We meet back in the waiting room. You’ve heard the news. You smile as I pull you from an old National Geographic featuring Eisenhower’s visit to a large country which has lots of mosques. Joseph, why did Ike visit Pakistan? We take Eisenhower to your apartment with us as a memento, when we arrive you do it to me on the corner of the bed. You ask me to say: I love killing people, especially the innocent ones who are out for a day of shopping while the other half . . . et cetera blah blah. I do as you say, etc. etc., etc. Joseph, I always do as you say. You blow your load into my red paratha and I cover my lack of having an orgasm, at least the sex made me laugh. As usual, I almost come. I think laughing is more important than the hidden Imam who is coming. I’m sort of bleeding just like all the students at McGill did a few hours ago. You came quickly, because of Ramadan. I wondered if we were actually in Ramadan. Perhaps a good laugh is better than an orgasm? You put your head down on the pillow and become my adorable friend.
I see lightning from your sparse nineteenth floor apartment window at Sherbrooke and Saint Denis. Your apartment has Ikea tables, chair, this bed we’re on, the book shelves, and on top of the glass Expedit bookshelf on wheels, a do-it-yourself Ikea super-small kiloton nuclear bomb. You’re on the bed. I ask: “Where’s that from?”
In a clear voice from the polka-dotted black and white Ikea pillow you reply: “From Mohammad’s Neurological Inconsistency.”
From your balcony we see the city covered with heavy rain, ambulances and police cars moving in the streets. No sirens, just flashing police car lights. We come back into the bedroom. A coma, like the near-coma I experienced in the scan tube, now engulfs us. We sleep soundly for about an hour, and then slowly, we pull out of the cone of sleep, get up and drive to Jean Talon, an area which we’ll never bomb. Hindu dosas arrive at our table, conversation seems unnecessary. We’ve had rather a good day. On the way back to the car, we laugh at the wet streets reflecting upside down neon Urdu.
Now, I am super old. You live down the hall from me. You watch me day and night. I can’t believe we drenched all those innocents in their own blood and the blood of others while I myself was having a heavy flow day. See how I’ve been influenced by your sense of humour?
We’ve come to this home to die, but they’ve made it so hard to die. You come to sleep with me sometimes. One just goes on living. It’s the medicines they give us. We simply can’t die. It’s terrorism to keep us alive. The sun rises, we wake. We’re still alive. We can’t undo medical advances and they can’t undo their state terrorism. The medical advances keep us fit for more work. Maybe we’ll get younger and start all over again but this time with larger bombs. The big powers are still winning, there’s work to be done. We don’t want to live, yet they make us live. We are bored, endlessly bored with simple things such as breathing and eating.
Joseph, you’re the coldest: the murders don’t come back to you. You always murdered in a forward sense. You don’t want anyone to confess our lovely bombings to the press. Journalists have come by, but that could be Anver playing the fool, at your instigation, testing our faculties against a clock that spins as fast as a Frisbee on a summer day, a winter’s day, a spring day.
Our potential leakage keeps your memory from failing. You also take pills for memory improvement. You think one of us will leak? All this keeps you young.
You tell me these days, old people are more energetic than old folks in the past. You want us to have ordinary ends, but how can we have ordinary ends when we’re exceptional people who’ve never been caught?
The McGill job was not as good as we’d hoped. Only 295 killed, and some will have to spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. These numbers will not put us on the honour list. Inshallah, we’ll improve. To put things coarsely, Noam became vapour by explosives researched and developed by blah blah blah MITs all over the world, but alas, I repeat myself.
Some of the field terrorists working on this bombing make lunches for their kids. A friend who helped us had to go home to make dinner for her kids, and they were going to watch Seinfeld and other Jewish comedy programmes such as the Big Terrorist Crunch.
You, Joseph were and are fuelled by something larger, I don’t know what that was, maybe that’s why you kept dreaming up bigger and bigger ways to balance things. Inshallah, I’ll die now. Forgive me for leaving — I mean dying. You made me laugh insanely. Joseph, these will be my last words, so much for their monopoly on violence.
3
Lahore, Atlantic, LHR
Not only did Dr. Rosa Luxemberg wear a tight-fitting blue suit with a fuchsia blouse that boldly revealed what Islam might reshape with hydrochloric acid, she also had an I-will-not-look-away-from-your-eyes-because-I-am-in-the-Islamic World confidence flowing through her.
A day ago, she flew in from Austin, Texas, and today, during a sunny Friday afternoon, she went to visit Joseph at his office on the university campus. Her shoulder-length wavy blonde hair helped her personable smile when she spoke with Joseph. He was tall, fine-featured, had a light complexion, and had understated, consequential leadership abilities.
Luxemberg offered Joseph a job at her university in Austin, not only because he was a promising mathematician, but because he was also someone who, as a young man, knew about things in other distant fields: Elitzur-Vaidman testing problems and string theory, to mention two. With his travel paper work complete, his contract signed, and with a view to living permanently in America, he went to Allama Iqbal Airport and left the ancient city.
Although Joseph was not in any way connected to cricket, he made it a habit to frequently telephone the members of the campus cricket team, and he went to on- and off-campus meetings with the Lahore Abroad Cricket Team. There were not altogether surprising consequences to his many phone calls and meetings with other members of LACT. These meetings did not interfere with his work as a mathematician, but after the presentation of his much-awaited paper, he felt he should leave America, where he had lived for about five years.
Day 1, Flight 035, 24 Dhu l-Hijja AH 1408
Ten thousand metres below him, the Atlantic slips by, and within hours the Texas afternoon changes to a starry night. A few hours later, as they move toward Heathrow, a thin band of red sunlight peels the dark blue horizon: the plane is nearing Ireland, and then over historic Lockerbie with its Libyan restaurants offering Maghreban complexities in the stomach of a goat. Our sable earth, mother of dread and fear, gently curves. The descent to Heathrow has begun. A newer life will begin. Hissing engines move the passengers over the troubles, a layer of skin growing over their orange eyes.
Earlier, before the flight, at the ticket counter at George Bush International Airport, Joseph noticed two tall, pot-bellied men in ten-gallon hats wander around the boarding gates; then two beefy Immigration and Naturalization Service officials: one, a black man, dressed in a white T-shirt and black jeans, placed his hand on the check-in counter at Houston Airport. The shades of black between the inside of his palm and the back of his hand is distinct enough to make a clear line from pink to black. Joseph remembers staring at these hands for what seemed like five minutes.
As the plane banks, sunlight scrapes the inside walls of the cabin. Coffee laced with caustic soda is served by a flight attendant with blonde eyes and blonde hair and a steel helmet with horns.
Two Arabs, sitting a few seats to the side, move constantly in their seats. They are planning something. They’re dressed in expensive suits, but they don’t wear ties. “Flying 747s for Dummies” falls out of the seat pouch. They get up. The passengers, in unison, bury their eyes into their newspapers only to peek over the top edges. Everyone watches them. The Saudis return from the toilet singing a version of “Okie from Muskogee.” What kind of notes did they leave in the washroom? Joseph imagines he will see the following written on a napkin in the washroom:
I see water and God. Allah and pure water — some salt in water. Now. Ready for final Atlantic landing, please to inform Allah of my virtuees in earthely life. There
Is No God but Allahs and Mohammad (PBUH ) is the last pilot of Islam — not in plural — singularly only. Pray now. We will not land. We see for the last time. Excuse to my english. It is write by arab man who is god servant. In the name of God, the compassionate, the Mercifful . . .
Yours truly,
Wa-sabi’
There is no flight attendant with an open jugular vein squirting blood onto the cabin windows. There isn’t a broken vodka bottle on the floor. The seat belts alert lights flash. Are they planning new ways to paralyze the western world? Are they going to put something in the water supply that will make all of Philadelphia deaf as a pomegranate from Kandahar? Will they inject zeros and ones into national TV that will show the president making a speech in Pashto? One of the Arabs calls for water. A camel with blue eyes and a southern drawl pulls water out of the well in the flying oasis.
The Americans weren’t comfortable with their faces: otherwise there wasn’t a problem. Drinking water and pissing it out is not the work of non-state actors.
While listening to Brahms, Joseph gets up to go the washroom. He found the CD somewhere in the airport. Maybe he should not go through with this. Maybe he should go back to this:
F = MA
Fazil = Mohammad • Anver
Or perhaps he should return to something he saw in his alphabet soup:
E = hf
Eram = Hafeez • Fazil
He thinks about getting rid of all his identity cards in the toilet.
The plastic covered photos are difficult to snap. The airline ticket receipt is shredded easily. A National Bank of America credit card refuses to bend and break. He drops it into the toilet bowl intact and uses his hand to push it through the vortex, while drops of the blue water climb up to his wrist. His finger touches the spot where the exhausted airplane food of thousands has passed. A travel document with a long serial number flows over Saint Mungo Street, Glasgow. The ink-stamped words “temporary” and “cancelled” are visible on the pages of a removal document. A photo of his face sticks to the grey metal toilet bowl. In a toilet at 8000 metres and falling, Joseph stares at photogenic Joseph looking as earnest as Gandhi standing in a corn field in Punjab, tube in hand, giving himself a Hindu identity enema. The blue water, flowing in a tight blue spiral, ripples over his face. The suction flush obliterates Brahms and Gandhi. Every bit of proof is scattered over the mutinous waves near Helensburgh. The proof of who he is spreads all over Scotland. As he returns to his seat, his papers still in order, he hears:
It is now 7:05 local time and the temperature on the ground is 15 degrees Celsius. As you can see, we have scattered clouds and light showers. As your captain, I apologize for the delay at Houston but I hope your flight has been enjoyable. Have a good stay in London and thank you for flying with us.
The passengers shift through the elephant trunk into transit. Everyone seems to be going where they need to be, but he’s lost. He walks a little faster. No baggage claim to worry about. He must get rid of his olive suit and white polyester shirt. He must change his clothes. Can any security people identify him? Anything left behind in a pocket or in the suitcase? There is a small rip on the left shoulder — maybe they’ll remember this? His hair flops neatly over his ears. He turns into a corridor and disappears into the crowd. Fatigue sets in as he tries to recover from the flight. A voice spreads in transit: “Please do not leave your luggage unattended. All unattended luggage will be seized and searched. Ne laissez pas vos baggages . . .” In German, Spanish, Arabic, and others.
As he falls asleep, the languages become a hive of sounds. A turmeric-coloured fog drips from the bodies of the parked aircraft. Dark nose-cones poke through the vapour which, cyclically speaking, was produced by all the burning jet fuel. A black private jet, its undercarriage obscured in fog, floats into a hangar.
Will the fog cover LHR for a century? Men in orange overalls moor the last of the antique jumbos; by their movements, the jumbos, nod back to the men. A flock of Tibetan monks wearing long saffron gowns float into transit. Passengers crowd the waiting rooms and toilets. Heathrow is inefficient. The toilet line-ups are long. The toilet floors are now watery due to the volume of traffic. This disgusts the Europeans; the Asians, especially the South Asians, are more understanding, walking on tippy toes through a shallow field of diluted urine.
People are sleeping, sitting, reading books and newspapers; they wait for the fog to lift, or for their turn at the toilet. On a long grey bench, a man snores. A nun tries to read but is distracted by the snoring. Daniel in the den with lions. In the far distance, Joseph with his trolley strolls through the immobilized crowd. He’s the only one moving. A closed umbrella swings like a fruit bat from his trolley. He walks out of the toilet wearing a Brazilian national team football jersey. His briefcase rests on the trolley. He moves through terminal F, past gate 12, past the Air India counter. He walks to a rubber plant near the farthest wall of the terminal, then back to the Icelandair departure gate, which is packed with passengers. He stares at the flickering flight announcement board: Jordanian Airlines 0973, via Vienna to Calcutta — delayed. Strangely, this disappoints him; he sits on a bench and looks around. He notices two identical pot-bellied Sikh men in their forties. They’re wearing identical yellow turbans and pink starched shirts. They are motionless, asleep, turbans touching. Joseph removes his earphones, sits down in front of the snoring twins and closes his eyes and falls asleep. The announcement board flutters like a flock of birds lifting into the air: BA Copenhagen ON TIME: FLT: 047: boarding. The wait could take days. How long will he remain undetected? Why am I waiting in an airport? Why the uncertainty in principle? Are they watching? Is waiting in the airport for so many days a professional way to conduct terrorism?
The fog defeats the powerful airport lights, small matchsticks in a forest at night. What was here before the airplanes? A pre-toxic meadow with cows? Peasants resisting aristocratic land encroachments? Centuries hiss by. A hand touches his shoulders. A sari-clad Air India attendant with a red spot the size of a one pound coin on her forehead in clear Glaswegian asks: “Sorry to wake you up sir, but aren’t you waiting for the Calcutta flight?” Joseph stares at the departure gate. Everyone has boarded. The sun is shining outside. “Huh?” he musters. Leaning towards him, the attendant waits for an answer. He doesn’t look at her directly but at the ceiling-mounted security camera. A moving walkway transports him and his trolley to terminal G and the routine of the wait in transit. He sleeps.
Day 2, 25 Dhul Hijjah 1408
From high above at sunset, the airport must look like an insect with long legs. Glowing, red-orange roads snake out from its concrete shell like veins in a bloodshot eye. Inside, Heathrow comes back to life. Shiny aircraft move along the tarmac, runway markers, C-47, C-46 are blocked from view, then reappear as the aircraft moves. The tail fin of an SAS plane cuts through the sunlight that falls on Joseph’s face.
He walks away from the Sikhs, and then a few minutes later he returns to sit in front of the two yellow-turbaned men who are still touching each other’s dreams. The static swirls of their turbans resemble the rotation of the fan blades of a parked 747. Perhaps, he daydreams, the slowly turning blades will undo their turbans, pulling their long hair into the turbines.
Sikhs dream about nothing but food. One of the sleeping Sikhs must be dreaming about aloo parathas. A paratha slowly floats up out of his turban into the humming air of transit and floats down into the other Sikh’s turban-mind. Transit passengers stop and observe the mind transfer. Joseph spreads out on a bench and pulls his coat over his head. Two security guards walk past him. Under the safety of his coat, he imagines a black and white security monitor in the airport secure zone revealing him sleeping on a bench next to a tall living palm tree, sleeping as thirty million passengers pass by his nose.
The PA system calls for a lost Mr. Fazool Samundur, or Ms. Lal Chout, or a Mrs. Penny Point to come to the information desk. Perhaps when his partners arrive he’ll hear a silky cathedral voice stati
ng throughout transit: “Your fellow terrorists have arrived — they’re all dressed in black.”
There is a large TV screen in Bon Voyage, a local transit café. Peela Dakhavaa is on strike, and team captain Imran Zindagee Ultaa has set an attacking field, with two short legs, a silly point, and a man out on the pull at deep third man. Is the television sending him a message?
A school of irrational sadhus wearing saffron robes, surrounded by ancient mists, walk by the Singapore Airlines gate. They’ve arrived in England via fifteen hours of rational means. Inside their bags-with-sandalwoodhandles lie musical instruments, small black lacquered boxes, incense, and bifocals. Tanned shoulders. Buddhist passports are never dog-eared. Their periodic presence here always brings the sensation that the air within transit is renewing itself. But it isn’t. There isn’t any wind, except when a whirring airport cart comes by driven by a red-nosed driver with a plastic ID dangling from his neck. There aren’t any fluctuations in temperature, even the sunshine, which scrapes across in window-like forms, can’t alter it. From Bon Voyage, he can see a monk purchasing a Braun electric shaver.
Surrounded by glass, he can’t hear the geriatric jumbos landing on the tarmac, plumes of burning rubber in long, white screeches. 19:05 — a creaking Ilyushin grumbles off to Moscow. Nearby, a jumbo taxies to a predetermined gate, wings drooping from Bengali fatigue. Dhaka enters, causing him to think of Mohammad Anver and Mohammad Iqbal. When will they arrive?
A pinpoint of light in the evening sky — this could be them — slowly becomes a vast Airbus bringing lung infections, the first cases of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, contraband, and illegals who provide jobs for lawyers.
Radius Islamicus Page 3