After On

by Rob Reid

  “He sounds like someone a kid would look up to,” Danna says quietly.

  “Oh definitely. And I needed a friend out there. Our Nablus family’s very physical. When the guys aren’t playing soccer, they’re brawling, and vice versa. Me, I’m brainy and nerdy, and speak lousy Arabic with a weird American accent. But Rashid always looked out for me.”

  “So what happened?” Mitchell asks gently.

  “We didn’t visit for a couple of years because it got real sketchy during the second intifada. Then the last time I saw him, he was way, way, way down. His life was just at a total dead end. Not that there’s anything super weird about that in Nablus. I mean, it’s not like your friends’re all getting jobs at McKinsey and Google. In fact, they mostly don’t even go to college. A much older cousin of mine was one of the few people in the family who did. But then the Israelis shut his university down. For four years! To punish protesters, or whatever. Still, all this bothered Rashid way more than most people, which brought out his darkness. He was smart, smart, smart, for one thing. So without access to learning, he felt like an athlete whose body was atrophying during his peak years. And not being religious, he couldn’t just tell himself everything would be peachy in the afterlife. Then his dad got…well, he basically ended up in a wheelchair.”

  “That’s awful,” Danna says, giving his arm another squeeze.

  “It was a construction accident. And a monster blow to the family. There’s, like, no jobs in Nablus, and my uncle’s job had been really good. Construction and maintenance for a big NGO, which meant good wages, and in dollars. Right after that, Rashid’s best friend got killed by soldiers at a protest. And he might’ve actually been…well, he might’ve been more of a boyfriend. People really don’t talk about that sort of thing in my family, but that’s my sense. Whatever the case, Rashid was unhinged by that. Meanwhile, the family’s getting real poor—and we’re talking Nablus poor, which is some serious shit.”

  Tarek falls silent for over a minute, struggling. Danna wraps an arm around him, Mitchell pats his shoulder, and they’re all silent.

  “By the way,” he finally says, “I hope this doesn’t sound funny but…are either of you Jewish?” They shake their heads. “If you were, I’d do a disclaimer here. Just to make it clear that I have zero, zero, zero issues with anyone’s religion. I mean, I grew up in Kansas. And my views are about as mainline American as Ronald Reagan’s.”

  “We know you’re no bigot,” Danna assures him softly.

  “I know. But the other thing I want to convey is, Rashid wasn’t either. He was a secular Muslim in Nablus, which is practically like being a Green Party vegan here! He was very moderate. And he definitely didn’t hate Jews as a people. But who he did hate was the soldiers. The people who shot his friend. Who shot lots of his friends. But even that wasn’t what drove him! Because everything with him flowed from the simple, awful fact that he became suicidal. Nothing geopolitical about it. Nothing ideological, and definitely nothing religious. Just an awful human state. And a very malleable one—and that’s the raw material these monsters turn into horrifying things.”

  A pause, then Mitchell says, “I was following you right up to that last sentence.”

  “Well…” Tarek thinks for a bit. Then, “When you see something like what those guys did today. Or what Rashid did—which, to cut to the chase, was to bomb a checkpoint and kill three soldiers. It feels like you’re seeing the…totality of a brief and hugely dramatic act. But in reality, you’re just seeing the last sliver of an almost lifelong development! The first 99-point-whatever percent of which was the…gestation of a decision to commit suicide. That’s a very long process, and a very interior one. And it’s one that sometimes gets hijacked at the very end. By someone who identifies an incredibly fragile and vulnerable person who they can manipulate into doing something unspeakable with his last moments. Something that’s even more horrible than killing himself. Even way more horrible.”

  “So who…hijacked Rashid?” Mitchell asks.

  “Saddam Hussein. Almost literally. Back then, Saddam’s paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers $25,000 each. That’s huge bucks in Nablus at the height of the intifada. We’re talking years of income for most people. More money than you’d save over a lifetime of working.”

  “Paying suicide bombers?” Mitchell says. “That’s sickening.”

  Tarek nods. “And effective. Effective enough to change my cousin’s suicide into a multiple homicide. Along with many others, I have no doubt. The key is that once he really hit bottom, his suicide was going to happen! That dark side had taken over, period. Depression runs deep in our family, he definitely had it, and after enough things went wrong, he simply gave up. And after he made the radical decision to kill himself—after he made it, and not before—that $25,000 became a huge factor. Because the truth is, he did rescue his family economically.”

  “But didn’t he also cause them almost infinite pain?” Mitchell asks.

  “He did. But in his mind, that was inevitable. He was going to kill himself, he had decided! Which meant he was going to cause that pain. Rashid kept a journal, I read it, and I can tell you, Saddam’s money did not make him kill himself. Nothing could’ve done that if things had been right with him. It was after he’d made the big decision that the money became this huge, shaping factor. And that’s what you have to remember about groups like Jaysh al Hisaab. They seem to have this terrifying power because they can get people to lay down their lives for ideas! Which is the ultimate sacrifice. The ultimate conversion, right? But the thing is, they cannot. Their raw material is people who are already deeply suicidal. And every society in the world—rich, poor, Western, Eastern, secular, religious—produces that raw material daily! People who are out of their skulls with pain can be manipulated as easily as people who’re out of their skulls on drugs, believe me. My point is, no amount of money or ideology can make a happy, whole person kill himself. But those things can turn a suicide that’s already going to happen into a mass homicide. And Jaysh al Hisaab is bribing these human wrecks with a lot more than twenty-five grand.”

  “With more money?” Mitchell asks, sickened.

  Danna shakes her head, and turns to Tarek. “Paradise, right?”

  “Exactly. Have you guys seen those recruiting videos?”

  “No,” Mitchell says.

  “I’ve actually seen all of them,” Danna says. Several times, in fact—but she keeps this to herself because it would sound weird. She’s researched Jaysh al Hisaab deeply, because it horrifies her even more than most people, for complex philosophical reasons. The philosophy in question is known as “Pascal’s Wager.” Its long-dead French progenitor argued that absent definitive proof of God’s existence, one should nonetheless act as if, profess, and (if possible) believe that God is really there. Why? Because if you bet on God, and he doesn’t exist, you’ll forgo a few earthly pleasures and leak some coins into collection plates over the years. But that pales in comparison to the infinite payoff of eternal bliss (or the downside of damnation) if you bet against God and lose. Danna’s atheism is as fervent as any religious zealot’s faith, so she doesn’t live by this wager herself. But she doesn’t trust humans and believes they behave better when they think they’re being watched. This makes her a huge fan of a judgmental, all-seeing God. Daft as she finds that concept herself, she thinks it does immense good by discouraging billions of people from running amok. Jaysh, then, horrifies her because she sees its potential to not merely neutralize this divine gift but to reverse it! Not because she finds Jaysh’s arguments insane. But precisely because she finds them rational.

  “And did the videos strike you as crazy?” Tarek asks, as if reading these thoughts.

  “I wish,” she says. “They’re actually chillingly logical.”

  Tarek nods. This gets them both baffled looks from Mitchell, so he explains, “The only thing that’s completely insane about Jaysh’s pitch is the premise of eternal reward or punishment after d
eath, decided by a flawless judge. If you truly believe in that—and billions of people do, Muslims, Christians, and others—then everything else adds up.”

  “Mass murder adds up?” Mitchell asks.

  “It does if you share Jaysh’s view of the afterlife. Which they’ll never sell to a modern secularist! Because that would be like talking a perfectly happy, empowered, and normal person into suicide. Nobody can close that deal.”

  “But they don’t have to,” Danna points out.

  Tarek nods. “Exactly. Because secular people aren’t Jaysh’s raw material. Their raw material is someone who does believe in Judgment Day, and happens to be feeling suicidal right now. And that kind of person’s a lot more nervous about death than you or I will be! Why? Well, imagine truly, fully believing in the eternal torture of damned souls—and knowing that you’re going in front of heaven’s admissions committee tomorrow. Right after committing the grave sin of suicide! Then suddenly, you see this articulate, intensely logical video. Starring this charismatic, funny guy who talks very sympathetically about suicide. And he frames everything—history, religion, ethics—in terms of your overwhelming dilemma! Which is that you’re utterly finished with life, yet terrified of offending God. And he’s offering you this ingenious, elegant solution, and guaranteeing you eternal joy! That’s way more powerful than Saddam throwing twenty-five grand on the table! And now, think of all the people this guy’s addressing. Almost a million humans will kill themselves this year. I’ll bet more than half believe in some form of Judgment Day. And a chunk of them hate some group the way my cousin hated the soldiers.”

  “And with Jaysh al Hisaab, you don’t even need the hatred,” Danna adds. “The videos spend a huge amount of time saying it’s not hatred to speed the good to heaven and the bad to hell. Instead, it’s justice. Even love!”

  In bizarre counterpoint, sudden, wild applause breaks out on the far side of the cafeteria. There they see Raj bowing before a small knot of admirers. Tarek rises. “Thank God, comic relief! We need this, guys.” They head over to the noisy group’s periphery. It’s mainly the Medici Diet crowd, including Danna’s boss O.

  A guy Mitchell doesn’t know approaches. “Raj got a tapeworm!” This in a tone normally used to brag about friends winning Nobel Prizes.

  “Eww!” Danna yelps, drawing the group’s undivided attention. “That’s…good?”

  The group nods.

  “But tapeworms are parasites!”

  “The accurate term is symbiotum,” O says testily.

  “As in symbiotic?” she asks.

  O nods.

  “You’re seriously saying tapeworms are good for you?”

  “Somebody’s never heard the Hyyyyy-giene Hypothesis!” O yodels, his eyes rolling prissily. Mitchell struggles not to laugh—a delightful change from a moment ago. Danna and O go back and forth like this constantly, but it’s plain that they both fully enjoy it.

  “Ever heard of ‘autoimmune’ diseases?” Raj says, air-quoting as if the term is certain to befuddle dim little Danna.

  Putting on her best bimbo voice, she air-quotes back to him. “Uhh, you mean, like, ‘lupus’? Like, ‘Crohn’s disease’? Or, like, uh, ‘celiac’?”

  Raj nods. “Unheard of in Paleolithic or Renaissance times. They’re a side effect of our overly sanitized world! Our immune systems have so little to do, they literally attack our own bodies!”

  “So,” Danna guesses, “your tapeworm is good because it gives your bored antibodies a hobby?”

  “Exactly,” Raj says.

  “Raj has become invulnerable to virtually all autoimmune conditions,” O intones, “as well as most allergies. Michelangelo had tapeworm. No lupus. Leonardo had tapeworm. No Crohn’s disease. Case closed!”

  “Speaking of Michelangelo, I got mine from eating Medici in Tegucigalpa last week,” Raj boasts.

  “Wow. Raw meat in Honduras. That’s all it took?” Danna asks.

  Every head nods.

  “Isn’t tapeworm the one that drops pregnant chunks of its body out of your ass?”

  “Only at night,” Raj says defensively.

  “You guys realize you’re all nuts, right?”

  Every head shakes.

  “I’ve read the DSM,” Danna presses. “And the leading clinical definition of insanity is high-fiving a guy for getting a gut parasite!”

  “A symbiotum,” O corrects.

  “You made that word up.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did so. I just watched you!”

  And so on.

  Eventually, the crowd disperses, and Mitchell, Tarek, and Danna return to their grim topic, oddly refreshed. “So, do you think Jaysh al Hisaab’s philosophy has staying power?” Mitchell asks. “Given that it didn’t even exist until recently?”

  Tarek considers this carefully. “Obviously, I hope not. But ideas like theirs are tough to stamp out once they infect a group. Here’s an example: Israel became a nation in 1948 and has been in a constant state of war with a huge chunk of Palestinian society ever since. It ebbs and flows, and goes from hot war to cold war. But at the risk of being slightly politically incorrect, it’s fair to call it a constant state of some kind of war, right?”

  Mitchell nods cautiously. This exceeds his remedial regional knowledge, but Tarek seems to know this stuff.

  “Now. How many suicide bombings would you guess happened in the first forty years of Israel’s history?”

  Silence.

  “I’ll give you a hint. In the first five years of the millennium, about 130 Palestinian suicide bombers attacked Israelis. So. How many in the first forty years of Israeli history? That’s from 1948 to 1988.”

  Still no guesses.

  “The precise number is zero. None, nada, zilch. No suicide bombings whatsoever! And it’s not like this was some brand-new concept or technology because there were suicide bombings in Russia under the czars. It’s also not like they were unheard of in the region. Because dozens of suicide bombers killed hundreds of foreign soldiers in Lebanon during the eighties. And that was mostly in the southern tip of the country, just a few miles across the border from Palestinian villages!”

  “So what changed?” Mitchell asks.

  “You know how viruses jump from species to species? In this case, an idea jumped. But from sect to sect. Now, I’m gonna make some really gross simplifications to save us a six-hour discussion, so if you’re really interested in this stuff, promise you’ll dig into it, to learn some of the nuances I’m skipping for now.”

  Mitchell and Danna both nod at that caveat.

  “OK. To start with, on a superbroad level, martyrdom is a huge deal to Shi’a Muslims historically—a much bigger deal than it is to us Sunnis. This goes back to the schism between our groups. In the eyes of the Shi’a, it all started with the martyrdom of their sect’s founders, over a thousand years ago. Thus, the very natural martyrdom interest. So what can that lead to? Well, take Iran. They have a huge Shi’a majority. And during the Iran/Iraq War, these giant waves of Iranians—mostly kids—would just march across minefields and into machine-gun fire. They’d overwhelm the enemy with meat; with sheer numbers! Almost a million Iranians died like that. And when they were told to march, they marched. Because the sanctity of martyrdom was at the heart of their worldview. Not so with Sunnis. Not in the eighties anyway.

  “And as for all those Lebanese suicide bombings? Back when there were none on the Palestinian side of the border? Well, Lebanon’s about a quarter Shi’a, and the bombings were carried out by a Shi’a group called Hezbollah. And it turned out to be a pretty effective military tactic, both against the US and Israel. But no matter how mad the Palestinians got at the Israelis—and believe me, they got plenty mad, especially during the first intifada—the practice never jumped the border. Because Palestinian Muslims are almost 100 percent Sunni, and martyrdom just didn’t animate them in the same way. Not yet.”

  “So what changed?” Mitchell asks. “And when?”

  “I t
hink it was 1992, or so. The Israeli government exiled hundreds of Palestinian fundamentalists to Lebanon for a while after some Israeli soldiers were killed. Classic community reprisal tactics. But the thing is, Lebanon’s at the tail end of a long civil war. So the exiles can’t just check into the local Marriott! They need protection. Being Palestinian, they’re all Sunni, and there’s lots of Sunnis in Lebanon. But they’re fundamentalists first and foremost, and the most powerful fundamentalist group in Lebanon is Hezbollah. Which is to say, the Shi’a behind all the Lebanese suicide bombings! So, the Sunni Palestinians take shelter with these Shi’a fundamentalists. Then, when their terms of exile are over, they come home, and, boom. Literally. A couple years with Hezbollah, and this Shi’a notion and tactic of martyrdom through suicide bombing has entered the Sunni playbook. Palestinian suicide bombings start immediately after these guys get home. And now that the idea has jumped to Sunnis, eventually Saudis—some of the Sunni-est people on Earth—are crashing planes into skyscrapers.”

  “And on that cheerful note…” Danna says, pointing at the door. O is back and is beckoning her. At this, all adjourn and head separate ways. Waving her cellphone, Danna gives Mitchell a pointed look. “See you at ten?”

  He nods. They still haven’t discussed the texted threats they received right after the bombing. They didn’t mention them to Tarek because there were too many other folks in the cafeteria. But he’ll be joining their group away from the office tonight, and everyone will see the texts then.

  They’re back at the Interval. And it turns out everyone here—Tarek, Danna, Kuba, Mitchell, and Monika (connected via video)—has been threatened since the bombing. It started with the texts Mitchell and Danna got right after the blast. Their timing and content suggested that the sender knew precisely where they were seated and saw they were unhurt. Other texts trickled in throughout the afternoon and evening of this strangest of days. Almost nine hours after the explosion, everyone has now received two or three.