The Garden of Last Days (31 page)

Tina stepped through the curtains from the kitchen. She stood on those new rubber mats, squinting at the houselights, her hair all messed up on one side. Lonnie liked her. Her years of turning men’s needs into cash for herself were over and she seemed content taking care of girls who could be her daughters now. It was why she looked close to tears, standing there waving her arm at Louis to come out back; she’d failed at the one thing she was here to do: take care of the girls.

THESE KUFAR, LOOK
at them. They sit at the dirty tables in this dirty hole wearing the short pants that show themselves. They smoke and laugh and some of them seem frightened of their own police as they are asked one at a time into the front area to be questioned. Soon Bassam will be as well. Twice he has checked his pockets and three times he has inspected his license to make certain it is the one from Florida. Not Virginia. Though his part will be activated in Massachusetts, a word he cannot say. Only Boston. This he can say.

Most of these policemen are young like him. They believe they are strong but it would be easy to kill them. He has learned so many ways to do it—hand to hand, knife to gun, gun to bomb. At the camp for training he was best with small weapons and there is the feeling he has been given a gift he will never use. Beside his table two men laugh. On their fingers are the rings of wives. One of them wears a tie
and shirt, his sleeves folded back to reveal a gold watch, and he smiles briefly at Bassam, who does not return it. But he nods so as not to incite an argument, so as not to draw attention.

A young policeman curls his finger to the businessman, who jokes with the other and rises. Bassam must be permitted to leave soon. There is the drive back to the east. He should be there before sunrise for the first prayer. Amir is in the north now but each dawn for days the Egyptian has kicked his mattress and Tariq’s mattress and the mattress of Imad. “The time of living like the kufar is over. Get up and perform your ablutions, my brothers. We must pray for strength. As-salaatu khayrun min’n-nawm. Prayer is better than sleep. Rise!”

The Jew owner moves among the tables grasping his pot of coffee. He sees to the comfort of these people he wishes to come back again and again. One of the whores, the white one with the red hair, follows with cream and sugar, and Bassam allows the Jew to pour his coffee though he will no longer touch the cup touched by the Jew.

This hatred gives him strength.

The hatred that was so pure and clear in the disciplined months in camp, the hatred that began to weaken in Dubai and has weakened further here in this Florida with its heat and all the women who each day show so much of themselves.

Amir has moved them to many places. Del Ray Beach, Boynton Beach, Hollywood, Deerfield, the small rooms smelling of men and incense and the pizza they often eat, the empty boxes stacked upon the floor near the kitchen sink where they would perform their ablutions.

But moving so much has kept them united. Bassam and Imad and Tariq like one man now, a shahid with three heads but one heart.

One heart.

With Amir they had enrolled at gymnasiums in each town, places where the kufar go to keep their bodies as well maintained as the Grand Am and Le Mans and Duster Bassam and his brothers had driven in their old nothingness. At the first one in Venice, because they knew nothing of lifting weights, the gym manager assigned them
a trainer Amir ignored. He did not change into exercise clothing as the others did but remained dressed in a collared shirt and pressed pants and leather shoes from Germany. He moved from machine to machine, pushing or pulling on whatever handles or bars there were to hold, sweating lightly, not speaking to or even looking at the woman trainer named Kelly who tried to correct him.

She was young. The age of Bassam, Tariq, and Imad. Tariq, that habit of never closing his lips fully which makes him look stupid though he is not, he stared at her body you could see so easily in its tight gym clothing, her uncovered arms and legs, centimeters of her flat belly too. And Imad, tall, heavy Imad who back home had told jokes and laughed which made everyone else laugh, since the camps he has grown quiet, his laughter turned to stone, and he listened to the young trainer talk as if deciding the most efficient way to kill her.

But Bassam liked her brown eyes, her brown hair, how she had it tucked up into pins revealing her neck. How she smiled at him and touched his shoulder or arms or back as she instructed him. She was kind. He could see it and feel it. She was kind.

As were so many others. Gloria, the real estate woman who found them their first apartment in Del Ray Beach. She was short and wore very much jewelry and lipstick, but she laughed at whatever she said and looked into Bassam’s eyes with hers, blue and smiling, and he felt liked by her even though she did not know him. It made him want to sit with her, a kafir and a woman, and sip tea and tell her things he had never told to anyone. She asked them their names and tried to pronounce them correctly though she could not and she laughed at herself, squeezed his arm, and he could not bear being in her presence any longer.

There was Cliff, the man at the fuel station store three blocks south. Taller than Bassam, he was as old as his father, his hair colored blond, his whiskers gray. Upon his arms were inked figures of naked women, and when Bassam came in for more milk or bread or Cokes, he asked how his studies were coming, was he having any goddamned
fun
? There were the women who served them food in restaurants, the young ones or older ones, the pretty or the ugly, they were polite and smiled while looking them in their eyes. Except Amir’s. Their smiles changed then. They could see and feel his hatred for them, and Bassam had felt soft and weak and not worthy of the title shahid; these people should fear him, too. He was prepared to do what he was chosen for. They must not doubt this. No one should question this.

It had been months since their training and now he and Tariq and Imad were back home. After the purity of camp, where daily they had fought hand to hand, where they fired the AK-47 while running, where they wired plastic explosives while reciting from Al-Anfal and Al-Tawbah, where they fasted and cleansed themselves and where their softness fell away like fat from a lamb, it was difficult being once again in the dusty and idle streets of Khamis Mushayt; Karim and the others wanted to race, to smoke, to gossip, to stay baboons. Imad and Tariq had grown beards and tried to teach their old friends to stay away from these evils. But Karim, standing before them in his Nike cap and T-shirt and jeans, his shiny cell phone in his hand, he was already lost; for two years he had studied in London, something he was always boasting, and he showed them the photograph of the Zionist girl from Jerusalem who had loved him, his mind soiled, his heart falling to the West. Karim told them they should not believe everything the Imams say. “Read the Qur’an, my friends. It says Ahl al-Kitab, the People of the Book,
Christians and Jews
, deserve respect because they are fellow monotheists. Have you read all the suras? Because I have. Read 3:113–115: ‘They believe in Allah and the Last Day; they enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong; and they hasten in the emulation of all good works. They are in the ranks of the righteous.’”

“And that is why they enslave the Palestinians?” Tariq said. “That is why they occupy our land and kill our brothers in Iraq? You have fucked a Jew, what can you tell us about anything? Go play with your cell phone. You are not going where we are going.”

“Yes,” Karim laughed. “Have a nice trip.” And he turned and walked
away, the sun on his back, dust on the soles of his Nike shoes; soon he would be an unbeliever and after his death he would walk the bridge over hell as all souls do, and Bassam could only leave it to the Most Merciful to spare him from the fall to Jahannam. For Karim and the rest did not know who they were talking to: shuhada’, martyrs who would sit in the highest rooms with Allah, men whose names would never be forgotten.

The moon was high. It shone blue on the dome of the mosque across the street. It was after Isha, the final prayer, and Bassam sat in the outer building of their home before his father. Many of Bassam’s brothers wanted to sit down as well, but Ahmed al-Jizani told them to leave until the meal was served, he wanted to talk alone with Bassam. They sipped hot tea. Inside the main house Bassam’s mother and sisters were preparing lamb kufta. He could smell it and knew they would squeeze lemons over it and serve it with tahina sauce and there would be laban bi khiyar and he was very hungry from the fasting in camp. His father sat against the wall dressed in a new thawb the color of linen. It was too loose upon him and he appeared tired.

“So you have taken up jihad?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Do you understand what this means?”

“Yes.”

His father looked at him as he had always looked at him, as if all the sons before Bassam had been the best. “Tell me then, what does this mean?”

“It means I am prepared to die for Allah.”

“No, that is not jihad. That is a lower meaning of it.” His father sipped his tea, his eyes on him. “What did they teach you at this place?”

“The Truth, Father. They taught me the Truth.”

“And what is the truth, Bassam? Who can know the truth but Allah?”

Bassam nodded. He would not receive his father’s blessings. Why sit here any longer? Why sit before this man who had built a mosque, yes, but also buildings on the air base of the kufar. His father was an important man, an al-Jizani, but his mind and heart had become weakened by the ahl al-shirk, the polytheists and the unbelievers.

“Father?”

“Yes, speak.”

“They want to occupy our land. They want to separate us from Islam. Khalid—”

“What of Khalid?”

“Nothing.”

“Do not say this. What of Khalid?”

“He was lost. He died because he was lost.”

“Your brother drove too fast. Do you understand this? He was no more lost than am I.”

Bassam looked down at his hands. They were clean, his feet as well, his body strong and pure and prepared, yet he was ashamed. He sat there before his own father ashamed. Of
him
. Of Ahmed al-Jizani.

His father sat forward. He lowered his tea quickly, some of it spilling onto his hand. “You have never been a bright boy, Bassam, so you must listen to me carefully. Jihad is this: it is a struggle within yourself, that is all. It is the struggle to live as Allah wishes us to live. As good people. Do you understand? As good people. Now go call your brothers please.”

Soon they were all eating kufta, and it was clear to Bassam, the dull boy, the slow one, that his father had favored not Rashad the officer or Adil the engineer, not the businessmen so many of his brothers had become, three of them moving their families to Riyadh, not even the one who had worked so hard as a stock boy for Ali al-Fahd, no, their father had favored the one who had done nothing but dream of the West and smoke and drive too fast listening to an American Jew.

And Allah took him from Ahmed al-Jizani.

Allah took the son whose death would hurt him most.

Because Ahmed al-Jizani, builder of air bases for the kufar, he has
forgotten the Creator, the Mighty, the Sustainer and Provider. As have so many others across the kingdom. They have allowed television into their homes. They have installed satellite dishes onto their roofs and now their families gather between Maghrib and Isha and watch programs from the West. Censored yes, but the women are uncovered and the men carry weapons and drive shining cars in their fallen cities. On Fridays, the Day of Gathering, entire families used to picnic in the desert between the evening prayers; now they stay inside to be drawn into the television of the kufar while thousands of young men like Karim lounge in the streets in kufar clothing, secretly listening to their music and dreaming of lying again with Jews.

Meanwhile the Zionist/Crusader alliance slaughter their Muslim brothers and sisters in Chechnya and Kashmir, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Palestine.

It was two hours before the final prayer. The mosque was empty. Bassam, Tariq, and Imad were dressed in clean thawbs and they had performed their ablutions slowly and with care. Tariq’s beard was thick while Imad’s was light and bushy and in it was a crumb of bread his ablutions had not found and Bassam reached out and picked it free.

Imad’s eyes grew light, as if he were about to joke, but then he nodded and they knelt facing Makkah. They held hands, Tariq’s small and worn, Imad’s large, still damp from his ablutions. At camp, many times during the day they were told to recite the Shahaada, and so they did it now, their heads bowed. “La ilaha illa Allah wa Muhammad ar-rasulullah. There is no god worthy to be worshipped except Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

Imad looked down at Bassam as if he were unsure what to do next. Bassam closed his eyes and breathed in the air still sweet from the incense burned for Maghrib. Inside his head and heart were the words he had recited again and again while cleaning his weapon at camp, pulling free the loaded magazine, blowing dust from the breech, ramming the oiled rod into the barrel.