Authors: Ruth Francisco
“What?
They can’t do that!
Peter isn’t an enemy combatant!
How can they?”
Dad took me into his arms, but I twisted away.
“Let me go!
They can’t do this!
I hate this country!”
“I’m sorry, Ann.
Everyone is doing whatever they can.
Peter will be visited every week by Amnesty International.
They will make sure he’s not being abused.”
“You mean tortured?”
I thought of the Muslim German citizen
Khaled
el-
Masri
I had read about who was whisked off to Afghanistan by the CIA while he was on vacation, beaten, stripped, drugged, and interrogated for four months until the CIA realized their mistake.
How many more like him we never heard about?
“Why are they holding Peter?
He’s not a member of any terrorist cell.”
“Honey, honey, honey.
Calm down.
For one, he’s refusing to talk about what he did in Amsterdam.”
I groaned, sick with guilt.
Peter was protecting me.
If he didn’t talk, they would never let him go.
Then I remembered I had lied to Mom about even being in Amsterdam, and now Dad knew.
My face felt so hot I thought it was going to pop.
“Have they charged him with anything?
Can’t he get out on bail?”
“Military courts don’t work that way.
Is there something you need to tell me, Ann?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“You can’t, I’m sorry.
Apparently the FBI went through Peter’s things at Canterbury College and confiscated his computer.
They’re saying Peter accessed
jihadist
websites.
He had a lot of materials he probably shouldn’t have had—tapes of Al Qaeda executions and suicide confessions.”
“He was writing a paper, okay?
Half the political science majors at Canterbury write papers on terrorism.
They even teach a course on it!
Everyone reads the websites.
Everyone reads the English version of
Al
Jazeera
.
The students are trying to understand terrorists, not become one.”
“Calm down, sweetie.”
“What about his rights?
He’s a U.S. citizen.
His parents are U.S. citizens.”
“It’s okay, pumpkin,
it’s
okay.
Come here.”
His hug felt like a straightjacket, my rage growing hot, whirling up inside of me like an evil extraterrestrial escaping from its human host, all jaws and claws and flailing tails.
I ran to my room and slammed the door.
Unlike Anne Frank, at least I had my own room.
#
I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning, tormenting myself, completely racked with guilt.
It was me who had insisted on going to dinner with
Marjon
and Nicholas.
Hungry for adventure, flattered the Dutch couple took an interest in us—in me—I had ignored Peter.
If we hadn’t gone to
Marjon’s
, we wouldn’t have seen the murders and would still be in Amsterdam or some other place in Europe.
He was right to blame me, to hate me.
He didn’t even turn around to look at me when security dragged him away.
Now Peter was in some military jail cell—I couldn’t imagine how horrible—and my selfishness put him there.
Imprisoned, without free will for the first time in his life.
Strange sounds—clanging doors, moans from other prisoners, telephones, voices, footsteps—keeping him awake.
He must be terrified.
I wanted him beside me, his hands on me, his breath on my neck, his mouth on my mouth.
I wanted to press all of my skin against all of his skin.
If I imagined him vividly enough, maybe I could save him.
Frustrated, I threw off the covers, got out of bed, and went to open the window.
A crescent moon hung in the black sky.
A crescent moon, the symbol of Islam.
The symbol of submission.
Chapter Four
Over the next two weeks I split my time between reading newspapers and watching television in a nearly catatonic state of horror.
Just as soon as Amsterdam seemed to be settling down and the curfews and military presence seemed to be quieting the population, renewed violence broke out across the city.
Islamic riots and demonstrations paralyzed the city.
A local
Salafi
Imam declared the Muslim
Slotervaart
district, home of Mohammed
Bouyer
, the murderer of Theo Van Gogh, was now under Islamic law.
Utrecht was taken over by Islamists, who stormed local government buildings and burned them to the ground.
In The Hague, a group of officers of Islamic descent led the army in a coup.
The ranks of the military, which were forty percent Muslim, overran the House of Parliament and local administrative offices, replacing local police with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al
Queda
.
They liberated all Muslims held in prisons or jails, which was seventy percent of the prison population.
A Muslim militia crossed the land putting local imams in charge.
Salafists
declared Holland an Islamist regime, and Imam
Fawaz
Jneid
was declared “emir of the faithful.”
Panicked non-Muslim populations across Europe reacted swiftly, joining the rightwing Germany National Democratic Party, the French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, and the Flemish Interest Party.
Emergency legislation in Belgium called for containment of Muslim neighborhoods and the closing of all mosques.
Muslim schools were shuttered.
Muslims on the streets in groups of more than three were arrested.
Muslims were banned from driving in certain parts of the city.
Muslims had to be indoors by eight o’clock.
Muslims were forbidden to attend cinemas, theaters, and other places of entertainment.
If these laws seemed reminiscent of Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws no one mentioned it.
Civil unrest spread to Northern European Countries that had large non-integrated populations of Muslims: Iraqis and Iranians in Sweden, Pakistanis in Norway,
Turks
in Denmark.
Only Finland and Iceland, with almost no Muslims, remained unscathed.
The first city outside of Holland to fall was
Malmö
.
Sweden’s third largest city, which was forty percent Muslim, declared itself an Islamic State.
Within days imams in Muslim communities throughout Europe also declared their neighborhoods “Islamic Jurisdictions”: in
Roubaix
, France; in Bradford, England; in Copenhagen, Denmark; and in the
Sint-Jans-Molenbeek
neighborhood of Brussels.
The French military continued to battle guerilla wars in urban areas.
Muslim refugees, fleeing Belgium and Germany into France and Switzerland, were turned away at the borders.
They had nowhere to go, open targets for vigilante groups.
Hundreds were killed.
The whole world was weighing in on the European crisis.
While
Al
Jazeera
was reporting that
Salafi
extremists were celebrating the unrest in Europe as the beginning of global jihad, leaders of many Middle Eastern countries were expressing indignation at the wide deployment of military forces to civilian neighborhoods.
“Any treatment of Muslims above and beyond that sanctioned by Amnesty International will require action,” said the president of Lebanon.
“Internment, expulsions, or massive arrests of Muslims will not be tolerated.”
I recalled a line on a T-shirt worn by geology majors at Canterbury College because they thought it sounded sexy—“
subduction
leads to
orogeny
.”
The collision of tectonic plates creates mountains.
That’s what seemed to be happening to the world—civilizations were colliding into each other, massive, immutable forces beyond anyone’s control, creating insuperable divides.
And no one could stop it.
#
“Why don’t we just drop a bomb on the
towelheads
.
Just nuke whole damn place.
It’s all just one godawful
desert
anyhow.”
Alex scooped an enormous glop of mashed potatoes and slapped it onto his plate.
He had been in an oddly bullying mood since I got back, his body jumpy and tense like a jock sitting out a penalty on the sidelines at a championship game.
He shoved food into his mouth as if he couldn’t wait to get away from us, his every word confrontational.
Dinner time was delightful.
“Alex, I won’t stand for that kind of talk,” snapped my father.
“There is enough intolerance going around without you adding to it, even flippantly.”
“What’s the purpose of having
a gazillion nuclear warheads
if we never use them?”
“The whole point is deterrence,” my father said patiently, “the threat of massive retaliation.
It’s about power, maintaining our global strategic position.
The point of having them is to keep anyone else from using them.”
“That assumes our enemies are rational.
Muslim extremists are suicidal maniacs.
Sitting on our bombs isn’t going to deter them.
They don’t care if they sacrifice millions of people.
They figure even if Muslims die involuntarily, they are martyrs, their deaths glorious.
Everyone goes to heaven.”
“I don’t think there are many Muslims who believe that,” piped in Mother, “only the extremists.”
“Islam is not a religion of peace,” Alex said hotly.
“Muhammad participated in twenty-seven battles.
He ordered assassinations.
He told his followers to make war against unbelievers until they were converted or subjugated.
The
Quran
demands Muslims to obey and imitate Muhammad.
Jihad is essential to their faith!”
“You are wrong, son.”
When Father started speaking like a Baptist minister, I knew he was angry.
“Suicide bombing is completely against the teachings of Muhammad.
‘Do not kill yourselves; for surely God has been merciful to you.’
Being a martyr means another person kills you, not that you kill yourself.
Furthermore, the killing of women and children is forbidden in the
Quran
.”
“Furthermore...,” mocked Alex, smirking around the table.
“Have you noticed how everyone has begun quoting the
Quran
?
Everyone is a fucking expert.”
“Watch your language, Alex.”
I gave him a swift kick under the table, which he ignored.
He was on a roll.
“Bin Laden claimed Muhammad’s deathbed injunction to ‘banish the pagans from the Arabian Peninsula’ requires Muslims to get rid of any western presence in any land that was once ruled by Muslims.
He argued women are fair game because they’re now in the military, and civilians are fair game because they elect their governments and are culpable for their actions.
All I’m saying is
jihadists
aren’t going to hesitate to use nuclear weapons.
They just don’t have them yet.
We should use ours first.”
“You want us to drop a nuclear warhead on Mecca?” asked my father.
“Great.
Then Iran takes out Israel.”