Radius Islamicus

by Julian Samuel

  My heart is not stone. I could feel the pain of Usha’s death, but when you’ve passed the seventy-nine-year mark, you get too old to feel things as you may have once. You become too old even to get cancer. So when one loses a loved one as it is referred to, one does not suffer as much as one used to. The pain has never lasted more than a few minutes, simply because our brains can’t remember what to get upset about. Death and departure are made into human exaggerations so funeral homes will make money. The grief industry makes coffins out of gold, patients entombed at -320 degrees, waiting to be reanimated (re-Mohammadized) in 2090 or whenever our specialists can invent something that will make them more money. Notice the cardinal strength of that number seventy-two? Usha’s death caused me no pain. None at all. Guess how many of my last friends here have died? I’ve seen five die in one week — all great friends they had become — they all died because their cells no longer had that replicative capacity to conduct operations. Doctors, please let us die in peace, please. Five deaths in a week is a record in the Death by Terror Olympics. Five homicide bombers and their controllers all live here. Fuck you all.

  Heart of stone? No, I don’t have a heart of stone. Heart of no memory — one has to have memory to feel. I have a heart that remembers, and those pills that fix the effects of the “oxygen paradox.” They invent a new term every two minutes — I’ll be able to get emotionally hurt very soon because my Aberrant Telomeres are no longer fading away.

  Near the bed, under the cover of night, a fan blows indolent summer air across her breasts, de-oxidizing them. She ages less in the artificial wind. That’s something the experimental doctors might say. I really do hear them saying things like that. The blanket is covered in moonlight below her waist. Can she feel my breathing along her neck wrinkles? Is she dead? I don’t think so. The Alzheimer-Necrophilia-Geezer-Rapist strikes again — well, for the first time.

  Under the sable night of dread and fear, I move toward her. Bet she can’t feel my breathing as my hand moves up her thigh. The Viagra has me on autopilot. Right on. In my mind’s ear, I can hear geezer rock-and-roll music: the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Jim Morrison . . . I see guitars smashing on a stage. “People are strange when you’re a stranger.” Will Linda forgive me? I am only fucking her in the pineal gland, nothing more than that, is it? Will Linda forgive me? Forgive me for what? Has she encouraged me? Indirectly, I mean. Can she be blamed for this? Yes, she can be blamed. Very directly. I’m not doing anything Tatjana would not want me to do, am I? She held my hand. Besides, who will forget first, Tatjana or me? She’ll forget first. She forgets things that have not happened, that’s how bad her condition is. Bet she can’t remember two sentences after she starts to complain to the nurse. The morning after. Complain of what? Had an itch when I woke up. Not my fault. Consenting adults. Consenting free radicals that eat up the memory cells. Hence we age, like wanton boys; the oxygen molecules kill us for sport. Though Tatjana has periods for weeks in which she has normal long-term and short-term memory.

  The warm wind cools in rhythmic sections. I haven’t taken any Viagra, that was a cool lie. Cool here, as I step closer, warmer there. She stirs, feathered wings folded: listlessly, an arm arches over her white forehead, which is in a patch of moonlight. Her nose is beautifully long. Can she pull herself out of her sleep? I found it difficult to pull my mind from that dream I had during our Atlantic crossing, on that large ocean liner with those two Middle Eastern idiots who worked with us — who live with me now, in this home. I’ve not introduced them to her. What difference will it make whether or not she knows? What’s the role of pleasure in all this?

  A night owl settles on a tree nearby, my only witness. I see the dark Atlantic outside. Gulls screeching, little innocent fish in their mouths. The waves crash against the boat. Stiff as a man of eighteen and lubed up with something, don’t know what it is. She is rattled awake by a falling spoon from the bedside table. I’m beside her, and gently, ever so gently she oozes out of her peaceful sleep into my Viagrian reality.

  “Hello, Joseph, what are you doing here? Late isn’t?”

  I thought she’d want me to come to visit. That’s why I came. She does not sense the aggression: of course there is none. That’s just the chemicals taking control. I think she falls back asleep. She called me by my name. The tension vanishes. Then she asks, what are you doing here, in my room? She pushes against me and raises her voice, slightly. But I persist, I mean, my hands persist. I snuggle under the blankets. She offers more resistance, then just like in Hollywood films she kisses my neck, her withering body fully igniting at age eighty-something-something. Her thighs slowly slide up in between my legs; every second of skin contact is paradise for me. I touch her waist and bury my nose in her neck. There is a smell of a child in old people. Piss, the universal solvent follows us to from the cradle to the near-grave. Tenderly, I part her legs. She says she doesn’t want to. Why not? Why don’t you want to? But why is she holding me like this if she doesn’t want to? She is breathing deeply. Will the shock of penetration kill her? Dream on old boy — there is no Viagra, no stiff penis. But I continue dreaming that waves of sperm froth into her. Dream on. Fertile as hell they must all be, singing “Under My Thumb” upstream to impregnate eggs tumbling down her fallopian tubes. We are in a deep cuddle, flesh contact brings us together. She calls out her late husband’s name, Ben, oh Ben, Ben Habib, I never thought you’d come back. Oh my God, she’s missed two periods. Dream or reality? Again and again, her head moves back and forth in pleasure. Old people are much younger now than they used to be. I tell her it’s Joseph, Joseph from down the hall. She clues in for a second time and holds me closer to her. I put my head down on her breasts. I’m in love again. Usha is a faded memory. The scent of childhood merges with the star-filled Atlantic.

  Her body smells of subtle, expensive perfume — which smells mainly of rose, an occasional echo of garlic salami ending with a preponderance of lavender and fox bladders. I ask her if I can give her a birthday gift of 747 jet fume perfume. Tatjana says that being with me is wonderful. She recalls our conversation about my visit. Thanks for coming, she says, laughing. Again, she pulls me toward her. I almost forget that you said that you were going to come tonight. I’ve now become aware of her perfume: it is guilty — daughter perfume. I pull her into my arms. I notice that she has had a partial mastectomy — ductal carcinoma it must have been; or is my anatomy off again? Also, I see a small scar that a lumbar puncture has left. She is flesh, and she’s warm. She likes me. The tips of my fingers find the healed scars. We fall into a coma. Three hours later, the spinning earth wakes me: with the rustling of bed sheets, she awakes too. I say I’ll be off to my room before everyone in the home wakes up. She pulls me down onto her sagging flesh trying to let me undo the bond. Shaky hands, rosy lips. I affectionately resist her tug, and tell her I must leave, reminding her that her daughter is visiting first thing today. She remembers and in her sand-and-spit old lady’s voice, says: “Ah! you’re right. Yes, today, Do you want to say hello to her again?”

  “Well, yes, I do want to see her again. I’ll come by after you two have had a chat, shall I?” I get out of bed to leave.

  She bursts into tears. “Please don’t leave me. It felt so good to have you near my side. I love having your body beside mine. I’m so lonely, I’ve forgotten what loneliness is.”

  The early morning birds have begun their chirping; mechanically, a programmed fog meanders over the indolent wog-filled River Ravi beside our home. The owl is not real: it’s there to scare the pigeons away. An eternity in wood. She’s on her elbow on the bed, hips elegantly arched like spring meadows, tears draining down her cheeks, which I kiss again and again. She holds my hand. I shuffle out. Softly yet firmly with trembling voice, she calls out: “Joseph don’t leave me now, stay with me, I haven’t been with anyone in many years. Joseph, I’m not dreaming this, don’t leave me, don’t. Please.”

  What she can’t remember will not sadden her. With my back to her, I
leave smiling victoriously, an endless gully of tears in my wake.

  35

  Late-Camel Linear B

  Is it true that Usha has a fistula between the rectum and the bladder? Fecal matter in her urine? Abnormal passage? Damn right: rectovesical fistula. Who has ulcerative colitis? Crohn’s disease — someone near me has it. Or was it rectal tuberculosis? Where am I in this time distortion? Do I need a sigmiodoscope to know where I am? A sigmiodoscope is a more curious anoscope. I’ve experienced both, sometimes with pleasure. But all this will not help me locate myself spatially. All I really want to know is when I got here, here in Linda’s apartment.

  I’m back in my nurse’s apartment, high up, overlooking the mountain. For an instant, one of the small cars below catches my attention. Who lent me the car to get here? Did someone lend it to me to get here? Did they drive me? Who?

  The frost on the windows has formed leafy patterns. Minus 20 degrees centigrade and falling. Linda sees me trace the lines in the leafy patterns with my fingers. How has the humidity in here transformed into such beautiful leaves? I follow a particular tributary of one of the larger frost leaves. I find a smaller rivulet, then a smaller one, then an even smaller one, and after that, I follow a series of dots of frost. I realize that there are no longer any detectable frost particles. The remaining sunlight throws the smallest bits of frost into mountainous relief, like Greenland seen from an airplane during a sunset on the way to a bombing. Pink, with deep blue out there. The immaculate conception of leaves would happen tomorrow, temperature and humidity permitting. It’s an afternoon in February. A stream of cold cars flows north along Avenue du Parc toward rue Mont-Royal.

  What I have just given you is a florid physicalist equivalent of a mechanical world. As things get smaller, the fundamental rules change. There was only one scientist here that I could talk to, but he’s got a disease. He says that there is an entire world at ten to the minus thirty-three metres or centimetres in a superposition and lots of arrows instead of numbers ↑↓↑↓↑↓, where state vectors get entangled, and a throbbing spin of 0, ½, 1, or ³⁄2, 2 depending on the afternoon, depending on the century, depending on which theory has been turned to myth by the imminent arrival of the future — which he’d say, just arrived. See, we were just in the past. He made me into a cosmologist and a quantum mechanical terrorist/ healer-against-imperialismosis.

  He did not believe in God, the only thing right with him. Hail Mary full of Grace, pray for me. Hail Memory stored below gluons, quarks, charmed quarks, fermions. The unseen particles don’t encourage God. Encourage? What could that possibly mean? We see the word “encourage” written on a piece of paper, which itself consists of smaller and smaller particles. The black ink makes us think of an image: the image is stored in the brain which itself is made up of other particles. Particles all the way down. Now why can’t I remember his name today, or yesterday or the day before: lack of particles? Can’t be that, I’ve lots of particles. He’s been taken out of circulation. He’s in a bed, green curtain to his side, bit of sunlight. I walked past his room. No life left, merely oxygen going into his lungs, which are themselves made of smaller and smaller particles. Heavy helium. An indolent South Asian breeze flows out of his nostrils.

  I sit. I wait for Rabi’ al-thani to flow into Jumada al-awwal while thinking that quantum mechanical terrorism can be done only in the English language. One certainly can’t do it in Arabic, Urdu, Spanish, even German. What kind of mathematical descriptions of the world would we get with Late-camel Linear B?

  What came first, fur or feathers? My friends have fluttered off. Now I have fewer friends. None left in London. None left in Toronto, except my brother and his wife. And an aged aunt in Peterborough, Ontario. No one visits. I am an atheist among believers, with their expensive and shiny crucifixes on sable cashmere sweaters worn by the wives of dead bankers. Merry Wives of Pierrefonds, dying in splendour.

  Jumada al-thani. Twilight. No river in front of my room. I must be in Linda’s high-rise: she’s gone on holidays and has given me the keys to her apartment. Why has she done this? We’re just friends. But all the same, I do have keys. I come here to get away from the old folks home. Here, in her high-rise, I have a full view of Mount Royal Park’s long hill covered in snow. Skeletal trees poke out of a blanket of snow. At night, I can see the crucifix: Our Cross with Electric Bulbs by Hydro Quebec — glowing tribute to French-Canadian Catholic secularism. Montréal, Qom of the Western World. “Minus twenty and falling,” I announce to everyone. Everyone? Just her and me. Like cows, the old folks look up at me and they clap, sarcasm being the furthest thing from their mental skills. Iqbal Masoume, more aged than I, asks: “What’s for supper?” Sammy, at the card table, less aged than I, replies: “Why worry about what’s for supper? We just had breakfast twenty minutes ago.” Aging away in splendour.

  Rajab. The red-lipsticked wives of bankers, insurance company presidents, and even richer bankers nod, pretending that they know what literary agents are. The poor die differently. We tried to prevent all that, but somehow we’ve ended up in this place for the rich? Who is paying for us? There are some educated women here, yes. One, in fact, Jennifer, was a literary agent. Brainy. Died last week. Another was a head librarian at one of the larger universities. She is still alive, in perfect health. She likes dietary fibre, used to knit sweaters made from these fibres. I love talking with her: she did a book, The Fate of Libraries in War Zones. After the people have been killed, the books and documents get it. They can’t rebuild society because the blueprint has been blown away. She tells me of a librarian from Kosovo who was filmed with the public library burning in the background. Tears running down his face.

  Jennifer’s tall, has thin white hair, wears a baggy brown skirt and a white shirt. She has a memory that lasts four seconds and I had a yen for her. She asks the same questions, makes the same pronouncements, like an old card catalogue. She is a complete and utter stranger to me. She takes a friendly step toward me. Jennifer, how do you do this afternoon? I’m Joseph. Dr. Joseph Macleod. Remember. How’s your bone cancer? Remember you have brain cancer, not bone cancer. Spreading, is it? Iatrogenic, is it? I hope so. The doctor gave it to you? That’s what they all say. Or was it bone cancer? I bet you’ve forgotten my name. Again. If you die, then I will not have to tell you my name every day, will I?

  “Hello. Jennifer. How. Are. You. Today?”

  “Hello. Mr. Saltmarsh, I’m fine. And how are you?”

  The short-wave radio in my possession for centuries crackles with the incomprehensible voices of newsreaders. She looks at the radio in my hand; she smiles and waddles off down the hall. Saltmarsh — who’s he? Must be me. That’s the new me. Saltmarsh Me is from the future —her memory is so good that she forgets things from the future. How many Jennifers were there? Two: Jennifer remembers remembering Jennifer. Jennifer was a production assistant on the Tribeca affair. She became a close friend for two decades, and now I’m just another bunch of particles floating by. Any chance she’ll reveal us to the authorities? I don’t think so, she’s post-revelationary with a lissom form. Can she tell the difference between the authorities, nurses and the cold-blooded killers we used to be? Who, in the widest sense of the word, isn’t a bomber? My name is not John Macleod but Javid Mohammad or something like that. Sorry about my secretive side. I’m a non-state actor, who is, to this day, unconvicted, thus as innocent as all the others. I didn’t mean to offend anyone.

  P.S.:

  Usha had super heavy periods which could be contained by the use of heavy-flow jam rags. The pharmacy where she used to buy them refused to stock them. The owner told her that only Moslems bled heavily or something equally terrorist. Usha, remember, was Irish. Well, we bombed that pharmacy at the exactly the same time — 18:32 — an Itwār AH something something as we bombed an art opening for a massive exhibition of the Group of Seven. Local artists loved our act because these institutions actively excluded their works; the act gave us Canadian content which, unfortu
nately, we made ashen in a few seconds: anti-Canadian content. The paradox made us laugh. All of A.Y. Jackson and Tom Thompson as well as Emily Carr. (We didn’t want to be accused of sexism and murder.) We killed forty-five (only); five (only) of whom were smug international curators from China and England. And, in cold blood, we murdered ten at the local drug store where they never had heavyflow tampons due to Islam or something like that. Understandably, we did cause offence to the local authorities and families, but we didn’t mean anything personal by doing this: I swear to the almighty that every bit of it was political.

  Acknowledgements

  The airport sections within Radius Islamicus was an original idea for a screenplay, Persona Non, conceived by my friend Abouali Farmanfarmanian; we both wrote this work. I have, with his permission, re-written and included a few pages from that work.

  Manal Stamboulie, Michael Springate, Michael Neumann, Rana Bose, Abouali Farmanfarmanian, Dimitri Nasrallah, Ian McLachlan, Fred McSherry, Michael Ryan, Martin Dowding, Matthew Sanger, Tim Spring, Michel Giroux, Loren Edizel, Sean Kane, Benjamin Shear, Ricardo Sternberg, and Claudio Gaudio commented on my manuscript. If I fall under the eyes of the intelligence community my commentators ought to be implicated as well: I couldn’t have finished the novel without their encouragement.