The Twelfth Imam (5 page)

8

Suddenly the beatings stopped.

Najjar didn’t dare open his eyes. Bracing for the next blow, he remained in a fetal position. After a few moments, he heard the boys walking away. Why? Where were they going? Was it really over? Mustering just enough courage to crack open one eye, Najjar wiped away the blood and tears and saw the three bullies standing around someone, though he could not tell who. Was it a parent? a policeman? Najjar opened the other eye. He wiped more blood away and strained to hear what was being said.

“The Holy Qur’an says, ‘Whomever Allah guides, he is the rightly guided,’” a commanding voice declared. “But what does the Prophet—peace be upon him—say of those who go astray, of those rebels who go far from the teachings of Allah? He says, ‘We will gather them on the day of resurrection, fallen on their faces—blind, dumb, and deaf. Their refuge is hell. And every time it subsides, we will increase their blazing fire.’”

Najjar knew that verse. His aunt had made him memorize Sura 17:97 on his fifth birthday, and it haunted him to this day. He scanned the crowd that had gathered, hoping to see a friendly face or at least a familiar one. But he recognized no one, and he wondered whether the mob was there to see a fight or a punishment.

“You’re saying we are all going to hell?” one of the bullies asked.

Najjar was surprised to hear a trace of real fear in the boy’s faltering voice.

“It is not I who say it,” the stranger said with quiet authority. “The Qur’an says, ‘The weighing of deeds on that day of resurrection will be the truth. Those whose scales are heavy with truth and good deeds, it is they who will be the successful. As for those whose scales are light, because of evil deeds, those are the ones who have lost their souls, causing them to travel toward the fire, because they mistreated; they knowingly denied Our signs.’”

Najjar knew that one, too. It was Sura 7:8-9.

He watched the shoulders of the teenagers sag. Their heads hung low. It wasn’t clear the boys had ever heard those verses before, but they certainly seemed to grasp the stakes. Suddenly they weren’t so tough or so cruel. Indeed, horrified by the wrath that could be awaiting his tormentors, Najjar almost felt sorry for them.

Since his earliest childhood, Najjar had deeply feared the fires of hell. He was convinced that his parents’ deaths in a car crash on a weekend trip to Baghdad when he was only four was punishment from Allah upon him for his own sins. He had no idea what sins he could have committed at so young an age. But he was painfully aware of all he had committed since. He didn’t mean to be such a terrible person. He tried to be a pious and faithful servant of Allah. He prayed five times a day. He went to the mosque every chance he could, even if he had to go alone. He had already memorized much of the Qur’an. He was often praised by his teachers for his religious zeal. But he knew the wickedness in his own heart, and he feared that all his attempts to do what was right could end up being for naught. Was he really any better than these boys who had beaten him? No, he concluded. He was probably worse. Surely they had been sent by Allah to punish him, and he knew he deserved it.

The three boys began backing away from their accuser. A moment later, they turned quickly and ran away. It was then that Najjar saw the one who had come to his defense, and he could not believe his eyes. The stranger was not a man but a boy—one not much older than he. He certainly wasn’t more than eleven or twelve years old, and he was short, with a slight build. He had jet-black hair, light olive skin, a pointed, angular, almost royal nose, and a small black spot like a mole on his left cheek. He didn’t wear street clothes like others his size and age. Rather he wore a black robe and sandals. But what struck Najjar most was the boy’s piercing black eyes, which bored deep into his soul and forced him to look away in humiliation.

“Do not fear, Najjar,” the strange boy said. “You are safe now.”

Najjar’s heart sped. How did the boy know his name? They had certainly never seen each other before.

“You are curious how I know your name,” the boy said. “But I know all about you. You are Persian, not Arab. Your first language was Farsi, though you also speak Arabic and French fluently. You grew up here in Samarra, but you were born in Iran, as were your parents and grandparents. Your family lived in Esfahān, to be precise.”

Najjar was stunned. It was all true. He searched his memory. He must know this boy somehow. But he couldn’t imagine where or when they had met. He had a nearly photographic memory, yet neither this face nor this voice was registering in the slightest.

“You are a child of the Revolution,” the stranger continued. “Your mother, Jamila, bless her memory, was a true servant of Allah. She could trace her family lineage to the Prophet, peace be upon him. Your mother memorized large portions of the Qur’an by the age of seven. She was excited by the fall of the Shah and the return of the Ayatollah from exile in Paris to Tehran on the fateful first day of February 1979.”

This, too, was true, Najjar realized, but it frightened him.

“Though eight months pregnant with you,” the boy went on, “your mother insisted that she and your father join the millions of Iranians trying to catch a glimpse of the Ayatollah as his flight touched down at Mehrabad International Airport that morning. But they never made it, did they?”

Najjar shook his head.

“Just after sunrise, your mother went into premature labor,” the stranger continued. “She delivered you on a bus on the way to the hospital. Only four pounds, fourteen ounces, you were on life support for months. The doctors said you would not survive. But your mother prayed, and what happened?”

“Allah answered her prayers,” Najjar said quietly.

“Yes, he did,” the stranger confirmed. “And then what? Your parents brought you home from the hospital just days before the students seized the American Embassy. Your mother stayed at your side night and day from that point forward. She loved you dearly, didn’t she?”

Najjar’s eyes began to well up with tears, and then the stranger moved closer and spoke nearly in a whisper.

“Your father, rest his soul, was a risk taker.”

Najjar nodded reluctantly.

“Your mother pleaded with your father not to move you and her to Iraq,” the stranger went on. “But he would not listen. He meant well. Raised by merchants, he had a passion for business, but he lacked wisdom, discernment. He had failed at exporting Persian rugs to Europe and Canada. He had failed at exporting pistachios to Brazil and had to borrow money from your uncle. He always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then, convinced the rise of the Ayatollah in Iran would create a boom in business with the Shias in Iraq, he brought you all here to Samarra to build a business and make a fortune. Unfortunately, he did not see the Iran–Iraq War coming. His business never took off, and your parents were killed on the twelfth of December, 1983, in a car accident in Baghdad. And aside from your aunt and uncle, you have been all alone ever since.”

The hair on the back of Najjar’s neck stood erect. His face went pale. Forgetting about the extent of his injuries, he struggled to his feet and stared back at this boy. For several minutes, there was complete silence.

Then the stranger spoke his final revelation. “You are the brightest in your class, Najjar. You are secretly in love with Sheyda Saddaji, the girl who sits next to you. You will marry her before your twenty-fourth birthday.”

“How do you . . . ?”

But Najjar could say no more. His mouth was as dry as the desert floor.

“Allah has chosen you, Najjar Hamid Malik. You will become a great scientist. You will help the Islamic world achieve ultimate power over the infidels and establish the Islamic caliphate. You will help usher in the era of the Promised One. But you must follow Allah without hesitation. You must give him your supreme allegiance. And then, if you are worthy, you shall live forever in paradise.”

Najjar hoped it was true.

“Yes, I will serve Allah with my whole heart,” he said with all the strength and sincerity he could muster. “I will devote myself to preparing for the Promised One. But who are you? Are you the One that—?”

The stranger raised his hand, and Najjar stopped talking.

“When the time is right, you will see me again.”

Najjar stared into those black eyes. And then, without warning, the stranger vanished into the crowd.

9

Syracuse, New York

Twelve years later

“Let’s go, David; we’re going to be late!”

David Shirazi heard his father calling up the stairs and moved faster. He’d been waiting for this trip as long as he could remember, and he had no intention of missing the flight.

Every fall, his father and some of his father’s doctor friends took their sons for a long weekend of camping and fishing on a remote island in Canada, accessible only by floatplane. The rule among the dads was that the boys had to be in high school or older. Both of David’s older brothers always came home brimming with stories and pictures of catching monster walleyes, roasting marshmallows by the campfire, hanging out under the stars, and eating seriously unhealthy quantities of Tim Hortons doughnuts along the way. Last year, David had finally been old enough but had come down with a brutal case of the flu at the last moment and was crushed that his parents wouldn’t let him go. Now he was almost sixteen, healthy, and completely jazzed not only to be going but to be missing a few days of physics and calculus as well.

David quickly rechecked the contents of his overstuffed backpack as he mentally reviewed their plans and checked his Timex. It was six minutes past eight in the morning. He knew they were scheduled on U.S. Air flight 4382, departing at 9:25 a.m. and arriving in Philadelphia at 10:45. From there, they’d transfer to U.S. Air flight 3940, departing at 11:25 and arriving in Montreal at exactly one that afternoon. The Montreal airport, his brothers told him, was where they loaded up on the Tim Hortons.

It seemed ridiculous to David to fly 228 miles south to Philly only to turn around and fly 400 miles north. But there weren’t any direct flights from Syracuse, so this was it. Crazier still was that once they got to Montreal, they still had a several-hour train ride farther north to a little town called Clova in upper Quebec. Only then came the floatplanes. But none of it mattered unless they made it to the airport on time.

At five feet, eleven inches tall and finally growing like a weed after being too small for too long, with jet-black curly hair, soulful brown eyes, and an always-tanned complexion, David might have looked Persian to his parents, but all he wanted was to be a normal American kid. David and his older brothers knew their parents’ colorful tales of growing up in Iran under the Shah. They could recite chapter and verse of their mom and dad’s saga of surviving the earliest days of the Revolution in ’79, taking refuge with the Harpers in the Canadian Embassy for nearly four months, and finally escaping with the help of some government guy named Zalinsky. Every year on January 28, the boys dutifully listened as their parents marked the anniversary of their harrowing journey through the Tehran airport and their nerve-racking Swissair flight out of Iranian airspace, the remarkable story of their exodus from Tehran to Geneva to Toronto, and why they had finally wound up in central New York and settled in the too-often frigid and snowbound city of Syracuse (which the boys liked to call “Zero-cuse,” “Siberacuse,” and “No-Excuse”).

The Shirazi boys knew their parents’ courageous decisions and remarkable journey had made their lives possible. But the truth was, none of it really mattered to David. He was certainly grateful for their freedom. But he didn’t want to think of himself as Iranian or a Muslim. He’d been born in the States. He’d grown up in the States. He dreamed in red, white, and blue. All he wanted to do now was fit in and excel, just like his brothers.

Azad, nineteen, was a straight-A sophomore in the premed program at Cornell. He planned to become a cardiologist like his father. He was also the best long-distance runner on the track team and could play the piano like no one David had ever heard. Not to be outdone, Saeed, seventeen, had graduated from high school a year early and was now a straight-A freshman at Harvard on a full swimming scholarship. If all went well, Saeed planned to go to Wharton or Stanford to get his MBA, unless the Harvard Business School gave him enough money to stay in Cambridge.

By comparison, David thought of himself as the black sheep of the family. While his brothers had twenty-twenty vision, he wore glasses. He was the only one of the three boys to get braces, which he still wore, embarrassing him to no end. His brothers hadn’t ever seemed to struggle with acne, but he had struggled with it for years, though it was finally beginning to clear somewhat. Girls seemed to fawn over his brothers, but David had never been on a single date, and though there were a few girls in his class he secretly liked, he dreaded the prospect of having to ask any of them to the junior prom the following year. What’s more, David hated chemistry and economics. He couldn’t imagine becoming a doctor or a high-powered businessman, and he certainly had no interest in playing the piano.

He had, however, acquired his parents’ brilliance and his brothers’ passion for athletics. A straight-A student at Nottingham High School near the Syracuse city limits, David had scored a 1570 on his SATs and was actually on track to graduate two years ahead of schedule. He was the starting catcher on the varsity baseball team, the assistant photo editor of the school paper, the assistant editor of the yearbook, and a genius with a Nikon 35mm camera and a telephoto lens. His dream amused his professionally-minded parents, but it was his dream nonetheless: to work for
Sports Illustrated
, starting out on the road shooting baseball in the spring and football in the fall, and eventually working his way up to editor-in-chief.

Which reminded him . . .

David heard his father laying on the horn but turned back and grabbed the latest copy of
SI
off the kitchen table. Then he kissed his mother good-bye in the front yard, joined his brothers in the backseat of their Mercedes SUV, buckled up, donned his Discman, cranked up the Boss, sat back, and dove into the cover story on Roger Clemens.

They were seriously behind schedule, but David had no doubt his father would make it. And sure enough, fifteen minutes later they were parking at Hancock Field. It was high fives and laughter all around when they finally cleared through security, made it breathlessly to the gate, and found the other fathers and sons who were going with them.

David buckled himself into seat 16A, leaned back, stared out the window at the gorgeously sunny morning that was unusual for a city so often “blessed” with overcast skies, and finally relaxed. They’d made the flight. He had no homework. He had no school until the following Wednesday. And he was finally “one of the guys.” He’d been dreaming about this trip for years, it was finally here, and nothing could ruin it.