Jihadi

by Yusuf Toropov

  ‘Goddamn me if I don’t know an insurgent when I see one,’ Mike Mazzoni said, flicking his cigarette through the open window, his eye on something, his blood up. He turned off the music. ‘And that is a fucking insurgent.’

  This particular insurgent, a pedestrian, also happened to be an asshole: Jimmy’s snivelling younger brother Jimmy Two. When Jimmy Two saw Mike Mazzoni, he shouted ‘DOG MAN!’

  The kid, who had frequented the Wreck Room back when there were dogfights to bet on and shout at, scooped up a handful of pebbles and let fly at the driver’s side of Mike Mazzoni’s armoured vehicle.

  ‘Game over,’ Mike Mazzoni said.

  The pebbles flew in the open window and bounced off the hood: Chicka da chickety chick. One hit Mike Mazzoni on the nose. Then again, the shout: ‘MAZZONI! DOG MAN.’ As he ran, he shouted, ‘MAZZONI DOG MAN!’ over his shoulder again, his elbows and knees flying every which way. He was fast. He turned a corner.

  ‘Gone, no way to make a positive ID,’ said Dayton. ‘Too quick. Get him next time.’

  ‘Oh, hell no,’ said Mike Mazzoni. And gunned the engine.

  cxl. engine

  Clive, that bleeding lovesick fool, tosses and flails on the floor like a wild thing, but the phone’s handset cord holds his wrists and ankles tight. You stir within me, ready, even now, to power the nation.

  33 In Which Liddell Finally Experiences Regret

  At this very window, as she did the dishes, Wafa had once said of the Americans, ‘They live as though everything is someone else’s fault. They never consider their personal arrogance as connected in any way to the national arrogance that gets them into trouble.’

  ‘But we’re Americans,’ Fatima had protested.

  ‘Used to be. Not anymore.’

  Fatima was the one doing the dishes now. Perhaps the American could be helped. Perhaps not.

  There was a sudden howl from outside. Something Noura didn’t like about a flower, which she dropped, then laughed at, then knelt to recover. She gathered more and more of the tiny red-and-white wildflowers, waved her thin hands in dismay as the new batch flew in all directions, and shouted at some insect not to sting her. She ran. She stopped. She lectured the air.

  She was no woman yet, not in bearing, certainly not in her capacity to withstand sorrow or challenge. Yet the structure of her body was changing. That was undeniable. At some point soon, someone would have to have a talk with Noura.

  Not a talk about the mechanics of the thing. Noura already knew that part backwards and forwards, and occasionally soliloquized about it in her dreamy, matter-of-fact way.

  No. This – what Fatima now had to consider – was the Real Discussion, the discussion that came years after all the talk about where babies came from and how they were placed there. This was a different discussion altogether, one requiring care and tact.

  This was the talk about the way men and women either helped each other or destroyed each other. The talk about how love either saves or eradicates, how it has no middle way. The talk about what might be expected from men, about the practical advantages of reinforcing certain restrictions of the faith governing one’s encounters with them, about knowing when and how to turn away from them. It was Noura’s time.

  Ummi knew the Real Discussion needed to take place, yet she was no good at that talk. Baba would have been better at giving these talks than Ummi. When it was Fatima’s time, Ummi had only begun the discussion at Wafa’s prompting. Ummi had collapsed into evasion and gossip and reverie when she’d tried to conduct the Real Discussion, and the resulting empty, over-told anecdotes about failed betrothals and sorrowful families had only left Fatima wondering what on earth the pauses, the raised eyebrows and the pointed emphases were all meant to convey.

  That left Wafa to conduct the Real Discussion with Fatima.

  Wafa did this the very morning after Ummi’s pointless rehashing of her sister-in-law’s broken engagement, which had only led to Fatima rolling eyes. Fast forward to Wafa, strolling with her on the way to buy fruit, her shoulders back and her eyes on the road ahead.

  Wafa began with the words ‘Now, Fatima, you know it is your time.’

  The talk was masterful, encompassing everything. Not merely what elements of one’s person must be concealed in public, which Fatima knew, but why they must be concealed. Not merely whose hand one may not brush against casually with one’s own hand, but why it must not be brushed against. What may be expected of men and what may not. How to tell when they believed themselves to be speaking truthfully and when they imagined they were deceiving you.

  Wafa’s words had been different from Ummi’s: insight rooted in an experience the origins of which Fatima dared not attempt to decipher; insight every syllable of which spoke of incontestable personal authority. Fatima’s eyes had narrowed, her steps had slowed. Her heart had opened. She had never listened so intently to anyone.

  Now Wafa was gone when she was most needed.

  Ummi was still useless on such matters, far worse than useless, in fact: a hindrance and an irritation. With Noura still likely to talk about the naked ravings of Crazytown with anything or anyone that moved, Fatima had to begin the Real Discussion. How? When? Who knew how much good it would do?

  Noura was edging toward the outer border of the wild, unthreaded tangle she called a garden, pressing toward that dark pool that lay beyond the kitchen window’s rectangle.

  Fatima rapped on the glass. Noura turned, nodded, and came back.

  Noura remembered things that mattered to her. The trick, as ever, was to make them matter to her.

  A horn honked outside. Fatima pictured her silent, expressionless driver waiting, felt his usual sullen impatience and heard the tough, grim motor of his old grey sedan idling. He never got out.

  cxli. silent

  Earbuds in.

  Even Ringo Starr wrote a song for the White Album: Track fourteen was his first solo composition. To ‘lose one’s hair’ is, in Liverpudlian parlance, to be decapitated. Compare ‘lose one’s hat’, which has an identical meaning. Mazzoni’s ghastly summary execution at the hands of the terrorist cell is thus foretold at 1:41–1:45. T’s more civilized passing, via the Graner Maneuver, is obliquely referenced at 0:19–0:23. I still find myself waiting for his knock on the door, even here. I recall seeing in his eyes the glimmer of settled, indefinable regret. But it was not repentance. It was something else.

  No knock at my silent door. Evil men, I think, never willingly admit their criminality.

  Fatima stayed at the kitchen window and took a moment to remind herself of something else Wafa said while standing on this very spot.

  Sullivan Hand, whose hips were sound,

  whose eyes were clouded,

  whose face was round,

  Sullivan Hand, who knew the dark,

  who liked its descent, who wore its mark,

  Sullivan Hand, who made no sound,

  save the clicking of keystrokes, with no one around –

  young Hand, I say, had just one light.

  It glowed from his monitor all through the night.

  Sullivan Hand reached out again.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to me?’

  ‘Aren’t you my friend?’

  34 In Which ‘Fajr’ Is Defined

  Having completed fajr and the supererogatory prayers that followed it, Indelible sipped his Darjeeling tea and consulted his various online profiles, all of which pointed their messages to ^indelible^@gmail.com. Three emails from muslim&proud@gmail.com materialized in quick succession. Indelible set the cup down and peered in at the screen. None of the three had content in the body of the message. The headings read:

  Why don’t you talk to me?

  Aren’t you my friend?

  Don’t forget to pray fajr.

  cxlii. fajr

  The Islamic pre-dawn prayer.

  A fourth message presented itself, with the heading ‘Well?’ It had this message in the body: Salaam. Well? Why don’t you talk to me?
<
br />   He studied the messages, then ran a simple, if unorthodox, diagnostic.

  The messages were tracking from Langley, Virginia. Indelible would create a recommendation concerning whether he should answer them – no, how he should answer them – when he returned from Jahannum.

  cxliii. Jahannum

  Literally, the internet tells me, a garbage dump! That may be the most apt descriptor after all. Nothing to do with hell. Restless and weary.

  Thelonius said, ‘Teach me how to pray for something.’

  A prayer right now, with a city of two million or so people calling for his head, certainly wouldn’t hurt. Since he was here, since she was out of sorts, he would humour her and pray her way. Whatever way that was.

  The Raisin was not as surprised as he’d expected her to be, but she didn’t say anything back, either.

  ‘I mean: Would you please teach me how to pray for something. No one ever taught me that before. I have this meeting today at ten. I want it to go well.’

  cxliv. this meeting

  Track fifteen. No one would be watching them copulating, there in the basement of a prison. And I am supposed to apologize for every ancient indiscretion. Need a nap.

  She looked away. He felt the volcano. That was it. That was the part that triggered him. Looking away. Like Becky had.

  Stress breath. It was possible she was testing him. Likely.

  Stress breath.

  ‘I want to pray to God for help,’ Thelonius said. ‘For forgiveness of my sins.’

  ‘As you say.’ She caught his stare and held it. ‘Whenever we are done praying, we are to continue praying. We are to pray to God when we are standing, pray when we are sitting, pray when we are lying down. Impossible, yes? But people are praying even when they don’t think they are praying. What are you praying to now?’

  He didn’t want to try to answer.

  ‘Hmm? To what?’

  ‘I give up. I don’t know what I’m praying to.’

  ‘Always our question the same: Does one use free choice to worship the Creator, or to worship what is created? If one worships the Creator alone, one is a Muslim. If one does not, one wanders and strays. A man has only what he strives for.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m praying right, then.’

  The Raisin took a leathery pull on her two unfiltered Pall Malls. When she let the smoke out through her nostrils, she looked like a dragon.

  ‘I think maybe I’ve just got too many bad things going on in my head to pray for anything,’ said Thelonius.

  She shook her head. ‘Prayer is to worship Allah as though you are seeing Him, and while you see Him not, to be certain He sees you. If you want to pray, say what the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, used to say. Say, Guide us to the straight path – the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favour, not of those who have evoked Your anger or of those who are astray. Will you say that?’

  Thelonius thought of what a lousy Christian he had been whenever Hal and Louise tried to turn him into a Christian. He was about to tell the Raisin he had reconsidered, that he wasn’t built for this kind of thing, but something, a trickling feeling inside, stopped him from saying that, and instead he said, ‘Give it to me slowly.’

  ‘Guide us to the straight path,’ the Raisin said.

  ‘Guide us to the straight path.’

  ‘The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favour.’

  ‘The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favour.’

  ‘Not of those who have evoked your anger.’

  ‘Not … of those who have evoked your anger.’

  ‘Or of those who are astray.’

  ‘Or of those … of those who are astray.’

  Just to keep the peace in the cell.

  cxlv. peace

  Room 209 can’t seem to get a moment of peace at the moment. One-thirty in the morning. That makes thirty-seven straight sleepless hours. MotherDaughter refuses to let me go under. Turning up the volume. Kicks within quite vigorous.

  35 In Which I Stand with Difficulty

  Before leaving her kitchen window, Fatima reminded herself of Wafa’s favorite proverb: One must enter a house through the proper door. Meaning: Begin all matters properly.

  She reminded herself of this proverb with regard to Noura, who was in the wild garden twilling a pleasant-looking weed. The discussion must begin properly. No time for it now. Perhaps when there was the opportunity for a long walk. The proverb was also relevant in regard to Ummi, to whom she owed respect, not resentment.

  ‘Ummi?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Probably still in bed.

  ‘Leaving for work now. Noura is in the yard. Will I call her in?’

  ‘Yes, love. Assalamu alaykum.’

  ‘Wa alaykum salaam.’

  Fatima knocked on the window again, caught Noura’s glance, waved her hand for her to come inside. Noura came in the back door.

  And to that sour driver out there, doubtless drumming his fingers within the sedan he never seemed to leave. The journey with him should begin properly, too.

  And even in regard to Thelonius.

  Time. Best to go now. Before the driver honks again.

  cxlvi. Before

  Track sixteen. You knew how long I loved you. You knew I loved you more. Yet you lied like all the others. And befouled the years before.

  ‘I thought smoking was prohibited in Islam,’ Thelonius said.

  ‘It is,’ said the Raisin, who had just lit the two simultaneous cigarettes permitted to her by mutual agreement. No more before the dhuhr prayer, which was still three hours away. Thelonius knew the timings now.

  cxlvii. timings

  My body increasingly a battleground. I happened to notice a Tums packet left in my open suitcase. That will calm us. It is now two eleven a.m. Let this work, MotherDaughter, for the love of Mother.

  ‘Then why do you smoke?’

  ‘Because I am addicted.’

  ‘Doesn’t count as a sin?’

  ‘Oh, I believe it does,’ the Raisin answered. ‘Every day, I repent for it and strive to leave the addiction behind. Perhaps today.’

  ‘Surely at this point…’

  ‘I know. I will be dead soon.’

  An awkward moment.

  ‘Everybody will be tasting death. Everybody. You. More obvious in my case, is all. Angel Gabriel gave the Koran to the Prophet, peace be upon him, to remind us of this. And of other matters we forget. At this stage, the doctor says I may do as I please. I smoke far less since we made our agreement, you know.’

  ‘You suppose God will forgive all the cigarettes you smoke now because you’re smoking less?’

  ‘I pray God will forgive me, not for the outcome, but for the sincerity of my effort.’

  ‘Sounds like a lot of trauma for nothing.’

  ‘It is Jihad. The heart of any religion worthy of practice.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard about Jihad. Jihad is why I had to come out here.’

  ‘There was a listening issue. Jihad means striving. Any striving.’

  That possibility circulated in wreaths of smoke.

  ‘Anyway, a lot of work,’ Thelonius said, ‘quitting smoking while you’re…’ There was no tactful word.

  ‘Dying?’ the Raisin offered. ‘What I am occupying myself with now is dying.’

  ‘What I mean is, you might as well take advantage of any way to enjoy yourself.’

  Kneeling there, her beads in her hand, blanketed on the floor, the Raisin took a long drag on both her cigarettes, expelled a wave of smoke, crushed one of the embers on her palm, deposited the half-length butt in the can, held on to the other one. She said: ‘The chrysalis of the Monarch butterfly shakes quite a bit when it is touched. Some think this is to ward off predators. I wonder if something else is happening.’

  Her voice was ragged and slow now. She took a drag on the remaining cigarette. Another plume of smoke went up.

  ‘Look at our cell. Look at our bodies disintegr
ating. This is Jihad. You and I are Jihadis. We struggle. Struggles and obstacles are gifts from our Lord. Even our faults. Even our losses. Even our weaknesses. What is our intention? Whatever we intend to strive for, that is what we worship. Again: Where are we going? What matters is not whether what we attain is just. What matters is whether what we are striving for is just. Whether we make an effort.’

  She ventured to stand, did not, rearranged herself onto the cot.

  ‘Jihad,’ the Raisin said, ‘is God-conscious intention and effort in the face of an obstacle. If it is easier for you to be just by saying “intention”, say “intention”, and don’t say “jihad”. Whatever you say, or don’t say, justice is personal intention and effort. Personal empathy. Personal striving. You must be there. It’s like pissing. Such a trivial undertaking. But you must do it in person. And with the right intention.’

  Morale Specialist appeared at the bars: ‘Time.’ Thelonius’s visitor was waiting in a private interrogation room. The visitor wanted him to know their discussion would not be monitored or recorded.

  ‘Take the Koran with you,’ the Raisin said. ‘On the windowsill. Assalamu alaykum.’ The little eyes managed a spark.

  He hesitated for a moment, stood with difficulty, then limped to the window, where the morning light made a kind of clearing, despite the clouds and the soot of the city. He took a breath. Then the book was in his hand.

  cxlviii. stood with difficulty

  As I did just now, before a long, complex and painful trip to the bathroom. That completed, and the door locked, I emerged and tried to lie down on the bed. Couldn’t. Ongoing gastric issues. Back at the little desk, I check the time. Christ.