She finished her drink and was ready to go. She was about to lean in to Stephanie and say so. “Follow me.” McGuiness took the empty glass from her and pushed a full one into her palm. He took her hand and led her through the crowded living room. Stephanie was laughing over the music, her eyes catching April’s as she passed, her caps white and glistening, her tongue dark from the Jägermeister. Through piercing electric guitar a singer was shouting “White Christmas” and April felt half-drunk already, her hand in McGuiness’s, big and dry and callused.
They were walking down a hallway, its walls white. Every foot or two was a framed black-and-white photograph of a shining car. Most of them were from long ago, black and boxy with spoked wheels. She could hear different music now, jazz playing, and the cars were still gleaming but now they had holes in them sprayed across the sides and front. Around each hole in the windshields was a white web radiating out and the white looked too white, and she was relieved when they stepped down into a billiards room.
There were people here she didn’t know. The carpet was an inch thick. A huge fat man in a suit sat in a leather chair in front of another gas fireplace. On a sofa beside him two women her mother’s age sipped brown drinks in glasses like the one she held. The light was dim here, even the green lamp over the walnut pool table where two men played. One was black and handsome as a movie actor, the other white, his long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a turtleneck and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows and every bit of skin, even each finger, was green and blue and purple tattoo.
At the bar she let go of McGuiness’s hand. One of the women glanced over at her. Her gold earrings were three or four inches long, angels, their gowns brushing her clavicle. She looked away, her angels swinging, and April sipped her eggnog and watched McGuiness walk behind the full bar. He pulled a chilled bottle of vodka from a mini-fridge, poured four fingers into a glass. The vodka was thick and syrupy and he raised his glass and touched hers with it. She felt the vibration but didn’t hear it.
“What’re we toasting, April?”
“Peace?”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too.”
“You’ve got a kid, right?”
“Yes.”
“A boy?”
“Yep.”
“Summer told me she’s a girl.”
A saxophone wailed in the air, brushes tapping cymbals, April’s heart beating behind her eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”
McGuiness seemed to nod his head without nodding, his eyes sizing her up again, measuring her, then his own hunger, as if she were raw meat butchered and laid out on a slab in front of him. “What’s her name?”
She wanted to lie, but he already knew. He already knew. “Franny.”
“To Franny then.”
“Yes, thank you.”
He tapped her glass and she swallowed more thick sweet eggnog, felt sleepy, didn’t want any more. Wanted to go home. He’d poured himself so much but he sipped from the glass as if it were hot tea. “You want something else?”
The crack of the cue ball behind her. Like a slap. The sound in the room strange. Out of balance somehow.
“It’s going right to my head.” In the mini-fridge she’d seen cans of Coke. A row of cold red cans. Christmas cans. “You have any Coke?”
“I didn’t think you did that?”
“Cola.”
That smile again, his eyes distracted, looking ahead somehow. “Go see the ladies by the fire. I’ll bring you one.”
She didn’t want to go but she went. Or, her legs and feet went. There was the soft carpet, her footsteps silent, the saxophone whining now, the pool balls colliding, and the fat man watched her. His lower lip was so much thicker than the upper and he reminded her of a dog of some kind and her legs were watery and she sat down in a leather chair by the sofa of two ladies talking. The angels swung toward her, the lady’s earlobes stretched by their weight. The lady wore a blue-sequined dress and said something to her, smiling, and April said something back, wasn’t sure what. But the vibration of what she’d said was still in her throat. Merry Christmas. Was that it? The angels swung back, and the lady was talking to her friend again, who kept looking past her at April, this woman prettier, but older, her nose small, her lips red and pursed as she listened. Now the drums were loud, the fat man studying his fingernails. He crossed a massive leg over his knee, his brown shoes shining, the bottom gritty and ringed with road salt. He bit off a nail and chewed it, looked into the gas fire. Bubbling Coke in a glass in front of her. McGuiness’s hand around it. The blue veins in it.
Thank you. She felt the air move through her vocal cords, felt her tongue shape out the words behind her teeth, but the drums were rumbling low, then high, then low again and McGuiness stood there with his back to the fire like he hadn’t heard her. The glass was heavy and cool and she drank deeply from it. Cold sweetness and carbonation, an ice cube nudging her lip. Go home. Just get out of this chair and start walking. But she was the chair now. She’d become the chair. She drank more Coke. Had she eaten? Yes, her mother’s American chop suey. The canned tomato sauce and hamburger and macaroni noodles. The red stain of it on Franny’s chin. Her mother smoking only three feet from her, giving April a look, the green dress she’d bought cheap at Marshall’s. She’d eaten, hadn’t she?
She drank more Coke. McGuiness and the fat man were talking. She could hear their voices. Could see their lips move. The drums were gone. It was just piano now. The keys getting plinked, the pool balls plinking too. The man in the ponytail kept staring at her, both hands cupped around the end of his pool stick, the other end in the carpet at his feet. Like he had his hands on a big lever and if he pulled it the floor would open and they’d all fall in. Now he smiled at her. He had an overbite. She made herself turn away. Everything thick and slow, so thick. Like trying to run in waist-deep water. The prettier woman sipped wine from a glass, still listening to the lady and her angels and blue sequins. April’s arm lifted the Coke to her lips but the glass seemed far away even when it was touching her lips, some of it running cool down her chin as she swallowed once, twice. McGuiness and the fat man still taking. Equals, though. No fear in the fat dog’s eyes looking up at him. Business partners. Biznis. Busyness. The Coke wasn’t working. Her chin was dropping and she tried to lift her head but couldn’t. Her mouth half-open now too.
The pretty woman stood and glided over in gold and stooped and picked up the glass at April’s feet, her hand empty. When did she drop it? The ice cubes one at a time plinking in the glass. The piano and pool balls and now the ice. The pretty woman rising. Shaking her head at McGuiness. “Drunk girl.” Angel ears and blue sequins frowning. Looking away. Drunk girls. Drunkurls. Drurls. The dark where her mouth opened till her chin touched her chest and the drool rolled ticklishly to her jaw. Then sleep, a rough sleep. Her cheek bobbing against satin muscle, a beating heart there. A wide cool bed. Bright lights beyond the dark she couldn’t open her eyes to see. The pool stick being pulled back and the floor dropping, then the falling and falling, her body pulled and pushed to sitting, the unzipping of her dress, a hand at her back, but still falling, her dress shucked past her arms, then down her hips and off her legs and feet. The rip of her bra. Her panties unrolling, knuckles against her knees. Still falling. Falling. Cold now. Cold. A hot mouth on her nipple. Sucking. Biting. It hurt. She cried out but in sleep there’s no sound and nobody listening and something pushed into her mouth and she couldn’t breathe and began to gag and choke, her legs pushed apart, the nudging, then the ripping, all this falling landing her onto a fence post, was pulled off it, then dropped on it again. Pulled off it, then dropped. Coughing and gagging and gasping for air, her arms and legs as still and inert as if they were dead.
She watched Lonnie sleep. He took a long breath and let it out through his mouth. His flat belly rose and fell. His hands looked like accidents of nature on his knees, big eggs broken open into fingers. His arms were long and she pictured him holding
Franny in one and using the other to knock down men coming for her, Franny holding tightly to his neck, her eyes squeezed shut, the men falling one at a time at Lonnie’s feet. But then they all got up and rushed at him and April was making a sound through tears she wiped away with two fingers, her breath coming in ragged gasps, the ring of the phone boring into her head and heart like a drill.
HOW TIRED HE is. How tired, his head aching as well from the champagne and the cognac and the bright sky they fly through. The sun reflects off the wing and he cannot bear it and pulls down the plastic window shade. Imad beside him eats. As does Tariq across the aisle. But he cannot. The thought sickens him and he closes his eyes and leans his head against the shade of the window and he sees her. Her soft questions about him. About Khalid. Now she is gone and it is the qus of the black whore he sees, such a color he would never have suspected. In the camp a Yemeni running the obstacles tripped and pulled the trigger of his weapon and shot another ahead of him, the wound in his upper leg a shredded hole, and Bassam thinks of that, how similar they nearly appeared, yet still he would push himself inside the black whore’s.
He must stop this. He must cleanse himself of these thoughts. But how is it the Egyptian and his own brothers beside him could have visited these places and not been tempted so strongly to return? How could they see these uncovered kufar women and not—what? What, Mansoor Bassam? Mansoor? Victorious? It is a lie to have named himself this. How can one so weak and distracted become victorious? How could he have been chosen for the highest of honors when he is so clearly—what? What, Bassam?
He opens his eyes.
Afraid.
He has become afraid.
These last days he has heard often in his head his mother, her cries for Khalid, yet she had the comfort of knowing his body was washed, of watching his body lowered into the ground facing Makkah. For Bassam, there will be nothing for Ahmed al-Jizani to wash.
Please, don’t do anything foolish. Would she consider this sacred mission foolish? In three days, Insha’Allah, the entire world will know her son’s name. The entire world will know of the al-Jizani family, not as merchants and engineers and builders of buildings, but as a shahid, a shahid for the Judge and the Creator and the Ruler. A chosen shahid.
There was no moon and the Afghani sky was black, the air cool. Hassan al-Huda had sent a boy to their tent, Bassam’s, Imad’s and Tariq’s and a quiet one from Yemen. “They want you three. You three from Asir. In the big tent.”
There were two others. Both Saudis from Abha. In their black kaftans they looked young and thin, but Bassam had seen them in hand-to-hand fighting, how fast and fearless they were, the shorter of the two, his gray eyes. The tent was lighted with halogen lanterns made by the kufar, their white light shining. The air smelled of dust and canvas, myrrh and gun oil. Hassan al-Huda, who allowed weakness from no one and who had lost three fingers in Chechnya, whose left leg had been shattered in Bosnia, he instructed them to stand around the wooden table. There, in the hissing white light, was a map of the land of al-Adou al-Baeed, the far enemy, its large mass poised between two oceans.
“You have been chosen for a great, great honor.”
And Abu Abdullah himself stepped forward and looked them each in the face, his eyes not unlike an old imam’s—wise, clear, and unafraid because he is lifted and carried by his faith and there was love there for them, for each of them, as if they were his sons.
One at each time they were sworn to secrecy, they were told not to speak to even their fellow mujahedin, and they made the bayat, The pledge of Allah and His covenant is upon me, to energetically listen and obey the superiors who are doing this work, rising early in times of difficulty and ease. Bassam stood erect, his hands clasped before him. It is happening. It is happening. There was no longer time existing yet there was too much time and it moved so slowly he could not breathe, this moment he had been waiting for without knowing it, working toward without knowing it, fasting toward and denying himself in a way never before possible in the old nothingness he could only thank the Most Merciful he had escaped. Abu Abdullah took a red marker. His fingers were long and thin. He began to circle cities.
Outside, the mu’adhin called for the final prayer, his voice raspy but pure, and their emir bowed his head to them. “Tomorrow, Insha’Allah, you will leave here for the west and specialized training. You should be very happy and very proud; destiny has chosen you for the highest rooms of Jannah.”
The young men looked at one another, Tariq blinking his eyes as if waking from a dream. These boys from Asir, who could have known what sort of blood had always been in their veins? But why such surprise? They were Qahtanis, tribesmen descended from Noah. Why should there be surprise? Other fighters began entering the tent for Isha barefoot, their beards dusty from performing tayamoom with clean sand, the dry ablutions of the hands and face Hassan al-Huda insisted upon as water in camp was scarce.
Outside the tent, in the cool night air, Bassam and the others removed their boots and knelt to the ground for handfuls of sand. “Bassam,” Imad whispered, “Tariq.” As if to make certain he was still Imad from Khamis Mushayt who only months before was a silly gossiper on Mount Souda. A racer of kufar cars on Highway 15. A man who may not ever see Jannah at all.
Soon they were purified and in the big tent, prostrating themselves toward Makkah, praying aloud behind their commander, and as Bassam performed the raka’ats, he had never pronounced each word so clearly or with such intention, had never loved the Holy One so deeply, had never understood the teachings of His Prophet—peace be upon him—so fully, and a warmth rose inside him from the soles of his bare feet through his legs and loins and chest, his eyes spilling for he had never felt so loved before by anyone, not merely accepted but exalted, and that thread of blood which tied him to his own father and mother, his two sisters and thirteen brothers, it was both severed and strengthened; he was an al-Jizani yet forever beyond being an al-Jizani, forever beyond his own family and clan and tribe—he was instead a child of the Creator who had fashioned each of them, the Creator who now called Bassam to fight and die for Him, to fight and die for them all.
Bassam opens the shade. The brightness of the clouds hurt his eyes but he does not look away. These kufar have done this to him. Their haram way of life, these women so happy to show themselves, this alcohol banned in his kingdom which has made him sick today when he should be strong.
“Sir? Would you care for coffee?” She takes Imad’s tray yet she addresses Bassam. She is older than the others. Lines in her face she covers with cosmetics, her hair dry, blond when it is not blond. How easy to kill her, to slaughter her like a goat.
“No, Coke please. Two Cokes.”
Imad’s eyes are closed, his large hands folded one over the other upon his table, and Bassam looks past him and watches the woman bend forward for the cans, watches her pull one free and open it, her buttons unbuttoned so he can see far too much of the crease between her aging nuhood, and he can feel her face in his hand, her head against him as he draws the blade across her throat.
She gives to him his drink and the two red cans, cool and slippery. His fingers tremble, his heart beating more forcefully now. She is smiling her smile at him and he returns it but it is as if he has pressed a button inside himself, and when she looks away, his smile diminishes at once.
Across the aisle Tariq sits beside no one. This morning he shaved his mustache too quickly and there is a small cut beneath his nose. He looks out the window. Above the white of the clouds, the sky is a deep blue that, seeing it, makes Bassam a boy: his mother and her sisters painting the family home in Abha. He had nine or ten years and couldn’t wait for Ramadan to end, for the Festival of Fast-Breaking and all the good food to eat: kabsa and marquq and minnazzalah, the sweet fried turnovers of qatayif, and his favorite, asabi’ al-sit, cinnamon and almond pastries soaked in sugar syrup, all things he had to wait for until the festival, so he squatted in the dirt playing with stones while the women repainted desi
gns on the shale walls of their house built into the hill, the blue like the sky beyond Tariq—boiled from indigo plant, the green from alfalfa, the black from vegetable tar. But so often now the women of Abha use paint from a can, paint mixed by the kufar, Shaytan laughing at them as they prepare for the end of Ramadan by covering their homes with the colors of unbelievers.
In front of Tariq a man and woman laugh. It is early afternoon and they drink. The laughing woman chews celery, her woman’s legs fat and wrinkled and tanned and completely available to him. She is like Gloria, the plump realtor, this friendly one, like her. How easy it was for Amir to ignore her, to hate her. And Bassam had tried but it was like willing himself to like the Egyptian; he was brash and arrogant and short-tempered, and he monitored them as if they were not the chosen few; he often spoke to them the way Ali al-Fahd had ordered Bassam to do this and to do that. The Egyptian was their commander, yes, but his place in Jannah would be no higher than theirs. He would be loved by the Protector no more than they. Absolute obedience, eternal vigilance, endless patience. How many times had Amir used those words with them? Bassam had been offended when he said them, for he was certain he did not need to hear them. How many floors and mattresses had he slept upon since leaving his home? How many kilometers had he driven to airfields and back? To banks and stores for food and Laundromats and telephone booths and cell phone stores? How many libraries had he visited to download flight information, airplane specifications, GPS systems?
But he had not obeyed absolutely, had he? When the Egyptian flew to Las Vegas, he and Imad and Tariq took operations money and rented mopeds and rode along the hard damp sand of the beach. They did this whenever he went away. Many times. Why not? They had worked hard in the gym. The trainer Kelly told him their muscles grow only when they rest, so why not rest on the seat of a speeding moped? The wind in their faces? The sun and the sky and the sea? And yes, all the exposed bodies of young women, Bassam and Tariq looked and looked as they drove along the beach, though Imad did not. More and more he did not look at any kufar woman at all. In his presence Bassam began to feel as he did with the Egyptian, not as pure or strong, and yes, not as chosen.
The Garden of Last Days Page 32
