The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (68 page)

To survive our lives we must divine the story of our lives, and this is Ahmed’s.

Never mind how he infiltrated the throng of dignitaries at the A-list metal detectors while we were forced to wait. The gold brocade robe says it all. The diamond set into his forehead tells the world that Ahmed Shah is special. Expensive forgeries certify him as the delegate of an obscure but potentially useful oil-rich country. Let the hoi polloi wait submissively. Ahmed is in the first wave of delegates entering the monstroplex.

And when the ceremonies begin, Ahmed will … well, never mind. When you spend your life plotting, you know the best-laid plans are the ones you keep secret.

At twilight the heads of both states—Brunei and Manhattan—will meet in the rotunda to cut the ribbon and declare this Perspex-and-steel Nirvana open to the world. The Sultan’s monstroplex outstrips everything humanity has ever devised for profit and pleasure. The future is yesterday. Welcome to
UNIVERSE
.

As a palliative to Native Americans—New Yorkers to you—the ceremonies will begin with a ritual reenactment of Yankee baseball triumphs. Trained entertainers will re-create the Yankees’ last game—before the cutting of the ribbon.

Salman Rushdie is throwing out the first ball.

Perfect.

Ahmed has been waiting all his life for this moment.

So, he thinks, has Rushdie. He never dreamed it would take so long, or that he would be so old, and he is old; last September Ahmed Shah turned ninety. So, of course, did Rushdie, which makes them kindred.

They are, after all, in this together. Hunter and hunted. Instrument and destiny, for every great pursuit demands the cooperation of both parties. For every Jean Valjean there is a Javert and if either died the other would be desolate. Imagine Ahmed and Rushdie, the perfection of pursuit and flight. Neither exists without the other.

Ahmed has pursued Rushdie through war and peace, mind you, through riots and confusion, through the nights and days and over the years. He has spent his adult life on this and he’s come close, he has! But never close enough. Is it fate that steps in Ahmed’s way at the last minute, or some suppressed will to fail? Ahmed would tell you that he has spent all his money and all his strength running toward this encounter. Once he got within firing range but the rented pistol failed; once he saw Rushdie leaving a party for Amy Tan and Stephen King, but his quarry’s entourage people crowded him out before Ahmed could whip the silk thugee’s cord around Rushdie’s neck and tighten the knot. For years he was insulated by fame, but people forget. Like Ahmed’s physical powers in his ninety-first year, Rushdie’s fame has dwindled.

In a way, Ahmed feels sorry for him.
Lo how the mighty, eh Salman?

How odd, to be so committed to the mission and yet so fond of the man. After all, they have a lot in common. Together yet stupendously separated by accidents of birth and fame, Ahmed and Rushdie have written dozens of books. They have outlived wives and lovers and numerous exes; all this Ahmed knows because he stays informed; he watches
TV
; he reads the papers and has Meena print new bulletins from the Internet. In their lifetime he and Rushdie have outlived Madonna and Brad Pitt and most world rulers; they have outlived, in fact, everything but the
fatwah
. Rushdie’s fault, for offending Allah
with that profane best seller.
Fatwah
made Rushdie celebrated and it made him rich while Ahmed’s poor little book went out of print before it ever made it into the stores. Rushdie must die, it is kismet.

How sad, that none of his women have understood this sacred charge.

“Don’t,” Meena begged only last night, clinging to the golden robe to keep Ahmed from leaving; “you have me to think of.”

Lovely Meena. His fourth wife loves him even though she is only twenty-three. Leaving at dawn, he told the story of his life. “Before anything, I have my mission.”

Which brings Ahmed into
UNIVERSE
, surging past the metal detectors as though it is fated. In fact it is fated. What Allah ordains, Ahmed will execute, and if he dies in the act then he will bypass Mecca and be lifted into Paradise to walk in the garden with Allah, hand in hand.

Better yet, when Ahmed has done what he’s waited so long to do, when he has killed Salman Rushdie, the Ayatollah will reward him with one million dollars.

Justice. Who hopes for more? Rushdie’s outrageous screed overshadowed Ahmed’s poetic tribute to the Prophet, it smothered it in the cradle. Rushdie got famous while Ahmed’s
Sacred Verses
was stillborn. Rushdie got paid for his obscenity while Ahmed paid dearly, starting with the cost of the printing. Ah, but once he is dead and Ahmed is paid they will be even.

He is so fixed on his mission that the eight-hour trek into the heart of the monstroplex passes like minutes. Carpeted sidewalks move delegates along through the diorama that surrounds
UNIVERSE
like the rings around Saturn. They glide through the Fall of Carthage and the lifelike veldt and the Rise of Industrialism to the inner circle of synthetic jungle that gives onto the megamall proper with its magic, glassy territory of a hundred thousand shops. There are plentiful snacks for the honored guests in the monstroplex, chaises for those who tire and tented facilities for every conceivable bodily need. Lovely attendants provide massages for the weary. The hours pass in a heartbeat, unless it is a lifetime. Oh but the crystal flowers, the plastic trees along the way are distracting to the pilgrims, the way stations where perfumes fill the air, the transparent vaulted ceiling! It is magnificent. Music floods the space, Rimsky-Korsakov booming as fountains play and perfume blossoms in the air at the glassy, convex margins. Ahmed would like to linger but he’s given up too much to come this far. The professional ambitions he’s set aside to pursue his quarry, the children he’s outlived, the company of women …

And that’s another thing. While Rushdie swans around at celebrity affairs on the arms of attractive popsies who as the man ages gets younger and
younger, Ahmed has lost every woman he ever had: first sweet Mrinal and then Lakshme and his pearly American girl Stephanie and dark-haired Sujeeta and only yesterday the last wife he’ll probably ever find, plump Meena with her sad almond eyes. Oh, his lovers and wives all said different things when they packed the children and left but Ahmed knows what they meant:

You said you loved me but all you care about is this Rushdie thing.

Crafty, sacrilegious Rushdie takes all, leaving nothing for Ahmed. One million dollars. Who wouldn’t want to kill him?

Who knew it would take so long! When the
fatwah
came down Ahmed accepted the Ayatollah’s mandate without question. He has spent his life trying to discharge it. Not that he hasn’t come close. That time in London, twice in New York. Fans, lovers, groupies,
TV
—the trappings of fame get between him and his mission. He hates Rushdie for being famous. He hates him for his cars and his women but what Ahmed hates most about Salman Rushdie is his own obscurity.

Ah but tonight, Rushdie is a sitting target.

Ahmed is ready. His preparations are exquisite: the blue-and-white baseball uniform Meena hand sewed, hidden by the golden mantle he chose for the long trip inside, the cleated shoes with poison transfused into every cleat, and finally the sleek, undetectable weapon—a glass kris! Access to the dugout, don’t ask. As the Yankees strut out in their quaint uniforms Ahmed doffs the robe and slips onto the bench like one of the team, reliving the glory days for an audience of billions. When the Star Spangled Banner ends and the band begins the Bruneian Anthem, when the Yankees trot onto the field and Rushdie hauls back to throw the first ball Ahmed will take advantage of the festivity and stab him.

But there is something funny going on.

Ahmed feels it before he comprehends it. A change in the air. He is aware of it before the band begins its medley of themes from the Bruneian anthem. A difference. A deviation from the expected. Most ceremonies go as scripted but something new is happening.

We are aware of it, watching on
TV
or climbing to sky seats in the rotunda. The hell of it is, we’ll never agree on what happened. Multiply any event by the number of witnesses and you won’t come close to the number of diverging stories. There is the event, yes.

There is what we bring to it.

Then there is what we make of it.

Add to that our weakness for worst-case scenarios, because narrative is fueled by our collective paranoia.

You bet there’s something funny going on. If it wasn’t, where would we find the story that enriches our days? And in a continuum this bizarre, in a world where a Rushdie gets rich and famous and an artist like Ahmed is discarded, in a society where commerce rules and nothing you expect can be expected, it could be almost anything. Today’s story could end in:

Armageddon; as the monstroplex opens, leaders of twin states nobody’s even heard of simultaneously push the red button that starts the war; above the great dome the sky blossoms …

Invasion by space aliens; the transparent panels that enclose the rotunda snap open like a giant iris to reveal …

Revolution, a million valet parking attendants and decorators and grounds-people take up their weapons to overthrow the rich …

Economic conquest: the Sultan of Brunei hands an enormous check to the acting U.S. president and buys us, U., S. and A. …

Are you afraid yet? Do you want to be? Play with the possibilities. Turn the ratchet one more time. Today’s story may end with:

Extermination: with the leaders of the known world assembled for the grand opening all the vents snap shut and yellow vapor pervades the amphitheater, thousands of the unsuspecting willingly assembled for the ultimate genocide …

Subsumption by a superpower none of the delegates and weekend shoppers even imagined existed …

Divine intervention.

Now, this, Ahmed could have lived with. Allah’s emissary shooting into the arena like a meteor to forgive Rushdie.

Or could it be all in Ahmed’s mind? Or all in your mind, or mine? Remember, the
fatwah
was called off decades ago, although Ahmed doesn’t know it. And remember, the Yankees tanked because there are no love affairs and no murders in baseball games, there is no story: one more proof that to survive our lives, we must have narrative. We build stories like traps to capture incident and turn it into Event.

And where there is no narrative, we have to supply it. For every story, there are a thousand possible endings. The two most obvious:

It was only a dream.

It’s all in Ahmed’s mind.

Really.

Rather, it is in yours, because for every observer there is a different interpretation, and when all accounts are settled, this particular event is what you make of it.

You can make whatever you want.

As it turns out we were all there when it happened, half a million of us, swarming into the rotunda. We saw the encounter between Ahmed and his target. There isn’t time or space to tell you what we made of it—there was too much going on. There are too many of us. Too many interpretations. To say nothing of yourself, along with all the baggage you bring to this.

To simplify, let’s stick with Ahmed.

Rushdie is behind the velvet ropes, waiting for the signal. His lips are trembling; he has grown old in the service, the pursued, who, face it! Was over-exposed to the point where he has become invisible. Except to Ahmed.

Time is suspended.

It’s the moment in the story when anything could happen.

Shark attack.

Alien abduction.

In fact, something even stranger happens.

It is both stranger and harder to understand, at least in this version, and remember this is Ahmed’s version, Rushdie-specific and not pertaining to you, for this is Ahmed’s story.

The teams come out and the throng applauds. Rushdie trots out onto the field, ancient but spry in his favorite outfit. At the sight of him every muscle in Ahmed’s groin tightens but the applause trails off and the music fades.

The emcee’s voice fails along with it. “Who’s that?” he squeaks, confused.

Rushdie throws his arms wide—to the Ayatollah? to Allah himself or to fickle fate or to us, the public that’s forgotten him?

The collective breath rushes out.
Who are you?

“It is I.” He grabs the hand mike and the words boom, the forgotten man crying to an unheeding heaven. “It is I, Salman Rushdie.”

Silence.

“You know,” he shouts in a failing voice, whirling until his scrawny arms fly out from his sides like scarves on a dervish. His lips move but only Ahmed hears the dying fall … “
Satanic Verses?
Rushdie, that awful book? The
fatwah?
You know.”

Only Ahmed is listening.

On the quaint old baseball diamond, there are two events unfolding. Ahmed’s. Ours, which is somewhat bigger. Figures at Rushdie’s back play out the larger drama of life and death and finance and speculation as U.S. Marines march out under the flag, platoon after platoon of them in close order drill, with each platoon circling gorgeously under its red guidon in a formation
more intricate and beautiful than anything devised for the fabled Dallas Cow-girls …