They darted for the door, which was already growing clogged with the half-drunk occupants of the club. When they emerged, both sides of the street were powerless, but Wilshire was less than a block to the south, and the power was still running on the southbound side of Wilshire.

A text pinged Cora’s phones, and she frantically checked it. “What’d he say?” asked Kaveh.

“He says he doesn’t know what caused it.”

Kaveh noted that some of the people on the street were looking into the westward sky, and, following their gaze, he saw the source of their fixation: a plume of smoke rising in the air not two blocks away, illuminated from behind by the lights of Santa Monica. At the base of the column was a faint glow, presumably from the blaze that was producing the smoke column. Eli recognized the location of the smoke column before he did and began running to its source, Leila close behind.

Fuck, he realized. Eli’s store.

It took them less than a minute to run that two blocks, but it felt so much longer. The fire department was already there by the time they reached the scene, blocking them from getting close. It wasn’t Eli’s family’s jewelry store that had been hit but rather the storefront two units over. This was arson—a bomb had done this. It must have blown up a transformer, knocking out the power in the process. Fire poured out of the building, and with the flames and the smoke, it took Kaveh longer than it otherwise might have to see what the building was—a mosque.

“This isn’t your family’s, is it?” asked Cora, a few steps behind him.

He let out a deep breath and shook his head, too dazed to explain that his family wasn’t religious, and either way, Eli was Jewish. Eli came back, apparently rebuffed by the fire department. “Some of the glass got blown out,” he said. “They won’t let me near it.”

Within another minute, almost everyone from their party had gathered near the blaze. Sirens blared in the distance, and Nasser grabbed Eli by the shoulder. “Hang tight. There’s nothing you can do right now.”

They stood in stunned silence, watching as the firefighters screwed their hoses together and doused the flames. Kaveh caught a glance from Leila, and in that glance an unmistakable question—were the threat letter they’d been sent and this bombing related?

Had this happened because of him?

March 8, 2008, 12:10 PM PDT

Los Angeles Times

FBI Investigates Bombing at Beverly Hills, California, Mosque

By Isaac Gantwerk Meyer

An explosion from a bomb rattled a Beverly Hills mosque early Saturday morning, authorities said. There were no injuries, but a large portion of the building was damaged by fire.

The blast at the Islamic Center of Beverly Hills happened just after 10 p.m. local time, the Muslim American Society of Greater Los Angeles said.