by Mark Powell
“They are calling you Yusef Islam,” Suleyman told him. “The others.”
Reed stared at him.
“Like Cat Stevens,” Suleyman said. “The American singer.”
“I know who he is.”
“The great convert, holier than all others.”
“I know who he is.”
“They’re making fun of you.”
“I know who Cat Stevens is.”
Then one day—thinking of Aida, but trying not to—he slept with a girl at the Boulevard Sit-n-Chat in Belvedere Park. Black girl, cornrows. Not something romantic or sexy but an animal slapping until he washed up panting on the shoals of her damp chest. Fire-engine red fingernails and the smell of cocoa butter. He paid $50 plus the cost of the room for the pleasure of smelling it.
That night he was determined to flay his dick with a kitchen knife, but wound up masturbating to a J.Crew catalog that had somehow found its way into their mail slot. Proof, he thought after, of the ingenuity of the Jew state, the insidious nature of the infidel. Like Aida. Like the pale elevator girl in New York. He sat there with his limp penis curled into his hand like a blind mole and thought of that time. The Voice of Reason. The laughing Buddha.
He knew then it was time to move forward, that this stage, whatever it was, was over. And how could it not be? He was hearing voices at night, long dreamless sleeps wherein he was visited by angels. Their lips by his ear—was this a dream? Sometimes they spoke in the voice of the professor, sometimes in the voice of Aida or his mother. Was this madness? Or was it the Word of God—some god, any god? He thought of the words of the prophet Jesus, peace be upon him: I come not to bring peace but the sword. To set son against father. Yes, his was a god of war and it was speaking.
It was possible, of course, that he was overtraining.
It was possible he was delusional, feverish, psychotic.
It was possible he was depressed and imagining everything.
It was also possible he was an instrument of History.
That he had not come to worship Allah, but to become Him.
And while the angel spoke—if the angel spoke—the world which had always felt so flimsy, something to be bent by his father’s will, began to solidify, to stiffen. History. Blood—the ground was soaked with it. You would hear it pumping through the earth were it not for the mindlessness of living.
Their lips by his ear—how could it not be real?
A barely created place, a barely created life, had become actual. Meanwhile, he watched the Americans slaughter the innocent with their airstrikes and drones. He watched the Jew kill Palestinian children like stray dogs. He watched the world do nothing. He watched the world laugh. But he wasn’t troubled. Once God became fact, there is no other. How could there be? When God manifests Godself, when God becomes known, what else can possibly exist in that blinding glare? The zealot isn’t a fool or a fanatic. The zealot is a logician, a utilitarian squaring everything on truth. Was this what had happened to James Stone? The man had once sent him four bottles of pomegranate juice as if it were a warning, a portent of what was coming, and it occurred to Reed now that perhaps it had been.
For days at a time he refused to eat, but knew he was filling with something greater.
And then he was full.
He rose and showered. He was going to walk into the world, now, today. What he wasn’t going to do was beg. What he wasn’t going to do was be laughed at, ever again. An instrument of God instead of a punch line. A man who believes can drive a hole straight through the universe. You look at me with your disbelief, your doubt. You act like it’s a joke only because you don’t believe.
He got up, he believed.
He was no longer near; he had arrived.
He bought a new phone and called the professor and when he didn’t answer left a message, something the professor had told him never to do.
I’m ready now, he said. I want to go to war.
*
The call came two days later. But instead of the professor it was James Stone. He gave Reed a location and time. And one other thing, all right? Shave the beard. Hadn’t spoken to Stone in what, two years? And that’s the shit he gets: shave the beard.
They met at the Ice Bar, a touristy place in Five Points that served overpriced vodka and handed out gloves and thermal suits. The booths inside a freezer. Five below Celsius. You could feel it in your sinuses.
“I’ve missed you, Reed. I ain’t gonna lie.”
They took five or six shots of Belvedere so cold you couldn’t taste a thing and then went up to the terrace when some Emory kids wandered in.
“How’s it in the Old South, young master? Sipping hot cocoa while mamma turns the eggs? Sometimes the zipper gets stuck and daddy helps out, am I right? You’re tugging and spitting, pulling at the metal teeth. Fucking Chinese-made garbage, you’re thinking.” Jimmy’s eyes spun inside his face. “Or I don’t know. Maybe it’s all prayers at the mosque. Some Yemeni princess for the formal gatherings. I hear you’ve converted. I hear you’re a holy warrior now. Tell me how it is, Reed?”
“You s-set me up.”
“This is me, legitimately asking.”
“You s-s-set me up, Jimmy. In New York,” Reed said. It sounded like a line from a Western, John Wayne sauntering into a bar, hitching his dungarees, but Stone seemed to give it due consideration. Dropped his voice several decibels as if this were some sort of concession.
“This is me inquiring,” he almost whispered. “Because I have my reasons.”
“The Voice of Reason. That was your joke. Hilarious.”
“Maybe not ha-ha funny. I admit to this.”
“You made a fool out of me.”
“Maybe not laugh-out-loud,” Jimmy said, “but humorous in its way.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m not going to argue the point.”
“F-f-fuck you, Jimmy. The idea of something real just kills you. You don’t have to say it. I know it does. I know you understand me, too, so don’t act like you don’t.” It was sounding more and more like bad John Wayne, but they were both drunk—Reed having not touched alcohol in months—and Reed figured this was the time to say such things.
Stone rubbed Reed’s shoulder. “I have a feeling you’re going to be hearing from the professor soon. I have a feeling you two are going to be taking a little ride together. If that happens, I want you to keep your mouth shut about seeing me. But you call me when you get back, all right? You call your old uncle Jimmy, you understand? Look at me, Reed. You understand?”
Reed was sliding out of his seat.
“Jimmy,” he said.
“What?”
“Jimmy.”
“What?”
The vending machines and kiosks. Nathan’s Famous—you could buy it right off the street, take the train to Spanish Harlem. Do-rags. A purple Cutlass with hydraulics and spinning rims. Pants falling off the hips. Bustin a sag. He remembered the expression from childhood, bustin a sag. Jimmy drunk in a Williamsburg bar talking about Buddhist monks outside the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
Would you do that for me, Reed? Jimmy had asked. Give me that gift? Would you set me on fire?
You really want to burn?
I think I do. Sometimes I think I really do.
Reed tried to sit up, wedged one hand between his head and the wicker armrest for leverage, but it wasn’t happening. Jimmy, he was saying, his head canted toward the concrete like a dead flower. Over and over: Jimmy, Jimmy. Because he wanted to tell him: No one will ever laugh at me again.
The next day the professor did indeed call and the following day they rode north to an out-of-season ski resort just below the Georgia-Tennessee state line. Professor Hadawi driving, both of them quiet as they wound past chalets of wood and glass and into a vast and otherwise abandoned parking lot. A glass cube held a blue-lit luxury sedan, the empty resort apparently brought to you by Lexus.
In the spare-tire well of the trunk the professor knocked aside the lug wr
ench and the bottle of antifreeze and the roadside flares, unzipped a duffel bag and removed a SIG 550, folded and wrapped in a quilt, and then a smaller pistol, a Beretta of some space-age composite. They hiked past the empty lodge uphill past sheds of machinery and beneath a chairlift. The hills were steep and green and looking back you could see the manicured ski lanes, broad carpets of a darker shade, as if someone had brushed the land against its grain.
Reed carried the SIG, two steps behind the professor who labored up the hill in silence. They were near the turn in the chairlift when they heard the first shots. The professor seemed unaware. When they crossed the peak they looked over at the back slope, an open valley where maybe a half-dozen men stood holding rifles. What appeared to be targets were pinned to hay bales along the tree line.
“Your brothers,” Hadawi said. “These are your brothers, Reed.”
*
They drove back at dusk and when he was home Reed called Jimmy Stone.
They met at a McDonald’s near the interstate.
“Little Reed Sharma,” Stone said, “son of the most important man in Georgia.” They were sitting on concrete picnic tables in the shadow of I-75, Stone licking his cone like a dog lapping at its own vomit. “I guess you understand at this point what you’re being offered,” he said.
“I’m going.”
“Then go. By all means. No need to tell me anything.”
“I’m only telling you because you were kind to me once. And I know you were a part of the struggle. Not my struggle, but still.”
“Still, sure,” Stone said. “So what’s the plan? You tell your parents something. You got a job, maybe. You’re going back to school. Make it plausible but vague. The professor tell you that?”
“I want to do something. If the professor won’t let me take action, I’ll need you. You knew people in New York.”
“Who, me?”
“If the professor stops me I want you to put me in touch with them. But for real this time.”
“So you don’t trust the professor?”
“I trust him enough.”
“First intelligent thing you’ve said all night.”
“I trust him, but I have to be certain.”
“Hedge your bets, absolutely.”
“I have to do something. I can’t wait any longer.”
“I hope the professor gives good counsel. Keep your Facebook page up. But don’t make any grand proclamations. Did he tell you this? Don’t talk any Allah shit. Just quietly disappear into the hills.”
“If he stops me or won’t let me act I’ll need to contact my brothers.”
“Your brothers?” Stone said it all incredulous-like, but took it as his cue to take out the phone and place it on the concrete table. He licked his cone, a bit of cursory maintenance, keeping the ice cream in check. The phone—an iPhone 6—sat between them.
“What’s this?” Reed said.
“This?” Jimmy gave it a little spin. “This is a gift. You know what telescope is?”
“I’m guessing not like at an observatory.”
“No, Reed, not like at an observatory. Like the app.”
“I know it.”
“Well, it’s on there. You see something, you get a look at anything at all, show me through the telescope. It’s a private feed. Comes to no one but me. I want you to be my eyes. I mean,” Jimmy said, “assuming you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
“Assuming then,” Stone said, “the world is ready.”
*
The camp was on the back side of the resort, abandoned for at least a generation. An old gem-mining operation but little left of it. A fire pit with log benches. A clapboard building with kitchen and rooms, all of it converted to a barracks for the six or seven men living there.
The professor picked Reed up and to Reed’s surprise Suleyman was in the back seat, grim, but apparently relieved to see Reed. The professor smiled and drove through the Chick-fil-A drive-through. Peach milkshakes beneath a sky that seemed to have lowered itself, to have unbuttoned and dropped, and Reed wondered about that, the question of authority. Like who gave it permission?
Hadawi passed around straws.
“Now then,” he said.
As subtly as possible Reed turned on his phone, tapped the telescope icon, and glossed the camera over the milkshake, a little something for Jimmy Stone, a little treat for him to unravel. Then he put the phone away and never took it back out.
A man in his early thirties met them on arrival and took Reed and Suleyman to the room they would share, two beds and a nightstand. A small arrow pointed the way to Mecca. In the morning they gathered to pray and then ran the abandoned ski trails. They were deep in the forest, at least four or five miles to the nearest town which was itself a pinprick in the vast north Georgia woods.
Reed didn’t know the name of it, and after a week it came to seem more rumor than place. Red America. White-bread mountain folk. A world of Pixy Stix and video poker. Candy bars and condoms. The white-sided Pentecostal churches and Redbox dispensers paling with sun. (He’d seen it briefly riding up in the professor’s car.) Mowing the grass with their iPods plugged into their ears. All the while not knowing, never knowing, that it is Allah who gives, and Allah who will take.
Do you know what the Koran says? the professor had once asked.
God is as close as the veins in your neck.
Their instructor was a man named Ahmad, besides Suleyman the only name Reed knew. Other men, experts on munitions or identity theft, came in and out of the camp, but Ahmad was the leader. At least so far as Reed could tell. Reed would see him at a meeting, standing silently at the back, and then he’d be gone for days. Returning with no word of where he had been or what he had done though the rumor was that he was organizing cells all over the Southeast.
He won’t stop until the infidel kills him, the others said.
Reed reckoned it true. He was a dense, persistent man who gave the impression of unyielding if slow progress. The son of Iraqi refugees who had fled after the First Gulf War. There was talk that he had worked as a translator for the Americans and seen what the Americans intended for the umma. He had remained patient, parlayed his services into citizenship and then, inside the great gates of the infidel state, disappeared from the eye of the government. Thus he was underground, thus he was one of them. They said the Americans wanted him dead. As did the Israelis. As did the world for all Reed knew. But Ahmad was not afraid.
He knows what it is to hurt.
Reed was beginning to know the same.
They ran in the morning and in the afternoon he learned to fieldstrip a Bushmaster, to set explosive charges, to fire pistols and kill with pressure cookers and common household ingredients.
Give me an assortment of goods, a trip to RadioShack, a trip to Dollar General, and I will make you a bomb.
Detergent.
Batteries.
Christmas lights.
Roofing nails.
He didn’t know their names, these other men, only Ahmad and Suleyman, and was careful to speak to Suleyman only in the privacy of their room. His friend was not well, worn down by the running, the bad food. Every morning they were given a single green pill for energy and one night Reed discovered Suleyman had a baggie of them, perhaps a dozen pills, concealed beneath his mattress.
“What are these?” Reed wanted to know when he came in.
“What are you doing? You’re going through my shit.”
“You took these, didn’t you?”
“Why are you going through my shit?”
“At least hide them properly,” Reed said.
“Give ’em to me.”
“Does Ahmad know you took them?”
“Fuck you, Reed. I need them, all right?”
Worse than the pills was the way Suleyman spoke: he spoke like the American teenager he was, no longer avoiding contractions, no longer affecting the voice of one for whom English was a language learned late and with great care. H
e had become himself.
“I’m thinking of leaving,” he told Reed a few days later.
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m thinking of going back to Atlanta. Look at my knee.”
His knee was swollen, Reed acknowledged this. But what was a swollen knee against the dead in Gaza or Raqqa or Kabul? What was a swollen knee against the Jew fist?
Reed kept running.
He began to assist Ahmad with openhanded combat.
They had all cut off their beards and should they ever be approached they were capable of killing with their hands. But they would not do this, Ahmad told them. They would speak the language of yes, ma’am and no, sir and God Almighty and America first. If they were pressed they might talk about the gays. It was safe to talk about the gays and everything they were ruining. About the Mexican. Should you be approached you could lament the Mexican. But they were never approached.
They would run and fight until their bodies burned and they passed into fire, knowing that soon enough that same fire would pass into light. When they were light they would illuminate the illusion of power that was the Jew and the dollar and the fat ball-capped men he had seen outside the feed and seeds and First Baptists.
Now and then Reed took from his bag a print he had torn from the Goya book Stone had given him. Saturn Devouring His Children. He had the phone, too, the burner. He had the professor’s number. He had James Stone’s number. But he didn’t call.
He ran. He fought.
He took his green pill and felt it within him, whatever it was.
He knew only that there was no more shame. They were doing what their brothers were doing in camps all over the world. ISIS. Al-Shabaab. Jabhat al-Nusra. Boko Haram. Jemaah Islamiyah. A roll call of martyrdom and faith, of bodies whispered into fire and then light.
In the meantime, so long as they were flesh, they were given antibiotics to fight the possibility of infection. The weakened immune system. The slightest cut. The mere trace of bacteria. Any of it might derail the coming of the caliphate. Not that they spoke of such things. Their concerns were practical. Each would leave here prepared to develop his own cell. Theory was left for others, the imam, the professor.