Jihadi (31 page)

Thelonius said, ‘Yes, I want to become a Muslim.’

Sergeant USA leaned in close and muttered in Thelonius’s ear: ‘Just get us the hell out of here.’

Fatima said, in English, not quite under her breath: ‘He has succeeded who purifies her …’

‘Don’t you listen to that stuff, kid,’ whispered Sergeant USA.

Thelonius closed his eyes tight.

‘… and he has failed who corrupts her,’ said Fatima.

When he opened his eyes, Sergeant USA was gone.

The imam said, ‘Repeat after me. I bear witness that there is no God but God.’

Thelonius bore witness to that. Ninety minutes later, he was on a plane out of the Republic.

Those who had helped to coordinate the American’s exit were advised, in a discreet email from the prime minister’s personal account, to stay away from the capital.

‘This will pass,’ Ra’id said. It would only be necessary for Fatima to avoid the city for the next, say, seventy-two hours. That would be enough time for the grumbling to recede. The White Beast would find some new soap opera, once it realized that this one had concluded.

As she sped through the restless back streets toward the suburbs and the village of D––, her driver’s uneven eyes once again flicking glances at her in the rear-view mirror, Fatima was not so sure the soap opera had concluded.

He had been sincere, at any rate. His heart had been sound, and with him gone there was no longer any danger of falling in love with him. She had watched him glance back over his shoulder at her as he was being led away, limping down the corridor of cold linoleum, toward a door that would become a pathway to a waiting car. She had watched him open his eyes wide and smile.

Here we are.

Done with that problem, at any rate.

Being debriefed is a whole lot like being interrogated. It feels like a continuation of what you just went through, not the end of it.

When word got around of how ‘the crisis in the Islamic Republic’ had been ‘resolved’ – two catch-phrases from the media coverage of the period that still make the dead guy writing this story chuckle – most people chose to assume Thelonius and the Directorate had outsmarted the extremists. That Thelonius had only accepted Islam as a legal pretence to get out of a tight spot. That bullshit had carried the day again.

He spent the better part of a day being ‘interviewed’ – that was the official term – in a brightly lit hospital room. Even though the hospital room was somewhere in Poland, it was really part of America: the Directorate was running the hospital.

During that long session he shared all he could remember about whatever people asked him. Nobody asked about the Raisin. Nobody asked about Fatima. Nobody asked about Mike Mazzoni’s piss. Nobody asked about the flechettes. People asked about what had happened to him in the BII compound and how much he had given away.

Thelonius had followed orders and kept his mouth shut. So everyone acted as though his becoming a Muslim was part of a clever trick that made it possible for him to fly out of the Islamic Republic. Which, in fact, it was. Thelonius acted that way too.

As people asked him questions, Thelonius kept thinking about going home.

The truth was, though, he didn’t even know where home was now.

Thelonius didn’t know all kinds of things. He didn’t yet know Becky was pregnant, hadn’t yet figured out that Child was missing, had no idea that cats liked to drink toxic puddles of antifreeze. All he knew for sure as he was being questioned was that there was a direction called ‘rest’ and a direction called ‘home’, obscure trails that intersected and disappeared into a mist.

As he stumbled into that fog, it was easy to be the person everybody believed he was. To assume, as they did, that he was not really a Muslim and never had been. Every once in a while, though, he peered into the fog and wondered who he would be back in Salem.

He was still wondering about that when he got off the plane in Boston.

He was wondering about it when he made his way downstairs and sat at his dining-room table and stared at a milk carton that vibrated. He wondered when it would pass, this feeling of wandering through the mist, of not being home yet, of being slightly dead. 

It took some time to rig up the sound system to his satisfaction.

The Bearded Glarers started work on the audio set-up right after fajr, and had the large box speakers in place by noon, but these, according to Abu Islam, produced insufficient clarity. Additional speakers appeared. The Glarers had the microphone ready for him just before one in the afternoon.

At one fifteen on Friday, October 14, 2005, the unseen New Imam, Abu Islam, tapped the mike and began delivering the sermon that preceded a communal prayer taking place in front of the American embassy. He did this from a comfortable, well-appointed hotel room, seated before a bottle of Dewar’s to which he made occasional appeals for inspiration.

By his side sat his stout wife, who scribbled occasional suggestions on the hotel stationery.

The boy was nowhere to be seen. Abu Islam had ceased making inquiries as to his whereabouts.

The dead guy telling you this story has no idea exactly how many people showed up for that prayer, but he believes the estimates that put the crowds at roughly ten times the size of the protest about the flechettes that killed Fatima’s sister Wafa. That would make it about two hundred thousand people. Technically, this wasn’t a protest. It
was a religious service that elevated the recent release of the American known as Davis Raymonds to a level of central theological importance in contemporary Islam.

One was obliged from a human standpoint, a moral standpoint, and above all a religious standpoint, Abu Islam insisted, to fight and to kill all of the disbelievers who had launched this insult upon the Muslim people, and to continue the fight until they submitted to his personal authority. His words echoed against five major thoroughfares, into a large public park and through several dozen crooked alleys, all filled to the brim with the White Beast.

Abu Islam continued by pronouncing that any and all members of the government, and any citizens aligned with or supporting the government, whether or not they had direct knowledge of the events leading to the release of the murderer and desecrator of the Koran known as Davis Raymonds, were now to be regarded as infidels. Short of repentance, they were destined for the hellfire. In this world, the world awaiting the Day of Judgement, they were to be killed wherever they were found.

The sound of a bottle of bourbon clinking against a half-full glass echoed through the streets.

(Back in the hotel room, the heavyset woman frowned and indicated silently that she was to do the pouring.)

Abu Islam, calm and even and more voluble with every sip of Dewar’s, pointed out that, as infidels, all employees of the government, even someone claiming to have no role or knowledge of the release of the murderer and desecrator of the Koran known as Davis Raymonds, were to be regarded as identical in status to the occupying Americans. Any Americans remaining in the city were also to be regarded as infidels destined for the hellfire. Killing such a person after confirming his or her refusal to renounce all support for the present government was mandatory, and a blessed deed.

Members of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, and their police, and their security forces in uniform, were also to be regarded as infidels destined for the hellfire. However, these individuals were likely
to be armed. Killing such a person was a blessed deed, to be certain, but precautions were in order.

First, it was praiseworthy and preferable to kill such a person in collaboration with another male believer. Women at this point were not to carry out such operations without the guidance and approval of a male believer. Particular stress was laid on this point. The loss of women from a family was to be avoided at all costs. They were to remain in the home.

In addition, Abu Islam ruled, it was praiseworthy and most preferable to kill armed infidels in uniform
only
after having consulted with one of Abu Islam’s personal representatives. Killing such uniformed, armed supporters was praiseworthy, but had not yet been declared mandatory. It might become mandatory in the weeks to come.

There was more.

Abu Islam ruled next that the murderer and desecrator of the Koran known as Davis Raymonds, whom he had identified in a previous sermon as an infidel destined for the hellfire, was, despite the government’s shameful connivance in his escape from the Republic, still subject to Islamic justice. The believer, male or female, who executed this person, acting independently or in collaboration with another believer, acting within the borders of the Islamic Republic or elsewhere, would be assured of Paradise.

In front of the embassy, Skullface, one bony hand on the boy’s shoulder, shouted
TAKBEER
into his megaphone.

Two hundred thousand voices responded
ALLAHU AKBAR.

Thelonius was now home from the animal shelter, having been released by the police on his own recognizance.

Composed again, he’d asked for Child’s remains before they left. The talkative officer had agreed to fetch them, on the condition that Thelonius stay in the back while he did. Thelonius also had to
promise the officer that he wouldn’t operate heavy machinery for a while, that he would stay off the streets and try to get some sleep.

During the cab ride home, the heavy box in his lap to settle him, he had felt Islamic City recede. His knee, which had caused him pain since his interrogation, had hurt less. Now, standing outside the Salem foursquare where Becky had been born, it ached again.

The Raisin had said: ‘Where then are you going?’

Actually the Koran said that.

He placed Child on the railing of the deck, unlocked the door, opened it, retrieved Child, and went in the kitchen.

Chaos surrounded him: puddles of milk from the half-gallon he had smacked around during his argument with Becky, an overflowing garbage pail, a counter full of dirty dishes, debris from breakfast, all of it strewn about, all of it furious. And him, the maddest, biggest mess of all, limping through it, his knee throbbing, the cat’s stone casket swaying in his hands. A placid sycamore waved its leaves from the window overlooking the porch.

Both forearms sore, Thelonius set his heavy load down in the middle of the floor.

He did not have to call out to see whether or not Becky was there. He knew she was gone: this silence was quite different from the silence when she was in and not talking. She’d be back. She always came back here. Odd for her to leave a mess, though.

He tidied up the kitchen.

He retrieved Child with an effort, headed upstairs and groaned: the knee throbbing as he made his way up. He kept on, but felt the slightly dead feeling again. He was pushing it too hard, trying to go too fast.

When he reached the landing, he turned. He looked down the stairwell from where he’d just come, then up into a skylight window whose height and width ratios approximated those of a sheet of paper. He saw the dancing leaves of that great sycamore again, colouring itself with autumn. A bird settled onto one of the leaves, blue and grey, its name escaped him. He felt better. He turned, went into the bathroom and placed the heavy box on the floor.

He sat, opened the casket, looked inside it and stared at the rumpled, strangely folded assemblage of fur and limbs that had been his cat.

He began to set Child on the tiled bathroom floor, and then, thinking better of it, laid him with care in the bathtub. There would be less mess if he were washed in there. Child’s eyes were empty and sad and finished.

That dead girl’s open eyes had looked nothing like Dick Unferth’s rat-eyes, nothing.

He wept for a long time.