Djibouti

by Elmore Leonard

  James caught the eye of a three-timer who talked up Allah in the Muslim part of the yard and went by the name Tariq, an African American Sunni Muslim. He said to James, “You in the Nation of what? Islam? Those people no more Islamic than the white fools call theirselves Shriners, wear a fez on their heads. The Nation say they black and play to it. All right, but me and you…are we black? We more a mellow shade of tan, like our Arab brothers the Wahhabi, spreading the word of Allah with explosive devices. You know how else we different? We don’t have woolly heads. We have hair we can comb, let grow long if we want.”

  “I notice that,” James said. “I’m looking at Islam as the way to go. But what do I get out of it?”

  Tariq had to grin, showing what teeth he had. He loved this boy. He said, “You quiet, you show respect. What is it you hope to become in your life?”

  “Famous,” James said. “I been looking at ways.”

  “Become a prophet?”

  “I don’t tell what will happen, I do it.”

  “Dedicate yourself to jihad?”

  “That’s a way to go, yeah.”

  Tariq said, “Do you know what you talking about?”

  “I have the gift to remember every word I read,” James said. “Everything you people tell me.”

  “There is a verse,” Tariq said, “‘Oh ye who believe, fear Allah and make your utterance straightforward.’”

  James said, “‘He that obeys Allah and his messenger has already attained a great victory.’”

  “It’s ‘attained the great victory.’ But you close. You know the Koran?”

  “I read it in the Stockade.”

  HE KNEW THEY WERE watching him: see if he was a punk or the kind wanted his own way. He was a restless age but seemed at peace with himself. The only time he was hostile, he’d stand away from them in the yard and stare at the skinheads, James with one hand holding his package, and motion to the skins to come over and try him.

  He cleaned the kitchen with one of them found stabbed to death with his own knife that said FOR NIGGERS scratched into the wood hilt.

  Tariq said, “Don’t the guards know you did it?”

  “Me?” James said. “I don’t cause commotions, I read. It’s skinheads always being thrown in the hole. Musta been another skin done it.” He could go back and forth from intelligence to street.

  A time came Tariq said, “You don’t talk much or make noise. But I see you with the one doing time for molesting boys…”

  James said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  Tariq took his time. “Listen, I ask around of my brothers, if they think you could learn to speak Arabic. I don’t mean ‘Can you direct me please to the Mosque,’ but as we speak and swear at one another. They say no, he can’t do it. They say they would always hear your American sound. Your black American sound in our words. No, he can never speak as we do.”

  “How much you bet I can?”

  “If I believe you can learn to speak our language in, what, six months?”

  “Three,” James said, “having the gift. I’ll be speaking like a camel jockey in three months. You can lay three to one I’ll do it and get the population betting against me. They’ll hear me say Allah’s making me do it and put me down as a fool.”

  Tariq said, “In only three months?”

  “Three more. I been learning Arabian from Short Eyes since I started hanging with y’all. I know how to recite ‘Your mother fucks pigs’ and other kinds of Arabian sayings. Get that man reading to be a cleric everybody trusts to judge can I do it or not. But how you gonna collect from people making fourteen cents an hour, the ones working?”

  “The women bring it in or they send money. Don’t worry, we always get it.” Tariq said, “But listen, when you become Muslim we’ll give you a name that will please Allah.”

  James said, “I’ve already thought of one I like the sound of. Jama Raisuli.”

  Tariq looked at the name in his mind. “How did it come to you?”

  “From Allah,” James said.

  It took almost a year to collect the entire twenty-three hundred he won speaking Arabian in the test, even the sayings and idioms.

  HE WAS RELEASED FROM prison the day he completed three years less two months: released the same day, the same hour, the Twin Towers were destroyed, blown to rubble 9/11, and James said it again, “From Allah.” This time believing it was the Lord’s personal sign, a gift to him.

  Allah told him to leave Florida and take a flight into Egypt using his new James Russell passport good for ten years. Three flights from Miami to Sharm el Sheikh on the tip of the Sinai Peninsula and hopped on a boat to take him down the Red Sea full of ships to Djibouti. Once he was getting the feel of the Arab world and speaking the language, he used letters of introduction from inmates to put him in touch with jihadists. Now he was going by Jama Raisuli and they began calling him Jama al Amriki.

  In Djibouti he met another Amriki, Assam the American, charged back home with treason, a Jew converted to Islam who broadcast threats, promised attacks that would leave the streets of America running with blood. Assam wrote powerful shit about hating America, but speaking proper Arabic like he’d learned it in school. Jama spoke street Arab, was accepted as an African and believed he was. But couldn’t see blowing himself up next to a school bus in Tel Aviv, his life precious to him. He didn’t know what he’d say if they asked him to become a martyr. He kept busy translating Assam’s speeches to Arabic, making them sound meaner.

  He didn’t see being a jihadist made him a traitor any more than selling blow or holding up a liquor store did. He let his hair grow to his shoulders, wrapped a scarf around it and wore a saronglike kikoi over his trousers, a Walther P38 in his back pocket. Jama had stopped in a shop that sold guns, kept the clerk busy looking for pistols he wanted to see, the clerk distracted as Jama slipped the Walther under his kikoi and left the shop.

  On the street an Arab dressed as he was stopped him and said, “You need bullets, don’t you?”

  It was Qasim al Salah, an al Qaeda hero walking around in plain sight in this quarter. Assam, the other Amriki, had shown Jama pictures of him and spoke of Qasim as a saint: the man who perfected the use of vehicles as improvised explosive devices. In ’83, still a lad, he helped plan the destruction of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon, a truck bomb carrying twelve thousand pounds of explosives; 246 killed. He planned and directed the bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Karachi; the bombing of the embassy in Mombasa, Kenya; the Air Force Barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Now, Assam said, Qasim was planning a radioactive “dirty bomb” for a second attack on America.

  Jama said to Qasim on the street, “You spoke and I felt Allah breathing on me. I know who you are and bow my head.”

  Qasim said, “And you are the American convict who wants to be one of us. I watched you go in a bank and look at it good and then steal a pistol.”

  “I’m known to rob banks,” Jama said, “when I don’t have nothing to do.”

  “Maybe you can be of use to me,” Qasim said. “Come to Riyadh with us and we’ll see.”

  THE NIGHT OF 13 MAY 2003, they rode through the city, nineteen men, three of their four vehicles packing explosives, to come up on the British and American compounds and open fire with AKs and rocket grenades. Approaching Riyadh Qasim had said to Jama, “You can drive a bomb car if you wish.”

  He spoke easily, a man who knew his business, seldom in a hurry, looking at the next step.

  “I’m not worthy,” Jama said, “to become a saint for Allah this soon, my first shot.”

  “You don’t have the desire to be a martyr,” Qasim said. “I don’t either. So we see if you have a desire to kill for Allah.”

  They attacked guard posts on the perimeter of the compounds, a Ford Crown Victoria ramming the Cyclone gate until it became tangled in the wire and the driver detonated the thousand pounds of explosives in the trunk. A Dodge Ram armed with four thousand pounds of TNT crashed a second gate, raced to the employee housin
g area, two-story apartment buildings on a curved street, and blew itself up, taking off the façade, the entire look of the buildings, and setting the apartments on fire. A GMC Suburban followed by a Toyota sedan crashed a gate to drive into the center of another housing compound and the SUV exploded.

  Qasim watched Saudi employees of American companies buried in the rubble, an evening tally of 34 dead and 194 injured: blinded, arms and legs blown off, listed as injuries. Osama bin Laden said if our people work for foreign companies they become our enemies. If they accept money paid them, they become evil. Qasim, older than bin Laden, believed the point could be argued but accepted bin Laden’s view. It made him important.

  He watched Jama during the assault. Jama firing his AK at people rushing out of burning buildings, emptying a clip and shoving in another. A man stood in an upper room without a wall, the man looking over the edge of his floor. Jama took him with one shot and watched him fall to the street. He turned to the building across the way and shot two more in their apartment without a wall. A woman and a man who fell to the street. He was deliberate about his killing, taking his time to be certain of his shots. He watched the entrance of the building now, waiting for someone to come out.

  He loves it, Qasim thought.

  A woman came rushing from the entrance and he shot her. A woman with smoke rising from her burka.

  Later, Qasim asked Jama, “What was in your mind when you shot the woman?”

  He said, “Which one?”

  “In the burka.”

  “She was on fire.”

  Qasim heard it as compassion, but thought, Would he care if she burned to death? He didn’t want him to care, but never asked if he did or not.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JAMA WAS TWENTY-EIGHT NOW, his birthday coming on the day they left Eyl for Djibouti.

  He rode in one of the five Toyotas rocking across the desert, catching the dust and gravel raised by the two in the lead. Qasim would be in the car directly ahead or behind them. Idris, next to Jama in the middle seats, told him, “We will be there in one period of twenty-four hours. Every two hours we stop to stretch our legs and piss. Twice a day we heat the spaghetti for you. Don’t worry,” Idris said in English, “these Somalis won’t know what we’re saying. Harry gave them an English test. He called them camel-fuckers and no one rose to cut his throat. He’s with Qasim, but we change cars at times, so I talk to Qasim and Harry talks to you.”

  There were sixteen Somalis with AKs and their provisions in the five cars: a driver and the Somali in front with him pointing in the glare of distance to the road curving toward a pass through the slopes, telling the driver now to slow down, to watch for falling rocks, until Idris told him in Arabic to shut up. A third Somali sat behind Jama and stared at the back of his head while Jama looked out at the land where Arabs lived and went to sea as pirates.

  He said to Idris, “You pretty good at hijacking ships, uh? Make enough to buy houses and expensive cars—why you need to turn me in?”

  “So I can retire,” Idris said. “Move to Paris. I said to Harry, ‘Let’s give the boys a tip, enough money to buy cigarettes for the rest of their lives.’ Harry refuses to give you a quid.”

  “I quit smoking,” Jama said, “during the time we getting payoffs from gangsters have mules smuggling cigarettes from North Africa to Europe, the Qaeda demanding a cut. We calling it the Marlboro Connection. I went up to Egypt and robbed banks for the cause, a few jewelry stores, and we into dealing hashish from Africa. Qasim says it cost ten million a year to keep the Qaeda running. Some of it Osama’s laying down, the reason he hates everybody isn’t with him. I saw him in Pakistan one time—not the easiest man to get next to. He kept watching me like he wasn’t sure of my credentials. You ever hear bin Laden say anything funny? But I like working for Qasim, the man has his shit together. He’s cool without knowing how to act it.”

  “Why is it,” Idris said, “if you’re devoted to al Qaeda, you don’t blow yourself up for Allah?”

  “Me and Qasim don’t believe in it. We worth more to al Qaeda alive. There enough boys can’t wait to go to Paradise.”

  Idris said, “Qasim won’t talk to me.”

  “Why would he? ’Less he has a reason.”

  “Harry threatens to shoot him. He tells me when we stop to piss.”

  “Harry would give up five mil? Bullshit.”

  “He suggests we shoot both of you in the knees, so you can’t run away.”

  “And have to carry us?”

  “Get the Somalis to do it.”

  “Then he has to pay them extra. Threaten them to keep their mouth shut. All the shit that goes down,” Jama said, “you work out when you’re planning a jihad. It took three years to put 9/11 together. Any place you want to blow up can take a good year deciding how to do it. You pick a date, find out it falls during Ramadan ’cause you forgot? I can’t ever look forward to the fasting. And the serious guys yell at me. I say if we doing it for Allah, what’s the difference? They always yelling about something.”

  “You took part in the Riyadh bombings.”

  “My first jihad.”

  “You began working with Qasim, one of the big players, eh? How were you called at that time? Jama, or by your Christian name?”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Jama said. “Only one man in this whole Arabian world knows my real name. He may even have forgot it by now.”

  “Qasim,” Idris said.

  “Ask him, see if he tells you.”

  “He’s difficult to talk to.”

  “The man can be a wall.”

  “We could shoot him in the knees.”

  “See what it gets you,” Jama said. “You’re talking about a man sets off bombs like earthquakes. They become headlines in every paper in the world. He does it for Osama. They have a brother thing going. You can do anything you want to Qasim. Blind him, cut off his hands, like the Imams do you rob something? You never gonna get him to tell my name or anything about me.”

  “How can you be that sure?”

  “I know him as I know myself.”

  “You kill for him?”

  “We call it assassinations.”

  “Would you die for him?”

  IDRIS AND HARRY WERE standing side by side pissing in the road, the sun going down, the guards eating oranges that came from Israel. Idris said, “I ask him if he’d die for Qasim. Do you know what he said?”

  Harry turned his head to Idris. “Tell me.”

  “He said, ‘Is the pope Catholic?’”

  He saw Harry squinting. Or was he frowning? “It’s a saying among that Christian sect,” Idris said. “He’s telling me yes, he would die for Qasim, not give it another thought.”

  “I know, but why bring up their pope?”

  “Jama is known in the American language,” Idris said, “as a smart-ass. Perhaps the Brits don’t use the expression.” He saw Harry still frowning or squinting and Idris said, “Why are you so serious about it? He was being funny.”

  Harry had taken a turn with Qasim during the morning drive, asking if he had ever been to America. Asking if he was looking forward to life in an American prison, or perhaps Guantánamo in Cuba. Asking if any of his mates were there, and getting no response.

  “The trouble is,” Harry said, “he’s been questioned countless times, tortured, urged in various ways to speak. Qasim bends over, he has trouble straightening himself again. He wears kid gloves to cover his broken hands, hit with mallets. I can’t get him to say one fucking word to me.”

  “Why do you bother?”

  “I want to know how Jama’s called in the U.S.”

  “He won’t tell you.” Idris was silent for a moment and said, “If there was a way to bribe him, offer something he’d want desperately in exchange for the name…”

  Harry said, “You might have something.”

  HARRY WAS WITH QASIM again later that evening, the Toyota rumbling, bumping along, night inside behind dark-tinted windows, Qasim close besid
e him. Harry turned his head to him and caught the odor of the Arab’s breath, spaghetti and spiced camel, and said to him, “I understand you know Jama’s American name.”

  Qasim stared at him.

  Harry held his breath waiting, counting almost to ten.

  Qasim said, “Yes…?”

  It felt good to be talking again.

  “Can I ask, why you want to know?”

  He won’t tell you, Qasim thought. He has to set you up first. Finally get around to the reason he’s talking to you. Then he’ll tell you.

  “Let me point out,” Harry said and took a breath, “you haven’t performed much in the past seven years. Let’s see, an embassy—”

  “Two embassies and a consulate.”

  “Most of the past decade, though, you’ve been a Qaeda fundraiser. The American Rewards people are going to say, ‘That’s all he’s done lately?’ I’ll bet if they don’t drop your reward they reduce it considerably.” Harry lighted a cigarette.

  Qasim took his time, staring in Harry’s face before he said, “You have to give me up to find out what I’m worth. Take my word, the Americans can’t wait to get hold of me, show me off to the world. They can make what I did two decades ago seem like yesterday.”

  “Yes, they will,” Harry said, “display you to their hearts’ content, congratulate themselves and throw you in prison.”

  Qasim said to this fellow Arab who wanted to be an Englishman, “For what exactly, acts of war or what you call terrorism?”

  “For being you, you idiot. Do you know how many you’ve killed?”

  “Tell me.”

  “And mutilated? Many of your own people, Saudis?”

  “Some became blind,” Qasim said.

  “You sound like you don’t believe you’re going to prison.”