The Imam of Tawi-Tawi

by Ian Hamilton

  “What about the people these terrorists have supposedly targeted?” Ava said. “Don’t you have any concerns about their safety, their welfare?”

  “Of course I do,” Sharif said. “But my first concern always is the people I live among.”

  Ava closed her eyes. Uncle used to say that self-­preservation was the strongest and most basic of all human instincts. She wondered if Wahab shared the imam’s sentiments, but decided that asking him wouldn’t serve any purpose. Instead she said, “I assume that you share the imam’s and Senator Ramirez’s opinion that the various government, military, and security forces in Manila would use the college as an excuse to reassert their authority.”

  “They would threaten our religious freedom, subjugate us politically, and destroy whatever economic gains we’ve been able to make,” Wahab said harshly. “This college is the excuse they’ve been waiting for, and maybe even praying for.”

  “The senator told me he’s determined not to let it come to that,” Ava said.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Preventing those attacks would be a great place to start.”

  “How would he do that?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is that we need to gather a lot more information, so that we can confirm what we’ve been told, add whatever we can to it, and then pass everything along to the senator, so that whatever he does is based on facts.”

  “We don’t have enough now?”

  “All we have is the story the boys told us,” she said.

  “What more do we need?” Wahab said.

  “I’ll answer that question in a minute,” Ava said. “First, I want to know if it is your intention to share what we just heard.”

  “Of course.”

  “With whom?”

  “Juhar is the head of the Brotherhood, and he needs to know what’s happening.”

  “How many other people in the Brotherhood know why you were coming here?”

  “None.”

  “So just you, Juhar, and Senator Ramirez were privy to the information that the imam initially provided?”

  “Yes.”

  Ava looked at Imam Sharif. “What about you? Did you tell anyone else, and is there anyone you have to tell?”

  “No.”

  “Good. The last thing we want is to tip off the people at the college that someone has an interest in them,” she said, and then turned back to Wahab. “I understand why it’s necessary for you to brief Juhar, but when you do, I think you have to stress that we need time to confirm what we’ve been told, and that it’s premature to expand the list of people who know. Luckily, if the May timetable the boys mentioned is accurate, we have a bit of time.”

  “What if it isn’t accurate?” Wahab said.

  “Have there been any terrorist attacks, here in the Philippines or anywhere else, in the past six to nine months that can be traced back to Tawi-Tawi, Bongao, or the college?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “More than a hundred students have already gone through the college and have been sent God knows where, and there haven’t been any reports of attacks. That leads me to believe that the boys could be correct about the timing.”

  “Okay, let’s assume they are,” Wahab said. “Where does that leave us?”

  “As I said earlier, we need to gather more information, starting with finding out all we can about this college and Tariq al-Bashir. Then we have to figure out who the young men were who went to the school and where the hell they are now.”

  “How are we going to collect that information?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Give me some time to think about it.”

  “But you’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  “I have never, ever been involved in anything that resembles what we could be looking at here.”

  “I mean information gathering and getting to the truth.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  He nodded and rose from his seat. “I have to phone Juhar, and Imam Sharif has obligations in Bongao. I’ll walk him to the car and have Saham drive him back to the city. I’ll make my call outside.”

  “Before the imam leaves, I’d like to ask him if he’s ever been to the college,” Ava said.

  “Why?” Wahab said.

  “I would find it odd if you had no curiosity about a new Islamic college on your home island.”

  “Once. I saw it once, a month or so after it opened,” Sharif said. “I was curious about it and had one of my people drive me there. It is in an isolated area that can be accessed only by a dirt track. As the boys said, it is a compound surrounded by high fences with double rolls of razor wire. As for the rest of it, I don’t know. I got a glimpse from afar of the general layout and then had the driver turn around.”

  “Did you sense anything strange about the college’s location, the fences, the wire?”

  “No. What I thought was that these were people who valued their privacy. Who was I to invade it?”

  ( 12 )

  Ava watched Wahab and Imam Sharif leave and then reached into her bag and took out her notebook. She turned to the back, where she’d started making notes about Zakat College, and under her previous entry wrote: INTERVIEW IN TAWI-TAWI. She then began to record everything that Ben and Alcem had told them. When that was done, she looked towards the café entrance. There was no sign of Wahab. More than fifteen minutes had passed since he’d left.

  She turned to a clean page and forced herself to focus on the questions that needed to be asked. After ten minutes she’d filled almost the entire page. She was still writing when she heard the door open and saw Wahab walking towards her.

  “What did Juhar have to say?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t want to believe it.”

  “Who does?”

  “He made me repeat everything we were told three times before he finally accepted that it might be possible.”

  “How did your conversation end?”

  “He said we have to do everything possible to find out the truth, and that the senator and his partners sent you here to direct that effort,” he said. “Juhar told me he’d agreed that you would be in charge and that he’d committed the Brotherhood — and me specifically — to providing all the assistance you need.”

  “Is providing help a problem for you?”

  “No.”

  Ava nodded. “Did you tell Juhar that we want to keep everything as contained as possible?”

  “I did, and you don’t have to worry about him. I can’t think of a single person Juhar would want to share this information with.”

  “Good.”

  “Now what? Where do we start?” He pointed at her notebook. “Have you come up with any ideas?”

  “The first thing I want to do is see the college.”

  He flinched. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t want them to be able to recognize us.”

  “How could they? We can just drive past it without stopping. I’m not suggesting we drop in for a visit.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “I don’t like dealing with the abstract,” she said. “I want to see it.”

  “I’m not sure —”

  “Is the car back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go now.”

  He settled the bill and led her outside. Saham was sitting on a picnic bench under the shade of a tree, his chin resting on his hand.

  “Hey, start the car!” Wahab shouted.

  As Ava and Wahab climbed into the back seat, she said, “I’m glad I brought my carry-on. I thought about leaving it at the hotel in Manila, but chances are I’ll miss that four-o’clock flight.”

  “Ms. Lee —”

  “My name is Ava. Please call me t
hat.”

  “Ava, are you telling me that you already have plans for the rest of the day?”

  “No. I just have questions that will hopefully lead to answers that will lead to more questions. This kind of information gathering is an unpredictable process, and often laborious and time-consuming.”

  “Where are we going, sir?” Saham asked.

  “Zakat College, but don’t stop when we get there. Just drive past it, turn around, and head back this way. Make it look like we’re lost.” He turned to Ava. “What kind of questions?”

  “For starters, how hard did you look for information on Imam al-Bashir?”

  “We went online and searched every site we could think of. The imam did the same, and he also made many phone calls to colleagues. This al-Bashir is not Filipino or Moro for sure, or someone would have known of him.”

  “What does ‘Moro’ mean? I’ve heard it a couple of times now.”

  “It’s the Spanish word for ‘Muslim,’ or at least it’s what the Spanish in the Philippines called Muslims.”

  “You’re suggesting that al-Bashir isn’t Muslim?”

  “No, just that he isn’t a local Muslim.”

  “You said earlier that Ramirez also did some searching.”

  “He asked a junior staffer to make some enquiries. They found nothing.”

  “So you think he’s from overseas?”

  “Well, that’s odd as well. Ramirez’s staffer ran his name past the immigration department. There is no record of anyone named Tariq al-Bashir entering or leaving the country.”

  “Maybe that isn’t his name.”

  “That’s my thought.”

  They had been on a dirt road since they left the café, and now the car veered to the right and drove onto a ruttier, narrower path. They slowed to a crawl as Saham tried to avoid the potholes.

  “Where are we exactly?” Ava asked.

  “About ten kilometres from downtown Bongao. The college is officially within the city limits.”

  “So to build the college, someone would have to get a building permit from the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m trying to remember…are foreigners allowed to own land in the Philippines?”

  “No,” Wahab said.

  “So who bought the land? Who applied for the building permit? Which company did the construction? Who paid them? There have to be a lawyer, an accountant, and a bank attached to a project of this size. Who are they?”

  “Those are a great many questions.”

  “There are more,” Ava said, remembering the list she’d made in her notebook. “How are Alcem and Ben and the other employees paid? How about suppliers? Somewhere there is a bank dispensing money. Whose name is on the account? Who has signing authority? Where does the money originate?”

  Wahab shook his head.

  “We need to find out. Someone paid for the land and for construction of the college. Someone is paying for its upkeep. Someone is paying for those students to get to the U.S. and elsewhere,” Ava said. “Money does not exist in a vacuum. It has to be moved from point to point. It has to have an origin.”

  “We’re nearing the college,” Saham said.

  Every eye in the car stared straight ahead, none more intently than Ava’s. She saw the metal fence first. It had to be five metres high, and the imam was correct about the razor wire. Then the school appeared, and Ava was surprised how plain but ominous looking it was. The one-storey wooden structure was painted a dull brown and didn’t have a single window. Above grey steel double doors was a painted sign that simply read ZAKAT. The building was dotted with security cameras.

  “It looks more like a medium-security prison than a school,” Ava said.

  As they drove slowly past the entrance gate, also topped by razor wire, two guards came out of the security hut and stared at them. Wahab rolled down his window. “We took a wrong turn,” he shouted. The guards didn’t acknowledge him.

  Ava could now see that the structure was shaped like a horseshoe, with two wings extending from either end of a long, deeply recessed main building. When they reached the edge of the property, the car stopped and Saham began to execute a U-turn, giving Ava a clear view of the fenceline, which ran for at least two hundred metres towards the back of the property.

  “That’s a lot of land,” Ava said.

  “Drive faster,” Wahab said to Saham as the guards moved towards the gate.

  No one in the car spoke until the school receded from view. Ava started to say something but suddenly felt almost drained. She knew that sign; she needed to get some sleep before her mind shut down. “I didn’t sleep at all last night,” she said. “I think it would be smart for me to find a hotel and have a nap. Maybe while I’m doing that, you can start finding some answers to my questions.”

  “I’ve already been thinking about them,” Wahab said.

  “And?”

  “We have good contacts in the city government. I’ll find out who owns the land and who got the building permits,” he said.

  “That’s a good starting point. But if you’re successful, don’t try to talk to them without me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Now, how about finding a hotel.”

  “There are only two or three in and around Bongao. The one I usually stay at is the Beachside Inn. It has some nice gardens and a view of the Sulu Sea and Bud Bongao. But it isn’t fancy.”

  “I just need it to be clean.”

  He nodded and then said, “Saham, take us to the Beachside Inn.”

  They retraced their path all the way to Maria’s Restaurant, drove past the cutoff, and continued south. The Sulu Sea appeared sporadically in the distance, but Bongao Mountain was a constant companion. Saham drove for ten minutes past Maria’s and then turned off the main road and headed towards the sea. A moment later they pulled up in front of the sprawling complex of whitewashed one-storey buildings that formed the Beachside Inn.

  “I’ll check you in,” Wahab said.

  Ava stood outside by the car, surrounded by a massive garden. She liked the wildness of it, and the perfume that she guessed was from ylang-ylang trees. When Wahab reappeared, Saham ran to the trunk to get her Shanghai Tang Double Happiness bag. She took it from him and walked towards Wahab.

  “I got you the end unit over there,” he said. “It should be quiet, and you’ll have a great view of the sea.”

  She took the key from him. “Thank you. I’ll find it,” she said, and then looked at her watch. “Give me two hours. Do you have my phone number?”

  “The senator gave it to me.”

  “Then call me about fifteen minutes before you come back to get me.” He nodded, and Ava turned and walked towards the unit.

  The room was small, plain, and clean. Ava put her bag on the teak coffee table, stripped down to her underwear, pulled back the blanket, and slipped into bed. Despite her fatigue, her mind was still active, turning over the morning’s conversations. As it did, that feeling of dread returned, triggered by thoughts of what could happen somewhere, sometime in May, and intensified by the fact that she knew so little. Don’t leap ahead, she thought. When she worked with Uncle, she had conditioned herself not to think about the conclusions of cases until they presented themselves. Any success was achieved small step by small step, not by overreaching or getting too far ahead of what the facts on hand dictated.

  I need to calm down, she thought, and began to draw deep breaths, holding them for as long as she could before slowly emptying her lungs. It was a relaxation technique she had learned from her bak mei instructor, Grandmaster Tang. She hadn’t reached twenty breaths before she fell into a deep sleep.

  She didn’t dream, which was unusual, and woke to knocking on a door. She opened her eyes, wondered where she was, and then heard the knocking again. I’m in Bongao,
she suddenly thought.

  She sat up in bed. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Wahab. I called you twice and you didn’t answer. It’s been more than two hours, and I was getting worried.”

  “I’m fine,” Ava said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes or so.”

  “Hurry if you can,” he said. “We have an appointment with a lawyer in the city in half an hour.”

  “What lawyer?”

  “The one who bought the land, got the permits, and is fronting the college.”

  ( 13 )

  It took Ava less than ten minutes to wash, brush her hair, and throw on the same clothes she’d been wearing that morning. She didn’t bother with makeup or perfume, but she did pull her hair back and secure it with her ivory chignon pin. The pin was the first valuable piece of jewellery she’d owned. She’d purchased it in Kowloon with the money she’d made on her first collection job. It was an antique, many hundreds of years old, and the jeweller who’d sold it to her said it had probably been owned by an emperor’s wife. She loved that thought, although she didn’t entirely believe it. What she did know for sure was that it was her lucky charm, something she’d worn on every job and every special occasion in her life. She knew she was being superstitious, but she was no more or less so than any other Chinese person she’d ever known, which meant that she’d never stop believing that the pin brought her luck.

  When she left the room, she saw Wahab standing by the car with a small smile on his face. It was too soon for smiles, she thought, but she didn’t want to be discouraging. “I’m sorry for sleeping so late,” she said. “I was more tired than I realized.”

  “I just called the lawyer. He’s not going anywhere or scheduling any other meetings.”

  “That’s good. Who is this guy?”

  “His name is Jaafar. He runs a one-man firm that handles mainly commercial and real estate transactions.”

  “How did you find out it was him?”