Osama the Gun

by Norman Spinrad

  Half of them formed up into a long line spread well apart, flying low over the highway towards Mina, returning a few minutes later flying towards Mecca, back and forth, back and forth, a continuous patrol. The rest of them made straight for Mecca to form a circling cloud over the city that was barely visible in the rear-view mirror.

  The “protectors” of the Hadj had arrived.

  * * * *

  I remembered how Gregory Mohammed had driven our converted Hummer madly up the rocky mountain slopes to the heights rather than take the tunnel through them to Mina, but I had no thought of trying anything of the sort with my beaten-up stolen delivery van when I finally reached the mouth of it now.

  It was a seemingly endless crawl, like the long passage of a reluctant infant through a birth canal, not knowing what awaited him at the other end. I had all too much time to think, inching along in second gear, and all too often constrained to downshift into first. Where was I going? What was I to do when I got there?

  Thought produced no answer and for the first time since I had joined this exodus from the Holy City I found myself resorting to prayer. I beseeched Allah to show me His Will, to at least send me an omen, a sign. What am I to do with this power You have placed in my hands? Why have You entrusted it to me? But prayer revealed no answer either.

  Until…

  At last there appeared a circle of light in the distance before me. Featureless and pure and bright white in contrast to the dark realm that encased me. Slowly it grew larger, so slowly that its waxing could only be discerned by the most intent concentration. I drove forward as if in a trance, as the circle of white grew brighter and brighter, became the world entire, so that it enveloped me entirely, and I fell into it like a moth into the flame.

  The sea of light filled me with Itself. Once more I became one with the White Light, basking in the Presence of Allah, carried along towards a destiny that must surely be a birth.

  And at last I burst from the tunnel from within this bubble of Light into a world that seemed bright and new, indeed like a babe new-born.

  I had emerged into bright late afternoon sunlight on the heights above Mecca. Ahead was an off-ramp that seemed to go nowhere in particular. Nevertheless, when I reached it, I felt moved to take it.

  The roadway wound through a rocky defile, climbed a rise, and then dead-ended at a kind of tiny mesa, a flattened peak with unimpeded overlooks both east and west.

  I descended the van and looked westward towards Mecca. Far below, the city nestled in a bowl ringed by sere uplands. I could barely make out the minarets of the Al-Haram Mosque. I could see the ribbons of highway clogged with the flight of the fearful. I could see its opposite lanes carrying faithful hadjis into the city. I could see the threatening glittering of the American aircraft hovering over the Holy City in the deepening orange light of the sun like carrion flies. Though my mind knew that the ball of the sun was sinking, my soul could not tell whether it was sunset or sunrise that it truly beheld. Nevertheless and though the time had not quite come, I was moved to prostrate myself and perform the sunset prayer.

  After which, I turned eastward. Long shadows enveloped the buildings of Mina, but the eastern walls still showed white, and the silvery tents spread across the plain outside it shimmered and glittered, beacons of faith against the gathering darkness.

  What I beheld was both an impending death and a birth. And I had been placed on the divide between. And though I knew not how, I knew that I had been chosen to bring both. I had fled the doom-threatened city in fear. But fear had not been Allah’s purpose. I would instead rejoin the hope of the hadj.

  Allah had granted me my vision.

  Blasphemy though it might be under other circumstances, it seemed not only appropriate but necessary now.

  I knew that Allah would forgive me as I performed also the sunrise prayer.

  CHAPTER 45

  I had carried my ihram everywhere, for the garment of the hadji is also meant to be his burial shroud, and I took it from my suitcase and donned it before I descended to the tent city. This was both camouflage and something more. Having already made the Hadj, I was not a hadji like most of the rest of those hundreds of thousands. There are those with the means to do so who repeat the rituals, though this is not required by Islam, but I was not seeking to become one of these either.

  This Hadj would be performed under the so-called “protection” of American warplanes, and with Mecca itself held hostage against the “good behavior” of eleven unknown men, each with the power to bring nuclear destruction down upon it.

  So not only had there never been such a Hadj, whatever happened, there could never be such a Hadj again. Nor could the Hadj ever return to what it had been before.

  Either the very center of the Hadj would be destroyed, or Mecca and the Ka’aba would pass through intact by the Will of Allah. Either way the Hadj and Islam itself would be transformed as surely as they would be if some day the Hidden Imam of the Shia, the Madhi of the Sunnis, emerged from hiding to bring the Kingdom of Allah to the Earth.

  That was the meaning of my vision from on high. A death and a birth. Both inevitable. The Islam that had been, the Islam that must die, could not pass through this great crisis unchanged. What would be born would be the presently unknown and unknowable Islam to come.

  Therefore the Hadj upon which I embarked as I drove down into the tent city would not be a repetition of the passage through time-honored sacred rituals which I had already made, but a pilgrimage through them to whatever lay beyond the blinding white light at the end of this dark passage through time.

  Could it not be that the traditional wearing of the ihram on the Hadj, on a man’s birth as a hadji, and again on his death in this world and passage into the Presence of Allah, was established long ago by the All-Seeing to clothe Islam’s passage through what it had been and what it was into whatever it was His Will that it was to become?

  * * * *

  Though the city of tents, erected to house the usual population of hadjis, was now half empty on the day before the beginning of the Hadj, I could not apply for a place in one of them, which would have required presenting identity papers, nor easily explain to tentmates my arrival with a suitcase as heavy as the one holding the bomb, nor was I about to leave it untended. So I parked in one of the lots at the periphery, made what meal I could off the vegetables in the back, and slept the night in the van.

  I awoke at sunrise with the rest of the hadjis, made my prayer directly outside the van in the parking lot, and only afterward noticed my thirst. And only upon becoming aware of my body’s need for water did I realize that soon I would be traversing a desert plateau under a hot sun, this day past Mina and Muzdalifa, the next on the Plain of Arafat itself, then back across it to Muzdalifa to gather pebbles, and thence to the stoning of the Pillars of Satan. There was no way I could survive this without water.

  So I had to leave the bomb in the van and make as brief a foray as possible into the tent city to get it.

  It was but a shadow of what I remembered, a ghost of what it had been on my hadj, uncrowded, the food stands and other stalls fewer and farther between, the merchants fear-faced, and like the hadjis in their white ihrams, and myself, unable to refrain for long from glancing up at the Falcons circling overhead.

  Worse still, I spotted camera drones with the markings of Al Jazeera and even CNN flying slower and lower beneath the robot warplanes as if under their protection, which they effectively were. Whether this was sacrilege or not was no doubt a matter of much dispute among imams and mullahs; idle dispute, since there was nothing anyone but the Americans could do about it. World television coverage had descended uninvited on the hadj, perhaps even with commercial interruptions. It had already thereby been changed.

  And yet there were still the flags and banners of Dar al-Islam, and Muslims from all over the world gathered round them, making their preparations for de
parture. There were fearful faces, sour faces, angry faces, but these were still outnumbered by visages illumined by excited expectancy, holy joy. There was still gentle laughter, brotherly talk, and yes, defiant fists waved at the American warplanes above.

  Even diminished in numbers and under the gun, this was still the Hadj, Islam was still Islam, and though I might be condemned to solitary travel in my stolen van, unable to give rides to hajis in the back of a vehicle with my atomic bomb, still my heart was warmed. Still was I proud to be a Muslim among Muslims, among these brave Muslims, to the point that it was more than glancing up at the Falcons against the bright sun that filled my eyes with tears.

  I bought two jerry cans and filled them with water but something prevented me from provisioning myself also with the food that was readily available. If circumstances prevented me from truly and completely immersing myself in the communal brotherhood of the Hadj, I would do the next best thing on my solitary second Hadj.

  I would fast. I would take nothing but water as a gesture at least of solidarity, and perhaps, Inshallah, something more. Perhaps, as such fasting had allowed me to achieve the clear vision of the White Light in a cramped and dingy hotel room, so might it grant me a greater vision under Allah’s open sky amidst the Hadj; a vision, Inshallah, of what lay beyond and what part, large or small, that Allah might will me to play in bringing it about.

  * * * *

  Though the Hadj this fateful year was greatly diminished, the Plain of Arafat was less than three miles wide and only six miles long from Mina to the rock wall at the eastern end where it dead-ended, and even this diminished number of hajis moving towards the Mountain of Mercy quite filled it with the Faithful. Afoot, on the open beds of trucks, in cars and mounted on camels, donkeys, horses, the ihram-clad pilgrims became an undulating sea of whiteness along under a bright desert sun, so that driving along in the midst of it, so that to my eyes, it was as if I was moving within a mirage.

  But to my soul, this was no mirage but the truest thing on the face of the Earth, Islam itself on the march, despite the American Falcons following and flanking it overhead like flying metal dogs herding a vast flock of sheep, defying its “protectors” and the camera drones turning it into television spectacle for the world outside the fold.

  Sipping meagerly at my water, sweltering and sweating in the unairconditioned van, driving slowly and mechanically in second gear, staring out the windshield as the individual motions of hundreds of thousands of purposeful hadjis became a gently but irresistibly rolling ocean of whiteness, I lost myself within it.

  Or rather lost the world outside its embrace and found the true world of my soul within it, as I had on my first and more innocent hadj, as I had when first I circled round the Ka’aba. Truly the Hadj was the journey not the destination.

  This experience, not the rituals, not the required prayers, not Mecca or the Ka’aba, was the immortal invulnerable soul of Islam, the White Light moving across the desert, and all of us within it as brothers.

  That it was taking place in defiance of the American warplanes above and the unbelievers watching it on television interrupted by commercials for beer and deodorant only lent it more power, the Haji become the Jihad, the Jihad become the Hadj, a new thing already born under the desert sun.

  * * * *

  Still we were a great multitude, and as before, the Caliphate had erected a circle of large video screens and speakers before the Mount of Mercy so that all of us could see and hear the sermon that would be delivered atop the hill and of the farewell speech of the Prophet to be recited afterward.

  As before, I could penetrate no closer to the Mount of Mercy through the assembled throng than a few hundred yards, and as I descended from the van, the mullah ascending through the crowd on the stone stairway to the top was a tiny figure to my unaided eyes writ large on the television screens.

  Similarly his words, impossible to make out otherwise, became a mighty voice booming out over the speakers, immediately bringing down a hushed silence.

  “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, the—”

  He was interrupted by another mullah running up the stairway, clutching at his robes, shouting something into his ear that the microphone did not pick up. Blood seemed to drain from the huge face on the screens leaving it pallid with shock. An immense babblement broke out to fill the void of his sudden silence. And then he found his voice, and it roared out in shrill terror through the speakers.

  “The Mexican police have…have captured a man with an atomic bomb in his valise attempting to cross the border into the United States!”

  Those were his only words. This was not CNN or Al Jazeera, there were no “further details,” though no doubt the news media of the outside world were now filled with nothing else. They were not needed. Everyone knew what this meant or believed they did. Shouting, screaming, milling about in angry shock, outrage, despair, confusion, and terror.

  The United States would now carry out its threat against Mecca.

  I was not so certain. I had learned that nothing was ever certain about what the Great Satan would do, save that it would be cunning, and designed only to serve America’s own pragmatic purpose. And I could not see how destroying Mecca could possibly serve any American purpose. The threat to bomb Mecca in retaliation for such an attempt certainly, but carrying it out could only ignite implacable Jihad against America. The only purpose it could serve was that of Osama bin Ladin, of the Sons of Osama, of the boy who had become Osama the Gun.

  But I was not atop the Mount of Mercy. I had no microphone to speak the words that might at least diminish the chaotic terror before the Mount from which there now came no Mercy. And the mullah who was and did had no words with which to even try.

  He stood there silent and immobile while the tumult went on, while thousands of fists now were waved in a fury at the warplanes and camera drones circling overhead, threatening to turn into a full riot, a futile one, aimed at an enemy beyond reach, beyond the hope of its destruction.

  Finally, an elder mullah, white of beard and hair, feeble of gait, clumped and stumbled up the stairs, aided by helping hands, and at length replaced him. The impending riot was not quelled by the spectacle of this difficult passage, but when he began to speak, the multitude quickly became still and silent.

  “O People! lend me an attentive ear, for I know not whether after this year I shall ever be amongst you again.…”

  Without preamble, introduction, or text, he began reciting the farewell speech of Mohammed.

  * * * *

  The time-honored tradition of the Hadj was to remain on the Plain of Arafat until the sun went down before proceeding to Muzdalifa for the gathering of stones; to rest, to pray, to eat, to wander among the encampments of the Faithful from all over Dar al-Islam, a time of tranquil ease.

  But this was a Hadj such as never had been honored by time, when the greatest traditions of the Hadj seemed about to be broken forever. And while the recitation of Mohammed’s farewell speech had quelled a terrified and angry multitude, in this time it seemed a mournful farewell to an all-too-possible passage of what Allah had caused him to bring into the world that transformed that multitude into a congregation of the Faithful in continuous imploring prayer.

  As if by unsaid decision of the common will, no food or water was taken, and none was offered. There was no wandering about or easeful conversation. For hours on end, everyone remained in place prostrated in prayer on the sere unyielding earth, speaking to no one but Allah.

  I too prostrated myself and prayed, but rather than begging Allah for the miraculous salvation of Mecca, I prayed for the salvation of Islam itself, not for a city whose future as a ghost of itself I had already seen and walked through in vision, but for the White Light that had once made it the navel of the world.

  As I prayed under the hot afternoon sun, dizzy from hunger and thirst, heat waves shimmering the s
ea of white-clad hadjis was transformed into a mirage before my eyes, a mirage into which I entered, into the White Light that filled the world entire, enclosed neither by stone nor flesh nor time itself, the Light that was Allah Himself, Islam. And I knew that should not merely Mecca but the world itself vanish in a mushroom pillar cloud in the next moment, it would remain.

  The Great Satan called America, the Devil himself, had power only over the world, but nothing, not even the ultimate power of matter and energy I held in a suitcase, had power over the Light that was the realm and the Presence of Allah.

  How long I remained in the Light I know not, but the sun was not down when I was slammed back down into the world by the terrible sound.

  The whining buzz of the Falcons overhead had long since been rendered inaudible to the mind’s ear by its continuous presence but the approach of the louder and deeper notes of these approaching engines brought all prayer to a stop and all eyes gazing skyward and eastward.

  The very sound was ominous but it was more than that to me, for I had heard it in Nigeria all too often, and I did not have to look to know exactly what was coming.

  The moan that went up when they became visible was like that of a herd of cattle beholding the approach of a grass fire with nowhere to go and no place to hide.

  Four American Vultures, metal birds of prey with oval pods slung beneath them as if clutched in their talons, flew overhead along the Plain of Arafat on their way to Mecca.

  * * * *

  But the sun went down and still no nuclear fire lit up the western horizon, no mighty sound rolled across the Plain, no terrible wind blowing sand and pebbles, no black mushroom pillar cloud defiling the heavens.

  Clearly Mecca had not been destroyed by the flight of American robot bombers. But nothing else was known and so the encampment was swept with every manner of wild rumor, nor could I keep myself from leaving the van behind but in wary sight, to hear them.