by Tal Bauer
Gunshots, in the distance. Answering fire from the ridgeline. Fighters on the ground. Military, warlord, jihadist. He couldn’t know. The sky was on fire, the mountain was falling, and his father was dying.
Again.
“Habibi.” ’Bu Adnan cupped his face. He couldn’t hide the pain, the way he curled over his chest. His ragged breaths. But he tried. For Dawood, he tried. “Take our family away from here. Keep them safe.”
“There’s nowhere safe in the world, Baba. That was it. Our home—” His throat clenched. His vision blurred. Not again, in shaa Allah, not again. “What do I do, Baba? What do I do?”
“Follow the Prophet, ibni.” ’Bu Adnan gritted his teeth. His hand clasped Dawood’s cheek, gripped his face, bruisingly tight. “You know in your heart what your path is. What it always has been. Allah laid out your life for you, habibi. You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.”
“No…” Dawood leaned over ’Bu Adnan, pressing his forehead to his father’s. His path had once been twisted and rotten, full of darkness and pain. His path was supposed to circle that mountain endlessly, live out his days in the light with ’Bu Adnan.
Why was Allah dragging him back to the darkness? To death, and anguish, and war? “Baba, I don’t want to.”
“Allah alone is charge of our days, habibi. His will for you is laid out. And His will for me is to die.” ’Bu Adnan shuddered. “Bismillah, Allah granted me that you shall be my last sight.”
“Baba!” Dawood grabbed ’Bu Adnan with both hands, cupped his face. Held him close. “Baba—”
His father held him, and he held his father in return, as ’Bu Adnan exhaled his last breath.
He shouldn’t cry. He knew he shouldn’t. Everyone’s time on the planet was determined by Allah, and to cry over a death was to subvert Allah’s will. But tears built and tumbled from his eyes, dropped onto his Baba’s still face.
It wasn’t fair, losing everyone he loved, everyone, in his entire life.
What path was this Allah had laid for him? What point was there to this pain, this anguish, time and again? What point was there to the darkness, the rage in his soul?
Screams rose from the scrub brushes he’d hidden his people in.
Sounds of running, men bursting through the trees onto the goat path they were following. Clad in black, with fighters’ vests and jihadist masks, every man carried a rifle.
Dawood laid ’Bu Adnan down and rose. Two strides placed him between his people and the fighters. His hands clenched.
“As-salaam-alaikum.” One of the fighters made his way to Dawood. His eyes darted over Dawood’s people. “Brother, where have you come from?”
“Wa alaikum as-salaam,” Dawood grunted. “We come from up the mountain. The bombs, they drove us down.”
“Those dogs are bombing everything! The entire range! They’re trying to destroy these mountains, yallah!” He looked beyond Dawood, to ’Bu Adnan’s still body, lying in the dirt. “Subhanallah, what happened?”
“My baba. He—” Dawood couldn’t speak.
“Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oon.” May Allah give him an easy and pleasant journey and shower blessings on his grave. The fighter held his hand over his heart. “He is a martyr, brother. Do not grieve. He is already in Paradise, with Allah.”
The mountain rumbled, and on the flinty peak above them, fire bloomed, a shower of earth exploding in a mushroom cloud.
“They are trying to take down the mountain!” The fighter reached for Dawood. “Come with us. We will protect you and your people.”
What could he do? The sky was falling, the world was burning, and his family was going to die if he didn’t move. He had no idea where to go, no plan, nothing but blind fear that guided them down the goat path.
Was his path, instead, to follow this man?
He pressed his hand over his heart. “Shukran, brother. But I will not leave my baba.”
The fighter handed his rifle to Dawood. “Do you know how to use this?”
Dawood nodded, once.
“I will carry your father. My men will lead us down. Care for your people.” He stooped and gathered ’Bu Adnan in his arms, cradling his body. ’Bu Adnan’s lifeless cheek fell against the fighter’s chest, against his vest and his ammo clips. “Yallah, we must hurry! Before more bombs fall!”
Dawood rounded up his people, took Behroze back into his arms. Behroze was a young teen, but still small. Easy for Dawood to carry on one hip with the jihadist’s rifle still in his hands.
Together, the band of fighters and villagers crept down the mountain.
Kandahar Province
Afghanistan
“Allahu Akbar.” Dawood held his hands by his ears. The brothers behind him repeated the call, the glory to God. “Allahu Akbar.”
He centered Allah in his heart, his intentions. Oh God, this is the path You have led me to. Through the twists and turns of my terrible life. You have led me to this place. You give everything form, and then guidance, oh Allah. It is only now, at the end, looking back, that I see the path for what it is.
He placed his arms over his stomach and looked down. “Praise and glory be to You, O Allah. Blessed be Your Name, exalted be Your Majesty and Glory. There is no God but You. In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. You alone do we worship and You alone do we call on for help.”
Remember, Dawood, ’Bu Adnan had said once. Every beat of your heart functions only by the permission of Allah.
Why does he keep me alive? Why keep me here?
Because he loves you, habibi.
“You who believe, be steadfast in your devotion to God. Do not let hatred of others lead you away from justice, but adhere to justice, for that is closer to awareness of God. Be mindful of God! God is well aware of all that you do. Allahu Akbar.” He led the brothers in the Quranic verse before he bowed. “Glorious is my Lord, the most great.”
When you called on your Lord for help, He responded to you.
Was his whole life a cry to Allah? Had he been too stubborn to see the signs? Had he been crying in the dark, raging in isolation, and had missed Allah’s reach for his soul? Days that built from shifting sands, unstable foundations, the hole in the center of his soul always leaking his anguish into the world, coloring everything in shades of pain, in loss?
Kris…
Dawood bowed his head.
Pakistan Northwestern Frontier
Bajaur Province
Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Three Years Before
The fighters led Dawood and his people down the mountain, into the tangled valleys of Bajaur, away from the bombs and the strikes, hidden deep in jihadist territories.
The first dawn, they buried ’Bu Adnan. Dawood led his people in prayer, and Ihsan, the man who’d saved them, brought his fighters to join in. He helped Dawood dig the grave and lower ’Bu Adnan on his right side, facing Mecca. Helped him cover the body in dirt and say the final prayers over the grave.
Later, convoys appeared, long lines of trucks and technicals, pickups with machine guns mounted in the back. Black flags flapped from the tailgates.
“Jihad?” Dawood asked Ihsan.
“It’s all we have left,” Ihsan said. They were standing around a fire, the first they’d had in days. Dawood couldn’t feel any warmth, though. Behroze curled at his feet, sleeping in a borrowed blanket. He never left Dawood’s side.
“Time stops for the West whenever they wish it. When they are angry, when they are hurt. But a thousand Muslims die in Afghanistan? A thousand more in Iraq, in Sudan? A thousand, again, in Chechnya? Time never stops us for us, brother. No one cares about our lives. Only we care.”
He stared at the fire, memories playing in the flickering flames. His father’s execution in Libya by Qaddafi had been the most evil thing in his entire world at ten years old. He’d thought the entire universe would react, that everyone would see the evil of Libya’s Great Guide, their dictator, that there woul
d be salvation and justice from the world. But the world kept turning, even though the ground beneath his feet had stuttered to a halt. Everyone else kept moving on, following the rise and fall of the sun, kept moving forward in time. In Egypt, there wasn’t even a headline about the execution. In America, most everyone said “Libya” like it was a dirty word, a nasty country, and he was just lumped in with everything and everyone that made Libya such a terrible place.
No one came to rescue him, or his family. No one cared about his father’s murder. Ten years old, and he’d known a truth then, something he refused to face as a boy.
But as a man, the truth was inescapable. The twisted, horrible path of his life, revealing the same truth to him, a dozen different mirrored ways. Reflections of agony, reflections of evil.
Where did it all end? How? Had the paths of history become so hopelessly entangled that there was no end? Just a ceaseless cycle of violence and death, killer and murdered always trading places? Where was reason? Where was justice?
What was his role in this life?
“Subhanallah,” Dawood muttered. What would his baba say? ’Bu Adnan, and his father before him? What would either man have said of Dawood sitting side by side with Ihsan?
“In shaa Allah, brother, we must restore the Caliphate. Every battle we fight, we’re trying to push the invaders away. Little by little, we must reclaim what was once ours.”
“The world is too big now. The Caliphate, a land of our own, is now just a dream. We can never go back to the past, to the Caliphates of old.”
“Don’t you want a home of our own? Muslim lands? Where we can be free? You know, the children of Saqqaf are trying. In the Sham. They’ve taken half of Iraq, half of Syria.”
“Saqqaf?” Dawood snorted. “Saqqaf was a thug. He was no Muslim. His followers were not Muslims. Nothing built in his name is any glory to Allah. He, and everything he brought into the world, go against Allah.”
Ihsan sighed. “The children of Saqqaf call themselves the Islamic State. They have declared that they are the Caliphate renewed.” His eyes were dark, burning with something that looked like wariness as he judged Dawood. “Al-Qaeda broke with them recently. For being un-Islamic.” Ihsan sighed. “I lose fighters to the Islamic State every month. They yearn for that Caliphate. They want to be part of a world where we are not subjugated any more. Where Islam lives and breathes, and our lives are one with Allah.”
“They will not find that with Saqqaf’s children. That is not Islam. That is a death cult. They have turned Muslim against Muslim, slaughtering anyone they wish. Nothing they do reflects the Prophet’s teachings, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam. Allah’s wrath will fall upon them, swiftly.”
“Then where, brother? The Arab Spring was supposed to liberate our people.” Ihsan shook his head. “Democracy was supposed to be the salvation. Finally, dictators would fall. The people would speak! Islam would rise! But, after the people spoke, the military took control, seized the government in a coup after elections brought our brothers to power. Eight hundred brothers and sisters were massacred in Egypt. The Syrians are trying to rise up, seize their freedom from the brutal hands of their leader, but the world ignores their cries for help. For justice. The world just looks the other way when it’s Arabs and Muslims who are dying. What must we do, in this world, for our freedom? For our Muslim lives to mean something, to matter, to this world?”
“A Muslim is a Muslim no matter where he is or what the world does. As long as he is close to Allah. The more difficult the world, the more a person’s closeness to Allah is tested.” Dawood swallowed. If he could boil his life down to one statement, that would be it. His words tasted empty, though. There was a war being waged for the soul of Islam, battles that tried to shape their existential reality. Where did he fall on those battle lines?
Ihsan’s eyes pinched as he stared at the fire. “Who are you, Dawood? You do not speak like an Afghan, or like a Pakistani. Or like a man who has lived his entire life on top of a mountain. You are your people’s imam. But how? What brought you there?”
“You do not speak like an Afghan or a Pakistani, either.”
Ihsan laughed. “I’m Saudi. I came to join the mujahedeen after the coup in Egypt. We must defeat these dictators. And clear our lands of the infidels. Until we have something of our own again.”
Dawood took his time answering. “I was born in Libya. I have traveled the world, to all the corners. My being has been shaped by the West. But I was born Arab and Muslim. And I have been pulled back to who I am by Allah for a reason.” He met Ihsan’s gaze. “I’m still figuring out that reason.”
Ihsan smiled. “In shaa Allah, perhaps we are meant to meet. Have this conversation. Become friends.” He clapped Dawood on the back, laughing.
Overhead, the moon rose from behind the shattered mountains, bloodied and haze-red from the fires, the smoke, the blood in the air and the ground. Dawood’s eyes lifted.
Kris. My bones are exhausted. My soul. I can’t understand this anymore. This life. This path. Not a moment passes where I do not wish to hear your voice again. The answers I need are in your soul. But you’re gone. What do I do?
He prayed to Allah, asking for blessings for Kris, for Kris’s soul to be at peace. Ihsan caught his whispered dua, watched his moving lips.
“Brother, you are not alone.” Ihsan wrapped one arm around him. “Come. Join us.”
“I’m not a fighter. Not anymore.”
“There are many ways to perform jihad, brother. Jihad of the mind. Of the tongue. Of the heart. I don’t need to tell you this. You are the imam of the mountain. Come, we need an imam. Ours was killed in the bombing. Is this meeting not meant to be?”
“Joining you would be a jihad unto itself for me,” Dawood snorted.
“All Muslims must fight to right injustice,” Ihsan said, finger wagging like he was teaching a lesson. “You know this. It’s in the Quran. It’s required by God.”
“Where will my people go?”
“Wherever they wish. We have a camp for some of the families hidden in the hills. It has never been bombed. We stay far, far from it. We can have a guide transport your people there. They will be safe and will be given new lives.”
“My people must be safe. They must be cared for.”
“Say no more, brother. They will be. In shaa Allah.”
Dawood stared up at the moon again. You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you, ’Bu Adnan had said. But his life had led him down a path that was nothing but death, years and years of terrible death. Was that truly where he was meant to go, again?
Above, the blood moon stared down at him, eternally, perfectly silent.
Kandahar Province
Afghanistan
Cold wind swept from the ridgeline, down from the haunted mountain passes of Afghanistan. The wind came from Khost, and beyond, from Tora Bora. Passed through Kabul, picking up more souls, more lost dead. Dawood felt the wind lift his scarf, circle around his neck. He heard their whispers, the lamentations, across his skin.
He stood and raised his hands. “Allah hears those who praise Him.” Behind Dawood, the brothers rustled, rising and reciting their prayers under their voice. Over his shoulder, he saw Ihsan, eyes tightly closed, fast whispers falling from his lips. Ihsan’s faith was hard, desperate, a cry in the dark for what he craved.
“Allahu Akbar.” Slowly, Dawood dropped to his knees and prostrated. His forehead touched the ground, the dust of ghosts.
How many ghosts had sought Allah? How many had been just as desperate as Ihsan, reaching out with both hands for hope? How many had died for the wrong reasons, or for choices others had made for their lives? How many ghosts were like his father, who had just wanted to live, to love Allah?
How many were the ghosts of the wicked? He felt the chill on the back of his neck slice his skin, the cold turning razor sharp.
He’d tried, for three years, to convince Ihsan that Allah was not a brother to be hugged, a power to be grabbed on to
and seized, or a missile that could be shot at the heart of his enemies. Allah was subtle and hidden, found in the whispers of the world, but only if one could listen. Finding Allah was like spotting a firefly in the corner of your eye. Like seeing the sun break the horizon, and that first beam of light stretch into the night sky and touch a star. Gone so fast, but for the moment, perfect.
You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.
Paths were made of choices, choices that men made. Allah had given him, and all men, the freedom to choose their own steps along the path He laid out. Each step drew a man closer or further from God, kept him on his path toward Allah or led him off it. Allah gave each man a key to their life, and it was up to each man to turn that key.
The choice to seek Allah, or the choice to stray from Him.
The choice to seek answers, or the choice to ignore.
The choice to build, or the choice to destroy a life, a soul.
Life was a mystery that stretched to infinity, and only at the end could a man look back and see the pattern of his life.
Dawood breathed in the dust of ghosts as he whispered his prayers. Even on his knees, even pressed to the dirt, Allah heard his whispers.
He was on Allah’s path.
Afghanistan-Pakistan Border
Three Years Before
He sent the families to Ihsan’s safe camp. They kissed his cheeks, cried, squeezed his hands. Thanked Allah for him, for the years he’d been with their qala. He prayed with everyone, holding the men’s hands, brushing away tears from the faces of the children.
“When you miss me,” he told the children, “look to the moon. I am always looking at the moon, and we will be looking together. If you wave, I will wave back. The moon will be our messenger.”
They nodded and hung around his neck, refusing to let go of their hug.
Behroze wouldn’t leave.
He’d become Dawood’s shadow since the mountain, since his family was murdered. When Dawood turned around, there was Behroze. Every morning, Dawood woke with Behroze curled into his hold, lying in the dirt as close as he could get.
