Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  “ ‘The truth is not there to be seized in one piece at a time,’ ” John recited softly. “‘The truth emerges, and that is how it is supposed to be in a democracy.’”

  Arlando looked surprised. “Walter Lippmann,” I said, attributing the quote.

  “So you can read instead of just watching old movies,” Arlando said to me and smiled at John. “Nice to see you’re having a good influence on her.”

  John returned his smile. “Today and Tomorrow, The Life of a Newsman, a made-for-TV miniseries, Gene Hackman, Sophie Hargood. French American co-production, shot in Canada,” he said. He glanced at me, almost apologetic. “Won an Emmy for Best Set Design,” he added.

  Arlando laughed. I didn’t, but a lot of tension crackling in the air had dissipated. John’s fingers squeezed mine gently.

  “Goddamn it, Arlando. I hate this, I really do.” I tried to keep the whine down to a minimum. “In my heart of hearts, I’ve always believed my job was to tell the truth, expose other people’s nasty secrets. Not cover our own asses with lies of our own.”

  He smiled wryly. “Your job, Kay Bee, is to report as much of the news as you can, in a responsible and professional manner. The public’s right to know does not extend to the point where people get needlessly hurt. That’s what responsible journalism means.”

  “And who makes those decisions, Arlando?” I asked. “Who takes responsibility for what goes public and what doesn’t?”

  He shrugged. “Better you and me than the Government. If someone else can do a better job, they’re welcome to it.” He leaned back in his chair, hands laced together across his stomach, fingertips rubbing his knuckles. “This is the way it’s going to happen, Munadi. You’ve just been promoted. Congratulations, you’re now GBN’s Chief Middle Eastern Analyst and Commentator. We do a splash feature on you and John a few days before you interview al-Ruwala. That’ll kick the ratings up high enough we should have the biggest market share for the interview, and believe me, it’ll be worth it.”

  “I don’t even have a choice?” I said in a low, aggrieved voice.

  “None at all.”

  For some reason, John smiled. I didn’t ask.

  They did the story. It hit the air right after the latest news flash from Khuruchabja, an endless roller coaster on the holotube that no one dared to look away from for a minute. Arlando even used the goddamned clip I’d deposited as our insurance, voices and faces obscured with digitalized scrambled pixels. And what a spin he put on it! CDI came out looking like they personally had thwarted an attempted coup, patriotic heroes one and all.

  Events happened fast after that, so quickly and flawlessly, it had to have been prearranged. When our special aired on American prime time, it was the wee hours of the morning in Khuruchabja. Within an hour, Ibrahim had used the disclosure to arrest the top brass who had helped him into power, most of them treacherous and corrupt schemers themselves, tossing them into jail still dressed in their pajamas. His own loyal guard handcuffed the army, stripping it of its major weapons. Rather than throw a hundred thousand soldiers into prison, most of whom had been in popular support for him during his rise, he promoted everyone a rank, passed out new uniforms and popgun pistols and turned them all into traffic cops.

  By morning, the few dozen political prisoners were instantly released and granted amnesty to great fanfare, even those rabid anti-government clerics still calling for al-Ruwala’s head on a plate. It was a cynically calculated move aimed at increasing Ibrahim’s popularity, and it worked. The more resistant mutawin and remaining army officers with a fondness for coups would later find themselves either quietly exiled or six feet under, but the rank and file, tired of the pointless violence, were more than happy to go home to the wives and kiddies and sing Ibrahim’s praises from the safety of their front porches.

  Of course, this also meant he was vulnerable to attack from any belligerent neighbor with a grudge. One or two rattled their sabers just to gauge the American reaction. The United States immediately made it clear they would not feel the slightest obligation to be sucked into any war on Khuruchabjan soil; this was not their affair, they’d had enough in the past. The jackals grinned.

  It looked suicidal.

  But Ibrahim was kind enough to save his coup-de-grâce for me and GBN. There was no way on earth I was going to fly to Khuruchabja for the interview, so it was done with a satellite up-link. My hair had now grown out long enough to style, the sweat on my face was covered with heavy camera makeup, and I sat in a skirt and silk jacket in the studio as the techs wired me thoroughly into place. When the holo of Ibrahim al-Ruwala solidified in the chair beside me, his electronic eyes widened slightly, amused but not surprised. Somewhere in Khuruchabja, my own hologram sat nervously facing the real Ibrahim.

  He had changed as well. The quick, street-smart man in worn jeans had been replaced by a well-groomed, composed dignitary in an expensive Western suit. He nodded graciously.

  “Good evening, Mr. President,” I said nervously, finding it hard to get the words to come out smoothly. “Thank you for joining us. ’Ana ’asz’heed geeddan, it’s a great pleasure for us and our viewing public in countries around the globe.”

  “ ’Ana ’asz’had,” Ibrahim replied. “Not at all. The pleasure’s mine.”

  “Mr. President—” I jumped in by reading the first question off the monitor. “You’ve stunned the entire world by abolishing the Khuruchabjan monarchy and establishing a Parliament to be democratically elected with real legislative powers to balance your own Presidency. Just in the past few days, you’ve made radical changes in your country’s military command, in effect demilitarizing your armed forces with a civilian controlled authority. How do you explain this sudden modernization you’ve undertaken for your country?”

  “There are many ‘modern’ countries which are not ‘democratic,’ ” Ibrahim’s hologram said. “Democracy is not the only form of modernization.” He smiled self-confidently. “But as Churchill pointed out long ago, democracy is the worst possible system of government… except for all the others.”

  “You see yourself as an Islamic Winston Churchill?” That wasn’t on the script. My ear mike whispered warnings.

  “More as an Arab Charles de Gaulle. As you well know, it takes far more than free elections to make a true democracy. My goals for my country and my private aspirations are happily quite compatible. My ambition is to create a government to suit my own personal tastes and preferences,” he said honestly, “which will then work without me for the benefit of my people when I decide to retire.”

  I blinked at that. He grinned.

  Then he dropped the bomb.

  “Could you explain the reasons behind your rather drastic military disarmament, Mr. President?” Like a good little bubblehead, I had gone back to following the list of questions flickering on an isolated prompter off-camera. “It appears you have left yourself vulnerable to attack by any hostile factions.”

  “There is no longer any need for Khuruchabja to maintain such an extensive offensive military force as we have in the past, which has drained our economy and only encouraged animosity from our friends. We will certainly maintain a limited civilian defense reserve sufficient to repel any unlikely invasion of our sovereignty, which I intend to model on the Swiss example. Slightly improved, of course. We have taken these steps to prove our willingness in declaring a national policy on Islamic nonviolence, a willingness I trust my brother Muslims will respect. There is simply no reason for Muslims to fight each other.”

  I looked at him skeptically.

  He smiled, and steepled his fingers. A thin blue transmission line glitched briefly through his figure, the only flaw in the illusion that he was not right there in the studio with me. “As far as our enemies are concerned, internal or external, Khuruchabja will be the first to recognize what should have been obvious all along. For too long we have tried to divide the secular from the religious in our countries, each half vying to vanquish the other. It is like the ri
ght half of the body trying to defeat the left, futile and foolish. It is not possible or even desirable to separate the secular and the religious from a modem Muslim government. Those who have tried have blinded and crippled themselves.”

  This was some speech, and I let him talk for himself, ignoring the irritated prompting in my ear to cut it up into sound bites.

  “The independent and sovereign nation-states of the Middle East are a day-to-day reality, what in certain Muslim tenets could be called the zâhir. But Islam also teaches us to see the greater reality, the divine bâtin, the truth underlying what we see only with our eyes, not with our hearts. The Europeans understand this with their Common Market, the United States has its own Unified American Trade Alliance with Canada, Mexico, Central and South America. Even the former Soviet Union and its mutinous republics finally understood the wisdom in the American phrase ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ It is time for us Muslims and for the world to recognize that each of our individual nations is, and has always been, and will always be, part of the unified whole, a Common Middle East. Each nation is itself only a separate millet within the Greater Islamic Empire.”

  Huh?

  “Including Israel,” Ibrahim added, and sat back to smile like the Cheshire cat while I stared at him speechless for a moment.

  “Does this mean your government is officially recognizing the current borders of Israel as it stands as an independent, sovereign nation?” I asked slowly, not following the frantic prompter blinking wildly. I winced, the mike in my ear suddenly too loud.

  Ibrahim waved the question away with a grimace. “Borders and nationalism are a Western concept imposed on us by colonialism, which has never been wholly accepted in the Arab world. We are traditionally a society of peoples, united by faith and by blood. Borders are illusions, certainly not worth dying over. Khuruchabja recognizes the current borders of Israel as being representative of a historical milletof the traditional Islamic Empire, a sort of ‘Jewish quarter,’ if you like. A fairly big Jewish quarter, but it is an autonomous region within the Greater Islamic Empire just the same. As is Khuruchabja.

  “We have already taken official steps in negotiations with the state of Israel to sign a formal treaty to this effect, guaranteeing the people of Israel their historical place within a unified Middle East, with all the privileges and obligations Jews have always had the right to expect under such a unified Islamic whole. The government of Khuruchabja not only is prepared to recognize the right of the Jews to their separate millet, but we are prepared to defend it against all aggressors, with every means at our disposal, as we would for any nation who joins with us in this Islamic unification.”

  My jaw dropped at this one, and simply hung there.

  “Of course, as non-Muslims, the Israelis would be expected to pay a religious tax to Khuruchabja, as well as to any other Muslim nation within the Greater Islamic Empire who perceives the truth of the situation… in the form of military protection.”

  Ibrahim’s eyebrows rose fractionally, as if defying me to ridicule this preposterous “truce” with Israel. Except we’d both seen Gabriel. And I knew who had made it. Maybe he did, too.

  I don’t remember much more of the interview, except that someone was screaming in my mike until I had to dig it out of my ear, and I found myself shaking my head at the smiling hologram as it winked out of existence.

  I was still trailing wires when I stumbled out of the brightly lit holo booth. My eyes unadjusted, I was blinded as I stepped past the sound panels into a clamor of people arguing intensely. Then John’s arms were around me, hugging me gently while plucking hook-ups off with a now-practiced hand. I was only too glad to let him.

  “… Are you kidding!” a voice said sharply next to me. In the semidarkness, I recognized him, more by sound than sight, as one of the techs. “The Israelis are never gonna go for that bullshit Muslim mumbo-jumbo. The guy’s a lunatic…!”

  “Well, maybe he is crazy, but crazy like a fox. He’s got something up his sleeve, that sort always…”

  “This is just some kind of scam to pull the rest of the Gulf states back into a war, gang up against Israel, trick ’em into thinking this time you really are gonna bring an olive branch, then wham…”

  “Try that, America would vaporize that little podunk country in two seconds flat…”

  “Not if it means the entire region is joining forces. We aren’t gonna fight the whole goddamned Middle East… !”

  “Come off it, these guys have never been able to get it together long enough to decide how to split a lunch tab…”

  “Gotta be the CDI behind this—this guy’s just a puppet— they gotta be the ones pulling his strings…”

  “Hey, Munadi! You’re the Chief Middle Eastern analyst now.” The group had spotted me. My eyes had adjusted, their faces reflecting red and green highlights from the monitors. “Give us your expert opinion.” I wasn’t sure if they were making fun of me or not. “I think you might be overlooking one other possibility,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “It could be he really is the Mahdi.”

  I kept an absolutely serious, straight face. It wasn’t hard. Their eyes bulged in incredulity as they stared wordlessly at me for a long moment. Then I let them off the hook and grinned.

  Still…

  TWENTY-SIX

  * * *

  During the following days, John had the pleasure of reporting the Israelis’ response in the United Nations. Far from laughing their asses off at this absurdity and telling the Khuruchabjani government to stick it where the sun don’t shine, much to the world’s surprise, Israel promptly praised the move. They announced they were extending blanket military protection to the recognized (and disarmed) tiny Republic of Khuruchabja, vowing to repel aggressive action taken by any nation against the newly formed democracy. Including the Americans, was the unspoken threat. And they had the nukes to back it up.

  GBN beat out all rivals over the next few weeks, for the very first time climbing to the top of the news heap as we all competed to keep up with the coverage. Ahmat al-Hamid began filing reports from Nok Kuzlat, eagerly polling the man in the street. Appalled at first, then grudgingly accepting, the average Khuruchabjan didn’t really mind. Just so long as those despised Zionist dogs stayed at their end of the desert where they belonged and minded their own goddamned business, which Israel was more than happy to do.

  Cautious negotiation, both public and covert, opened up between Israel and her more powerful and alarmed neighbors, however. The advantages in a unified Middle East had always been secretly acknowledged by all parties concerned; the “solutions” forced on the Middle East from the outside had never worked.

  Israel had good reason to want a real truce in the Middle East. The perpetual hostility was beneficial only to Western countries with their military bases on foreign soil in order to keep their thumbs firmly inserted into the oil pie. Decades of fighting Hamas and Hezbollah and Behjars all by themselves had left the Israelis with a permanent case of national paranoia. Israel wanted good relations with their traditional ally, the United States, but for their own security they needed the cooperation of the Islamic countries bordering them on every side. The issue of Jerusalem and the occupied territories had always been a sore point, but with the formation of a Common Middle Eastern Parliament similar to the Europeans’, the issues could be wrangled over endlessly without anyone required to don black or white hats.

  Israel, with its massive military technology and infrafusion nuclear capability, was the only country with any chance of standing up to pressure from the Americans, and they didn’t appear to be interfering in Khuruchabja’s internal politics. A pax with the little Zionist Satan was at least better than the big American one, which had been Israel’s intent all along.

  Hesitantly, grudgingly, the Gulf states were forming a true Middle Eastern Common Market. There was now even some open talk about closing American and British airbases in the Gulf, much to those govern
ments’ consternation. Ibrahim’s peaceful economic jihad was slowly becoming a strange reality.

  Given breathing room, the new Republic of Khuruchabja had a good start. With the extension of automatic and full Khuruchabjani citizenship to any Arab Muslim who previously had no nation of his own, the trickle of skeptical homeless from a variety of countries turned into a small but steady stream of immigrants. Only some of them were educated or skilled, but all were eager to trade the violence and poverty of refugee camps and city slums for a fresh start.Those who were not doctors and nurses, engineers, college professors, writers, artists, were given community service jobs and community housing while they built roads, badly needed housing, and sanitation faculties—the infrastructure of a modem life. To keep prejudice and fear at a minimum, native Khuruchabjans profited almost immediately from the benefits of an enlarged labor force, artfully tided over by grants from certain advocates from the West.

  Those who arrived trying to hide behind covered faces, importing the bigotry and hatred with which they had terrorized their own people, found themselves not tolerated by either their compatriots or their new countrymen. Even the threat of a drain on slave-wage labor in various rich countries dependent on their “foreign residents,” many of whom had been born there, alarmed several governments enough to add a few civil and legal rights along with economic incentives to keep their lower-class workers happy.

  Other than extending special visa privileges to Khuruchabjani pilgrims visiting the great mosques in Holy Jerusalem, Israel stayed scrupulously out of Khuruchabja’s Islamic internal affairs, and made sure everyone else did so as well. If the fledgling nation was to succeed, it would have to do it by itself. Or not at all.

  The nuts and bolts would take longer and be less exciting, but interest in Khuruchabja persisted; the country never returned to its original obscurity. There would always be fanatics, Jewish or Muslim, resisting anything that looked even slightly like capitulation. The kind of “The only good fill-in-the-blank is a dead fill-in-the-blank” extremist. Centuries of mindless prejudice and hatred will not be washed away overnight.