The Prophet's Ladder

by Jonathan Williams

  ****

  In the city of Tunis life carried on much the same as usual. It was a near timeless place, despite the always increasing prevalence of newer handheld devices and the flowering of solar cells on every rooftop, Tunis, at least in the old quarter of the medina, was very much as it was three or four centuries ago.

  Life was not the same however, for the al-Aziz family. The family had not recovered from the loss of Ali at the hands of fundamentalists more than a year ago. Sharifa’s mediocre health had deteriorated even further, as though she had given up on the matter of living entirely, and she was now fully bedridden, unable or unwilling to even utter a single word to anyone, especially her husband, whom she blamed for Ali’s death. Salah and his remaining sons would bring her food prepared by local street vendors or nearby relations, though she would not touch it, refusing to eat anything but soggy bread and mashed dates.

  Ali and Amina’s book was a best seller in Tunisia, particularly in urban areas and amongst the country’s youth. Out of respect and love Amina had transferred fully half the proceeds from sales of the book to Salah’s bank account (coincidentally the account was with the same bank her father owned), and had written to him with kind regards, going so far as to send a bound, signed edition with a lovely message scrawled on the inside cover. Salah did not attempt to read the book, or even look at it, shelving it on some forgotten windowsill. Instead, he spent much of the monies Amina had provided on house calls from the best doctors in the city for his wife, perhaps out of a sense of residual guilt over his son’s death, but Sharifa had again been obstinate, declining any proffered treatment.

  In the end, Salah had grown exasperated with his wife’s stubborn contumacy and returned to spending much of his time at the mosque or in the cafes with his friends, leaving the day to day running of the hanut to his eldest son Abdel, only returning in the late evening to remove and clean his wife’s bedpan after she had fallen asleep. Sharifa sought to escape reality in her dreams, retreating to memories of her darling, favorite child playing in her lap.

  A year and a day after Ali’s death, his mother died asleep, alone, a single quilt covering her gaunt frame. She was buried next to her youngest son’s empty grave.

  ****

  1346 CE, China

  “And how are you getting along in Quanzhou, Master Battuta?” The ambassador was formally dressed and spoke in Persian, the only language the two men both knew to some degree, with an erudite tongue. Ibn Battuta, struggling to recall his limited vocabulary, replied slowly.

  “I am impressed with the beauty of this land, sir, and with its richness. Even the meanest peasant wears silk at all times of day, and owns the most beautiful porcelain I have ever laid eyes upon.”

  The ambassador, his surname Wu, smiled amicably and inclined his head slightly. “Your words do us honor, master Battuta, though I hope this city is not too ostentatious, for that would be unseemly. But surely your own land has its riches?”

  “The Maghreb does indeed have wealth, your honor, but it is not of this sort. Our faith in God and our love of his Prophet, peace be upon him, is our greatest treasure.” He grinned. “Well that, and our tangerines, the most delicious fruit you’ve ever tasted.”

  Wu nodded appreciatively, though perhaps he was only being diplomatic. “Very good, very good indeed, though I surmise that you are disenchanted with our not being of your own Muslim religion.”

  “In truth, your honor, it does, though in my travels I have met many fine pagans, those you call Buddhists, and even now Confucians. It strains my heart to know that you will not know our Creator’s infinite kindness. I pity you, though I hope you do not take offense at my meaning.”

  In fact Wu’s mood was slightly soured by the Moroccan envoy’s tactful speech, though he did not let it show. “No offense taken, Master Battuta. I understand that you are a man of great conviction, evidently. I am certain that is why your Sultan appointed you as a judge and envoy in the Kingdom of Delhi.” The ambassador rose from the tea table at which they were seated. “Well, I hope you will join us for our canal excursion tomorrow.”

  Ibn Battuta rose and, in the custom of this land, bowed at the waist. “I look forward to it, ambassador Wu, and to traveling to the capital of your great land in a few day’s time.”

  After his counterpart had left, Ibn Battuta turned to his present company, an Egyptian merchant by the name of Siddiq. He was a man who had grown exceedingly rich during his stay in China, a period of several years. “Was that properly done?”

  “It was, it was, my friend,” said the merchant, a fat, bearded fellow who wore gold chains over his grey silk robes. “You bowed as though you’ve been living here for half your life!”

  “ I wanted to do the ritual some justice.”

  “It was very good, I assure you. Now, what do you have planned this evening?”

  “I had intended to stay in my apartment and read the Quran, for lack of a proper place of worship.”

  “You can do that any time!” The man slapped his knee. “Come come, you must attend a magic show with me tonight.”

  “True magic? You mean, like sorcery?” Ibn Battuta seemed shocked that a Muslim like himself would attend to such idolatry. His companion guffawed.

  “Haha, no no no: only mere tricks, sleight of hand, acrobatics and the like. You know what I mean.”

  Ibn Battuta paused and considered the offer. “Well...very well then. I have kept cooped up in my accommodations for too long.”

  “Excellent!” Siddiq seemed honestly thrilled. “Tonight at sundown then, I will send some servants and a palanquin for you.”

  Ibn Battuta stared out the window, reviewing the architecture, the terraced topography of Quanzhou. “Siddiq, can I be honest with you? I feel as though you are the only person in this city I can be forthright with, though I’ve known you only for a few weeks now.”

  “Of course my friend! What ails you?”

  “In truth this city, this land, depresses me. It was one thing to meet those of another religion in a kingdom of the faithful, indeed I learned a great deal in conversations with those good persons, both about their faith and my own, but this is something else entirely.”

  “I see. Yes, I can understand what you mean.”

  “For example, they serve roasted pig on the street here! Hundreds of vendors hawking the flesh of an unclean animal for consumption! It astounds the mind. Surely…. surely some pious Muslims have made their way here before us, have attempted to teach them the error of their ways?”

  “I’m sure they have my friend, but this is an ancient kingdom, one far older than even those in the Arab world, older even than the Rum, or the Persians. They seem certain of their ways, of their traditions. They know them to be the most proper, the most suited for their wants and needs.”

  “I suppose you are right.” Ibn Battuta sighed. “I am not entirely certain I wish to entertain a trip to Beijing. I am overwhelmed, now more than ever, with the desire to return to my home. My true home, Tangier.”

  His companion cracked his knuckles loudly. “Well, don’t decide right away. Think it over, give it some time. For now enjoy all that China has to offer.”

  “I shall my friend, thank you. God bless you and your parents, you’ve been quite kind to me this past fortnight.”

  Siddiq the merchant kissed his friend on both cheeks as he departed, invoking his comrade’s full name, a sign of esteem. “May God bless your parents as well, Abu Abd al-Lah Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lah l-Lawati t-Ṭangi ibn Battuta.”

  ****

  The interior of the space elevator’s Tower facility was a sight few outside the inner circle of the Al-Hatem Aerospace Corporation had seen. Only Sheikh Nur, Karim, a portion of their employees, and the company’s exclusively contracted construction workers had been inside the building for any significant length of time. At least, until today. If asked, the sheikh could not begin to explain why he had offered to show Amina Hannachi the facility. Perhaps it was a desire to demonstr
ate the tangible outcome of her deceased finance’s convictions, his thoughts of a better Islam, an improved Arab society forged in a crucible where science was measured and tempered by faith; where a man (or a woman, or anyone) could make of themself a kingdom dedicated to bolstering the Creator’s gifts. Not improving upon them, no, for that would be arrogance, and this tower and everyone in it would be cast down and destroyed by the All Powerful, to punish their hubris. No, not improving, but supporting, strengthening. Helping his fellow brothers and sisters, the people of the book, and even those outside the House of Peace, and lifting them up, bringing them to the heavens, that they might fully witness the glory of creation: both in the stars and in themselves.

  Nur turned to look at Amina as his palm print was scanned at the entrance to the heart of the structure, the cable’s base and the elevator’s staging depot. It was where cargo and passengers would be loaded and unloaded as soon as the device became fully operational, a matter of a few months and weeks more. “I think you’ll be pleased with what you’re about to see. I would only ask that you not take any pictures with your phone or use any other recording technology. Your devices will be scanned for data—no matter what—upon your exiting the facility, so best to warn you in advance.”

  Amina blushed. “No! No of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  The burnished metal doors swung open automatically on their tracks and the glory of his life’s work was there before them, laid bare. There was the cinereal cable, its broad girth buried deep, deep in the earth’s crust, its length extending straight up the center of the tower’s pagoda shape into the sky above, a blue circle of light visible at the apex’s opening. Surrounding the cable were massive machines built into the walls, seemingly torn from some soviet bloc state’s industrial nightmare, each alive and buzzing, lights flashing in sequence. This was monumental architecture of a modern sort; the structure’s scale echoing the Neolithic henges and Egyptian Old Kingdom pyramids of epochs past. Sleek, reflective aluminum panels clasped broad, finely balanced platinum gears, arms, and trolleys the size of buses. Hundreds if not thousands of monitoring stations, engineering terminals, sensor arrays, hazmat, fire, and other safety vehicles surrounded the cable platform, while teams of technicians and workers swarmed every subsystem, every hill and valley of sophisticated electronic paraphernalia extending from the tether’s center, a Victorian techno-futurist’s hedge maze. To the eastern end of the structure lay a strip of elevated, reinforced asphalt leading to a pair of distant gates as a cathedral nave, the roadway designed to accommodate bulk cargo traffic into the interior of the tower.

  Atop an octagon shaped dais the diameter of a football field rested the elevator itself. It resembled nothing so much as a house-sized lotus flower: petals of solar panels collapsed inwards towards the cable on every side, dark blue segments overlapping and shading one another protectively. At the elevator’s center a circular series of rollers enveloped the cable’s breadth, the disk’s unmoving treads gripping tightly the graphene hawser. The base of the elevator platform was a more simplistic affair of titanium panels supported by innumerable crisscrossing girders stretching across the elevator’s ambit. Amina noticed a pressurized cabin, almost a shack, near the center of the elevator, seemingly designed to accommodate human passengers. The entirety of the elevator ‘car’ itself appeared almost comically delicate, as fragile looking as a glass sculpture when compared to the mighty rockets of the twentieth century, its ancient competition.

  Amina stood there for a full five minutes, taking it all in, while Sheikh Nur stood by in silence, not uttering a sound, waiting for her to absorb the image, his dream. Finally she spoke. “This is...incredible. Will it work?”

  “I think so, yes.” Sheikh Nur guided Amina to his office, which had several observation windows for a bird’s eye view of the launch floor.

  Amina continued with her questions as soon as the door shut out the deafening ruckus of the Tower’s interior. “What will you transport up the elevator first? Human passengers?”

  “Nothing that dramatic. Only a few additional components for the asteroid depot, some refined materials, and additional batteries for the facility’s solar cells. No human passengers on the test run and it will only be carrying a half load, just in case something goes wrong...God forbid.”

  “God forbid.” Amina habitually echoed the sentiment. “How much weight can it carry into orbit?”

  “When all is operating smoothly, effectively three hundred metric tons beyond the weight of the elevator car itself, though we’re looking to substantially increase the carrying capacity once we’re up and running.”

  “And how long would a one way trip take?” Amina smiled. “Not that I’m interested in going myself, of course.”

  Sheikh Nur returned her smile with another. “Of course. Well, a trip would take a few days, depending on several factors. We’ve yet to do a speed run, or any run at all for that matter!”

  “I’m sorry to be a pest with all of these questions, Sheikh, but one more, if you’ll indulge me.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why?” Amina’s gaze seemed steadfast, direct, in a way that few people, man or woman, had dared to look at the sheikh. He was impressed.

  “Why what?”

  “Why all of this? Why build a space elevator? Why not alleviate the ills of the UAE or even the entire Arabian Peninsula with all this money? You could instead build more schools or better roads, even fight food scarcity and climate change while you’re at it.”

  The sheikh took in a breath. “Well for one thing,” he gestured out the office windows at the construction surrounding the elevator, “ this isn’t all my money. Not even a significant fraction of it. The money we used for this project comes from investors: corporations, kings, Sheikhs, African dictators, bankers like your father, other less savory individuals and institutions. Those noble causes you mentioned— and they are noble, certainly—don’t attract this amount of financial support. There is not enough of a return on investment on building schools or fighting climate change, believe me. I wish that it were so.” Nur turned in his swivel chair and himself looked out the window, his hands clasped in front of his face as though in supplication or prayer. He continued, meditatively. “Frankly I also believe that we are, in a sense, addressing the issue of climate change, as you mentioned. I’ve spoken to some of the best climatologists, chemists, and environmental scientists in the world; some of them even work for me. I’ve read the reports myself.” Nur poured Amina and himself a glass of water from a decanter on his desk. “To speak truthfully, things are going to get very difficult for humanity in the next one hundred years. There is too much CO2 in the atmosphere. There will be widespread drought, starvation, mass migration, wildfires, rising sea levels. Much of Eden, Allah’s gift and blessing to his children, will become a desert.”

  Amina frowned. “Don’t you believe that humanity has the capacity to find solutions to those problems?”

  “Yes I do, but it is unwise to keep all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak. Our species will survive, flourish even, in time, but there will be upheaval and suffering in the interim. And our solutions may very well come from the resources and technology developed in orbit, or on other settled worlds in our solar system, perhaps. I am merely hedging humanity’s bets. Giving us a better, fighting chance, God willing.

  “Truly, miss Hannachi, I believe that we must construct this grandiose symbol, this tower, not only to inspire and help our fellow man, but to save our faith. Not just from exterior environmental threats, but from itself. That is the principle reason I’ve done all of this. Islam is degrading, or has at the very least stagnated, as your fiancé rightly pointed out. The vast majority of Muslims suffer under the despotism of a few conservative sects whose subscribers yearn for a golden age that never existed. I won’t idly stand by and watch our belief suffer. No longer. We must look forward. That’s why I helped get your book published.”

  Nur turned back to face his
guest, who listened attentively. “And if, in so doing, we improve the lot of our entire species, then all the better.”

  Amina sat there sipping her water, absorbing Nur’s diatribe. It was almost impossible to believe, that he’d be able to overturn centuries of slow societal torpor, but here was the elevator; here were the resources and the drive. Her heart swelled with excitement. “I want to help you. However I can.”

  Nur nodded, seemingly gratified. “I knew you would. But there will be a price, of course. There always is, when individuals attempt to move mountains. Actually...culture is more like a glacier; it takes an age to shift, wouldn’t you agree?” He stood. “Sorry, that was rhetorical. Anyways, you are aware that I know some of your father’s colleagues in government, old business friends of mine, and they are prepared to assist you with my proposal. I need you to run for the Tunisian legislature. How is it pronounced in French? The Assemblée des représentants du peuple? Yes.”

  Amina was taken aback. “What? Why me? I’m…flattered, but I’m only a graphic designer! I have no skill in politics.”

  “No, that’s not what Karim tells me. He told me that you were very popular at the book launch in Cairo; that you spoke very well. He claims you had the guests enthralled, lingering on your every word. And your unfamiliarity with Tunisian politics is exactly why you’ll do well there. You believe in what we’re doing here, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes.” Amina began to process his proposal.

  “And you believe in Ali’s message?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then this is the next step. Prosperity must be coupled with moderation if we are to win this culture war, and not just in the UAE, but also across the Middle East. I have colleagues who are moving this effort along in other countries: Yemen, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, even Saudi Arabia. We call ourselves Al Sulema, The Ladder, as we are a means to a greater height, a better life, for our people.”