Caliphate (8 page)

Ishmael escorted the two burka-clad girls from the house to the market. That was part of his official duty; he didn't hit Besma up for
baksheesh
for it. This was to the good as Besma only had the two dozen
dirhem
she'd begged from her father to buy some new clothes and shoes for the new girl in the house. Her father's wife had objected, and her older stepbrother, Fudail, had sneered, but still her father had given over the money. Besma was, after all, the pearl of his heart.

They went into a women's and girls' shop, a simple door into an old brick building with a sign to one side and the windows painted black. Ishmael had to wait outside with the other various
mahram
, the men suitable as escorts for women because sexual intercourse was prohibited between them and the women escorted.

Ishmael was not exactly in that category. He could legally have had intercourse with either Besma or Petra, had they been married. Ishmael, however, was a eunuch, having been castrated as a boy, just before he was sold. He
couldn't
really be expected to have intercourse with anyone and so was
mahram
as a practical if not a legal matter. Even so, Ishmael's master, Abdul Mohsem, was taking some risk by having him escort the family's womenfolk.

One aspect of that risk was visible just across the street from where Ishmael and the rest of the
mahram
squatted outside the women's store. Ishmael didn't know what the crime was, but he saw a group of
mutaween
, wearing their traditional brown robes, drag a man from another shop and force him up the street to one of the usual sites reserved for executing the judgments of the police for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue. There was a stout pole there, affixed into the cobblestones. From the pole hung a looped rope.

The man being forced blubbered and begged for mercy. It was not forthcoming.

First, one of the
mutawa
knocked the man to his back by a blow to the face. Then two others gathered up his legs and lifted them. A fourth dropped a loop of rope over the ankles while a fifth pulled on the rope to raise the feet. Once this was done a sixth lashed the rope to a pintle on the pole. The man's shoes were removed, and the senior of the
mutaween
took a long, stiff but flexible stick from another and bared his right arm to the shoulder.

Even from as far away as he was, Ishmael heard the hiss of the stick. He could have been considerably farther away and still heard the scream of the victim.

The shop was small and the shelves and racks something less than full. Dust gathered here and there showed that the emptiness was not a recent phenomenon. And yet Besma had said that this was one of the better women's shops in the town. Petra assumed this was so, and really didn't even notice the emptiness of the stock or the dust where no stock lay. Her town's one remaining general store had had even less.

"What was that?" Petra asked, as the reverberating sound of a human scream penetrated the shop's black-painted windows.

"The
mutaween
," the shopkeeper answered. "They become more vicious with each passing day. And if you're a poor
Nazrani
minding your own business . . . I'm Muslim and it still makes me sick what they do to the
Nazrani
."

Petra gulped. She was both
Nazrani
and poor. Worse, she was owned. What would they do to
her
?

Besma patted her arm. "Don't worry," she insisted, "I won't let them near you and they wouldn't
dare
touch
me
."

Having had a chance to watch the household for a while by this point, Petra wasn't sure that Abdul Mohsem hadn't doted on Besma so much that she had forgotten her place in the world. After all, their burkas sat on a chair in one corner. Outside was a man who would escort them wherever they went. And she'd seen enough to know that Moslem women, if wealthier, were not even as free as the wretched
Nazrani
girls and women of Grolanhei.

She said nothing, though.

Besma turned her attention to the shopkeeper and said, "My friend needs two new dresses and a pair of shoes."

"Yes, miss. Right away." The shopkeeper measured Petra by eye, then went to a shelf and dusted off some cobwebs. She removed half a dozen ankle length dresses in what she thought was a fair match for size and brought them to the girls.

For the nonce, Petra was able to screen out the screams and sobs coming from outside in her wonder at the fine—she certainly thought it was fine—clothing the shopkeeper began laying out on a table top.

* * *

The actual beating was over, though the victim still sobbed loudly. Two of the
mutaween
left, while the rest stood around smoking and, apparently, telling jokes.

"Poor bastard," Ishmael said to no one in particular.

One of the
mahram
smiled, perhaps sadly, and said, "You haven't seen anything yet. Wait."

It wasn't long, so Ishmael saw, before the two
mutaween
who had left returned carrying a large bucket between them.

"Now it gets nasty," the
mahram
who had spoken previously said. "That's ice water. They're going to pour it over his feet."

"What will that do?" Ishmael asked.

"You'll see."

The two
mutaween
lifted the bucket and began to pour water over the bruised soles of the victim's feet. Within a few seconds the crystal clear water running off the feet turned red, even as the victim emitted a scream such as Ishmael couldn't remember having heard since his own castration.

"Does something to the blood vessels, the bones, and the skin," the
mahram
explained. "Regular water wouldn't do; it has to be cold."

"
Il hamdu lillah,
what did he
do
to deserve that?"

The
mahram
looked on Ishmael with something like pity. "You don't get around much do you? The
mutaween
probably demanded a 'donation' which he refused. That would be enough."

Ishmael, even though he thought this an abomination, also thought it very likely as the
mutaween
began circulating about the square shouting, "Donations for the defenders of the faith to continue with their holy work?"

He still had the dirhem he'd been given by Besma. When he dropped one in the cup of a
mutawa,
and got nothing but a dirty look in return, he decided that his feet were more important than a few bits of silver. He turned over all he had. Each tinkle of silver on silver was like a knife to his heart. That money was
freedom
money. And, yet, how much would the
mutaween,
who made a living from robbing others of their freedom, care for the freedom of a castrated slave?

There had been just enough money, after purchasing dress and shoes, to replace Petra's threadbare burka with a new blue one.

"It will match your eyes," Besma assured her, "even if no one but you and I and Ishmael know that it does."

Mahmoud stretched out on one side of Gabrielle's bed. He'd tried to cover himself partly with the top sheet but she'd insisted on full nudity for her sketch. Having moved the sheet, she'd stepped back, looked him over, then reached out and draped his penis at what she thought was an aesthetically appealing angle.

"Besides," she said, smiling warmly, "I
like
seeing you like this."

It was a strange thing to Gabi, what she'd come to feel for Mahmoud. She was modern and western; casual, recreational sex was no big thing to her. What she felt when she was with Mahmoud was not casual. Rather, it was—though she didn't like the term— something approaching
sacred
.

What he felt for her? Well, he'd never plainly said. His upbringing wouldn't permit it yet. Yet in his every action he proclaimed love. He was putting up with posing for her, after all, even though he hated it.

"I still feel ridiculous," he said, even while putting up with the pose for the sake of love.

"It's for
art
," she insisted. "You'll be famous."

"I don't want to be famous. And my mother will have a stroke if she sees."

"Your mother is kept in purdah, veiled and without a television," Gabrielle countered. "She buys no books; she can't even read. She'll never see."

Mahmoud sighed. When an argument was lost, it was lost. "At least turn on the television so I can keep my mind busy."

That seemed fair. Gabrielle walked over and turned on the TV. When the screen cleared, she and Mahmoud saw what appeared to be a major protest in Paris. It soon became clear that the protest was over a recent French decision to ban the wear of hijab in schools. There were at least two German states, or
Länder
, that were considering similar measures.

"That's just so wrong," Gabrielle said.

Mahmoud disagreed. Shaking his head firmly, he said, "It's not wrong, though it might be pointless and it might turn out to be a mistake. Trust me; I know my people. Any toe in the door you give them they will exploit ruthlessly. Any concession you make will convince them you are weak and lead only to demands for ever greater concessions. Which you'll give because making the concession in the first place showed that you
were
weak; that, or stupid, which amounts to the same thing.

"That said, the only thing worse than making a concession is first making a show of strength and defiance and
then
backing down. That will convince my people that you are both stupid
and
weak. And I'm not sure the French will understand that . . . or understand that, once having taken their stand, they can't ever back off from it. You're making some of the same mistakes here, with your publicly funded mosques."

"Oh, hell, Mahmoud, that's ridiculous!" Gabrielle exclaimed. "To think that a few little headscarves are going to bring about the collapse of the Republic of France. To think that treating Turks here with some decency is going to ruin Germany."

"It's not the symbols, Gabi, it's what the symbols do to the minds of men, how they affect the cost-benefit calculus, and where they indicate the direction of movement is."

"I still think it's ridiculous to think that a minority population— what is it in France? Five percent? Ten?—is going to overthrow the country."

"Probably closer to ten percent," Mahmoud said, "Eight, at least. But it's a population that's young and growing." He stopped for a moment and asked, "Gabrielle, how many brothers and sisters do you have?"

"None, as you well know."

"First cousins?"

"Two."

"And the typical French artiste has but few more. The same for the Italians, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Scandinavians, the—"

"What's your point? The world can't support more."

Mahmoud gestured with his chin at the television, the screen of which showed thousands upon thousands of young women and girls, each wearing at least hijab, and many in burkas. "Tell
them
that. Those girls will be married by the time they're eighteen, sixteen or seventeen for some of them. They will pump out four or even five children each. The half of those children who are girls will do the same. In a hundred years, if things don't change, one Moslem women will have increased her gene pool—more importantly, her religious and cultural pool—at least thirty-two times over. Still more girls come in illegally from overseas and are entered into arranged, often polygamous marriages. Maybe they'll have fewer children, sharing a husband; maybe they won't, either. But from the point of view of the imams, it's all good, all free increase in the numbers of the faithful, here, on the battlefield they believe matters."

"You can't
know
that that will happen," she countered.

Mahmoud shook his head, sadly. "No, I can't know. But that's the way to bet it."

He thought about it for a minute and then announced, "Tell you what, Gabi. This Friday, we're going to drape you in a burka—don't worry, I'll buy it; they're already very easy to find here now. Then you and I are going to a mosque, one that preaches in German. I want you to hear what the people you're defending say about you."