The Lion's Game (17 page)

Asad Khalil struggled with two primitive instincts—sex and self-preservation.

Khalil paced impatiently across the flat roof. His father had named him Asad—the lion—and it seemed that he had consciously or unconsciously taken on the traits of the great beast, including this habit of pacing in circles. He suddenly stopped and looked out into the night.

The Ghabli—the hot, strong southerly wind from the vast Sahara—was blowing across northern Libya toward the Mediterranean Sea. The night sky appeared misty, but in fact the distortion of the moon and stars was caused by airborne grains of sand.

Khalil looked at the luminous face of his watch and noted that it was 1:46 A.M. Bahira, the daughter of Captain Habib Nadir, was to arrive at precisely 2:00 A.M. He wondered if she would come. He wondered if she had been caught. And if she’d been caught, would she confess to where she was going and with whom she was going to meet? This last possibility troubled Asad Khalil greatly. At sixteen years old, he was perhaps thirty minutes away from his first sexual experience—or he was several hours away from being beheaded. He saw an uninvited mental image of himself on his knees, head bowed as the massively built official executioner, known only as Sulaman, swung the giant scimitar toward the back of Khalil’s neck. Khalil felt his body tense, and a line of sweat formed on his forehead and cooled in the night air.

Khalil walked to the small tin shed on the flat rooftop. There was no door on the shed, and he peered down the staircase, expecting to see either Bahira, or her father with armed guards coming for him. This was lunacy, he thought, pure madness.

Khalil moved to the north edge of the roof. The concrete rooftop was surrounded by a shoulder-high, crenellated parapet of block and stucco. The building itself was a two-story-high structure built by the Italians when they controlled Libya. The building was then, as it was now, a storage facility for munitions, which was why it was safely removed from the center of the military compound known as Al Azziziyah. The former Italian compound was now the military headquarters and sometimes residence of the Great Leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, who this very night had arrived at Al Azziziyah. Khalil and everyone else in Libya knew that the Great Leader made a habit of changing locations often, and that Gadhafi’s erratic movements were a safeguard from either assassination or an American military action. But it was not a good idea to comment on either possibility.

In any case, Gadhafi’s unexpected presence had caused his elite guards to be unusually alert this night, and Khalil was worried because it seemed that Allah himself was making this assignation difficult and dangerous.

Khalil knew beyond a doubt that it was Satan that had filled him with this sinful lust for Bahira, that Satan had made him dream of her walking naked across moonlit desert sands. Asad Khalil had never seen a naked woman before, but he had seen a magazine from Germany, and he knew what Bahira would look like unveiled and undressed. He pictured each curve of her body as he imagined it would be, he saw her long hair touching her bare shoulders, he recalled her nose and mouth as he’d seen them when he and she had been children, before she was veiled. He knew she looked different now, but strangely the child’s face still sat on a wonderfully imagined woman’s body. He pictured her curving hips, her mound of pubic hair, her naked thighs and legs ... He felt his heart beating heavily in his chest and felt his mouth become dry.

Khalil stared out to the north. The lights of Tripoli, twenty kilometers distant, were bright enough to be visible through the blowing Ghabli. Beyond Tripoli lay the blackness of the Mediterranean. Around Al Azziziyah was rolling arid land, some olive groves, date trees, a few goatherd shelters, an occasional watering hole.

Asad Khalil peered over the parapet down into the compound. All was quiet below—there were no guards visible nor any vehicles at this hour. The only activity would be around Colonel Gadhafi’s residence and around the headquarters area that housed the command, control, and communication buildings. There was no special alert tonight, but Khalil had a premonition that something was not right.

Asad Khalil looked again at his watch. It was exactly 2:00 A.M. and Bahira had not arrived. Khalil knelt down in the corner of the parapet, below the line of sight of anyone on the ground. In the corner he had unrolled his
sajjafiamda
, his prayer mat, and placed on it a copy of the Koran. If they came for him, they would find him praying and reading the Koran. That might save him. But more likely, they would guess correctly that the Koran was a ruse and his
sajjafiamda
was for the naked body of Bahira. If they suspected that, then his blasphemy would be dealt with in a way that would make him wish for beheading. And Bahira ... They would most likely stone her to death.

And still, he did not run back to his mother’s house. He was determined to meet whatever fate came up those stairs.

He thought of how he’d first noticed Bahira at her father’s house. Captain Habib Nadir, like Khalil’s own father, was a favorite of Colonel Gadhafi. The three families were close. Khalil’s father, like Bahira’s father, had been active in the resistance to the Italian occupation; Khalil’s father had worked for the British during the Second World War, while Bahira’s father had worked for the Germans. But what did that matter? Italians, Germans, British—they were all infidels and they were owed no loyalty. His father and Bahira’s father had joked about how they had both helped the Christians kill one another.

Khalil thought a moment about his father, Captain Karim Khalil. He had been dead five years now, murdered on the street in Paris by agents of the Israeli Mossad. The Western radio broadcasts had reported that the murder was probably committed by a rival Islamic faction, or perhaps even by fellow Libyans in some sort of political power play. No arrest had been made. But Colonel Gadhafi, who was far wiser than any of his enemies, had explained to his people that Captain Karim Khalil had been murdered by the Israelis and everything else was a lie.

Asad Khalil believed this. He had to believe. He missed his father, but took comfort from the fact that his father had died a martyr’s death at the hands of the Zionists. Of course, doubts did creep into his head, but the Great Man himself had spoken and that was the end of it.

Khalil nodded to himself as he knelt in the corner of the roof. He looked at his watch, then at the doorway of the tin shed ten meters away. She was late, or she had not been able to slip out of her house, or she’d overslept, or she had decided not to risk her life to be with him. Or, worst of all, she’d been caught and even now was betraying him to the military police.

Khalil considered his special relationship with the Great Leader. He had no doubt that Colonel Gadhafi was fond of him and his brothers and sisters. The Colonel had let them stay on in their house in the privileged compound of Al Azziziyah, he had seen to it that his mother had a pension, and that he and his siblings were educated.

And only six months ago, the Colonel had said to him, “You are marked to avenge your father’s death.”

Asad Khalil had been filled with pride and joy and replied to his surrogate father, “I am ready to serve you and to serve Allah.”

The Colonel had smiled and said, “We are not ready for you, Asad. Another year or two, and we will begin training you to be a freedom fighter.”

And now Asad was risking everything—his life, his honor, his family—all for what? For a woman. It made no sense, but ... There was the other thing ... The thing he knew but could not bring himself to think ... The thing with his mother and with Moammar Gadhafi ... Yes, there was something there, and he knew what it was, and it was the same thing that had put him here on the roof waiting for Bahira.

He reasoned that if the relationship between his mother and the Great Leader was not a sin, then not all sex outside of marriage was sinful. Moammar Gadhafi would not do anything sinful, anything outside the Sharia, the accepted way. Therefore, Asad Khalil, if caught, would take his case directly to the Great Leader and explain his confusion concerning these matters. He would explain that it was Bahira’s father who had brought home the magazine from Germany that showed photos of naked men and women, and it was this filth from the West that had corrupted him.

Bahira had found the magazine hidden beneath bags of rice in their house and had stolen it and showed it to Khalil. They had looked at the photographs together—a sin that would have gotten them both whipped if they’d been caught. But instead of the photographs filling them with disgust and shame, it was these pictures that had been the cause of their speaking of the unspeakable. She had said to him, “I want to show myself to you like these women. I want to show you all that I have. I want to see you, Asad, and feel your flesh.”

And so, Satan had entered her and through her had entered him. He had read the story of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew book of Genesis, and had been told by his
mousyed
, his spiritual teacher, that women were weak and lustful and had committed the original sin and would lure men to sin if men did not remain strong.

And yet ... he thought, even great men like the Colonel could be corrupted by women. He would explain that to the Colonel if he were caught. Perhaps they would not stone Bahira to death and would let them off with a whipping.

The night was cool and Khalil shivered. He remained kneeling on his prayer mat, Koran in his hands. At ten minutes after two, there was a noise on the stairs, and he looked up to see a dark outline standing at the opening of the tin shed. He said softly, “Allah, be merciful.”