The Mosque of Notre Dame

by Elena Chudinova

  “We’re doing everything we can, esteemed Mosvar Ali,” said Kasim. “But you don’t want to be accidentally killed as a result of our hasty actions, do you?”

  “I don’t want to be killed, period. I’m not just anybody; I’m the imam of the Al Franconi Mosque! Officer, are you aware of what will happen if you fail to protect me?”

  “Call us if anything changes,” said Kasim, and put down the receiver with relief. The imam ’s high voice continued to ring in his head.

  The Interior Army’s command headquarters had been hastily set up in a center for the distribution of Islamic literature. (Out of habit, many converts still called it by its former name—Shakespeare & Company Bookstore.) It was close by the Little Bridge leading to Notre Dame. But even so, there was little that could be done for the esteemed imam . No matter how much he raged, he would not fare well.

  Two young captains, taking advantage of a break between meetings, drank coffee from a thermos, sitting without any particular reverence with their posteriors on cardboard boxes that were filled with edifying Islamic literature. No religious guards would be showing up—they had probably heard that Mosvar Ali was trapped in the building.

  Although the situation in general was bad, it was good to feel command in one’s own hands, Kasim decided. An orderly moved discretely near the door, sometimes taking a cigarette out of his pocket, sometimes putting it back, glancing the officers fearfully. Kasim had read the newcomer’s file last night. His name was Abdullah—a sniveling convert. He had been Abdulwahid’s driver, and now they had brought him here. All that was left of his boss’s head was smaller than a matchbox. The rest of Abdullah’s family was probably in the grave. Now he’d been moved from a cozy place into hell. But shit floats. Even if there were an attack, he would probably survive.

  At least now they’ve forgotten about the ghetto. Maybe I saved Antoine. If this incredible rebellion had not taken place today, Antoine would probably be dead, like the family of this coward Abdullah.

  Antoine doesn’t hate me, it was obvious from his voice that he hadn’t begun to hate me. As they were transporting Abdullah’s mother to the morgue and him to the sharia zone—probably separating them in front of their house—it’s unlikely the family forgave him as Antoine would forgive me, if they rounded him up. The situation is entirely different. When I accepted Islam at the age of twelve, people weren’t being hauled off and disappeared. Toto’s parents had just begun to go bankrupt...

  Why do they kill the entire unconverted part of the family? Do they want only the scoundrels to convert, the ones who don’t mind betraying their parents, brothers, and sisters?

  If they didn’t do that, normal young people would convert, simply because they saw a difference in their prospects. Today, normal young people no longer become Muslim. Instead, we get creatures like this Abdullah. Things get worse and worse.

  “Why are you glued to the door?” barked Kasim to Abdullah. “Go buy me some cigarettes. The brand doesn’t matter, just hurry. Do you hear me?”

  * * *

  In despair, imam Mosvar Ali listened to the signal from the telephone receiver. It sounded terrible, but still he didn’t want to hang up. It would be like cutting off the last thread connecting him to the normal, orderly world.

  But he couldn’t stand forever there like a pillar with a receiver in his hand, especially when he was being irritatingly watched by police and the religious guard who had fled into the mosque. He could see himself in their eyes now as in a mirror. Putting down the receiver without a word, turned on the heels of his house slippers and left the receiving area.

  Finding himself in his office, the imam sank wearily onto a couch. The soft leather pillow yielded pleasantly, receiving his heavy body in its embrace. How much concern for his comfort had been invested in the decoration of this room! How hard the women had worked, arguing with the designers, negotiating with the workers and the suppliers! Who could have guessed that these prestigious apartments in the very center of the city could become as lethal as a mousetrap, once the bridges were closed?

  How he had fought to come here from the old mosque! How much effort he had invested—so he could find himself in this terrible position today. If everything ended well, he would find a way of showing that he remembered! But would it end well?

  Mosvar Ali crossed to the women’s half. On his way he saw his third wife, Hatidza, who was playing on the carpet with one-year-old Aslanbek. When she saw her husband, her expression, which generally looked frightened when she was in public, took on the withering look she usually favored him with. It got on Mosvar Ali’s nerves, even on a much better day than today. With his wife, the imam frequently admitted to himself, he had no luck. Neither satisfaction nor gain. The child she bore, it must be admitted, was large, healthy and even male to boot, but even without Aslanbek, he already had five sons.

  Everything he had heard in his youth about the sexual capabilities of Scandinavian women had turned out to be nonsense. What a shame. A man in his youth married for the first and second times in order to secure his position. Later, he could do something for his personal pleasure. Mosvar Ali wanted not only a fifteen year-old virgin, but a skilled one. The youngest wife always receives the most gifts—isn’t she responsible for conscientiously earning them? And ultimately, isn’t it in her best interest to satisfy her husband? But this one was a piece of wood in bed. You would think she was about to scream.

  Tumbling around his mother-fortress, the boy tripped, but did not hurt himself or cry. He simply continued his journey on all fours.

  A strange thought drew the gaze of the imam to Aslanbek’s small, light-colored head. We have lived too carelessly, and now we have nothing with which to defend ourselves in time of need. The ancestors would immediately know where to find hostages. The best were little ones like this. Better yet to have several of them, one to kill before the eyes of the kafirs, and the others to trade.

  Aslanbek looked like a kafir child, especially from afar; there was nothing distinguishing him as one of the true faith. What if he ordered the police to tell the kafirs that he had hostages—children from the ghetto—and then he showed them Aslanbek? And demanded that they release the imam and his family? In that case, he would have to leave his son in their hands. How would they react to that? If he were in their place, and someone made a fool of him like that using a hostage, he would certainly crush the child’s head against the nearest wall. Or something worse. One could never know these things in advance.

  He had to think logically. A sixth son from a wife from a non-influential family. Even if it was necessary to risk his life, it was the same as losing a pawn for a king in a game of chess. Children were the sacred property of their fathers, after all. Was he a coward, afraid to demonstrate his will when necessary? His ancestors would spit in his face for acting like that!

  His ancestors... As never before, the thoughts of the imam returned to the past. His family had risen high in the past half-century; after all, they were not descendants of the Prophet, but mere Chechens. And how miserable they had been, among the last associates of Basayev. They rose in status by giving five daughters to a shahidki training camp at the beginning of the century. They weren’t paid that much money, but it became the basis for their wealth. Then they found themselves on the right side of the green curtain after the Islamic victory because they had followed their human “capital” by moving to the shahid-controlled area.

  There, as relatives of righteous young women, they established ties with Arab families. Yes, they rose high. If it were not for those women martyrs, he, Mosvar Ali, would be sitting in Chechnya now with the renegades who allowed their daughters to work on television and in theaters like whores, and lived among infidels! Or he would be a poor worker here in the Euroislamic countries. His obvious course of action now was to save himself as his family had done...

  “Listen to me, you old goat!”

  Shocked, the imam looked at the woman. Picking up a heavy antique nutcracker,
she plucked the child from the carpet with one hand and jumped back from her husband, waving the tool menacingly with the other hand.

  “If you so much as get near my child, I’ll kill you! With Allah as my witness, I’ll kill you!”

  “You’ve gone mad, woman! Who are you talking to? And how can you say that the child is yours? What do you own here, anyway?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t understand me, you monster!” Hatidza said, as she continued to wave her pathetic weapon. “What were you thinking about while you were looking at my son? What evil act are you planning? I can read your filthy mind like an open book!”

  “What are you ranting about, madwoman?” raged Mosvar Ali—caught red-handed and humiliated. “Just you wait! You’ll pay for this as soon as they kill the kafirs !”

  “Maybe the kafirs will kill you first. May Allah bless them if they do!”

  Despite the woman’s unprecedented daring, his anger suddenly vanished.

  I could, of course I could. If I survive, I will settle accounts with this crazy Danish woman. He could snatch the child from her—not him personally, of course, since she would scratch and bite like a tiger. But his assistants could overpower her. However, that was too excruciating and it would take a long time. And where would he get another child? He couldn’t very well go get it from the ghetto...

  Wait, he could! Mosvar Ali smacked himself on the forehead. It was so simple!

  He headed back to the office, to the closest telephone. By drawing his attention to his youngest son, Allah had shown him the best possible option! They should send buses to the closest ghetto; they should bring back a hundred—no, several hundred—all the children they found there! They should line them up on the bank around the Cité and start killing them! The Maquisards had a lot of relatives in the ghettos. They would immediately release the imam and his family and then... It didn’t matter what would happen then, as far as he was concerned. He would already be in his house outside the city, in Vieux Moulin on the lakeshore!

  Mosvar Ali quickly pressed redial to get the same number he had recently called. The same unpleasant captain picked up the receiver, but that didn’t matter.

  “Officer! Listen to me carefully!”

  “I’m listening. Are there any changes?”

  “That’s not the point. You have to go quickly, do you hear me, quickly...” The line went dead. The imam slammed down the receiver. He had lost his connection when every second was precious!

  There was no dial tone.

  “Hey, Ibrahim, go and bring my radio telephone right away! I think it’s somewhere in my office!”

  When the young assistant returned with the unit in his hand, he looked frightened.

  “Apparently the connections have been cut, sir. The Maquisards ...”

  “Cattle! Children of the devil! Somebody give me your cell phone. That’s not such a hard thing to think of, is it?”

  “We’re just the City police, esteemed sir,” replied a young man in uniform shyly. “We only have one phone for five men; it’s not a cheap device.”

  “So what?” Precious seconds were melting like ice cream in the sun. “There are more than fifteen of you here right now.”

  “That’s correct, sir, but none of us has a cell phone.”

  Mosvar Ali noted that the policeman was looking at him with something like insufficient respect. They were driving him crazy!

  “Ibrahim, go find my cell phone; it’s also in the office. Hurry!!”

  “Sir, you ordered me to take it for repairs yesterday and I did. They didn’t have a part they needed, so they kept it. They promised to bring it back today before nine.”

  Imam Mosvar Ali got down heavily on the floor. Covering his face with his hands, he began to whine.

  * * *

  The rebel headquarters was located in the Europol building. Brisseville had brought two young men, Malezieux and Garaud, to delete all the information from the computers. This was not strictly necessary, but no one objected. “What’s good for the Russian is death for the German,” nodded Sophia Sevazmios approvingly. In her hand she held neither a cigarette nor a pistol but just an ordinary paper cup with tea. This looked almost unnatural.

  “Hello, Larochejaquelein speaking!” Henri lifted the receiver. “Yes, Laval, what’s new?”

  Pierre Laval was heading the group evacuating the largest ghetto— Panthéon .

  “Things couldn’t be better on this side; there are only five of their men left in the whole ghetto! The people know what’s happening; so far we’ve lowered more than four hundred people underground. The only problem is that the women are carrying a lot of souvenirs—photographs, books, their great-grandmother’s dishes. It’s understandable, but...”

  The “but” is yet to come, thought Larochejaquelein: temporarily placing more than ten thousand people underground and then evacuating them out of Paris in small groups. But this was good, it was very good.

  “How are things in Austerlitz ?”

  “Apparently, everything there is going well, too. All right, I’m hanging up. This line is protected, but still... Goodbye!”

  “It’s ten after nine,” said Father Lothaire. “Sophie, how much time do we need to plant the explosives?”

  “If we have five people working, we can do it in an hour. But we’ll need more than two hours to get the Saracens out. They’re firmly lodged, the sons of bitches.”

  “And we’ll need at least an hour to determine the condition of the altar for consecration...

  “We still don’t have a reason for concern.” Sophia stood up suddenly and lifted the window sash up to the matte opaque glass: A young chestnut seemed bent over, under the burden of its hot pink flowers. “So far, we haven’t lost anyone. In normal times, we’ve had far worse days. We can hold the island for a maximum of twenty-four hours, but they don’t know that. We have to make them think that’s our minimum. What do you say, Henri?”

  “I think that anyone trying to take the church will have a hard time. They’ve sealed up the windows with whatever they could find, they’re not easy to open, and outside the walls, it’s all empty space—you could play football there. They cut down the trees and planted their stupid flowers. Many people will be killed, but who could have predicted that we didn’t really need to occupy the Palace of Justice and Europol first—just take the church!”

  “So are we going to tear our hair out because of that? Do we all agree that we’ll take it before morning with minimal losses?”

  “There will certainly be losses, even if they are small.” Larochejaquelein said, knitting his brow. “And I don’t like the fact that one of those pigs, the one on the roof, has a sniper rifle.”

  And what kind of sniper rifle is it?” Brisseville coughed seriously.

  “I can’t guarantee it,” said Larochejaquelein, “But I think they have an SB-04 sniper rifle with infrared. An excellent weapon, produced in Russia in the 2010’s. But what’s a flique doing with a weapon like that?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a policeman,” Sophia said. “And we could kill everyone who headed from Europol toward the church. But there’s no reason to doubt that 10 or 20 well-armed men are hiding in the Cité, and that we don’t know where they are because they won’t reveal their positions before attacking us.”

  “That’s so simple,” said Brisseville, continuing to cough, spitting blood into his handkerchief.

  “But all right,” said Sophie. “So what if they have a sniper rifle with infrared? Nighttime losses cannot be compared with daytime ones. Would you like some tea then, your reverence?”

  “Thank you, Sophie,” said Father Lothaire, laughing.

  “Even though it smells like fish cured in kerosene,” added Larochejaquelein.

  Sophia took out another cup and began to pour tea prepared in an electric teapot. “This is real Lapsang Souchong; I found half a bag in a pocket.”

  Father Lothaire, accepted a cup with satisfaction. “Lévêque, tell Bertaud we’re going to l
iberate the church at night.”

  “Yes, your reverence.”

  Eugène-Olivier left with a load of sleeping bags.

  * * *

  “So, we are going to work on our tans until this evening,” said Roger Bertaud, opening a pineapple juice. “With cold drinks, like on the Cote d’Azur. The only thing I’d like to know is what’s going to happen first. Are we going to attack the church—or are they going to attack the Cité? In any case, we have nothing to do. We can pull our rocking chairs over here.”

  “Not here.” Eugène-Olivier couldn’t get the image of a sniper with a night scope out of his head. “That creep is somewhere above. Do you know where?”

  “Somewhere in the gallery in the middle, just over the rose window.”

  They could move along the walls from the apsid, but would the creep see them when they got to the door? Eugène-Olivier wished he knew. They didn’t dare get close to the stone, either; they’d have to break down the door and someone could get hurt. What could he think of to get rid of him?

  He hadn’t seen Notre Dame close-up for a long time: two towers rising to the Heavens; the circle of the gigantic rosette; three doors with the painted-over traces of destroyed images. He even remembered their names: The one on the left was the Portal of the Virgin; the one in the center was the Portal of the Final Judgment; and on the right, the Portal of St. Anne. There was no one he could ask why the doors had names, and why those names and not others. But wait. Of course he did. Father Lothaire!

  Endure a little longer, Notre Dame; there is the intolerable suffering of long illness, as the ancients would say, but afterward it will be simple and easy; death will come to set you free.

  “Oh, look, Lévêque, look up!” Roger shouted, crouching down on his knees. “The hero is Larochejaquelein, the great conductor! It’s all happening as he predicted. It’s as if they were reading from his score!”

  In the cloudless sky, helicopters circled like dragonflies, still very small, but growing rapidly.