American Taliban (22 page)

THEY WENT TO BED
with poetry—

and woke before the camp stirred. John sipped the weak tea Jalal made, rolled up his mat, folded his blanket, tied his sneakers, and was ready.

They started with an easy warm-up run around the campsite, then Jalal took a footpath up the mountain. When John could no longer keep the pace, they switched to a quick walk down and a fifty-yard sprint up. And again, until John’s legs were aching. At the end of every sprint, Jalal dropped down on the path and delivered something extra, twenty push-ups or twenty sit-ups, and though John tried, he couldn’t keep up. He might have been in good enough shape for surfing, but Jalal was in better physical shape than anyone he’d known.

The air is thinner here, Jalal pointed out, so your lungs have to work harder.

After, they washed beside the stream. Hearing John groan because his arms were too sore to reach his back, Jalal offered to do it for him. In his room, he offered Bengay, and John massaged his arms and legs,
Jalal did his back, and John felt his stupid penis respond. But if Jalal noticed, he didn’t say anything, for which John was grateful.

THE EARLY WORKOUT
became his favorite part of the day. He loved the thin morning air, crisp, fresh, clean. He looked forward to this quiet time with Jalal, to Jalal’s attention, and pushed himself to deliver an extra sprint or extra push-ups and earn Jalal’s compliments. He wondered about Jalal’s ability to live out here away from the city without colleagues his own age. But Jalal seemed to welcome the quiet, meditative life, with time for poetry, alongside the physical rigor.

Who’s your hero? he asked Jalal one night. I mean like your mentor.

Jalal thought about it. The early mujahideen, he said. Of the seventies. If you’re asking about someone more contemporary, then Mullah Omar. He’s a scholar, not just a warrior, Jalal said, and I like that.

Yusef and I served two tours together, Jalal said. Both in Kashmir. I volunteered for a third tour in Afghanistan because of Mullah Omar.

THE WEEK FLEW BY
. The lorry came down the mountain to load up on food and ammunition.

When you’re ready, Jalal said, as they worked side by side, loading the lorry. When your lungs are accustomed to the thinner air, you’ll want to train up there.

Soon, John said. In the meantime, he’d enjoyed his first week here. He was sleeping well. He liked Jalal. He liked the boys whose names he’d come to know. Also the teaching and target practice and Qur’anic recitation. His Pashto was improving. And he looked forward to his morning workouts. He felt his heart expand in his narrow chest. His throat and nostrils opened wider. His long arms ached, his long legs burned, he groaned, but when Jalal traced the developing sinews and
tendons on his limbs—maturing muscles, he called them, your reward—John was proud.

AND ALWAYS
his penis threatened to embarrass him, though Jalal revealed nothing. He massaged, he soothed, then capped the tube of Bengay, and set it down beside John. Some nights John found himself awake and wanting Jalal. He wondered at himself, at his fickleness in love. This wasn’t the first time his fickle heart had shifted from one love to another, and he rebuked himself for mistaking lust for love.

THEY TALKED
over slow pots of watery tea. He told Jalal about riding a wave, about waiting for the right one, knowing it, knowing yourself as a mere humble drop in its wake, and going back for more. He told him about Jilly, who went and didn’t return. He explained: Wiping out in an extreme wave could take you twenty to fifty feet under water, and if another wave breaks before you’ve had a chance to surface, you could be held down for too long. A triple wave hold-down is near impossible to survive. Therefore the name: extreme wave surfing.

Walking on water, Jalal called it.

I keep thinking about her final moments. About what she knew. About what there is to know.

HE TOLD JALAL
about Katie and Sylvie, who were now incomplete without Jilly. He couldn’t explain very well. About what was lost. About what he felt. It wasn’t only the loss of Jilly, since she remained within him forever as Jilly. It was something more basic: they’d been
perfect as three, and now the circle was broken, and he found himself aching for its repair, for the number three. He couldn’t explain very well.

IN BED
, on their separate mats, Jalal on his back, always with one hand under his head, and John on his stomach looking into Jalal’s face, they talked about sacrifice, about submerging the individual self for the greater good.

It’s an old mystical ideal, but it’s also a military one, what every soldier in every army in the world must do, Jalal said. Self-surrender. In the Prophet’s day, this experience was expected of every man. Today’s jihad extends this tradition.

But I keep thinking, John said, that maybe there’s a better way to free Kashmir and unite Afghanistan. Without violence. Like Gandhi.

I wish, Jalal said. But Gandhi’s pacifism worked because of Gandhi. Some say Gandhi was the Buddha’s gift to India.

JALAL QUOTED HERACLEITUS
, of whom John hadn’t heard though he considered himself well read.

Well read compared with whom? Jalal asked. Americans? He was your first philosopher, Greek. Most famous for his idea that all things are in a state of flux.

John nodded. He already knew about the significance of life in flux, eternally becoming. He told Jalal about his paper on Jacob’s struggle with his ego, his inner enemy.

Exactly, Jalal said. That’s how he became a powerful nation. Struggling with himself. Knowing himself. Of course, it helps when it’s for a good cause, and Islam provides one. For two hundred years, our umma has been under attack. First the French invaded Egypt. Then the British took Egypt from the French. Then the Italians went for Libya. Then after World War One, when it suited them, the French and English agreed to carve, divide, and subdivide our land.

Jalal knew his history. They were beside the stream, soaping each other’s backs. As a Westerner, Jalal said, you are as wet with colonial guilt as you stand here slick with soap.

Go ahead. Rinse off, Jalal said, and pushed John toward the water.

But John wouldn’t let go of Jalal’s hand and pulled him along, and together they flung themselves in, splashing, and still John held on, though they were both slippery with soap. The stream was too shallow for vertical immersion, so they went under horizontally, nose to nose, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, and then they floated to their sides and spooned, with Jalal holding John snug against himself, hardening against him, and John wanted nothing but this hardened flesh within him. Now, he begged.

So facedown in the water, he gets what he asks for. Jalal stands, and thrusts, and more, holding on, holding out, for what John wants, long enough to wonder for how long John can take it, underwater, a receptacle without breath. He seems suddenly limp, he is only taking, offering no arching response, and Jalal becomes afraid, and afraid, he reaches to lift John’s shoulders and sees the arc of cum in the air, continuous cum arcing, his own cum which is entering John, flowing through John, emerging from John, into blue air, and into clear water. And as if from a distance he hears the noise of John’s ragged choking breaths, a body catching up on life.

After they floated as one, bobbing up and under, up and under, allowing the intervals underwater to grow longer, stretching their lungs to accommodate their desire to submit.

You’re actually pretty good at this, Jalal said. Do you know about the concept of wu-wei? To live as if you’re already dead. Have you been to Hyderabad, to the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif, the uncrowned king of Sind? They stage sunset performances of Sufi music there. Latif wrote:

Try to be dead from now on / Everyone’s dead in the end.

He called it the greatest freedom, the only freedom available to man.

THEY SCHEDULED EXTRA SESSIONS
of target practice. Jalal stood behind John, helped him line up the rifle along his left arm, tucked his elbows in. Though he’d gotten good at hitting the target from a prone position, elbows supported by the floor beneath him, he was all over the place once he stood. His arm wavered; he lost the target, lost control.

Breathe, Jalal said. Relax.

But the target shimmered; the target danced.

Listen to your breath, Jalal said. Count the exhales. And keep sighting down the barrel.

John inhaled, looked up, exhaled, tried sighting again, pulled the trigger and sent another bullet nowhere.

Jalal suggested dropping down on one knee, and John felt he was regressing.

You’re tall, which puts you farther from your center. That’s why you’re unsteady. Dropping down gets you closer to your core.

So John practiced on one knee. Some days now he hit a bull’s eye, but when he couldn’t repeat it on demand, he called it beginner’s luck. He was inconsistent. He still couldn’t qualify as a marksman, though he was getting better.

He went from practicing with one knee on the ground to standing up. He learned to breathe. He learned to relax. He learned to squeeze the trigger, to think of it as a slow consistent squeeze rather than a pull.

Like other challenges, Jalal said, achievement takes time. And practice. But you’ve gotten really fit.

It was the end of his third week of training. Jalal was administering the daily Bengay, and he took his time, massaging and soothing.

You’re ready, Jalal said, tracing John’s newly hardened muscles, ligaments, and sinews. And this is an opportunity for you because this group is heading into Afghanistan. The Taliban has been calling for help.

But the lorry came. The lorry went. John stayed a fourth week until Jalal reminded him of his duty, of what he wanted, and why he’d come: He must think wu-wei, give himself over to the chance of death, become. His reward: greater spiritual life. The great spiritual men of this world escape biology, become immortal.

Do you know the “Tale of the Sands”? Jalal asked.

From the
Mystic Rose
?

Think of yourself as the stream that allows the wind to carry it across the desert sands, then falls like rain and becomes a river. You, too, will return as the higher essence of yourself.

Will you still recognize me? John joked.

Listen, Jalal said. It’s your duty. And it’s an experience you’ve been wanting. You owe it both to yourself and to Islam. You must go to the mountains. You must struggle to become.

But why must it be violently? Why not with love? Like Ibn ’Arabi’s. Like the Beatles’. Like ours. He was asking the questions Barbara would ask.

Don’t speak like a foolish naïf, Jalal said. Violence is life. You were born in violence, tearing away from your mother, hurting your mother in the process, and you live by violence, fighting to survive. If you do anything worthwhile with your life, you’ll die violently, as most men do, even your namesake, John Lennon, singing for love and peace, even Mahatma Gandhi. Read the Bible, read the Qur’an, read the daily papers. Life’s violent. Preaching love, Jesus Christ died violently.

LATE ONE NIGHT
, they were under netting to avoid the fidget of flies, and beside him, Jalal was breathing with deep sleep, but John remained awake, thinking:

It will be an adventure and he’s been wanting adventure. He has learned much from Jalal, received much, and he wants to give back, to Jalal, to the people, to Islam. He is Muslim, and he wants to fulfill his duty to Islam. More than anything else, he wants to become. He is here to know and become the age-old way, the way the Buddha became the Buddha, the way Abraham became father to a nation, the way Jacob became Israel, the way Christ became the Savior God, the way Jilly became Jilly. And though their achievements were impossibly difficult to understand, impossible to explain, he has come to understand what they’ve done, and he knows what he has to do.

He thinks of Richard Burton dancing with the dervishes, cutting himself. He thinks of Jacob struggling with the angel and walking away with a limp. He thinks of Muhammed reciting as commanded. He thinks of Jilly giving herself to the wave, her last one. He would do as they had. He would give himself to becoming.

So he swears allegiance to formative struggle. So Jalal packs his backpack. So he is packed, so he is strong and muscular, so he is ready for the lorry to take him up the mountain. He is the only passenger in this vehicle loaded with supplies of food and ammunition. So the lorry grinds up the steep incline on a road designed for old switchback train
tracks. The lorry grinds to steep right, steep left, and right again, inching forward, inching back, and forward again, in ever smaller degrees. The mountain grows steeper, narrower, steeper, the switchbacks become more frequent. So he gives his body to its rhythm, this forward and back, this inch up, and inch back, and understands this as life, the rise and drop, the up and down, with no stop at peak, a wave, which comes in, collects itself, gathering meaning, then heaves over and disperses back to nonmeaning. An eternal attraction and withdrawal, progress and regress, with the reach toward crest already showing the drop down and away. This, he thinks, is what Jilly knew. That all experience is like this. That this is life, with meaning and nonmeaning side by side, touching. Before meaning, chaos. After meaning, chaos. Before life, senselessness. After life, senselessness. He must embrace the before and after, the forward and away, the switch there and back, the becoming, because only becoming is eternal. Because being doesn’t exist.