Sarab

by Raja Alem

  She noticed that Masrour was holding on to a bound man and pushing him along, but she didn’t understand who his captive was. Why had Masrour left his strategic position as a sniper at the top of the Taysir Minaret to creep around down here? And where was he going? A mysterious excitement made Sarab follow him from a distance, and before long she realized that he was heading for the entrance to the sewers. Her pulse raced at the thought that he wanted to escape and that he might be able to help her kidnap her brother Sayfullah and take them both out of this hell.

  When Masrour reached the tunnel entrance, he stumbled and his prisoner freed himself. Masrour rushed to grab him and a silent scuffle ensued. At once, Sarab realized that the silent captive was Kasir. Masrour continued to struggle with his son, and both were careful not to make any sound that might attract attention. Masrour tried to drag his son to the tunnel and Sarab realized that Kasir was refusing to escape. His love for weapons had healed the pain of his abandoned education; he had dedicated himself not to Mujan, but to the pleasure of murder.

  Finally Masrour succeeded in gaining the upper hand over his son; pointing his gun at Kasir’s head, he forced him to yield, hissing, “I’m the one who threw you in here and I’m the one who will save you. You will follow me whether you like it or not.”

  Kasir put up fierce resistance, aware that his father wasn’t able to kill him.

  “You’re only responsible for yourself. I’m my own master.” Kasir tried to push away his father, who proceeded to bind him using his pilgrim’s clothes.

  “It’s the weapons that are tempting you to this false machismo. You are a boy; you weren’t born for this.”

  He picked Kasir up like a sack and threw him over his back, carrying him to the tunnel entrance. Suddenly, to his father’s shock, Kasir let out a piercing scream like the whine of an ax blade. The cry rent Sarab’s heart as it leaped into her throat and choked her. From nowhere, shots were fired and ghosts swooped down on father and son from the darkness.

  Masrour stood dumbstruck. A bullet had left a hole the size of a coin in Kasir’s forehead, killing him instantly.

  The ghosts didn’t waste time. They threw Masrour to the ground and fell on him. Sarab backed away, blinded by the blood pounding in her head as the battle between the giant and his rebel comrades disturbed the night.

  “You damned worm!” Their curses lashed him as he struggled against them desperately, without saying a word. He was on the verge of overpowering his five attackers when more arrived, attracted by the sound of the fight, and succeeded in wrestling him to the ground. Now Mujan appeared, and without comment he supervised the removal of Masrour to the southern arcades, where he was bound between two pillars.

  “You will be left to die slowly of hunger and thirst, as a warning to anyone else with thoughts of weakness.”

  From her hiding place, Sarab watched as they left him there and disappeared into the darkness. Masrour sobbed bitterly when Kasir’s lifeless body was thrown in front of him. Perhaps he had been more shocked by his son’s betrayal than his death. For a few moments, Sarab couldn’t move; longing and horror silently goaded her to move forward and break the ropes, and then to surrender to whatever happened afterward. But however much she gathered her strength, she couldn’t take a single step in Masrour’s direction.

  “When we are resurrected on Judgment Day, we will pay for this bloodshed!”

  Sarab trembled as Masrour directed his ravings toward her through ragged breathing.

  “And we won’t be forgiven for ignoring the truth,” he went on. “My master al-Kharaymi was right: how can we have ignored the most important condition for the appearance of the Mahdi? He must be descended from the Prophet, peace be upon him. This Muhammad is an al-Qahtani, not a blood descendant of the Prophet! And I sacrificed the most precious thing I had to a delusion.” His weeping overwhelmed him. “My son wasn’t the type to slaughter the dead. Perhaps I made him disloyal and death-loving when I ate the lizard’s testicles.” He waited for her to exonerate him, and when she persisted in her silence, he carried on talking to himself.

  “Since I was a child, it was my dream to have a son like me. I got married when I was fifteen so I could have a family quickly, but I spent fifteen more years without children. For years I took a fertility potion, a mixture of ground lizard testicles and palm pollen, until I had him. I called him Kasir so he would have a lucky name, a beautiful flower planted in rock, since he split the rock of my infertility. I named him Kasir, the destroyer, and I intended him to grow up to be a great hunter, like an eagle or a falcon. He charged up against death and disease, but he didn’t die or even get sick. When he was born I swore I would only reply to the world ‘sum’ and ‘tum’ to acknowledge my gratitude for that gift. And I kept my promise, to discover now that those words were the bombs that broke my heart.”

  The two were silent, listening to his words echo into the night.

  “I made him join this hell, thinking it would lead to Paradise. What kind of a father am I, to wish my son to grow up in Heaven by throwing him into Hell.”

  When she didn’t reply, he began to recite the Quran, his recitation mixing with his tears and the verses of the blind reciter pilgrim, as if they were one person.

  Hence, who could be more wicked than those who bar the mention of God’s name from any of His houses of worship and strive for their ruin, although they have no right to enter them save in fear of God? For them, in this world, there is ignominy in store; and for them, in the life to come, awesome suffering.

  A shudder ran through Sarab, but she resisted the impulse to reply to this provocation. She remained there for a long time, victim of her own weakness and self-hatred. She mocked herself for being too cowardly to assist not only Masrour but also the healthy hostages imprisoned in the cellars, while she affected compassion for the dying hostages, neglected and strewn among the arcades.

  Death, the Final Separation

  This is the waste that propagates death, and death that propagates waste. She didn’t know how this phrase instilled itself in her head, but it began to haunt her while she watched her comrades struggle in misery; not only against the attackers and the weapons, which were beginning to run out, but with their own human bodies. They were being brought to their knees by trivial needs they couldn’t avoid, like the need to defecate and be rid of the result. A week had passed since their first victory, and as the attempts to storm the Grand Mosque intensified, the rebels could no longer leave their positions to use the bathrooms. They resorted to exercising their need behind the forest of pillars, turning the galleries of worship into an open sewer. The stench of this waste, heightened by the hot sun and combined with the increasing attacks, caused the fighters’ faith in their end goal to teeter.

  Her brother in particular seemed to scorn his body for the mere fact of its humanity. He pushed it mercilessly beyond its limits in order to become a superman, capable of killing ceaselessly day and night. But his poor body, however much it struggled to do so, wasn’t able to escape its humanity and it weakened him. It caused him to sleep where he stood, snatching a few minutes of rest, or forced him to leave his weapon and evacuate his bowels in the bucket which Sarab emptied every morning, reassured her brother was still human.

  Sarab felt her brain dry up and shrivel with torpor as events beyond imagining began to come thick and fast. She carried on with her tasks, all the while feeling that the sky was silent and indifferent. She craved to see any sign of clemency there in the form of a cloud or a lightning bolt, but the sky remained absolutely clear, never tempered, confirming Sarab’s deepest fears that God had abandoned them to the horror they had created.

  Wherever she looked, Sarab was faced with corpses rotting in hidden rage and frustration.

  “How will we justify all of this before God?” Muhammad appeared suddenly, voicing this unexpected condemnation of himself. Both he and Sarab listened to the ominous silence around the Grand Mosque, their heads sunk into the thick black cloth coveri
ng the Kaaba, and for a moment its dull perfume covered the stench of death around them.

  He went on: “I am haunted by the Prophet’s order to his army not to cut down a tree on their march, and not to kill women, children, and the elderly.”

  “But you are the Mahdi. It’s your destiny to save the world,” Sarab said.

  He looked at her for a long time and the purity of his face was split with an inexplicable smile; it carried suffering and pity, for her and perhaps for himself and the whole world. His face had a beauty that struck her like a lightning bolt, and she hurriedly hid her embarrassment.

  “You are the Mahdi and you will lead us out of this bloodshed.”

  “Will I? Can we ever survive this bloodshed of our own making?”

  “I didn’t mean that you will lead us as a jamaa; perhaps we have lost any hope of survival by now. But the important thing now is what we brought with us. You must lead this to the end.”

  “This is the end.” His voice exuded a despair that admitted no rescue or conclusion.

  Sarab was furious. “Don’t be angry with me, but what did you expect by coming here like this and starting a war in God’s house?”

  She bit her tongue at her bluntness, but instead of the angry reaction she had expected, Muhammad said bitterly, “Nothing like this.”

  She thumped the wall softly and added, “Perhaps you believed that the doors of this mosque would just close on you and your men, and the world would respect you and pledge allegiance to you as the Mahdi. And the world would be filled with justice after it was filled with tyranny.” Despite her respect for Muhammad, she was surprised by the bitter sarcasm filling her voice as it repeated Mujan’s promise. She couldn’t believe that the Mahdi himself was frankly declaring doubts that she had been too afraid to even whisper in the presence of her brother.

  “I never imagined war would break out. Perhaps it was naive of me to believe that they wouldn’t dare fight us here, although history tells us the opposite. The Ummayads bombarded the mosque twice using their catapults; the second time, in 73 Hijri, they set fire to a part of it.”

  “You could throw away your weapon any time and say ‘enough’ to this path of blood.” She realized the naivety of this suggestion.

  “If anyone slays a human being . . . it shall be as though he had slain all mankind. The murder of just one person recurs endlessly. There’s no going back,” he said.

  He stared at her, hawk-like, and her whole being shuddered from the tremors along her spine. She knew she was staring into the eyes of a dead man, and falling in love with him. The truth shook her then and there, in a place and time that were inappropriate for love, or for any feeling other than despair and terror. Her feelings were incompatible with all this death. Not even the fact that he was married to Mujan’s sister had hindered her capitulation to these blissful, terrifying feelings. She looked around, trembling, for fear that someone might be eavesdropping on a conversation that could only be described as betrayal. She was astonished that he could read her thoughts.

  “Veil yourself well.”

  She was confused. Did he mean the veil of a woman? Could it be, by some miracle, he had uncovered her disguise?

  “Throw away your weapons, all of you!” A voice like thunder exploded behind Sarab. Mujan had been passing when a giant shadow pounced on him and, to everyone’s shock, held a knife to his neck. It was Masrour the giant, who had succeeded in breaking his chains and charging the leader.

  “This slaughter must end. Order your men to surrender.”

  Mujan remained silent, but he bared his teeth in a smile as the knifepoint dug deeper into his neck. A drop of blood trickled to his chest. The violence arrested the fighters and, bewildered, they wavered between surrender and hesitation, hoping for a miracle.

  Sarab froze; she didn’t dare to turn around to see what was happening behind her. From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Muhammad’s shadow as he crept around Masrour, who had protected his back with a pillar.

  “Give the order to these miserable wretches, and save those whose souls can still be saved.” A bullet exploded in the giant’s arm and Mujan wheeled around on his adversary, freed by the bullet.

  “Fear the day of reckoning, Mujan. On that day, you won’t be helped by money or—” A hail of bullets silenced the cry, which tore the red glow of the sunset.

  Sarab froze. Behind her, she heard the sound of a human skull cracking and blood fountaining into the air, before she saw it gushing over her feet. Sarab was certain that a bullet had pierced her brain and burst the tumor of doubt swelling there. Her veins throbbed with the sound of the pilgrim’s voice announcing Judgment Day: ”And when the sky is rent asunder and becomes red like burning oil . . .”

  When she didn’t fall down dead and her head was still on her shoulders, she summoned up the courage the dead man had shown and turned around. She saw Masrour’s body, its head mashed, lying a couple of meters away. She saw the gaunt, rigid apparition of Mujan hurrying away from the scene, ignoring the blood still dripping from the wound in his neck where the knife had twisted into him.

  The nearby rebels were dumbstruck, their gaze fixed on the heap of bodies; the giant had fallen and covered the body of his son. The pure red blood of the father mixed with the blood of the son, which had already turned black. Wings fluttered in the air, and Muhammad stood in the middle of the area between the arcades, watching with a brooding expression as a breeze blew through the arcades and buffeted their faces.

  The angels of death are here, Sarab thought, too frightened to look up and face them. It’s the angels driving hell over our heads.

  “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! La ilaha illa Allah!” The sudden call to sunset prayer disturbed them. It came from a location no one had been expecting. Eyes swiveled to the bearded fighter who had taken up position among the arcades to perform the call to prayer, for fear of stray bullets. His loud voice was agitated, like a lament, and he wasn’t qualified to lead the call to prayer, so it echoed feebly in the forest of pillars. The sound caused the outlines of Grand Mosque to expand beyond the planet’s boundaries, to where the sky disappeared, leaving them to tumble into a hell of their own making.

  Sarab hurried away from the mangled lump, formerly the bodies of Masrour and his son. She quickened her pace, avoiding the eyes of her comrades. If they shone a light inside her head now, they would discover absolute sin, embodied in the absence of the call to prayer.

  She groped forward blindly, losing herself in the darkness, imploring the earth to open and swallow her up. She felt fragile, and avoided al-Mutawwaj Minaret where Sayf was stationed. He had started this by exterminating an entire battalion of the National Guard with his unerring bullets. He had repelled and demolished that first counterattack, playing a decisive role in transforming the path of their jamaa’s venture. Since that massacre, whenever Sarab looked up she saw the minaret drenched in blood, a nightmare that haunted her even when she was awake. She stopped suddenly, arrested by the fact that her brother, Sayfullah, was responsible for turning the call to prayer into a call for war.

  “If not for Sayf, I would never have ended up here.” This sorrow erupted in fire. “Or at least I wouldn’t have been too cowardly to release Masrour and follow him outside.” For the millionth time, Sarab asked herself, “What is it that shackles me? Why do I loiter here around death, unable to cut the cord with a brother who hankers after blood?” Was it because of the physical resemblance between them? Because it was her duty? Or maybe there was a hidden appetite for suicide in her? Inside, all was a blur; she couldn’t make out a glimmer of feeling other than increasing revulsion, and a sense of loss that she and Sayf had remained there and sacrificed everything to the abyss. In that massacre, when Sarab came face to face with death, its face transmuted; it became seductive. Her body was stimulated by its numbing pleasure; her tingling flesh responded easily and instinctively to the bottomless chasm.

  There had been another wave of deaths, and the rebels ha
d still had no opportunity to dispose of the bodies. Wherever Sarab went, her senses were violated; everything she took in, the smells, sights, sounds, and tastes, was like death.

  Rage blinded her and she quickened her pace. She ran aimlessly, and came to her senses in front of the Riyada gate, exposed to the reproving glare of her comrades. As she stood there, bile began to gush through her veins, a compulsive, inhuman force pumping through her delicate body and whetting her senses. With some difficulty she controlled the yearning to hurtle forward and tear down all these barricades as if they were made of paper, allowing the soldiers inside the Grand Mosque while her supernatural body absorbed a hail of bullets from her brother’s machine gun.

  She returned to the cellars. Involuntarily, her feet took her toward the prayer cell where the minbar hid the door to the outside. The darkness was condensing, welling up from her sense of being adrift, torn as she was between escaping now and holding out to ensure her brother survived. As each day passed, she realized her ability to save him was a delusion.

  She pushed on, and the darkness sucked her up until she reached the cell, one of a row of similar rooms. She was sure it was the same prayer cell, although she was confused by a perfume she hadn’t noticed before. She advanced cautiously, thirstily drinking in that fragrance.

  As she entered the room she couldn’t make out anything at all; rather, she was guided by the scent. There was no trace of the minbar, and in its place there was a body clinging to the back of the room, a gleaming lump of smooth, brown flesh.

  At first, Sarab thought that it was the body of one of the hostages who had been imprisoned there, although she smelled perfume, not decomposition. But as she approached, she saw a barely perceptible movement of slow breathing.