Season of Martyrdom

by Jamal Naji

  I said to myself: Please God grant me an easy path and loosen my tongue for me.

  I stood up. “Hello, Shaher,” he said, shaking my hand. “I’m Sari.”

  I greeted him and introduced myself, noting that he did not give me his full name.

  He looked me over from head to toe. I was wearing a yellow shirt and black trousers. I felt embarrassed by my old shoes which, on top of being dusty and faded, were too tight on my feet.

  I sought refuge in God and asked for His aid. Then I summoned up my strength after Sari sat down across the table from me and I said, “I am very happy to know you have work for me. May God compensate you for your good deed. But please permit me to ask a question. Where did you get my phone number?”

  “Let’s agree on something,” he said with an air of superiority. “From now on, no questions outside the parameters of the job I am going to ask you to do. And before we get started, let me tell you that I know you were with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and that the name they gave you was Darrar al-Ghoury. I will call you by that name from now on instead of Shaher. I also know everything that happened to you, and if you ask me, ‘Where did you get this information?’ I will tell you that is my business. I have an entire center for research and information and I can get any information I want about you or anyone else for that matter, so don’t bother asking.”

  “Did you find out why they released me?” I asked.

  “I told you,” he answered. “No questions unless they have something to do with the job I want you to do. And now let me explain the mission I have for you.”

  I was puzzled. Where did he get such authoritativeness? It filled his words with a level of sincerity and fortitude that sent terror right into the soul. But my bewilderment disappeared once I found out what it was he wanted from me.

  He asked me to return to the ranks of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and to find a mujahid by the name of Walid Nael Shaker Dughaybil, whose jihadi name was Sharhabil.

  He spoke as if he possessed the same level of authority as the people who had tortured and imprisoned me, maybe more.

  Before I could say anything, he reached into his pocket and said, “I believe you need money now, because you aren’t working.”

  “I’ll be fine, God willing,” I said proudly.

  He handed me a white envelope and said, “Five hundred dinars. It will help you make your decision. Then we will agree on the rest.”

  I asked myself whether this was a blessing coming to me out of the blue from God, or was it a trap they wanted me to fall into all over again? Who knew who this Sari fellow was? And who sent him? And why did he choose me in particular?

  While I was thinking through all this, he got up, looking at his watch, and said, “We will meet again in two days. I will call you.”

  Then he handed me a little slip of white paper with a cell phone number and no other information written on it.

  “This is my number in case it gets erased from your phone,” he said and then left. I stayed behind, thinking.

  But I didn’t stay long. I remembered that I had 500 dinars in my hands, which was a substantial sum of money to me in those difficult circumstances. I was afraid something unexpected might happen, so I got up and left.

  I headed immediately downtown, bought a pair of comfortable shoes and put them on. I stuck my old pair in a bag and tossed it into the first trash can I came across. Then I sauntered over to Hashem’s Restaurant, ate two plates of hummus and fouleix and more than twenty pieces of falafel, thanking God for his generosity.

  On the bus that took me from Amman back to my village I started thinking. If the down payment was 500 dinars, how much would I get for carrying out the mission? Five hundred dinars just like that, no receipt, no nothing.

  I said to myself: Let this be the beginning of a new adventure in life, as long as there is money in return. And anyway, after I did what he asked, I could repent. I could go and perform the Umrah pilgrimage or the Hajj, and from there I could turn to God in sincere repentance, for God is forgiving and merciful, but after I pocketed enough money to open a little business of some sort, maybe even a little grocery shop. I could give alms to the poor and show mercy if God presented me with the opportunity. The important thing now was to find Walid . . . or Sharhabil.

  The first thing my mother noticed when I got home was my shiny new shoes. Her eyes were drawn to them the moment I walked through the door. She asked me if I had found some work, so I answered her, “Put your faith in God. Soon I will be working.”

  Two days later I met up with Sari in the same location. I told him I accepted the mission and also made it clear that it was going to require some time. He acknowledged with a nod of his head. And when I told him that I had signed an affidavit with the Intelligence Office attesting that I would not return to the mujahideen, he said, “Forget the affidavit. Consider yourself released from it.”

  “Suppose they prevent me from leaving the country?” I said. “This is very likely.”

  “We will deal with things as they come up. Every problem has a solution,” he said. “Just get yourself ready as soon as possible.”

  Then he asked to see my cell phone, so I showed it to him. It was a cheap one.

  “Perfect,” he said. “You don’t want to appear to have a lot of money over there.”

  Then he gave me a more advanced model and showed me how to use it. He made it clear that I shouldn’t let the mujahideen see me with it and I should only let them see the old cheap one. That was if they even allowed me to use it.

  Abu Hudhayfah

  I marveled at Sharhabil’s skill during the first battle he engaged in as a member of our base. I had never seen anything like it. By God he destroyed machinery like a professional hunter shooting down prey, turning it into black scum the way lightning turns Afghan spider trees into charred, black sticks. He hunkered down behind a boulder shaded by a tree, around 200 meters from our position. There he was able to take cover from the gunfire that was being fired from their tanks and was coming close to us. Then he fired his first rocket, destroying one of their tanks, which went up in smoke. It gave us a target to fire at with our machine guns from numerous positions, making us seem like an entire battalion of mujahideen. Then one of our mujahideen brothers by the name of Anas al-Yamani came out of his trench carrying two hand grenades and headed towards the second tank, screaming. But he was martyred before he could throw them, may God have mercy on his soul and let him enter His spacious Paradise.

  When Sharhabil destroyed a second tank, we were exuberant, because this gave us a boost and helped us to transition from a defensive position to an offensive one. The rest of the tanks turned around in retreat.

  God is with you, Sharhabil! How sharp is your aim. It reminds one of the arrows shot by the Prophet’s Companions during the great Battle of Badr. And how admirable is your modesty and lack of need to brag about your deeds.

  After the armored vehicles withdrew, we inspected the battlefield to discover that six of the mujahideen had been martyred, including Anas al-Yamani.

  We gave them a hasty burial so that we could vacate our hideout temporarily, in case they came back with reinforcements.

  However – Glory be to You, O God! – I swear the fragrance of musk rose up from the corpses of our martyrs and the area around them with the dawn of that misty morning. And when we buried them, that delightful smell continued to waft its way into my nostrils, filling me with a strong desire to win that martyrdom which God – most precious and most glorious – had not willed to bestow upon me during that great battle.

  As for the miracle I bore witness to in the vicinity of that hideout, it occurred forty days later. When we returned to that place to straighten the martyrs’ bodies and direct them towards the kiblah, the smell of musk emanated from their graves when we opened them, and we found them still clothed and soaked in their blood, just as we h
ad buried them, without change. We cried, “Allahu akbar” and “La ilaha illa llah” and embraced each other exuberantly.

  I praise you, O God, for the grace of jihad and for your miracles, which you have showered upon the mujahideen, your good and righteous servants.

  Muntaha al-Rayyeh

  The worst thing about Sari’s visit was the way he treated me, as if he was coming to bring charges against me or had some kind of evidence on me. He acted like someone who knew I had committed the sin of adultery, and who I had committed it with.

  Why did I say, “Like someone who knew”? The fact of the matter was that he would not have come to me unless he did know. Maybe in his mind I was a whore, or some other word.

  I sensed in the tone of his voice and the things he said to me a kind of threat, as well as the stirring up of a past I had buried long, long ago.

  “What secret are you referring to?” I said, trying to tone down his threat. “What secret are you going to spill? To who? My husband, who’s been dead for more than four years?”

  “‘He who uses his head will not grow weary,’” he said.

  It was clear he wasn’t going to leave without getting something out of me, some kind of information about al-Walid at the very least.

  “Al-Walid is with the mujahideen in Afghanistan,” I said. “What do you want with him?”

  “It’s not me,” he said. “It’s his father, the Basha, who wants to see him. It’s his right. Is he still in Afghanistan?”

  “He hasn’t come here since he left,” I said crossly. “Ask at the borders. Ask at the airport.”

  Calmly, but with determination, he said, “I know that he has not returned via the borders or the airports. But I heard he entered the country secretly, in which case there is no doubt he would come visit his mother.”

  I felt he was not being truthful with what he said. Maybe he was trying to play with my mind, though I hadn’t said anything other than the truth.

  I looked directly into his eyes and said, “You haven’t told me, what does your boss Fawaz want from him exactly?”

  He averted his eyes. “Mrs Muntaha, or Umm al-Walid, the Basha wants his son, and you yourself know, ‘No debt goes unpaid if the collector comes calling.’”

  My sense of irritation came back. “You talk as if he were a little boy in diapers.”

  He put a business card on the table with his name and phone number. “In any case,” he said, “my phone number is on this card if you decide to use your head.”

  I remembered Fawaz’s insult after the trip to Paris. I got a hold of myself and said in a nasty tone, “Listen. Tell your boss Fawaz al-Shardah that al-Walid is a thirty-year-old man now who has taken up killing people in Afghanistan. He has killed many. Who knows, he could come back here at any moment and I would tell him to go back. If I were in Fawaz’s shoes or your shoes, I would be careful.”

  Sari Abu Amineh

  How mind boggling. Mrs Muntaha said that her son Walid, or al-Walid as she calls him, might come here. Then she warned me to watch out for him. And her warning was directed at me and the Basha.

  She actually threatened us with her son.

  I went to her to deliver a strong message from the Basha, and she ended up giving me a stronger one to deliver to him.

  Could Uroub’s prophecy come true at the hands of this sixty-year-old woman, Muntaha al-Rayyeh, who I’d searched for for such a long time?

  What was there to stop her from seeking her son’s help? Most likely she called him from time to time. I was almost certain she was in contact with him in some way or another. She was his mother after all, and he was her son, and a mother cannot be completely cut off from her son for ten years or more.

  She could turn him against us and he could come to hurt us, or even kill us. It made no difference to people like that. He had nothing to fear.

  If his mother were to turn him against us, I would expect him to become incensed.

  Of course the matter wasn’t as simple as that. His demise could come at our hands, but everything was possible. He could come after us even before finding out that his mother had been an adulteress before she got married and that the Basha was his real father.

  Women are the source of so many problems.

  All she had to do was tell him a non-believer was threatening her in her own home or in her shop.

  I noticed that Mrs Muntaha was not fat or flabby like most women her age, and her fair-complexioned face still retained some of its beauty despite her being nearly sixty years old. Even her bangs, which stuck out a little from beneath her white scarf, were black and showed no signs of gray.

  Actually, her face reminded me of the actress Shams al-Baroudy. I wondered if she looked like her when she was young.

  Darrar al-Ghoury

  I went to Al-Shouneh al-Shamaliyah, to the home of Sheikh Abd al-Karim al-Abbas, the one who enlisted me twenty-two months earlier and sent me to carry out jihad in Afghanistan.

  He welcomed me warmly – may God reward him for that – as though he were reuniting with a son after a long absence. Then he sat me down beside him there in his room on a mattress up against the wall whose paint was peeling off. He started asking what had happened to me.

  I thanked God that he wasn’t aware of what had happened to me in prison. That was clear from the conversation, for he commended me for my resolve and for getting out with my head held high, as he put it.

  I asked him about the three mujahideen who accompanied me on the homeward journey to Jordan and he answered that he had no knowledge of their whereabouts or of what had happened to them.

  I spoke to him about the blessings of jihad and self-sacrifice for the sake of God, and about the mujahideen vying with each other to achieve martyrdom, and I broke down into tears.

  He patted me on the shoulder with his right hand, in which he held a long set of prayer beads, and said, “Are you so moved by this that you would cry, Darrar?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “They deprived me of the blessing of jihad and martyrdom when they arrested me and put me in their prison cell.”

  “God is with you, my son,” he said. “He who wages holy war for the sake of God but is unable to achieve the blessing of jihad, or martyrdom, despite his efforts, will still be considered a martyr if he dies a contrite Muslim seeking God’s forgiveness.”

  My voice softened to the point of sounding feeble and submissive. “Sheikh, sir, jihad is my only means of rescue and escape from the estrangement I have been living since getting out of prison – estrangement from my parents, brothers, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. They all look at me with disdain, and shun me. They avoid me like an infectious disease and call me a terrorist, even though jihad for the sake of God is not considered terrorism except by non-believers and apostates. They say I’ve ruined my future, forgetting that there is no future in this world or in the hereafter except in Paradise. And they blame me for lack of work, forgetting that the best work is to worship the one true God, and to carry out religious duty and jihad for His sake. That is how they have treated me since I came back, so please let me return, sir, into the folds of jihad, into the ranks of the mujahideen who are as pure and clear as ice and snow.”

  He nodded his head and said, “Why such astonishment, Darrar? Islam began as a stranger and will go back to being a stranger. ‘Blessed are the strangers.’ That is what our Noble Prophet – prayers and the peace of God be upon him – said, more than 1,400 years ago.”

  “I am but a stranger who cannot live amongst these unbelievers,” I said. “So free me into jihad. Free me so I can win martyrdom and see with my own eyes the houris of Paradise, for they pluck the strings in the presence of the prophets and the righteous and the martyrs.”

  “Will they permit you to cross the borders?” he asked.

  “I will find a way to smuggle myself out,” I answered. “Sir, he who has ta
sted jihad cannot but return to it again.”

  “And what if they catch you, Darrar?” he asked.

  “I am accustomed to their prisons,” I said. “There is no difference to me between that small prison and this grand prison. I want to carry out what my religion demands of me, so I will not feel regret every time I hear about an attack carried out by my mujahideen brothers without me. Sir, I’ve become like a fish. I can only live in the sea of jihad and the mujahideen.”

  “Put your trust in God. I will do what I can,” he said. “Ask God to grant success and good fortune.”

  I wasn’t faking my tears in front of him, and I wasn’t truthful either. It was a mixture of truth and falsehood, and I felt I had lost my conviction. But I was intent on going back to Afghanistan with the blessing and confirmation of Sheikh al-Abbas, who I felt sympathized with me and wished for me to return.

  Sari Abu Amineh

  The Basha was never a coward.

  Once, three years earlier, the airplane we were in on our way to Madrid hit some turbulence and dropped more than 200 feet to a hard landing, causing the contents of the overhead bins to come crashing down on us. The Basha kept calm and held his composure. He was the only passenger who didn’t show signs of fright or start screaming and trembling and reciting the Quran, or making the sign of the cross over their chests.

  I, on the other hand, shuddered with fear and recited the shahada for my life in a trembling voice.

  During the Davos conference he participated in in Switzerland a few years back, he didn’t heed the advice of the conference organizers to wait a while before leaving the auditorium in order to avoid the protestors – men and women with their chests bared – who were demonstrating outside.

  He was not a coward, not to my knowledge. However, one recent morning, he called on his driver and his security guard to stop a bearded man he had seen driving down the street in front of his house in a rundown Opal. He had noticed the man while standing on the balcony that overlooks the houri fountain in his garden. He drove past once and then came back again and again, and from what I understood he was driving very slowly and was peeking inside the gate in a suspicious manner.