Again, he notices more passengers: a Bolivian woman with a round face wearing a bowler hat; a fifty-year-old man whose beard covers his face; a Turkish Sufi with a droopy face and a surging beard wearing a robe of many colours.
From a telephone booth he calls Gorgana.
A male voice says: “Hello.”
“Hello. Do I have 40 17 89 00 89, Gorgana. Please.”
In the distance, Gorgana is informed about the call; Londonistani sounds in the background. Gorgana is now on the phone. “Hello.”
“Hello.”
“Joseph?” Gorgana asks.
“Yes, Usha. Thanks for your help.” Joseph calmly hangs up.
He trolleys away. A rotating advertising column — one of the ads is for a safari park outside a city — turns to reveal an image of the earth in black space: “interstellar banking.” Two passengers have hot towels over their faces. They remove them in unison. They are identical twins. Joseph is sitting near them in a row of passengers.
Day 5, 28 Dhul Hijjah 1408
Joseph is now going for a sink shower. Beside him, a suit is washing up. Calmly, Joseph stuffs the old shirt in the rubbish bin and puts on a clean white shirt and dabs on aftershave which is also tossed into the rubbish. He parts his hair on the left side. He starts to throw things from his trolley into the trash and heads off to Bon Voyage.
He’s at the Air Malta gate. He is waiting, groomed, ready for London. He walks past the boarding gate when passengers flow out.
After brushing past each other in front of McDonald’s, Gorgana takes Joseph to the underground cargo bay. They walk under the noisy water pipes bolted to the concrete ceiling.
A friend within the airport has had the security cameras in this section turned off for repairs. The long corridor leads to a cargo storage area which is flooded with sodium lights. A cage in the corner contains two large black panthers. Panther number one is still in a daze. Panther number two has defeated the tranquillizer and is pacing back and forth. Number two gives a slow rolling growl, stretches and peers out at Gorgana and Joseph.
“Where are they going?”
Gorgana points to the waybill taped to the cage. Shanghai Zoo, Customs clearance: 1C948R8491. China Air. “But not really to a zoo.” She snips the air with her fingers like chop sticks. Joseph looks away and imagines what the panthers have been through:
We met one day at an inter-species supper. She has melanistic colouration just like mine, black and shiny. Now, she’s sleeping. Can’t wait to see her yellow eyes again. They were filled with tropical sunshine when I last saw them. We were walking near a lagoon not far from the river. Originally, we’re from farther north: we live near where we can smell the field workers, farmers and their cows and goats.
Sometimes, the dust mixes with the rain and we can see mud stuck in their cloven hooves.
When we hear voices we move away until the sun drops, then we can do what we like.
The afternoon rain tapers. Now, a few drops fall from the larger leaves. I lick the white clouds reflected in the lagoon. She’s noticed the goat’s smell. I keep trying to get in between the goat and her. The smell isn’t moving, this means that the goat is not moving. My friend pretends that I’ve haven’t noticed her pointing her nose in that direction. She smiles at me as we drink. I claw her thigh.
The goat is no longer present in her mind, I think. But wait, the goat is now in her mind.
In fact her mind is now filled with goat. The goat’s left or right nostril is clogging with fresh blood; someone’s done that with a razor so that we’d smell both the blood and the piss.
The topmost leaves on the tree shake. The twine — cat-gut, made from one of us — will not break. The more she thrashes the tighter it gets. The goat knows we’re waiting. A nose dripping blood on the green leaves.
My friend steps into an anthill, she shakes them off and pushes her open claws into the jungle.
The hunters are using something that covers their odour or makes them smell like blue parrots after a rain shower. Overhead, a large parrot screeches. The afternoon is becoming early evening.
She thinks if we don’t act now, the other panthers will eat the goat and we’ll suck on entrails. I try to keep her mind on the white clouds reflected in the water. I lick her long body, trying to get her mind out of the trap. I’ve succeeded in distracting her? No. She’s trembling. Okay, we’ll walk past the goat, just one circle. Just to see if it’s safe. She bites my neck. I growl. The entire area is now fearpissed. A radar-driven idiotic fruit bat stirs from slumber. I try to reach for it. This makes her laugh. A python with yellow triangles on its sides elongates up a tree so he can better see what’s about to happen.
Goat. Mind. Goat. No mind, just goat. What season are we in? Plenty of four-legged food around. We both know it’s a trap, so let’s walk away from it. How will we know it’s a trap if we don’t test it? What if we go there and rip the goat to shreds and nothing bad happens to us? Dinner with blood.
A breeze moves the clouds away from the surface of lagoon. The idea of piss converts into hairy surface flesh, bone, muscles, and veins, squirting blood, fat. We’ll gnash away at its gums and chew off the knuckles. We’ll bite her neck bringing departure within seconds. Squirt. I hear blood evaporating off the edge of her lips.
Leaves as big as parachutes dither in the sunlight. I see the blue gun turning white in the sun. What are they using these days? I am thirty years old. I’ve seen everything. I’ve survived. I can’t smell them and the wind is coming from their direction.
Like lizards, we drag down on the jungle floor, hearts going like mad. We’re in this together. What’s a trap? We’ll kill the hunters — it’ll be across the Daily Panther by sun up.
Black Panthers kill two white hunters and eat goat: Heroes.
Our whiskers touch. We kiss. They can tell we’re nearing: the anxiety of the stupid little piebald goat, ballerina panic ears flapping, rib cage hammering against the tree, is now evident to the entire jungle. Its eyes bulge when she feels my friend nearing, grass tenderly conforming to her body like waves in a warm sea. I laugh at the goat bashing its sides against the banana tree. We both remember the motto of all panthers: meat on the outside becomes meat on the inside.
Tangled in more twine. We tire out the goat by just being there. Broken streams of piss run down her leg. Fear governs us all: the scentless hunters, the goat, us. Love binds us. My gracious panther — queen of the jungle — circles the goat. I crawl behind her, pissblood everywhere in the air. She’s going to claw her bladder first. I have my partner’s bum in front of my face, moving, and I’m supposed to be hunting.
Eye-to-eye: the goat is dead still, as though a plot has suddenly been bared and the actors have come to the stage’s edge. A banana falls on its head. We laugh. Poor little goat. I’m in the tall jungle grass hoping they will not see us and that we’ll soon have goat blood all over our mouths. So, hunter, where’s your trap? My friend stops and raises her head. She feels the trap around us. If this desire is not the trap then what is?
A dart politely sinks into her sweaty neck. She’s twitching like the goat now, sleep comes to her. The goat is balancing the banana on her head. My love and devotion propel me toward my panther. Of course I’ll share her fate. An insignificant bee stings me. What’s a mother and father? We ate a gazelle at New Year’s at Kampala four months ago. Our yellow eyes shut instantly. I dream about the farmers and their cows. My paw touches her neck, and I dream about our walks in the forest. Who is going to feed our baby panthers in our lair? My mother and father are distant memories.
I hear the sound of cars on a broken road, then echoing voices in a large room. We are in a cool space with no lights. My chest hurts. There’s a large bottle with a tube. Suck tube equals water. We can figure it out. It’s dark.
I can taste the chemical in my mouth. We hear a screech and then our cage shakes and then we can’t feel any motion. I see harsh daylight.
I smell air that I’ve encountered on t
he clothes of Europeans. We’re on a cart of some kind.
There are airplanes everywhere and men walking around holding yellow pads in their hands. Eyes everywhere. Yellow eyes. I’m not scared. I’m a panther. What do these airplanes know? We’re now in a room with large lights on the ceiling. I’m more or less awake, but my friend’s still sleeping: she must have received the same dose although she’s smaller. A slip of paper hanging on our cage states: Shanghai Zoo, and various numbers attached to customs and veterinarian export papers. We’re going there by China Air.
I hear a door open. Two people walk toward our cage. I let out a big growl to scare them.
But it comes out as the growl of a young cub. She has the nerve to touch my paw through the bars. I order my claws out to harm her, but only another cub growl leaves my mouth, that’s how weak I’ve become.
I have strength enough to pace in the tiny cage.
A tired looking man with a day’s beard says to the woman touching me: “Gorgana, what’s this? Where are they going. Are they for the London Zoo? How nice of you to bring me here, to cargo.”
She has on a pale blue dress and a scarf on her head. I can smell human piss on her, but no fearpiss. Why all the piss smell? She can’t keep her eyes off me. She’s drawn to me. Let me look at her before my friend wakes up. I snarl at her again. She loses herself in my eyes.
I could claw her wrist off for touching me. I’ve set a trap for her. I ignore the man who looks like he’s never seen a beautiful black panther.
“It looks like they are going to the Shanghai Zoo. China Air,” she says. He asks: “Is there a shortage of tigers in China?”
“They’re not tigers, Joseph.”
“Well then, they are cats or jaguars? I know they like to live near water. How did they arrive here I wonder?”
“Do you have zoos where you come from?” he asks her.
“They’re not really going to a zoo. You know that, don’t you?”
Gorgana imitates chop sticks with her fingers. “Endangered delicacies. Panther sauté with garlic served with deep-fried rat.”
My lover opens her eyes. At once, she notices the female. We’re leaving for China.
We’ve got to escape, but how? I lick her face, her legs her breasts in front of the female. No one thinks about the man who doesn’t move much. I think I’m licking the clouds in the lagoon where we roamed free. They stay and chat between themselves. They mention a man called Mohammad. We see daylight again moving on a cart toward an airplane.
Darkness for a long time. We drink more water from the tube. They give us cow which tastes like it’s been dead for a long time. We hear the same screech of large parrot followed by a hard thud. We land in a city in South China, our Kenyan ears can’t understand the language, but I can smell familiar odours. We are taken to a large market where they transfer us into two smaller cages. I cry out to her.
They keep us together but in separate cages.
They don’t put too much distance between us.
Someone shows money. My head is pulled out of the cage with large metal pliers and a large hammer hits my skull and eyes. My body writhes in pain, but I’m not scared. I’m a black panther, even lions fear me. Supportively, my friend hisses. She’s in the cage nearby and one of my eyes is knocked out. From my neck to my groin and all along my legs, the Chinaman tears off my skin in one respectful piece. It appears to me that the Chinaman is asking me the same questions again and again.
I understand a few African languages but not Chinese. Chinese is not an African language.
Someone yells Chinese words into my cage; I let the words into my mind. I think. I fully understand him: I’m a dead and an alive cat at the same time; I can have his language go inside me as Chinese and in my mind it becomes comprehensible Kenyan English.
But he can’t convert my colonial English into Chinese, hence the impolite departure of my limbs.
I growl out that I don’t know what is he talking about. He keeps mentioning someone called Mohammad, then he throws my skin in hot water and someone stirs it and they pull it out to show the smiling crowd. He asks:
Mohammad made you do it? A music group is playing tweety opera nearby. Mohammad made you do it? He asks again and again. The rendition of music mixes with me saying: No I don’t understand the question but the stranger does not stop making the same sounds with his mouth. With a large knife he deeply pre-cuts but does not remove my legs. Deep gashes ready for the final blow when someone buys a part of me. Immediately, my paws have been chopped off and sold. I’m still alive, and my heart still beating in my open panther’s chest. I can see it all from up here. There’s a hook in the back of my neck and now I’m looking down at the people making a fashion statement with parts of my body. I’m hooked high above, and I can see all the empty ambition.
I fix on someone who has paid for my right paw. My remaining eye follows him until he is out of the market. A full moon, begging for immigrants, glows in the sky. This is the night market. The Chinaman looks back at me.
She won’t last the afternoon. Someone has bought my leg. And another person is buying her. When they come for her she pulls back into the cage and cries like a hungry cub. The butcher, who’s wearing wet, black rubber boots, pours scalding hot water on her back making her hiss and turn on her back, claws extended against the bamboo bars. The shoppers laugh at her. Her total skin leaves in one flawless, slow removal. Paws are hacked off and sold first.
I would do it again. There is nothing better than a trap to take you somewhere else.
One trap leads to another. I am not very conscious. They bring me down and place me face up on a splendid bed of blood-red ice and rice. I look at white clouds in an evening sky.
My pain has gone.
Gorgana opens the cage. The panthers have been Mohammad and Mohammad all along. Dressed as panthers, so to speak, Gorgana and Joseph escort them to the door that leads to transit and to the exit. Upright, they walk calmly. Two airport security men chuckle at Mohammad and Mohammad. At arrivals-and-departures none of the social antics they see everyday surprise them. A few travellers look and laugh also. Mohammad and Mohammad, remove their costumes and, with Joseph, flag a taxi into London with a view to causing as much damage as possible.
As the years passed, they did event after event, champagne corks going into orbit after each celebration. They remained undetected, causing terrific, cosmic disturbances which left England frightened and trembling as never before. Solar flames to right the wrongs. Their work was appreciated by every cave-dweller in Afghanistan, and provoked leading members of the Irish Republican Army, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, (ETA) et al., to ask themselves: Why hadn’t they thought of doing what the young Moslems are now doing? Wouldn’t they have arrived at the table of endless negotiation centuries earlier? How large was their budget and who supplied them?
Why couldn’t they as young men have done things of equal yet Irish scale?
And how on earth did Joseph and his group remain undetected? They remained undetected due to the long gaps between events; they remained undetected due to their conception of time.
Must time have a stop?
They went silent, at least for England they went silent. Learning to go under for years, or a decade is an art. One has to submit income tax, shop, cook, take kids on vacation, buy a birthday present, throw a davat for a few friends and so on, and so: via an agreement with funders dx, dy and dz, they did one last bang and boom in the United Kingdom, and went to Canada, via ship no less. Look out Canadians. They settled in cities, hopping from one to another — they did a few things which were useful in the larger balancing out of things. Bien sûr, a majority of Canadians were against what they did, let there be no doubt. The IDF recruits in western countries. Some Canadians joined them, but given the task at hand, only a minority. Then, suddenly, at the speed of an equatorial sunset, they, as a group, grew old. What follows is an epistle to imperialism and its sons.
4
Christopher Marlowe, M
uharram
From up here on the hillside, I can see not only the large old folks home where I live but also my life in bits and pieces. As I walk down the path, the shape of the river changes. Snow covers the branches of the pine trees, and across the broad river bank are small purple hills. Muharram, in Québec, is the cruellest month. The pills doctors give me cause my memories to flood back with precision, without guilt or arrogance. The fresh winter air has, now and then, tinges of the smell of airport transit lounges, where I’ve spent much time. Through the cold, stark branches in Pierrefonds, I can see us at the table.
I remember a handful of men and women in our younger bodies, eyes aflame — in our English house outside London. Was it near Hayes and Harlington? At the table, we, the really committed few, have the almost odourless Semtex. Or was it Pentaerythritol tetranitrate that our friends purchased, via a Scottish South Asian proxy, in the Czech Republic?
I turn my head in the direction of Montreal. As the wind purrs through the near and faraway trees, I remember the plush governmental Westminster tube stop. As Big Ben strikes in London, a black crow in Pierrefonds lifts into the air. A plume of serpent smoke in Arabic lettering issues from Russell Square. What a heavenly pleasure it is to see Bloomsbury in Mumbaian panic. Momentarily, and for days afterwards, we’ve throttled the city of Christopher Marlowe and his Moslem of Malta. But all that’s in our vainglorious past.
We didn’t do any of it. We’re innocent. I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
The snow covered path takes me nearer to the old folks home. I am now right on the hillside, not near Westminster. The flat ice will remain in that state until March, when, according to my epiphanic opinion a state-shift will take place: 13 March Anno Domini something something. I’m now decaying near Montreal. I’m a terrorist — non-convicted, thus innocent, thus a free citizen, thus a near-free citizen swaddled in the white cloth of occidental tyranny. Who these days isn’t a terrorist? One man’s terrorist is another man’s old folks home friend; one man’s terrorist is another’s transit lounge passenger.
Radius Islamicus Page 5