14
In a quiet conversation in the mountains of Afghanistan, Omar Rasoul Sharif was telling Yousef about the creation of Al-Qaeda. The first formal meeting of the organization with numerous new recruits would be held within a few days. The ultimate objective was the creation of a new Islamic nation from southern Spain to Indonesia, totally free of any occupation by infidel armies and governed by Sharia.
“Pay careful attention, Yousef. The mission of this organization is to make history. There will be military and political leaders, and leaders from all areas of government. We will pursue our objectives without relenting, based on the heroic way we are acting here in Jaji and, always, with the grace of God. Listen well: our organization must be global but I am not global. I am an Arab. Deeply Arab. If you take me from my Arab world I am nobody. I realize this. But I need someone trustworthy on the other side, in the West, for us to take jihad to them. And I do not see anyone more suitable than you to be the eyes, ears and hand of justice on the other side.”
“I will do whatever is needed.”
“Excellent. I esteem you highly. I’m fully aware that you carried me on your shoulders under heavy enemy fire. I will never forget that, you can be sure of it. Money will not be lacking, nor will several passports so you can move around freely. I will attend personally to everything. Your mission will be of crucial importance. I foresee that we will only be able to succeed when we can take jihad to the West, producing attacks and victims there. To do this you will have to find ways to infiltrate as far as possible into western society, to understand them in their tininess so we can then, when the time comes, inflict heavy blows where they will hurt the most. I want you to take the trouble to find out how they think.” Omar pointed a finger at Yousef’s head. In the middle of the mountains, the young man’s head seemed to be spinning, he felt a kind of nausea. It was all too complex to be fully understood in so little time, and the more he tried to concentrate, the dizzier he felt. “Are you hearing me, Yousef? Are you paying attention?”
“Yes, of course. I will fully obey anything the organization requires of me until the final victory. What matters above all is our cause.”
“Despite your courage, you shouldn’t think that everything is done with direct combat, with a frontal attack. I know you know this, and that’s why you’ve stayed alive up to now. That’s why you survive, and are so agile swimming in the sea of blood all around you. You know how to see the blood with its true color. Patience, Yousef. Attack only when the time is right and always with the maximum resources possible so you never lose. This is how you must always act. As for the resources, leave it to me, I’ll see to it that you lack for nothing. I will come to see you whenever I can.”
“I understand.”
“Just one more thing. Given that it will be quite a while before you see your family again, it is only fair you be allowed to spend a few days in Jeddah. There you will meet the contact I’m going to give you, and you will have a few days to settle your own affairs. When you next leave Saudi Arabia behind, you will end up living with several different names. You must know that, although I have informed the appropriate people of your future activities, no one in the organization will answer for you. No one will even confirm your existence. Your birth records and any other official records will be burned. From the bureaucratic point of view, you shall become nothing more than the ashes that the earth will one day claim when your time comes. On the other hand, you will have as many names as your imagination can encompass, embossed with countless photos of you in a thousand and one passports and national identity cards. I will tell you whom you must seek out to obtain all that you need to start your mission. You will not speak to me again anytime soon, and you must not mention my name or that of the organization to anyone at all, unless you receive precise instructions to do so from me or someone I trust. Understood?”
Yousef was altogether giddy. The words echoed in his head. The blue sky and the clouds spun around him as though he were riding on a carousel.
15
May, 1989
Return to Jeddah
The plane carrying Yousef traversed the sky at cruising speed on automatic pilot. It was a clear day. Down below, like paintings full of impressionist brush strokes by Van Gogh, images went past of the surface of the Earth, and Central Asia. Afghanistan. Patches of innumerable shades of gray and the beige of mountain rock. Some sparse green patches of mountain groves of trees. Somewhere along the stretch down below there must also be big fields growing opium full of lovely poppies. At times the green patch became denser. Here and there a stream appeared that looked totally stagnant from above. Scattered clusters of houses where lives are decided, though they, too, seemed stagnant. Seen from the sky, the Earth seemed entirely bound up in endless stagnation. The landscape of Iran followed. Naturally, seen from the sky, the Earth is also without boundaries, which is perhaps indicative of the fact that the Earth, in the eyes of God, or of Allah, words that both equally mean the only supreme God in different languages, never had borders, that this was purely the invention of man, a dividing line between men that God never intended, though for some reason He must have allowed it. Heresy, some would say. But isn’t it the case that the existence of borders, as lines that separate men, is itself a heresy? Shouldn’t we all be brothers? So much so that the very idea of a border has itself always been intimately associated with war. If it were not for the idea among men of land borders between groups of men who believe they are more brothers among themselves than with those on the other side of the boundary line, who knows, perhaps there would not have been one tenth of the wars that there have been over the course of the world’s history. But there it is, inexorable, the border. The line that says: on this side, I’m in charge, on the other, you’re in charge. On this side you’re a national, and on the other, a foreigner. Or an immigrant. Let us think for just a moment of the Berlin Wall. Of the Iron Curtain. The Crusades. Israel and Palestine. Serbia and Bosnia. Europe and Africa. Christians and Muslims. Europeans and Asians. The rich and the poor. Borders. Let us imagine that one day we will tear down one border after another. First in our heads, and then on the ground. That we can live freely in one single world, full of multiple, spectacular differences that spring up like mushrooms from the soil, so many different cultures, raiment, languages and ways of thinking, as many as the number of human beings on the face of the Earth. And let us imagine that we will not attempt to set up any more borders, and now build only bridges, from one group to another, tolerating and living with the differences. Utopian? Perhaps, but dreaming has never been forbidden, and reality also does not have to be as horrendous as it is, with so many absurd borders dividing people. And I do not believe that people can have a better destiny in this world giving higher priority to borders than to bridges, as we have done throughout our history. Since things were primitive. The countless wars of independence. All to define borders. When looked at from above, way up there in the sky, God cannot see borders, only free earth and people as far as the eye can see, of all the countless varieties there are of our species. And I imagine that in this variety He sees infinite beauty. If some day we should have to go up against an alien species that lives on a planet with just one nation, we will probably perish, fundamentally as victims of our disunion, of our difficulty in accepting differences. We will argue and even go to war while our united enemy will strike us down, all of us earthlings, like clay pigeons. One day Pandora ’s Box must have been opened, when a group of men decided with another group to allot to each one its own piece of Earth, set apart by force. That for each piece of earth, the design was to be commanded by a single group of men. Commanded. That’s the word I see as most associated with the word border, that and the verb “to close.” Closing doors, closing borders. The border as we know it well into the 21st Century is increasingly a line intended to show who commands in a particular stretch of earth, and that some have certain rights while standing there and others have none there, or if they have any they ar
e much more restricted.
Be that as it may, at a certain point, Yousef understood that he was in Iran and no longer in Afghanistan, as he then understood that he was over the Persian Gulf, a huge stagnant blue, and on the other side of the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, his country. He could not know that soon the Gulf War would happen there, decisive in the unfolding of events in the Middle East. Iraq, just two steps away, at least as seen from the sky, would try to increase its borders to swallow up Kuwait. Saudi Arabia and the United States would rush to the defense of the little country of capital importance in the geopolitical strategy of each country. Yousef looked out the window enjoying the landscape, and despite the efforts of his neighbor to strike up a conversation, he remained as silent as possible throughout the entire journey. At last, they were flying over the desert of the Arabian Peninsula. From the coast of the Persian Gulf to the coast of the Red Sea where Jeddah is located and, a little before Jeddah, Mecca, about seventy kilometers away. As it passed by Mecca the plane was already on its descent, and Yousef felt the change of pressure in his ears. A little later the landing gear came down as the plane approached the runway at King Abdul Aziz International Airport. The man beside him could not suppress clear signs of nervousness. Yousef was serene. After two years spent in Afghanistan as he had spent them, it would take more than a mere plane landing to make him the slightest bit nervous. Out of the corner of his eye he looked disdainfully at his neighbor, as, impassive and serene, he felt the impact of the plane touching down on the asphalt. It was nothing compared to the impact of a mortar shell hitting the ground. That was a real artillery impact. Yousef basked in a sense of superiority and abundant self-confidence. After the landing he closed his eyes. He brought with him from Afghanistan a list of tasks of high importance, among them, some of a personal nature. One of them was to say goodbye to his family. However, he was now a warrior, and this meant knowing how to make reason always prevail over his heart, regardless of the circumstances. He was confident that he would know how to keep everything in its proper place. He had all the next steps well planned. The first would be to meet the man Sheik Omar had indicated to him, his contact in Saudi Arabia.
After landing, Yousef took a taxi to the old quarter of Jeddah. He passed over the surface of the city, also known as the bride of the Red Sea, from street to street, face to face, building to building, inscription to inscription. He was so absorbed he didn’t even feel the ground beneath the wheels. He could have been passing all this time over water, as though Jeddah had suddenly become a Saudi Venice, inundated by the Red Sea.
All of this was now strange to him. He saw it all as a foreigner. The taxi driver must also have taken him for a foreigner, because he asked for an exorbitant price for the trip, a price unmistakably for a… foreigner. Yousef did not argue. From the start of the trip he examined the architecture that had always seemed to him entirely without charm, full of pale shades, faded white and brown, and that he now found to be elegant, impressive and full of purity. This notion took him by surprise. An urge arose within him to see the sea, his from birth, his Red Sea. The name seemed to have taken on a new life. That’s where he wanted to go now and tarry a little while. Yes indeed, he would ask the cab driver to wait a few minutes as he got close to the sea, perhaps to feel it, wet his feet. The cab driver stopped at the beach along the Corniche Road, in the northern district of Jeddah, on the long, beautiful strand running along the limpid Red Sea. Yousef got out of the car and paid the cab driver generously to wait. He took his first steps towards the water and stopped a few meters shy. He sat down. He looked at the vastness of the water so bright and transparent. Two women went by close to the water covered from head to foot in their traditional abayas and behind them, a flock of seagulls flew scavenging after food. Yousef observed their gracious movements in the air. From time to time a gull swooped down to try to catch a fish. At just that moment one of them succeeded, and proudly raised its prey still dripping in its beak. From where he was, Yousef looked on with pleasure. He thought that if he were a fish in that sea he would have to take serious measures. He would have to get organized. He couldn’t allow gulls to fly over constantly biting into his sea, into his space. He would teach them a lesson. Just as he would not allow strangers to pass over constantly biting into the Arab world. This would have to stop, and he would make his own particular contribution, more than ever now that he was a hardened warrior. He would not vacillate. He would do all that was necessary. He breathed the air more and more slowly, increasingly synchronized with the harmonious tranquility of what nature revealed to his eyes, until finally he went back to the taxi and ordered to driver to continue to the city’s old quarter.
16
The white taxi left the longer and more modern avenues to plunge into the streets of Jeddah’s old quarter, entering the historic part of the city known as Al-Balad. An assortment of buildings, shops and Arab markets. Men attired in white tunics strolled along the passageways or crossed the streets in front of the taxi each time it stopped at a traffic light. A few women, always covered by their dark abayas. Yousef asked the cab driver to stop there. He would go the rest of the way on foot. He took the money from his pocket, paid and bid the driver good-bye. The taxi took off, leaving Yousef looking around him as though he were a tourist. With his chin in the air, he reflected on his roots. From where he was standing to Peshawar and the mountains of Afghanistan the differences were all too obvious. Here, in spite of everything, things were considerably more orderly. People knew the rules. Families and unmarried people, men and women, each one fully acquainted with his or her social compartment, without mingling in the same physical space; everything having its own particular place. The men predominantly in white tunics, the women predominantly in black abayas. The women were fully acquainted with the rules that constrained their existence and that, in all important matters, required the approval of men, from things as simple and mundane as a trip to the bank to a surgical operation on one’s own body. The single men knew that they had their own public places to occupy, separate from families, and the cardinal rule was to avoid looking any unknown women in the eyes – while obviously these women did not look at unknown men. The royal family was untouchable. The mutawa, the terrible and pitiless religious police poised to strike back at any infraction of Sharia without mercy, including, of course, failure to wear appropriate attire in public. And everyone knew that the laws of Sharia were in force there. In spite of this, the Government of the Kingdom did tolerate the presence of foreigners to do lowly work that Saudis did not do, or those jobs for which they did not have sufficient specific professional training. If foreigners wished to live with the rules of their own civilizations, let them do so, but within their own spaces, contiguous and enclosed, such as private condominiums, for example. At all events, all city residents, foreign or otherwise, made the city prosper in their way, as a team, in what was and still today is known as the city governed with the greatest openness of spirit and tolerance in the Kingdom. Above all, everyone in his place without undue or undesirable mixing, so that purity and order could be maintained as much as possible. This being the case, as long as all this was respected, life in Jeddah could be quite pleasant for many people, within their homes, their families or their work, and abiding by the rules of the Kingdom. This is what life looks like to us in Jeddah and, to anyone who had lived there all his life, this is how the contours of all existence were defined, with almighty and merciful God looking down from the heights of Heaven.
As Yousef plunged into a series of narrower streets, he was once again surprised at the way he was now appreciating Jeddah’s appearance, the beautiful and unusual architecture of its old quarter. A car could scarcely get through here, and on either side there arose four- or five-storey buildings with tall beautiful doors, carved wooden balconies and windows, and walls made of the Red Sea’s ever abundant coral. With oil wealth, the residents preferred to move as fast as they could out of the old quarter to new parts of town, where the buildings
were also new, and in this way, the old quarter became more mysterious, and was, by degrees, also succumbing to age. For much of this architectural wealth the moment of truth had arrived, when it could either be preserved or lost. As happens mainly in times of progress, new structures covet and occupy the place of old ones, causing them to be forgotten or disdained. Turning the corner, Yousef found a souk that he knew, a traditional open-air market. Here he bought a papaya and sated the hunger erupting in the pit of his stomach. He then turned back in the opposite direction en route to his destination. In a gap between buildings he glimpsed the tall, proud minaret of a mosque, looked at his watch and realized that the last prayer of the day, the evening prayer, would take place in about an hour. He was still expecting to meet the contact indicated to him by Sheik Omar before this. It was nearby. He turned right and stopped before one of the four-storey buildings. The façade was predominantly of a faintly pinkish white, decorated with those bay windows made of several pieces of wood in faded green known as rowshans that erupted from every building like decorative lace molded onto the façade. Given the scarcity of wood in the desert landscape surrounding Jeddah, Arab builders made the most of any scrap of wood, hence these small architectural beauties. As of the date this book is being written, there are no tourist visas for Saudi Arabia – although these treasures may yet be unveiled to foreign tourists, considering that now in the 21st century Saudi Arabia is promising to take decisive steps towards a more open society on various scores, including tourism, through the so-called Project for the Development of National Tourism – a pity, because Jeddah certainly merits some diligent sight-seeing, whether for the Red Sea, the city’s architecture, or its intense Islamic heritage that, especially for westerners, will always be a great source of mystery and exoticism. On the other hand, there is a special aura to the last forbidden country, the last frontier forbidden to westerners, for as we know, what is forbidden is always a target of yearning.
The Miracle of Yousef: Historical and political thriller Page 11