‘To the believer,’ the Raisin said, ‘the world itself is a prison. We are both in a prison, you and I. It is the kind of prison from which escape is only possible through obedience to God unto death.’
cxvii. unto death
Don’t imagine we can’t kill you here. Don’t flatter yourself with that. You are no American now, my dear.
Thelonius worked his tongue in and out of the side of his mouth. ‘Not a believer, buddy.’
‘As you say.’
‘Well, I suppose the boys do need to blow off some steam from time to time.’
By special permission of Captain X, the Wreck Room was unboarded, on the condition that all locals would be excluded and ‘this dog business’ forgotten. The place was alive in the night again, glowing with movement and money and beer. A boom box thudded Mazzoni’s favorite mix, which inclined to Metallica and the Ramones. No women were in attendance (there had never been any women present at any of the evening Wreck Room sessions, and never would be) and no dogs.
Mike Mazzoni watched from his table, nursing his second Heineken of the evening. Bobbler passed out the sheets. Bobbler who fucked things up for a living.
cxviii. passed out
Wake up, T. Wakey, wakey. Rise and shine. I recall you had some problem with your knee. Which is still tender, isn’t it? Hey, do you like this song? Hey, did you ever call me Martha? Hey, did you promise me a child while we listened to this?
The phone’s email alert chimed. Fatima clicked on the message.
It contained instructions to relay a certain confidential offer to the American.
Fatima was to discuss the attached confidential offer with the American in person with all due speed, and in a manner that did not intimidate him or antagonize him in any way.
The American’s interrogation sessions (she read in an encrypted email) had been suspended on the direct orders of the prime minister.
That meant the religious faction had been overruled. A pragmatic rapprochement with the Americans, it had been decided, was in order, at least for the time being. Fatima was to be the American’s primary point of contact from this point forward. This was as a result of her familiarity with American culture, her presumed advantages in the arena of appropriate communication between genders and her apparent ability to elicit sympathy. She had been granted visiting privileges and was advised to take advantage of them as soon as practicable.
Fatima read the offer. She requested a day to prepare.
cxix. requested
Do you want it to stop? Give me a name.
cxx. name
I gave you everything. I took care of you. I told you her name. I gave you a year. A YEAR to schedule that operation. Now you owe me a name.
The nine Bearded Glarers parted, scurried, scanned the streets separately, reconvened and jointly surmised that between fifty and seventy-five thousand souls had gathered for the next midday prayer to be led by the New Imam. It was not even a Friday.
The Islamic City police refused to give an estimate for public circulation. BII analysts, preparing a summary for the prime minister, put the figure at sixty-five thousand, a number described within the report as ‘significant, given the city’s population of three and a half million’.
The huge congregation presented logistical challenges. In service of the man with the sallow face and patchy, scraggled beard, and of the silent boy by his side, the nine Bearded Glarers recruited a hundred earnest-looking brothers and gave them all armbands. These men directed the crowds.
The New Imam’s sermon that day, although amplified erratically, landed its point: the legal necessity of serving justice upon a particular American, now held by the government. He had urinated upon the Holy Koran and then murdered a father and his daughter in the street. His name was unknown. The sentence upon him was death.
‘You recited one of the promises of God.’
The Raisin rose, went to the window, retrieved the Koran, found a certain page, then walked over and offered the book to Thelonius.
‘The verse you recited.’
Thelonius swatted it to the floor. The Raisin only sniffed, smiled as an unconvinced judge smiles, retrieved the book, put it back on the windowsill, settled into the cot, turned over, and went to sleep. There was no more conversation that day.
The next morning, the Raisin asked: ‘Is it possible that something went quite wrong on this mission?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you talk in your sleep.’
Thelonius’s insides froze. ‘What?’
‘You said, “Why did I do it?” You repeated it several times. In your sleep.’
The cell drew itself in tight.
‘You can talk about what happened, you know,’ the Raisin said. ‘Better for you if you do. Perhaps you lost something along the way. Better to talk about such things. I think this mission was a difficult one for you.’
‘Don’t think about me,’ Thelonius said. And turned over to face the wall again.
As he handed them out, Dayton had no idea what significance the curious symbols on the sheets of grey paper were supposed to have. He thought maybe Mike had some kind of game in mind. Games calmed Mike down sometimes.
When he found out that night, as Mike sat on a crate, handed him a beer, and told him to sit his ass down so Mike could explain the grey sheets before he explained them to everyone else, Dayton kept his face expressionless.
When Mike was done talking, there was a gap between songs. Mike kept looking at him and Mike’s eyes didn’t look calm at all. Then the boom box played ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’.
Mike said, ‘Yes!’ and gave the three-fingered salute to the world at large. He stood up like Dayton had agreed to something. Then Mike began to party, not in a calm way, though.
Dayton waited until he thought people weren’t looking before he left the Wreck Room.
Up very early, Fatima wrote a letter by hand, sealed it in an envelope, and called for her driver. His lateness and gruff demeanor put her off, as usual. She had forgotten his name. From the back seat, she decided against asking him.
Within the BII compound, before all but a handful of people had arrived for work, she showed the appropriate clearances, made her way to the proper plastic bin, pulled the prisoner’s file, saw to it that her letter was placed within SERGEANT USA #109 and entrusted the plastic-sheathed comic book, with clear instructions, to Ra’id’s assistant, who came in early. Fatima had been gone for over an hour by the time Murad Murad, who always checked the front-desk logs, made it to his desk.
cxxi. prisoner
See what you did, love? It’s bleeding again. And you know how hard it is for us to get a doctor in here to attend to the guests. A name, please.
Thelonius concluded himself awake, then, eyes still closed, reconsidered. Things had been odd lately. It was worth double-checking.
He opened his eyes, scanned the floor, and sat up with a start. What appeared to be, but could not possibly be, his favourite comic book, SERGEANT USA #109, lay on the floor right next to his cot.
He looked around. No sign of the Raisin. Thelonius was all alone in the cell.
His attention returned, like iron to a magnet, to the familiar cover. His right hand twitched, as though it recognized an old friend. He picked up SERGEANT USA #109 – yes, it was real, or at least as real as anything else in the cell – and unsheathed it. He let fall the plastic cover. It made a clicking sound as it fell to the linoleum.
Page one should have read THE HERO THAT WAS.
As indeed it did. He turned a page, convinced for the moment of the book’s objective existence and of his own.
Inside the familiar bright leaves was an envelope, sealed. It fell to the linoleum, as the plastic cover had, but it made a softer, rustling sound. Thelonius picked the envelope up and read what was written on the front of it.
It said, ‘READ ME’.
Eyes wide, he opened it and removed two rectangles, folded upon themselves, inscribed in the s
ame tiny, neat hand as the words on the front. The letter read:
Thelonius Liddell:
Pardon my familiarity, but I believe you to be a military man and have no idea of your rank. You will recall me from your interrogation. I heard you say then: ‘Allah has seen fit to force upon me the sin of making me a sceptic of Islam, and I respect His will in the matter.’
You are clearly aware that there is such a thing as sin. I pray that you receive the Divine guidance that is our shared human birthright, that you follow that guidance, that you deploy to your own benefit the power of choice bestowed upon you by the merciful One God, and that, if you bear any responsibility for the flechette attack upon the village of D—, for the deaths of the father and daughter on Malaika Street, or for any of the other outrages upon our nation of which you stand accused, such as the desecration of our Holy Book, you seek repentance for those crimes from the One God.
I do have an opportunity for your release I am professionally obliged to discuss with you. Admit my appeal for a visit.
Very truly yours,
Fatima A––
cxxii. yours
Whatever it is that you and I have, T, and I’ve never claimed to be able to describe it well, I think we would have to agree at this point that it constitutes a committed relationship. A name. Goddamn you. A name.
Thelonius felt a pounding in his ears. He read the letter from beginning to end three more times. Once he reached the end for the third time, he stopped at her name (which of course was rendered without dashes in the original) and stared at it as though it were the only island on a horizon. Then, having established the reality of the island, having confirmed it was no mirage, he worked his way back up to that sentence that spoke, however obliquely, of the possibility of a return home, and confirmed the reality of that, too:
I do have an opportunity for your release I am professionally obliged to discuss with you.
At some point, Morale Specialist must have readmitted the Raisin to the cell – when and from where, Thelonius had no idea.
‘That coloured booklet came for you while you were asleep,’ Morale Specialist said from the free side of the bars. ‘I was instructed not to wake you. You are to read it, now that you are awake.’ He strode away.
The Raisin settled in.
‘I hear a person’s name actually means something in this country,’ Thelonius said to the Raisin. ‘What does Fatima mean?’
‘A person’s name means something in every country,’ the Raisin replied. ‘It’s just that Americans tend to ignore the meanings.’
‘Right. What’s it mean?’
‘She who weans the infant,’ said the Raisin.
‘What does A–– mean?’
cxxiii. A—
Clive trying to call my cell phone. Ignoring him. My little trip down Memory Lane has detoured, but note that the surname that T obscures and the Fabs reveal here – in fact, Bitch Hajji’s actual last name, Adara – rhymes with the name ‘Martha’, the keyword of track nine.
‘In Arabic, “virgin”. In Hebrew, “fire”. In Greek, “beauty”.’
Thelonius studied the Raisin as a man might study a page too dense with someone else’s handwriting.
‘And what does my name mean?’
‘That you must learn for yourself.’
cxxiv. learn for yourself
Yes, do look that up. You always told me you were named after a piano player. Some jungle bunny or other you favoured. You heartless niggerloving bastard.
27 In Which Liddell Is Strapped Up
As ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ yielded to ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, Mike Mazzoni shouted ‘Turn it up!’ strutted, took a pull from his Heineken and showed off to all and sundry a sharp new black pentagram on the back of his left hand, in the little well between the thumb and the forefinger. Around it ran the words UNITED WE FUCKING STAND.
The tat was calculated, Bobbler had observed before starting up the ink gun, to piss off their mother, a cradle Catholic. ‘No shit,’ Mike had answered.
Not about going home. About getting respect while you’re here. Which of course some people don’t get.
That star was too damn small. Mike Mazzoni had paid Bobbler the fifty bucks anyway – no discount for blood – and advised him that he would be doing a lot more business soon.
cxxv. business
In our business, sleep deprivation has, the laments of the editorialists notwithstanding, a long and proud history as an intelligence tool. Those who shy away from it sell their history to the highest bidder.
It was Mike Mazzoni’s experience that Captain X would grant certain enlisted men operating under his, Mazzoni’s, authority, significant personal discretion in timing their return to the barracks at night. The men knew this and appreciated it. They started shouting ‘Speech!’
Mike Mazzoni stepped onto the platform where the dogs had fought.
‘Where the hell’s my brother? I’ve got to keep my mom happy, guys. I promised her I would keep an eye on Bobbler. Where is that gap-toothed loser?’
No one answered, and the gathering was not much troubled by this. The meeting, fuelled by several cases of Heineken, progressed methodically through the items on its complex agenda, an agenda no human mind could have consigned to bullet points. The assembly ran louder and later than anticipated, and toward its conclusion the sun rose – which was, for a few of the attendees, a hilarious development in itself.
Mike Mazzoni strode to the centre of the crowded, noisy, odorous paradise over which he would still rule for another twenty minutes. He had saved the best for last. ‘Okay, there’s a rumour,’ Mike Mazzoni said, ‘that Allah sets the rules in this Republic, and we all know Allah has a problem with tequila. So if you guys don’t mind, we’ll just keep Allah out of the loop on this one.’ He produced a bottle, cracked the metallic top and took a long, vigorous pull. The Wreck Room sent up cheers that resonated for half a mile.
He wiped his mouth and recapped the illegal bottle. He held it aloft and informed all assembled that once they too had downed a swig, each of them was to consider himself born again in the Church of Cuervo. The bottle made the rounds, and each man converted.
It cost forty dollars to enter the Wreck Room, twenty of which went into a pool. Two hundred and forty bucks was now up for grabs. That money, and two bottles of Cuervo, would be awarded to the lucky, born-again bastards named Heroes of the Week.
‘Hey. Listen up, ladies. Listen up. Almost bedtime. Before we say goodnight, I bet you’re wondering: How do you become Hero of the Week?’
cxxvi. Almost bedtime
The very phrase ‘sleep deprivation’ is subject to profound misinterpretation. (And this chapter’s alignment with track ten’s sequentially mandated theme of fatigue is too obvious for even my detractors to miss. Cue track ten.)
The obedient new converts shouted, ‘How, Mike? How?’
He held the black pentagram tattoo up for all to see.
‘Step one. If you’re serious about your team, tattoo yourself with the logo you and your partner were assigned. My brother backed out, which makes me my own team. Fuck him. I’m the only team with one guy. The Starfuckers.’
The men howled and clapped to show their approval, presumably of the name. They were in a mood to approve of virtually anything.
‘Step two for being Hero of the Week,’ Mazzoni continued, waiting a couple of seconds for the various rebel yells to die down, ‘step two, boys, is to submit the best photograph of yourself next to a dead raghead. Ideally,’ and he had to say the word again louder to be heard over the whoop and roar, ‘ideally, an insurgent.’ This repeated qualifier produced raucous laughter, followed by more prolonged whooping.
‘All you raghead bitches, watch out!’ Mike Mazzoni screamed, his face red, his eyes set for distance like a hawk’s. ‘We’re eating this place alive!’
He raised his arms and gave the arena-rock, pagan salute: thumb, forefinger, and little finger extended.
The loudest cheer of the
night, or rather of the day, shook the puny walls of the Wreck Room. A spidery little hillside occupant, perched behind a dark boulder less than a hundred yards away, heard that cheer.
He had been stationed on the hill for nearly an hour, nursing a plastic cup of Darjeeling tea, waiting for his shot. Indelible took a final sip of tea, capped the vacuum bottle, set it aside, and pulled out a carbine from a coarse cloth sack. He took aim at the man in the centre of the window.
cxxvii. He took aim
Did he pull the trigger, didn’t he, was there a mole, wasn’t there, did we lose control of an operative, didn’t we, does a bear say the rosary, does the Pope shit in the woods? Etc., etc. All this relentless effort to focus on that which we lost: the taproot of all anti-Americanism. The reader will recall that I have declined all comment on the Indelible affair. Our present topic (the White Album insists, via track ten) is sleep deprivation. During what might or might not have been our final supper together in Mother’s house, I recall T’s too-righteous, too-familiar insistence that Harry Truman would never have signed off on such interrogation initiatives as prolonged sleep disruption. As though Truman were now President! Time for a bath. May help me get to sleep.
This modest one-storey house, which they could not help calling ‘Wafa’s house’, commanded a full acre of overgrown and weedy land, untamed except for the patch Fatima had cleared out front. It boasted an old, sturdy tree that reminded Fatima of one of those great New England oaks, but wasn’t an oak. The chaotic secular community of insects, overgrown rodents, unnameable grassworms and various stray cats had apparently not bothered Wafa and her husband. A scattering of empty, filthy bowls within that jungle of a lawn: even daydreaming of untangling it all seemed too much for three longtime city dwellers.
Jihadi Page 17