The Empty Quarter

by David L. Robbins

  “Only at first.”

  Prodded initially by his wife, using his computer skills to stay anonymous, Arif began to contribute to international blogs criticizing the monarchy. Through a series of straw-man accounts, he and Nadya sent funds to opposition groups in London. Arif exploited Twitter and social media platforms using a new battle name, Abu Adel, father of the Just. As Abu Adel, he developed a large following inside the Kingdom, despite the many attempts to root him out and shut him down. Like a mujahideen, Abu Adel knew how to hit and run.

  Arif drubbed the royals for their hypocrisy. Every weekend after morning prayers, members of the family could be found speeding down the causeway to Bahrain for nights in bars and discos, every amusement they forbade in the Kingdom. They justified their existence as the absolute guardians of Mecca and Medina; they interpreted the da’wah, the call to faith, as an obligation to the government instead of solely to Allah. They twisted the laws of the Prophet to benefit themselves and protect their positions. The royals’ corruption, oppression of women, support of America’s wars against Muslims, repressions in education, the myths of obedience, their Wahhabite claptrap of severity and punishments, Mutaween enforcers patrolling the cities with canes in hand, the suppression of any political opposition—all ran counter to Arif’s reading of the Qur’an.

  “And I said so online.”

  “It is not a wonder you ended up in jail. I mean that as a compliment.”

  “I will take it as one.”

  “How did you get caught?”

  “The way we all do. I had faith in myself one too many times.”

  To stay in touch secretly with others in the Kingdom who opposed the Al Saud, Arif ran or tracked several private Internet Relay Chats. The IRCs were set up and torn down daily, with a rotating series of passwords and IDs among users. Regularly, Arif hacked into computers just to slave them as chat servers for hours at a time. In response, the government’s General Intelligence Presidency played a cyber game of cat and mouse, spoofing servers to fool rebels into signing in and betraying themselves. Often when the GIP snared a target, they swung deals to persuade the hacktivist to switch sides. One man Arif knew and trusted got swept up in such a sting. He drew Arif to a new IRC, but in a last act of defiance included a warning code that he’d been turned. Arif, overhasty and cocky, missed the signal.

  One bright afternoon he emerged from a coffee shop to find a ring of men in tracksuits and running shoes. Had he chosen to make a break, they were dressed to pursue. Politely, they took him to his home where they pored through his books and computers. They let him wait for Nadya to come home from the women’s hospital so that he could say good-bye, then drove him to al-Ha’ir, the prison of the Mabahith, the secret police. The charge against him was fitna, spreading “discord” across the Kingdom. In the Wahhabite view of Sharia, the governing Al Saud had the duty to preserve the state’s harmony; they regularly used this to imprison critics without trial.

  For months Arif was questioned, always by pleasant men, who argued that he should be respectful of the community, not sow disagreement and subversion. “This is not the Saudi way. It is takfir.” The act of a nonbeliever. Arif quarreled with them. He’d not taken up arms against the state, used no violence, only expressed a different opinion. He made no headway and did not buckle. Arif was kept in agreeable conditions—the food and quarters were excellent—but he wasn’t allowed to read newspapers or books. Arif was not released.

  After the first year, it became obvious that other forces were at work to keep him locked away. Nadya went to her father. The prince responded that he could only do what God commanded. Allahu A’lam. Only Arif could effect his release.

  So Arif stopped debating his interrogators. He took advantage of the policy that any Saudi prisoner could have his sentence cut in half if he memorized the Qur’an. This cost him the next two years.

  Ghalib covered his heart with both hands, a gesture of awe.

  “Magnificent.”

  Then Arif was allowed to enter Care Rehabilitation, the Kingdom’s response to 9/11, after fifteen of the nineteen hijackers turned out to be Saudis. Just as the prince had tried to do for Arif a decade and a half earlier, the Al Saud created a program of indoctrination and incentives to repatriate its young mujahideen coming home from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, West Africa, the Philippines, Chechnya, the far-flung horizon of jihad.

  Along with forty returnees from Guantánamo Bay, Arif was held in isolation for three months at a complex of former desert resorts outside Riyadh. The guards did not wear uniforms, and the grounds were grassy and open. The men lived dormitory-style, prepared group meals, and were well fed; the ghostly jihadis around Arif regained the weight they’d lost. Every day they played football on the athletic fields; the Saudi boys had been exposed to mujahideen from around the world and picked up many bad habits of the aggressive European-style game. It amused Arif to watch the detainees being coaxed back to the Saudi brand of soccer, meticulous and team oriented. Daily meetings with Wahhabite scholars and shaykhs opened them to persuasion and to debate over the interpretation of Islam. They were reminded over and over that the Qur’an held 124 verses about dealing kindly with non-Muslims, while only one advocated waging war against them. Again Arif was instructed, like he had been as a child, that the Qur’an was the basis for everything in the nation’s constitution, that the Al Saud ruled by the hand of the Prophet. He was challenged to find disagreement, but this time Arif simply nodded in agreement. Those radicals who would not renounce their extremism, the militant warriors who’d come home convinced in the power of a gun, the battle deranged, the withdrawn and sullen ones who refused to engage even in the football games, they were held longer.

  “On my release, I signed a taahud promising to be a good citizen. Not to criticize the Al Saud online. Nadya’s father came to the prison personally to open my cell. Before letting me walk out, he asked if I would keep my pledge, since he was responsible for me. I said I would honor it.”

  “Did you?”

  “For two months. Then we left.”

  “A lie is a sin of the tongue, Arif.”

  “A man may lie when he speaks to his wife to please her, to reconcile between people, and in war. I had all three reasons.”

  “I see the Al Saud’s rehabilitation of you did not take.”

  “No.”

  “And I think you have come to Yemen to break your taahud.”

  “I came here because I believe the will of God, not the words of oil barons and fat princes, is law. Nothing in Sharia supports an absolute monarchy. Power is God’s to give, not the Al Saud’s. God desires to give it to my wife, to me, and to the Ummah of his lands. Allah wants no kings.”

  “Did you tell all this to my father?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see now why he gave you sanctuary. You are indeed a scholar. And a warrior. You’re the new Juhayman, with a computer. What have you done since you’ve been our guest?”

  “I’ve taken down some Saudi censorship sites. I was part of a group that disrupted the Saudi oil company’s network.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’ve hacked into some archives and corporate sites. There’s more than a hundred thousand cyber attacks on Saudi ISPs every day. I am part of that.”

  Ghalib frowned, trying to grasp.

  “This is jihad?”

  “I’m very close to something more. Something big.”

  “Excellent. Tell me.”

  “We haven’t decided if we’re friends.”

  “My father was your friend. Tell me for him.”

  “I wasn’t aware Qasim believed in reform.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “What then?”

  “Retribution.”

  Arif had answered Ghalib’s questions for two hours. The qat finished, the tea cold, the tobacco gone, the
sun was falling. The time had arrived for the shaykh’s youngest to answer, or for Arif to leave his home.

  “Why did you ask me here?”

  “At my father’s graveside were seven brothers. There should have been eight. Three years ago, the next one older than me, Yasser, was killed.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was incinerated driving west from Ma’rib. A missile strike from an American drone. He was killed with his wife and youngest son. Another car nearby was destroyed also, a local businessman.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course.”

  “Your brother was al-Qaeda?”

  “No. He was only responsible for funneling our family’s money to them. My father was al-Qaeda. But Yasser’s name was the one on the CIA’s list. And so.”

  Many times in prison, al-Qaeda—the child of Osama bin Laden—had reached out to Arif. Emissaries were sent his way, gifts and quiet persuasions. A man of Arif’s talents would be invaluable. Al-Qaeda shared his goal of toppling the Saudi crowned heads. Gently, Arif rebuffed the overtures. Their methods were not his, their aims too broad, and they would replace the Al Saud with themselves, not the people, and not an improvement.

  Ghalib’s invitation was coming clear. Qasim could spare his youngest son; just as Ghalib said, the family business was in good hands without him. Arif asked a question he already knew the answer to.

  “And you, Ghalib?”

  “Tell me. Do you have American drones flying over Saudi Arabia?”

  “No.”

  “Your people will not allow it. Would America tolerate drones from a foreign government flying over their cities? What would be their response after the first missile murdered an innocent or child? At my father’s wish, in my brother’s place, I have taken the bay’a.” The al-Qaeda oath.

  “I see. And what will you do for them? Move money, like your brother?”

  “I have taken a blood vow. America is the far Satan. Her allies around us are the near Satan.”

  Ghalib, foppish and virtually illiterate, knew just enough to quote Osama bin Laden. He talked like a warrior, but he was a jihadi on pillows.

  Ghalib rubbed his palms, a greedy, more suitable gesture.

  “Arif, this thing, this big thing you are close to. What will you do with it?”

  “Post what I find online. Maybe give it to one of the opposition groups in London.”

  “London? What will that accomplish?”

  “Humiliate the Al Saud. Expose them. Defy them.”

  “And what reforms will you demand? What would you have them do?”

  “Share power. Allow transparency. Freedom of expression.”

  Ghalib chuckled softly.

  “Dreams.”

  Arif drew in his legs to get on his feet and go. Ghalib slowed him with a raised palm.

  “Do you think the United States will allow the Al Saud to fall? Truly?”

  Ghalib pointed behind himself, out the window, into the gilded sky where the drone had come from, as if America existed there, above them like Allah.

  “Do you believe America will allow this? Democracy in the Kingdom? Give the Saudi people freedom to vote, so they can say No, we do not want the crusaders’ interests in our country? Shave my beard if it is so.”

  Arif raised his voice.

  “And what would you have me do? Pick up a gun again? This is how I fight now.”

  Ghalib settled after Arif’s outburst. Arif did not release the tension in his legs, remaining poised to rise when he’d heard enough.

  “Dissent, Arif? Embarrassment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your problem is you think too small. You need one more awakening. I am it.”

  “How do you suppose?”

  “You can’t get what you want doing it your way. The House of Saud will not topple like that. You need another path.”

  “That is?”

  “Fawdha.” Ruin.

  Ghalib gathered himself on his cushions. He closed his green robe across his chest and folded his legs, hands on knees to sit like a shaykh, a powerful man.

  “Think of Juhayman. In the end he got what he wanted.”

  “His head chopped off?”

  “No. Change.”

  “And what do you suggest I do?”

  “I have resources you do not.”

  “And?”

  “This information you will find. Give it to me.”

  Chapter 7

  11 Degrees North

  Camp Lemonnier

  Djibouti

  This warm evening 11 Degrees North was packed. Marines, pilots and aircrews, sailors, National Guardsmen, contractors, all milled around the Armed Forces televisions, dartboards, and pool tables, inside at the bar or out on the terrace.

  LB sat alone on the balmy patio, at the rim of the crowd in the fringes of light. He clapped his first beer bottle on the tabletop and leaned back. Beyond the canteen’s lights, the clear Djiboutian sky twinkled. Behind the high blackout fence, an aircraft warmed up unseen on the main runway a hundred yards away. LB made up his mind to drink until he counted a dozen takeoffs and landings—a random number, but he figured it would cover his evening.

  In the middle of the patio, with people on all sides, Wally and Torres leaned toward each other on their elbows, going public for the first time, and unaware that LB or anyone else was here with them. She wore her dark hair down her shoulders, loosed from her constant bun.

  The first flight, a Predator, idled a while, then blared skyward. The big drones operating out of Lemonnier, always ominous to the fighting men and women, both for being invisible and unmanned, raised a distinct, mournful whine. Flying lightless into the night over Africa, the drone seemed witchlike.

  Closer to the fence, an HC-130 finished its engine run-up. The cargo plane taxied, then accelerated down the strip to lift off. Like the Predator, only a gray shape rose into the dark; the plane was executing a blackout drill with no external lights, the crew wearing night-vision goggles. On board were Doc, Quincy, Mouse, and a still-gimpy Jamie on a night training jump. LB tracked the plane’s rumble until it faded, then walked inside the canteen. He bought a round to be delivered to Torres and Wally plus two beers for himself. He ferried the bottles back to his table.

  LB finished one of the beers without ever setting it down. Out of the nighttime west of the base, a marine chopper left the ground, chasing after the cargo plane to practice in-flight refueling, a difficult thing to do in daylight, a hazard at night. After the chopper departed and the patio returned to the buzz of mosquitoes, chatter, and country tunes, LB started his third beer. Through gaps in the shifting crowd, he fixed on Torres and Wally.

  Another HC-130 approached from over the black Gulf of Aden and landed. A helo returned from somewhere. To the long winding down of the chopper’s blades, LB sipped and in his imagination entered the fuselages of all these aircraft coming and going, even the drone. They carried away men and missions, weapons and cameras, and as long as they brought them all home, LB and the PJs were left to wait and prepare. LB could drink his beers alone tonight in the starry peace of his table, and Wally could gaze into whatever he saw in Torres’s eyes.

  A waiter delivered to Wally’s table the drinks LB had bought. Torres pulled her attention from Wally, listened to the waiter, then started to rise. Wally took her wrist to keep Torres in her chair. Instead, he shot to his feet. Taller than most, Wally scanned the deck until he found LB.

  He headed for LB’s table, swinging his shoulders to wend through the crowd. LB watched him come, then stop, reconsider, and keep coming.

  He arrived with hands out, mouth hanging open and silent. LB indicated one of the empty chairs.

  “What are you doing over here? I thought it was date night.”

  Wally dropped his hands and closed his jaw.r />
  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Beg pardon.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I sent over a couple drinks. You’re welcome.”

  “Why would you piss her off like that?”

  “It was a joke. Calm down. Both of you.”

  Wally pulled out the chair to sit. He laid his forearms flat, leaning in as he had across from Torres.

  “You really have no idea half the time, do you?”

  “About what, specifically?”

  “Other people. Normal people.”

  “I’ve known you eighteen years. Got you pretty figured out.”

  “You think?”

  “I do.”

  “Here’s something new you might be missing. I like her. She likes me. I scared her in the pool last week when I passed out. Didn’t you see how she reacted?”

  “You were fine the whole time.”

  “That isn’t what I asked. Did you see how she reacted?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like she didn’t understand that people get hurt doing what we do.”

  “She’s the PRCC10, she sends you and me out. She gets it, LB. But she never figured she’d have to watch me drown myself. I didn’t think of that before I did it.”

  “Why the hell would you?”

  “You’re the one who doesn’t get it.”

  “Bullshit. You put the team first, where it belongs. Bravo. You did your job.”

  Wally loosed a headshaking laugh.

  “Man. I just saved your ass again and you don’t even know it. Next time I’ll let Torres come over here. You want to keep pissing her off, it’s your funeral.”

  Wally surveyed the stars and the canteen crowd, as though searching for a way out, a back door to avoid saying something even more harsh.

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “You’re right. I was doing my job. But at the moment, over there, I’m doing something else. My life.” Wally pushed back the chair. “And that doesn’t include you.”

  He strode into the canteen crowd, not dodging the marines and airmen but letting them move or get bumped.