The Prophet's Ladder

by Jonathan Williams

  Opposite the butcher’s a mendicant beggar sat on a collapsed cardboard box. His dirty, torn clothes barely covering his undernourished body, his hands cupped, head lowered in supplication. No one passing by spared him a second thought as Amina looked on with a frown. She’d stop at a hanut and bring him some of that bread she’d seen later that afternoon, if he was still there. Though she’d been elected in a landslide popular vote to the Tunisian Assembly, Amina knew that try though she might, a single person couldn’t change the fortunes of the destitute overnight. That took time, patience, and a good deal of willpower.

  She turned to go back inside her office when a hand on her arm stopped her. Startled, she looked up only to see the dour face of the police chief, Radhouen Al-Din.

  “Good morning, Assemblywoman Hannachi. And may I offer my congratulations on your election victory. B’sshahtk.”

  “Chief! Thank you. I…I haven’t seen you in some time.”

  “No indeed. No indeed.” He clasped his hands together, rubbing his arthritic fingers. The officer’s mannerisms and posture seemed awkward, self-conscious. “I have some news. Can we talk privately?”

  “No one is listening out here at this hour. What is it, chief? I do apologize but I’m rather busy. I just stepped out for a moment to get some air.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry for the intrusion. It’s just, well, we’ve uncovered some information you might find useful.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well my higher-ups tracked down that Islamic State cell, the same ones that…murdered… your fiancé all that time ago. One of the men, well, he had a laptop, and with the help of Interpol we finally got around to cracking its security software.” The man looked down at his shoes and crossed his arms across his chest, bracing himself. “Well, as you know the Islamic State of the Maghreb were in the business of selling oil and phosphates on the black market, to the tune of many millions of Euros. They also made some investments with the proceeds, which they documented. Ran the whole thing like a legitimate business almost. Transactions discussed in emails, receipts sent as electronic attachments, various spreadsheet files, you know.”

  Amina began to see where this was going, where the chief was leading his ambling narrative, and she didn’t like it. The chief looked up, looked her in the eyes.

  “We all know where you got the money to finance your book, miss; the press reported on it…and it seems Al-Hatem Aerospace took money from the Islamic state; sold them shares discreetly.”

  Amina nodded, no expression crossing her face, though inwardly it was as if she’d been struck by lightning.

  “My superiors didn’t want me to tell you, said it would cause problems. But I figured you should know, Allah help us.”

  “Thank you, chief. I appreciate you telling me. I am grateful. Very grateful.” The policeman handed her a USB flashdrive.

  “It is my duty to serve. Ela wajib. Here. It’s all on here. I made copies of the files for you.” He turned to go. “Just…be careful with what you do with that, Assemblywoman. You deserved to know. Maybe the world doesn’t.”

  Amina watched passively as chief Al-Din strode off through the medina gate, his shoulders hunched over. She numbly unlatched the office door and walked inside.

  ****

  Nur was strolling through the gardens of his estate when his private line rang. Only a select few had the number, those members of Al Sulema, the Ladder, and his immediate family. He’d left his business phone inside, hoping to get away from the endless press conferences, biographies, and interviews. There were magazine photoshoots, old-fashioned ticker tape parades, some Japanese business leaders had even wanted to get his measurements for an animatronic doppelganger: a replica to be installed at a children’s science fiction amusement park.

  No, he needed these few moments alone; he relished them. The calming scent of hyssop and artemisia, thyme and lilac restored his vigor; led him to think on fresh ideas; ideas to improve the running time of the elevator, or how best to rescue the Libyan government from a political morass of infighting. He stopped next to a large myrtle shrub, and looked at his communicator: a small wrist mounted phone of his own design. Really it was just a sling for the actual smartphone in his pocket, relaying relevant information to the circular LCD screen that doubled as a watch. He’d built it in a spare moment of free time one Saturday afternoon. It was Amina.

  He answered. She was part of the plan; he had inducted her into Al Sulema, had told her about the movement. An instrument in his orchestra, but a vital one. “Salaam Allakum, xti.”

  “You knew.” There was revulsion in her tone. Unexpected.

  “Knew what Amina?”

  “Your company had dealings with the Islamic State of the Maghreb, and you knew. Don’t deny it.”

  “Yes. And I don’t.”

  “Why? Why?” Her voice cracked. The steel that she’d soldered onto the frame of her argument fractured along old fault lines: her fiancé’s death.

  “I told you we took money from whomever, Amina. I was forthright about it. That includes those we consider our enemies in this secret cultural revolution of ours. They don’t know what our true intentions are. Why not turn their wealth against them?” He sat on a smooth limestone boulder that denoted a fork in the trail.

  “It’s fucked up. Hshuma alaik. Shame on you. I can’t believe I let you help me.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand right now, but you will. You’re capable, smart. I wouldn’t have backed you otherwise.”

  “I could go to the media with this. It’d be on every major news channel tomorrow morning.”

  “You won’t. You’d sink your own nascent political career in the process. You’d damage everything Ali had worked for.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line, then the sound of her ending the call. Nur sat up. A pair of desert larks noiselessly alighted on the branch of an ancient Cordia abyssinica tree above his head. It was a perfect scene, the serendipitous splendor of nature. He closed his eyes, raising his face to the warmth of the sun.

  ****

  1349 CE, Tangier, Morocco

  “I have arrived too late.” The traveler spoke to no one in particular as the graveyard lay empty upon the hill outside the city. Empty, save for the deceased and their remains, the plots facing east towards Mecca, and the man who’d finally returned after twenty-four years abroad. He stood beneath a solitary olive tree, its gnarled branches twisted and bent, its roots sunk deep into the rust-red and beige soil. There before his feet lay the graves of his parents. He’d heard rumor of his father’s death as far away as Damascus on the return voyage, from traders at the caravanserai; the burial marker noted his death as having been fifteen years earlier. Even still, he’d held out hope for his mother being there to greet him upon his return, but it was not meant to be. She had passed away only a month before he set foot inside Tangier’s city walls. The grave plot’s soil was still unsettled; the stone slab above her remains freshly chiseled.

  On his trek across two continents he’d learned from a wife he’d left behind of a son he’d never met, never would meet. The boy had been struck down at age ten by a wasting sickness. Though he had outrun plague and war to return to his native country, there was naught for him here but old friends he no longer truly knew, and the memories of a childhood he no longer cherished.

  Ibn Battuta took a winding trail that meandered away from the cemetery, down towards the sea. The air was heavy with salt as he stepped past sloped rows of bean fields and almond saplings. The path crisscrossed back and forth over a racing brook, its singsong-rapid flow likely diverted there by ambitious farmers from some natural spring above. A mixture of emotions roiled his core as he looked west, his eyes sliding over the endless slate grey and beryl waters that encompassed the horizon. What lay beyond? He could not know. There were none who knew but God. As he walked the traveler recalled the tale of General Uqba spurring his mount into these very waters centuries ago, the man’s godly ambitions cut short
by the illimitable ocean.

  After a half hour’s hike the footpath cut back below a rocky outcropping and he was forced to duck his head, the jagged crags pitted and pocked, moist by the shore’s edge. His walk came to an end and the strong sea spray diverted his gaze northwards, towards the coastline of Al-Andalus, visible even at this late afternoon hour. Something stirred in his heart: a forty-five year-old’s wanderlust began to kindle from gasping embers. Odd he had never been to see Gibraltar or the cities of the north. Perhaps...perhaps tomorrow I shall make another excursion...

  Above, the sun had set at last, and the stars emerged one by one, filling the sky as grains of sand spilt from some celestial hourglass. The firmament above wreathed his sight with jewels and splendor, seemingly reflected by the ocean below, and though he had witnessed such scenery countless times, the view took the old man’s breath away. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah.

  Epilogue

  “And it is He who placed for you the stars, that you may be guided by them through the darknesses of the land and the sea.”

  -Surat Al-'An`ām, the Quran.

  Prayer is an intimate act; those who perform the Salat know the truth of it. Prayer is dissolution, a freeing of oneself through the act of submission to God. The man who knelt upon his prayer mat believed this, took it to heart five times every twenty-four hours.

  The man was unadorned and wore only simple clothes, that his movement might remain unrestricted, his head shaved bare. Clasping his misbaha close to his chest he rose from the tiny niche, his fingers counting the 99 beads, each of which corresponded to one of the traditional names of God. Here was a liminal space, an aspect of the holy that stood upon the precipice, its light penetrating the darkness of the sea upon which they sailed. Glancing out the window on the floor he saw Earth: a miniscule, azure glass marble ever so distant, its sphere receding from view to stern. Once they were far enough out he would engage the Alcubierre drive and shift the tapestry of the Emancipator’s design ever so slightly, pulling upon one strand of the weave and threading it back upon itself elsewhere. Nothing drawn out of place, for the material was flexible yet strong: it could be warped or folded but never rent or broken, such was the Creator’s talent, His skill.

  The pilot took his seat at the helm. To his right the ship’s computer displayed the path that they would take through the empyrean. Once, long ago, his ancestors had named and cataloged each of the brightest stars visible from Earth, marking the names on parchment on moonless nights, their observatories stationed far out in the remote desert reaches or upon lofty mountaintops. Now he would carry on that ancient line of work, charting those constellations and stars yet unseen, and any habitable spheres that spun about each in turn. Not for the first time the man pondered why God had gifted humans with the drive to explore, this compulsion that had brought him here, that drove him farther and farther beyond sight of the shore and the safety of the harbor. As he placed his finger upon the jump sequence start key the answer came unbidden, as a moth to a candle’s flame: To know Him. The ship winked for one moment more and was gone, the currents of the universe carrying it far, far away.

  The End

  About the Author

  Jonathan L. Williams served in the United State Peace Corps in Morocco, where he lived, worked, and played the banjo in a small village near the Algerian border. Subsequently, he moved back to New England where he resides with his wife Rebecca and their dog, Pearl. You can read more of his poetry, short stories, and other writings at https://thelislesdale.wordpress.com.