The Language of Secrets

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Ashkouri selected Din this time from his group of listeners, a test of some kind. Din’s face fell. Grace reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  “If you subtract the night from the day, the new moon will blossom over the square.”

  “Very good.”

  Ashkouri continued his own recitation, but the sense of what he said was just out of Khattak’s grasp. The poet who would have been most on point for Ashkouri’s peroration was Ali Ahmed Said, Adonis himself, but Ashkouri was careful to make no reference to the poet with the most transparent connection to the Rose of Darkness website.

  The website was clearly a jihadist construction, promising retribution against the West, fluent in a litany of grievances—some legitimate and nuanced, others the blind outpouring of a blunt, premeditated rage, founded on three central beliefs: Muslims were ubiquitously under attack. Jihadists were the sole defenders of the ummah. And those who refused to support the jihadists had taken sides with the oppressors of their community. These oppressors were identified reductively and collectively as the “new Crusaders.”

  The third principle allowed for a clear demarcation of “us” and “them.” Under this demarcation of those who belonged and those who had to be excluded and were therefore vulnerable to jihadist retaliation, Khattak was clearly one of “them.”

  Esa Khattak and Hassan Ashkouri, members of the same faith, were standing on opposite sides of a door. Each man’s understanding of divine justice was antithetical to the other’s.

  They were enemies.

  Seek death in the places you expect to find it.

  But for Khattak, it was life that was the most precious of all gifts, all callings.

  And looking at Ashkouri, he thought of a different line of poetry.

  The criminal law, like the criminals, has not evolved.

  18

  “I wonder if we should discuss my intention of marrying your sister.”

  They were standing in the kitchen near the pitcher of rosewater-scented milk prepared for their guests by Ruksh. Ashkouri savored a glass, examining the portrait of Esa and his bride that hung beside the breakfast bar. The cold smile that edged Hassan’s lips raised the hair on the back of Esa’s neck. Khattak’s wife had gone beyond Ashkouri’s power to harm, but Ruksh was still at risk.

  “I think you’ll see that it’s best that we not proceed further on the subject of my sister until the investigation into the death of Mohsin Dar has been concluded.”

  “And why would that be, Inspector?”

  “It’s clearly a conflict of interest, given your relationship with Ruksh. I shouldn’t be part of this investigation as it is.”

  “Then why are you?”

  “I’m here at Andy Dar’s request.”

  Ashkouri’s fingers traced the rim of his glass. He spared a smile for Ruksh, who made no secret of listening as she joined them.

  “From what I understand, Mohsin’s father singled you out for his rather … extreme displeasure.”

  “He was speaking from the emotion of the moment. He thinks there’s been a lack of justice for his son. I’m sure that’s something you can understand.”

  Ashkouri’s eyes narrowed.

  “Why? Because I am from Baghdad, a city so continuously under threat? Our liberators are coming.” He downed the rest of his drink, while inwardly Khattak shuddered. Could Ashkouri possibly mean the besieging forces of ISIS? What kind of liberation did he imagine lay in store for the people of his city?

  “Those with power think their power is unassailable,” Ashkouri continued. “Let them douse the moon, if they can. Then I might come to believe in their power.”

  Khattak had no difficulty interpreting Ashkouri’s referential manner of speaking.

  To douse the moon, to snuff out the crescent—Ashkouri had taken a metaphor used by the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz and twisted it. Ashkouri’s subtext was jihadist—the point being that the new Crusaders could not subdue the defenders of Islam. And the insult was doubled by using a poet of Khattak’s ancestral homeland.

  Did Ashkouri not know—or did he simply not care—that in this instance the poet’s dire critique had been of his own society?

  It was like very bad theater, poorly scripted and just as poorly received.

  Except that the Nakba plot was real.

  Of all the men his sister could have chosen, why had God placed her with Ashkouri?

  This time Khattak took his father’s chair, motioning Ashkouri to a different seat. Esa wasted no time. He asked for an account of Ashkouri’s actions on the night of Mohsin Dar’s murder. It tallied in every respect except one with the statement Jamshed Ali had given. Ashkouri had shared a cabin with Din Abdi. He’d been alone, asleep. He’d heard the gunshots and rushed outside. The others were all there, including Din and Grace.

  Which was not how Jamshed had remembered things. And not what Din himself had confided. Khattak went over that part of Ashkouri’s statement again.

  But Ashkouri would only repeat that when he had gone outside, Din and Grace had joined the others in the circle. Whether they had taken some time to appear, he couldn’t say. And whether Din had left sometime earlier for a private rendezvous with Grace, he didn’t know. He knew nothing about the gun. He wasn’t a marksman. He had no personal experience with small arms. He didn’t have a permit. And he wasn’t a hunter.

  Khattak looked down at his notebook.

  The line was there. Esa wanted to cross it. But his position was perilous enough as it was. He’d been told to leave questioning that related to the training aspect of the camp alone, and that included the bolt-action rifles. He was meant to say nothing that would alert Ashkouri to INSET’s knowledge of the Nakba plot.

  And yet Esa wondered. Ashkouri’s unnatural calm, his baiting of Khattak, his willingness to appear in Khattak’s own home—his entanglement with Khattak’s sister. It didn’t add up.

  Did Ashkouri truly believe himself invincible? Or was his composure due to the fact that he was a step or two ahead of the INSET team at all times? Had he known Mohsin was feeding them information? Did he know about the plan to switch out the ammonium nitrate with inert material?

  There was something about the evening that festered under the surface, something that had been said at the halaqa. Esa concentrated, trying to remember. And then he had it. It was the singling out of Din Abdi.

  What had Din said?

  If you subtract the night from the day, the new moon will blossom over the square.

  But what did it mean? Tahrir Square in Cairo? The movement that had launched the Arab Spring?

  It reminded him of the article Mohsin Dar had written for the student paper when Esa and Mohsin had been young men.

  When the Russians rolled into Afghanistan, they imagined it would be as effortless as their conquest of Czechoslovakia. And now their empire lies buried in Afghan lands. By rocket launchers and Stingers.

  If I had a rocket launcher.

  The song on the Rose of Darkness website.

  But Czechoslovakia? The Prague Spring? Was there a connection to the Arab Spring? A connection he had missed? Because he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ashkouri’s cryptic halaqas were delivered in some kind of code.

  And Esa asked himself a necessary question. Did Ashkouri lay the blame for the deaths of his family at the doorstep of the country that had taken him in? He doubted Ashkouri would separate Iraq’s sectarian violence from the invasion that had preceded it, the invasion that many blamed for the destabilization of Iraq, despite the horrors of Saddam Hussein’s rule.

  Officially, Canada had refused to join the U.S.-led coalition without the proper United Nations sanction. Unofficially, the waters were murky.

  “Can you think of anyone who would have reason to murder Mohsin Dar?”

  “No one at all. He is one of the few people I know who can claim to have been beloved by everyone he met.”

  “Was Mohsin alive when you found him?”

  “His eyes were open, but his
body was cold.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual at the scene?”

  Ashkouri shook his head. “The only thing I noticed was my friend dead alone in the woods.”

  “Mr. Ali said there was a blood trail. That Mohsin must have dragged his body to rest against the tree.”

  “Perhaps. I do not recall. Why does it matter?”

  “I don’t know that it does,” Khattak said slowly. “But I thought perhaps you might have noticed something else. Footprints in the snow. Or blood on someone’s shoes.”

  “I noticed nothing of the kind. You think that one of us did this to our friend, but isn’t the more likely explanation that a hunter escaped your grasp? That the provincial police forces weren’t quick enough to cast their net and seek this man out? Mohsin had a beard, wore a kufi. Perhaps his murder was an act of prejudice as his father says.”

  Khattak noted the gleam in the other man’s eyes. He was pushing Khattak’s buttons, much as Coale had done at the INSET meeting.

  And just as Coale had learned, Khattak couldn’t be rattled so easily. He pushed back. “So you don’t feel responsible for not finding Mohsin sooner? If you had, he might still be alive.”

  “What can the wound do when the knife is already drawn, Inspector? You ask me to predict the unpredictable. To assume my knowledge and capability are greater than His.” He pointed a finger upward. “God has His plan for all things and all beings. So it was with Mohsin.”

  A spasm of anger shook Khattak.

  To blame God for a man-made death. To invoke what was good as a cover for evil—the bile rose in Khattak’s throat.

  He didn’t know if Ashkouri was a murderer, or if he’d somehow determined that Mohsin was in the employ of the RCMP. What he did know was that Ashkouri intended murder on a devastating scale, something that a team of dozens of police officers was working to prevent.

  He answered in as offhand a manner as he could. “If God has any plan at all, surely it favors life rather than death.”

  Hassan Ashkouri leaned forward. “Sometimes we must destroy in order to rebuild. Do you not know your scripture, Inspector Khattak? The iniquitous must be destroyed to make way for the righteous. Isn’t that what they say happened to my country?”

  Ashkouri was describing the Iraq wars. But there were other truths he wasn’t prepared to accept. Iraq’s hundred thousand civilian dead had been caught in the cross fire of a sectarian slaughter, the violence prefaced by those who claimed a divine right to power and the equally divine monopoly of a shared, multifarious faith.

  Bombs in one neighborhood, then the next, in a cycle of endless reprisals, until blood and devastation were all that remained of the birthplace of a civilization, in a disastrous mirroring of the Mongol sack of the city in 1258.

  Their eyes met and held. And in those fathomless dark eyes, Khattak recognized a priest of the culture of death. Ashkouri had just made his first mistake.

  “Are you saying that Mohsin Dar was unrighteous? That he deserved to die? Why would that be?”

  Ashkouri recovered swiftly.

  “I don’t believe I said that, Inspector. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t put words in my mouth. Mohsin was my friend. I grieve his loss as much as anyone else.”

  “Yet you’ve held no memorial at the mosque that I’m aware of.”

  “That decision must be taken by the imam. Or by Mohsin’s father. It seems precipitate when Mohsin’s body has yet to be released. But I understand the police are at a loss.” He gave Khattak a cold smile. “And that the secular law must precede the demands of the congregation.”

  “Even if Mohsin’s funeral prayer is delayed, there’s no reason not to observe a ceremony for the man you claim is your friend.”

  Ashkouri stood up. He brushed his hands against his narrow trousers.

  “An interesting choice of words. I’m not certain why it is that you would doubt my claim, but I hope to be on more cordial terms with you when I am a member of your family. Separating Rukshanda from her family wouldn’t be an act of my choosing.”

  Khattak rose as well. He could see the shadows pressing against the door to the room, hear the raised voices in the kitchen.

  “As I said to you before, Mr. Ashkouri, it will be appropriate to speak of such matters only when the investigation into Mohsin’s murder has been concluded. Until then, and for my sister’s sake, I would appreciate it if you would hold off on your plans.”

  Stay the hell away from my sister, in other words.

  Ashkouri inclined his head in a brief nod, but Khattak knew this hadn’t been a victory.

  He was beginning to perceive the extent of Hassan Ashkouri’s plot.

  19

  Rachel poured Alia Dar a glass of rooh afzah. Tense and wound up, Alia didn’t drink it, just held it with a death grip, her haunted eyes focused on Paula. Alia had shown up at Khattak’s house wearing blue jeans and a sweater and a matching pale blue scarf.

  The others had left with Jamshed. Ashkouri waited for Paula in the entrance hall, speaking quietly to Ruksh. They held each other’s hands. Esa watched them, thinking of his mother, and what she would say to him.

  Khattak heard Alia’s tearful voice and joined her in the kitchen, quietly signaling Rachel.

  Alia wheeled to face him. “You tell me, then. Because this woman won’t tell me anything. What was she doing with Mohsin? Did she love him? Did he love her? I know she was desperate to seduce him.”

  With each new sentence, Alia’s voice rose higher, thinning out at the top of her register to a shriek that must have been painful for her throat.

  Paula scowled at her.

  “How dare you accuse me of such a thing! I wasn’t the least bit interested in him. He hounded me, not the other way around.” She importuned Khattak. “Tell her it’s the truth.”

  Rachel intervened.

  “Maybe she’ll believe you if you tell her what Mohsin wanted. If you weren’t having an affair, why did he hang around you?”

  Paula shrugged. And Khattak could well believe that despite Alia Dar’s naked grief, the answer didn’t impinge on Paula’s conscience at all.

  “I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “He just thought—the mosque was suffocating me. He said I should spread my wings, share my talents. Get out and meet other people. He kept talking about the value of my contribution.”

  Alia’s whole body seemed to shrink beneath the revelation.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why you and not me? I made a contribution, too. I did my best to serve the community. He knew that.”

  Paula stared pointedly at Alia’s listless scarf.

  “Maybe because of that. Maybe because you never observed the proper etiquette of hijab. And maybe because you refused your husband when he asked you to wear the niqab. Maybe that’s why he preferred the company of a woman like me.”

  Alia’s breath rattled in her chest. She stared at Paula for a moment, unblinking.

  Then she raised her glass of milk and tossed it in Paula’s face.

  * * *

  Khattak led Alia to a seat in the foyer. Rachel had dealt with Paula’s hysterics, and Ruksh had helped dry her face. She had left with Hassan Ashkouri, but Khattak knew she was only temporarily contained. From what Rachel had told him, Paula’s convictions were etched in stone, and like stone, they were mute in the face of nuance or difference. It was possible that Paula would find her way in time, when the rituals proved empty without a richer commitment to sustain them. Or she would leave the house of Islam, a failure on their part. One that would have eased Alia’s many worries.

  He thought of the information Laine had shared with him.

  Something we’ve just learned. Alia Dar collected a speeding ticket outside of Huntsville, twenty minutes from Algonquin Park, on the night Mohsin was killed.

  As a friend, Esa knew this wasn’t the time to ask, not when Alia was so overwrought with emotion. As an investigator, he knew he’d have no better opportunity.

  “Alia,�
� he said. “Tell me where you were the night that Mohsin died.”

  Alia perched on the small Chinese bench that was placed beside an antique porcelain cabinet. Her eyes dwelt aimlessly on the curios within.

  Instead of answering his question, she asked one of her own.

  “Do you think Mohsin was having an affair? With Paula, of all people?”

  Esa drew up one of the Versailles chairs that framed the marble balustrade.

  “It doesn’t sound like the Mohsin I knew. But it’s been a long time since I knew him.”

  Alia brushed at her eyes, tears escaping in a thin, monotonous stream.

  “Then what he was doing doesn’t make sense to me. So much concern for someone who wasn’t his own, so little interest in someone who was. Did you know he called me Sitara?”

  But Khattak understood too well, the questions that had been puzzling him resolved by Paula’s heedless admission. Rachel had been right in her guess about Mohsin’s motivations.

  “Alia,” he said again. “Where were you on the night Mohsin died?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “At home. With Baba.”

  “You weren’t on the road to Algonquin?” Her shocked eyes met his. “We have a record of the speeding ticket you received. It was nearly midnight. There’s no mystery about Mohsin’s time of death. He was killed just after midnight. What were you doing at the camp?”

  Alia shook her head side to side, the movement of her neck stiff.

  “You know everything,” she said. “You might as well know this.”

  It was several more minutes before she continued. Esa watched her in silence. She was a woman undone by too many unanswered questions. He knew he possessed answers that would have granted her comfort, but they weren’t in his power to give her.

  “I couldn’t take it anymore. I thought it was time I confronted him. Before that, I never wanted to say the words aloud. I thought they might be the catalyst for Mohsin to act. Maybe he’d taken his time because he didn’t want to hurt me, and now if I challenged him, he would make a decision, he’d leave. He would choose Paula.” Her breath caught on a sob. “I didn’t know even as I was driving exactly what I would say. Maybe that I would start wearing the niqab. Maybe that he could have his freedom. Maybe that I would beg him never to leave me, to remind him how much I loved him. All of those things. Any of those things.”