Sarab

by Raja Alem

  After what seemed like an age of traveling, they arrived at Medina. After they asked for directions in the mosque, a guide led them to where Mujan was staying in a large house in al-Hara al-Sharqiya.

  Sarab would never forget the day they arrived in that house. The moment her feet stepped into the large courtyard she felt that she and her brother, previously like Siamese twins, were being forcibly separated. Beards reached over the chests of the men seeking knowledge here. The sky erupted ecstatically with cries of “Allahu akbar!” as the men lined up in neat rows in front of a slim figure, a tall man in pure white interrupted only by a black beard, with a piercing gaze that bored straight into the hearts of his audience.

  “Mujan!”

  Her body echoed the tremor that ran through Sayf when he breathed that name and bowed deeply. She was struck by the fever that broke out in Sayf upon seeing this leader, a fever that made it clear they would survive what was to come.

  Sarab stared, not at Mujan al-Qutaybi, but at his companion, a graceful man also dressed in white. Mujan was laying an arm across his shoulders, declaring his affection and pride for him.

  “My brother, Muhammad bin Abdullah, and I are practiced in uncovering the sinful arts of Satan’s envoys, who strive to rally their power over us through calumny. We defied the interrogators to prove that we have an arsenal of weapons. We were freed due to the lack of proof. Through God’s will, we will uncover the identity of these traitors who offered up these sly doubts with the aim of hurling us into prison.” He raised his hand up high and his voice trembled as he warned the crowd, “No mercy for traitors!”

  And the crowd fervently repeated after him, “No mercy for traitors!”

  Sarab and Sayf understood that it had not taken long for the two men to be released from prison on the charges of inciting fitna and stockpiling weapons. The authorities had been careful to avoid a direct clash with Mujan and his band of zealots, who were mounting the pulpits in many cities and spreading their radical message through sermons and free classes. Although Mujan and his brother-in-law Muhammad bin Abdullah had been arrested for stockpiling, it was the ulema who had questioned them, and on charges of blasphemy and sacrilege. After questioning, these religious authorities declared the men innocent on the basis that they were conservative, traditional preachers, like all the Qutayba tribe, and posed no danger to the state.

  “But, Sheikh, do we have the weapons we need to fight Satan and his demons?” The eager question raced through the crowd like wildfire, and was answered by a reassuring smile from Mujan. It kindled his audience’s hidden hopes, and dangled the possibility of war like a tempting fruit.

  Emboldened, the crowd shouted “Allahu akbar!” as loudly as they were able.

  Mujan enjoyed widespread fame as a rebel, a utopian religious reformer, and a contemporary development of the Bedouin group the Ikhwan fi Taat Allah, known widely as just the Ikhwan. They had been formed earlier in the century from the most zealous of the newly converted nomadic tribes who wished to purify the practice of Islam. In his sermons, Mujan would echo their rejection of modern society and culture, and exhorted his followers: “We will stop this Satanic wheel they call ‘progress’ although it is nothing more than a regression to the lowest steps of Hell. We who bear the absolute truth will sacrifice everything to take this truth to the world, which will have no choice but to yield to it.” Mujan’s ambiguous smile sent tremors through the faces hanging reverently on his every word.

  He went on: “My beloved brothers in God, time has passed and God is choosing those of His worshipers who are most devoted, those most ready for sacrifice. This is the test, and you are the chosen who will fight Dajjal, the false Messiah who will lead the righteous astray with his evil lies.

  “My father and grandfather and the best men of the Qutayba tribe scorned Wajir, the settlement founded by the ruler to tame us: us, the Ikhwan, the Bedouin who fought in his army, who brought him victory and made him ruler of this desert and its riches. The fearless men of the Qutayba did not hesitate to revolt against him and sacrifice their lives in the great Battle of al-Sibala when he brought the modern, infidel Western world to our country and encouraged our women to participate in what they call ‘development’; to leave their homes and join schools and universities.” Mujan took a deep breath, allowing the heroism of his ancestors to sink into the crowd’s minds.

  “I was raised on the stories of their heroic deeds and their fierce battles to establish the truth. From 1955, for eight years, I worked in the National Guard and was trained in their methods of fighting. Thank God—at last, in compensation for the slavery I had endured, God liberated me and my brother Muhammad from our slavery of the heart. So, by the grace of the Almighty, we were expelled from the mockery of working for the state, because as long as we continued to be in its debt, we could never truly oppose it.”

  “Allahu akbar!” rang out from the crowd, hoarse with excitement.

  Mujan and his brother-in-law Muhammad bin Abdullah were the ideal pair to captivate a crowd. Muhammad was the star who blazed with elegance, the absolute embodiment of a divine prophet, while Mujan was the true innovator who presented his followers with fascinating visions of grace and Hell—and he advised what would attract the former and repel the latter. In him, the crowd saw both Malik, gatekeeper of Hell, and Radwan, gatekeeper of Heaven.

  “Don’t close your eyes and feign innocence. Open your eyes and look upon the Hell we have allowed to open on our earth, the cradle of truth. We turned this virtuous cradle into a temple of money worship, where we are slaves to the evil West and its Satanic modernity.” Despite the heat that coursed through her from the crowd’s fervor, Mujan seemed to Sarab to be a little deranged by his own private Heaven and Hell on earth.

  “Look at us, brothers. From every nation and color, there is no division between the Arabs and the non-Arabs, only piety. We are the seeds from which the Ikhwan will grow, the only bond between us that of truth. We are the bearers of absolute truth.”

  He watched his men, drilling into their minds his idea of what that constituted.

  “And now we are together, brothers. Let us put our trust in God to lead us on the path of our pious ancestors in our fight against atheism and modernity.”

  Sarab turned and found her brother in a state of rapture that bordered on mania. He left her and moved toward the preacher like he was in a trance, heedless of the guards who were blocking his way and pushing him back, fully prepared to fling him to the ground. He kept forcing his way through the guards, attracting the suspicion and concern of the crowd. Something in Sayf’s suicidal behavior and his look of utter adoration halted Mujan as he was about to retire to his room. He gestured to his guards to step aside and reached out his hand to Sayf.

  “Come here, my young brother.”

  Sayf moved forward, entranced by this face carved from rock. He kissed the proffered hand and introduced himself. With childish enthusiasm, he placed the bundle he was carrying at Mujan’s feet and opened it, displaying the collection of his father’s rifles. “I am the son of Sheikh Baroud. Here: I present his guns to you to help reach the goal you are leading us to, Sheikh Mujan. I have come here from Wajir to follow your path of absolute truth.”

  The name of the legendary Sheikh Baroud did not escape Mujan.

  “Blessings on you, for you are the heir of the Ikhwan, the true mujahideen. We need men like you. God preserve you, and may He welcome you into Heaven.”

  That was how Sarab began to part ways with her brother Sayf, in the shadow of that large house. It was made up of several rooms circling a courtyard; some were used to house young, destitute followers, while others were used to hold small study groups where students were instructed in jurisprudence and Mujan’s teachings. Mujan profited from the legitimacy granted to him by the Grand Mufti, who had rented this house for Mujan to signal his blessing of the jamaa, the religious and educational community gathered under Mujan’s leadership. The Grand Mufti approved his calls for a return to s
trictly religious teachings and, along with other members of the ulema, often attended lectures there.

  However, the mufti didn’t know this jamaa and its advisory council were making covert plans. They convened secret meetings to debate their most important aspirations, of which he was not kept informed.

  Sarab watched her brother closely. The moment his eyes fell on Mujan, a meteor struck him; it left a crater in his head into which the whole world had toppled and disappeared, except for Mujan. Even Sarab was among those missing from Sayf’s mind, along with his father’s rifles that he used to glory in, and had now forgotten in the courtyard. Sarab hurried to pick the bundle up and hold it against her like another spine.

  Two sponge mattresses were brought, and Sarab and Sayf were led to the room where they would stay. They were greeted by five mattresses lying on the ground; evidently, five other seekers of truth slept in here side by side, and Sayf didn’t hesitate to accept this room of single men over the family rooms. Enthusiastically, he unrolled his mattress next to the other five and Sarab realized she would have to sleep close to these men.

  Trying to create some kind of boundary, she took refuge in a small cavity in the corner, a hollow in the wall intended as a sort of cupboard, two meters by half a meter. She pushed her mattress into this tomb-like cavity and put the bundle containing her father’s guns at its foot to guard her from the masculinity dominating the room.

  On her first night in that house, the room was fogged up with stifling fumes of sweat. Sarab burrowed into her mattress and cocooned herself inside her woolen blanket, and despite the heat she began to shiver with bone-wracking cold. She felt her soul leaving her trembling body and standing in the air, observing her pityingly. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to read what her soul would reveal of her future: that what she had thought was just a visit to this place would turn into a home and a destiny. Most frighteningly, it might show her that from that moment, her fate had diverged from her brother’s.

  In the house in Medina, in her body of ice inside that cube of fire, Sarab realized for the first time that Sayf had never in his life displayed feeling toward another living thing. Only after their mother’s death had he showed he felt something, and the sentiment he displayed was hatred toward life.

  To do him justice, Sarab thought that perhaps he could only have strong feelings for one person: himself. And yet here he was, granting that entire self to Mujan, dissolving into him. Sarab had been raised not to approach Sayf; not even to show him affection of any kind. She was molded into his ghost, copying all his actions and gestures, just a mirror of that emotional void. Confined to following him with equal coldness and negativity, she was nevertheless frightened by the poisonous mixture of servility and envy, even the compulsion to protect him, planted in her by her mother. She had to protect him; he was the secret of her existence, and if he ceased to exist, so would she.

  Like a cog in a huge wheel, Sayf automatically started turning. Sarab, meanwhile, found herself like an alien creature, moving among people who couldn’t see her and who spoke among themselves in cryptic riddles. Panic mushroomed. She would wander between the study groups and the students, exhausted from discussions that conveyed nothing to her despite buffeting her head like burning meteors. She suffered from a fear she didn’t want to name.

  Gradually the stream of newcomers increased. They fed the classes and plunged into fiery discussions about the impending end of the world and the salvation embodied in Mujan. Mujan’s arrest had fortified his image as a jihadi and he was attracting more followers from other communities under different leaders. Rumors of his intentions for an armed struggle were escalating, along with the gradual recklessness of the jamaa in using their sermons to advocate for such an approach.

  At its core, Mujan’s jamaa was influenced by two schools of thought: the first was represented by Sheikh Muhammad Nasr al-Din al-Albani, who refused sectarianism and called for rigid adherence to the Quran and the verified hadith, while Mujan adopted the principles of tawhid, the nature of God’s indivisibility, from the writings of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Ibn Taymiya, and Sheikh Ibn al-Qayyim.

  These names resounded in Sarab’s head. Wherever she went she found a group of students clustered around a tape player, ardently listening to recordings of sermons that condemned all signs of urbanization and adherence to this vain life. Sarab was haunted by a nightmare of this behemoth infected with the voracity of urbanization and civilization.

  The endless debate convinced everyone, Sarab included, that “outside was evil.”

  Month after month, she, along with everyone else was tamed by the idea, and the house became her only refuge. Her greatest fear was that the jamaa would throw her out and she would find herself “outside,” where she would be swept away in the currents of Hell and “urbanization” rampaging through the country.

  “Welcome to freedom, welcome to safety.” Sayf’s voice trembled, cautioning the group of newcomers who had gathered around him. The sins of the world burned within them like the fire they hoped to avoid, so painful they were tearing their clothes in despair. Meanwhile, Sarab was arrested by the voice she no longer recognized as her brother’s as it recited Mujan’s apocalyptic essay “Innovation and Clock Signals,” which he had learned by heart.

  Every night he lay on his mattress like a corpse, staring blindly into space, while the tape player whirred beneath his pillow and warned that “the Devil raises his head and reaches out to make them worship banknotes. Banknotes are the modern Antichrist, enslaving them.”

  Whenever Sayf opened his mouth Mujan’s words would gush out. “Who will lead us to salvation? Who other than Mujan and our jamaa?”

  Sayf exuded authority, and he roved about distributing tapes of Mujan’s sermons to the new arrivals, particularly avid that they listen to the sermon called “Removing Confusion,” in which Mujan outlined his stance on the other groups. “Do not trust the Muslim Brotherhood; their work in politics has led them astray. And do not trust the Jamaat al-Tabshiriya, for they are deficient in preaching tawhid.”

  Sayf would walk around questioning the new followers. “What sermon did you listen to today? God bless you. Did you listen closely? Did you play it twice? Or only once?”

  Sarab herself would have forgotten she was female were it not for the shared bathroom. Her period was the first challenge she faced there. The situation remained forever carved into her memory, and she would be haunted by the smell of that bloodied rag between her legs, which became increasingly slippery. It couldn’t absorb the deluge of blood that flowed from her body as it faced its fears and the unknown future. She had to change the rag so it wouldn’t brim over and stain her clothes and reveal her as a woman. She knew this, but was bewildered by how to deal with this necessity. What should she wash it with? She and her brother were destitute, utterly without livelihoods or possessions; they were living on the shared funds of the group—donations from rich, anonymous followers.

  One day she knew she had to find some soap. She waited impatiently for the end of the meal that the poor members of the jamaa shared in the courtyard, and as soon as she could she slipped into the main kitchen and volunteered to help clean the plates. The cook glanced at her in surprise, but allowed her to clean the huge copper pot. She was drowning in grease and the blood was sticky between her legs. When the cook took out the rubbish, she seized her chance and hurriedly poured some soap powder into a cup.

  Her heart pounding, she rushed to the bathroom and locked herself in for over an hour, dealing with her ridiculous problem. The others knocked on the door irritably and shouted at her to hurry up. In that confined space she felt suffocated by the rag’s stubbornness. It was almost impossible to get rid of the blood and the smell; it was like rotten fish, guaranteed to draw the attention of the men who shared the bathroom with her.

  Washing the blood wasn’t the end of her tribulations; now she didn’t know where to spread the ignominious rag to dry. The tiny bathroom had no space where s
he could hide it, so she had to take it with her. She carried it around in a plastic shopping bag, secretly begging it to hurry up and dry.

  Sarab was wandering among her male comrades, who were exempt from the humiliation of menstruating, when she noticed a room in the corner of the courtyard. She hadn’t noticed it before; no one went in or out of it, and not even the air moved the open door. It occurred to Sarab that she could hang her rag in that overlooked place, certain that no one would notice her, and she hurriedly slipped through the wide-open door. As soon as she stepped inside, she was stunned by the equipment surrounding her, chugging away in darkness. She saw a vast number of seemingly endless recorders, their red buttons staring at her, along with a young, dark-skinned Pakistani man whose beard reached to his navel. Facing every recorder were two openings like gaping mouths in which cassette tapes were spinning. Sarab couldn’t turn her gaze from these mouths, realizing that the room around her was crammed with shelves to the ceiling, all laden with cassette tapes filled with preachings and warnings about Dajjal. The young man was making countless copies of every title. Sarab was stupefied, not daring to leave. After what seemed like an age, the young man handed her a bottle of glue and a pile of thin stickers the length of a finger.

  “Take these, and stick the titles onto the tapes. Be careful; God loves someone who excels at his task.”

  The bag dropped from Sarab’s hands like evidence of a crime. She didn’t confess her humiliation, or how this task elevated her from it. Mechanically, she began to stick the thin strips of paper to the front of the cassettes. Mujan’s name was repeated under her fingers; she felt it was burning off her fingerprints. As she stuck the titles down, her eyes widened blindly in the darkness. All the while, the cassettes made her head spin like giant mills of fire, but a fire fueled by an unknown source. Her terror increased at the thought that it might consume her and her brother, and her whole body trembled.