The Twelfth Imam (7 page)

13

Quebec, Canada

It was now late afternoon.

The sun was just beginning to set as the de Havilland floatplane steadily gained altitude and gently banked northeast. The line of thunderstorms they had encountered after leaving Philly had cleared by the time they landed in Montreal and caught the train to the tiny town of Clova. Here, over the province of Quebec, the skies were clear.

Dr. Shirazi sat in the copilot’s seat of the single-engine prop plane, nicknamed the “Beaver” by the Canadian-based de Havilland company. Azad and Saeed sat in the middle row. David was in the back row by himself, surrounded by backpacks and fishing gear. It was cold and cramped, and David knew he would be back there for nearly an hour, but the truth was, he was finally beginning to enjoy himself.

The de Havilland Beaver had just one serious design flaw, as David saw it. It was loud. Really loud. The view out the tiny window was amazing, but he could barely hear himself think. Yet as they reached a cruising altitude of eight thousand feet—soaring high above a seemingly endless carpet of blue rivers and lakes and lush green islands, moving farther and farther away from any sign of civilization—David couldn’t help but nudge Azad in front of him and say, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“What?”
Azad yelled, barely able to hear over the roar of the Pratt & Whitney 450-horsepower engine.

“I said, she’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
David yelled back, leaning closer.

Azad laughed.

“What’s so funny?” David asked, bracing himself for whatever sarcastic zinger was sure to come.

“You,” Azad said. “You’re a real comedian.”

“Why? I’m just saying . . .”

“I know what you’re saying. But forget about her. You haven’t got a prayer.”

“What?”

“With Marcy.”

“Who?”

“The girl—Marcy.”

“You mean Marseille?”

“Whatever—she’s not your type.”

David just stared at him for a moment. “I was talking about the plane, you idiot.”

“Whatever. Just steer clear. You’re way out of your league, Charlie Brown.”

Their twilight water landing was picture-perfect.

Moments later, the other two de Havillands bringing the rest of their party landed and taxied over to join them by two wooden docks; four small, flat motorboats were moored alongside. A cluster of small, weathered, rustic cabins stood nearby. The only problem was they were running behind schedule and were quickly losing the light they needed to set up their base camp.

Larry McKenzie, the gruff, scruffy, ponytailed, chain-smoking pilot of the plane David had been on—and the owner of McKenzie Air Expeditions, the charter service his father’s fishing group had used for years—helped them unload their gear. The other two pilots did the same and carried several large coolers and cardboard boxes into the cabins as well. These were filled with food for the long weekend. There was nothing gourmet, just basic fruits and vegetables, milk, juice, coffee, butter, bread, eggs, and bacon, all of which would supplement the main dish each night, which would be, of course, fresh fish.

When they were done, McKenzie gathered the group together by the shore and reminded them of the rules. “Don’t drown,” he barked. “Don’t get bit by a snake. Don’t get eaten by a bear. Any questions?”

Most were veterans of this trip. None of them seemed bothered. Only Marseille appeared a bit unnerved, whispering something to her father David couldn’t quite hear.

“No questions?” McKenzie confirmed. “Good. We’re out.”

A moment later, he and the other two pilots were back in their cockpits, hightailing back to the real world. These guys were making $750 a head to drop “clients” off in the middle of nowhere. That and a “don’t drown” pep talk and poof, they were gone.
Nice work if you can get it,
David thought. Not that he really cared. It wasn’t his money. It was his father’s, and his father always said this was why he’d escaped from Iran—to be free. Free to think. Free to work. Free to play. Free to travel. Free to do whatever he pleased, without a tyrant controlling his every move.
Amen,
David thought. He took in a deep breath of cool Canadian night air. The temperature was under fifty and dropping fast. But they were finally here.

Dr. Shirazi turned to the group and encouraged them all to grab their gear and set up the cabins. Meanwhile, he asked David and Marseille to go gather as much firewood as they could. Internally, David resisted. He hadn’t come on this trip to be treated like a kid. But he felt better when he saw his brothers’ faces, just visible in the final traces of the sunset—why should David get time alone with the girl?

Marseille’s reaction brought him back to reality. “Out there?” she asked. “With the bears?”

“Don’t listen to Old Man McKenzie,” Dr. Shirazi laughed. “He’s not even Canadian. He’s from Poughkeepsie.”

“Poughkeepsie?”

“He got hooked on drugs and dodged the draft in the Vietnam War. Moved up here to get away from Nixon and get free health care. I met him when he desperately needed triple bypass surgery faster than the system up here could get him scheduled. Nice guy, but one taco short of a combo platter, if you know what I mean.”

David looked at Marseille as Marseille stared at his father.

“What does that have to do with bears?” she asked.

David grinned at the perplexed look on her face. “Nothing,” he said, handing her a small flashlight and shaking his head. “That’s just the way my dad answers a question. Come on. Let’s go.”

David headed into the woods, a more powerful flashlight in his hands. Marseille clearly didn’t want to be left behind. She zipped up her North Face fleece jacket and caught up to him quickly.

“So my dad tells me you read and write Farsi fluently,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“And German.”

No reply.

“And you’re working on Arabic.”

Still no reply.

“Of course,” she said, glancing at him as they walked, “you might want to work on your English a bit.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m just saying . . .”

“Yes, I speak all those languages.”

“What are you, a genius?” she asked.

“No.”

“That’s what my dad says.”

“How would your dad know? He hasn’t seen me in six years.”

“He says you were almost fluent in all those then.”

David said nothing. They walked quietly for several minutes.

“So where in the world are we, anyway?” Marseille finally asked, trying again to break the ice.

“You really can’t stand silence, can you?” David replied.

“Shut up,” she laughed, punching him in the arm, “and answer my question.”

David feigned pain but finally answered. “The Gouin Reservoir.”

“The what?”

“The Gouin Reservoir—or in French,
Réservoir Gouin
.”

“
Ooh la la
, I’m impressed,” she said.
“Parlez-vous français, aussi?”

David shook his head.
“Je ne remember much pas.”

Marseille laughed. “
Je le doute.
Anyway, that’s too bad.”

“Why?”

“’Cause we’re in Quebec, and they speak French up here.”

“So you
do
know where we are.”

“I can read the ticket stub. But
Le Réservoir Gouin
—what the heck is that?”

“You really want to know?”

“I’d just like to hear you put two or three sentences together in English . . . you know, just to know that you can!”

“Fine,” David said. “It’s a collection of hundreds of small lakes containing innumerable islands and peninsulas with highly irregular shapes, located in the central portion of the Canadian province of Quebec, roughly equidistant from Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City. Its shoreline stretches over 5,600 kilometers, excluding islands. The reservoir was created in 1918 at the upper reaches of the Saint Maurice River and is named after Jean-Lomer Gouin, who was premier of Quebec at the time. Construction was done by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company to facilitate hydroelectric development by controlling the flow of water for the stations downstream.”

Marseille had stopped walking and was staring at David. “How do you know all that?”

“I read a lot.”

“What did you do, memorize an encyclopedia article or something?”

David shrugged and quickly changed the subject. “Hey, over there, grab those old branches and I’ll grab these,” he said. “That’ll be a start.”

For much of the next hour, they gathered firewood, hauled it back to the camp, dropped it off, and went back out for more, avoiding the older boys. In their gathering, they passed by a few cabins farther inland, unoccupied and clearly out of use. They were unlocked and seemed to have been left to the elements. One of them displayed plenty of bear claw scratchings around the door and windows, but another A-frame style cabin was in pretty good shape, just a little dusty. They didn’t have time then to explore, but this little island ghost town fascinated them both.

It had been a long day, and once the gear had been set up or stowed for later, the whole group was sleeping by 9 p.m. The next four days stretched out in front of them with the promise of endless pike and walleye. But the fish would wait till morning.

14

Sadr City, Iraq

Najjar Malik was exhausted.

Even after a long nap and a simple, home-cooked meal, the morning’s violence, the malfunctioning machine gun, and the strange encounter with the mysterious taxi driver still rattled him.

After dinner, in spite of his weary protests, Najjar’s aunt and uncle took him shopping in the bazaar. At one point, his aunt was haggling with a grocer over the quality of some pistachios while his uncle sat across the street in the shade, smoking a water pipe and chatting with the older men. Najjar looked over a collection of leather boots and wished he had enough to buy himself a pair. But he still hadn’t found his wallet, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to be buying anything that day, the shoe seller told him to go away.

Najjar nervously inched his way through the market, still wondering who the man was who had been kidnapped, still wondering who had kidnapped him and why, and why they had killed his wife and child. The gruesome images were indelibly etched in his mind’s eye. He wanted to forget it all, but he could not. Was it political? Was it for money? He didn’t want to think about any of it, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

Just then he nearly tripped over a beggar sitting cross-legged against a cement wall.

“Forgive me,” Najjar said. “I didn’t see you there.”

“It is not mine to forgive,” said the beggar, a surprisingly young man—hardly older than Najjar himself—covered in a dirty brown robe and wearing no sandals or shoes. His filthy black feet were covered with oozing blisters. “Only Allah can do that, if he so chooses.”

Najjar shrugged. The religious fervor of his youth was dying. What had Allah really given him? Sadness. Loneliness. Poverty. Despair. Were these the gifts Allah gave to his children?

“Come, my friend,” the beggar said, “you look downtrodden. Let me tell you about your future.”

Najjar shook his head, then scanned the crowd to find his aunt and uncle.

“You don’t want to know your future?” the beggar asked. “Or you don’t think I can see it?”

“Both,” Najjar half lied. He desperately wanted to know his future. But he hadn’t time for back-alley charlatans.

“I think you are lying,” the beggar said, his tone suddenly low and sober. “I think you desperately want to know your future. But you think you haven’t time to spare for some back-alley charlatan.”

Startled, Najjar whipped his head around and stared at the young homeless man in disbelief.

“You are troubled by the violence you saw in the street this morning,” the beggar said, his face smudged with dirt. “But all your questions will be answered in due course.”

Najjar was scared.
Who is this person? How can he know my most intimate thoughts?

“May I ask you a question?” the beggar said.

Najjar nodded.

“If you could go anywhere in the world, if you could travel anywhere and money was no object, where would you go?”

“I don’t know,” Najjar said blankly.

“Again you are lying,” the beggar said. “You don’t trust me. Fair enough. You don’t know me. But the moment I asked you, you instantly thought of where you would like to go, true?”

Najjar was embarrassed and confused. He nodded again.

“Write it down,” the beggar said.

“Where?”

“On a piece of paper. Don’t let me see it. But I will tell you what you write.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

Najjar didn’t have a piece of paper on him, much less a pen or pencil, but he turned back to the hustle and bustle of the bazaar and found a grocer nearby. From him, he secured a small pencil, then spotted an empty cigarette pack on the ground. Najjar ripped open the pack and scribbled down a location inside, carefully shielding it from the beggar and any other prying eyes that might be around. When he was finished, he stuffed the pack in his jeans pocket and stared back at the young man who now captivated his attention.

“Bless you,” the beggar said.

“Why do you say that?” Najjar asked.

“Because you just wrote down the Jamkaran Mosque near Qom, Iran.”

Najjar’s eyes went wide. “How did you do that?” he asked, his pulse pounding. “How did you know?”

The beggar didn’t respond. His face revealed no expression whatsoever. Instead, he simply said, “Now write down the name of a world leader.”

Unnerved, Najjar hesitated. “Living or dead?” he asked.

“You choose,” the beggar said.

Najjar pulled out the cigarette pack, scratched out
Jamkaran Mosque
, and wrote,
Saddam Hussein
. Then, realizing that would be too obvious, he thought for a few moments, crossed out
Saddam
, and wrote instead,
Fulgencio Batista
. Batista, Najjar had recently learned, had been the president of Cuba in the late 1950s. He crumpled up the cigarette pack and put it back into his pocket.

“You have chosen well, my friend,” the beggar said.

“How so?”

“I am touched.”

“Why?”

“For you are truly a spiritual young man. Allah can do great things with one such as you.”

Najjar had no idea what the man meant, but it was obvious he didn’t know what Najjar had written down. Then Najjar heard his aunt calling for him.

“I have to go.”

“But I have not given you the answer,” the beggar said.

“I don’t think you know.”

“But I do.”

“Then whose name did I write down?”

“Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali,” the beggar said.

“Ha!”
Najjar said, somewhat disappointed but determined not to be perceived as nearly having fallen for this man’s trickery. “Not even close. You think that just because I’ve always wanted to visit the wishing well in Iran where the Twelfth Imam once appeared that I would actually be so stupid as to write down the name of the Mahdi, peace be upon him?”

“Actually,” the beggar said, “first you wrote down Saddam Hussein’s name. Only then did you choose the Promised One.”

Najjar again was stunned. The man was half right. But this, too, was strange. How could the beggar know that Najjar had written down Saddam’s name at first but not know that he had replaced it with Batista’s name? None of it made sense.

Uneasy, Najjar decided it was time to go. His aunt was calling him again and sounded quite annoyed. He pulled the cigarette packet from his pocket and tossed it to the beggar.

“See for yourself,” he said, then turned to his aunt and yelled, “I’m coming!”

The beggar caught the rumpled pack but did not open it. Rather, he tossed it right back at Najjar, seeming to dare Najjar to reconsider. A bit annoyed himself now, Najjar walked over to the beggar, leaned down, opened the cigarette pack, and prepared to read the name Fulgencio Batista.

But to his shock, the words were not there.

Rather, next to the scratched-out name of Saddam Hussein was the name Muhammad Ibn Hasan Ibn Ali—in his own handwriting, no less.

Dumbfounded, Najjar looked back at the beggar. He tried to say something, but no words formed.

The young beggar spoke instead. “You will serve the Promised One when the time is right. You are not yet ready. But do not fear. The time has not yet come.”

Najjar suddenly felt icy cold. His fingers went numb. Now his uncle was demanding he come home with them. He looked up to ask his uncle for another few minutes. He had questions. He needed answers. But when he looked back, the beggar was gone.