The Garden of Last Days (47 page)

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 designs 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.

But how could he not look at them? Never had he seen so many uncovered women, their bare skin shiny with oil. And nothing happens by mistake. All is part of the plan of the Sustainer and the Judge. They were put on these beaches under the hot sun for a reason; perhaps it was to give him and his brothers a taste of what waited for them.

But this woman across the aisle, Bassam cannot look at her any longer, at her fat sunburned leg, the dimpled flesh of it—she does not even know how deeply she sins against the Creator. None of them do. This is what has troubled him. On the flight here from Dubai, he expected to see kufar like the American officers in the souq, tall disrespectful warriors laughing at them as they walked through the day fully aware of their actions. But not these stupid people living to please Shaytan and not even knowing it. They are like dogs except they are worse than dogs because they work hard to put you to sleep as well, to make you drunk, to take your money and your clothes and your dignity and your faith.

Their very way of living itself seeks to separate you from the Ruler.

Eternal vigilance
: the Egyptian has been correct all along not to join himself to any of them—with a smile, a shake of the hand, a polite hello or goodbye. He has been right to turn them away with his eyes. He has protected himself and their mission and now it is what Bassam must do as well, that is all—separate himself from those who would separate him from his own faith.

The woman laughs once again and he feels a hot anger flare inside him and burn: how close he has come to truly losing his place in Jannah and it is their fault—Kelly’s and Gloria’s, Cliff’s and April’s and the black whore’s and every waitress to whom he was polite, every librarian, every fuel attendant, and he only prays his judgment has not compromised what, Insh’Allah, will be done. He only hopes he left nothing behind in the Neon. He checks his pockets but there is no paper. Did he forget the receipt of his wire to Dubai? And why did he leave the tote bag in the trash? He should have put the contents into another bag within the container. But now a kafir maid may want the tote bag, a new black Nike, and she will have to empty its contents. And what will she find? Everything. The aeronautical maps and flight manuals, the Egyptian’s protractor and German dictionary, the flight-school books and Imad’s book on judo and the computer printout from the airline companies. What will she think then, Bassam al-Jizani?

THE DOCTOR WAS
a woman. She had long gray hair streaked with black she kept pinned away from her ears, and she wore no lipstick or eye makeup, but when she held his broken wrist in her cupped hand, AJ felt cared for once again, first by the old cop and now this doctor, and he felt bad telling her the bucket came down on it. She just nodded and listened. It was hard not to look at the smooth pale skin of her throat.

“When did this happen?”

“Hour, hour and a half ago.”

She kept her eyes on him, hers behind her glasses a blue-gray that wasn’t cold, just neutral, like she would never judge him but needed the truth and knew he wasn’t giving it to her.

He looked away. There was a color chart of the human body, intertwining strands of red sinew pulled from bone to bone. She laid his hand back down on his leg.

“It’s fractured. A nurse will take you to X-ray and we’ll go from there, all right?”

She smiled at him, but it was that deputy who took him, his hand squeezing AJ’s good elbow all the way down the corridors.

“You can ease up, sir, I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s for damn sure.” The deputy said nothing more. AJ could smell his deodorant and dry-cleaned uniform, his judgment of him, this man maybe even younger than AJ, who was treating him like he’d done something sick and wrong but they would find out soon enough that the girl was fine and he’d taken good care of her just the way he said he had.

But now he sat in the backseat of a moving patrol car, one cuff loose around his cast, the other snug against his wrist. Outside was too bright to look at, the sun glinting off car chrome and concrete, a palm frond drooping as if he’d let it down somehow, and he shouldn’t be surprised they were taking him to county but he was.

You can’t just drive off with somebody’s child, he knew that, and maybe he should be thinking more about it than what kept running through his head, the old cop’s words:
Alan, we’ve been to your home. We’ve spoken with your wife
.

Man, she could say he was crying, she could say he was drunk and driving, she could even say she hated him and never wanted to see him again—just don’t say anything about my bad hand, Deena. Please, honey, tell me you didn’t say I was already hurt when you saw me last night.

JEAN LAY ON
her sofa with a pillow over her eyes. She was trying to calm her erratic heart, trying to breathe, trying to fully accept whatever had to be accepted, the fear returning, swelling inside her as if it would swallow her, and April’s words still tore through her head like a whip of barbed wire.

Then Jean heard her actual voice calling for Lonnie to hurry, please hurry. There was the slam of her door upstairs, the fall of her feet on the outside steps, then Lonnie’s, heavier, and Jean was off her sofa and at the door so quickly she felt faint and grabbed at his arm.

“They found her. She’s all right.” Then he was gone.

She may have wept. She remembers kneeling on the floor of Franny’s room, her forehead pressed to the pillow, her eyes squeezed shut. Now her body felt light and loose in the joints but it wasn’t easy to
breathe and her mouth was dry and briny. She told herself to rest, to try to get a few moments’ sleep, but when she lay down on her bed it might as well have been electrified.

Franny, oh Franny
.

She made herself eat a slice of buttered toast. She made herself drink coffee, though it only added to this feeling her body was somehow drifting away from her, something old and tired that had its own needs whether she liked it or not. And it needed rest. But not till Franny came home, not until Jean had held her and kissed her and started doing for her whatever could be done. But how much longer would this take? They’d been gone over two hours.

She watched the news. There was a police photo of the man from a previous arrest for beating his wife. He had a boyish face, though he wasn’t handsome; he looked unintelligent and angry, something seething beneath the surface, and Jean was certain she would kill him if she could. But
she isn’t dead she isn’t dead she isn’t dead
. This phrase ran itself over and over inside her steadier than her own pulse. It was there as she stepped out into the vapored heat that smelled of bougainvillea and mango leaf and damp roots in soil; it was there as she reached into the slatted shadow of the stairwell and turned the water faucet until the hose stiffened over the dried coffee April had spilled; it was there as she squeezed the nozzle’s trigger and sprayed the ixora and allamanda, the bougainvillea and cabbage palm and jacaranda; and it was there inside her, a mirror to her own astonishing aliveness only two days after the suffocating knowing that, she, Jean Hanson, was going to die here in this garden Harold never got to see.