Veiled Freedom (49 page)

The nurse's dismay gave away the enormity of Amy's mistake. “I did get them a gift, but what must they be thinking of me?”

“Well, it's still Eid, so it's not too late,” Becky consoled. “They may be too polite to ask, but they'll sure be expecting it.”

Amy still had afghanis on hand from her New Hope Eid shopping. Quickly filling four envelopes, she slipped back downstairs. Reticent as Soraya was, only a serious crisis could have propelled her across town to accost her employer, and Amy felt absolutely terrible.

“Forgive me for forgetting this yesterday with your other gift,” Amy said quietly, handing Soraya an envelope. “I am so sorry I made you come all the way back here.”

Soraya's expression lightened as she slid the envelope inside her tunic. “It is of no importance. Forgive me. If it were not for my family's need, I would not consider disturbing your feast celebration.”

Amy grabbed a fluorescent lantern to light Soraya's way back to the gate. It was still two hours until curfew, but with the shortening days, night had already fallen, and Amy looked doubtfully down the dark street. The sounds of partying could be heard behind compound walls, but Amy spotted only a single man loitering among parked vehicles across the streets. Lifting the lantern high, she made out a silhouette of average height and stocky build.

The man straightened up under her suspicious stare, and as he headed down the street and around the corner, Amy asked uneasily, “Are you sure you shouldn't spend the night? It's pretty dark out.”

Soraya had not yet dropped her burqa into place, so Amy could see her shake her head. “No, no, my family is in need of my return.”

“Then at least let Jamil take you home in the car.”

Jamil had followed the two women to the gate, and Wajid was in the process of letting him into his sleeping quarters in the mechanics yard.

“No, my family would never permit it. It is not so late. And look, the bus is coming now.”

Sure enough, the sound of air brakes signaled an approaching city bus at the corner. Dropping her burqa into place, Soraya hurried to catch it. Jamil had turned to stare down the street where the loiterer had disappeared.

As she watched to see Soraya safely aboard the bus, Amy called, “Jamil, that man who was over there, could you see if he was one of the men from the other night? I wonder if they've been released.”

When Jamil shook his head, Amy dug into her shoulder bag. Jamil and Wajid had eaten the Eid feast with the men on Rasheed's side, so Amy had been filming the New Hope feast herself. She pulled out the camera and handed it to Jamil.

“Then would you mind taking this and keeping a bit of a lookout, just in case that man comes back? Maybe see if you can film him if he does? Then we can check if any of the women recognize him.”

Jamil nodded as the camera disappeared into his vest.

Then Amy handed him an envelope. “Oh, and here's your Eid bonus.”

Without waiting for a reply, Amy rushed back inside the gate. She still had two more envelopes to deliver. But she paused for a final stare after the bus, now departing with Soraya aboard. The fluorescent lantern had been full on her housemate's face, and Amy had seen Soraya's smile evaporate, a glance flicker to Amy as she'd dropped her burqa into place. Something in those dark eyes had been disturbingly similar to what Amy had glimpsed in Rasheed's hooded glare.

Was it dislike she'd seen there?

Or guilt?

Paradise lost.

Jamil had lingered only briefly to carry out his employer's directive. He too had watched the loiterer's retreat and had seen what Ameera missed, a stocky shape boarding the bus as Soraya hurried over. Should he have told Ameera the man was no spy but her housemate's lover?

But no, he'd finished with such interference. Jamil walked through the vehicle gate. If only it were as easy to leave behind the tale Ameera had told tonight. But translating her words had burned them too firmly into his mind to dislodge. Her story of paradise given and lost was not in the book he'd now read so many times he'd lost count. But it differed little from the versions mullahs recounted in schools and mosque. The Garden of Delight, which foolish mankind had tossed away, accessible now only to those successful in earning Allah's favor and forgiveness.

The mechanics yard was empty of travelers on this feast day. The snow was now gone underfoot, but the moon floated bright and high. Stars glittered against the night's freshly washed backdrop. Their silver touched the swaying crowns of the orchard across the back wall so that they might have been a blurred mirage of a garden where men played with wild beasts and God walked with his creation.

Paradise. Jamil longed for it so deeply it haunted his dreams. What was in those dreams, he could never be sure when he awoke. Greenness. Beauty. Lush vegetation like Ameera's pictures, so different from the barren rock of much of his country. The dreams always evaporated with his waking like mist when sunlight hit the fields.

Still, what he'd seen in his dreams didn't matter. It was the assurance of paradise for which Jamil longed. The fear that in Allah's absolute sovereignty and stern justice paradise was already lost to him haunted the nightmares that came with his dreams. For it was so much easier to attain hell than paradise. At least for such as he. The smallest fraction, an infinitesimal tipping of Allah's scales toward death rather than life, condemnation rather than mercy, guaranteed his doom.

To fail in carrying out the five pillars of Islam, in following the exact lifestyle of the prophet, in protecting the Quran from defilement—these were only a beginning. There were other worse things. Things that weighed the scales so far down in debt that no hope was left of tipping them back to Allah's favor, if one prayed and fasted and offered every earning for the rest of one's days.

Ameera spoke so glibly of freedom in serving her prophet. Only it wasn't freedom that offered paradise but truth. So assured the mullahs. With enough unswerving, submissive devotion to truth, there was, if never a certainty, at least the hope that in the divine will of Allah, who wrote a man's destiny and tied it around his neck before he was ever born, paradise might be attained and hell's fires averted.

This was what the West did not understand in their sneering censure of Muslim mobs rioting for the purity of Islam. The fear and the urgency involved because a person slack in their defense of the faith might find himself on the wrong side of those scales. The fear that lived in Jamil right now, consuming him with each passing, fleeting day.

And this was what else the West did not understand, what Ameera would never comprehend should he try to explain—fear, more than hate, prompted followers of the faith to take the ultimate step that alone assured Allah's favor. Because only in taking it could one lay down the burden of fear that had become so all-consuming Jamil could no longer live with it. Was not hate all too often the reaction to fear? How to explain that for one as soiled as Jamil, there was only one way to make up for past infractions. One hope that Allah might still open to him the doors of paradise.

And yet he was so weary of both fear and hate.

Jamil shut his eyes to squeeze back the images. Children's innocent, unspoiled laughter. Softness in a woman's face.

And the words. A Savior who would come. Jamil knew of whom Ameera had meant to speak. A man—a prophet—walking streets like his own. Not with a sword or a soldier's gun but on sandaled feet with a healing touch and kind words for poor and rich alike. Such a man as Jamil could have wished to follow even without the prophet's own assurances of paradise and eternal life.

If only such a thing could be.

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free
.
”
Those had been Isa Masih's words.

But it was too late now for freedom. Only truth remained.

Jamil had reached the cold, concrete box of his quarters. The closing of his door shut out that fleeting mirage of paradise. He took time only to set Ameera's gift carefully into the purloined crate that held his possessions before throwing himself on his tushak. Then the tears came. Jamil wept for what could not be. He wept as he had wept in his dream. As he had not in all the long, dead years.

If only.

He'd arrived before the dawn call to prayer to make his own preparations. A fresh feathering of snow drifted through openings in the broken walls, but he'd swept the blast-shattered floor and spread a patu as a work space. A heavily swaddled figure was spreading out on the blanket an assortment of computer-printed digital images. Faces. A location from various angles.

It was the first time he'd glimpsed his mentor by light of day, if the sullen gray dawn filtering into the ruined building could be deemed such. The heavy winter swathing, a wool scarf wrapped over turban across the lower face, were intended for disguise as much as warmth. But there was no concealing height nor breadth, the hooded eyes and arch of a nose—or the voice.

“As you see, we have the place now as well as the day and hour. And this time it is no test. The only question, are you ready for shaheed? to make your confession to the world?” A hand waved toward the reason for this deviation from operational protocol, a tripod and video camera. “To strike such a blow for Allah that will leave your name praised forever among the ulema of the faithful? to achieve at last the justice for which your own dead cry out?” His companion's formal, flowery words were the pep talk of a commander sending a subordinate into battle. An incongruity in this ruined environs with winter's breath whistling through every crack.

And if he said no? that his faith and commitment, even his hate, had waned? His gaze rose from photo array to hard eyes, dropped to an automatic weapon balanced across squatting thighs. He would not leave this place alive.

He looked at the instrument of shaheed lying beside the photo array with no indication of the ugliness and death it held. “I have long been ready. But I do not see how this can be done. There will be many guards. They will surely not let me pass with this so easily.”

“Trust my competence. All you need is here.” His companion handed over a market bag.

Immediate understanding came as he looked inside. He picked up a plastic ID card. The picture was not his own, but it would be close enough with what this bag held. No impediment remained now but one. “And your own promise? You said you had confirmation. I will not take this step until I have your vow they will be safe and cared for.”

The voice hardened, a hand tightening on the weapon lying across his companion's lap. But his rebuke was peaceable. “Did I not say it is done? that I will give you the confirmation? May Allah himself strike me if I do not keep my word. Your sacrifice will ensure their well-being for the rest of their days. But first let us finish. I have appointments to keep.”

It was well his statement was written out and memorized so that impatience did not taint it. He positioned himself against a remnant of wall as backdrop but not with the instrument of shaheed. Such an ingenious scheme might be used again by others. Instead his companion handed him an automatic rifle, though without its magazine, and a Quran. It took every effort not to shiver, the finery he wore chosen to look good on film but not for warmth.

“Allahu Akbar . . .”

From his companion's approving nod, his face was conveying the resolution, his voice the defiance for which he strove. It did not take long, the parameters of a shaheed statement dictated by no mullah but YouTube. No sooner had he tightened a blanket back around his thin clothing than he demanded, “Now, your vow.”

The envelope held two sheets of paper. The handwriting on the first was not familiar, but then it wouldn't be. Its words held authenticity—names, places, biographical details. But that could be counterfeited, however great the difficulty.

The second sheet was a computer printed photo like those still spread out at his feet. Two females. He walked over to a jagged opening that had been a window to take advantage of the strengthening dawn. The tallest wore full chador, only eyes, nose, and forehead visible, one arm around the other female.