Alif the Unseen

  “Intisar,” he whispered, “How did you know I was here?”

  She backed down the steps.

  “I was supposed to make you come out,” she said, “Where they could see you. They needed to be sure. They made me, Alif—I didn’t want this to happen—”

  The red beam of a laser sight danced near Alif ’s temple. With a screech, he ducked back inside the great door and slammed it shut. The crossbeam slid down into its cradle with a loud clank.

  “You bitch,” he shouted through the dense metal, “You’ve sold us all to the devil!”

  The lights inside the musala flickered, and shadows began to move across the underside of the dome in strange patterns, against the light. Alif felt chilled. Vikram appeared behind his shoulder.

  “Get the girls and the old man,” he said. “Lock the rest of the doors.”

  Alif looked up at him wildly. “What do you mean? What are we going to do?”

  “We are going to stay exactly where we are for as long as possible. Your friend’s new buddies can’t come inside a mosque, but that won’t stop them from trying. I have to warn you—this can only end one way.”

  “What? What way?”

  “With you in their custody.”

  Alif ran a trembling hand through his hair.

  “Is it better if I just turn myself in?” he asked. “Do you think they’d be merciful if I cooperate?”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  “Mother chode.” Alif sat down on the floor.

  “I told you,” said Vikram, scaling the far wall and the underside of the dome with his claws. He stopped, hanging batlike from the smooth stones, to examine one of the dome’s five skylights. The curling shadows retreated when he approached. “I can’t protect you from everything. At least, not permanently. However, some time is more useful than no time, so I will give you all that I can.” His voice bounced through the room and landed in Alif ’s ears half-muffled.

  Something occurred to Alif.

  “Vikram,” he called up, “Can you die?”

  Vikram landed soundlessly on the floor.

  “Oh yes,” he said.

  “How?”

  “The same ways as you. Starvation, thirst, old age, decapitation, a bullet wound, a broken heart.”

  “People don’t die of broken hearts,” said Alif.

  Vikram snorted. “You are at this very moment,” he said.

  Alif looked down at his chest in horror. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He pressed his temples with his fingertips until he felt pressure building in his head; the parameters of the world felt off, his processing speed compromised.

  “Get the girls and the old man,”Vikram repeated, “If they haven’t been awakened already by your cursing.”

  Alif got up and half-ran toward the rear of the musala. Sheikh Bilal was coming out of his office, buttoning the collar of his long robe with fingers that trembled.

  “What is this unholy racket?” he hissed. “Why is the musala empty? Where are the worshippers for the dawn prayer?”

  “I don’t think they’re coming today, Sheikh Uncle,” stuttered Alif. “The Hand—the men from State, and maybe some worse things—are here for me. Vikram wants us to lock all the doors.”

  Sheikh Bilal puffed his cheeks. “I have been caretaker of Al Basheera for thirty two years,” he said. “Never have I turned away a Muslim at prayer-time. This business of yours—”

  “I’ve been betrayed,” wailed Alif, the last of his self-control slipping away, “She tricked me and now we’re all fucked, Sheikh Uncle, fucked—”

  “God forgive us! How dare you use such language here? Is this Hamlet? Are we on stage? Stop blubbering and go perform your ablutions—we will do the dawn prayer ourselves, if nothing else.”

  Alif made a face at the elderly sheikh, aghast. “How can you possibly think of prayers at a time like this?”

  “How can you afford not to? Get out of here and wash your feet.”

  Incredulous, Alif stumbled toward the washroom to obey. He heard nervous female voices coming from the room with the camp bed. A gust of air hit him as the convert yanked open the door and looked out wildly.

  “What’s going on?” she asked in English. “We heard shouting.”

  “We’re surrounded,” moaned Alif, rolling up the hems of his pant legs with great energy.

  “Surrounded by what? What are you doing?”

  “Washing for prayer.”

  “Jesus—hold on.”The convert ducked back into the spare room. She emerged again with Dina, who was hastily pulling her veil into place over the bridge of her nose.

  “What have you done now?” Dina asked in a leaden voice.

  “Nothing. That bitch sold me out to State.”

  Though he could not see her face, Alif detected a faint air of satisfaction.

  “I told you she was trouble. Any rich girl willing to run around behind her father’s back in Baqara District is trouble.”

  “I know she was slumming it by being with me,” snapped Alif, “You don’t have to rub it in. She was going to be my wife—she did it for love—”

  “If you say so.”

  Alif cursed again and half-hopped across the cold tile at the perimeter of the washroom. The water that splashed out of the tap in the wall was frigid; he yelped as it hit his perspiring skin. A muddle of voices came from down the hall and split as they echoed against the washroom walls, creating a kind of operatic harmony: Sheikh Bilal’s loud indignation, Vikram’s musical contempt, the convert’s nasal protests. Dina was silent, but he could guess what she was thinking. A wave of guilt passed over him. He had no right to bring her into his perverse orbit, so far removed from the little duplex in Baqara District where she performed the hidden offices of her sex. She would be tainted by his infamy—he had, perhaps, put the nice young suitors with trim beards and reasonable salaries out of her reach. All this he had done by sending her to Intisar’s house with that wretched sheet, and by walking back from the date grove with her on a hot afternoon. It took so little to destroy a woman.

  Sheikh Bilal was calling his name. Alif finished his ablutions and hurried back down the hall toward the musala. The sheikh stood in an ornamented niche facing Mecca, sunk two steps below the floor to demonstrate the humility of the prayer-leader. Dina and the convert stood shoulder to shoulder in the rear of the room, near the great doors. Alif hurriedly turned his back; Dina would not be able to lift her veil for prayer with him looking. He stood just behind Sheikh Bilal, looking around furtively for Vikram—who had disappeared—before bowing his head.

  Someone pounded on the great doors from the outside. Sheikh Bilal ignored the noise and cleared his throat. The call to prayer came melodiously up from his lips in a voice that suggested a much younger man: confident, well-trained, unwavering. For a moment Alif was distracted by the force of the familiar words praising prayer above sleep. It was not singing, exactly, but some occult scale; the music of the spheres. The pounding arose again. Alif grit his teeth, forcing himself not to look back. He realized with alarm that anyone who came through the doors would get to the girls first. It was ludicrous to stand there and do nothing, he thought, like the sheep that crowded the streets on the eve of the Feast of Sacrifice, wagging their little heads and making plans for the following week.

  In front of him, Sheikh Bilal was bowing; Alif hurried to copy his movements. The commotion outside the great doors grew louder. Abruptly the noise stopped, replaced by a terrified howl. The hair stood up on Alif ’s neck. He knelt and touched his forehead to the musty carpet, fighting back the bile that rose in his throat. As he stood for the second raka the noise outside redoubled, punctuated by the sound of a police siren. Sheikh Bilal raised his voice: And on the Elevated Places shall stand men who know all things by their signs; they shall call out to the dwellers of the Garden: peace be upon you! They shall not have entered it yet, though they hope.

  On his knees, Alif greeted the angel to his right; when he turned to his left
he saw Vikram kneeling next to him. He yelped.

  “Quiet,” said Vikram, “You sound like a little girl.”

  “Did you just kill somebody outside?”

  “No. I thought the old man might be upset by guts on his doorstep. I gave them all a good scare, though. One or two are catatonic.”

  “How many are out there?”

  “They’ve cordoned off the whole street. That should give you an idea. The other things—well, it’s difficult to guess how many there are. They move as one. I’m not sure anybody besides the man who summoned them can see them. The people from State don’t seem to realize they’re there.”

  Dina crept up from the back of the room and sat down several feet away from Alif.

  “If I go out there and tell them I’ve been held hostage by a terrorist, do you think they’ll let me go home?” she asked Vikram. Miserably, Alif attempted to catch her eye. She ignored him.

  “Since you deliberately misled a State agent in order to protect your abductor, I doubt it.” Vikram cocked his head at her. “How is your arm, little sister? I smell blood.”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  The convert walked toward them, twisting her hands. The face above the hem of her violet scarf was pale and puffy.

  “I really don’t know about this,” she said in English. “I had no idea you were in this much trouble. I shouldn’t even be here—I’ve got class today—” Hysteria pressed at the edge of her words. Alif gave an inarticulate cry of frustration.

  “Sit down.” Sheikh Bilal’s voice left no room for refusal. He carried a folding chair under one arm and a volume of tafsir under the other. “Enough sniveling. You will all listen quietly to the lesson I prepared for the dars that would be taking place at this moment had your escapades not prevented my students from attending.”

  “What? Why?” Alif looked from the sheikh to the great doors. The sound of groaning metal suggested State had moved from manpower to more forceful methods. “This is crazy. They’re cutting through the doors and you want us to sit here at your knee like a bunch of pimply madrassa students? We’re done if we stay.”

  “We’re done if we leave. At least this way you can tell them I gave you nothing but tea and religious instruction. My skin will be safe.”The sheikh sat down on the folding chair, arranging his robe around him. Vikram loped across the carpet and scuttled up the far wall once more, disappearing out of a skylight. A pale, unsaturated luminescence, the false start of dawn, came down through the opening in his wake.

  Sheikh Bilal opened the tafsir to a marked page.

  “We will begin with a question,” he said. “It is particularly appropriate to this context. God, in His mercy, tells us that a good deed is recorded as soon as a person decides to perform it, while a bad deed is only recorded after it has been performed. But the world today is more complicated than it once was. So I present you with the following dilemma, posed to me by a young boy of my congregation: when one is playing a video game and his avatar consumes a piece of digital pork, has a sin been committed?”

  Alif waited. “You’re asking me?” he said when Sheikh Bilal was silent. “You’re the alim. How am I supposed to know?”

  “I’m interested in your opinion. I know very little about video games. It is my understanding that this boy is very involved in something called World of Battlecraft.”

  Alif sighed in exasperation. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” The great doors shrieked as though under pressure from a saw. “I really can’t concentrate.”

  “It mattered very much to this young person. I was inclined to tell him that if he was worried, it probably was a sin, or at the very least, would weigh on him as one. For God also tells us that when you perform an action you believe to be a sin, it still counts as a sin even if it is proven to be permissible. Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of man.”

  “All right, it’s a sin,” moaned Alif. “I don’t care. I don’t play Battlecraft. It’s for teenagers.”

  “I am not looking for any particular answer. Don’t feel you must agree. I want to know what you think.”

  “I think people need a break. It’s not like they’re out there selling bacon and booze. They want to pretend for a few hours a day that we don’t live in this awful hole getting squeezed by State on one side and pious airheads on the other, all while smiling our shiteating grins so that the oil companies keep shoveling money into our pockets. Surely God wouldn’t mind people pretending life is better, even if it involves fictional pork.”

  “But isn’t that a dangerous precedent? Fictional pork is one thing—one cannot smell it or taste it, and thus the temptation to go out and consume real pork is low. However, if we were to talk about fictional adultery—I know there are many people who do and say all kinds of dirty things online—then it would be another matter. Those are real desires manifesting themselves on the computer screen. Who knows how many adulterous relationships begin on the internet and end in the bedroom?”

  Alif blanched.

  “And even if they don’t,” the sheikh continued, “Who’s to say the spiritual damage isn’t real nonetheless? When two people form a relationship online, it isn’t a fiction based on real life, it’s real life based on a fiction. You believe the person you cannot see or touch is perfect, because she chooses to reveal only the things that she knows will please you. Surely that is dangerous indeed.”

  “You could say the same thing about an arranged marriage,” said Alif.

  Sheikh Bilal smiled a little ruefully. “Ah. Yes. You have me there.”

  The noise of the saw rose several decibels, screeched, and stopped. Voices yammered outside, high and confused.

  “Those doors are four hundred years old,” said the sheikh in a wistful voice. “The gift of a Qatari prince who passed through the City while on Hajj. They are irreplaceable.”

  “It’s my fault.” Alif wiped his brow with the back of one trembling hand.

  “Yes, that’s true. But. You are likewise irreplaceable.” Sheikh Bilal leafed through his tafsir. “I believe your friend has disabled their saw.”

  The convert, who had been pacing back and forth across the musala, came to stand next to the sheikh’s chair.

  “This is making me to worry, a lot, a lot,” she said in Arabic, “I can’t stand it any no more. I want to leave.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do,” said the sheikh. “But that does not seem possible at the moment. Would you mind if I asked you to boil some tea and fetch the tin of biscuits sitting in my office? Bless your hands.”

  The convert stared at him for a moment, then shuffled off to do as he asked. Dina rose from the floor and went silently after her, pulling her robe tight against her wounded arm like a sling. Alif watched her with deepening anxiety.

  “I have to end this,” he murmured, “I have to get her out of here.” He remembered NewQuarter01’s parting words: if this gets really bad u better do the right thing. U know what im talking abt.

  Sheikh Bilal sighed and closed his book. “So much fear and doubt over a computer program,” he said. “One does not even need to commit a crime in order to commit a crime anymore. We live in a simulacrum. I’ve got jinn in my mosque and State agents at the door—fah! Who could believe it? Soon we will lose the thread of history, and the birds and the beasts will be telling us what is real, and what is not.”

  The sheikh’s words prompted a memory. He had been asleep in the spare room, on the camp bed, and began to dream. Birds and beasts. A stag and a doe—like the story in the Alf Yeom. But the stag had not been a stag, not really. The stag was an avatar, a stand-in for a—

  “Utility program,” whispered Alif. His face felt hot and he began to perspire. The thought that had been lurking in the back of his mind, just out of reach, rushed out like a back alley thief ready to mug him for his wallet. It filled him with commands and equations, cascading tiers of information, coding platforms. He looked at the sheikh with glazed eyes.

  “Sheikh Uncle,
” he said hoarsely, “Do you remember that thing you told me when I was trying to explain quantum computing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That thing, that thing! About the layers of meaning in the Quran—”

  “Ah. Each word has seven thousand layers of meaning, all of which exist without contradiction at all times?”

  Alif was flooded with euphoria.

  “I know what he wants to do with the Thousand and One Days,” he said. “I know why he’s so desperate to get his fists on it.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “The Hand,” said Alif. “He’s trying to build a computer.”

  Chapter Ten

  Mercifully, Sheikh Bilal had a DSL line in his office. He ran it into a Toshiba desktop that was several years old and clogged with malware, but had enough RAM to suit Alif ’s purposes. After swearing to back up his Word files and archived emails in the Cloud, Alif convinced the sheikh to let him blank the hard drive, leaving a tabula rasa, a clean void of machine into which Alif could pour himself. He installed a Linux platform off of his netbook, feeling an almost erotic surge of excitement when the familiar home screen loaded, accompanied by a series of energetic clicks from the guts of the CPU. Alif propped the Alf Yeom against a half-empty case of bottled water that sat at the back of the sheikh’s wide, cluttered desk, opening the book to the story of the hind and the hare; the origin point. He took a breath.

  “I’m sorry, my boy,” said Sheikh Bilal from the doorway, “I still don’t properly understand what you are attempting to do. You said this censor is trying to build a computer. My computer is not only built, but becoming a little out of date.”

  “If I’m right, it shouldn’t matter.” Alif squinted against the pink dawn that flowed slyly inward through the latticed window. “I’m going to teach it how to think all over again. I will give it a second birth.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Alif looked over his shoulder at the old man with a feeling of beneficent tenderness. He shouldn’t be impatient; he was on fire with meaning, with light colder and purer than the ruddy dawn. He could explain anything.