The Garden of Last Days (54 page)

Khalid was educated and he was Bassam’s older brother, but he was weak, too. Perhaps even weaker than himself. If the kufar had not been allowed to spread its dirty music across the borders, its cigarettes and autos and televisions, its noise and its speed and its distractions. If the king had not allowed it into the birthplace of the Prophet, Allah’s blessings and salutations be upon him, would not Khalid still be alive in Khamis Mushayt? Would not their mother have been spared her grief? For accept this, too, Bassam, there is no guarantee Khalid was
spared either. Yes, he would give a cold man his coat, but his mind was given over to these people, was lost to these people.

The kufar couple are sitting at a small table. They face one another. The woman’s foot rests on the man’s bare knee, and he reads as if he is not this close to a woman, as if this means nothing. He is large. He is an athlete of some kind, and Bassam has practiced often against men his size, many times with Imad. The hand on the forehead, the jerking backward, the thrusting into the skin below the ear. He could do it now. He could walk into their area, stand a meter behind the man, pretend he is looking at the high window and its afternoon light, the ‘Asr prayer coming soon, very soon. She may look up at Bassam and smile again, so warmly as before, and he would strike, the blade pulled from the boy’s neck before he even feels the hand upon his forehead. The blood that must come. Her screams. Her eyes the eyes of one who can now see. Her ears that can now hear.

Bassam’s heart is pushing hard in his chest. He opens the notebook, puts the pen from Florida to the right side of the page.

O Dear Mother, ya umma al’aziza, I said to you I would write but I have not written. For this I am apologizing. Muta’assif
.

Mother, what I have done, Insha’Allah, I have done for the Creator. This is a great honor. I hope you are well pleased
.

Bassam stops writing. His father, he sees him laughing so immodestly. Sitting against the tapestried wall of the outer building with his brothers, with Uncle Rashad, laughing at one of his jokes. Bassam as a boy, he walked into the room, his father and uncle still laughing, Ahmed al-Jizani’s eyes wet and shining as they saw him, the joy there, an added happiness that he was here, his youngest son of so many. And the years that followed. His only son not to go to university. Those days with no end in rooms of lessons he soon forgot and the sitting and sitting he could not forget—why go to university when the streets and teahouses and souqs and malls are full of educated men with no jobs? Why go to university only to race on the highway and smoke on Mount Souda with educated men who, if they have work at
all, it is for those such as Ali al-Fahd? Why, Father? And what will you think of me soon, Father? Will you be proud? Will you be ashamed? Ashamed you could not see what was in your own home. A
chosen
one? A chosen
shahid
? Or will you disown me, Father? Are you so blind and deaf, you no longer truly
believe
?

The black kafir woman coughs. It is time for prayer, time to leave this temple of false idols and pray with his brothers. And if Tariq has not turned off the haram movie, Bassam will do it for him. He will pick up the television and throw it into the street. He knows he is strong enough to do this. He can feel it with each breath, with each breath given to him by the Mighty.

He reads what he has written. He does not know how to sign it. What final word for her when there is not even one for his father?

Far away there is muffled laughter. He must hurry back and pray. He writes:

YOUR SON
,

MANSOOR BASSAM AL-JIZANI

IN A WAL-MART
south of Bradenton, April pushed a cart up and down the aisles and filled it with things for Franny: a deep green bedspread, three pair of shorts, two cotton dresses, one she’d love because it had smiling yellow suns against blue; she picked out two bathing suits, a pair of flip-flops, a packet of underwear, and four pairs of ankle socks with purple stitching at the hem. She bought her a sand bucket and shovel and a pair of goggles. She wanted to get her a new toy chest for her room. And maybe a soft chair for kids. But they couldn’t look new. None of this should be in her room looking too new.

She was hungry. It was after one and it occurred to her she’d had nothing all day but coffee. She pushed her cart into the fast-food area near the big tinted windows and ordered a hot dog and Diet Coke and she sat in an orange booth and ate too quickly. She regretted telling Lonnie she’d let him take her to dinner. Leaving the club, she knew
she wanted to go shopping for Franny, then work on her room until it looked better than it ever had. But Lonnie was so cheerful and upbeat after quitting the Puma, he wanted to take her out to lunch on a beach somewhere.

“I need to get ready for tomorrow, Lonnie. Can you just drive me back home first?”

He’d looked guilty for thinking of himself, but she felt as if she’d just used him and owed him something.

“Maybe later?” she’d said.

“Dinner?”

“Okay.”

She had the rest of the afternoon ahead of her, but first she had to find a furniture store. There was that big mall in Bradenton. Franny liked it because of the Play Place in the food court, the netted pit of hundreds of plastic balls, Franny sliding down the red chute into them, disappearing as if she were underwater.

At a table on the other side of her cart, a man kept looking at her over his sandwich. He sat across from his wife and daughter, both heavy, the woman’s bra strap creasing the flesh under her shirt. His face was pink and shaved smooth, and he looked away from her looking back at him. April may have danced for him but couldn’t remember. She stood and crossed the room to throw away her hot dog wrapper and half-empty cup. She knew he was watching her, his face on fire that his nightworld and dayworld were here in the same place at the same time. It was as if she were electrified, could walk over there, put her hand on his shoulder, and make his heart stop. It was a power she did not want. A fame she’d like to shed.

Out in the bright parking lot, she pushed her cart over the asphalt past all the glaring cars. She hoped she’d be able to get the furniture in her trunk, that whatever she bought would be small enough to fit into the only space she had.

TARIQ’S SHOES ARE
no longer near the entrance. The room is darkened and quiet, the television off, and Bassam can hear them through the wall. Their voices are low. They are preparing for prayer. He places his notebook upon his bed and leaves quickly, allowing the door to close and lock behind him. He will perform his ablutions in Imad’s room, and he knocks upon the door. “Imad? Tariq?”

Imad greets him. His face is damp. He smiles downward at him and steps to the side, and as Bassam removes his shoes, he hears the voice of the Egyptian, he hears Amir.

“Mansoor?”

It has only been ten days but the Egyptian has changed; his face is shaved as usual and there are the dark lines he applies beneath his eyes, but he appears thinner, his skin olive-yellow, his eyes darker, and
he smiles at him and approaches and grasps his hand and kisses both his cheeks. “Assalaamu ‘alaykum.”

“Wa ‘alaykum assalaam.”

Amir keeps his hand on Bassam’s shoulder, regards Tariq standing near the bed, Imad. “Everyone is here now. And the rest are where they should be. Have you been fasting?” He asks this in a way Bassam has never heard before, not as a commander, forever monitoring him, doubting him, but as gently as would a friend.

“Yes,” says Imad. And so Bassam does not have to say no, he has not been fasting.

“Good.” Amir steps to the bed and opens a leather briefcase. It has brass fasteners and they snap open on the springs and he lifts the case’s cover and removes three sealed envelopes. Bassam thinks how he must mail his letter to his mother. He must mail it.

“Brothers,” Amir hands one to each of them. There is no writing on its face, nor on its back. “Tomorrow, Insha’Allah, is the last day, and you will open these. Read these instructions carefully and follow them.” He looks to each of them. The light of the lamp is in his eyes, and Bassam can smell his cologne, the same as before and now even stronger, but this is not the Egyptian with whom he has lived and traveled these months. Forever watching over each detail of each movement, of each plan, of each place they have lived. Forever watching
them
. This is the Egyptian Bassam saw for only one moment when he pulled the Cessna’s stick and they rose so steeply into the sky,
Allah is great, Allah is great
, his face so expectant of the joy to come, his reward everlasting.

“We are just moments away, brothers, Allah willing. But you must be vigilant and you must help one another and be strong. After tomorrow’s morning prayer, read these and follow them. I will see you the next morning in the matar, Insha’Allah. Now hurry, finish your ablutions and we will pray together. Then I must leave.”

They have pushed the second bed aside and there is room for two rows of two, Tariq and the Egyptian Amir, then Imad and Bassam. Imad
has lighted the incense, and how fitting that the direction in which they pray has the television at their backs, Makkah so far away but not far away, simply through the walls of this hotel and over the square of the best school and its high walls that cannot protect them, over the loud and dirty streets of the kufar, through their homes of false idols and over the sea on which sail tankers of Saudi oil, over the shores of England and France and Germany, over the heads of their women who laugh and smoke and drink and tempt believers away from where he travels now, through Spain and Italy and Greece, its wine-drinking kufar, its women naked on beaches he turns away from, through the Balkans where thousands of Muslims were massacred and the West watched, then over the Mediterranean he has never seen and blood-soaked Palestine the Zionists occupy, his brothers and sisters living in camps since they were born, the holy city occupied by Christians and Jews, their polytheistic temples and churches, their worship of Ezra and the Messiah as if there is not One Lord, then south through Egypt and Sudan and across the Red Sea to the beaches of the kingdom where as a boy he played and swam with his older brothers, his mother and aunts and sisters in full abayas on blankets beneath umbrellas, and years later he and Khalid and Karim would drive there in their auto built by the far enemy and laugh and make silly jokes about nothing, even later sitting so closely together on a mirkaz in one of the restaurants on the water, eating fried fish and yogurt, again talking about nothing because they were nothing, because they were adrift on the sea of unbelief and none of them had even begun to prepare for the hajj, nor would they now, though the shahid is exempt, the shahid is exempt, and Bassam is nearly there, passing the two hills of Safa and Marwa and the eternal springs found by the faith of Abraham’s wife to the Al-Haram Mosque and its stone Ka’bah built by the hands of Abraham and his son and how can Ahmed al-Jizani not be proud? How will he not be so very proud?

But Bassam’s mind is wandering and he must not allow it. They have already performed two raka’ats, and he knows he recited the prayers and words of praise with the others though time has left him,
he has stepped into non-time, and how can this not be a sign from the Holy One Himself? This feeling he is nearly a spirit, he is already nearly a spirit in this world of flesh and a constant love of it. How happy he will be to rid himself of it. How joyous!

Now they are sitting, Imad’s shoulder touching his. His hip and his knee. He and Imad with their very important task. Amir and Tariq with theirs. His heart thrusts inside him. The camel races in the Empty Quarter, how the sand rose and blew over the tourists. He must forget this. He must let go of all thoughts of home for he will soon rise toward the only certain home there is. He is behind in reciting with his brothers the tashahud, and he begins it quickly to himself, then joins them.

Amir is gone. The room is quiet. Imad places his envelope on the lamp table. He sits upon the bed.

“You both should be fasting.”