The Road from Damascus (30 page)

‘Knowledge is what we need to solve our problems. But knowledge isn’t going to solve problems unless it’s practical. Unless it gives you power.’

And more agreement.

‘Perhaps some of us,’ Ammar looked significantly at Sami, ‘don’t see the importance of gaining power. Or of knowledge. But this is the time for power, and soon it will be too late.’

A chorus of ‘yes’ and ‘that’s right’ in English and Arabic. There was plenty of affirmation among these brothers.

‘The signs of the Hour related to us by the Prophet give warning as to when the end shall come. And the signs are being fulfilled. The minor signs, at least, we can be sure of those. The earth has become smaller, like the Prophet said it would. Vast distances are crossed in short spans of time. People jump between the land and the clouds. These things are happening now.’

‘That’s planes and the internet,’ Mujahid confirmed.

‘And the space shuttle,’ said Shafeeq.

‘Before the Hour comes,’ Ammar said, ‘rain will be burning.’

‘Acid rain, man,’ said Tariq.

‘And fog will appear over cities because of their evil.’

‘Read the news and you see it,’ said Abd ur-Rahman.

‘The Hour will not come before the Beduin compete with each other in building high buildings.’

‘Look at Dubai and Abu Dhabi,’ said Abdullah. ‘Look at the skyscrapers in the Gulf.’

‘As a result of European persecution, the people of Iraq will have no food and no money.’

‘The sanctions,’ said Sulaiman.

‘Men will look like women and women will look like men.’

‘This city full of that weirdness.’

‘Family ties will be cut.’

Sami directed his eyes at the mat.

‘The signs are being fulfilled. These are some of the minor signs. There are others. You know them, brothers. It can’t be long till the major signs come, and then they come fast. It’s almost too late. But most so-called Muslims don’t even know what time it is.’

Everybody nodded. Sami may have nodded too, in physical sympathy. An unstable plant in a forest of nodding trees.

‘The worst of a people,’ Ammar continued, ‘will be its leader. There will be an increase in killing to the extent that people won’t know why they are killed. Not even the killer will know why.’

Examples given from the Muslim and Western worlds.

‘The Dajjal will rule, the False Messiah, the one-eyed beast.’

‘Seen the eye on the dollar? Masonic sign. One eye, not two.’

‘Or the TV, brothers! One eye in every sitting room!’

‘The Dajjal,’ said Ammar, ‘will have a mountain of bread, and the people will face hardship except those who follow him.’

A sudden hammering from upstairs silenced the gathering. Loud, metallic and intent. The brothers switched their gaze from face to face. How to interpret that? Home repairs or a warning of imminent violence? Or something else entirely?

Sami sat still. Waiting.

Ammar launches from the Nissan into an angry floundering on the pavement beside her. Arabic radio news wafts behind him. He’s had it on at full volume, dense as car-trapped cigarette smoke. There’s no greeting.

‘Something needs to be done about it. You see how our brothers are living in Palestine. You see how your sisters are living. And in Iraq. You see how our people have been starved and broken by the West and by that tyrant they put there. I tell you, something needs to be done.’

‘So what are you doing?’ Unperturbed, she poses her challenge into the storm. It may snag him enough to say hello. She can hardly see his eyes for the jerking of limbs. He wears long white sleeves. His shirt buttons are done up to the top. He is thin and overworked and handsome in an impoverished way. Is it only coincidence he’s found her on the street? What has he come to tell her?

‘Yeah. I’m making a start. I’m strengthening my Islam. Islam’s coming. I don’t know how yet. But we’re going to do things. The time’s getting nearer. I tell you, I’ve got two burning towers of anger – Iraq and Palestine – and I’ve got the rule of Allah coming up BOOM! between them. We’ll get rid of the traitor governments for a start. And then we’ll sort out the Jews.’

Muntaha had been on her way home. Normal people would arrange to go for coffee somewhere instead of such car-crash rendezvous. She’s happy to see him, anyway.

‘Not all Jews are interested.’ She talks back, amused and concerned. Ammar is on the cusp, as usual, of comedy and desperation. He’s her attractive energetic brother, and he’s also a complete loon.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean some of them don’t care about Israel. And some of them oppose Israel.’

Ammar releases tongue from palate with the kind of explosive violence he’d like to detonate under the complacent world.

‘Jews is Jews, Muntaha.’ He shakes his weary head.

‘No. That’s too simple. There’s different kinds of Jews like there’s different kinds of Muslims. Some of the Jews help us.’

‘That’s wrong thinking.’ His right hand chops into his left palm. ‘You’ve been tricked by their game, man. Jews is Jews and kuffar is kuffar. Unbelievers. You got to know the boundaries.’

Muntaha smiles at being called man. Littler versions of Ammar poke through.

‘Which brings me to something else.’ He scowls, sensing her sympathy and resisting it. ‘Something we must have words about.’

His face is cocked obliquely, his nose quivers. He’s trying to be big-brotherish, and the strain tells, his vulnerability. Muntaha is open with curiosity.

‘Speaking of the kuffar, I mean. You got to watch out, sister. Don’t trust their motives. Do you follow me?’

‘No, habibi, I don’t.’ But she’s starting to sniff his purpose.

‘I’m talking about one particular kafir. That Gabor. Round you like a fly round honey. Talking his philosophical shit to try to manoeuvre in.’

She’d wanted to respect his authority, so as to not hurt him. She watches the stream of her breath. There’s a stream too of kuffar around them, married women and single men with Freezerland bags which steam in the afternoon heat, boys with beer cans, more boys on mountain bikes, rapids jostling around this obstruction in streetflow. But the al-Haj children don’t respond to it.

‘It’s my duty here to set you straight.’ He isn’t meeting her eyes, but frowning skywards. ‘You’re innocent in this. Naïve. I know that. So I’m giving you advice, from brother to sister. Stick with your husband, with your Muslim man. He’s your fortress.’

Her breath is fast and scorching. He can’t see her.

‘Keep away from the kuffar. They’re waiting for you to make one wrong step, that’s all, and then they pounce.’

This illustrated by his knuckly hand, a leaping spider.

‘What,’ she asks, ‘are you suggesting?’

Clipped vowels and plosives. He knows he’s overstepped a boundary. Backtracks.

‘Nothing. I’m suggesting nothing. Just advice. Just warning you.’

‘Warning?’

‘Warning you. You’re innocent, I know it. I meant him, not you.’

‘What about him?’

‘Forget about him. Stick with Sami. He’s a brother. You’re safe with him.’

‘I wouldn’t be talking to anybody I wasn’t safe with. I respect myself. I don’t need to be warned, little brother.’

Two teenage girls have stopped to spectate. They chew gum in synchrony, chins bucked upward, insolently close.

‘Yeah… yeah.’ Ammar dissolving into small hard pieces. Pebble-dash. Shingle. ‘Just, you know, Sami’s, you know, a brother.’

‘A Muslim brother?’

‘Yeah.’ He brightens. ‘A brother.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘Oh, don’t be like that, Muntaha. He’s never said he isn’t a Muslim.’

‘I’ll tell you what he’s said.’

But Ammar snarls and windmills his arms as if she’s going to describe her orgasms. Nasty dirty incestuous stuff. Her bras and knickers abandoned on her bed. Opening the bathroom door on her. Her female smell. He doesn’t want to know.

‘No, but if you think you can judge people so easy…’

‘It’s between a man and Allah.’

‘Let me speak.’

‘I don’t want to hear.’

‘And I don’t want to hear you. You’re still a boy. A little brother is all you are.’

Ammar flinches.

‘And what’s this “they”?’ She continues the onslaught. Words born through the hot vibration of her lips, blood ringing around her eye sockets, eyeballs burning. ‘All this kuffar stuff? What’s that about? People are individuals, not shapes to fit your categories. Not shapes you slot through holes in some fucking baby game.’

Muntaha swearing. He’s misstepped badly.

He attempts to firm up. Makes the gesture, at least. There isn’t much more in his repertoire.

‘Watch what they do, not what they say. Watch what they do in the world. They have this nice cop nasty cop thing, but it’s all bollocks. The result is the same. They started it. I’m just responding. Believe the propaganda and you end up defenceless.’

‘You were talking about Gabor. He’s one of my colleagues. He’s a teacher.’

‘Yeah, whatever. But they all stand together at the end of the day.’

The spectating girls lose interest. They shuffle towards the newsagent’s for better distraction. Brother and sister remain, enwombed in private drama.

‘Ammar, you’re insane. You need to have your head checked.’

‘And we need to stand together too, is what I’m saying. Muslim with Muslim, that’s all.’

‘Slow down.’ Speaking into his face, she exaggerates the shapes of the words. ‘This isn’t politics. You were talking about one of my colleagues.’

‘They divided us, you see.’ He continues blindly, for the sake of his pride, down this doomed leaden road of contradiction. ‘They invented sects and parties among us. Divide and rule, you see.’

‘Who did?’

With softened nose fallen towards the ground and a voice sunk into monotone, he continues. ‘The English, the Jews, the Christians, America.’

‘What’s that got to do with…’

‘You know, created these traitors among us, the Shia, Communists.’

Abruptly, she pities him. At the moment when he merits her anger most. She speaks quietly, sorrowfully.

‘Your mother was Shii. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

At last he is quiet. His eyelids flutter. He is overcome by a glottis-tangled cough. Is he starting to cry?

‘You can’t talk to me like that,’ he says.

She waits.

‘I’m the head of the household,’ he says.

A strangled hiccup in his throat.

‘Then behave like a grown-up.’

The drying up of his speech reveals barren cracked silence beneath. It’s awkward. Muntaha wants to move things on before she sees insects crawling out. Millipedes from their sand dens. Clicking exoskeletons. Shiny black pulsing things.

‘I don’t know what you put into each other’s heads in that mosque. You were better off into Public Enemy. It made a lot more sense.’

His head hangs below gaunt shoulders, unresponding.

‘I mean, the Jews invented the Shia? It’s ridiculous. You should read some history books.’

Which does the trick. ‘So you believe what they write in their books?’ he says. ‘Sister, they’re taking you for a ride.’

‘For God’s sake.’ Relief breezes through her. ‘You read more than one book and make your own mind up. If you don’t want to read their books, improve your Arabic and read ours. For God’s sake.’

‘A sister,’ he says, ‘requires proper guidance.’ And he’s speechifying again. About sisters ideological, not actual.

She disconnects, like leaving a meditation. There’s the street around her: its stark lack of sisterhood. Everyone by themselves, doing the Anglo thing of avoiding contact, whatever their religion. And departing again, she remembers Baghdad. Was that her there? If time hasn’t cheated her, and she knows it has, the city of her childhood was like a storybook village, traffic and dust and heat notwithstanding. The neighbours there were sisters to her mother, at least she called them sister when they met. Muntaha used to be sent around to the neighbouring flats with pots of rice when her mother made a big meal. The women were aunties to her. The market men were brothers and uncles.

Ammar has realized that he has no audience. He glances at the Nissan.

‘So what did you want?’ Muntaha asks him.

‘Oh fuck, nothing.’

‘You just came to say your piece about Gabor.’

Wordlessly, he concedes it.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Muntaha says. ‘And I’m not doing anything anyway.’

He nods. There’s a condom smeared on the pavement between them.

‘You were listening to the news, and you had a little emotional rush from the news, so you decided to drive by and give me a speech about kuffar.’

He nods again. Glances at the Nissan, which is playing Egyptian dance music.

‘Well don’t let it all drive you mad, all right? There’s enough madness.’

He bunches his lower lip forward and scratches at wispy beard. His voice is level. ‘You want to go somewhere to pray Asr?’

‘No, habibi, I don’t. You don’t make me calm.’

‘All right then.’ He affects a nonchalant gait as he steps around the car. Swings the door open.

‘Be calm,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you.’

‘Insha’allah.’ He scallops into the cockpit, fires the engine, pulls away fast.

She’s left all alone in the busy city. Orphaned, but connected by fate to her genetic simile. Whether she likes it or not.

Muntaha’s prayers are much more peaceful than those of the men in her life.

When she prays, her heart is a shining mirror reflecting the light of God. She can almost say that only God is present. She is aware of Him only. Her consciousness continues, but Muntaha, the daughter of Marwan and Mouna, is nearly absent. Aiming at absence. She is the flame of love blown out by the Beloved. She is the reed and He the breath, He the music too. He the cause and the consequence and she obliterated in between.

God is closer to her than her jugular vein. I am inside God, she thinks. God is inside me.

When she prays, she enacts a drama of scale. She is worshipping the absolute Light, in the centre of it, conscious of herself at the midpoint of extension into inner and outer space. Out there the larger volumes, the stars and galaxies, and out there in reverse the smaller sizes, atoms, electrons, and particles yet more abstract.