The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (3 page)

4

My father did not teach
madrassa
often, but would sit in during especially important lessons. I remember the day we learned about the seventy-two virgins. My brothers—Fouad, Ibrahim, Omer—were there and also my mother’s brothers, Uncle Khalid and Uncle Shafiq. My mother sat quietly at the end of the table while Father told us a story from the
hadith
about a man who charged into a Jewish army all alone, sacrificing himself for Allah.

“The moment he died, he woke up instantly in
jannah,
” Father said. “Allah presented him with seventy-two virgins, women who had never before been touched by a man. And each virgin also had seventy-two virgins attending her, and all these women belonged to the man who died as
al-shaheed,
a martyr.”

Uncle Khalid winked at Fouad, who grinned widely. It seemed my oldest brother thought this was a fine arrangement. But I sat on my
tesat
and thought about it.
Seventy-two times seventy-two?
At six years old, I could not even count that high.

“Father,” I said, “You only have one woman in the house, and you fight all the time. How are you going to be able to manage so many women?”

My uncles burst out laughing, and Father smiled a little sheepishly. He thought it over for a moment, then said, “The grace of Allah is sufficient.”

He went on to explain that there would be no bickering or fighting in
jannah
. “These women will attend to all your desires and needs.”

“So they are servants?” I said.

“No, they are
, virgin women. They will not be angels, but not human, either. They will be there to meet your heart’s desire.”

I knew what he meant. My friends had told me a million versions of how sex was done. Also, I had seen sheep and goats mating in the little barn behind our building.

But now I wondered:
What about my mother?

I looked down the table and caught her eye. Then I turned to my father again. “You are married to my mother,” I said. “If you die as a martyr and you get this many virgins, how about if my mother died as a martyr? What does she get?”

My uncles and my brothers laughed, although a bit nervously this time. Father looked at Mother, who returned his glance, then looked down.

Finally, he said, “Your mother will become one of the
.”

I frowned and looked down at the wood patterns in the table. This answer did not settle well with me. My brother Ibrahim had once told me angrily that in the Koran, Muhammad referred to women as the “ground that we walk on.” We could not think of our mother that way.

I could feel everyone staring at me, waiting. Finally, I looked up at Father. “If Mother works hard in this life and dies as
al-shaheed
, why doesn’t she get seventy-two virgin men?”

My uncles’ mouths popped open. Then they looked at each other, threw their heads back, and roared with laughter. My father’s face flushed red, and a vein on his neck began to pulse. Then, quick as a cobra, his hand closed the distance to my face.
Whack!

“Insolent boy! Never talk about your mother that way!”

My father glared at my uncles, but the joker Khalid did not care what my father thought, and he snorted out loud. Mother did not say a word.

My question ended
madrassa
that day. But a week later, I was out on the roof chasing lizards through the liquid sun when my father emerged through the door from the living room and walked to the wall overlooking our street. I went over and stood beside him. Below, a vegetable merchant slowly wheeled his cart past a knot of giggling girls. Marie, the Christian girl from next door, was down there.

My father pulled a lighter from the pocket of his white shirt and lit a Kent. Leaning his elbows on the wall, he turned his head toward me. “Do you remember what you asked me about your mother?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Your mother will become the head of the
, the head of the seventy-two,” he said. “She will be in charge of them all.”

Father never told me where he got that. Maybe he went to the mosque and asked the imam. If he did, I learned later, the imam most certainly told him, “The woman gets nothing.”

But Father could not come and tell me that.

5

People traveled to Beirut from all over the world, and the richest ones rented chalets—colorful tents on the seashore. Yellow stripes, blue stripes, white, red, like candy dotting the sand. Americans called them cabanas. The rich people jetted across the cobalt water on their big boats with wooden skis, nearly naked in their western swimsuits. It was the fancy life.

“These people bring evil with them,” Mother told me. “When the flesh is exposed, the devil gets loose.”

I nodded solemnly, but was secretly fascinated.

During the summer, Saturday was my favorite day. The whole family would get up at the crack of the sun and walk the short distance to the shore. I remember those walks, my heart beating, excited to visit the sea again. From my dreaming window, the Mediterranean had always called to me, inviting me to explore its endless blue depths. To come and dabble at its cool, clear edge was to me like ruffling stars at the fringe of another universe.

At that hour, the infidels would not yet have defiled the water, Mother and Father told us, having stayed up too late the night before indulging in their debaucheries.

I walked along the shore with my brothers and sisters, collecting seashells and watching tiny crabs scurry across the wet sand. Rising over the mountains behind us, the sun turned the sea foam pink as it tickled
our ankles. My aunt and sisters waded into the water wearing bathing suits underneath long shirts and snug pants down to their ankles. They did not remove these outer garments even when they swam. Afterward, they were careful to wrap up tightly and quickly, not wanting anyone who might be out early to see their hair or skin.

On these days, my father tried to teach me to be a man. He would grab me and throw me into the water with just one instruction: “Swim back if you want to live!”

6

In
madrassa
, when we learned about Sura 99, “The Earthquake,” my father sat with us again.

“At the day of judgment, Allah will bring all your good works and your bad works together and put them on a scale,” he said, looking pointedly at me and each of my brothers as we sat on the kitchen floor. “If your good works outweigh your bad works, you will go to heaven more quickly. If your bad works outweigh your good works, you will go to hell.”

My own works flipped through my mind like snapshots: fighting with my brothers and sisters…helping myself to guavas and plums from my grandfather’s garden…the “medical games” I secretly played with Marie next door.

I am in bad trouble….

I glanced across the table at my younger brother Omer and saw no concern. Nothing fazed him; he was always happy as a little rabbit. But Ibrahim would not look at me. I could see he was as tormented as I, stuck somewhere in his thoughts like a mouse in a trap.

Father had talked to us several times about the flames of hell and the tormenting giants who would use meat hooks to rip you apart. We had already learned that, according to the Koran, every Muslim, except for
al-shaheed
, has to pass through hell. There, Allah purifies you through
burning. After a long time, if you were not an altogether bad Muslim, Allah would excuse you and admit you to a dry place between heaven and hell. Finally, if you pleaded many times, Allah would let you into
jannah
. You would be among the lowliest and receive only a few virgins and a little bit of food. But Mother assured us that even this was much better than earth.

After
madrassa
was over, I scurried to the bathroom and climbed up into my secret place, the attic where we stored rice and grain and kept blankets in the summer. My heart was melting completely because I knew I had no hope. I was not even good enough to make it to the dry place.

My breath came short and quick as I thought about the demons with the meat hooks. Leaning back against a sugar sack, I thought,
My deeds will have to make a place for me
.

I remembered the teaching about
al-shaheed,
the martyrs for Allah. My mother had taught us that one Muslim man has the strength of ten infidels, just like Prince Ali Baba in
The Arabian Nights
. As the comforting smell of wheat and rice seeped through the cloth bags all around me, I looked up at the rafters and meditated on legendary Islamic warriors. One would charge at hundreds, knowing he was going to his death. The idea, I had learned, was to take as many infidels with you as you could. I imagined myself as the great Muslim general, Khalid ibn Walid, or as Omer ibn al-Khatb, the second caliph. Father had told us that wherever Omer walked, Satan ran away.

I could be a great warrior like that
.

I knew I did not want to grow up to be an evil man, not like that bandit who had dishonored his mother. And I remembered what Father had told us: “The first drop of infidel’s blood you shed, you can provide atonement for seventy of your loved ones.”

No matter how bad and evil I am now
, I thought,
one day I can save myself and my family
. One afternoon during
madrassa
, my mother taught us something amazing. She was reading from her treasured Koran. Omer was only about four at the time. Mother sat on the floor at the end of the kitchen table, and he stood at her side, tracing the words with his tiny finger. She was reading the Sura 9:5, which teaches that infidels do not deserve to live.

“Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them,” Mother read. She then looked up to expound.

“My sons, if you kill a Jew, on the day of judgment your right hand will light up before the throne of Allah, and all his heavenly host will celebrate.”

When she said this, I flashed back to an incident a couple of years before. At a young age, a sign had emerged that I was destined for trouble: when I colored with my crayons or ate my food, I naturally used my left hand. To my mother and father, this was intolerable.

In Islam, the importance of the right hand, and the “right” in general, cannot be overstated. Infidels are “the people of the Left.” Muslims are “the people of the Right.” We sit at Allah’s right hand, the side of goodness and righteousness. The good Muslim, when he greets a friend or makes a vow or opens the Koran, or even when he eats, does so with his right hand. When he dresses for work in the morning, he first puts on his right sleeve, his right pant leg, his right shoe. When he washes at the mosque, he washes his right hand first.

His left hand is reserved for unholy business, such as going to the bathroom or having sex with his wife.

Left-handed people are shunned. So, when I began using my left hand, my mother took to stinging it with one of her welt-raising switches.

I was not yet three years old on the day I was sitting on the
nuniah,
the training toilet, when my father got home. That was the hour when my mother delivered her daily damage report: which son had done this or that, which one had gotten into the most trouble. That particular day, as she finished running down the household news, my mother and father came and stood at the doorway to the water closet where I sat.