Sarab

by Raja Alem

  Mujan consolidated his plans, focusing on the cellars and labyrinthine vaults of the Grand Mosque.

  “Rejoice! Our brothers have laid up large quantities of provisions and ammunition in this city below the mosque. As soon we walk inside, it’s finished; we need only hold out and time will be in our favor.”

  Few members of the council knew the names of the followers supplying this food and ammunition. Even the intermediaries’ identities were secret, known only to Mujan. His associates had grown bolder and they began to expand their smuggling operation from the warehouses of the National Guard to the cellars of the Grand Mosque. The countdown to the deadline made them reckless, and they had no fear of being caught.

  An engineer from the architecture firm volunteered to explain the maps and charts to the group, and Sarab took advantage of every opportunity to listen to him. As soon as they finished studying for the day and the maps were entrusted to her for safekeeping, she would bring them out of the safe and go over what she had heard; she traced Mujan’s plans over these intersecting slices until their smallest details were drilled into her memory. In her dreams, she rifled through this complex, hidden network formed by the service entrances and exits. For some mysterious reason, she was haunted by the hidden tunnels that led from the holy fountain across the vaults and outside the mosque, surfacing in a faraway part of the city near the Maala Cemetery.

  “Perhaps we will not need to fire at all; we only have to walk inside and the Grand Mosque will be an impenetrable fortress. It will fall into our hands, and they will have no choice but to surrender and carry out our demands. They cannot defile the house of God with our blood, and they will never be able to extract us from that underground maze.” His tone deepened and intensified. “Let everyone understand that if it is so demanded, then this maze will be our grave. Unless we are victorious, we will not leave alive.”

  Mujan’s words had an intoxicating effect; the jamaa seemed ready for obliteration, to be sacrificed for the salvation of humankind.

  The speech put fear into Sarab’s heart. Memorizing those maps became an obsession occupying every waking and sleeping hour.

  One night while she was sleeping, a choked murmur rose from her intermittently, until it resolved into jerky kicks and broke off with a cry. This made her surface from sleep, rescuing her from a bottomless nightmare. She sat up in bed, frenziedly shaking an invisible blackness from her body, and the black dissolved before her eyes. The room was empty, as the others had left for a round of training in the camp. Only Sayf was getting ready to lie down. He ignored her soft cry; he was used to her nightmares.

  “If you have to keep on with this garbage, at least train yourself to scream like a man,” was his perpetual comment on her nightmares.

  “You have nightmares because you lie flat on your stomach. That’s how Satan sleeps.” Those were her comrades’ comments on the nightmares that lay in wait for her every time she lay down. “That’s how Satan sleeps,” her roommates jeered whenever she went to bed, and Sarab bit back the question: When have you seen him asleep?

  Without looking at her, Sayfullah lay on his mattress, setting the tape recorder under his pillow. Sarab leaped from her bed and leaned over him like an axe.

  “Sayf, are we caught up in something much bigger than us?”

  He pulled away from her and sat up on his bed, staring at her blankly.

  “A black sandstorm was hunting us both in my dream just now.”

  His eyes widened in disapproval, but she went on: “Don’t be angry with me, but it was horrible. Sayf, Mujan frightens—”

  He interrupted her before she could articulate her fear of Mujan: “You have a heart like a rat.” He spat contemptuously. “Pack your things and go back where you came from.”

  “I’m afraid for you. Let’s leave here, and pray to God that He will grant us a good life.”

  “What?”

  “Please, let’s go. Don’t worry, we won’t go back to Wajir; the earth is huge. We can go to the mosque and stay there. We’ll put ourselves in the hands of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and he will guide us to the right path.”

  He struck her in the chest, pushing her away from him.

  “From now on, I don’t know you. Your heart is made of air; mine is made of rock. You’re a disgrace to me, to all of us here.”

  She crawled toward her bed and his voice followed her, freezing her to the spot.

  “Look, just pack your things and go. Don’t ever show me your face again.”

  She hid in her bed, trembling, and never again dared to voice her fears.

  Everyone was beginning to notice the countdown secretly taking place in Mujan’s head. A month before their fated day, followers began to gush from all corners of the country toward the Holy City. They descended on it as individuals or in small groups, so as not to attract attention. Around two hundred weapons were hidden in anticipation of the dawn of the Hijri year 1400. But one morning, two weeks before the end of the year, something unexpected occurred.

  Sarab was returning from the dawn prayer in the mosque attached to the house when her attention was suddenly caught by a fine black thread coming from the door of the recording room in the corner of the courtyard. It wasn’t that remarkable; just a small piece of darkness added to the darkness of the night, and it didn’t seem to have been noticed by anyone but her.

  She went closer and was struck by a strange rotting smell. Her first thought was that it was the urine of Satan. She approached the door cautiously, and her chest tightened from the stench. She poked her head through the open door and gasped. The room was entirely turned into soot; it seemed as though acid had passed through it and silently burned everything. There was no trace of the young Pakistani man and she didn’t dare to look behind the desk where he had been working in case she saw a deformed lump melting there. She slammed the door shut and ran away, feeling acid burn away the whorls of her brain, and every tape that wouldn’t stop whirring away inside it.

  Dawn, November 20, 1979 / 1 Moharram 1400

  Sarab found herself in a small bus heading into the dawn of the Hijri year 1400. They were threading through the sleeping streets of the Holy City, heading for the Grand Mosque. Six of the most loyal fighters surrounded the two leaders, buoyed up by the adrenaline that came from the knowledge that at dawn they were going to present the long-awaited Mahdi to the world.

  Suddenly Sarab noticed they had all performed their ablutions for the dawn prayer; the water was still soaking their beards but it failed to extinguish the fire smoldering inside them. She was the only fighter with a veiled face. Her head rang with Mujan’s intimidations.

  “The Mahdi will bring red death and white death, and locusts at the appointed time, and locusts at the unappointed time, like the colors of blood. The red death is the sword, and the white death will be plague, and five out of every seven will fall . . .”

  Her eyes swiveled, seeking a trace of these deaths, but they met nothing but the tranquility of the Holy City and its inhabitants, still unaware of what was in store for them.

  Her gaze turned away from the vehicles speeding through the slumbering streets and she contemplated the bearded men around her on the bus. Inside their heads she saw, not modern buildings, but tents and camels. She thought she was looking at the face of the cosmic clock, and was about to force its hands to turn counterclockwise; they were dispatching the modern era and ushering in another, one of unknown identity.

  Their departure was like the opening shot of an eternal war, and Sarab didn’t know how she would be able to keep her brother safe; in contrast to the men around her, her battle was not against any monster or demon, but the ghosts hidden in her brother’s head. Him at least she had to extract from their clutches; Muhammad seemed out of reach to her and beyond any attempts at rescue.

  As soon as they got off the bus and Sayf banged the door closed, Sarab felt an invisible door slam shut behind her. The jamaa encircled its leaders and made its way inside the Grand Mosque with
forceful strides, their hearts calcifying with every step. They regarded Muhammad bin Abdullah as the embodiment of Muhammad (peace be upon him), for the simple coincidence of their names.

  Mujan watched like a hawk as the squadrons of his army infiltrated the mosque from all sides. He confirmed the men were stationed in the positions he had assigned to them, scattered throughout the mosque and around the thirty-nine doors. They were waiting for the starting signal: the moment that the imam concluded the dawn prayer.

  The Grand Mosque was thronged with inhabitants of the Holy City and a hundred thousand pilgrims who had traveled from all over the world to perform pilgrimage. The crowds joyfully celebrated the start of the Hijri year and a shudder went through Sarab’s body.

  The imam of the Grand Mosque took up his position directly in front of the Kaaba to lead the prayers through the microphone. His voice was permeated with solemnity as he began the Chapter of Repentance.

  “Disavowal by God and His Apostle is herewith announced.” The first word struck Sarab like a physical blow. She staggered and almost fainted. A hundred thousand souls repeated the statement of disavowal, and Sarab felt disavowed by them. And all repeated after the imam, “Amen.”

  The word overlapped with the fluttering of a flock of doves that hovered overhead, tracing circles in the sky and prophesying the awe of what was to come. However much Sarab gazed at the Kaaba to calm her heart, it wouldn’t be still. It outstripped the fluttering of the doves’ wings as the prayer neared its conclusion. Suddenly a herd of men appeared, each of their heads wrapped in a red-spotted head covering, carrying coffins on their shoulders. They began to move forward through the rows of praying people and placed their burdens in front of the Kaaba so the prayer for the dead could be read over them after the dawn prayer was finished. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; it was the custom of the inhabitants of the Holy City and the surrounding towns to bring their dead for the crowds to pray over in the Grand Mosque. Mujan watched his men carry fifty coffins concealing their huge arsenal into the mosque. Sarab felt suffocated in her disguise of male clothing. She fingered the cold weapon hidden under her clothes and her soul was racked when her brother broke away from her. She watched him desolately, her whole being shaken, while he walked unnoticed to the back and took up his position at the top of the minaret over Bab al-Malik, the principal entrance to the Grand Mosque.

  The plan required that she take up a position close to the imam. The moment the prayer was completed, the peace of the dawn and the prayers was shattered by a shot fired from the direction of the mosque’s main entrance. It seemed that one of their fighters had gotten confused and fired too soon, killing a nearby guard. The shot terrified the crowds. Sarab leaped up to snatch the microphone from the imam but he raised his hand as a barrier and blocked her way. As she fumbled for the weapon hidden in the folds of her clothes, his wise eyes stared into hers warningly. She felt God nailing her to the spot from the depths of those ageless eyes. The imam instinctively perceived the danger in the air and the gravity of surrendering the microphone to the young man who had pounced upon it; such a small act might play a decisive role in the uproar unexpectedly breaking out in the peace of the mosque.

  And so, endangering himself by raking Sarab with reproachful eyes, he intoned gravely, “Fear God. Let us pray for the dead brought here today.”

  Sarab quivered, retreating while the imam led the prayer for the dead in total serenity.

  Four times “Allahu akbar!” rang in Sarab’s ears like knocks on the door of a grave the size of Heaven and earth. “O God, forgive the living and the dead, the present and absent.” The words solidified in Sarab’s heart, so heavy they almost broke her spine.

  The prayer did not take more than three minutes. During the third “Allahu akbar,” total chaos broke out in the arcades around the doors, and the worshipers wavered between attending to the imam or the sound of the bullets.

  “ . . . O God, give him a home better than his home and a family better than his family . . .” The prayers were like a prediction, and Sarab’s heart broke from the certainty that she and her brother had no retreat now. No sooner had the imam pronounced the fourth and final “Allahu akbar” than the horror around the doors was made clear; the insurgents were struggling to close the thirty-nine colossal, enormously heavy doors while the terrified worshipers rushed to escape. Weapons glinted in different sections of the mosque, and the sight of them struck the crowds like a lightning bolt. Sarab’s attention was distracted by the sound of shots coming from the minaret where her brother was positioned.

  The murder has begun. This thought struck Sarab, and the taste of blood and bile rose in her throat.

  “Hurry, take this out of the mosque.” The imam pushed the microphone into the hands of his stupefied guard, who automatically began to run and disappeared in the panicking crowds.

  The imam was driven back by the men from the jamaa, who rushed forward. Revealing the weapons hidden in their clothes, they began to shoot at the small number of security guards, who were not permitted to use weapons inside the mosque, and they fired shots in the air to control the unruly, terrified crowds. The men screamed into the frenzied torrent with voices hoarse and cracked with tension: “The Mahdi has appeared!”

  When Sarab noticed the imam had disappeared and there was no trace of the microphone, she was devastated; she had failed in the first trivial task she had been charged with. She was supposed to deliver the microphone to Mujan to broadcast his declaration of war and the appearance of the Mahdi to the crowds.

  Dozens of insurgents gathered quickly in the courtyard of the Grand Mosque and they began to open the coffins and bring out the weapons hidden there. They brandished these at the crowds, which began to push and shove at the sight of them. Thousands of terrified bodies threatened to swamp the handful of rebels, and they opened fire. The bodies that fell to the ground smeared with blood only magnified the shoving, the madness, and the torrent of random shots.

  Sarab went deaf. Everything was taking place in slow motion. She couldn’t see anything but her comrades, their darting eyes widened with terror as they tried to stem the onslaught of the panicking crowds. Fear swelled in a cloud over the Grand Mosque as the snipers occupied their strategic positions at the summit of each of the nine minarets, and they began to fire on anyone attempting to approach the mosque.

  Finally, by some miracle, the enormous heavy doors were closed and chained shut, sending a current of madness through the crowds trapped inside, who were stumbling over and crushing each other in their blind rush to escape.

  As the situation threatened to spiral out of control, Mujan issued his orders: “Let the foreigners leave. Only keep nationals as hostages. They are our audience and our objective, and our trump cards in negotiations with the authorities.”

  The rebels herded the horrified pilgrims toward the tunnels used by service lorries to enter the mosque. Sarab and a group of her comrades were assigned to carry out the dispersal orders swiftly.

  Hundreds of dumbstruck faces of every nationality left under Sarab’s gaze, clouded with doubt at what was happening. Suddenly her attention was drawn by a pilgrim in a simple white garment, a head covering lying haphazardly on his shoulders. He was looking at his feet, avoiding everyone’s eye. She knew him at once; it was none other than the imam of the mosque, hiding in the clothes of an Indonesian pilgrim. He looked up suddenly and caught her eye; he knew she had identified him, but he didn’t stop or stumble, and he continued making his way out. This was Sarab’s second test on the first day of the battle and she hesitated, unable to make herself stop him and disclose his identity to her comrades. Disregarding everything her leaders believed, she felt that releasing the imam was a sincere act of piety. She looked away and allowed the imam to escape. Nevertheless she worried that her comrades had lost a trump card for their negotiations while a hail of bullets was launched over the mosque in a salute of the first decision she had taken in her life independently of her mother and
brother.

  Mujan clung to the Kaaba near the Black Stone, believed to have been formed from the pearls of Paradise. He was standing a meter above the ground on a narrow edge that barely offered a foothold, in a desperate attempt to appear to everyone in the courtyard and quiet them. His ringing voice was futile and unintelligible to the crowds as he announced the demands to be conveyed to the authorities.

  “The ruler of the country must look to our demands, which are as follows: We demand a boycott of the secular West; we demand the termination of education for women; we demand the termination of television broadcasts and the repudiation of Dajjal, the demon of the West, which is found inside its screen. And above all, we demand the expulsion of foreigners and the closure of their embassies.”

  The faces of the imprisoned pilgrims stared at Mujan, overwhelmed with confusion by these riddles.

  “It is a disgrace that we belong to this state, which pledges allegiance to the West. It is lawful in the eyes of God to spill the blood of anyone who carries its identification papers.” Mujan flourished his identity card and began to rip it up theatrically in front of everyone, and his men followed suit. Fear coursed through the hostages; they hurriedly imitated the rebels, taking out their identity cards and tearing them up so as not to be punished.

  Sarab stood three paces from where Mujan clung. She avoided looking at the Kaaba, trying not to increase the crushing weight of her weapon. Her eyes were glued to Mujan’s profile as she stood in front of the panicking hostages, aware of the mistakes of that unsteady beginning. The hostages couldn’t see them; their weapons loomed too large. She found it difficult to believe that this skinny man was really there, under the Kaaba, clutching the veil covering it in his left hand and a trembling machine gun in his right. He raised his voice louder, his lips grown rigid from the tension of conveying his electrifying current to them. No one knew or cared what was being declared. One idea occupied their minds: survival.