The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

Refresh. The storm spread through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, surged into Russia and Eastern Europe, and crossed the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to engulf Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, and Libya as far west as Benghazi.

  “We are next,” said Gaddafi.

  “Uh-huh,” said Wajid, shooting his tech guy another look. Then the computer monitors flickered as a heavy gust of wind struck the building and millions of tiny grains began pelting the windows.

  Refresh . . .

  In Texas it was early morning. In an undistinguished house in the Austin suburbs, a man stood in his kitchen, talking to his dog. Though no one would guess it from his current surroundings, the man was a son of privilege, his father one of the most powerful and respected elders in the Evangelical Republic; in his youth it had naturally been assumed that he too would achieve great things. But he had squandered the advantages of his birth, used up all his second chances, and so come to nothing. Now that his own children were grown, the little black terrier at his feet represented the pinnacle of his responsibilities.

  “I know you want the canned food,” he said to it. “But you don’t get to decide what you eat. I’m the decider.” He flashed a goofy grin, impressed by his own wit, which the terrier couldn’t or wouldn’t appreciate. But the dog did seem to understand that it wasn’t going to get its wish, and bent its head reluctantly to the bowl of dry kibble. “Good boy,” the man said, and went to see about his own breakfast.

  The man had slept poorly, plagued as usual by anxiety dreams in which he searched endlessly for something he had promised to find—though whether the something was a person or an object he could never quite remember. The sense of frustration continued to haunt him even now that he was awake. As he stood by the open refrigerator looking blankly within, he wondered, Where are they? and then, Where is what?

  He was still staring into the fridge when he heard the patter of what he assumed was rain against the side of the house. The dog, facing the sliding glass patio doors and able to see what was really going on outside, let out a terrified bark and ran to hide in the pantry.

  “You whine all you want,” the man said. “You’re still not getting the canned food.” As the storm intensified he shut the refrigerator door and went into the hall and called upstairs to his wife: “Hey Laur? You awake? You better go shut the windows in the spare room!”

  Refresh . . .

  Ninety miles away in Crawford, the man David Koresh called the Quail Hunter was in the CIA’s interrogation wing, extracting a confession from a recalcitrant Quaker. The basement torture room was windowless and soundproof, but even so he sensed the arrival of the storm as a sudden tremor in his heart.

  “Sir?” asked a centurion who was holding a bucket of water above the prisoner’s head. “Should I go again?”

  The Quail Hunter started to gesture Yes, yes, and something trickled onto the back of his hand. He looked up. A hole had appeared in the ceiling and sand was streaming down through it like the grains in an hourglass. He felt his heart give another kick.

  “Sir?” the centurion said. “Sir?”

  Refresh . . .

  In Virginia, David Koresh sat at his desk with his Bible open to the Book of Revelation. He thought he understood what was happening and ought to have welcomed it, but now that he was getting what he’d prayed for he found himself in doubt, the rasp of the sand on the window behind him sounding more and more like the crackle of a fire.

  Across the Potomac, Colonel Yunus stood in the dinosaur gallery of the Smithsonian, marveling at the sand sifting down through the growing cracks in the skylight. He felt no fear, even as the roof began to give way; in the dust cloud that came boiling towards him, he saw the outline of a house, and faces of a family that he knew. He said: “God willing.”

  Refresh . . .

  All around the globe—in Berlin and the occupied territories; in London and Tehran, Kabul and Denver, Chicago and Jakarta, Islamabad and Corpus Christi, Los Angeles and Mumbai; in Alexandria and Alexandria—the storm scoured the landscape, roaring through the homes and hiding places of the powerful and the meek like some mighty voice: Refresh. Refresh. This is the day the world changes . . .

  And in Baghdad, a tall man stalking the halls of a mansion found himself suddenly outside, exposed to the storm’s full fury. The wind tore the rifle from his hands and the pelting sand drove him to his knees. Blind, he clawed his way forward, seeking shelter, a cave to crawl into. There was nothing. He quickly became exhausted. Sinking down, he felt sand piling up around him and prepared to be buried alive.

  The storm abruptly ceased. The tall man raised his head and saw only darkness. He stood up in the black stillness, listening to his own labored breathing, and felt rather than heard the heavy footsteps coming up behind him. The back of his neck prickled. Hot breath whispered in his ear as someone taller even than he was leaned in over his shoulder.

  “Who goes there?” Osama bin Laden said, and then he turned around.

  Epilogue

  The City of the Future

  When Mustafa comes back to himself he’s on top of a big pile of sand, one dune among many, a sea of sand extending to the horizon. He doesn’t know which desert this is. The Sahara is the obvious guess, but it could just as well be the Rub al Khali, or the Nafud, or something completely new.

  He is kneeling as if to pray, and indeed it is about that time: When he looks up, the sun is directly overhead. But instead of prostrating himself, he stands, brushing sand from the robe he has somehow come to be wearing. The hem of the robe hikes up and he sees that his feet are clad in leather sandals, a good pair, nicely broken in.

  Straightening, he continues to take inventory. Things he has: A robe. Comfortable shoes. The first hint of a beard. Things he does not have: Pockets. A wallet. A watch. A map. Food. Water. That last could be a problem, though he’s not thirsty yet. Supposing that he will be soon enough, he turns around, to see whether perhaps there’s an oasis behind him. There isn’t; just more dunes. He has all the sand he could wish for.

  Continuing to turn, he spots something else, sticking up out of the dune a few meters away from him: a boot. He goes over and pulls it up, pours out the sand, and turns it over in his hands. It’s a tall boot, tan leather and nylon with a thick rubber sole. There are no markings on it, inside or out, but it looks military.

  Well, Mustafa thinks, now I have a boot. But it’s the wrong size for him—he can see this, even before he measures it against the bottom of his sandals—and its mate is nowhere to be found, so after a few moments he tosses it, and watches it roll and bounce down the dune face.

  As the boot comes to rest, he detects more motion in his peripheral vision: Amal and Samir, climbing up opposite sides of the dune. Amal is wearing a blue abaya that shimmers brightly in the sunlight. Samir is dressed in city clothes: socks and loafers, khakis, a cotton shirt that is already stained with sweat.

  Mustafa nods hello to them and they nod back, everybody affecting a casual attitude, as if meeting in the middle of nowhere like this were a natural occurrence. As maybe, in this world, it is. They stand side by side at the top of the dune and look out over the high and rolling sands stretching far away.

  Samir is the first to speak. “Well,” he says, “here we all are in the desert.” Looking down at his empty hands: “With nothing.”

  “We are alive at least,” Amal offers.

  “That is one theory,” says Mustafa. But he says it good-naturedly, feeling not so much optimistic as philosophical: If this is the same world he woke up in yesterday, then he hasn’t lost anything he hadn’t already lost. If it is a new world, it is as apt to contain good surprises as bad ones. He supposes he should consider the possibility that they are in hell, but the fact that he can still smile, however faintly, makes that seem unlikely. And in any case, whining will change nothing. “I guess we should start walking.”

  “OK,” Samir says. “Which way?”

  Three Muslims adrift in the desert could do worse
than follow the Qibla direction. Of course Mustafa has no idea which direction that is, but he remembers the direction he was kneeling in, so they strike out that way. At first they try to travel in a straight line, but after trekking up and down a few dune faces in the noonday sun, they decide to zigzag instead, following the troughs between dunes.

  They’ve only gone two or three kilometers when they come upon the jeep. It is buried nose-down in the sand, its front hood and most of its windshield covered, its tailgate and right rear wheel sticking up at an angle. Like Mustafa’s boot, it is unmarked but looks military. Its green paint job has been scoured by the sand.

  Under a green canvas tarp in the tail bed they find several plastic jugs full of water. Mustafa cracks one open and drinks. The water is very warm but tastes fine. He passes the jug around.

  After they’ve all drunk their fill, they investigate the front of the jeep. Amal, the smallest of them, crawls in through the open passenger window. She finds the ignition and tries it, but there’s not even the click of a solenoid in response. She has better luck with the glove box: Inside is a small pistol, .25-caliber with a nine-round clip. The clip is fully loaded and the barrel is clean; the slide moves easily. Mustafa is mildly troubled by this discovery but Amal takes it as a good omen. “It never hurts to be prepared,” she says, slipping the gun into her abaya.

  Samir takes another look in the tail bed and finds a leather pouch with tobacco and some rolling papers. “Are there matches, too?” Amal inquires, and Samir produces a lighter from his back pocket.

  Mustafa would love a smoke, but there’s something else he needs to take care of first. He grabs one of the water jugs and goes to find a private spot around the nearest dune. He washes his face, his hands, and his feet. He still doesn’t know the Qibla direction, but there’s a workaround for that: He says the required prayers, not once, but four times, each time turning himself by ninety degrees.

  He’s finishing up the last set when a light breeze comes over the dune, carrying the sound of Amal’s voice saying her own prayers. Careful not to disturb her, Mustafa makes his way back to the jeep.

  Samir has torn a long strip from the tarp and fashioned a turban for himself. It looks comical but will protect his scalp. Mustafa rolls a cigarette and they pass it back and forth until Amal returns.

  They should probably use what’s left of the tarp to make some shade and sit out the hottest part of the day, but they are all impatient now to get somewhere, to find out where somewhere is, and so without even discussing it they each take a water jug and start walking again.

  They walk for several hours, zigzagging between the dunes, using the position of the sun to maintain a more or less steady course. In the middle of the afternoon they find another military vehicle, a canvas-top troop truck, lying on its side. Samir crawls in the back, looking for more goodies. This time there’s no water or tobacco, but when he digs in the sand that’s drifted up inside, he finds a big tin can filled with something heavy.

  Mustafa studies the length of the shadow cast by the truck, does a mental calculation, and goes off to pray again. When he gets back, Samir and Amal have found a can opener. “Figs,” Amal says. They sit in the back of the truck and eat fruit, lick syrup from their fingers. Then they get sleepy.

  Mustafa naps for about an hour. When he wakes up, Samir is snoring like a buzz saw and Amal is gone. He steps outside and finds her standing up on the truck cab, balanced precariously on the passenger door. She is shading her eyes. “I see a city,” she says. Mustafa looks where she is looking but his view is blocked by a dune, so he climbs up beside her.

  Now he can see it: out on the horizon, wavering and indistinct, its distance impossible to guess. “I see towers,” Amal says. “Do you see towers?”

  “I see something,” says Mustafa.

  They wake up Samir. He sees it too. “I hope it’s real,” he says. “I hope the people who live there speak Arabic.”

  “If they speak English,” says Mustafa, “I’ll translate.”

  “And if they speak Farsi,” says Amal, “I’ll tell you what not to say.”

  They set out. The dunes no longer seem so steep, so they begin to travel in a straight line again, and as they climb up and down, they play a game to pass the time. When they are on top of the dunes and the city is visible, they describe what they think they can see. When they are down in the troughs and the city is hidden, they talk about what they would like to see, what they hope they will find when they get there.

  “I hope prohibition is over,” Samir says. “I’d like to get a cold beer.”

  “I hope there are more women in Congress,” Amal says. “A woman president would be nice.”

  “I hope there is a Congress,” says Mustafa. “A republic—a real republic—of some kind.”

  Hope. They are careful to use that word, and not wish. And they are careful not to speak of friends or family. But in the silences, as they labor up or downhill, that is what they think about: who will be waiting for them.

  Amal thinks of her father. She pictures him on the steps of the city hall, in uniform, shoulder to shoulder with all the others who gave their lives for justice: These are the ones. She hopes to stand beside him again, but if that’s too much to ask, she is prepared to stand for him, and carry on his legacy.

  Samir thinks of his sons. In his heart he is certain that they are out there somewhere. What he is less sure of is whether he will be permitted to see them. The majority of his thoughts are focused on this, and on how he will begin to search. But beyond Malik and Jibril, there is room in his hopes for one other—not so much a specific person, a specific man, as an idea of one. It is still not an idea he would dare to voice aloud, but he can at least conceive of it now, and wonder whether, on this side of the storm, some things might be possible that were not before.

  Mustafa thinks, of course, of Fadwa. He doesn’t know if he will see her again. He doesn’t know, if he does, whether anything will be different. He would like a chance to tell her he is sorry, and he would certainly be willing to try again: To be kind. To be honest. To be a bit less of a fool. Trying doesn’t mean succeeding, though, and he is still the same man, with the same flaws.

  But he is willing to try. And to ask for help. And that more than anything is what he hopes for: that waiting in the city will be one whom he can ask for help with his struggle—the struggle of the future he must still face, and the struggle of the past he must learn to let go.

  They walk all the rest of that day, a day that seems to go on endlessly. But it does end, finally. As the sun sinks below the horizon, they crest one last dune, and there it is, sprawled on the plain below them: a white-walled city, with lights of evening just coming on.

  They stand on the dune looking down.

  “I don’t recognize it,” Amal says. “Do you?”

  “No,” Samir says.

  “No,” says Mustafa.

  But it’s not entirely foreign to them. Here and there, along the unfamiliar streets, they see shapes they do recognize: domes and steeples and towers. And even now, in a minaret near the outer wall, a muezzin begins his cry, words and a language they know.

  They stand on the dune and listen to the call. More lights come on. People move in the streets. “God willing,” says Mustafa. And then he and Samir and Amal go down, in hope, to the city.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due, as always, to my one and only wife, Lisa Gold, who served as my first reader, sounding board, research assistant, and cheerleader. My agent, Melanie Jackson, offered encouragement at a time when I still wasn’t sure the novel would work. My publisher, Jonathan Burnham, and my editor, Rakesh Satyal, were also early supporters, and Rakesh helped me across the finish line with a minimum of pain and suffering. Tim Duggan shepherded me through publication. Others who gave assistance or encouragement include Alison Callahan, Nancy Gold, Rita and Harold Gold, Ernest Lehenbauer, Matthew Snyder, Neal Stephenson, Lydia Weaver, and Henry Wessells. Special thanks to the late
(and sorely missed) Reverend Jack Ruff, whose insights into human nature continue to serve me well.

  In constructing the mirage world, I drew upon many sources, including works by Peter Bergen, Mark Bowden, Anne Garrels, Shahla Haeri, William R. Polk, Thomas E. Ricks, Zainab Salbi, David Thibodeau, Evan Wright, Lawrence Wright, and Amira El-Zein. Quotations from the Quran are taken from Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s English-language translation. Bible quotations are taken from various translations, including the New International Version, the New Revised Standard, and the King James.

  Finally, I am indebted to Karen Glass and Caitlin Foito, who started me on my way by asking me to tell them a story. It’s taken four and a half years, and the end result is surely not what they had in mind, but I am grateful they made the wish.

  About the Author

  MATT RUFF was born in New York City in 1965. He is the author of the award-winning novels Bad Monkeys and Set This House in Order, as well as the cult classics Fool on the Hill and Sewer, Gas & Electric. He is the recipient of a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Ruff lives in Seattle with his wife, Lisa Gold.

  Visit Matt Ruff on the web at www.bymattruff.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by Matt Ruff

  Bad Monkeys

  Fool on the Hill

  Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls

  Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy

  Credits

  Jacket Design by Oliver Munday

  Copyright

  THE MIRAGE. Copyright © 2012 by Matt Ruff. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.