Jihadi (39 page)

Fatima shut the door. She stood before his desk, behind the chair set in the middle of the room. Her fists were clenched, and her forearms close to her hips, but this was invisible beneath her loose garment. Remember to breathe.

Behind his desk, his back to her, uniformed Murad Murad was grunting, working out. In each hand was a heavy miniature dumbbell, each a formidable gold-painted hand-weight, each with a handle across, for the convenience of the sweaty grasper. He moved these weights to and fro in rhythmic patterns. No earbuds drove his grunting. This was his own private symphony, playing for himself and for Fatima as he stared out the first-floor window.

The window was lined with one-way glass. Pedestrians a foot or two away had no idea how minutely they were being evaluated by the Interim Director of the BII.

‘They are still (grunt) preparing my office upstairs,’ he said, without looking at her. ‘But this place will do for now. (Grunt.) The joke in the newspaper is that I did not kill Ra’id, (grunt) but I did not stop him being killed, (grunt) and that I threw a party after he was killed. (Grunt.) I arranged no such party. (Grunt.) You believe what they say about me?’

(Grunt.)

Murad Murad’s fat ass jerked and twitched beneath the khaki as he moved the dumbbells. He still would not turn and look at her.

She sighed, low, and looked to the ceiling.

‘I know who killed Ra’id.’

He turned from the window at last, his sweaty face set in an
attitude of purposeful confusion. ‘Who is this? Hm? To whom am I speaking?’

She met his eyes. ‘You know who I am.’

‘No, no, not with certainty.’ He looked away. ‘Not with clarity. You could be the New Imam. No one knows where he is now, you know. No, no. I know nothing with certainty about you. These are dangerous times. One must know something about you. Remove the facial veil.’

Fatima felt a sour taste at the very back of her throat.

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Strangers among us. Not everyone is to be trusted. I’m unsure.’

‘Listen to me. I have information. Important to you. Something Ra’id knew, something that you should know. That’s why I’m here.’

‘No. You are here because you need protection. You and your family. That’s why you came. The only possible reason to talk to a man you swore never to talk to again would be protection. Remove the facial veil. Then we can speak more comfortably together.’

And he smiled his weak little smile and glanced at her again, a little insect, briefly there and then gone.

‘Be seated. Then show me your face. As a gesture of goodwill. The past being the past. And so forth. Do understand my position. I must confirm your identity, you know, if we are to discuss your information. And I do so want to discuss your information.’

Technically, this is a workplace. Nothing in the Sunnah against it. Very well. The offer, at least, must take place. If he declines, he declines.

Instinct said,
don’t.

Her legs screamed,
sit
.

She ignored instinct, supposing she was doing so for Noura and Mother.

Fatima took her seat in the chair, which welcomed her and soothed her legs immensely, but she noticed it had been bolted to its spot, directly in front of his desk. There was no wheeling the chair backwards a pace or two, a fact that made her uneasy.

Instinct said,
Too close. Leave now
.

No. Noura. Mother.

Instinct said,
Leave now
.

Fatima ignored instinct.

She removed her facial veil.

With a heavy mini-barbell in each of his plump hands, Murad Murad stepped around the desk to inspect her more closely, as one might inspect a hanging cut of meat.

Too close.

Fatima leaned back in the chair.

Curious as a fish, Murad Murad did not shift away, despite her obvious discomfort, but continued evaluating her – leaning forward slightly, in fact.

‘Good. It has almost healed. I felt badly about giving you that bruise. I so wanted to tell you how badly I felt. One regrets an action like that, a bad overreaction, I should say, when it affects a person one cares for.’

Too close. His breath stank. The beginning of an edge of nausea. Everything had happened today. Now this.

Just Get Started.

‘Respected Interim Director, there is a mole in your informant network. I know this mole’s identity. I can describe him. I have video of him. He is working for a group affiliated with the Defenders of God. The man who killed Ra’id knew this mole’s identity as well. You will want to arrest this man, I assure you.’

He sniffed, stepped back, sized her up once again. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he dropped both barbells on the surface of his desk. They fell with a heavy clanging sound.

‘Ra’id had you placed on some interesting assignments. Where is this video?’

‘At my home. On a thumb drive.’

‘Why didn’t you bring it?’

‘I didn’t feel safe transporting it. Didn’t want it to be seen prematurely.’  ‘Prematurely.’

‘Yes.’

He smiled another limp half-smile.

‘So. You came here to bargain with me.’

‘I came here to bargain. It turns out I am bargaining with you.’

He walked behind her. To turn while remaining seated was impossible. The chair bolted. The casters disabled.

The options now: Stay seated, or stand and signal a desire for conflict.

Stay seated. Look at the ceiling.

‘You think I am worried about these people,’ Murad Murad said. And laughed. ‘About this White Beast. Worried enough to negotiate with a woman. But you see I have them on my payroll. And there is only one thing I will negotiate with a woman. I will tell you something, it is not the White Beast. They are a minor irritant, these people in white. In their thousands. In their tens of thousands. I don’t care. I will tell you something else. At the most they are forty percent of this country. Thirty-five, more likely. So. What are we to make of this thirty-five, forty? Are we to lose sleep? They are more vocal than the majority. That is all. More willing to identify themselves. Easier to pick off in a gunfight, if it comes to that. I tell you something else: The sixty, sixty-five percent I work for wants it to come to that. These are schoolboys, these men in white robes. I could have a hundred moles. I will still beat them all down. This is not what I’ll negotiate, Fatima. With a woman, I will negotiate something else. You are concerned for your sister. For your mother. For yourself. Say yes. It’s true. You are concerned for them. You want to protect your home.’

Breathe. Still time to engage him in the trade you came to make.

‘Yes. We need protection. Now listen. This man I am talking about. I believe a major operation of some kind is under way. I believe he’s been researching it, preparing it. Someone tried to kill me so that I could not interfere with it.’

He made a tsk tsk tsk sound.

‘Go back to “Yes”. Go back to “We need protection”.’

He was standing directly behind her now. His voice too close again.

She looked up over her right shoulder.

‘Very well. We do need protection, my family and I. And so do you. Now I believe you have a decision to make. The BII has a decision to make. What is your decision?’

With a few soft, fat taps of his feet, he was invisible again. He could move quickly.

‘These are dangerous times we live in.’

Well, he is much further away now. Either good or bad that he’s moved away.

She heard the little click of the door:
He has locked me in
.

Very bad.

The soft, fat taps of his gait returning. And he was close again behind her, unseen: ‘As I have told you already, Fatima, my dear Fatima, there is a thing I am willing to negotiate with women.’

The sound and smell of him directly above her, whispering, almost, to the top of her head. The foul breath again. His forearms on the high-backed chair, stressing it. She felt his forearms there without touching them.

The room fell still.

Without moving, the room seemed to ask her what she planned to do next. A mistake to come here.
Yes
, the room agreed,
but what now?

She had been chased out of her body. She hovered above it, above her own body, above sweaty Murad Murad, above the bolted chair,
above everything. Time skittered like a top. It spun down, kicked around, and bounced itself dead into a corner.

The wrong place to be, but there regardless.

It was instinct that set time spinning again. Instinct said,
Stand up, claim your ground. Purify yourself
.

Fatima felt herself descending, felt time coursing back into her body. A sense of her life being brief and sacred possessed her.

While she was still seated in that high-backed chair, while her eyes and spine and feet reformed, while her heart opened and closed, at the first hint of her movement, she felt a blow at the top of her skull. She felt knuckles and knives at the point where time had reawakened. The room wobbled.

Then three of his untrimmed fingernails cut right through the thin fabric and into her scalp, two left, one right – and one of his hands pulled the covering from her head while the other pulled the blouse from her chest.

Abomination. As she reclaimed her body. Sudden, unforeseen, indefensible, animal force. To eliminate the border of her modesty. Abomination.

Safety pins flying through the air. The topmost part of her garment torn. The sudden pain from three deep, bleeding gash-lines in her scalp, each imparted by what she imagined, at the moment of the Abomination, to be the claws of a beast. Her right hand instinctively rising to her throat to hold her torn jilbab in place.

A tidal wave of shame engulfing the room.

She was bareheaded now, clutching the shreds of her jilbab about her, in a locked office, before a man. Not a close blood relative. A non-mahram. A non-mahram with bad intent.

Stand or crouch and cover?

Instinct saw the two pathways, too, and demanded this decision from Fatima:
Stand
.

Fatima stood as she had been ordered to by instinct. She did not turn to reveal her face to her attacker. Instinct had not told her to do that. The chair, bolted in place between them, served as a kind of barrier for her as she spoke.

‘Open that door immediately or by God Almighty, you will regret the consequences.’

‘Fatima,’ he whispered again from behind, his lips too near her ear. ‘Fatima. Certain words feel so good to say. The end of all the secrets today. Dark hair, then, quite long, quite straight, inclining to auburn in places. Let me be your father. You need not say anything.’

Murad Murad made a
shhh
sound, very close to her ear. Then, with practised ease, he stepped back a pace or two and placed his left hand on his belt buckle. He began to unfasten it. When he did that, the metal components of the belt struck against each other and made the sound of an alarm pronouncing danger.

When instinct heard that sound, it spoke to Fatima again, advising her of Murad Murad’s new position in the room, and ordering her to undertake a certain course of action. She obeyed without hesitation.

She scanned the desk that was now in front of her. She found the two gold hand-weights lying near the centre of the desk, and she took up her weapons, one in each hand.

She shut her eyes, gathered the two weighted hands together into a single projectile, positioned her arms as instinct instructed and spun around towards Murad Murad with all the speed and momentum her body could summon.

At the lethal point where the twinned weights caught him, just below his left cheek, the iron missiles spun Murad Murad’s head abruptly sideways. Fatima heard his neck crack with the force, but because her eyes were closed, she did not see his body fall backward against the rear wall and then hang there.

She dropped the two gold hand-weights and heard them thud and clatter, low-toned against each other and the floor. The dark kiss of gravity.

‘Bismillah,’ she said. In the name of God.

She opened her eyes.