!” Oatman roared. “I hope the little fuckers die in a fuckin’ ball of fire.”

Eric looked at his shoes. “Worst. Birthday. Ever.”

**

“The piece has arrived intact,” the gray man in the kippah reported, “and is scheduled for reassembly on the Fielding House lawn – our diversity and human rights centre, you know. It seemed appropriate. As for your other generous gift, Associate Dean Bailey has reserved a place of pride at MacKinnon Hall. He’s thrilled by our latest, um, acquisition.”

“You needn’t be coy, Avram,” Professor Thomas Skillruud beamed, adjusting the laptop screen to incorporate his entire bald, jowled head. Dean Avram Silber was perfectly framed, though the University of Guelph “skullcap” was doing extra duty atop the old academic’s chaotic white locks. “I assume you have minimal liability here, and I’m reasonably certain no one currently in Washington reads the journals. I can’t tell you how grateful we all are for the University’s largesse.”

A heavy sigh escaped the woman in the wing chair opposite Tom’s desk, and the Midwest’s self-proclaimed premier expert in modern American realist painting tossed off an admonishing frown.

“Thomas, you know I was a great admirer of your father’s works – especially David’s Star – and helping subvert the tyranny that has once again befallen our U.S. friends, well, you could call it my tribute to Carl.” Dean Silber ran gnarled fingers through his snowy hair, and Tom wondered if he’d intended him to spot the faded numbers that momentarily peeked from the cuff of his tweed jacket. “We both understand tyranny, nu?”

“Indeed,” Professor Skillruud nodded soberly, glancing over Urquardt’s shoulder at the sepia portrait of his father in happier days, after his second and last novel was published in 1951. He found them rather ponderous volumes, truth be told, but they’d brought his father the twinkle ultimately extinguished by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. That day, he’d been a man of uncharacteristically few words. “You’re aware HUAC trenched in on the red-baiting after being told to lay off the Klan? History reverberates –and ricochets, eh?”

“Old white men, eh? An ongoing blight on society. I’m sure your Professor Urquardt would agree. Please give her my blessings, as well. Be well, Thomas.”

Thomas closed the laptop with a faint, forlorn smile. “And my implicit gratitude to your young confederates. It’s comforting to know we can still instill a sense of social consciousness and justice in these Gen-Whatevers.”

Melissa snorted. “Zach gets semester credit after fucking up his mid-term project, though the ‘hot prof’ crack will not go unpunished. Weekend beer money and the opportunity to fuck with ICE was enough for his bros. When Nassim pops up among the living one of these days soon, my guess is the administration won’t want to touch it with whatever hyperbolic phallic metaphor they’re embracing these days. We probably do want to keep this classified from the gang, though.”

Professor Skillruud smirked. “I wouldn’t count on it. Saanvi told me to tell you your protégé – Zach? – laid it on a bit thick with the rightwing fruitcake argot and syntactic butchery.”

“He’s no Carl Skillruud,” Melissa conceded.

“Wish we could thank Ethan,” Tom mulled. “After all, if he hadn’t designed Abattoir with a hollow center, we’d have had no place to stash poor Omar for the border crossing.”

Melissa considered, and uncoiled herself. She paused at the office door.

“Tell your buddy Silber he was only half-right,” she murmured, twisting the corny brass knob. “There are those rare times when an old white man comes in handy.”