Jihadi

by Yusuf Toropov

  Fatima leaned back in the chair.

  Curious as a fish, Murad Murad did not shift away, despite her obvious discomfort, but continued evaluating her – leaning forward slightly, in fact.

  ‘Good. It has almost healed. I felt badly about giving you that bruise. I so wanted to tell you how badly I felt. One regrets an action like that, a bad overreaction, I should say, when it affects a person one cares for.’

  Too close. His breath stank. The beginning of an edge of nausea. Everything had happened today. Now this.

  Just Get Started.

  ‘Respected Interim Director, there is a mole in your informant network. I know this mole’s identity. I can describe him. I have video of him. He is working for a group affiliated with the Defenders of God. The man who killed Ra’id knew this mole’s identity as well. You will want to arrest this man, I assure you.’

  He sniffed, stepped back, sized her up once again. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he dropped both barbells on the surface of his desk. They fell with a heavy clanging sound.

  ‘Ra’id had you placed on some interesting assignments. Where is this video?’

  ‘At my home. On a thumb drive.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring it?’

  ‘I didn’t feel safe transporting it. Didn’t want it to be seen prematurely.’ ‘Prematurely.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled another limp half-smile.

  76

  The doctors feared she would die before midnight. The phrase ‘afraid she’ll die’, is buried deep in the mix, but discernable to the trained ear at 1:30. (There must have been coverage of the attack in the London papers.)

  ‘So. You came here to bargain with me.’

  ‘I came here to bargain. It turns out I am bargaining with you.’

  He walked behind her. To turn while remaining seated was impossible. The chair bolted. The casters disabled.

  The options now: Stay seated, or stand and signal a desire for conflict.

  Stay seated. Look at the ceiling.

  ‘You think I am worried about these people,’ Murad Murad said. And laughed. ‘About this White Beast. Worried enough to negotiate with a woman. But you see I have them on my payroll. And there is only one thing I will negotiate with a woman. I will tell you something, it is not the White Beast. They are a minor irritant, these people in white. In their thousands. In their tens of thousands. I don’t care. I will tell you something else. At the most they are forty percent of this country. Thirty-five, more likely. So. What are we to make of this thirty-five, forty? Are we to lose sleep? They are more vocal than the majority. That is all. More willing to identify themselves. Easier to pick off in a gunfight, if it comes to that. I tell you something else: The sixty, sixty-five percent I work for wants it to come to that. These are schoolboys, these men in white robes. I could have a hundred moles. I will still beat them all down. This is not what I’ll negotiate, Fatima. With a woman, I will negotiate something else. You are concerned for your sister. For your mother. For yourself. Say yes. It’s true. You are concerned for them. You want to protect your home.’

  Breathe. Still time to engage him in the trade you came to make.

  ‘Yes. We need protection. Now listen. This man I am talking about. I believe a major operation of some kind is under way. I believe he’s been researching it, preparing it. Someone tried to kill me so that I could not interfere with it.’

  He made a tsk tsk tsk sound.

  77

  A woman’s laughter – 1:35, 1:42, 1:44, which transitions seamlessly into the cooing of a baby at 1:48. Order established. She was not killed and will not die! She brings Order to the Nation!

  ‘Go back to “Yes”. Go back to “We need protection”.’

  He was standing directly behind her now. His voice too close again.

  She looked up over her right shoulder.

  ‘Very well. We do need protection, my family and I. And so do you. Now I believe you have a decision to make. The BII has a decision to make. What is your decision?’

  With a few soft, fat taps of his feet, he was invisible again. He could move quickly.

  ‘These are dangerous times we live in.’

  Well, he is much further away now. Either good or bad that he’s moved away.

  She heard the little click of the door: He has locked me in.

  Very bad.

  The soft, fat taps of his gait returning. And he was close again behind her, unseen: ‘As I have told you already, Fatima, my dear Fatima, there is a thing I am willing to negotiate with women.’

  The sound and smell of him directly above her, whispering, almost, to the top of her head. The foul breath again. His forearms on the high-backed chair, stressing it. She felt his forearms there without touching them.

  The room fell still.

  Without moving, the room seemed to ask her what she planned to do next. A mistake to come here. Yes, the room agreed, but what now?

  She had been chased out of her body. She hovered above it, above her own body, above sweaty Murad Murad, above the bolted chair, above everything. Time skittered like a top. It spun down, kicked around, and bounced itself dead into a corner.

  78

  As the second section begins (1:51), there is a sudden transition away from instrumentation and toward crowds/choirs.

  The wrong place to be, but there regardless.

  It was instinct that set time spinning again. Instinct said, Stand up, claim your ground. Purify yourself.

  Fatima felt herself descending, felt time coursing back into her body. A sense of her life being brief and sacred possessed her.

  While she was still seated in that high-backed chair, while her eyes and spine and feet reformed, while her heart opened and closed, at the first hint of her movement, she felt a blow at the top of her skull. She felt knuckles and knives at the point where time had reawakened. The room wobbled.

  Then three of his untrimmed fingernails cut right through the thin fabric and into her scalp, two left, one right – and one of his hands pulled the covering from her head while the other pulled the blouse from her chest.

  Abomination. As she reclaimed her body. Sudden, unforeseen, indefensible, animal force. To eliminate the border of her modesty. Abomination.

  Safety pins flying through the air. The topmost part of her garment torn. The sudden pain from three deep, bleeding gash-lines in her scalp, each imparted by what she imagined, at the moment of the Abomination, to be the claws of a beast. Her right hand instinctively rising to her throat to hold her torn jilbab in place.

  A tidal wave of shame engulfing the room.

  79

  The choir (2:33 etc.) represents Western (i.e., white European) civilization; it is challenged by mongrel (i.e., Islamic) terror/chaos at 2:30, 3:15, 4:02 and 4:20. But this will pass, and she will emerge victorious from the Bottomless Pit.

  She was bareheaded now, clutching the shreds of her jilbab about her, in a locked office, before a man. Not a close blood relative. A non-mahram. A non-mahram with bad intent.

  Stand or crouch and cover?

  Instinct saw the two pathways, too, and demanded this decision from Fatima: Stand.

  Fatima stood as she had been ordered to by instinct. She did not turn to reveal her face to her attacker. Instinct had not told her to do that. The chair, bolted in place between them, served as a kind of barrier for her as she spoke.

  ‘Open that door immediately or by God Almighty, you will regret the consequences.’

  ‘Fatima,’ he whispered again from behind, his lips too near her ear. ‘Fatima. Certain words feel so good to say. The end of all the secrets today. Dark hair, then, quite long, quite straight, inclining to auburn in places. Let me be your father. You need not say anything.’

  Murad Murad made a shhh sound, very close to her ear. Then, with practised ease, he stepped back a pace or two and placed his left hand on his belt buckle. He began to unfasten it. When he did that, the metal components of the belt struck against each other an
d made the sound of an alarm pronouncing danger.

  When instinct heard that sound, it spoke to Fatima again, advising her of Murad Murad’s new position in the room, and ordering her to undertake a certain course of action. She obeyed without hesitation.

  80

  At 4:50, the piece transitions abruptly into its third section, with violent, muttering rabble replaced by cheering Islamic masses, imagining they have won the day.

  She scanned the desk that was now in front of her. She found the two gold hand-weights lying near the centre of the desk, and she took up her weapons, one in each hand.

  She shut her eyes, gathered the two weighted hands together into a single projectile, positioned her arms as instinct instructed and spun around towards Murad Murad with all the speed and momentum her body could summon.

  At the lethal point where the twinned weights caught him, just below his left cheek, the iron missiles spun Murad Murad’s head abruptly sideways. Fatima heard his neck crack with the force, but because her eyes were closed, she did not see his body fall backward against the rear wall and then hang there.

  She dropped the two gold hand-weights and heard them thud and clatter, low-toned against each other and the floor. The dark kiss of gravity.

  ‘Bismillah,’ she said. In the name of God.

  She opened her eyes.

  81

  And back. Just played 4:54–5:10, and pausing there: Someone’s wife informs him that he must now wear yellow underwear. This section foresees T’s detention at Bright Light, fluorescent yellow garments being issued to all inmates.

  The leftmost coat-hook had punctured his temple, impaling him with its four rigid inches of stainless steel. Murad Murad dangled, on display, unconscious, twitching.

  Fatima approached him with slow steps, breathing hard. She looked him over. A thick rivulet of blood ran from his nose, wound its way down his cheek and onto the shoulder-pad of his khaki uniform. His eyes stared at everything and nothing, and then rolled back into his head.

  He gasped and then stopped gasping.

  Short of breath herself, she grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. The question of what to do next was now moot. Instinct had removed the threat.

  Her breathing, already hoarse and raw, became more frequent in the certainty of his death, and she heard herself moan and wheeze with it. Something shuddered again inside her, the roaring and coiling from the very core of her, and she staggered backward with it. The chair held her, though it was bolted in the wrong direction, so as to only afford her its back. She gave it her armpits, slung herself there, heaving with it. He was dead, with certainty he was dead, so she did not attempt to prevent the shuddering.

  The thing writhing inside her swung in and out of itself from all angles, like a pot boiling over from beneath its lid, sputtering and stopping, sputtering and stopping. It was stronger than last time, even, and it bent inward with each new heave it demanded of her. It kept up that inward bending and heaving for the longest time. She clutched her torn garment, held her upper body tight. Instinct was content with this arrangement. It had its own momentum.

  There was no shame in her following where the writhing led. When the spasms had passed, when she had returned to herself, she asked instinct ‘What next?’ and listened for the answer.

  Having been granted permission, she returned to the corpse that hung by its hook on the wall. She repeated Bismillah and fought back the urge to spit into its face. That would have been shameful. She found a loaded pistol in a holster on Murad Murad’s hip. She took that pistol.

  She retrieved her torn scarf and facial veil from the floor, found three of the four pins. She worked them back into place as best she could. She sat for a brief rest. Her hair, forehead and lower face covered again, her jilbab pinned acceptably, she remembered Thelonius.

  Just Get Started.

  She stood, retrieved the two gold hand-weights, covered her eyes with her left hand and hurled the hand-weights toward the grey window.

  They sailed right through its one-way glass. There was a tremendous crash and whine and clatter. Gold afternoon light flooded the room.

  The danger past, she removed her left hand from her face. Her eyes were safe.

  She ignored the alarm that sounded. She kicked free the loose shards of glass in the corners of the frame, and walked calmly into the late-afternoon rush of Malaika Street on her numb, obedient legs.

  82

  You are rumbling again, in anticipation of 5:36.

  ‘Getting some wheels now?’

  Sullivan Hand joked that, with all the money he had just transferred to Indelible’s bank account, Indelible could afford to buy a new car now if he wanted. They both laughed at that.

  Indelible laughed exactly the same way Sullivan Hand laughed. He acknowledged that he might be buying a Lincoln at some point, but said that, right now, he had to pay off some pressing debts. During all of their conversations, Indelible made frequent reference to desperate financial straits.

  In reality, he had no pressing debts. As soon as the conversation concluded, Indelible arranged for the money he’d secured to be delivered, in the event of his death, to the trustees of the refugee camp known as Jahannum.

  Indelible emailed Sullivan Hand the names and locations of five insurgents. These five men had agreed to be martyred in order to help Indelible build up a bridge of trust with Sullivan Hand. Sullivan Hand didn’t know that.

  During their next call, Indelible told Sullivan Hand that he had recently been appointed the New Imam’s personal physician. He hadn’t, really. Sullivan Hand didn’t know that, either.

  In his cubicle, Sullivan Hand maintained his fatherly tone as he said ‘Oh.’ Then he punched his silent fist in the air. It felt to him as though he had just won the Super Bowl. As though Becky Firestone were, at any moment, about to walk in the work area, strap him down to something solid, his desk, say, and have at him, as though he were immortal.

  83

  Gunfire @ 5:36 signals global religious war. The conflagration that will follow Her rebirth and send the elect to the safety of the Bottomless Pit

  Late that night, Thelonius phoned Adelia and asked to speak to Dad. When she recognized Thelonius’s voice, she said she had been meaning to call him and asked whether he was sitting down.

  84

  And back. A coda begins at 6:47, culminating in the voice of a WOMAN WHO GETS THE LAST WORD at 7:44. Babies are of course born naked. Peace possible only through the establishment of Order, and Order in the nation only possible through revering Her.

  This was like running patrol, only all alone. This was like hunting, and like looking for a new black star to tattoo, and like pinning disrespect itself in the laser sight. This was like getting down to business at last.

  The drive had helped Mike Mazzoni to even things out a bit. He took another hit from the fifth of Cuervo, which was beginning to undercut that headache. Hair of the dog. Good for whatever ails you. Have to remember that when time to call Mom rolls around. Women a lot more likely to overreact to things.

  He wasn’t ten minutes from the base when he spotted her.

  Damn.

  Some fool raghead girl. Thirteen, fourteen. Stark naked. In a pond. Splashing herself between the legs. He slowed. Either she hadn’t heard the vehicle or she had heard it and not cared. He pulled the vehicle onto the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. Peered through the window. She was visible from the road through a parting in the trees, no problem. She was facing the road, in fact. And she was spending way too much time washing her goods.

  Which looked fine and clean and free of distracting stubble and open for business to Mike Mazzoni.

  Cold water or no cold water, she certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. Her face. Damn. He killed the engine, swigged some more Cuervo, got out, stepped around quiet to the border of the asphalt, and stared at her. A little rosebud blooming.

  Damn.

  The broad grey road between them. Forty feet away, maybe.
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  And she was still trying to work something out down there. What the hell kind of water was she cooking with? How long would this go on? This long, anyway.

  Damn.

  Then the moment died. The girl heard something, abandoned her half-crouch, stood straight, met his eyes. Her forehead wrinkled and her face went dark. She screamed something he didn’t understand. Like she was calling him a name. Warning him off.

  When he didn’t move, she raised her two hands like two paws with claws and howled at him like a cat. Loud as she could. Now a meow. A howl. High, then low and rumbling.

  Then she covered her little teenybopper titties. Turned and splashed her way out of the pond and ran her little teenybopper butt cheeks back into the brush.

  Oh hell no.

  Something about the way she had looked at him, something about the cat thing, pissed him off in a way he couldn’t quite translate.

  Bitch.

  Things That Piss Me Off. His go-to topic, and, in a sense, his only topic. Prominent on the long list of Things That Pissed Mike Mazzoni Off were any and all stunts pulled by people who had the intention of humiliating him. That was what the raghead teenybopper had just done: tried to make him look like an idiot by howling at him like a cat. Like she could kill him just with a look.