After the drive through Mauritania, Sofiane had begun to feel nauseous. He assumed the bumpy travel, coming so soon after the venture on the fishing boat, as foul-smelling as that wooden death trap was, had not set well with his stomach. He blamed much of his discomfort on a perpetual feeling of hunger, as well. But after receiving the na’an and lamb from the desert herdsman, the nausea only seemed to worsen, despite the relief provided by traveling on camel, rather than on foot. It was on the day after he left the camel herder’s lodging that the vomiting began. At first, there was nothing unusual that did not coincide with an intestinal illness. But on the second day, the vomiting continued. Instead of food and water, Sofiane was expelling blood.
He noticed the camel’s footing getting less sure the longer they journeyed, and his own legs began to weaken—more than Sofiane thought they should have, given the distance he had traveled. The sores were what made him worry, though. Open wounds around his ankles and on his right thigh seemed to only get worse, to the point he knew they were infected. No amount of cleansing seemed to help, and after several washings, Sofiane gave up, preferring instead to save his precious water for hydration. The camel suffered similar ailments, but Sofiane would not spend the energy or resources to help his steed beyond feeding it. The camel was a blessing, but it was only a means to help him reach his final goal. And his survival was imperative, not his furry friend’s.
He arrived in Ghardaia too late for marking Fajr in one of the local mosques, instead performing the first of the day’s five ritual prayers on the hard-packed sand that told him he was close to civilization. Sofiane made a call at the first payphone he found to the number he was given back in Algiers, before his journey began. He took a seat on the ground by a dusty stone building and waited.
Sofiane leaned against his pack, tired from days of grueling travel over shifting sands. He held the black case beneath his legs. Somehow it maintained a constant warmth for reasons he did not understand. He understood goats. And taxis.
He also understood why he needed to finish what he had set out to do.
Many would label the former Algiers taxi-driver a “terrorist,” lumping him together with countless others who hid behind a veil of false Islam, claiming to be warriors of Allah and defenders of the faith. Sofiane spit at the thought of those who called for jihad when it suited their own selfish needs, but his parched mouth produced no saliva. It was precisely those holy men, along with the throngs of misguided martyrdom-seekers who only perpetuated, and in many cases, instigated the violence that marred the present-day world. They did not act on behalf of Islam as they claimed, they were helping to destroy it. By twisting the words of the Holy Qur’an and intentionally misinterpreting the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, they themselves were the blasphemers, not those they accused and executed.
The scale on which those men bastardized his faith disgusted Sofiane. He tried hard to shelter himself and his family from the seemingly endless calls for holy war. In his eyes, men should concentrate on the Greater Jihad, the internal struggle, to bring strength to their own beliefs. Instead, more and more people took up the mantle of the Lesser Jihad, arming themselves for the defense of Islam, though it was not religion that needed defending.
Sofiane saw through the lies. He knew the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a political war—a bloody game of chess between the Russians and the Americans. The conflict in Palestine was about land. When Osama bin Laden, the self-appointed amir of al Qa’ida, attacked New York City, Sofiane continued to take fares in Algiers and play football with his son. And he prayed in the mosque every day. The enemies of Allah were nowhere to be found. Islam was safe, and though many Muslims fell at the hands of evil men, they died not for their faith, but because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, Sofiane would be vilified the world over as a “terrorist.” Another lost Muslim, caught up in a false jihad. The thought made him sick. But Sofiane steeled himself with the knowledge of his true motivation.
A mangy dog that was probably white in color at one time bounced happily past Sofiane, stopping to sniff the Algerian before moving on in search of trash or a hand out. He would most likely find his next meal by way of the former in the Muslim city. Ghardaia was not a city on the scale of Algiers or Tunis, with which he was familiar. And though people were seen moving about the streets, alone or in pairs, the majority of the citizens were still in their houses or apartments. To Sofiane, the city was still asleep.
A police car drove by, its driver not even giving Sofiane a cursory glance. Sofiane coughed and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic, adding to the blood stains that had already set since his sickness began. He watched the car disappear down the dusty road. He knew the law enforcement officer behind the wheel was not the man who killed his family, but he was cut from the same cloth—a member of the Algerian national police. Because of that, Sofiane despised him.
It had been eight years since Sofiane Belmokhtari’s world came crumbling down around him. Eight years since his life took a dark turn that led him to this very spot. Sofiane tried to block the images of that day from his mind, but they were too vivid to erase completely. He didn’t remember what made him stop his taxi and get out. Or had someone told him he needed to get to the central market at once? He could not remember. But he would never forget the look in his five-year-old daughter’s eyes as he held her amidst a sea of strangers. The screams of sirens and the wails of lamenting women were muted. There was only Sofiane and his daughter. And silence.
He saw her mouth move feebly as he stroked her blood-soaked hair. Sofiane tried to smile, despite his own grief, as his tears cut streaks through the dirt and grime that covered his face. Little Samira’s tiny voice asked if her mother was okay, but her eyes said more. They asked her father what she had done wrong. Whatever she did, she was sorry. Even this close to death, her body riddled with bullet holes, Sofiane’s precious child thought of the comfort of others first. She wanted to go home. Her dark eyes showed no sign of pain. Sofiane knew she was beyond pain. Then the light went out.
Two days later, Sofiane found out what happened in the market that afternoon. After their morning shift as guards at the Canadian Embassy on Mustapha Khalef Street in Ben Aknoun, four members of the Algerian national police retired to one of the men’s apartments. Though Algeria is a Muslim country, it was also a long-time French colony. Among other things, the French brought a penchant for alcohol to their annexed territory on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Despite the fact that alcohol was forbidden in Islam, the soldiers spent the afternoon away from the sun and heat, heavy into Dutch beer and European Football League replays on the television.
Later that afternoon the group dispersed and returned to their own homes. On the way, one of the soldiers passed through the market area and began haggling over the price of fruit. The negotiations were much louder and more hostile than was custom, and soon a small crowd had gathered to witness the exchange. Too much alcohol, lack of sleep, and a slight Napoleon complex made for a bad combination, and the soldier raised his submachine gun and killed the fruit vendor. As people screamed and looked for cover, the soldier panicked and sprayed the crowd with bullets before dropping the weapon and running away in a single moment of half-sober clarity. Six people were injured, and four more were killed. Three of those four were Sofiane’s wife and two children.
It was two weeks before Sofiane could bring himself to drive a taxi again. After the funerals, Sofiane sank into a deep depression. He lost himself in the only thing he had left. His religion. He looked for divine guidance to make sense of the tragedy that so suddenly altered his existence. And for a while, he found solace. For nearly six years he attended prayer five times a day at his family’s mosque in Algiers, and Sofiane became a more reliable presence than the resident imam. He began participating in a weekly study group that helped deepen his understanding of the Qur’an and the examples of the Prophet more than he ever thought possible. He was also introduced to a very diffe
rent interpretation of Islam.
The first time Sofiane heard Murad Bajrai bin Talib speak to the group, he was mesmerized. The visiting Yemeni cleric was very animated and clearly passionate about his teachings. Sofiane was attracted to Bajrai’s humble nature, which helped to encourage discussion among the men. The conversations were lively at times, but for the most part people just listened to the older, wiser teacher. By the fourth month, Bajrai bin Talib opened up and began to reveal his true beliefs, and his ulterior motive.
Sofiane was wary of the preacher’s teachings after the fifth weekly meeting, thinking that he detected a harsher message behind Bujrai’s fatherly speeches. He blamed his suspicion on his own ignorance of the Divine Word, until one day when he found himself in a conversation with a young man he was driving to Houari Boumediene Airport. The traveler was clothed in a white cotton ihram. The man said he was flying to Mecca on a pilgrimage, completing one of the five pillars of the faith. The journey to the holy city and cube-shaped al Ka’bah, rebuilt by the prophet Ibrahim and his son Isma’il, was a requirement for all able-bodied Muslims who could afford it, and would earn the man the honored title of “Hajji.”
Sofiane had made the journey himself exactly one year after his family was slaughtered. The man had many questions for Sofiane, who gladly answered them all. Then the discussion turned to doctrine, and Sayid Qutb, the Egyptian author and Islamist. The man in the backseat of Sofiane’s taxi revered Qutb, and what started as a friendly conversation between men of faith soon became a lecture on the evils of the West and how Muslims had lost sight of the true message of the Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. According to Qutb, and Sofiane’s fare, the only true government was one of Islamic law, or shari’a. Any other alternative put false authority in the hands of men, when Allah was the only true authority. Sofiane agreed on this point in principle, but he did not agree with the assertion that any ruling body or individual that opposed the implementation of shari’a law should be destroyed. The man further argued that it was every Muslim’s duty to support jihad against such people and institutions. In his eyes, violence was the only way to secure the society Allah called for on Earth.
Sofiane later heard the same arguments from the likes of Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman al Zawahiri, as well as the Society of Muslim Brothers in Egypt. It was the same message Murad Bajrai bin Talib brought to Sofiane’s mosque in Algiers. Bujrai was, in fact, attempting to recruit more members into al Qa’ida, specifically al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.
AQIM grew out of the Sunni organization known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat—GSPC for short. What started as an internal violent Islamist resistance movement against Algeria’s secular government, the GSPC became a part of the al Qa’ida franchise in 2006. The move, officially announced by none other than Dr. Zawahiri, gave what many in the West feared was a longer pan-Maghreb reach for Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. One more group of jihadists hell-bent on realizing the re-emergence of the Islamic Khilafat in modern times. Bujrai was an employee of the al Qa’ida front office, a veteran of Afghanistan, and in Algiers to beef up AQIM’s numbers by preying on the desperate, downtrodden, and impressionable.
The reality was, the GSPC’s morphing into AQIM did not have a great effect on the group’s primary motivation. They wanted the establishment of an Islamic government, to be sure, but they were a locally-focused organization and concentrated their efforts on changing Algeria’s government without any real intellectual or emotional energy spent contemplating a strategy to achieve the same results globally. The association with al Qa’ida merely brought more prestige, more recruits, and, GSPC leaders hoped, more money. Murad Bajrai bin Talib was there to help get recruits.
Like any good salesman, Bujrai first tried to establish a rapport with his potential consumers. In this case, he was selling jihad. After he got to know his audience, he focused on individual openings to close the deal. Bujrai found that opening in Sofiane when one of the group’s discussions revealed the tragic event that took the Algerian’s family from him so violently. Bujrai used that horrible day and the emotions Sofiane had suppressed through religious devotion to target the taxi driver. Sofiane did not believe in Bujrai’s or al Qa’ida’s distorted dogma. He didn’t even buy into the GSPC/AQIM mantra, but the more he heard from Bujrai, the more Sofiane thought that there may be an opportunity there.
One evening after the weekly discussion group, Sofiane lingered behind in the mosque’s classroom as the other men bid farewell to the cleric and each other and headed home. Bujrai took notice of Sofiane’s continued presence and gently shut the door behind him to give the two men some privacy. He quietly approached the Algerian, who was studying the floor in front of him, occasionally raising his eyes to indicate that he wished to talk.
Bujrai asked a boy who had come in through a door in the back of the classroom to fetch some fresh tea. The boy quickly finished the job of straightening up the now-empty room and disappeared through the door. Bujrai put a hand on Sofiane’s shoulder and motioned for him to have a seat on one of the cushions that lined the wall before perching on a brightly-colored, more ornate pillow. He never took his eyes off of Sofiane, even as the boy returned and served the men hot tea. Sofiane thanked the young servant, who did not even acknowledge him, preferring instead to leave the room as quickly as he could.
When the two men were alone, Bujrai finally spoke. “What can I do for you, brother?”
Sofiane took a sip of his tea and lowered the small glass to his lap. He dropped his exterior subservient demeanor and fixed his eyes directly on Bujrai. “The question should be, what can we do for each other?”
Bujrai’s salesmanship had worked, though not exactly as he expected. Forcing Sofiane to delve deeper into the latent feelings of hatred and anger that the taxi driver had worked so hard, for so many years to extinguish, never quite succeeding, Bujrai got his recruit. But the newest soldier in al Qa’ida’s army came with conditions. Sofiane joined the ranks of al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb, but he did not attend the religious and ideological indoctrination sermons that were standard requirements for every new jihadist. Instead, Sofiane prayed on his own. He made it clear to Bujrai that he did not subscribe to one bit of the al Qa’ida message, and he would train with other members of the group in learning terrorist tactics and weapons handling only. In exchange, he would give his life in violent death—not because he wanted martyrdom, but because he wanted revenge. He wanted to make the people who had ruined his life pay for what they had done. If not the trigger-man himself, then at least the people he worked for. That was the job Sofiane agreed to do.
Sofiane coughed more blood and looked down the street for any sign of the car that would take him the rest of the way to Algiers. Not yet.
He sighed and stared at the black case between his legs. Sofiane’s work was almost done. He just had to stay alive long enough to die.
Chapter 35
New York City
“Ja’afari’s out.”
Susan turned around to see George Smithfield standing at the opening to her cubicle. “What?”
“Mohammad Qasim Ja’afari. He’s out. Taking an early retirement.” George said.
Susan put her pen down, but kept the mangled top in the corner of her mouth. “He was being groomed for the top slot in the IRGC, and he just decided to retire?”
“If you believe IRNA,” George said.
“I don’t.” Susan took the pen cap from her mouth as George took the empty seat in the corner. “I mean, I don’t believe he’s voluntarily retiring.” IRNA was the Islamic Republic News Agency, the official media outlet of the Iranian government. While the news they reported was factual, for the most part, Susan found that the backstory was often different from the truth.
“You think they’re forcing him to step down?” George asked.
“That’s exactly what I think,” Susan said. “The man has too much invested in the IRGC. He’s done ev
erything right to get where he is right now, and to just throw it all away when he’s almost reached the pinnacle of his military career doesn’t make much sense.”
“What doesn’t make much sense?”
Susan and George watched Casey saunter into the cubicle. He put a white paper bag on a stack of folders and took a seat on the corner of Susan’s desk. After opening a 20-oz Diet Coke bottle and taking a sip, Casey repeated his question.
“Good morning to you, too, sir,” Susan said. “George just informed me that Qasim Ja’afari is retiring.”
“Susan thinks he’s being sacked,” George said.
“That makes sense,” Casey said, taking another sip. George was eyeballing the bag Casey brought in as the smell of fresh-baked bagels began to seep out.
“It makes sense that he would have to be fired before he would quit of his own volition, but what did he do that would cause his superiors to lose confidence in him enough to get rid of him? He was going to be the next Revolutionary Guard Commander, for crying out loud,” Susan said.
Casey handed the bag of bagels to George who attacked the first one his hand came into contact with. “You gotta have more faith in yourself, man,” Casey said. “Ja’afari and his boy Alam try to buy missiles from the Russian black market. Shit happens, and the deal goes bust. You don’t think someone’s gonna take the fall for nearly screwing up the P5+1 talks before they even happen? A favorable outcome for Iran in Ankara still isn’t guaranteed, you know.”
“Okay, then what about Alam?” Susan asked. “Thanks for the bagels, by the way.” She pulled an everything bagel from the bag, dropping about thirty poppy and sesame seeds on the floor in the process.
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