The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (7 page)

3

The sidewalks dried into puddles as we moved into the neighborhood where the pack of Shia boys had chased me. A chill wind coursed through the curving streets, ruffling the robes of the imams who surrounded me like a mothering flock. Abdul Rahman insisted that I tell him where I had first seen them, so I led the imams back through the Shia neighborhood.

As we approached a corner bakery, I saw the boys who had chased me to the mosque lurking by the door. When they looked up and saw us coming, they scattered like a school of spooked fish. Outside the bakery the smell of rosewater and Turkish coffee poured into the street, and I could see through the glass several customers seated at small ta
bles, munching pastries. Abdul Rahman entered first, and I followed with the Abus behind me. On our right, a long counter ran the length of the shop; the diners sat to the left, knives clinking on plates. Behind the counter, glass cases displayed
baklava,
sesame cakes, and
kanafa
with cheeses. Suddenly, I remembered I had not eaten since leaving my mother’s kitchen. I longed to be there now, safely inside the rustling of the berry tree.

A man with a small moustache squared off behind the counter and wiped his hands on the towel that hung from the bellied waistband of his white pants. His eyes roved over what must have seemed a curious group, one small boy with six large men.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

Abdul Rahman put his right arm around my shoulder and ushered me before the baker. Quivering inside, I did not resist. I kept my face even, not wanting to embarrass my protectors by showing any fear.

“Who is that large boy who was outside just now, the one who ran away with the others?”

“He is my son,” the baker snapped. “What is it to you?” Beneath his bluster, I thought I sensed fear.

“Do you see this boy? Look at his face. Do you see how your son and his friends beat him up?”

The baker’s face took on a look of disdained amusement. “So what? That’s what boys do.”

“Perhaps,” Abdul Rahman said. “But this boy is our boy. He belongs to us.”

The imam placed his hands on the counter and leaned closer to the baker, piercing him with a hard gaze from his superior height. The darkness I had seen flicker across his face in the mosque now burned across his features.

“We are the imams of
Masjid al-Bakar
,” he said, naming the mosque. “We are the Muslim Brotherhood. If you touch this boy, you touch us.”

I had heard this name, this “Muslim Brotherhood,” spoken in hushed tones between my father and my brother Fouad. I did not know what it meant, but I saw the baker freeze and the insolence melt away from his
face. Behind me, the diners fell silent. Around us, the whole shop suddenly seemed still. Charged. My heart thumped inside my chest.

At last, the baker drew a great breath and let it out. “I will talk to my son.”

Abdul Rahman did not move, yet his presence seemed somehow to loom across the counter, pressing in on the baker. “Yes. You will talk to your son. And he will talk to his friends. And all of them will come and apologize to this boy. If they don’t come, we will come and find
you
. We know where you work and we know where you live.”

I did not allow any look to pass across my face, but my insides had turned to jelly. I did not know what I had expected. The imams exercising their spiritual authority, perhaps, the Sunni over the Shia. Talking. Reasoning. But as the baker seemed to shrink inside his clothes, I saw fear in his eyes. I could smell it on him, a metallic tang. He said something else to Abdul Rahman. I couldn’t hear what exactly, but it was something very humble. They continued talking, but I do not remember what else they said at that moment—only my own trembling amazement at the power of the imams.

“I will take care of this today,” the baker finally said to Abdul Rahman. Now he turned to me, his face a salad of anxious kindness. “Come back here tomorrow,” he said. “I will make sure my son apologizes to you…Would you like something to eat?”

I shook my head and looked down at the flecked tile floor. All I wanted to do was go home. This was more than I had bargained for.

I did not know it was only the beginning.

4

Iskendar, the Kurdish bully, had beaten me up many times, and I knew where he lived. Abdul Rahman insisted that I tell him. After a short walk, we arrived at a shanty house—bits of plywood and tin pieced together to extend a small house sitting on a corner. Thin strips of nailed
tin held the wooden door together. Abdul Rahman stood before me and rapped twice on it. The rest of the imams formed a crescent behind me.

The door cracked slightly and a woman’s face appeared, her
hijab
exposing the front of her hair in the style of the Kurds that my mother thought brazen. In the woman’s face, I could see echoes of the bully’s bone structure—the wide cheekbones, the forehead that jutted too far forward in its skin.

“Yes?” the woman said, revealing gold among her upper teeth.

“We are the imams of the mosque. We want to speak with your son,” Abdul Rahman said.

“He is not here,” the woman said, opening the door a little wider. She wore a long skirt made of a patchwork of fabrics, some in screaming prints like the Gypsies wear. Most of the Kurds were poor immigrants who had come to Lebanon illegally from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq seeking any kind of work they could get. Their homes and clothes were often makeshift, cobbled together from whatever could be had cheaply.

“What do you want with my son?” the woman said.

As he had at the bakery, Abdul Rahman put his arm around my shoulder and ushered me forward. “This boy belongs to us. And your son beat him up today.”

The woman looked down at me, seeming to catalogue the injuries on my face. Then she looked back at Abdul Rahman. “If my son beat him, the boy must have done something to deserve it.”

“
Deserve
it?” Abdul Rahman said, biting off the words. “He
deserves
to be beaten every time he passes this way?”

His voice grew louder, and I could see from the corners of my vision that passersby had stopped to listen. Abdul Rahman spoke as if the woman was dust. “This is not even your country, and your son pretends to guard a territory here?”

A shadow play of emotions flickered across the woman’s face: disdain, the dawn of understanding, then panic. Slowly, she pulled her arm from behind the door. In her hand, she held a stick.

“Get away from my house! Get out of here!” she shouted, waving the stick and salting her words with curses.

From behind her, I heard a guttural yell and saw movement. A worn print drape that served as an interior door was swept aside. Out came Iskendar, waving a banana knife. Instantly he spotted me standing on the sidewalk.

“So you have come to cause me trouble? You have broken into my house! Now I will cut you!”

“That is him!” I shouted, pointing and backing away. “He is the one!”

Abdul Rahman did not hesitate. He flung the door wide with his right hand, pushed the woman aside with his left, took three steps forward, and kicked the boy straight in the gut. A noise of wind escaping, and Iskendar collapsed on the concrete floor.

The woman screamed. “Don’t hurt my son!”

The Abus now crowded into the tiny space. A single raw lightbulb swung over their heads, throwing wild shadows onto the fruit box slats that patched holes in the woman’s walls.

“Please! Please don’t hurt my son!”

But Abdul Rahman swooped down and snatched the banana knife, and the imams were on Iskendar like a pack of wolves, kicking and kicking, each blow lifting his body off the ground. Their fury terrified me. To the imams, this was not only an issue of territory; this boy was a Kurd, which meant he was no better than a dog.

The beating I got was nothing like he got.

Wham! Blood burst from his nose in a stream as one man’s foot crashed into his face. Instantly, the skin around his eyes turned red, then purple.

Wham! Burgundy patches bloomed in Iskendar’s dark hair, matting it together in stringy ropes.

Wham! His face went slack, then pale underneath the bright scarlet of his wounds.

His mother screaming, screaming, drawing a little knot of Kurdish neighbors who did not dare interfere.

My own heart screamed inside me. One part of me was glad for vengeance, but the savage assault horrified me. Part of me was proud to have champions. Part of me wished I had never run into the mosque.

In a low voice like thunder, Abdul Rahman bent and spoke into the boy’s bloody ear: “If you ever threaten this boy again, we know where you live. We know who your mother is. And we know the police. I will call them myself, and they will deport your filthy little clan back to whatever Iraqi cave you crawled out of.”

“My son will not touch your son!” the woman cried. “We only want to make a living. I promise this will never happen again!”

Now Abdul Rahman tangled his fingers in Iskendar’s hair and jerked his head off the pale yellow concrete. He laid the blade of the banana knife against the boy’s cheek and pressed the tip into his nose. Terror shot through my belly—I was afraid Abdul Rahman was going to cut the boy’s face, a permanent symbol of Sunni victory and Kurdish shame.

“Apologize to this boy,” Abdul Rahman said. “Right now.”

A sob of fresh hope burst from the woman. “Yes! Tell him you’re sorry! Ask him to forgive you!”

Revulsion seized me as a slimy swirl of spit, blood, and mucus streamed from the boy’s mouth and nose, and he blubbered through it. “I’m…sorry….”

Then I saw that his eyes were dry. No tears, no remorse, no defeat. From beneath battered, swollen lids, his eyes pierced mine with a gunmetal glint. Only his mother and I were in a position to see it. A new wave of fear rolled through me.

Abdul Rahman dropped Iskendar’s head, and it thumped on the floor. Then, in a flourish of robes, the imams sailed out, like a storm cloud that has fired its lightning bolts and spilled its rain.

5

The sun had come out, playing among fat white clouds, sucking the water off the pavement. Still carrying the Kurdish boy’s banana knife, Abdul Rahman walked at my shoulder, hurrying me along. I could feel a
charge in the air, a spark snapping among the imams, as though they had drawn energy from the violence.

Because of that, I did not tell Abdul Rahman about the look I had seen in the boy’s eyes. I was afraid he might go back and kill him.

When we reached the Armenian neighborhood, I saw a group of boys standing in front of a
cadout
, a gift shop that sold decorative items like statues and bowls and figurines. I recognized the ringleader, and as we approached, he recognized me. Like leaves in a wind gust, the boys scattered.

“Was that them?” Abdul Rahman asked me.

After seeing what the imams had done to Iskendar, I was afraid to answer. But how could I now turn against these men when they had become my defenders?

“Yes,” I said.

Abdul Rahman ushered me along faster. When we reached the door of the gift shop, he did not slow down but entered in long strides, extending his arm and raking an entire shelf of merchandise off onto the floor. The crash filled my ears as crystal and ceramic pieces shattered against the tile.

A dark, curly-haired man ran from the rear of the store. “My shop! What are you doing!”

“Infidels!” Abdul Rahman roared. “You are picking on a young Muslim boy, a son of Allah! Why don’t you come and deal with us?”

“What are you talking about!” the shop owner roared back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He surveyed the sparkling mess on the floor, and rage simmered on his face.

Abdul Rahman advanced a step toward him. “Those kids outside. Every time this boy walks through your neighborhood, they beat him. This is a Christian crusade against us! You lose your country, and now you are coming to possess ours!”

“Those kids are not mine! They were just standing in front of my shop!”

Outside, I heard raised voices, and when I turned to look, my stomach flipped. Five or six Armenian men had come running, armed with sticks and pipes. Behind them, I saw two of the boys who had beaten me.

A woman’s voice came from somewhere above, a window or a balcony. “The police! Someone call the police!”

Abdul Rahman barreled out the front door, robes flying, and surveyed the area like an emperor. “Yes, call the police!” he bellowed toward the upper floors of the surrounding apartment houses. “Let me show you what I will do while the police watch me do it!”

The imams waded in among the Armenians like sharks among minnows. Suddenly, in my mind, a puzzle piece snapped into place: Abdul Rahman and the other imams were trained fighters. Abdul Rahman swept the banana knife in wide arcs, forming around himself a protective space. One of the Abus—Azziz, I think—now revealed himself a martial artist, delivering a straight-armed blow to the throat of a blond Armenian man. I stood beside the shopkeeper gaping. The dozen men tangled before me, a savage knot of flailing arms and legs. Each time Abdul Rahman whirled in my direction, I saw
madness
in his eyes.

Then one of the Armenian boys picked up a rock and hurled it, striking Abdul Rahman in the chest.

Time froze. A warble of sirens broke the air. In seconds, two Jeeps carrying paramilitary police arrived amid a whir of engines and squealing brakes. Four officers with automatic rifles spilled from the vehicles and waded in to separate the fighters.

“Who would like to explain this?” a man with many decorations on his shoulders demanded.

Abdul Rahman spoke up immediately. “This boy belongs to us,” he said, nodding his chin toward me.

I now hoped the earth would crack open and swallow me whole.
The police will have my name forever
, I thought.
They will think I’m a criminal
.

“Every time he comes through this neighborhood, the Armenian boys beat him!” Abdul Rahman spat out. “We try to live in peace with you, and this is what you do to us!”

“Which boy beats him?” the police commander said.