The Mosque of Notre Dame

by Elena Chudinova

  “Worse,” said Father Lothaire with a smile. “The status quo is disappearing. Our only goal now is to add our corrections to its change.”

  “I want a new rosary,” interrupted Valerie, mumbling a little because her mouth was full of candy. “The buttocks took mine and stomped on them. I chased them because I was angry. They ran away. But the rosary was broken; it can’t be fixed.”

  “I’ll bring you a box of them, and you can choose,” the old man responded. His voice was hollow, like that of a man who is not thinking about what he is saying.

  But he went and retrieved a large box and placed it before Valerie. She lifted the lid and sighed with wonder. She began to pull out new rosaries, one after another—made of light and dark wood, silk thread, colored glass, plastic, and pearls both large and small.

  “I don’t want the ones that are red like coral, I don’t want black ones,” she muttered softly. “I don’t want wood ones, I want translucent ones like amber.”

  “Will there be a lot of people tomorrow, Father?” asked the old man.

  “About two hundred of ours and almost twice that from the Resistance Movement.”

  “Excellent.”

  So that’s why it was necessary to dry everything and make benches with boards and canisters! But why was it necessary for Resistance Movement fighters to meet with the church’s people?

  Eugène-Olivier couldn’t fall asleep for a long time despite the goose-down sleeping bag they’d given him. Alpinists used to sleep in such bags directly on the ice.

  The bag was warm and soft, but as soon as he closed his eyes, pictures kept appearing. Houri-succubi with red lips would approach him and try to catch him with their heavy breasts like pincers. His body flinched from their touch, and he awoke. The lulling sound of the generator had stopped a long time ago, and the underground was ruled by total silence, total darkness.

  Then he was relieved to hear quiet voices. It was the priest and Valerie.

  “Little girls should be asleep at this time,” said Father Lothaire with a smile in his voice, “so go to sleep, Valerie.”

  “Tell me a story,” she said.

  “All right, but not a long one, agreed?”

  “But not a really short one, either.”

  “Very well. My mother used to tell me this one: Once upon a time, there was an old king who lived in a forest with his knights...”

  Living sounds, thought Eugène-Olivier. He felt his body relax. What was being said was not important. The important thing was that silence no longer shrouded him like black cotton. He began to doze off. A little later, he awoke again, and heard Father Lothaire say to Valerie, “And that is why today there are very few priests.”

  “So few that you’re the only one for all of Paris?” she asked.

  Father Lothaire replied. “How did you know that, Valerie? Until recently, there were two of us. Father Francisco was captured and martyred last winter. In all the ghettos of Paris, there are not more than three hundred Christians. For them, one pastor is sufficient, don’t worry. And if I am killed, our bishops will appoint a new priest from among the monks in the forests of Brittany or the students of the secret seminary. We won’t disappear, Valerie.” There was a brief silence.

  “Thank you, Father,” she said, with a little yawn. “But your story is sad. Do you want me to tell you a happy one?”

  “Please do.”

  “Soon the Mother of God will have some consolation.”

  After that, Eugène-Olivier could hear a rustling noise as if a mouse were moving, a sigh, and then breathing in sleep.

  CHAPTER 11

  The house of the converts (continued)

  “Dear, who was the girl from the ghetto that came to our house today? Haven’t I told you a hundred times that the old woman is a spy?”

  “Forgive me, but you refuse to allow me to resolve these matters with her. I’ve wanted to do so a hundred times.”

  “You think that another woman would be different? We’re converts! You know very well that any servant allowed to work for us will be a paid informant for the First Department.”

  Aset shuddered. An office of the First or Religious Department existed in every large institution to enforce sharia. Satellite offices handled groups of smaller companies.

  Kasim, who still had not removed his blue uniform as a captain of the Interior Army, stood before his wife. He was a handsome, thirty-seven year-old man, one of those who looked good with prematurely gray hair.

  Gray hair can be flattering on a man, if his face is youthful and his figure trim, Aset decided when she first noticed the gray hairs on her husband’s head. Today, only soldiers were allowed to develop their muscles. Sports were banned. But who could forbid a soldier his professional training?

  Among his lazy colleagues who were Arabs and Turks, Kasim was a model officer—always in good practice with his marksmanship, running and combat skills. For him, military training was a good substitute for the sports he had enjoyed as a boy—although he didn’t dare admit this to anyone. Likewise, the tactful Aset did not mention it. It was part of the game they both played, because the welfare, and perhaps the very existence of their family depended on it.

  Once Kasim was promoted to the Ministry, his physical shape would be sacrificed for the good of his career. But this transfer was repeatedly put off. In Aset’s opinion, the First Department was to blame. A true believer with only one wife? That was very suspicious. Aset was very grateful to her husband for that, and she did not miss an opportunity to tactfully let him know it—even though, with the common sense of a parisienne, she knew that his reason for not taking a second wife was not only his great love for her. Where an occasional three-hour-long “marriage” with a prostitute was concerned, her husband might not be that different from the other officers. But men were by nature cautious with respect to marriage.

  To bring some completely foreign creature into their house, to share a bed with her, to change his own habits in accordance with her habits—most converts were reluctant to do this. Worse, any two Frenchwomen would inevitably argue and intrigue against each other. There would be no peace, and a man places great value on peace around his home hearth. “An Englishman’s home is his castle,” goes the expression, but the same is true of any Frenchman.

  The danger of such disregard for sharia was not merely difficulty in advancing in one’s career, but danger to one’s life. One had to know where the border lay. If a candidate seems to respect most of the rules and expectations, being overly faithful to one’s wife could be tolerated. Kasim would end up in the Ministry sooner or later. But two or three violations could make a situation dangerous.

  The unwritten rules of the game that she and her husband lived from day to day were very complex.

  “What do you mean, ‘lived’?” thought Aset angrily. “We still live them and we will continue to live them.” But she noticed she only thought about her Muslim world in the past tense, since her meeting with that uncompromising and naïve girl. How silly and dangerous!

  “The girl wasn’t from the ghetto, dear.”

  Kasim had always had the tendency to flush easily, and now his cheeks were burning. “At least you could avoid lying to me. You think Zuraida can’t tell the difference between a true believer and a kafir ? She said...”

  “I’ve never lied to you and I’m not lying to you now,” said Annette with dignity. “I never said the girl was a true believer. And Zuraida is a goose.”

  “Please explain it to me, then.”

  Kasim was a little alarmed at his wife’s calm voice. He had come home nervous, partly because the question of his transfer to the Ministry had again been deferred. But tiny slights can be sometimes be even more annoying than serious problems. Today, that dog, Ibrahim Yasir Hassan, had brought a new Chinese laptop to work.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have the means to buy the products of our renowned Farhad Corporation on my salary,” Hassan said, feigning sorrow as he demonstrated the capabilities of
the machine to his colleagues. “I have to make do with Chinese electronics. But the gadget isn’t bad, is it, gentlemen?” Kasim was of course infuriated. Why?

  The owners of the Islamic company, Farhad, made their money by selling what were essentially Chinese computers in Islamic boxes. Kasim’s higher position obliged him to buy the Farhad version of the same computer, which cost twice as much.

  The family budget didn’t suffer that much for his paying 1600 Islamic euros instead of 800. But it was insulting. Now he comes home and finds that Aset has brought home some kafir girl. Even if you do your best to play the game, the Islamic system can be a daily barrage of fears and irritations. He told himself that none of this was serious. But it had been a demanding day.

  The solution in this world is that the woman would begin delicately easing the situation. The table was already set for lunch. Their beautiful older daughter would run in to hug her father. They would bring the baby to him to be kissed—she was so sweet, strong, and healthy... His passing anger, in fact, would just be a reflection of his contentment with family life, and his concern to defend it.

  However, his wife’s strange intonation boded the cold shadow of something different and very serious.

  “Where could a kafir girl come from, if not from the ghetto?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure, but she’s probably with Maquis . I brought the girl here to hide her from the police.”

  “A girl from the Resistance Movement? A member of Maquis here in our house?” Kasim’s whispered incredulously, with his voice almost trembling. “Aset, you’re ill. You’re babbling. I can’t believe that you would do that.”

  “If I hadn’t helped her, the girl would have fallen directly into the hands of the police. And you know what they do with Maquisards . Sweetheart, in another situation, it could have been our daughter.”

  “So, what are you doing—trying to turn fate around so that our daughter becomes a subject of police investigation as well? We’re on a knife-edge here. I’m walking on eggs at work so my family can live safely and comfortably. Is my wife in the meanwhile digging a hole for us? I can’t imagine that you helped a kafir girl from Maquis! Do you think she will thank you? Do you have any idea how much those fanatics hate us? More, I believe, than the true believers do!

  “They could kill me, an officer of the interior army, at any moment—the same way they killed qadi Malik. The pen-pushers from the First Department will put off my transfer to the Ministry for at least another month because of that. But that’s not the important thing. Today the Maquisards killed imam Abdulwahid. Do you understand that your so-called good act will not stop Maquisards from killing your husband?”

  “I’m afraid you may be right,” Aset said. “But I am convinced that the two things have nothing to do with each other.”

  The woman who stood before Kasim was wearing Aset’s raspberry-colored dressing gown, which was long, gathered at the waist and made of natural silk. She wore her familiar house shoes of crocodile skin that he himself had chosen for her as a birthday present. But she was a stranger. Moreover, she was far more attractive than his wife.

  “You should get medical help,” Kasim finally said, truly angry, saving himself from the strange feeling. “You are acting like your abnormal grandmother who chose to spend ten years sitting in the house!”

  “Since we’ve begun talking about our forefathers, you look absolutely nothing like your grandfather. I mean your paternal grandfather. He was also an officer, wasn’t he, sweetheart?”

  He couldn’t have expected such a low blow from Aset, a reference to a carefully guarded family secret, a skeleton in the closet. It was too terrible to contemplate. No one in the family ever mentioned, even to himself, that Grandfather had been sentenced to five years in prison.

  At the end of the century, when he was at the epicenter of military operations against the Serbs, he secretly let them know the coordinates where NATO planned to bomb them, and where their KLA enemy’s troops were located. Grandfather wasn’t even paid to be a spy. He was simply siding with the dirty kafirs in their battle against the true believers.

  At that time, the true believers were not in power in Europe, so he was sent to an ordinary prison. But if those facts were to float to the surface now—well, the best career path Kasim could expect would be to spend the rest of his life in some horrible garrison in Picardie.

  “Thank you for reminding me of that,” said Kasim in a dead voice. “Your husband has more reason than you to be ashamed of his forefathers.”

  “Dear, hasn’t it occurred to you that your grandfather would be more ashamed of you today that you are of him? Did he perhaps betray his military obligations because he didn’t want his great-granddaughter to be named Iman?” She suddenly sobbed. “Maybe he would have wanted her to be called Nicole! Nicole, like I wanted to name her, but I always kept quiet!”

  Running up to his wife, Kasim grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand and struck her across the face with the other—forcefully, but without anger, only to stop her hysteria.

  Aset suddenly relaxed. She threw her arms around her husband’s neck and sobbed silently, hiding her face on his chest.

  “Forgive me, sweetheart, forgive me; it’s difficult enough for you without me! Perhaps I really am ill. Perhaps this is something I inherited from by grandmother. I don’t know. I don’t know what is happening to me!”

  “Calm down, sweetheart,” Kasim squeezed his wife in his embrace. “You must have had a terrible shock when you saw the murder of qadi Malik. The late qadi , truth to tell, was truly a repulsive man, although very necessary. But to see something like that up close—it’s terrible, especially for a woman. And that poor Zeynab was your friend. Of course, now she has to forget about socializing. But of course you feel sorry for her.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” Aset wiped her tears. All they needed now was for the servants to notice. “I’m going to fix my face. Then I’ll tell them to bring out lunch.”

  “Don’t rush, dear. Tell them to serve lunch... in fifteen minutes.” Kissing his wife’s cheek, Kasim left the room.

  The old servant Ali, whom Kasim respected most because he never bothered to learn French, not even lingua franca— even though he had arrived in Paris when he was fifteen years old—was already waiting for him with his civilian clothes. Sending the lackey away with a tired wave of his hand, Kasim stood for a while holding a light-colored shirt that fell below the knees, a short red waistcoat, and pants.

  Meanwhile, illiterate blacks were wearing the same T-shirts and jeans his father would have worn around the house. But what could he do? His position demanded it. Nevertheless, how he disliked to wear these stupid rags! Arab or Afghan, he couldn’t understand where the inane fashion originated. Then he asked himself why he called them “rags” and “stupid.” It was very comfortable clothing of good quality made of natural fibers.

  Kasim wearily pressed his palm on his forehead: Psychosis wasn’t like the flu, after all. One didn’t get it from contact with someone who is infected. Or was it contagious in another sense? It must have taken her some time to come up with something like “Nicole”! Imagine naming his daughter Nicole! And perhaps the little one should have been Genevieve? What nonsense. Something weighed heavily on his soul, was it perhaps because Aset, who had always been very smart, so brusquely revealed the shame of his family? Or was he not well because his wife was not well? What was wrong with her, anyway?

  He wasn’t even hungry. Kasim listened carefully, approached the door and turned the key in the lock. Another key, to the drawer of his desk, lay among the jewelry in a small case that opened with with a code. At first glance, it looked like another box with shirt buttons.

  Here it was, the contents of a secret drawer. Kasim turned the glass tube with white powder in his hands. He was too cautious. After all, this was not haraam . Many people allowed themselves this pleasure occasionally, several of his superiors among them. He took a piece of yellow
paper, rolled it into a cone, and poured in a little of the powder into it with a small measuring spoon. It wasn’t haraam . He believed that he would never become addicted. He hoped he would never start using anything stronger.

  Leaning back in a soft armchair, he inhaled the cocaine.

  His hands and feet became like tufts of cotton—immobile, as if someone had extracted the bones from them. Somewhere in his brain, bubbles of happiness appeared that resembled the bubbles of champagne he had tried when he was twenty. But how could you compare champagne with this miraculous white power, creating this joyful blizzard in his head?

  When Kasim entered the dining room, the whole family was sitting at the table. Little Aziza with her bib sat proudly in her highchair. Only Aset’s red eyes betrayed her—she had put permanent lipstick on her mouth, powder on her face, and rouge on her cheekbones.

  “Bismillah...”

  When he started eating, Kasim understood that the effect of the narcotic had stopped quite quickly. Otherwise, he would have not noticed that everything was somehow going wrong. Contrary to her usual habit, Iman did not pout or ask for ice cream instead of lunch. She didn’t giggle or pretend the oysters were going to bite her. She sat somewhat tiredly and ate what was put on her plate.

  The thought flashed through his mind: She was already fourteen. In another year or two, three at most, t hey would have to part. He should start looking for a suitable party. A disgusting task, but one shouldn’t stick one’s head in the sand. Even ten years ago, marriages among converts were a normal thing, but now they were viewed disapprovingly. It would be difficult to marry Iman to some decent young Frenchman. And to think that Sheik Yusuf had already said several times that he would like to take her as his fourth wife! Kasim resisted, claiming his daughter was still too young— and hoping that within a few years, the old man would get a heart attack .