The Garden of Last Days (32 page)

“And from His Book: ‘O Lord, pour Your patience upon us and make our feet steadfast and give us victory over the unbelievers. Lord, forgive our sins and excesses. You move the clouds. You gave us victory over the enemy, conquer them and give us victory over them.’

“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. There is no god worthy to be worshipped except Allah.”

And yes, Bassam, say again the oath you made in camp. “The pledge of Allah and His covenant is upon me, to energetically listen and obey the superiors who are doing this work, rising early in times of difficulty and ease.

“Bismillah. In the name of Allah.”

And once more, the Shahaada: “La ilaha illa Allah wa Muhammad ar-rasulullah.”

Bassam stood first, Imad and Tariq following. Imad’s eyes were shining. He smiled down at them and put his arms around their shoulders. “Brothers, we have bound ourselves to the Holy One as shuhada’. This bayat has sealed this. Insha’Allah, we will live together forever in Jannah.” And he hugged Bassam and Tariq to him, his thawb smelling of fresh linen, his throat of soap and water.

Before leaving for Dubai, Bassam embraced his mother at the door. When he was young she only wore kaftans under the jamah, but now she was in a dress made by the kufar, a modest purple dress with long sleeves that covered her arms, yes, but still a dress made by our enemy, and she smiled at him, his short, round mother with her graying hair and deep brown eyes she’d passed to him. She appeared as if she might weep, for he was traveling to a place he could not name to her. She held him and kissed both his cheeks, calling him Bassam when he was now Mansoor, the Victorious, the name he decided to take with his oath.

Since he’d become a jihadi, living among his family was like living in a dream except in the dream everyone else is sleeping while you are awake. They sleep and do not know they sleep. His mother did not
even know she was no longer awake with the Creator as she should be. She smelled of perfume and the amber incense she preferred to burn. He could not hold back any longer. “Soon, Allah willing, everyone will know my name, O Mother. You will be very proud that I am your son.”

“Bassam, darling, I
am
proud. Please, don’t do anything foolish. You are a good boy. Please, where are you going? Please, tell me.” She rubbed her thumbs along his cheeks, the stubble there.

He nodded to his sleeping mother. He took her wrists and pressed her hands gently together. “I will call you. I will call you soon.”

Though he never had. Months now, and he never had.

The black whore blows out smoke from her cigarette and she looks at him from the bar. She stands near the Jew owner and they drink coffee from white cups like his he has not touched. She smiles at Bassam, and he looks away. He knows when they are let go by these police she will try to get more of the money he should not have spent. She will offer him her qus, and not just to view, he knows this, and it is like bleeding in the Red Sea, sharks smelling his blood from kilometers away, his weakness, Shaytan trying to pull him from the highest rooms of Jannah to the lowest and hottest of Jahannam. How deceptive he is, and yes, Bassam is afraid he will like it too much to leave this earth; he will lose his resolve, his bayat with his brothers and with the All-Knowing will be broken and is there any fire more hot than that reserved for a failed shahid? For one who loses his way?

But what is worse is what he never would have known as he hardened and purified himself in training, as he prayed steadfastly in tents and motel rooms and autos, that he would
like
these kufar, that he would like Kelly and Gloria and Cliff, and yes, this April who calls herself Spring, her brown eyes that could belong to a good girl from Khamis Mushayt, whose skin is soft and warm and whose hair is shining, and who smells not of lust but of companionship, he likes her as well. And there is a sting in his heart for what he told her last, not because it is not true—because she will burn, they will all burn—but because he was using the truth to push himself away from her and his
own weakness. Her scar from delivering her child, so dry and raised, the color of old goatskin, not as if it had been cut and healed but burned, like the skin of the burned. He made himself see her entire body that way, bare belly and hips and legs, her round shoulders and throat and face, her nuhood he so weakly and strongly wanted to touch. He forced himself to see it as it will be.

All the money he gave to her. How could he justify it? How would he explain it to Amir, who would know precisely how much.

“Sir?” A young policeman points at him, curling his finger rudely for him to come be questioned.

There are four kufar remaining. As Bassam stands, one of them nods and smiles at him as if they are all brothers in this misunderstanding, as if this is a small price to pay for their pleasure here, the only price.

Bassam ignores him and walks away from the empty tables and chairs, damp with spilled alcohol and scattered with ash. His shirt sticks to the sweat of his back and he is thirsty. He keeps his eyes on the young policeman but Bassam can feel the eyes of the black whore upon him, her smile, her long dark legs and arms, her white teeth, Shaytan reaching from inside her to pull him down with these mushrikoon.

Bassam does not look at her. And he will not look at her. The time for looking is over. The time of living so haram is through. He lifts his chin and follows the policeman. The curtain is parted by one of the men paid to protect these whores, this one tall and without muscle, looking down at Bassam as if he were a dog, a dog someone should have caged such a very long time ago.

DEENA COULDN’T SLEEP
. She had for a while, but now she was awake, lying on her back in the dark, the constant wind from the fan blowing across her face. She kept thinking how bad AJ had looked. His hand was broken somehow, his eyes red from drinking and crying, and even though he’d hurt her and she did the right thing calling the police, it seemed her fault he was turning into such a mess. She kicked off the sheet.

The first few nights he was gone felt like when hurricane season is finally over. She and Cole had sweet, quiet suppers together, and whenever he asked about Daddy, she told him his mama was sick and he had to go take care of her. But then she got scared. She thought of all the news stories she’d heard of husbands ignoring restraining orders and coming back madder than they were before. There was that woman with three kids down in Venice. Her husband had been beating her for years and she finally called the police and had the
order on him less than a day when he came back with a shotgun, kicked in the front door, and chased her past the kids into the bathroom and killed her. She couldn’t picture AJ doing anything like that, but then she never guessed he’d ever hit her either. And how could he not be getting madder and madder having to live with his old, wheezy mother and stay away from his son?

One night at the end of that first week, after Cole was asleep, Deena had taken AJ’s .22 rifle out of the closet. It was a good-looking gun with a shiny stock and a long straight barrel. AJ’s stepdaddy had left it to him, and AJ wanted to teach her how to shoot it but she already knew how; her father owned all kinds of guns and when she was eight or nine he carried their picnic bench down to the beach and lined up Budweiser and soup cans and it wasn’t long before she could hit each one with a rifle just like this. She was good with a pistol too, but Daddy’s semiautomatics scared her with their kick in her hand and how easy it was to fire off three or four bullets just like that.

I’ll kill him
. Daddy in their kitchen at home, his lined face and big belly, the way he glanced over at Mom like he was expecting her to say something though she didn’t.
He lays so much as a fingernail on you, I swear to Christ I’ll shoot him where he stands
.

That didn’t help anything. Four nights in a row after AJ got driven away, her father had come over and played with Cole and watched some TV with her, his .380 strapped in a holster on his belt.

“Daddy, you can’t keep coming over here.”

“Yes I can.”

“What if he comes and you shoot him? Then I lose you, too.”

“What do you mean
too
? You
miss
him?”

“He’s my husband.”

“You can get another. A better one.”

Could she? Really. Could she? Daddy had always ignored how dumpy-looking she was. How in high school she’d only had Reilly, who was skinny and hated people and animals and with his mustache
and pointy nose looked like some kind of rodent. He called her a fat whore, and that was after they’d done it on the moldy couch on his parents’ sunporch.

“Please go, Dad. If he comes, I’ll call the police like I’m supposed to.”

He did go but not before he unstrapped his .380 and laid it on the kitchen counter. “Keep it.”

“I don’t want that in the house with Cole. If you leave it here I swear I’ll throw it away.”

He smiled sadly, took it back, hugged her. “You call me.”

“I will.” Though she knew she wouldn’t, knew if she ever had to because of AJ that her daddy would drive up with another loaded gun. It’s why people owned guns in the first place, wasn’t it? Because they were just itching for a good reason to use them, a better one than picking off cans and shooting squirrels? But Daddy showing up like that had scared her even more than she’d been and for a week or more she slept with AJ’s rifle on the floor by his side of the bed. Each morning before Cole woke, she’d put the loaded clip in her bedside drawer, then lean the rifle back in the corner of the closet behind AJ’s button-down shirts.

Seeing those shirts made her sad. He wore them only to church or a dinner at her family’s house on the lake, and she knew if they ever fixed things between them that Mom and Dad would have to welcome him back, though it would never be the way it was before he’d slapped her not once, but twice, and the last time had sent her flying across the kitchen in front of Cole and she had to call 911, she just had to.

Still, by the end of the second week the fear was gone and all she felt was sad and guilty and alone. She’d read and sing Cole to sleep, then watch TV and skim magazines and eat a snack. When she finally went to bed she left the rifle in the closet and tried to rest but she couldn’t. She kept thinking about him, remembering him really, from before, when she worked at the Walgreen’s and he was her boss. She wasn’t so big then and she was good at her job, her drawer hardly ever
over or under. What she liked about him was how shy he was, how he might be telling her and another cashier about a new special or an updated store policy from the district manager and his eyes would pass over her breasts and he’d look away fast, his face reddening up. He was polite and looked handsome in his white shirt and tie and khakis with the crease up the leg. She wondered if he ironed them himself. He wasn’t much older than she was but he had to be pretty smart to be a shift manager already.

Then that cool night in January when her battery died. She was the last cashier to leave. She was still sitting in her car when the overnight manager relieved AJ and he came out and saw her there. He stood on the sidewalk, the fluorescent light of the store behind him, looking at her behind the wheel of her mother’s Geo like she might be sick or hurt. For a second it didn’t look like he was going to do anything but stand there. Then he walked over and she opened the door and told him about the dead battery, that she was about to call her folks but didn’t want to wake them.

“I’ll drive you.”

His truck had smelled new, and sitting in it, buckled up beside him, driving out of the parking lot riding so high, she felt as if she’d just won something. He said he was thirsty, that it was a Friday night and did she want to get a beer somewhere?

“I’m only nineteen.”

“That’s okay, I’ll pick up a six.”

It was cold and went down real smooth after seven hours on her feet. She was surprised he drank his Miller so openly driving down the road. He seemed so careful at work. He asked where she lived and she told him.

“You do?” Like he was surprised, like he hadn’t expected she’d live in a house on the water. But then he glanced over at her and smiled. “You got to stop calling me Mr. Carey.”

“Well what’s your name?”

“AJ.”

“What’s that stand for?”

“Ask Jesus.”

“You’re teasing me.”

He looked over at her. He switched on the radio, got a good station from Tampa. They were on Myakka City Road driving in the dark. He finished his beer and opened another. She did too. They drove quietly a while, just listening to the music, REM singing about a man on the moon. He turned it down low. “Where’d you go to high school?” His voice was soft and he sounded interested and like he wasn’t just making conversation.

“Bradenton.”

“You have any brothers or sisters?”

“My brother Reggie. He’s in the army.”

“So what do you like to do?”

“What do
you
like to do?”

“I don’t know—work, I guess.”

“For fun?”

“Yeah, I like work. You?”

“What?”