Osama the Gun

by Norman Spinrad

  “Generous offer?” muttered Kalil.

  “Like a wolf offering to guard the sheep, no doubt,” I told him, for while I might not be able to predict the detail of what was coming, I knew that whatever it would be, it would be the end game that all the Great Satan had done had been leading up to, and it would surely be aimed at what they had admitted they were after all along.

  “The United States calls upon the Caliphate to schedule democratic elections for a constitutional assembly and calls upon the people of the Caliphate to await them peacefully once this is announced. Once such a democratic government is established, the United States will resume importing oil from the Caliphate at full market price as it is already doing from the former provinces of the Caliphate which are already establishing democratic governments under our protection. In the meantime…”

  The American President paused, and had he truly been a wolf, no doubt to enjoy the anticipatory licking of his chops.

  “Here it comes…” I muttered.

  “In the meantime the United States will secure all oil fields, pipelines, pumping facilities and loading ports in the Caliphate so that oil exports may begin immediately and proceed without interruption—”

  “Welcome to New Biafra!” I snarled.

  “—payment for which will be placed in an escrow account to be released in full to a democratic government once it is established. God Bless America, and may Allah grant you freedom and peace.”

  * * * *

  It took the Caliph only hours to reply to this wolf’s ultimatum in threadbare sheep’s clothing, via loudspeakers in the streets and special editions of the newspapers, with a naked ultimatum of his own.

  If a single American soldier or one of its satanic robots violated its present borders, come what may, the Caliphate would immediately use its full nuclear forces against the American fleet, and against “any American target within reach.” This was not broadcast on Free Caliphate Television, but the text was read in full by a newsreader, including the last words: “We are ready to die for our country, for Islam, and Allah. Are millions of your people willing to die for our oil?”

  The Americans replied with a short communiqué of their own an hour later read by the same newsreader. “Any attempt to interfere with the peaceful securing of oil facilities will be regarded as an act of war against the United States and dealt with accordingly. We are willing to negotiate modalities with the government of the Caliphate so that this may be accomplished without loss of life.”

  The next day the Caliphate Council announced that it was willing to resume oil exports to the United States provided that they were paid for at full market price and the funds paid immediately to it rather than into an escrow account and that the United States recognize it as the legitimate government of the Caliphate.

  The Americans quickly responded by inviting the Caliphate to send a delegation to Geneva to negotiate a settlement and pledged to do nothing on the ground while the negotiations were still going on.

  However the Caliphate government might have responded was not announced on the American television broadcasts nor even by its own statement in the local newspapers. But it must have been something that satisfied the Americans, for Free Caliphate Television ceased reporting riots and demonstrations in the Caliphate and filled the air time with bland world news, features on scientific developments and show business personalities, sports results, and even local weather reports.

  “Sometimes no news really is good news,” I told Kalil on the second day of this transformation of the American broadcasts, when I came back to the hotel from the streets of the city, though I did not really believe it.

  As if in obedience to the American president, the crowd on Masjed Al-Haram Street had dissipated, the Caliphate troops were more or less standing around doing nothing, or even drinking coffee in a few of the cafes which had reopened. The souks had more or less returned to normal business too, and although there was still a crowd around the Al-Haram Mosque, it was much smaller, more orderly, and prayerful.

  Yet there was still a cloud of gloom and tension over Mecca. Those who had fled had not returned in any great numbers, the souks and streets were half-empty, the general body language was hunch-shouldered, and the city was eerily quiet, even considering the reduced traffic on the streets and sidewalk. While the fear of imminent destruction seemed to have evaporated along with the angry energy of the demonstrations, there was no sense of relief, rather the vague awareness that what was being negotiated in secret was the terms of surrender, that nothing could be done to prevent it, and a numbed resignation to waiting for the revelation of the grim details.

  Wandering listlessly about the city I became tormented by a vision of sorts, a vision of the future all-too-easily induced by the present, a vision of Mecca in the process of fading away into a hollow shell of mosques and buildings haunted by a skeleton population of defeated people, the ghost town it was fated to become.

  May Allah forgive me, I was coming to hate the place, for a mere place it seemed to have already become, and therefore a desecration of what it had been since the time of Mohammed, as if Allah Himself had joined the stream of refugees abandoning it.

  I had no heart to speak of this to Kalil, who had not ventured out of the hotel in days and still seemed to be in a state of disbelieving shock; instead I put the best face I could on it and persuaded him to accompany me back outside to walk the streets himself.

  It did not improve his mood. We wandered about for no more than half an hour before he told me that he had seen enough. “More than enough, Osama. If I made this umrah to awaken myself to a vision, I have seen it.”

  “And what have you seen?”

  “Something like the hill of the Acropolis in Athens, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Stones and bones and relics, nothing more, monuments to the dim memory of its own lost soul.”

  “That has been slain. That has died.”

  Kalil shook his head vehemently. “No, Osama,” he insisted as something of his old Sufi spirit came back into his eyes. “Mecca has been the abode of the center of the soul of Islam, the footprint of Allah upon the Earth, and that may move on, but it cannot die, for it needs no permanent home save as the Madhi, awake or asleep, in the souls of all men.”

  He shrugged, he managed a wry little smile. “After all, the first Muslims were desert nomads, were they not?” he said. “And the Bedouins find their purity in their desert wanderings under Allah’s open sky, not in the dwellings and mosques and monuments of the town. Perhaps in the end as in the beginning, Muslims will become nomads once more. People not of the Ka’aba or of Mecca, but of our Book alone, like the Jews, for where the Koran goes with us, there is the soul that departs from this place.”

  And there we stood in the twilight gloom of Masjed Al-Haram Street halfway back to the hotel, with the minarets of the Al-Haram Mosque visible above the modern buildings, and like them, after all, built by the mortal hand of man. And though my own gloom had not been lifted, I saw that the Sufi’s had.

  “The navel of the world,” he said, nodding towards the minarets of the Mosque, towards the Ka’aba. “But it is the heart that animates the soul of a man or of the world, is it not? The navel is but the scar left behind when the birthcord is cut. Inshallah, in times to come, may what happens here be such a cutting of the cord. Seen not as a death, but a birth. A purification. For that meteor embedded in black stone was worshipped first by pagans in a city of idolaters. And the Koran rightly forbids such worship. And to hold the stones of a city or the city itself as something holy, is that not idol worship of a kind? Mohammed threw the idols down, as did Moses before him, and if it is Satan who throws them down here, may he not thereby be unknowingly serving the purpose of Allah, may the Prince of Liars not be telling his greatest lie to himself?”

  * * * *

  While I waited during the next few days for the ot
her shoe to fall, as it is said in the west, I found myself meditating on the Sufi’s words long and hard and praying more often and with more sincere passion than I had in a long time.

  That Islam would survive the fall of this Caliphate I had never doubted, for it had survived the fall of the first one. That Islam would survive even the total destruction of Mecca at the hands of the Americans if such came to pass, I had never disbelieved either. But that something good could come of it was a new thought and a strange one. Was Kalil right? Had we come to worship a city and a shrine as idolaters?

  At first these words had seemed blasphemy. But as I mulled them over and over and prayed for understanding I began to see that what they described might very well be the real blasphemy. Was Allah Himself not the only true object of worship? In this darkest of nights might not be hidden His sending of the Pure Light?

  Many Muslims regarded the Sufis as heretics. But Allah would not banish the truth of Kalil’s words from my soul. Might they in all innocence be the heretical idolaters and the Sufis the guardians of the pure Light of Islam? Was I becoming one of them myself?

  Three days later there was a short announcement on Free Caliphate Television that the results of the Geneva negotiations would be revealed after the sundown prayer the next day. It was repeated every hour, and if the intent was that the whole Caliphate would be watching and listening, it certainly succeeded.

  The sun rose on a city in prayer. All traffic stopped. People assumed the position where the sunrise caught them for the morning prayer. The amplified prayer resounded from hundreds of minarets. But when the prescribed sunrise prayer was completed, the praying went on. From the minarets came a full recitation of the Koran over and over from beginning to end in amplified unison that enveloped Mecca. Many people on the streets joined in the chorus. It went on through the afternoon prayer and through the prayer at that fateful sundown.

  And then the entire city fell silent and people rushed to the nearest television set.

  “…the President of the United States speaking from the Oval Office in the White House…”

  His hair was perfectly combed. His eyes were shining. He was smiling. His voice was firm and clear and seemed to be struggling to hold back a triumphant tone.

  “I am pleased to announce that after difficult but frank negotiations, the governments of the United States and the Caliphate have reached an agreement to be implemented immediately. The government of the Caliphate has agreed to resume shipments of oil to the United States in return for which the United States agrees to pay full market price directly to the government of the Caliphate. The government of the Caliphate agrees to organize free elections for a National Assembly to be held two months after the coming Hadj and the United States agrees to supply what technical assistance the government of the Caliphate may decide it requires…”

  “Solomon could not have done better than this!” Kalil exclaimed joyously.

  “This man is not Solomon,” I told him sourly. “Now he will cut the baby in half with his sword.”

  “…in light of the present lawlessness and chaos in the Caliphate which the present government admits it is incapable of fully quelling, it has asked the United States to assume full responsibility for the security of all oil fields and infrastructure within the Caliphate until the elections have been held and the new government is able to assume such responsibility itself, so that the flow of oil and payments will not be impeded by terrorists or mobs and the United States has agreed to grant this request and will begin the necessary deployments immediately…”

  From the city outside the hotel room window came a ghostly collective groan that rose into an ululating mournful wail.

  “What!” moaned Kalil.

  “What else did you expect?”

  “…the blessings of Allah be upon you, and God bless America.”

  The television screen abruptly went black.

  “This has been an address by the President of the United States,” intoned an eerily mellow and neutral voice. “We now return you to Caliphate Television’s regularly scheduled programming.”

  And abruptly, there on the screen was the face of the Caliph.

  His face was deathly pale, his lips trembling, his eyes watery and furtive, and he seemed to have aged ten years. Although he could have easily used a teleprompter of some sort, he held a document in his shaking hands and had put on a wire-rimmed pair of glasses to read it, as if as a sign that he was reading words not his own against his will.

  “In the name of the government and people of the Caliphate, I…I am pleased to express our boundless gratitude to Allah the Merciful, the Beneficent for…for…the successful conclusion of the negotiations with the United States in Geneva and the…the peaceful and cooperative outcome of the crisis…”

  “Successful conclusion?” muttered Kalil. “Cooperative outcome? He looks and sounds like a man with a gun at his back!”

  “Which he more or less is…the only question being whose…”

  “…This agreement might not be the…the…the full victory we would have hoped for…but…but neither is it defeat…your government, the government of Allah, has won full and fair payment for our oil that will further enrich us…and…and the pledge of the Americans that their machinery will only occupy the minor territory necessary to secure the oil facilities and they themselves will not…will not defile our holy places or population centers with their infidel presence…we…we…we will hardly notice that they are there. The government of the Caliphate has been preserved…and…and the elected National Assembly will…will act in an advisory capacity only.…”

  The Caliph removed his glasses, tossed aside the document he had been reading like the piece of filth that was, and spoke more strongly and sincerely, as if the words were at last his own.

  “I cannot declare that there is true joy in this outcome. But we have faced down the greatest military power on Earth on the brink of destruction, preserved our lives, our prosperity, and the honor of the government and the people of Islam, all thanks to Allah, who has caused wisdom to prevail, even in Washington. I…I…”

  He paused. His lips moved soundlessly as if unwilling to taste the next words.

  “I…I ask for your…your support and understanding. I…I…I ask Allah for His Mercy on myself and on us all, and…and I ask…I ask you to pray for my soul, and I ask for your forgiveness for doing what I was…for what He willed me to do. Allahu Akbar!”

  The silence from the city outside the hotel room window spoke louder than any words or cries or even a nuclear explosion could.

  The silence of the tomb.

  CHAPTER 42

  “I see no further mission to perform, Osama, and to wait here for the Hadj to bring the life of the spirit back to this city would be—”

  “Futile,” I grunted. “Better to escape. I understand.”

  “I was going to say pointless. And I was also going to say because I now believe I understand what the point of my umrah was, if not of yours.…”

  We were saying our goodbyes at the entrance to the monorail station. The thoroughfare back to the Al-Haram Mosque had returned to some semblance of superficial normality, but it was a changed normality that might go on forever. The troops were gone, there was traffic in the street, and feckless pedestrians on the sidewalks. The hotels were still mostly empty, but the shops and cafes were now all open but catering to a sparse clientele. In the city beyond, there was commerce in the souks and stores, people praying in the mosques, children in the schools and at play, a city like any other, and thousands of the inhabitants who had fled had returned now that there was “peace.”

  Yet to me Mecca seemed empty, and not only because the population was visibly sparser than it had been when I arrived, but as if it had been built all of a piece at once, like a failed mall, in anticipation of throngs that never came.

  There were no American
troops in the city nor even those of the Caliphate, and yet it seemed a city under occupation in a defeated country, existing in a state of “peace” without honor, without hope, a gray peace that would go on and on, waiting for a Madhi who no one really believed would ever come. It was Kalil’s Madhi who slept within all men who had died here never to awaken.

  Or perhaps it was only that Madhi within me which had died.

  “The point of your umrah…?” I muttered disconsolately. “To bear witness to this…this—”

  “Fall? Yes,but not so much to bear witness, but to be awakened by the vision to something that all Muslims know in the dreamlands of our soul but that is hard to keep with us in the waking world. That Islam is not holy shrines and objects, not mosques and imams and mullahs, not Caliphates or Muslim empires, but the Light of Allah in which we all dwell when we are fortunate to be awakened, which has been there for us since Adam, before the time of Mohammed, before the meteor fell from the heavens around which men built the Ka’aba and the Al-Haram Mosque and Mecca, and which will remain when all that men have built as shells to contain it has long since gone.”

  “You have told me this before, Kalil,” I grumbled.

  “As others have said before me. This is the Sufi faith…no, not faith, but knowledge, which needs no faith, no hadj, no rituals, which remains to be awakened even when all faith is gone. And that is what witnessing the passing of that knowledge from the shell of this city has reawakened in me now. It is as if the breaking of that shell has released that knowledge from the gilded prison of worldly idolatry to soar freely into Allah’s heavens like a great white bird returning to where it belongs.”

  “You…you find happiness in this disaster?”

  “I mourn the tragedy in the world, but I take joy in the purity it has reawakened in my soul. As Allah would have it. For that is what He made men to be.”