What a day your W Team has had! We refer to last Thursday, a day of intrigue and adventure in the midst of deadly and dangerous Orientalism. A day in which we stood toe to toe with violent death! Or, at the very least, severe annoyance; a day of dark venturing ripped straight from the pages of The Arabian Nights--only without all the sex.
 
Our day began, as do so many, with the morning. We were returning from a pleasant Virginia sojourn to the nearby town of Reston, where conservative icon, Newt Gingrich was promoting his new, co-authored book, Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War. This is the first of a planned novelistic trilogy in which General Lee wins the battle of Gettysburg and goes on to even greater victory. In Mr. Gingrich's speculative but nonetheless deeply heartfelt fiction things come out much, much better.
 
The noted politico-turned-fantasist was on hand to sign copies of the book and to help his devoted readership pronounce unfamiliar words.
 
The day's general theme of Arabic mystery was in abundant evidence upon our arrival. The bookstore's parking lot had been transformed into a virtual Persian marketplace, where one could everywhere find vendors purveying every conceivable variety of overripe produce with which to greet the former Speaker of the House. Mrs. Feeny bought several basketfuls and waited near the front door. We were in the midst of imploring her to come with us just as the noted author came out.
 
After our release, we all piled into our vehicle and motored home. Feeny was seated in the back of the car, and we happened to notice that her door was ever so slightly unlatched. This of course electrified us all, and you may be sure that we took quick action.
 
We're certain you will share our joy in the subsequent discovery that, no matter how fast we took each turn, or lurched to a stop and then bolted off again, the door remained resolutely shut, and its precious cargo safe.
 
"Oh, look!" said the old saddlebag, a little out of breath from the most recent of our unproductive sessions of crack-the-whip, "There's that perfectly sweet old Mosque! I've always wanted to visit it. Is it all right if we stop?"
 
One has in such instances but two options: the first being to argue with the old prune until anoxia sets in, the second to accede immediately to whatever insane request spews forth. We chose the latter course, in part because it occurred to us that it might not be a bad idea to pop into one of these likely terrorist havens unannounced, after the fashion of the UN weapons inspectors, in hopes of learning what was what.
 
It was a lovely day for a visit. The sounds of nature were all about us as we approached the impressive Islamic edifice: the excited twitter of the sparrow in every tree, the cheerful stridulation of the insect on every leaf, the busy whirring of camcorders in every bush, all orchestrated the symphony of spring.
 
A pleasant woman in a plain gray hijab greeted us at the door and conducted us to the Imam, the prayer- leader, who showed us around the mosque and the attached Community Center. It was immediately apparent that our hosts had in some inexplicable way penetrated our plans--even before we'd made them--and had quickly hidden the Center's anti-aircraft emplacements, anthrax manufactory, and annotated maps of Washington's transportation and water systems. All that remained was an air of innocent and wholesome purpose that was almost...well...American.
 
We are dealing with a very clever adversary.
 
As we sipped dark tea in his office, the Imam asked us to help him unravel a mystery that had vexed his congregation. As part of what we construe to be a growing ecumenical movement among federal law enforcement officials, agents of the FBI had conducted a series of...oh, let's call them "pilgrimages", to carefully selected mosques around the nation. In these visits the agents demonstrated their newly minted religious devotion by inquiring into every aspect of the mosques' activities, including their books, papers and computers.
 
Apparently an awkwardness had arisen during a pilgrimage to the present mosque. One of the agents, no doubt giddy and coltish in the throes of newly found religious fervor, happened to trip over some loose bit of floor jetsam, inadvertently bringing himself rather sharply into contact with a woman of the mosque. The woman, very likely a paranoid schizophrenic, immediately assumed the worst and complained about rough treatment. The agent patiently and gently explained that she should "shut her mouth," because she'd have been "treated much worse in [her] own country."
 
Well! The joke was on him, because it turns out her family has been American citizens for three generations! Hah-hah! We'll bet his face was red!
 
But the Imam had an even greater mystery to plumb. It seems that Muslims--principally males--have begun to disappear all over the country. For the most part their absences seem to be the result of arrests and, er, quiet, detentions by vigilante--sorry, vigilant law enforcement personnel. Some of the detainees have been deported, while others have been returned after a period of hardly more than a few months. The mystery: a number of the returnees bear unexplained bruises and minor fractures.
 
Ignoring the strong possibility that the injuries might have been occasioned by lumpy mattresses, the Imam asked if any explanation presented itself to our minds. Well, of course it did, but we'd had such a nice afternoon, and we hated to spoil it with the suggestion that people should think twice before joining the Islamic religion because there's something about it that makes one accident-prone.
 
At last, Feeny was satisfied, and our visit ended with our hosts making us promise to return soon, and waving goodbye as we drove off. After which they doubtless redoubled the manufacture and storage of their deadly ordnance.
 
As we say, our visit was pleasant, but it was also something of a disappointment: not once did a bearded fanatic leap out at us, waving a scimitar and damning us for infidels. This is something we've noticed lately: people everywhere are losing touch with their charming ethnic typicalities, and becoming barely distinguishable from real Americans.
 
In its own way our adventure was as big a letdown as last year's visit to that church in Harlem.