The Crisis (46 page)

“We may pass?” Juulheed grins. They nod grumpily, motioning them in with the rifles. Hasheer and Zeynaab follow, the hem of her abaya swishing on the sand.

 

INSIDE a raucous crowd mills on red and white tile, nearly all in traditional dress. The huge room's so hot that even used to the desert as Ghedi is, sweat springs out all over his skin. The ceiling sparkles with bits of mirror and colored glass. Thin pillars meet it as it dips in graceful arches.

Hundreds of men are at the Second Clan Conference. Which means, apparently, there was one before, though he hadn't known about it. Most are graybeards. Everyone's talking, shouting over the din. Shaking fists at each other. He catches the accents of mountain speech, of northern, of every clan and family.

Hundreds of carpets cover the buckled antique tile. He heads for an open space, walking slowly. Men glance up as he passes, then blink, noticing his boots, his camouflage, and last, his face.

A murmur swells. It eddies out from where they bend to unroll their carpet. Zeynaab sits, spreading her dress around her, then adjusting her
hijab
. There are other women, but they're old and sit in the back. She's the only one sitting with the men. But once the murmur's spread to the walls of the great room and then rebounded, heads turning and hands raised to brows to study them, no one raises his voice to object. The talk resumes, not as loud as before.

“They have nothing to say.” Juulheed grins. “Can it be they recognize the Orcharder?”

“Keep your voice down. Don't talk so much.” Ghedi looks for foreigners but doesn't see any. Is this for Ashaarans only? But he doesn't see the one man he'd hoped for. Maybe he won't come.

An old man straightens and begins. His voice is weak and though he speaks first to respectful silence, soon there are calls to repeat what he's saying. Here and there men get to their feet, wandering toward restrooms or a table set with foreign bottled water. Ghedi sends Hasheer for some.

“These elections are false,” the old one ends. “The Americans back those who think like they do. I'm not saying Dobleh's a bad man. But he's spent so long in other lands he doesn't know our ways anymore.”

“Our ways are changing,” another graybeard laments. “My young men will not obey. They follow others.”

“If they follow others, it's your fault for not bringing them up right.”

The two men scream at each other, but their neighbors laugh, as if they're old opponents. Ghedi smiles too, exchanging glances with his sister.

It's good having her back. If only he could have found Nabil as well . . . regather the family. . . . He tries to muster nostalgia about the village but can't. She's told him what happened. That she'd spent years with the Christians but never become one. That a group of bandits hurt her and burned her refuge, but she came away with gold.
That
he understands, the suffering the bandits are causing. It's one reason he's here today.

But only one.

This is traditional Ashaara, men who speak of God but whose hearts belong to the clan. Whose first question is “What's your lineage?” Who judge and are judged not by holiness or deeds, but solely by who is their cousin.

Like those who took him from his sister and brother, and made a bandit of him.

He reaches for God within himself, and hears Him speak. This assembly is unclean. There's hate. Corruption. Greed. These men are rotten limbs on the body of the ulama, the people of God.

They must be . . . lopped off. Pruned away. So beautiful fruit may grow.

At the front a heavyset man with a bullhorn voice—no, he actually holds a bullhorn—exhorts everyone to support his party. “If there's to be real democracy, the city people must be opposed. The Americans will install them no matter how we vote this time. We know that. But what about the next election? We represent the real strength of the country, the farmers. All must join our party. Except the Issa dogs.”

Zeynaab leans, careful not to touch. “What are these men discussing?” she murmurs.

“Politics.”

“They are very loud.”

“The American elections,” Juulheed snaps contemptuously.

A small man with a single white tuft atop his scalp stops at their carpet. “What clan?”

“We are beyond clan,” Ghedi tells him.

“No one's beyond clan. What's your descent?”

“We're past that. We follow the Prophet and the Law.”

He notices everyone around them's listening. Heads cocked, looking hostile.

“We all follow the Prophet, peace be upon him. But no one's beyond clan,” the little man says again. “Your accent says you're from the south. You belong over there, not here. And women are not permitted at
jirga
. With respect, she must leave.”

“She must leave.” “Go with your clan,” men shout. Ghedi bows his head. His pain probes down into his chest with a throbbing agony, as if he's being pierced by long needles from his jaw to his toes.

“So be it,” he says to the man, who stands arms akimbo, staring them down. Like an old rooster in the yard.

“Old roosters can be plucked too,” Juulheed tells him.

“What? What's that? Roosters?”

“Never mind.” Ghedi stands, dusting off the Western trousers he's proud of. God forgive him, he shouldn't be proud of his clothes. He was proud of his looks too. Now he's disfigured. This is the will of God. He moves and lives now feeling that will in every word he utters, in the least sign that passes. He reaches a hand to Zeynaab. She shifts her legs, adjusts the black enveloping cloth, and rises awkwardly.

From either side Juulheed and Hasheer reach past her ankles, under her skirts. Ghedi, kneeling, reaches too.

When they rise they hold Kalashnikovs.

The old man's shout's blotted out by the chatter of Hasheer's rifle. He goes flying, nearly cut in half. Ghedi and Juulheed begin firing at the same moment, left and right. They shoot down those sitting closest first, in case one's smuggled in a weapon too. But none has. The wounded go down screaming, then try to crawl away. The three men change magazines, taking fresh ones as she hands them up. She shivers at the noise, but her face shines as if, Ghedi thinks, she's gazing on Paradise.

The deafening noise is focused by the graceful arches of the ceiling. Where bullets hit plaster and tile a spray of chips and smoke flies. Amid
the shots he hears more shouting from outside. Then a rattle, a stutter that becomes a shattering roar.

But he's not yet done in here. He drops the empty and fits another magazine in as old men link arms and stagger forward, screaming curses. He cuts them down like wheat before a hand scythe. Others cower, shielding boys with their withered arms. The women in back are screaming without cease. Ghedi aims a full magazine their way, holding the short rifle like a pistol as it recoils, the handguard smoking as it starts to char. Even in battle he's never fired so many rounds this fast. Blood sprays on fluted columns, antique tile.

His weapon falls silent. He holds out his hand, but his sister shouts, fists balled, “No more. There is no more.” And there's only a moaning, a slow stirring all around the room. A river of blood runs toward the courtyard.

Shadows fill the sunlit rectangles of doors. Ghedi waves to make sure they see him.

Noise fills the room again. Guns flash as his men finish off those still crying out or trying to crawl. At close range the bullets tumble as they hit, tearing flesh into pieces.

He holds his jaw as the pain lances, so fierce he can scarcely see. If these are true Muslims God will reward them. But he doesn't think they are. They're rotten limbs, better burned. The light flares and jangles behind his eyes. A man grabs his arm and he jerks the weapon up, pulls the trigger before he recognizes Juulheed. Fortunately his rifle's empty.

“Just as you said, General. They were foolish enough to come unarmed.” He raises his gaze to the shattered glass embedded in the ceiling, reflecting the huddled corpses. His jaw flames. He regrets the deafness of those who wouldn't listen. But he's not to blame. Perhaps he truly is the Guided One, who will rid the world of injustice and tyranny. All that he's done has been written from time immemorial.

All, all is the will of God.

T
HE penalty is death,” he says. The man before him in his tent was caught naked with a young boy. The boy's been punished with two hundred lashes. The man doesn't weep or protest. He simply nods.

Ghedi understands. Each man has to die. No point making a fuss over it. He touches the knot in his jaw that seems to grow larger each day. Sometimes he can't think. His vision blurs. The pain's so intense he must pray himself from minute to minute, until God in His mercy makes it ebb.

“This punishment,” the man says at last. “It is just, O Guided One. But may I choose my way of dying?”

Ghedi looks at the man in the Arab-style robes in the corner. Their chubby visitor wears his beard without a mustache. After a moment he nods.

“Perhaps,” he tells the prisoner. He
was
one of the Waleeli. Until, of course, he was caught in uncleanness. “How do you wish to die?”

“May I not be martyred fighting the infidel?”

Ghedi hovers his fingers above his jaw, not touching it. Then rises and lifts the flap of his tent. Looks out.

In the months since it was set up the refugee camp's sprawled over the countryside. From a hundred acres of salt-grass flats it's exploded west across the foothills and down the Southern Road nearly to the coast. From here the Old City and the cranes the Americans have installed are visible fifteen miles away across the mud plain where the river flowed before the drought.

Nearly forty thousand live in Camp One now. All the acacias and even the thornbushes have been cut down. The dusty ground lifts into the air at the slightest wind. It smells of dried shit, since each family defecates outside its tent. Ruts lead from the road to a feeding compound the whites occupy in the mornings. Those who live here seldom leave their
tents, inside the rusty wire. There are gaps in it now no one bothers to repair.

Still pondering the man's question, Ghedi sips the coffee his sister's brewed from beans she bought in the city. Outside a long queue of women, aluminum and plastic pots and buckets balanced atop their
hijabs
, wait for a few liters of dusty water. His men guard the pumps, decide who may approach the spigots.

Many of the women squat or even lie as they wait. It's dysentery. The foreigners announced an inoculation program, but Juulheed learned the real reason for the needles. They were to sterilize Muslim women. After that no one went for the shots, and after a time, the needles disappeared.

Ghedi's tent holds only a worn carpet where he sits, a field desk captured at Uri'yah, a box of MREs, and five rifles laid out on a blanket. Two are AKs, one is American, one Canadian, the last Iranian-manufactured. He watches dust filtering through the sunlight like silver smoke. The Arab's petting his beard like a mother her child's hair. When Ghedi looks over he smiles. His teeth are porcelain white, perfectly regular, as if they've been bleached and straightened. No one in Ashaara has such teeth.

He tells the prisoner, “Your wish does you honor, despite your crime. You may die fighting the infidel and invader.”

“Thank you, Maahdi. God is great.” The condemned man and his guards about-face to leave.

“It is wise?” he asks the Arab, whose name is Yousef. Yousef nods, showing again those incredible teeth.

One of Juulheed's lieutenants puts his head in. His eyes are red and his hands shake. “You called for me, O Maahdi.”

“What time does the food arrive?”

“It is said, when the sun is so high.”

“Guard it well. Food is life. Water is life. The Waleeli bring life to the people.”

“The Waleeli bring life to the people,” the lieutenant repeats. It's what the handlers shout each time they pitch a bag of corn mix, rice, or bulk flour from Ukraine off the trucks in village squares across the country. “The Waleeli bring life to the people,” little girls shout as they play, stick legs flashing in the dust. Ghedi looks at Zeynaab's turned back, her spine curved as she adjusts the Chinese stove.

He pushes aside the tent flap and goes out. The air's so thick with the blowing powder it's like living in the center of a dust devil. His guards touch their headdresses, a black cloth worn pulled across their faces to breathe through.

Across the country that headdress is recognized, along with the
black-and-green flags of the technicals that rumble over tracks only goats picked along before. From the Western Mountains to the Empty Quarter, the Waleeli steal from the foreigner and give to the people. When they work for the foreigners they don't wear the headdress, and shave their beards. The aid agencies pay them to guard the trucks, but food, medical supplies, water pipe, fertilizer, vanish all the same.

He looks across to where the foreigners work. He doesn't speak to them. There'll come a time to deal with them, but that time is not yet.

A commotion in line draws his attention. A woman's confronting a guard. She demands to know why there can't be another line, why only one at a time can fill her container. They spend hours getting water. The sentry looks at the ground. The woman sees Ghedi watching, wavers, then turns away. She rejoins the line, pushing her way back in, screaming at the women behind her.

Yousef comes out and side by side they walk through the camp. A beaten path leads around its edge, inside the rusty barbed wire.

Ghedi's been thinking about how to use the explosives he got from the Gelhirs. He ponders the man he's just condemned to death. Can he put the two together?

“You came to our attention when you eliminated the clan chiefs,” Yousef says, strolling with hands locked behind him and the hem of his soft dish-dasha brushing the path. His shoes are expensive braided leather with golden buckles. “We recognized a man we should make our friend.”