The Occurrence

  War was clear. Dead. Alive. His circumstance now was a grey zone, and he thought of his grandmother, who’d tried to teach him about the complexities of life, but he’d refused to listen. She was the woman who’d cared for him after his parents were killed. The woman who said he was spared for a reason. Who said he could never bring his parents back with blood. That blood for blood was not God’s way. She’d never stopped trying to impart the futility of war or relinquish her vow to infuse in him the love of all men, which she believed Allah spoke.

  He cried, for he saw the disrespect he’d given her even though he’d loved her. And he let himself cry, for he knew Mariam and the young boys would believe his tears were for the beauty of the Qur’an. And he let the lie linger. He knew what was needed must be done with lies and “much discretion.”

  Mariam said to the class, “You should all be so moved by the words of the great Prophet like Mister Siraj.”

  Nazir nodded and smiled through his tears.

  As he told the students of his life in Mosul, a woman came to the door of the classroom and motioned to Mariam, who went to her.

  The woman whispered something to Mariam, who turned to Nazir and said, “There are a few things I need to attend to.”

  She turned to the class, directed them to be good and attentive to their guest, and left.

  Nazir wiped his tears. He went to the door and closed it. If he was ever going to attempt to cultivate the seed of non-violence, now was the time. Now was the test he believed the imam had set before him. The test he was betting his life on.

  He walked among the boys, shifted from his life in Mosul, and told them a tale he called, “The Mystery in the Desert.”

  He hadn’t planned to tell them about what had happened to him, but realized he was being guided and trusted the scent of roses, of which he could see only he was aware.

  He told the story of how fierce enemies had an experience they couldn’t explain when a ball of fire exploded in the desert and left them alive. It set each of them on a path to find the source of the fire from the sky, and the mystery of its effect on them that had changed their hearts. And they went in search of each other—in search of an answer that would bring them, and many others back together, from a long ago time.

  The boys leaned in. Nazir knew the power of story. He knew the power of lies and how they could persuade. He knew the power of truth and how it resonated with the heart. He also knew the power of mystery and how that could capture and hold attention. How to serve all these and not get killed was the dangerous undertaking before him.

  He thought of what Jhana-Merise had told him, about the awakening of a spiritual DNA. It gave him an idea to plant in the story he was telling. And he spoke of a young girl from a land far away who awoke one day with the knowledge of how to bring these once enemies together. She knew it was Allah who’d brought the fire to the desert. Fire that would burn the hate. But it was a quiet fire, lit from inside these strangers that would lead them to what Allah called The Greater Jihad. The jihad of love.

  Nazir’s grandmother’s voice coursed through him, and he said aloud, “Blood for blood is not God’s way.”

  The boys’ attention turned to the back of the room. And Nazir saw Mariam standing in the doorway.

  Class was over. The boys were gone. Mariam confronted Nazir about what he’d been teaching. “Blood for blood is not God’s way?”

  “We need to open their hearts before we can fill it with jihad,” Nazir replied.

  “Is that what Hashim taught you?”

  “Yes. Hashim said, ‘when the heart is open Allah will find a place.’”

  He was telling her the truth, but for him the place Allah would find was love, not one of blood.

  He wondered if the questioning look in her eyes held a seed for her transformation out of the violence, or maybe it was a look that questioned his loyalty. He couldn’t tell. But he needed to address it. And to do that he told her about his life, in hopes his passage to jihad would quell whatever doubts of his loyalty might be lingering in her mind. Doubts she might not be aware of, but which could rise and be used against him. He knew gossip could be a plague. Lies were his salvation in this.

  “My grandmother called me Shaheed,” he said.

  “Martyr. She wanted you to be a martyr?”

  “Yes,” he said lying, silently asking his grandmother for forgiveness for using her this way.

  He could see Mariam was caught off-guard.

  And, the more details he related of men in suicide vests, the more she shuddered at the savage reality of those actions. He’d heard her father speak of the glory of sacrifice, and had seen its effect on her, for he knew how much she admired him.

  Nazir spoke of sacrifice, too. But he spoke of the blood in a way he knew she hadn’t been exposed.

  He told her of one martyr who never made it to heaven, never got the virgins, even though the blast from his bomb was strong enough to kill twenty infidels.

  “He wasn’t a hero because he didn’t die. Neither charred eyes, nor a face like bubbled tar pleased Allah.”

  It was a gamble speaking this graphic, but he wanted the gruesome details of jihad to burrow inside her. Because he believed horror this raw could move her. He needed it to move her at a place inside, a place in which he hoped an ember of The Greater Jihad burned.

  88

  Rain beat heavily against the windows of Bruton’s office.

  Dominique saw turmoil in the man she’d come to respect, for she knew how much he had at stake, too.

  “It’s important to look to the future of what’s been presented,” Bruton said. “But present dangers are not to be taken lightly. Is the relationship with the young Sarif woman going to be an asset or liability?”

  “You mean, is there a romance that could thwart or support Nazir’s purpose?”

  “Do you have a sense of which it might be?”

  “No, I don’t. And I’m not putting him in any more danger, pushing him one way or the other with her.”

  “His life was in danger the minute he landed here. Do you think he can change their hearts without anyone noticing?”

  Maybe the world couldn’t change. Maybe darkness would always rage against the light. Could Nazir change hearts without anyone noticing? It was a good question, and one she’d suppressed because she didn’t want to believe it might be true. But Dominique also believed what Jhana-Merise had said about the reawakening of their souls, and saw how that could ignite a quiet fire of love from inside. It was a worthy pursuit. A narrative that told her she’d been asleep all these years, even running through the clusterfuck of firefights.

  “I know you’re frightened, Charles. I am, too. But we have a chance to do something that can change us—maybe even change the world.”

  “And you plan to let Nazir go deeper into the lion’s den to find that out? Who’s putting him in more danger now?”

  “He’s not going to do it alone from here on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s going to introduce me to Mariam. She’s our conduit to Pashtar, and to the imam.”

  “If you think that isn’t a death sentence, you’re more naive than I thought.”

  “I was with Nazir and Hashim in the warehouse. I have information the imam will want to know. I’ll tell him I’ve been in contact with Hashim ever since he set foot here. All of which is true.”

  “And what if he decides you’re not worth the risk?”

  “We’ve known all our lives that we’re more than we know. We can break free of the tribal beliefs handed down to us by fear. What we’ve been thrust into is mystical in design. But it doesn’t make it any less valid than the air we breathe, which we can’t see either but is measurable. This is measurable, too. I believe the imam will listen.”

  Bruton touched her shoulder in a gesture of friendship. “And where is Julian in all this?”

  “Making his way to a truth that has eluded him.”

  89

  J
ulian stood at the door to the Victorian era master bedroom his parents once shared. The housekeeper had kept the ornate curtains and damask bed sheets pristine, as if the appearance of cleanliness and order reflected reality. It didn’t.

  The senator made his way up the main staircase to the master suites. He saw his son staring into the bedroom.

  “Your mother said you were here. You can go in, it won’t bite.”

  “You visited Jack Dean,” Julian said. “Did he know you’d had the same chance at all this that I have?”

  “Yes. There was a time when we shared our lives.”

  “I’d always wondered what it was that had terrified you when I was a boy. It terrified Mother, too. I understand that now.”

  He walked into the bedroom.

  “I remember coming in here when I was young. There weren’t many of those days, but there was love here once.”

  Ledge stood at the threshold to the room.

  “When I was in the catacombs,” Julian said, “I could feel you there with me. You had a longing for something out of reach.”

  He faced his father. It’d been a long time since he had compassion for him.

  “You had an experience like I did, and you turned away.”

  The anguish Julian felt in the catacombs he saw now in his father’s eyes.

  “There were others,” Ledge said.

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not Jack Dean?”

  “He had the information, but that was all. He was a messenger.”

  “Whose career you and Bruton killed.”

  Julian felt the thrum of pain that emanated from his father.

  “I’ve turned away from much, too.”

  “But not this,” Ledge said.

  “No. As much as I struggle with it, not this.”

  Julian turned toward the door and saw his mother standing there. She didn’t have a drink in her hand.

  “I see you found each other,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Julian answered. “Maybe we’ll all find each other again.”

  90

  Wednesday, October 21

  To avoid the chance of Mariam making any connection to the journalist in the warehouse bombing, Nazir introduced her to Dominique, under a fictitious name. They were at the mosque where Mariam worked.

  Dominique, wearing a dark hijab, could see Mariam trusted Nazir in the way she listened and accepted what he told her about how he and his visitor came to be connected and committed to jihad.

  Something happened to Dominique as she stood in the hallway of the mosque. She was being downloaded with this young woman’s history.

  Slipping into the skin of Mariam’s life—her sorrow for not knowing her mother—her feelings of being “the other” in America—the longing to be part of the culture of her father, which included his passion for justice through jihad. And her feelings for Nazir complicated an already perilous situation.

  Dominique had spent years wanting to get into the mindset of the mujahideen, to understand them and change the course of the violence. That way broke open in her conversation with Hashim at ADX prison. And now she was making contact with Mariam’s soul.

  From what Nazir had told Dominique of Mariam, she knew this young woman didn’t fall into the usual grievances that gave rise to terrorism in the name of God. She’d been neither alienated, humiliated, nor dispossessed in the ways that drove men and women to sacrifice themselves. Yes, she’d been guided by her father’s grievances, but Dominique could see beneath Mariam’s anger—a force of which Mariam wasn’t even aware was tempering her fervor. And so, Dominique talked with her about the prophets and poets that inspired their cause.

  Dominique’s meeting with Hashim in prison gave her much insight.

  She’d spent time learning of the work and life of the woman he’d spoken of—the “poetess of the Islamic State.” And when she mentioned Ahlam al-Nasr to Mariam, she lit up, as if encountering a kindred spirit.

  The authority of verse had no rival in Arabic culture. That was what Hashim wanted to impress upon Dominique. Desert nomads composed their earliest poems. And while the Qur’an had harsh words for these troubadours, these men and women of words had become companions of Muhammad, praising him in life and elegizing him in death.

  Mariam talked of al-Nasr’s book of verse, The Blaze of Truth, which consisted of a hundred and seven poems in Arabic—elegies to mujahideen, laments for prisoners, and victory odes.

  Mariam was well informed of this history. She talked of when in the spring of 2011, and protests in Syria broke out against the rule of Bashar al-Assad, how al-Nasr took the side of the demonstrators. The poems she wrote stood as witness to the regime’s violent crackdown, and she was radicalized by what she saw.

  Mariam spoke of a verse al-Nasr wrote in reaction to that spring—of shattered brains. Bones cracked. Throats drilled. Scattered limbs. And blood that ran through the streets.

  Dominique saw her own fervor had reached deep into Mariam’s, as Mariam’s fervor was reaching into her. Their souls connected. It was unsettling and beautiful.

  She could see Nazir felt it, too.

  91

  Dominique hadn’t been in Adrien Kurt’s therapy office since she’d come back from her experience in the catacombs. She appreciated that he was willing to stay late to see her on short notice, because she needed to be here. She didn’t know how to process all of what had happened to her in the mosque.

  “Every bone in my body tells me not to go any further with this.”

  “That’s the remnant of your fear,” Kurt said. “You’ve overpowered it for so long you never gave it the chance to rise up so you could choose it, and dismantle it. You’ve wanted to turn jihad around a long time. And from what you’ve told me, you have a grasp on a lot of it now—from the download of Mariam’s life—to the engagement around the poet. That’s a rare combination. And a serious confrontation to the terror you’re feeling. It isn’t going to let go until you choose to let it go.”

  She noticed a beautiful white porcelain figurine on his desk.

  “That’s new,” she said, pointing to it. She needed a distraction.

  “Yes. She’s called, Quan Yin. She’s a Buddhist bodhisattva. She represents compassion and mercy.”

  “May I…”

  “Sure.”

  Dominique went to the desk and held the figurine.

  “You’ve been guided to the place where you are, Dominique.”

  “Divine intervention?” she said with a nervous chuckle.

  “What do you call putting on the mind of another?”

  “So, you’re not going to try and talk me out of it?”

  “You’re not afraid of what happened. You’re terrified you’ll succeed. Besides, there are forces seen and unseen that want you to succeed.”

  “And forces that don’t.”

  “There are.”

  She placed the Quan Yin back on the desk, but couldn’t leave her presence.

  Dominique had lived with forces that didn’t want her to succeed all her life. Being a woman was part of that equation. Being successful, the other.

  She spoke of the last time she and Kurt met here, after she’d returned from the desert, and how Kurt had said he understood what she went through.

  “You never told me all of what you understood.”

  “You weren’t ready to hear it.”

  “Am I now?”

  “I believe you are.”

  He told her he was in the desert a long time ago, in the same catacombs where she and Julian were led.

  “How long ago?”

  “Long enough.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I was one of a group who came to find a location to hide the stones in order that those who followed might be led to the tablet.”

  “Are we having this conversation?”

  “You asked. What do you think you’ve been being exposed to since that hospital room in Pittsburgh?�
�

  The memories of her almost dying as a child, and the near escapes from death, moored her to a deeper perception of the path she’d been on.

  “Were you responsible for the missile going off course?”

  “I was part of the energy that made that happen.”

  She didn’t know anything about him. She’d avoided knowing anything about him.

  “Who are you?” she cried.

  “I know you want answers to all the questions you have. But anything I say, beyond what I’ve said, your mind will argue with. So, why don’t you accept that I’m here to help you. I’ve always been here to help you.”

  “Can you help us survive what we’re attempting to do?”

  “We already are. But there’s no guarantee. We’re not God. We’re guides.”

  “What about Mariam?”

  “There are memories that will open for her. And you must be there to help her understand.”

  “And Julian?”

  “He’ll make sure the others are safe.”

  “Others?”

  “Those who’ve been brought together at the cottage. There are many of us who’ve been waiting for this. Waiting to help shift the downward spiral of the world. And, because of you, it has begun.”

  92

  Sunday, October 25

  Dominique sat across from the imam in the same empty restaurant in the strip mall on the edge of D.C. where Nazir first met him the previous Sunday. She’d been here a few minutes, but time had slowed, and each second seemed elastic.

  It was within that yielding space that she knew him.

  Not from this life, but something deep in the past. It was a web from another level of another reality, the doors of which continued to open in inimitable ways.

  If there was a center to her experience of him it was his eyes. They were ice-blue. An odd color for someone from his culture. Also, beautiful and frightening. She’d seen eyes like that before.