The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (4 page)

“…and I caught Kamal using his left hand,” Mama concluded her report.

“Burn it,” my father said without hesitation.

“What?” mother said.

“Burn his hand.”

Burn my hand! With fire?

“No, no, no!” I cried from the
nuniah,
my pants bunched around my ankles. My mother disappeared from the doorway and returned with a
small box of kitchen matches. Crowding past my father into the tiny room, she came and squatted on the floor before me. She grabbed my left hand and put it under her left arm.

“No, Mama! No!” I cried.

Mama twisted around so that I faced her back, my arm clamped in the vise between her left arm and side.

A strike. A sizzle. A whiff of sulfur.

“No! Please!” I screamed, now choking with fear.

I pushed at her and kicked with my feet. I kicked the
nuniah
and it tipped over; a pool of urine spread around my feet. The heat of flame licked near my hand, and I fought wildly.

“Mama, don’t hurt me!”

Suddenly, she let go. Turning to face me, she blew out the match. A curl of bitter smoke snaked up my nostrils.

From the doorway came my father’s voice: “You are a Muslim child, and you will use your right hand.” Then he turned and walked away.

I cried all night long and would not allow any of my brothers and sisters to talk to me. That my mother who loved me would burn me was scarier than anything else. I decided that no place was safe.

I had not thought of that day for a long time until Mama told us about our right hand lighting up before Allah. Now I was thankful she had corrected me, that I might instinctively use my right hand to kill an infidel and not displease Allah by using my left.

“Why do we do this?” I asked.

Killing infidels is one of the ways Allah would open heaven for us, she told us. The more infidels we killed, the better our chances to move quickly from punishment to paradise.

“It is your duty,” she said. “It is the duty of the faithful to punish and harass the Jews and Christians, who are thieves and traitors to Islam. They are cursed as monkeys and pigs, and their spirits are unclean. It is in the Book.”

In July 2007, Walid Shoebat and I met in Aspen to address a meeting of the Jewish-Christian Relations (JCR) on the subject of anti-Semitism and Muslim terrorism. Speaking to this audience was an extraordinary experience for me, meeting eye to eye with the very people I had been brought up to think of as my blood enemies. After leaving Islam, I had embraced the teaching that people “of every nation” were the same in God’s eyes. By the time I met with Walid for the JCR conference, I had believed that for more than twenty years. The opportunity to (perhaps, in some small way) redeem some of the evil I had committed against this people was of great meaning to me.

Our stay in Aspen was brief, and the glorious summer made me wish we could stay longer. Around us, the Rocky Mountains, blue-green with spruce and pine and still capped with snow even in July, jumped out in sharp relief from the crisp Colorado sky. The morning of our departure, my wife, Victoria, and I sat by our hotel swimming pool chatting over coffee with Walid.

Walid is not Walid’s real name. Born in Bethlehem of Judea, Walid’s grandfather was the Muslim
mukhtar
, or chieftain, of a village in Israel called Beit Sahour-Bethlehem. While living in Jericho, Walid lived through and witnessed Israel’s Six-Day War. Like me, he joined the PLO at a young age and was later imprisoned in the Russian Compound, Je
rusalem’s central prison, for committing violent acts against Israel. After his release, he resumed his acts of terror against the Jews, eventually continuing them in the United States, though in the form of fomenting propaganda against Israel while working as a counselor for the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago.

Though schooled in violence, Walid was also an intensely scholarly man whose
jihad
was informed by hundreds of hours of Islamic study. Ultimately, it was his intellectual bent that led him to abandon holy war. Islamist men are taught that they can marry Christian or American women in order to convert them, or to gain innocent-looking entry into a certain society. In 1993, in a challenge to convert his Christian wife to Islam, Walid studied the Hebrew Scriptures. Within six months, he decided that everything he had been taught about the Jews was a lie. Convinced he had fought his whole life on the side of evil, he became an advocate for his former enemy, speaking to tens of thousands at churches, synagogues, and civic groups, and to government leaders and media about the cause of Israel.

For that, he was marked by the jihadists for death—and by many in the American media as a bigot and a charlatan. As we sat by the hotel pool, steam rising from its surface and from our coffee cups, he told me that soon I would be marked as well.

“I have a real concern with your security,” he told my wife and me. “You both need to understand that as Kamal becomes better known, you will need to eat, sleep, and breathe security.”

Victoria looked at me, concern straining her eyes.

Walid had been speaking out against radical Islam for five or six years by then, but I had only recently joined the fight. I could tell he thought me an innocent who was far too willing to think the best of the other guy in the room, unworried about embracing, shaking hands, and sharing personal stories.

He had learned the hard way to be more careful. “I was targeted several times,” he told us gravely. “They tried to find me and my family. We had to keep moving from place to place, hiding. To find a safe place, I eventually had to move out of the country.”

Walid’s grim manner sent fear spearing through my heart. He reminded us of what had happened to Zakariah Anani, the third member
of our trio, who had received multiple death threats. In Canada, jihadists burned up his car and burned down his house.

“Every one of us in the Shoebat family is continually conscious of our environment, our surroundings,” Walid said. “We wonder, are we being followed? Are we being watched? It is always at the forefront of our minds.”

I looked at my wife and could see reality beginning to sink in on her face. Walid was telling us that if we continued on this path, our lives would never be the same.

“Move often,” he urged. “Get an 800 number. Make sure that your real name never appears on any documents.”

He told us to hire a registered agent to handle all our business transactions and never to reveal where we live.

“Above all,” he said, “trust no one.”

1

In
madrassa
, Mother loved to talk about how her ancestor warriors, Arabs and Turks, had used their thick and heavy swords to lop off the heads of Jews. They were men of great courage, she said. Muslim warriors were clever and strong, first piercing the enemy’s armor with their swords, then severing the infidels’ arms from their bodies.

“Now the Jews and Christians could not raise their swords against the Muslim fighters,” Mother told us. “And that’s when the Muslims chopped off the infidels’ heads.”

That day, during our coloring time, I pictured myself on a white horse slicing through enemy armies with my mighty Muslim sword. As a child of six, when your mother loves you so much and is nourishing you, you believe her with every part of your being. Among my brothers and sisters, I was the one who believed the most. I was the one with the big faith. I used to lie on my back on our concrete roof, drinking in the passing clouds. In them, I saw Allah’s creations. Some were glorious and mighty like a snowy mountain or an eagle. Some were funny, like cartoon trees and toucans and fat elephants, as if in scrawling his art in the heavens, Allah was trying on purpose to make me laugh.

Allah must be great,
I thought.
He must be big. He must be awesome!

With the world he created as my witness, there was no question about my mother’s honesty. To me, she spoke the mother’s milk of truth.

That night, I had a dream so powerful that I never forgot it. I saw myself sitting on a haughty white horse, wielding a
saif
, a heavy double-edged sword, in each hand. The Day of Islam had come about, the day when Muslim warriors would cleanse the earth of every infidel and establish the true religion, the day that every infidel would convert or die, the day that
Umma
would be complete.

In my dream, I rode bareback without armor, no shoes on my feet and wearing only the white
sherwal
, bloused pants tight below the knees and above the waist, like the Ottomans. In the eye of my dream, I knew this was a battle of no return. I might die, I knew, but I would take with me as many infidels as I could. Sleek, muscular, and majestic, my horse stamped and snorted amid an army of fierce Muslim fighters, all of us ready to charge under the scarlet flags of Islam. Rank after rank in military formation, we faced off against an army of our enemies arrayed against us across a vast, foggy battlefield.

One warrior cried out, then many: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” One nation, one voice!

The infidels charged. Unafraid, I kicked my stallion’s flanks and galloped forward, racing the wind. Setting my horse’s reins free, I plunged into the enemy formation, drew my swords from their scabbards and swung them left and right in deadly arcs. Every sweep of my blades sent a man’s head tumbling off his shoulders and onto the ground. At this sight, the Islamic dream warriors cheered for me, chanting, “Wa Islama! Wa Islama!” Power to Islam!

Now my dreamscape shifted so that the end of the battlefield melted into the golden carpet that, it is written, leads to the throne of Allah. I knew that I must be in
jannah
, paradise, which meant I must be dead, martyred on the battlefield. Joy seized my heart! I had done it! I had become
al-shaheed!
Now, like an offering of melons, the severed heads of Jews and Christians rolled down the golden carpet to Allah’s feet, and when I looked into his face, I saw that he began to smile.

“Only my crazy Kamal would do such a thing!” Allah said to me. “Welcome! Welcome to your reward!”

2

Fouad and Amira went to
Madrassa al-Riyadh
, a private Muslim school in West Beirut. (Amira would be allowed to go until she was a teenager; then she would have to quit school and devote herself to learning to be a wife.) As a small boy, I was impressed with the way they could read and write, and I could not wait for the day when I would be old enough to go with them and learn important things. But the first day they took me there, I cried and cried until there were no tears left in my head. At first, it was because I suddenly realized that going to school meant leaving my mother. Later, it was because I learned school was a brutal place.

Winter had wrapped itself around Beirut. An icy wind charged in from the sea, whipping through the alleys to assault us on the streets. Amira held my hand as we trudged along past the shops. Rain dripped from the colorful awnings, making wet, smacking sounds on the pavement. My tears made my cheeks colder. I sniffled and tried to bury my face in the collar of my coat.

“Kamal, you always wanted to go to school,” Ibrahim said impatiently. “Why are you crying now?”

“Be quiet,
inta majnoon
!” Amira snapped, calling him crazy. “He’s only afraid to leave Mama. He will be fine when he gets to school and meets his new friends.”

Amira tried to pull me closer. At that moment, we were walking past the open garage door of a mechanic’s shop. The smells of grease and welding oozed out into the street, and I saw a man in there wearing a dark mask and holding a gun that shot blue fire.

At the sight, I sank to the sidewalk, threw my head back, and howled.

“See what you’ve done!” Amira said to Ibrahim. Clutching her book bag, she bent down beside me. My cries echoed off the concrete face of the building, and I could feel the wet ground soaking through my pants.

Through my tears, I saw two men emerge from the mechanic’s shop to stare at our little tableau.

“It is his first day of school,” Amira explained.

Dressed in blue coveralls, both men smiled and nodded sympathetically. One of them had a banana for a nose, with nostrils as big around as my thumbs. “It’s going to be alright,
ya habebe
,” Banana-nose said. “You’re going to go to school and become smart, and the whole neighborhood is going to be
very
proud of you!”

I looked up at the mechanic and saw that he had hair sticking out of the holes in his scary nose. I screamed louder.

Now, even Fouad had had enough. He grabbed my hand and lifted me firmly to my feet. “Come, brother. We’re going to be late.”

Fouad dragged me along and I followed like a sheep, sobbing all the way. Finally, I looked up to see a towering double gate made of green wrought iron. Each half of the gate was shorter at the hinges, then rose in height to where they met at the center. Each pole in the gate was topped with a point like a spear.

Inside the gates, a huge concrete stairway led down into the school proper, where five buildings housed classes of all ages.
Madrassa al Riyadh
was one of the largest private schools in Beirut, home to at least several hundred kids. To me, it looked like tens of thousands as Fouad, Ibrahim, and Amira led me to my classroom, which was in a building painted baby blue. Rosebushes lined the stairs and walkways. The colors and gardens soothed me, and school began to seem more friendly.

When Amira opened the door to the classroom, music spilled out: piano, French horn, clarinet. Suddenly I was mesmerized. Fouad helped me hand over my lunchbox to the smiling teacher, who assigned me a seat with a colored sticker to remind me in case I forgot. She took me by the hand and led me to my seat. Suddenly confident, I waved goodbye to my brothers and sister.

The teacher had seated me between two boys, whose names I remember to this day: Nabil and Mukhtar. Mukhtar was a kind little boy and was always trying to think of fun things to do. But Nabil was devious. He thought about everything evil he could induce me to do. It was like sitting between an angel and a devil.

Soon we reached the ten o’clock break. In the center of the school stood a little shop with a door that opened on top while the bottom stayed shut. My brothers and sister had told me that inside that won
derful little building were candy and cakes and petit fours, and even little toys like tiny soldiers and cowboys. From inside came the smell of fresh popcorn and, best of all, freshly fried potato chips. I could see a long line of children forming at the door. Nabil and I drew near them and I saw that each student who went to the little door-gate came away with a treat.

So I got in line. My mouth began to water as other students passed by with white paper cones filled with the glistening hot chips which, my brothers and sister had told me, were dropped in a fryer, drained in a big steel net, then sprinkled with sea salt.

Child by child, I edged closer to the shop, where I saw that a teenager manned the door. He had dirty blond hair and blue eyes.

“Potato chips, please,” I said when I reached him.

He scowled like a prince looking upon a beggar and handed me a wide paper cone, twisted at the bottom and filled with chips.

“Two
kroosh
,” he said.

I know my face was a question mark.

“
Two kroosh!
” he snapped. “People are waiting.”

“But I do not have any money,” I said. I had not known that the other children were
buying
their food. Only that they got in line and that when they came out, they had a treat.

The young shopkeeper snatched the cone away from me as if I were a thief, and I heard the light clatter of chips being thrown back into a bin. “Stupid boy! Get out of the way!”

Tears squirted from my eyes. Frightened, I backed away, afraid he might box my head for trying to steal. Worried that someone might tell my parents I had dishonored them, I scurried away to find Mukhtar. School was turning out to be a treacherous place.

At the end of the break, all the classes lined up near one of the buildings, each rank facing out, with the tallest child’s back to the wall and each student going forward shorter than the one behind him. I saw the other children spacing themselves by putting their right arm on the shoulder of the child ahead. Since it was our first day, our teacher was there to show us how to do it like the older students.

At that moment, a loud squealing, like a wounded animal, cut through the general chatter. I was already standing in line and now saw
the headmaster, a fat man wearing a blue suit and red moustache, striding from the direction of the snack shop. A boy trotted along beside him, dancing strangely on his toes, howling as he went. Behind those two walked a tall, dark man and a woman wearing a long red dress.

I knew the man with the red moustache was the headmaster because we had lined up and passed by him earlier that day. He had inspected our uniforms: Were they laundered? Were they ironed? And our fingernails—were they clean? I had heard from Fouad that if the headmaster found dirt or wrinkles, he would whack your hand with a ruler.

Now the headmaster turned toward the ranks of students, and I saw that the boy was the blue-eyed shopkeeper who had snatched away my chips. Tears streaked his scarlet face. His ear, the handle the headmaster had used to drag him center-stage, glowed the color of pickled beets.

“This boy’s name is Amal, and he is a thief,” the headmaster announced. “When we came to collect the money from today’s shop sales, we found part of it in Amal’s socks.”

Amal’s chest heaved, and I could hear his breath hitching. He kept his head down, his eyes glued to the pavement. The dark man standing on the boy’s right looked on grimly. In his hand, he held a raw plank of wood, about two feet long, with a rope dangling from one end. The woman stood on his left, holding a thick length of dark-stained wood, wide at the front and tapered back to form a handle.

For the second time since I stepped through the green gate made of spears, I began to cry.

“This is the only time we will warn Amal,” the headmaster went on. “If he ever steals again, we will call the police and he will be dismissed from this school.”

Then he turned to Amal. “Take off your shoes.”

Shaking and crying, the boy obeyed.

“Sit down and raise your legs,” the headmaster ordered.

My stomach knotted. I could feel more tears sliding down my cheeks. The boy behind me in line began to sniffle, too.

Amal lay down on the concrete and raised his legs in the air. Lunging forward, the dark man placed the new plank behind the boy’s ankles, and wrapped the rope around the front of his ankles. After two passes
with the rope, the dark man tied it to a nail that stuck out from one end of the board.

Amal’s legs were secured to the plank and the bottoms of his long, skinny feet exposed. Now the boy began to cry in earnest. “Please, I promise never to do it again! Please!”

His pleading was pitiful but they did not stop the proceedings. The woman handed the red-veneered paddle to the headmaster, then stepped up to hold one end of the plank that bound Amal’s feet. The dark man held the other end of the plank. The headmaster then swung the paddle back like a tennis racket and swung it forward again, landing blow after blow on the bottoms of Amal’s feet.

The boy screamed and so did I.

It was terrifying, a nightmare unfolding in the flesh. I imagined they would grab me next for one reason or another. What if Amal told them I had tried to steal chips?

3

As we got older, there were times when my father and mother taught the boys and girls separately. My father took Fouad, Omer, Ibrahim, and me and taught us some things the girls did not need to know. He taught us that we were superior to our sisters and, in fact, to all women, because the woman had sinned in the Garden of Eden. She was the weaker vessel, not perfect like Adam, and Satan was able to deceive her easily through lust.

“Satan seduced her physically,” Father said. “Women are not strong. They bring sin to the house. This is why they must cover themselves from the tops of their heads to the bottoms of their feet.”

Meanwhile, my mother taught my sisters how to be good wives, how to honor their husbands, how to cook and clean and serve. Among the strict Muslim families we knew, no girl was allowed to go to school beyond the twelfth grade.

Reading from the Koran, Father taught us more about
jannah.
I learned that it was a wondrous place, dripping with fat grapes so juicy and sweet that the smell of them alone would fill you up.