The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  After attaining dual master’s degrees in computer science and finance from Baghdad University, Jamil became one of the first generation of online day traders, using a software program of his own devising. His profits—which came as much from the sale of his trading software as from his actual investments—served as seed money for his later online ventures . . .

  In addition to his work on The Library of Alexandria, Jamil has contributed expertise and investment capital to the eBazaar online auction company, the Hawaladar e-commerce site, and the classified ad site safwanslist. He is also a co-founder of Christian Media Watch, a watchdog group that monitors Western television, radio, and newspapers for anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic propaganda.

  Wajid Jamil had originally wanted to name his online encyclopedia the House of Wisdom, after the famous library and translation center established in Baghdad by the Abbasid Caliph Al Mamun. But that URL was already taken, and the cybersquatter who’d grabbed it demanded an absurd sum. So Jamil went with the cheaper libraryofalexandria.org instead, saving the House of Wisdom tag for his corporate headquarters.

  The building was located in Al Mansour Square. A mural above the entrance depicted the great scholar Ibn al Haytham lecturing to his students. Auditing the class from the back of the room were two visitors from the future: Wajid Jamil, in his hacker’s djellaba and flip-flops, and beside him, in a gold-embroidered caftan, Muammar Abu Minyar al Gaddafi.

  People unfamiliar with Jamil’s family connections could be forgiven for wondering if this was a joke. Al Gaddafi had struggled for decades to be taken seriously as an Arab leader, but outside Libya—where the crooked state election board, staffed by his old National Guard comrades, ensured his return to the governor’s mansion every four years—he was regarded as little more than a comical human interest story: the governor-for-life, who slept in a nomad’s tent and was protected by an all-female bodyguard squad.

  His big moment in the national spotlight had come in 2000, when he’d run for president as an independent candidate. Asked during a debate which of his accomplishments as governor he was most proud of, Gaddafi gave a rambling answer about infrastructure projects, including a program that had made Tripoli and Benghazi the first two cities in North Africa to provide free wireless web access. When the governor finished speaking, rival candidate Bandar al Saud inquired in a tone of gentle derision, “I’m sorry, are you telling us you invented the Internet?” Though this was not even close to what Gaddafi had said, the line got a huge laugh and was soon being reported as fact. A few days later, during a Congressional debate over a new anti-obscenity bill, the Speaker of the House appeared to have Gaddafi in mind when he described the Internet as “a series of intestines, laid out by a goatherd’s son, spewing bile at both ends.”

  After that it became a full-on Net meme. Someone created a screensaver showing a goat sticking its tongue out above the caption IM IN UR INTESTINES, SPEWIN MAH BILE. Joke posts appeared on technical support boards, crediting the Libyan governor with miracles both positive and negative: “Invoking the name of Al Gaddafi cured my blue screen of death”; “Spoke ill of Tobruk soccer team last night, now I am beset by malware. Halp!” Even as Gaddafi’s presidential ambitions went down in flames—he got less than half a percent of the popular vote, stealing just enough support from the Unity Party candidate to clinch the election for Bandar—the denizens of cyberspace anointed him a king, the Mighty Jinn of the Interwebs.

  Remarkably little of this made its way into the Gaddafi entry on the Library of Alexandria. The encyclopedia’s article on the governor was respectful to the point of obsequiousness—and it stayed that way, no matter how many amateur editors tried to spice it up with irreverent anecdotes and LOLgoat photos. The man Wajid Jamil knew as Uncle Muammar might not have real magical powers, but what he did have was the Tarhuna Data Center, the largest state-subsidized server farm in the country, buried under the mountains south of Tripoli: unlimited data storage and the bandwidth to go with it, available at rock-bottom prices to those the governor counted as his friends. Wajid took pains to remain among that number.

  The receptionist at the House of Wisdom told them that Waj would be free shortly and invited them to wait in a private cybercafé lounge. While Samir helped himself to pastry and Amal checked out the art on the walls—watercolor landscapes of the Libyan Sahara, painted by the governor—Mustafa got tea and sat down at a computer.

  The web browser defaulted to the Library of Alexandria, but a few mouse clicks brought him to the homepage of Christian Media Watch, a site devoted to the proposition that however frightened you were of Jesus’s Western disciples, you weren’t frightened enough. The banner art showed a scene from the Volksaufstand: a screaming Teuton with a bloodred cross on his chest winding up to throw a Molotov cocktail at a line of Israeli police in riot gear. Superimposed on this was the quote “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war . . .” which the tagline attributed to POPULAR CHRISTIAN ANTHEM.

  Mustafa remembered the first time he’d heard that song. It was his last year at BU, and he was sharing an apartment with Samir, Wajid, and an Ethiopian exchange student named Kidane Sellasie who spent most of his waking hours building cardboard models at the architecture school. Wajid was similarly dedicated to his studies, but on Thursday nights he liked to unwind by smoking hashish and watching funny videos: cartoons, bad movies, old TV shows.

  On the night in question, Waj had rented what he’d thought was a collection of computer-animated shorts from the Tunis Film Festival. But there’d been a mix-up at the video store, and the tape inside the case was actually a documentary about American Christian fundamentalists. On the theory that anything could be entertaining with enough smoke, Waj loaded up his hash pipe and popped the tape into the VCR. Samir joined him on the couch, but Mustafa, who had exams the next week, went to his room to study.

  Half an hour later, the sound of raucous laughter drew him back out again. “What did I miss?”

  Samir was laughing so hard he was gasping for breath: “Rewind! Rewind!”

  Waj rewound the tape. When he pressed play, a children’s choir was singing the anthem:

  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war

  With the cross of Jesus going on before

  Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe

  Forward into battle see His banners go!

  “I don’t get the joke,” Mustafa said.

  Samir made a clumsy grab for the remote: “You went back too far!”

  “I know!” said Waj, “I know!” To Mustafa: “Just wait, there’s another song after this one . . .”

  The next song was a folk number about the different kinds of Jew and how much better it was to be a member of Christ’s flock:

  I wouldn’t want to be a Pharisee (No!)

  A Sadducee (No!) or a Maccabee (No!)

  I’m glad that I’m a Lamb of God

  Baa! Baa! Baa!

  “Baa!” bleated Samir. “Ba-a-a-a-a!” Waj went off on an extended riff about Christians and their livestock that Mustafa didn’t think was funny but which, to his lasting shame, he laughed at anyway. Then he heard footsteps and turned to see Kidane Sellasie, home for once, standing in the apartment doorway with a sad look on his face.

  Mustafa immediately apologized and Samir at least managed to keep his mouth shut. But Waj dug himself in deeper by trying to explain away the insult, insisting that he hadn’t been making fun of all Christians, just the fanatical, Jew-hating, American variety.

  “I’m glad you are so comfortable with your prejudices, Wajid,” Kidane Sellasie said.

  These days, Mustafa reflected, wincing at the memory, Wajid was even more comfortable with his prejudices—though he no longer found American fundamentalists a laughing matter.

  Mustafa typed the word “rapture” into the Christian Media Watch search box and the screen filled with video thumbnails. He clicked one labeled “FOX News, January 2002” and the site began streaming an interview with a man identifie
d as FAIRFAX COUNTY EVANGELICAL PREACHER.

  “So you aren’t worried by the Arabians’ threat to invade?” the interviewer said.

  “Worried?” said the preacher. “No sir, why would I be worried?”

  “You’re very close to Washington, here. And you know the president has promised a massacre if enemy troops try to enter the capital.”

  “Well sir, God bless the president, but it’s not man’s promises I care about . . . Tell me, have you accepted Jesus into your heart?”

  “I attend church regularly, yes.”

  “That’s not what I asked. If you’ve accepted Jesus as your personal savior, as I have, then your place in heaven is assured and there’s nothing you need fear. But if you haven’t, there’s no place on this earth that’s safe . . .”

  “You talked earlier about the Great Tribulation,” the reporter said. “Do you believe the Arabian invasion could be the start of that?”

  “It’s too soon to say. We have heard reports that the head of the Israeli Knesset and the grand rabbi of Berlin are meeting in secret with the leaders of the UAS and Persia. There are also rumors that we may soon see a huge influx of Jews into Palestine. If that happens, it would definitely be a sign of the coming Tribulation.”

  “And what would your reaction be?”

  “I’d say, ‘Bring it on!’ ” The preacher smiled. “I’d say bring the Arabs on, too—but they’d better be ready for a surprise when they get here.”

  “You think God will . . . smite them?”

  “No sir, I think they’ll arrive to find this land empty. Emptier, anyway . . . Come the rapture, I know I won’t be home . . .”

  Amal, done looking at art, now stood at Mustafa’s elbow watching the video. She said of the preacher: “Do you suppose he’s with God now?”

  “He might be, if he stayed in Fairfax. But I doubt he was transported bodily to heaven the way he was expecting.”

  Though the Coalition assault on Washington had not been without casualties, the massacre promised by the American president had failed to materialize. A year later, however, after insurgents in a village called Langley had murdered a group of civilian contractors, the UAS Marine Corps had gone into Fairfax County to restore order. The resulting engagement had been one of the deadliest of the occupation, with Marines ultimately using white phosphorous shells and napalm bombs to drive the insurgents from the dense urban zones in which they’d entrenched themselves.

  Mustafa studied the face of the preacher, frozen now in the final frame of the video clip. Were you still there when the sky started raining fire? he wondered. What went through your mind? Did you think God had abandoned you? That you’d been left behind in your rapture? Or did you immediately start looking for a new prophecy, one that would make sense of the loss you didn’t believe you could ever suffer?

  Powdered sugar like a swirl of fine ash trickled down in front of the computer screen. “Mustafa,” Samir said, through a mouthful of pastry. He indicated a secretary who’d just entered the lounge. “I think Waj is ready for us.”

  “A lovely name for a lovely woman,” said Wajid Jamil. “Is she going to be number three, Mustafa?”

  “Excuse me?” Amal said.

  “I’m kidding, of course.” Waj smiled to indicate no offense was intended. “I’m sure you’re already married . . . And a mother, perhaps?”

  This was another of Wajid’s post-11/9 obsessions, the population race between Islam and Christendom. Muslims on average had larger families, but because there were so many more Christians to start with, it would be many decades yet before they achieved parity. And that was assuming nothing changed: Women like Amal, who put career before family, were a reminder that birth rates aren’t fixed.

  Mustafa had his own reasons for not wanting to get started on this topic. “With respect, Wajid,” he said, “we didn’t come here to talk about marriage. If you want to have an in-depth discussion of the subject, you should take it up with Amal’s mother, the senator.”

  “The senator?” Waj’s smile underwent a subtle phase-shift as he put it together. “You’re Anmar al Maysani’s daughter?”

  “She is. And you, Waj, aren’t you working with the senator on some sort of legislation?”

  “Yes. I’ve been lobbying her on Uncle—on Governor Gaddafi’s behalf, about the new telecommunications bill . . .”

  “Good luck with that,” Amal said.

  “Well,” said Waj, moving right along. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?” He retreated behind his desk, a massive executive cockpit equipped with multiple computer screens. “Please, all of you, sit down. Tell me what the House of Wisdom can do for Homeland Security . . .”

  They sat. Mustafa described his interrogation of Costello and the search of Costello’s apartment, then gave an edited version of the meeting in Farouk’s office. He omitted all mention of Idris and spoke of the president only indirectly, saying that they had been asked “by Riyadh” to look further into the mirage legend. “We thought if anyone would know about a new Christian myth making the rounds, it would be you, Waj,” he concluded.

  “ ‘The mirage,’ hmm . . .” Waj tapped on his desktop keyboard, consulted his screens. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything in my databases yet . . . You say this is related to rapture theology?”

  “It’s a theory.”

  “Yes, well, that would make sense. These rapturists, they’re like any Christian End Times cult, always expecting the apocalypse next week, and then when next week comes and the world’s still here, they fall all over themselves trying to explain why. With so much theological innovation it’s hard to keep up, even with computers . . . Tell me more about these objects you found. Can I see some of them?”

  Mustafa opened his attaché and passed the map of the mirage Middle East to Wajid.

  Waj spotted it immediately: “Israel is in Palestine?”

  Mustafa shrugged. “God willing, anything is possible.”

  “Heh, and Kirkuk is part of Iraq. The guys who manage the Kurdish edition of the Library would love that.” Waj laughed. “This is actually kind of cool, in a completely demented way. Is there more?”

  Mustafa showed him the newspaper they’d found in Costello’s apartment. “The New York Times,” Wajid read, his English as good as Mustafa’s. “ ‘All the news that’s fit to print . . .’ ”

  “It’s a ghost paper,” Mustafa said. “According to our research, there was a New York Times, but it was shut down by the American government in 1971 for revealing state secrets. The publishers were executed for treason.”

  “Well, it looks real enough. Professionally printed.”

  “That photo is obviously a fake, though,” Samir put in. “What do you think, Waj? Photoshop?”

  “Could be.” He pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the front page, where a rectangle of newsprint had been neatly excised. “What happened here? Somebody clip out a recipe?”

  “We’re not sure how that happened,” Mustafa said. He’d first noticed the cutout about an hour before he received the call informing him Gabriel Costello was dead. “There are some pages missing from the inside, as well.”

  “Would it be all right if I made a copy of this?” Waj asked. “I’d like to read it through, maybe show it to a couple of my research guys.”

  “As long as you keep it in-house.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t post it on the Library . . . Hmm, that’s interesting.”

  “What?”

  “According to this, these September 11 attacks took place on a Tuesday.”

  “Sure, just like 11/9,” Mustafa said.

  “Yes,” said Waj, “that’s the problem . . .” He pulled up a calendar on one of his computer screens. “Yeah, see: September 11, 2001, was a Saturday, not a Tuesday.”

  Samir snorted. “What a surprise, even the date is fictional.”

  Wajid stared at the calendar. “You think about it, it’s too bad September 11 wasn’t a Tuesday . . .”

  �
�Why?” said Mustafa.

  “Because then November 9 would have been a Friday.”

  Friday: first day of the weekend. Mustafa heard the Fairfax preacher: Come the rapture, I know I won’t be home . . . “The towers would have been empty.”

  “Emptier, anyway,” Waj said. “Janitors, security people, probably some office workers clocking overtime. But the restaurant would have been closed, and the evacuation would have gone a lot faster . . .”

  Samir, bemused, said: “What are you talking about?”

  “In Christian countries, the weekend starts on Saturday,” Mustafa explained. “Or Sunday.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Samir said. “And I know crusaders can be idiots. But do you really think they wouldn’t have checked to make sure the towers would be open for business that day?”

  “What if they hadn’t, though?” Mustafa said. Just imagine it: the planes, themselves emptier because of the holy day, crashing into mostly vacant offices, silent halls and stairwells. Of course it still would have been a great tragedy, and the shock of the towers’ destruction would not have been lessened in the slightest. But once the smoke cleared and word began to spread of the even greater tragedy so miraculously averted, might history not have proceeded down a different path? Maybe leveler heads would have prevailed. Maybe the pointless war with America could have been called off. The thought of this alternate reality, in which not only the thousands of lost soldiers but even that silly Fairfax preacher got to live out their natural lives, filled Mustafa with a sudden, irrational joy.

  Then he thought, Fadwa, and his joy faded.

  “Dude,” Wajid said, reading some or all of this in his expression. “Forget about it. Samir’s right. They would have checked.”

  “I know,” Mustafa said.

  “And even if they hadn’t . . . The guy who sold them the plane tickets would have said something.”

  Waj stepped out of his office to arrange the copying of the newspaper and Samir tagged along with him. Mustafa and Amal remained seated, both looking quietly out the window.