He opens his eyes. The bathroom’s light is behind her. Her face is difficult to see as she continues sucking. Tariq, his head back.
“Get off. Please, get off.”
She stops. “Already, sweetie? Already?” She lifts herself from him and releases Tariq and lies upon his bed and opens her legs and Bassam rushes into the harsh light of the bathroom. O Allah, I take refuge with You from all evil and evildoers. He pushes closed the door. He locks it. His reflection there in the glass, he cannot look. He is sweating and his legs are weak and he pulls the reservoir from him and wraps it in tissue from the toilet and pushes it into the container for trash. He hears the bumping of Tariq’s bed against the wall, the kufar music from the radio, the whore’s cries of pleasure. And do not lie to yourself, Bassam. You would like to watch her do this. You would like to open the door and see more, to feel more. You would like to rest and do it with her again. The way Tariq does it now, on top. Your body has been dirtied, but it is a cooling fire and already you wish to burn again. For listen to her, her cries come from Shaytan himself, his dark joy at weakening you. Seducing you with the life of this world when less than one hour before you were in a state of purity, a state befitting a shahid. Could Shaytan be more joyous at this moment?
But no, Bassam, calm yourself. Calm yourself. We have only taken a bounty from the al-Adou al-Baeed; the Book, it is written clearly— women are your fields. This whore is simply the shadow of a taste of what is to come, Insha’Allah, as the women of Jannah will lie with them on soft couches in lush gardens watered by running streams. And there will be no kufar music playing, no whores, no money, but Bassam’s eternal flesh inside their eternal flesh. Allah willing, forever.
The bumping has stopped. Tariq speaks. The music has once again become men selling products. As he and Tariq have just been sold this one. That is all she has been, Bassam. A drink of vodka or beer when you were living among them, or a health shake Imad buys at these gyms after exercising.
The radio becomes silent. Bassam presses his ear to the door. The whore’s voice is close by, and he can hear her dressing. He hears the zipper. But he does not wish to hear any more, nor can he see her. She has made him do this, and if it would not harm their plans he would take his razor knife and push her to the floor and cover her mouth and cut her throat, let her bleed her dirty blood onto the carpet, let her body lie there while he and Tariq sleep comfortably on their beds whose sheets would have to be changed because of her and what she made them do.
Again she laughs, says, “Your friend.”
He pushes aside the shower’s curtain. He turns on the water as nearly hot as it allows. Is she laughing at him? Does she think he is a boy? He steps inside and pulls closed the curtain. She must leave their room. She must be gone when he is through, but if she is not, it will be difficult to control himself. It will be difficult, and he is grateful for the cleansing water, for the hot rain that extinguishes fires and leaves only ash, wet and black.
UNDER THE FLUORESCENT light of Publix, April pushed her cart. Inside it was romaine lettuce and vine-grown tomatoes, bags of pears, apples, and a slim crate of clementines. There were carrots and a box of raisins and a package of almonds. There was sliced cheddar cheese and smoked turkey and ham and Ritz crackers. She was buying what she and Franny always bought, nothing to hide here, nothing to change.
She hadn’t wanted to go out and told him so, told him she hadn’t showered yet and still had to buy groceries, that she didn’t know what time these people would be here in the morning and this just isn’t a good time, Lonnie.
“You have to eat, don’t you?” He stood there in an ironed short-sleeved shirt the color of bananas, his damp hair combed back from his face. He was looking right at her with the steady warmth he’d always given her at the club. Just a friendly face.
It was a marina restaurant on Sarasota Bay, one of the places April had applied to with Franny, and as soon as they walked in April wanted to leave. She followed the hostess, who led them through the air-conditioned cool, the linen-covered tables only half-full, out to the patio bar and the table Lonnie had reserved.
But the patio was nice. There were small tables under the last of the sun, most of them full, a woman singing on a platform just under the thatched roof of the tiki bar. She had long dark hair and wore white and she was singing something in Spanish, a keyboard player keeping time beside her. April sat down and looked at the piers of white boats, the sun shining off Sarasota Bay. She closed her eyes, saw Franny holding her arms out to her in Tina’s office.
She stood.
“You okay?”
“I’m sorry, Lonnie. I have to go.”
In the health food section, she opened a protein bar, cookies and cream, and ate it slowly. It’s what she and Franny did. She grabbed a peanut butter chocolate for her and dropped it into the cart.
Lonnie had driven her home quietly, as if he were deeply ashamed of himself. She didn’t mean to embarrass him, but to care right now about how he felt was beside the point. Back in front of the house he’d gotten out fast to come around and open her door. She was going to have to deal with him soon, wasn’t she?
Before leaving for here, she knocked on Jean’s door and asked if she needed anything, had she eaten? She said she hadn’t, but she wasn’t feeling too well, and behind her on the counter was a mug, her cat licking a tea bag on a spoon.
April put the protein wrapper on the clementines where she would see it and not forget to have the girl ring it through. It’s how she and Franny did it. How they always did it.
In the dairy aisle, April opened a pint of milk and drank. It was cold and cow-sweet. This too would be rung up empty, then thrown away, the cashier dropping it into the wastebasket under the register, the virtuous feeling this gave April every time, that she was a good citizen, an honest person who worked hard and did the right thing without ever being told to, her daughter happy and well-fed and cared for. So why now, standing before the bright shelves of milk and cheese and yogurt and butter, did she feel like a liar, one about to be found out and then punished?
THE BEDSIDE LAMP burns once more and Tariq is dressed and sits beside the window he has opened, his feet resting upon a chair. He is smoking, blowing it into the darkness. The room is cool and there are the smells of the smoke and the whore’s perfume. On the desk is the glass of wine she did not drink and Bassam, his towel wrapped tightly about his waist, thinks of Imad seeing it and he takes the glass and pours it into the toilet, the red swirling in water.
He rinses it and carries it back to the minibar cabinet.
“Bassam, did you like it?”
“No.”
“No?”
“She is a whore, Tariq. A kafir whore. She is fortunate I did not kill her afterward.”
Tariq smiles. Look at him sitting there with no modesty like a kafir: his feet with no socks, smoking his cigarette. No longer distracted, no longer restless.
“What is funny, Tariq? Do you think I am joking? I will go find her and kill her now, Allah willing. I will do it.”
“Bassam, you liked it. I know you liked it.”
“My body liked it, Tariq. I did not.”
Bassam grasps his khaki pants and makes the du’a for dressing. All praise is for Allah who has clothed me with this garment and provided it for me, with no power nor might from myself. He secures the button of his pants. He pulls over his head the polo shirt from the drugstore in Del Ray Beach. He picks up from the floor his soiled clothing and carries them to the closet and shuts them inside.
“Think how much better will be Jannah, Bassam. Insha’Allah. Just think of it.” Tariq pushes his cigarette into the small wine bottle, the smoke rising.
“Do not be proud, Tariq. We must be vigilant now.”
“I am not proud, Bassam. I am prepared, that is all. I am ready.” And he rises and passes Bassam, touching him lightly upon the shoulder.
I am ready. How different they are. Tariq has lain with a whore and now he is ready t
o leave this world. But why did you lie with her as well, Bassam? How could you have felt so stongly in the presence of the Holy One in one moment and then succumbed to the worst of this life in the next?
The door closes, the shower runs, and Bassam knows he has lied to him. He would not kill the whore, he would not. What he wants with her is more time. What he wants with her is more and more of what she sold to him, for it was over so quickly. And there are so many ways of doing it, are there not?
He looks at their remaining money beside the beds, and Al-Khaliq help him, for he wishes to count it, to see if there is enough to buy her once more. Or to buy another one. One even prettier. But he will not be able to bring her here. Imad will return soon, Insha’Allah. Allah willing. Allah willing. What is he thinking?
He looks downward at his mattress. Its cover is wrinkled slightly but that is all. There is no other sign of what happened here. No sign of his seed being wasted. So why does he wish to waste it again and again? For a feeling? A simple physical sensation? Or is his soul as tied to the earth and all its pleasures as strongly as a kafir’s?
Cliff, at the convenience station, over sixty years and he has bleached hair and smokes the entire day and wears gold around his throat and wrists, the inked markings there of women and their hips and naked nuhood, the cross of Mary’s son, the names of kufar women he has lain with, one of them burned away by a lighted cigarette. Cliff, who called him Sammy. Cliff, who has certainly lain with many, many women in this world. His face and body an ugly map of his lostness, his nothingness, his unbelief.
What, Bassam? Do you want to stay here, is that it? Do you wish to smoke and drink and lie with whores and non-whores like the tall girl who smiled at you today? The girl who certainly at this moment is taking her boy inside her, pulling his precious seed from him? His strength? For that is what they do, do they not? These kufar women? Even the kind ones like Gloria, like Kelly, especially the kind ones—they take from you your power, your physical strength, yes, but also your ability to think clearly, to receive the Word of the Creator, to see and accept His signs.
Bassam grasps the bed’s cover and rips it from the mattress. He throws it into the corner. He sits. On the table, the sealed envelope from their commander. To all of them. Here, and across the river, and in the two cities to the south. Look how many thousands of kilometers from home they have come. Look at all the work and preparation, the training and practice, the fasting and prayer. Do you think this is wasted, Bassam? Do you think one brief thrusting into one kafir whore will waste this? Are you not ready to do what must be done? Are you not?
He pulls open the bedside drawer. He removes his razor knife. It is gray and metal and always he has liked the weight of it in his hand. But he has not always liked what they have planned to do with these, has he? A kafir businessman, yes. But a woman? A friendly woman—he has been blind. For look at how weak he is now. Look at what the white whore and Shaytan have done to him.
He pushes the button, the blade revealing itself. It is silver and very short and shines in the light from the lamp. It is so sharp it cuts paper and it will cut flesh easily, Insha’Allah, it will cut through it very fast, and after all is done, Allah willing, from the highest rooms he will witness what happens to these jinn on the Last Day. He will watch them beg for their souls. He will watch them kneel before the Judge and the Ruler and tear at their faces and prostrate themselves and beg and beg, but for them only will be the everlasting fire and what joy Bassam will feel, Allah willing, as he watches these whores fall from the bridge into the flames. As he watches them fall.
He retracts the blade, drops it onto the holy book of the kufar, and he pushes shut the drawer.
SHE HAD TO talk to him through a video screen. Her own son. She had to sit in a chair in front of a TV with him looking back at her in his jail clothes and talk to him on a telephone in the narrow, loud hallway where many others sat in front of similar television screens talking to their loved ones too.
She’d never seen him look so bad. Even when he had to come live with her away from his family, even then. It was his eyes. The will she’d seen in them his entire life. That undying determination to get done what had to get done, to get through what had to be gotten through. It was there in his low-slung eyes when he was little and pushed one toy into another, when he was bigger and walked off to the school he hated, when his voice was changing and he closed his bedroom door to her and whatever man she was giving herself to, when he was grown and carried all of Eddie’s tools onto the sunporch each evening and then back out every morning, when he married that Deena—even then, standing before the justice of the peace in the county courthouse with only her mother and father and Virginia as witnesses, Alan in a jacket and tie she’d bought him, his pregnant bride in a plain cotton dress, he had that look, that this was another thing to take on and he was going to take it on and get through it.
But looking at him this afternoon on the television monitor looking back at her, she saw him in a way she never had. His shoulders were slumped and he kept looking away from the camera like he wasn’t sure where he was or what he was supposed to do now or if she was even there on the other side.
He’d taken a long breath and let it out. I was trying to do something good, Mama. I was trying not to think of myself.
You never do, honey. You never did.
On the drive home she began to cry for him, this boy she’d raised to take on everything so alone. Why couldn’t he have just called the police? Why couldn’t he have asked her for help?
But why would he? Lord, why would he? When she thought of their past together, so much of it was with AJ as a tag-along—to her work, to the barroom or pool hall with whomever she was with, as a young third-wheel she’d put in front of the TV while she carried on with Eddie or the men before him in the kitchen or the bedroom.
Then Eddie gone and his vodka too. How quiet the house got, AJ working nights at the drugstore in the clothes she ironed for him. She’d smoke and flip through the channels, not really watching, just waiting, it seemed. But for what? Weeks and months of this, and she was smoking so much she couldn’t breathe. Had to get that tank. And then that woman on TV, that pretty woman Virginia’s age talking about her assault, about two men who’d bound and gagged and “violated” her for a day and a half. Virginia doesn’t remember how she escaped or what happened to the men, only that the woman went on to describe years of drinking and promiscuity. “You’d think I wouldn’t want any man to touch me. But I was trying to fill an emptiness only the Lord can fill. Only Him.”
Virginia began to weep.
The following Sunday she walked into a Catholic church. Seated in half the pews were well-dressed families: husbands and wives and kids. The walls seemed to be made of dark wood and stained glass, and suspended high above the altar was Jesus on the cross. The priest was young, his dark hair combed back from his face. He was handsome and spoke of the evil among and within us, and it was like putting words to the name of something you’d seen or used for years but had never known. There was the feeling she was being gently lifted and placed on the right path, one she could only stay on by letting go of the wheel.
You need to sell my truck, Mama.
But she wouldn’t. She had two CDs worth plenty and tomorrow she’d cash them in and hire a lawyer.
And she’d get him out of there. With God as her witness, she would do whatever she had to for her son. For her one and only son.
MONDAY
THE ROOM IS darkness. Bassam touches his chest. He touches his face. He turns upon his side and pulls up his knees, his legs whole, his arms—still here.
The shower runs. Tariq’s bed is empty, and the red light of the clock radio casts dimly: 5:03. Your last full day, Bassam. Allah willing, your last full day. He makes his supplication for waking: All praise is for Allah who gave us life after having taken it from us and unto Him is the Resurrection.
Bassam pulls the covering away. He sits and turns on the lamp and his eyes n
arrow at the light. He closes them and prays the morning supplication: We have reached the morning and at this very time all sovereignty belongs to Allah, Lord of the world. O Allah, I ask You for the good of this day, its triumphs and guidance, and I take refuge in You from the evil of this day and the evil that follows it.
Water runs in the pipes in the walls. The brass clip is empty, their remaining money lying upon the two sealed envelopes. Bassam lifts his and rips it open, his fingers shaking as they did with the whore he fears now has ruined him.
It is several pages photocopied, and it is both a comfort and an admonition seeing his written language from home.
The Last Night
1. Make an oath to die and Renew your intentions. Bassam rubs his eyes. He sits more erectly. Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. Shower.
2. Make sure you know all aspects of the plan well, and expect the response, or a reaction, from the enemy. Bassam’s heart begins to beat more quickly. He breathes deeply through the nose and he wipes more sleep from his eyes.