Forbidden Thoughts

by Milo Yiannopoulos

  The Angel just looked at her.

  Shazia’s jaw trembled. “If he kills this soldier… will he be no longer fit for such a destiny?”

  “It will make your job much harder.” The angel bowed his head. “If you can find a way to stop him from committing murder—if you can stop him and yet retain his life and yours—he will in time aid you. I can see it. Once he regains himself, he will write letters from prison that will help clarify and inspire. If he dies, your mission may be lost, and mankind will pass into yet another age of darkness.”

  “But… what can I do?” she cried. “If I run over and speak to him, they will kill me. Will they not?”

  “Yes. They will.”

  “What then?” cried Shazia.

  “You could fetch the soldiers—the city guard,” suggested Gabriel. “I will hold the young men here a while longer, to give you time. Your cousin will be arrested, but he will live.”

  “And… that is the only way?”

  “It is.” The angel’s face seemed strangely cool and distant. “I have seen it.”

  Turn on Kabir? Betray him to the police?

  That was the only way to save the world?

  Shazia gazed at her cousin, so handsome if he would only stop sneering. She glanced at those around him, the nine standing and the one kneeling and frowned.

  “That man there with the bag over his head,” she pointed. “He is a soldier. If I bring more, won’t they grow angry at the humiliation of one of their own and shoot.”

  “They might,” the angel said sadly. “My Father has granted humans free will.”

  “But,” Shazia cried in great agitation, “can you tell me for certain that if I turn my cousin in, he will live. Do you know for sure?”

  The angel bowed his head. “Only my Father knows all.”

  Shazia continued to gaze at her beloved cousin. Was this to be her fate, then? To turn on the one person she most wished to protect and betray him to the officials, so that years from now, he might write her helpful letters from prison? Allah was cruel, indeed.

  What of the life he was going to have led? What of the family he wished someday to have? Was that all to be lost?

  Was there no hope?

  Shazia’s eyes filled with tears that even a Marine would not be ashamed of.

  Pulling her hijab around her more closely, she turned her back on the angel and began to walk slowly toward the Khyber Gate with its machine guns and its guards. As she walked her cheeks began to grow hot as she envisioned all the I-told-you-sos she would soon face from her friends at home. All of them had told her she was crazy for coming, for wasting her time, her money on such a fool’s errand—all of them except her Irish bunkmate from the Marines.

  Camlyn had written her a long email telling about how the O’Malley family had lost her uncle Sean after he joined the IRA. He had been shot by a cop while trying to blow up a building for the Irish terrorists group. “To this day,” her friend had written, “my mother mourns her brother and regrets that she did not make the trip to Ireland to try and change his mind. You go, Lance Corporal Hayak! You save Kabir!”

  Disappointing her fellow Marine was going to be even more painful than facing the naysayers. Maybe, she would just send a text: Mission failed.

  Then she paused, for she had just recalled the words of the Angel Gabriel: “When the time comes for a prophet to come into his own, the rules are told to him. Then he is tempted. For it is my eldest brother’s prerogative to have a chance to lead mankind astray. The potential prophet is told that it is allowed to do something that is not allowed. If he knows better, he is a true prophet. If he does not, he retroactively becomes a false one.”

  Had not she just been told the rules?

  In the light of the angel’s halo, had not she been reminded by her memory of Great-Grandmother Anahika of the two most important things in life? Never lose hope, and never let anything come between her and Kabir.

  This was the Test of the Prophet. The Evil One could not appeal to her vanity. Shazia was not a vain woman. The Evil One was tempting her to despair.

  Shazia turned slowly and gazed back at her cousin and his comrades through the frozen raindrops. The young men in their tight black clothing stood surrounded by jeering shaitans, ifrites, and marids. The angel was still in the clearing, standing motionless, shining in the gloom like a star.

  “Gabriel,” she cried, “what if I could drive off the djinn? They are making these young men crazy. I saw it in their eyes. If I could drive off the djinn, might Kabir and his friends let the soldier go.”

  “Very likely,” replied the Angel Gabriel.

  “How? How can I do that?”

  “I cannot help you.”

  The djinn hooted and guffawed. They shouted out crass mocking words.

  Shazia hung her head, struggling not to cry. She was a Marine. Marines refused to give up. Marines found solutions.

  “Solomon!” Her head snapped up. “The Quran says that Allah granted him ‘a kingdom over the djinn not allowed to any human after him.’ Even the Prophet could not command djinn, but King Solomon could. Could you… bring Solomon here?”

  The angel shook his head. “That is not within my power.”

  Shazia cried in desperation, “Is there truly no other way? Something, someone, somewhere must be able to banish the dark spirits!”

  The angel gazed at her with his unendurably deep eyes. “There is Another in whose name these dark ones can be banished. For it has been said: ‘Even the evil spirits are subject to us in thy name.’”

  That sounded familiar, but she could not place it. From a movie, perhaps?

  “There is someone else? Who?” Shazia fell to her knees on the hard ground, taking no care to avoid the broken glass scattered there. She pressed her hands together, pleading. “Please, if there is anyone—anyone at all—who has authority over these dark spirits… Anyone in all of wide Heaven… Can he not help me? Please?” She looked up at the rain-drenched sky, through the motionless drops. “If there is any power in Heaven that can drive back these dark djinn, I beg of you, please come!”

  There came a sound that shook the earth beneath her. The beast-like shaitans and the black, flame-eyed ifrite fled away, leaving only the five great marids with their horns and fiery breath hovering over the young men. Shazia, too, quaked, her limbs trembling. Even as she shook, however, it came to her that she had heard such a sound before, on a documentary.

  It was the roar of Lion.

  A great golden beast came padding around the corner. It was greater than any lion Shazia had ever seen in a zoo. Its body shone like the sun, and its mane was so dark a gold as to appear black. Its eyes gazed out upon the world like two terrible lamps.

  Terror seized Shazia. Her thoughts scattered like frightened butterflies. Never before had she been so scared. Not the first time she had deployed, not in her entire stint in the Corps, not even the time she crossed a field where a landmine had just blown off a man’s leg to save his little girl.

  Shazia screamed and leapt to her feet, hiding behind the angel, clutching the soft feathers of his folded wings.

  This was clearly not a tame lion.

  Yet, the beast did not attack.

  The angel bowed his head respectfully, “Milord.”

  Shazia gasped. She had been betrayed. This glorious angel was not Jibrail, but some pretender. This beast was the horrible Iblis himself, coming to claim her.

  Only the Lion’s eyes were not terrible. They were mighty to behold, but it was a wonderful kind of mighty.

  Looking into them made her feel as if she were so much more than a young woman who had lost her way. Looking into them, she felt like the very daughter of God.

  The Lion turned and regarded the marid. The great wicked creatures backed up, hissing and spitting. Yet still they clung to their charges.

  “You are not welcome here,” their leader hissed. “No one has called You. We are within our rights.”

  The Lion eyed them grav
ely. “Tell your fellows down in the fiery pit: Our Father is beautiful in his mercy and terrible in his justice. Tell them that I said: Last time, I came as a lamb and thus went meekly to the slaughter. That time has past. Soon, I shall come again. This time, I come as a Lion.”

  Ooooohhh!

  Shazia’s jaw dropped. “You… you are Isa Ibn Maryam!”

  “That is one name for me.” The Lion’s tone was wry. “But it is not the name that these ones fear. It will not aid you now.”

  “You mean…” Her mouth was as dry as dust from the desert. “Do I have to convert? Turn my back on my people? What is it that I must do? Drink blood?”

  Lion ignored her. It sat and began washing like a cat.

  “What do I do? Must I convert to the infidel religion? Worship you? Bow down? Kiss your feet? Foreswear everything held dear to me? I have heard about you my whole life. The imams preach against the followers of the Son of God ever Friday. You will not help me unless I do some horrible thing?”

  Lion drew itself up, until it looked very fearsome indeed. In a deep, deep voice, it roared: “Do you think me so small as that?”

  Shazia shrieked and grabbed Gabriel’s back, her fingers again sinking into the soft feathers of his wings.

  Gabriel spoke, his voice like music, “Call upon His Name.”

  “Just that?” asked Shazia.

  “That is all.”

  “B-but why?” Shazia cried, turning to the Lion. “Why would you help me, a Muslim? I am no one important. Not an angel. Not a king. Not a son of God. I am just a lowly creation in submission to Allah. Why would you help me just because of my asking?”

  The Lion regarded her steadily.

  Shazia took a very deep breath and cried out in as steady a voice as she was able: “I-I banish thee… in the name of Jesus Christ!”

  The Lion roared.

  The sound of it shook the foundations of the earth. There was a rush of darkness as the djinn screeched and fled.

  Then it was raining.

  Shazia stood on the grass amidst the broken glass. Rain pelted her hijab. Ten young men, standing around a kneeling soldier with a bag over his head, all looked at her, where she stood, dripping wet, having just shouted out a name that would mark her for an infidel.

  One of the young men jabbered at her in Urdu, quicker than she could follow.

  “Shazia?” Kabir cried out. “My sweet cousin Shazia? What are you doing here?”

  “I… am lost,” she cried in Urdu, for it was all she could think to say.

  The young men stared at her. Shazia drew the edge of her hajib across her face. But she noticed a difference. The crazed anger was draining from their eyes. They looked like ordinary young men, the kind that might play basketball at the park while listening to music.

  “Shazia, what are you doing here? You will catch your death in this rain. Come home. Come home.”

  Kabir dropped the scimitar. Striding forward, he grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the others. Under his breath, he whispered, “Don’t look back. Just walk, as if that is what we are supposed to be doing.”

  Shazia lifted her head and walked.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Kabir.

  “Saving you.”

  “Saving me?”

  “You know what you are doing here. It is wrong.”

  Kabir must have forgotten his own recent words of wisdom, for he stopped cold. “But it is for the glory of Allah!”

  “Yes!” Shazia replied scathingly. “This is what Allah wants from you! You! Do you remember how we vowed to make a change for good? Does this look to you like good? This barbed wire? This atmosphere of fear? What kind of god would want a good boy to turn into such a bad one?”

  Kabir’s face grew dark with outrage, but then his face went slack. He glanced over his shoulder, almost as if he were looking for the wicked qareen who no longer dwelt there. He blinked twice. “Yes. You are right. I do not know what came over me.”

  “Come, Kabir. Let’s go home,” said Shazia. “We have work to do. You and I.”

  He took her hand and began walking again, whispering. “Don’t look back.”

  But she did.

  Behind them, the tallest of the young men kicked the kneeling soldier, pushing the man over with his foot. The soldier fell to the muddy ground, his hands still tied behind his back.

  “This is no good.” The tall one pulled off his face scarf. “Let’s go.”

  The young men turned and left. The soldier lay panting on the ground, alive.

  A huge golden Lion stepped forward and stood over the fallen soldier, who was writhing, trying to get free of his bonds. The Lion breathed on him. The ropes loosened. The soldier wriggled free. He ripped the bag off his head and untied the ropes securing his legs, stumbled to his feet, and ran.

  He did not seem to see the Lion.

  The Lion turned its head toward her. Shazia noted that it had not cost her another headache to see Him. Staring into the great golden eyes, she understood that her ghost-induced sickness was a thing of the past. From now on, she would be able to see the invisible world without pain.

  In her mind, Shazia heard His words, answering her earlier unanswered question.

  “You are all my Father’s children.”

  FLIGHT TO EGYPT

  By

  Sarah A. Hoyt

  The new segregation is just the tip of the iceberg…

  Ingrid looked around the room where she’d lived for three months.

  Three months.

  It seemed impossible, as she stared at the pink walls, the pink-painted furniture, the statue of Our Lady Del Dolores languishing on the bedside table in a flash of purple and inartistic silver plaster swords.

  The baby moved within Ingrid, his movement so violent that her too-tight blue dress seemed to writhe upon her distended stomach with a life of its own.

  “You got everything now, dear, didn’t you?” Dotty asked. Dotty owned this house and the pink room. She was a plump, middle-aged woman who always wore black in memory of a husband dead so many years ago that anyone else would have sickened of the monochrome outfits. She wore her hair back in a tight, salt-and-pepper bun that left her face round and unencumbered, looking like bread pudding from amid which her eyes shone like two glossy, black plums. Standing at the door to the small room, watching Ingrid pack her things into the small, canvas suitcase, she sniffed and twitched her nose, and touched a tissue to it in a way that reminded Ingrid of a white rabbit.

  Of course, Ingrid repented the thought immediately, and reproached herself on her uncharitableness, as she snapped the suitcase shut and said, “I’ve got everything.”

  Her back hurt as she straightened.

  Dotty didn’t offer to carry the case. She just turned and walked down the narrow hallway outside the room, towards the living room. “Your husband will be here soon,” she said and sniffled, and took the tissue to her eyes.

  Dotty was in a great hurry to get rid of Ingrid, yet Ingrid refused to resent it. If it weren’t for Dotty and her small, modest house in a working class area on the outskirts of Goldport, Colorado; if it weren’t for the whole network of the Rachels, then Ingrid wouldn’t have a baby moving within her; she wouldn’t have to worry about the weight on her back, nor counterbalancing it by standing very straight.

  She wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that and she wouldn’t have to stay hidden. She could go out and work. She could even visit her family in Marstown. Or move there, if she didn’t mind leaving Joe behind.

  Which she did, of course, she told herself, erasing the whole tempting thought of Marstown streets, of the freedom to move around, of not having to live in cramped quarters, defying authority by her very lack of action.

  She felt the weight of her heavy plait of blond hair. She hadn’t been able to get a decent haircut in three months. Her back hurt. The baby pushed on her bladder. Her feet hurt.

  She’d lived for three months in one cramped room, unable to see strang
ers, unable to talk to anyone but Dotty. And now she was being evicted.

  Ingrid felt her eyes fill with tears and wished she could sniffle genteelly, like Dotty. But she couldn’t. And once she let the tears come, they would flood her eyes and she would bawl her eyes out like a child.

  She’d never been one to defy authority.

  Never before. But when authority threatens all that’s important to you, even the meekest of women will rebel.

  Ingrid found herself smiling, looking at the man in the art exhibit. She’d just arrived from Marstown, via the tunnel to downtown Goldport—a freshly landed art student in search of the glories of the past.

  Instead, she’d got sidetracked by this small exhibition, and now by a man—a living man, a living earthling, neither art nor ancient. Although the art part could be begged.

  He wore dark pants and a tight shirt that molded well-defined muscles, sculpted his broad shoulders, showed his tiny waist in sharp relief.

  Standing in front of a white marble sculpture of a nymph in flight, he looked less like a real man and more like a part of the art exhibit—a polished, shining dark sculpture, throwing the lines and color of the other into relief. Only, of course, he wasn’t a sculpture and he wasn’t the color of dark stone.

  More the color of dark chocolate, freshly melted.

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “May I help you?”

  “Huh?” Ingrid said, and reproached herself for her foolish lack of words.

  “May I help you?” he asked, again. He spoke with a baritone that throbbed and moved something within her, something to which her heart seemed to reply in faster beats, in quicker breaths, something that was familiar and at once strange. “You looked... lost,” he said.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, and cursed herself for her stupid frankness, but it was either that or not saying anything at all and leaving the place, shamefaced and slow, regretting it forever. “I looked like I was ogling you. Because I was.” She grinned at his shocked face. Sometime between puberty and her twentieth birthday, Ingrid had realized that the most straightforward of men could be discomfited by frankness in a woman. “Did you know you’re the exact color of dark chocolate?”