Radius Islamicus

by Julian Samuel

  Where am I now?

  In the old folks home?

  Or am I a young man in London doing another set of events?

  Did I see the paintings in my mother’s womb? Will I mastermind events in Canada’s nice cities? What were the icebergs if not amniotic fluid in another form? And why did they all lean in the same direction? What force pulled them? What force pulled me down along my mother’s canal? That we immigrated, or were vectored here or were born here, makes no difference; makes all the difference. Do we care if we get caught? We’ll progress even if they catch us. Societies transform when we’re in their prisons. Do we get tortured in various cities in the dark world? We don’t have much to tell because we’re not an organized army. In their prisons, we become Islamic gold. They can’t say that they’ve finished with us; we’re right there in their prisons. And we have family and friends who make life worth living.

  The Canadian coast awakens me. What was I in England? Who am I now? What have I become? How many airports did I move through? Why is the concept of forgiveness as strange as acquiring Lunar citizenship? Is it impossible for us to forget cotton becoming shirts? Am I the man in the airport waiting for the flight to equality?

  I look at our ship’s black hull as we drive away. Anver Ahmed born in Sialkot, near Bradford cosmologically speaking. We ate fish and chips, ate Paya on Fridays, ate Baysin-ke-roti, and knew how to re-calibrate camshafts — top dead centre, bottom dead centre. He joined us in international stuff from Anchorage to Ulan Bator. We regretted doing Ulan but, somehow, we just had to wake them from a dun landscape that allows for centuries of slumber.

  2

  Chanel Vegas Collection

  The first sign that things have changed is when you can’t hear anything. You’re under a large, protective dome that’s hovering metres above your head.

  Then the lecture hall has an odour coming from Noam not because he’s old but because of the melting glass. The lights in the hall flicker and manufactured things become, as you used to say, de-manufactured. If you’re wearing glasses, shadowy and clear bars like an interference pattern form on your lenses. The seconds feel like hours. Sound and vision entangle at a level we studied at school.

  Before the smoke, a silent white flash fills the halls: Buddhism meets Islam as you said once or twice. Noam’s words can’t be heard. The protective sound dome saves us from his words. Seconds ago, he said: “The slaughter in East Timooo . . .” The lights flicker like thin clouds moving across a full moon over the Bay of Fundy. I can see you laughing because I just mentioned a place in Canada? If you’re in all that fire, the damage happens slowly: an airborne pen travels through a hat, and then through the face of an undergraduate; his eyes and nose are now an oval flesh and blood mix that hovers in space before streaking into the wall. An iPad spins itself into a Frisbee which snaps a neck then fractures into parts of eyes and lips, app icons, so on and so forth. No matter how slow these events seem to the victims, to an amused, distant, viewer like Anver, events move fast. In the blink of an eye, everything except large structures revert to dust.

  Joseph, you think I’ll tell the cops what we did. I won’t do anything of the sort, but, Joseph, I think I should tell you that I’ll die today. I know you’re going to find this letter because I put it in one of the books you’re reading.

  I know you’re here to make sure we don’t tell anyone. Why would you think this? I know you’ll find this note, and when you read it, it’ll be like hearing my voice say your name. We’re almost the same age and we’re both mentally sound. I also made notes all the time, just like you. I’ve had a meaningful life with you, working side by side; nothing spoilt our connection. You’re the loveliest. What were the chances I’d be working with you? We didn’t get caught because our advisors used some kind of higher thinking to decrease the chances of getting caught when the cards were stacked against us. What does stacked mean? Does it mean that things are predetermined?

  On my way to this operation, I ran into my neighbour on the way to pick you up. Was this a case of predetermination? No, not really, but I think about it all the time. Why wouldn’t I? This was my operation. On this particular bombing you were just another follower. About five hundred were to get killed. Lofty? Yes, but nothing happens if you don’t set goals.

  In preparation for those fall term blasts, I remember filing my nails and slowly, pushing the half-moons into the light of a warm-tone light bulb, putting on gold nail polish. I know you like looking at my dark complexion with gold. Lunch is set at such and such a time and place, after which, a bomb will explode at a large lecture hall where he’ll be speaking in front of hundreds of students: and, thank Allah, in front of the public at large. See how useful Chanel Vegas Collection, Le Vernis Gold Fingers Nail Polish can be? Nothing like Vegas to distract us Moslems from the killings.

  Daylight enters from the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround the lecture hall. Tree leaves sway outside. Room lights, spectacles, ceramic glass on phones break into millions of bits, due to the radically new stuff we’re using. It takes about two hundred hours and/or three centuries for the dust to really settle.

  Someone in our group did the calculations for the job. And, of course, we calculated the radius islamicus, which was many, many metres. Bathetically, an innocent wall crumbles onto running students and the public at large. Thank Allah. Why did all of us in this group of terrorists study science? Their terrorism against us is so strong because their science is stronger than ours. So we connected science plus morals plus innocent intestines flowing up walls.

  Joseph, I’m thinking about our past: wet sound waves hit the ears like an insulting slap from a Mullah in Yorkshire. Upper-middle class students listen to inoffensive words by Noam; he tells them a story of how Arafat told him that the hippocampus is the most anti-terrorist part of the brain so we should have moved Israelis to a hippocampus near Camden.

  Some of the things you used to say made me laugh.

  Things made of glass are coming to an end and, in fact, life itself is coming to an end. Sheets of smoke, shoes, arms, legs, throats, and detached fingers and toes zip past. Bits of flesh stretch out like billowing large, pink tents, then deflate like old balloons; bodies flying overhead, roll on their own axes and hit the walls.

  And why haven’t we been hit? Well, because you and I are in the MRI room getting treated for terrorism. The MRI room is near where we are doing today’s bang.

  Joseph, it’s because of you, and practising with you, that I’ve been near enough to smaller test explosions to feel the initial hot silence. The white flash means paradise for the engulfed ones: just compensation for having known The Faerie Queene better than the works of Mohammad for all those years.

  Joseph, I knew how to think clearly before I met you, but I could never do what I’m doing today were it not for you and only you who encouraged women to conceive, plan and execute bombings even when menstruating, jam rags expanding to infinity and back.

  We did another bombing before our main bombing. Why am I telling you when you already know? I am reminding you for the pleasure of reminding you. An Israeli politician was invited by a local political party to visit them at their office; we did lightweight cultural bangs. From our point of view these were non-terrorist bombings, no matter how the city interpreted them. The city aquarium, we read in the papers, had three small bull sharks. When our tiny bombs shattered the glass several people were injured by sharks flapping around on the flooded floor. Two kids, one Moslem we learned later, were bitten, one lost a leg, and their bonsai collection accidentally caught fire, which we regretted. Most Moslems I know respect bonsai trees as much as they respect religion. We did small damage: one leg and a few bites, far from balancing things. Of course, nothing to fill us with guilt or anything like that. As well, we bombed the Côte-Saint-Luc metro station at 3:30 in the morning. ‘Twas only coincidence no one got killed. We spread these events across several hours just to ratchet up the tension. You agreed with me about bombing the fish
before getting the international talent speaking at McGill. Surf and turf on the menu for today. And, in a strange way we can see it as liberating fish from zoos. We couldn’t get the animal liberation people to support us even though our struggles were similar. Saving a whale is much like saving a Moslem. You used to say that some whales have converted to Islam and from the deep, cold Atlantic, they send sound-messages to Haram al-Sharif.

  After lunch, we had to go to the hospital as cover. I remember making you hold my hand in the car on the way to the hospital. I don’t like going to the hospital at all, but we have to go because of the funding. Nothing to do with health, or perhaps a bit to do with health. I must be mentally ill or I’m a pretend-patient with normal looking appointments in an excellent research hospital getting MRIs or CT scans simply to have a cover.

  In the car on the way to the hospital, your hand enveloped mine and I felt gushy, as we headed south on Avenue du Parc and turned right on Pine, autumn leaves flapping ostentatiously on both sides. We turn right into the underground parking at the Royal Victoria Hospital. We arrive to get the final technical assistance for the five-hundred-people-job we’re doing today. But, I am still being tested for something; I mean I have something which has to be confirmed or not confirmed. So two, rather than three, birds with one stone: I get my scan; we get more funding from our connection.

  As we enter the grey building with carved wooden doorways, I remember you turning your head south to take a look at the skyscrapers in downtown Montreal, the Saint Lawrence river in the far distance, the university — nursery of Canadian imperialism — nestled in the foreground. You looked in the direction of the lecture hall and looked at me. The metal-skinned elevator takes us to the fourth floor. In the waiting room, under the fluorescent lights, you sit down to read a magazine from the last century. Holding a pad, the nurse, with a Jamaican accent, asks for me. Usha. I’m Irish but nicknamed Usha — you thought that up.

  I leave you holding a copy of Time Magazine with an old British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, on the cover. I get up, smiling, and follow the nurse to the MRI theatre, where I slide into a blue frock. My toes and the arch of my feet that you love touching settle on the cold floor. I’ve been here a few times. Funding plus supplies for bombs and coordination always take a few visits to the Neuro. The nurse knows me. I like her. I’ve been coming here twice a year for years, I lie down on a long steel tray and the god of blinking pin lights and small beeps pulls me into the plastic cylinder which could, with the right quantity of C4, launch me across the park and into upper Westmount among the wood pigeons. What might I see on such a flight? Trees with bright fall colours, above me the stars receding. Whose roof would I fall through? What would the rich families be talking about at dinner time? I ask the nurse if she could launch me into outer space. I tell her that I could accelerate the effects of the circus explosive by pushing with all the thunder in my thighs. If I’m in low orbit my friends will not have to worry about me. Oh, she’s doing orbital terrorism now — using lasers to bomb satellites — don’t worry about her. But here, Joseph, in the duniya of the small, provincial world of electrons I am stationary. I’ll live in this cylinder for the next forty-five minutes. What will they see inside me? I suspect I have something.

  All the health bills are paid by our terrorist stock exchange, all set up by a Moslem with a shaved snatch. Allah o akbar to the razors meeting flesh not far from the clit, just the hair, not the clit. You’d pretend to be Max Planck as you touched my clit. Oh Max, oh Max, I can’t believe you gave me a hand job in Yad Vashem after you trimmed my hairs with a razor — your trained hand removing the hair so the clit could stick its head out and dare that Islamic edge.

  These men and women of the MRI machines must conduct mission after deep mission into my body. While I’m here, I think, what’s Joseph doing now, is he still reading that Time Magazine or has he picked up one of the old National Geographics I saw stacked on a coffee table in the waiting room? The MRI room has a high ceiling and fluorescent lights. Later, you’re in my MRI room, sitting in the chair in the corner, faint, yellowcoloured walls rising behind you. It looks like we’re in an old folks home but we aren’t; we’re here at a research hospital.

  Why do I have to go through the MRI every time? Cover. I just do as you ask. You see me lying on the tray, slowly sliding into the plastic world. I smile slightly and move my legs.

  I teach high school part-time, grades seven and eight. I’m tired. I’ve adjusted my makeup for the second, third, and fourth time today, red lips, fine black outlines for my eyes. I’m a bunch of nerves. All day. Nerves, but calm nerves. The tube envelops me like a placenta in rigor mortis. Strangely, the buzzing and knocking sounds cause me to daydream, but not sleep. The nurse won’t allow me to doze.

  The sounds of science comfort me; they become chimes on a porch in a Montreal suburb. The liquid they inject into my arm heats me. I feel the heat every time. Are they giving me a CT Scan or an MRI? Here, Joseph, is what I saw in my daydream while I was in the scan tube: I’m at a terrorist meeting in Toronto where a young woman is telling me about how she met her husband at a test bombing in Sudan. Civilized people go to openings for Jeff Koons, we go to test bombings. She keeps talking: Islam this and Islam that. We have a similar educational background but her chatter is making my head hurt and I can’t escape her empty religious talk. I keep thinking about Jeff Koons’ colourful bunnies. We approached this artist to make a fifty metre shiny abstract version of Mohammad (PBUH) receiving revelations.

  In the corner of the large room, you and someone that looks like Anver — perhaps a doctor — are talking. There isn’t a nurse here. She’s behind glass, away from the electrons.

  The man with a black beard says hello. You both go into a smaller room leaving me in the plastic cylinder which is making buzzing sounds like house-trance music made by a hipster from Cologne, and for a moment I feel guilty that I’ll be playing a key part in blowing up such a prestigious person. Why I’ve agreed to do this I don’t know. We’re not going to blow it up now — not right this very minute. I’m here getting tested and treated for terrorism, so we have a few minutes before things go splat, loud noise, and an awful lot of smoke. And we can’t stop the bomb now. What if at the last minute the university changes the location of the lecture?

  Why would a doctor help us destroy lives here in Montreal? All this killing of people sometimes baffles me, but I go on doing it. I guess it’s nothing but retaliation, or defense, or just a job like working at a shoe store or teaching at a university. Today, I am on my period so of course I’m having doubts about blowing up students, and the public at large. Yes, I blame self-doubt on my period. I’ll take some more Islamic Midol — it expired in 632 AD but I’ll take my chances. The Great Book does not forbid women to bomb when bleeding. Joseph, my love I’m saying all this to make you laugh. We won’t tell the cops and we won’t tell the mullahs we called you the Red Leader.

  Then, suddenly, the tray on which I’ve been lying starts to move. My exam is over and the nurse says that if there is anything Dr. Changberg will call me. They always say there’s nothing new. “New” is a question of degree. I live my life, the electrons, theirs.

  A few minutes from now, when the famous thinker speaks, everything will change. From our point of view, they’ll have to scrape off the flesh and rebuild that particular wing of the university. Perhaps they will do this with Saudi money. McGill gets new wings built with Saudi money. Directly, or indirectly: did Wahabi cosmology fund us also? Do you remember or is your brain going also? Does it matter who funds this? It’s all Allah’s funding in the end, the good and the bad.

  While getting funding for the very next thing, we cause the worst collective haemorrhage in Canadian university history, but they made weapons and sold them to the wrong types. Can we justify what we did? Perhaps only to ourselves. About today: I swear I felt the bomb blast right here in this medical instrument. The nurse tells me that something has happened. What? I ask. People
are running out of the building, I can see and hear ambulances. Within hours, downtown Montreal will be in Kandaharian lockdown, just like we caused in, as you used to say, Marlowe’s London.

  With finesse, I slip off the blue frock and look at my tits and wonder if the MRI has jostled my tit-mind continuum: after a CT scan or MRI I never know if my tits are in the same time zone. You and I both have advanced degrees in terror related science and engineering, and I have the largest breasts of any woman terrorist in the world. Lots of women did lots of killing. The press showed nothing, just the extremists beating women, which, in a way, was far from the truth.

  I put on my not-so-high heels and walk over to pick you up in the waiting room. I don’t walk quickly. The nurse and a guard tell us to head home right away. Someone in the waiting room says it was bomb. We act shocked, but not unhappy. Pretending to be unhappy would make us hypocrites, which is forbidden, just like having the red sea flowing down your legs during these events. Aden to Port Said, then across to Yad Vashem for a red squirt orgasm on all the saddening photos.