"I mean, you have volunteered out of the fullness of your faith?"
"Yes, and out of hatred of those who mock and ignore G.o.d."
"Excellent. You do not feel manipulated by your elders?"
It was a surprising idea, tliough Joryleen also had expressed it. "Of course not. I feel wisely guided by them."
"And your path tomorrow is clear?"
"Yes. I am to meet Charlie at seven-thirty at Excellency Home Furnishings, and we are to drive together to the loaded truck. He will accompany me in it part of the way to the tunnel. Then I am on my own."
Something ugly, a disfiguring little twist, crossed the shaikh"s clean-shaven face. WitJiout his beard and richly embroidered caftan, he appeared disconcertingly ordinary- slight of frame, a bit tremulous in manner, a bit withered, and no longer young. Stretched out on the rough blue blanket, Ahmad was conscious of his superior youth, height, and strength, and of his teacher"s fear of him, as one is afraid of a corpse. Shaikh Rashid, hesitating, asked, "And if Charlie by some unforeseen mischance were not to be there, could you proceed with the plan? Could you find the white truck by yourself?"
"Yes. I know the alley. But why would Charlie not be there?"
"Ahmad, I am sure he will be. He is a brave soldier in our cause, the cause of the true G.o.d, and G.o.d never deserts those who wage war on His behalf. Alldhu akbar!" Alldhu akbar!" His words mixed with the distant musical phrases of the City Hall clock. Everything had a distance to it by now, a receding vibration. The shaikh went on, "In a war, if the soldier beside you falls, even if he is your best friend, even if he has taught you all you know about soldiering, do you run and hide, or do you march on, into the guns of the enemy?" His words mixed with the distant musical phrases of the City Hall clock. Everything had a distance to it by now, a receding vibration. The shaikh went on, "In a war, if the soldier beside you falls, even if he is your best friend, even if he has taught you all you know about soldiering, do you run and hide, or do you march on, into the guns of the enemy?"
"You march on."
"Exactly. Good." Shaikh Rashid lovingly yet warily gazed down upon the boy on the bed. "I must leave you now, my prize pupil Ahmad. You have studied well."
"I thank you for saying so."
"Nothing in our studies, I trust, has led you to doubt the perfect and eternal nature of the Book of Books."
"No, indeed, sir. Nothing." Though Ahmad had sometimes sensed that his teacher in his studies had been infected with such doubts, now was not the time to question him, it was too late; we must each meet death with what faith we have created within, and stored up against the Event. Was his own faith, he had asked himself at times, an adolescent vanity, a way of distinguishing himself from all those doomed others, Joryleejfi and Tylenol and the rest of the lost, the already dead, at Central High?
The shaikh was hurried and troubled, yet had difficulty in leaving his pupil, searching for the final word. "You have your printed instructions for the final cleansing, before . . ."
"Yes," said Ahmad when the older man could not finish.
"But most important," Shaikh Rashid urged, "is the Holy Qur"an. If your spirit were to weaken in the long night ahead of you, open it, and let the only G.o.d speak to you through His last, perfect prophet. Unbelievers marvel at the power of Islam; it flows from the voice of Mohammed, a manly voice, a voice from the desert and the marketplace-a man among us, who knew earthly life in all its possibilities and yet hearkened to a voice from beyond, and who submitted to its dictation though many in Mecca were quick to ridicule and revile him."
"Master: I will not weaken." Ahmad"s tone verged on impatience. When the other man at last was gone, and the chain lock secured, the boy stripped to his underwear and performed ablutions in the tiny bathroom, where the basin nudged the shoulder of anyone sitting on the toilet. On the inside of the basin a long brown stain testifies to years of a faucet dripping rusty water.
Ahmad takes the room"s one chair to the room"s only table, a bedside table of varnished maple scarred by ash-colored troughs of cigarettes allowed to burn down beyond its top"s bevelled edge. Reverently he opens the gift Qur"an. Its flexible gilt-edged pages fall open to the fiftieth sura, "Qaf." He reads, on the left-hand side where the English translation is printed, a distinct echo of what Shaikh Rashid has said: They marvel forsooth that one of themselves hath come to them charged with warnings. "This," say the infidels, "is a marvelous thing: What! when dead and turned to dust shall we ... ? Far off is such a return as this?"
The words speak to him, yet make insufficient sense. He studies the Arabic on the facing page, and realizes that the infidels-how strange it is that they, the devils, have a voice in the Holy Qur"an-are doubting the resurrection of the body, which the Prophet has been preaching. Ahmad, too, can scarcely picture the reconst.i.tution of his body, after he succeeds in leaving it; instead he sees his spirit, that little thing inside him that keeps saying "I... I...," entering the next life immediately, as if pushing through a swinging gla.s.s door. In this he is like the unbelievers: bal kadhdhabu hi "l-haqqi lammd jd"ahum fa-hum ft amrin marij. They, bal kadhdhabu hi "l-haqqi lammd jd"ahum fa-hum ft amrin marij. They, he reads in the facing English, he reads in the facing English, have treated the truth which hath come to them as falsehood; perplexed therefore is their state. have treated the truth which hath come to them as falsehood; perplexed therefore is their state.
But G.o.d, speaking in His magnificent third-person plural, brushes their perplexity aside: Will they not look up to the heavens above them, and consider how We have reared it and decked it forth, and that there are no flaws therein? Will they not look up to the heavens above them, and consider how We have reared it and decked it forth, and that there are no flaws therein?
The sky above New Prospect, Ahmad knows, is hazy with exhaust smoke and summer humidity, a sepia blur above the jagged rooftops. But G.o.d promises that a better sky, a flawless sky, exists above it, with its blazing patterns of blue stars. "We" goes on, As to the Earth, We have spread it out, and have As to the Earth, We have spread it out, and have thrown the mountains upon it, and have caused an upgrowth in it of all beauteous kinds of plants, for insight and admonition to every servant who loveth to turn to G.o.d.
Yes. Ahmad will be G.o.d"s servant. Tomorrow. The day which is almost upon him. Inches from his eyes, G.o.d is describing His rain, which causeth gardens to spring forth, and the grain of harvest, and the tall palm-trees with date-bearing branches one above the other for man s nourishment. and the tall palm-trees with date-bearing branches one above the other for man s nourishment.
And life give we thereby to a dead country. So also shall be the resurrection. A dead country. That is this country. A dead country. That is this country.
As simple and unanswerable as the first creation shall the second be. Are We wearied out with the first creation? Yet are they in doubt with regard to a new creation? Are We wearied out with the first creation? Yet are they in doubt with regard to a new creation?
We created man: and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are closer to him than his neck-vein.
This verse has always borne a special, personal meaning for Ahmad; he closes the Qur"an, its pliant leather cover dyed the uneven red of a rose"s streaked petals, certain that Allah is present in this small, strange room, loving him, eavesdropping on the whispers of his soul, its inaudible tumult. He feels his neck-vein beat, and hears the traffic of New Prospect, now murmuring, now roaring (motorcycles, corroded m.u.f.flers), circulating some blocks away around die great central lake of rubble, and hears it dwindle after the City Hall clock chimes eleven. He falls asleep waiting for the next quarter-hour, though he expected to stay awake all night in the blanched, hovering tremble of his high, selfless joy.
Monday morning. Sleep slips suddenly from him. There is again that sense of a shout dying away. A lump of soreness in his stomach puzzles him, until within seconds he remem- bers the day, and his mission. He is still alive. Today is the day of a long journey.
He consults his watch, carefully laid on the table next to the Qur"an. It is twenty to seven. Traffic is already audible, traffic whose unsuspecting flow he will join and disrupt. The entire East, G.o.d willing, will be paralyzed. He showers in a stall equipped with a torn plastic curtain. He waits for the water to heat up, but when it does not he forces himself into the cold dribble. He shaves his face, though he knows that debate rages over how G.o.d prefers to see men face to face. The Chehabs preferred him to shave, since bearded Muslims, even teen-agers, alarmed the kafir customers. Mohammed Atta had shaved, and most of the eighteen other inspired martyrs. The anniversary of their feat was last Sat.u.r.day, and the enemy will have relaxed his defenses, like the men of the elephant before the a.s.sault of birds. Ahmad has brought his gym bag and from it takes clean underwear and socks and his last fresh-laundered white shirt, pleasantly stiffened by a number of pieces of cardboard.
He prays on the prayer rug, the mock-mihrab in its abstract pattern orienting him toward, in the distracting geography of New Prospect, the sacred black Ka"ba in Mecca. In touching his brow to its woven texture, he notices that same faint human odor present in the blue blanket. He has joined a procession of those who have stayed for whatever hidden purpose here in this room before him, showering in the cold rusty water, smoking their cigarettes as the clock chimed. Ahmad eats, though his appet.i.te has vanished within the tension of his stomach, six segments of the orange, half the plastic cup of yogurt, and a significant portion of the bread of Abbas, though the sweetness of its honey and anise seeds strikes him as less than delicious at this hour, with his mighty deed pressing close upon him and crowding upward into his throat like a battle cry. He places the uneaten portion of the sticky holiday bread in the refrigerator, on the biggest piece of shirt cardboard, with the yogurt cup and half-orange, as if for the next tenant, but without attracting ants and roaches to a feast. His mind works through a haze like that which precedes the event described in the Meccan sura called the Blow, on the day when man shall become like scattered moths and the mountains like tufts of carded wool. on the day when man shall become like scattered moths and the mountains like tufts of carded wool.
At seven-fifteen he closes the door behind him, leaving behind in the safe room the Qur"an and the cleanliness instructions for another shahid shahid but taking his gym bag, packed with his soiled underpants, socks, and white shirt. He pa.s.ses through a dark hallway and emerges onto an empty side street that was moistened by a small rain sometime in the night. Orienting himself by the steeple of City Hall, Ahmad walks north, toward Reagan Boulevard and Excellency Home Furnishings. He deposits his gym bag in the first corner trash can he sees. but taking his gym bag, packed with his soiled underpants, socks, and white shirt. He pa.s.ses through a dark hallway and emerges onto an empty side street that was moistened by a small rain sometime in the night. Orienting himself by the steeple of City Hall, Ahmad walks north, toward Reagan Boulevard and Excellency Home Furnishings. He deposits his gym bag in the first corner trash can he sees.
The sky is not crystal-clear but damp and gray, a furry low sky bleeding downward tails of vaporous fuzz. The night that has pa.s.sed has set a gleam on the asphalt streets, their manholes, their shiny dribbles and patches of tar. Dampness adheres to the still-green leaves of bushes straggling beside front steps and porches, and the overlapped strips of aluminum siding, its color baked in. Most of the close-packed houses he pa.s.ses are not yet fully stirring, though from weakly lit windows at the back, where the kitchens are, sounds of plates and pots and the Today Today show and show and Good Morning America Good Morning America signal breakfasts being consumed, and a Monday like many another in America beginning. signal breakfasts being consumed, and a Monday like many another in America beginning.
An unseen dog in a house barks at the shadow-sound of Ahmad pa.s.sing on the sidewalk. A ginger-colored cat with one blind eye like a crazed white marble is huddling close to the front screen door as it waits to be let in; it arches its back and flashes a golden spark from its narrowed good eye, sensing something uncanny in this tall young stranger pa.s.sing. The air tingles on Ahmad"s face but there is not enough of a drizzle to soak his shirt. The starched cotton feels crisp across his shoulders; his black stovepipe jeans sheathe the long legs that float in the watery s.p.a.ce below his belt. His running shoes lick up the distance between himself and his fate; where the sidewalk is smooth, the elaborate relief of their soles leaves moist prints. Who shall teach thee what the Blow is? Who shall teach thee what the Blow is? he remembers, with the answer: he remembers, with the answer: A raging fire! A raging fire! The distance to Excellency is half a mile, six blocks of tenements and small enterprise-a Dunkin" Donuts open and a corner grocery ungrated but a p.a.w.n shop and an insurance agency still closed. Reagan Boulevard is already loud with traffic, and the school buses have begun to prowl, their angry red lights blinking in rapid seesawing alternation as they swallow the cl.u.s.ters of children waiting with dieir bright backpacks. For Ahmad there will be no return to school. Central High now seems, witii all its menacing clatter and impious mockery, a toylike miniature casde, a childish place of safety and deferred decision. The distance to Excellency is half a mile, six blocks of tenements and small enterprise-a Dunkin" Donuts open and a corner grocery ungrated but a p.a.w.n shop and an insurance agency still closed. Reagan Boulevard is already loud with traffic, and the school buses have begun to prowl, their angry red lights blinking in rapid seesawing alternation as they swallow the cl.u.s.ters of children waiting with dieir bright backpacks. For Ahmad there will be no return to school. Central High now seems, witii all its menacing clatter and impious mockery, a toylike miniature casde, a childish place of safety and deferred decision.
He waits for the traffic light to display its walking man before he crosses the boulevard. Its oil-stained concrete is more familiar to him as the surface supporting the tires of his truck than as this silent, enigmatically speckled plane beneath his feet. He turns left and approaches from die east, walking past the funeral home widi its wide porch and white awnings-unger & son, a strange unctuous hungry name- and then the tire store that was once a gasoline station, the pumps uprooted but its island intact. Ahmad halts on the curb of Thirteenth Street, looking over to the Excellency lot. The orange truck is not there. Charlie"s Saab is not there. Two unknown cars, one gray and one black, are there, diagonally parked in a heedless, s.p.a.ce-consuming way, amid signs of mysterious activity: a litter of Styrofoam coffee cups and clamsh.e.l.l-style take-out containers that have been dropped on the cracked concrete and then flattened, in a coming and going of tires, like road kill.
Overhead, the sun burns through the overcast and throws a weak white light, as of a failing flashlight. Before Ahmad can be seen-though no one appears to be sitting in the strange, arrogantly trespa.s.sing cars-he ducks right, up Thirteenth Street, and crosses it only when he is hidden behind the screen of bushes and tall weeds that have grown up behind the rusting Dumpster, on property belonging not to Excellency but to the rear of a long-defunct diner in the shape of an old-fashioned trolley car. This boarded-up relic lies at the corner of a narrow street, Frank Hague Terrace, whose row houses, semi-detached, are quiet during the weekdays, until school lets out.
Ahmad consults his watch: seven twenty-seven. He decides to give Charlie until quarter of eight to show up, though their schedule had called for seven-thirty. But then it bears down upon him more and more strongly as the minutes pa.s.s that something has gone wrong; Charlie will not show up. This lot is poisoned. This empty s.p.a.ce behind the store used to give him a sensation of being watched from above, but now it is not G.o.d watching, nor G.o.d"s breath he feels. He, Ahmad, is watching, with held breath.
A man in a suit abruptly comes out of the back of the store, onto the loading platform some of whose thick planks still ooze pine sap, and comes down the steps where Ahmad would often idly sit. Here he and Joryleen exited together that night and then parted forever. The man walks boldly to his car and talks to someone over a kind of radio or cell phone in the front seat. His voice, like a policeman"s, doesn"t care who hears it, but amid the swish of traffic it carries to Ahmad with no more meaning than birdsong. For a second his white face turns full in Ahmad"s direction- a well-fed but not happy face, that of an agent for infidel governments, powers that feel power slipping away-but he doesn"t see the Arab boy. There is nothing to see, just the Dumpster rusting in the weeds.
Ahmad"s heart beats as it did that night with Joryleen. He regrets now the waste, not using her when she had been paid for. But it would have been evil, exploiting her in her fallen condition, though she saw her condition as not so bad and only temporary. Shaikh Rashid would have disapproved. Last night, the shaikh seemed troubled, something was pressing on him he didn"t want to share, a doubt of some kind. Ahmad could always sense his teacher"s doubts, since it was important to him that there not be any. Now fear invades Ahmad. His face feels swollen. A curse has been laid on this peaceful place, which had been his favorite spot in the world, a waterless oasis.
He begins walking, down silent Hague Terrace-its children at school, its parents at work-for two blocks and then cuts back to Reagan Boulevard, toward the Arab district, where the white truck is hidden. There has been some mix-up, and Charlie must be meeting him there. Ahmad hurries, breaking into a light sweat under the hazy sun. The businesses along Reagan Boulevard deal in big goods-tires, carpeting, wallpaper and paint, major kitchen appliances. Then there are car agencies, mammoth lots holding new automobiles parked as tight as military formations, cars by the acre, windshields and chrome glittering now that the sun is wearing through, reflecting light as if across a wind-tossed wheat field, striking sparks off of strings of shiny triangles and streamers twisted in spirals that slowly turn. A new style of attention-getter, a creation of recent technology, are these weirdly lifelike segmented plastic tubes that when blown full of air from underneath wave their arms and jerk back and forth in torment, in constant beckoning agitation, begging the pa.s.serby to pull in and buy an automobile or, if posed at an IHOP, a stack of pancakes. Ahmad, the only person walking on the sidewalk along this stretch of Reagan Boulevard, meets such a tube-giant twice as high as he, a hysterically gesturing green djinni wearing a fixed, pop-eyed smile. Pa.s.sing it warily, the lone pedestrian feels on his face and ankles the hot air that makes this importuning, agonized, grinning monster appear to live. G.o.d givetb you life, G.o.d givetb you life, Ahmad thinks, Ahmad thinks, then causeth you to die. then causeth you to die.
At the next traffic light he crosses the boulevard. He strides down Sixteenth Street toward West Main, through a mostly black section like the one he walked Joryleen home to that time after hearing her sing in church. The way her mouth opened so wide, the milky pinks of it. That time on the second floor, all those beds packed in side by side, maybe he should have let her blow him like she offered to. Less mess, she said. All girls, not just hookers, learn how to do it now, at school there had always been loose crude talk about it, which girls were willing to do it, and which said they liked to swallow it. Separate yourselves therefore from women and approach them not, until they be cleansed. But when they are Separate yourselves therefore from women and approach them not, until they be cleansed. But when they are cleansed, go in unto them as G.o.d hath ordained for you. Verily G.o.d loveth those who turn to Him, and loveth those who seek to be clean.
As Ahmad walks along, swift and scissoring in black and white, yet with a native trace of the American lope, he sees shabbiness in the streets, the fast-food trash and broken plastic toys, the unpainted steps and porches still dark from the morning"s dampness, the windows cracked and not repaired. The curbs are lined with American cars from the last century, bigger than they ever needed to be and now falling apart, cracked taillights and no hubcaps and tires flat in the gutters. Women"s voices rise from back rooms in merciless complaint against children who were born uninvited and now collect, neglected, around the only friendly voices in their hearing, those from the television set. The zanj zanj from the Caribbean or Cape Verdeans plant flowers and paint porches and take hope and energy from being in America, but those born here for generation after generation embrace dirt and laziness as a protest, a protest of slaves that now persists as a l.u.s.t for degradation, defying that injunction of all religions to keep clean. Ahmad is clean. His cold shower this morning lives as a glowing second skin beneath his clothes, a foretaste of the great cleansing he is hurrying toward. His watch says ten of eight. from the Caribbean or Cape Verdeans plant flowers and paint porches and take hope and energy from being in America, but those born here for generation after generation embrace dirt and laziness as a protest, a protest of slaves that now persists as a l.u.s.t for degradation, defying that injunction of all religions to keep clean. Ahmad is clean. His cold shower this morning lives as a glowing second skin beneath his clothes, a foretaste of the great cleansing he is hurrying toward. His watch says ten of eight.
He moves swiftly, without running. He must not attract attention, he must slip through the city unseen. Later would come the headlines, the CNN reports filling the Middle East with jubilation, making the tyrants in their opulent Washington offices tremble. For now the tremble, the mission are still his, his secret, his task. He remembers himself running, crouching and shaking out his naked arms for looseness, waiting for the starter"s pistol to go off and the knot of boys to unravel forward with an angry hail of thumping feet on Central High"s antiquated cinder track, and until his body took over and his brain dissolved itself in adrenaline he was more nervous then than he is now, because what he does now occurs within the palm of G.o.d"s hand, His vast encompa.s.sing will. Ahmad"s best official time for the mile had been 4:48.6, on a springy composition track, green with embedded red lane lines, over at a regional high school in Belleville. He had come in third, and his lungs afterwards felt scorched in the fire of his finishing kick over the last hundred yards; he had pa.s.sed two boys, but two more stayed out of reach of his legs, mirages ahead that kept receding.
After five blocks Sixteenth Street comes into West Main. Elderly Muslims stand around like soft statues in their dark suits and the occasional dirty gallabiya. Ahmad finds the Pep Boys and the Al-Aqsa True Value storefronts, and then the alley behind tiiem that he and Charlie had walked along to what had been Costello"s Machine Shop. He makes sure there is no one watching as he draws near to the small side door of quilted metal painted a vomitous tan. No Charlie stands outside. There is no sound within. The sun has burned through, and Ahmad feels his shoulders and back sweating; his white shirt is no longer pristine. The Monday is astir a half-block distant on West Main. There is some traffic, cars and pedestrians, in the alley. He tries the new bra.s.s k.n.o.b on the door, but it doesn"t turn. He keeps twisting it, in exasperation. How can little unthinking bits of metal balk the will of as-Samad, as-Samad, the Perfect? the Perfect?
Fighting panic, Ahmad tries the big door, the sliding door. It has a handle down low that when turned makes two rods release a pair of side latches. The handle turns; the door shocks him by sliding up with a counterweighted ease that feels like flight, a curved moment of flight before it settles rattlingly into its rails above, in the gloom near the ceiling.
Ahmad has let light into a cave. Charlie is not inside the grimy s.p.a.ce, nor are the two operatives, the technician and his younger support. The workbenches and pegboards are just as Ahmad remembers them. The litter and drifts of discarded parts in the corners seem less than before. The garage has been cleaned up, tidied toward some finality. There is a hush as of a tomb that has been robbed the last time. The traffic in the alley throws into the cave dangerous flickers of reflected light; pa.s.sersby idly glance in. No one is here but the truck is here, die boxy GMC 3500 unprofes-sionally hand-lettered Window Shades Systems.
Ahmad opens the driver"s door gingerly and sees that the military-drab box still sits there between the two seats, duct-taped to the milk crate. The ignition key dangles from the dashboard, inviting an intruder to turn it. Two thick insulated wires still trail from the detonator into the truck body. The access door, no higher than a crouching man, slides open only six inches before the wires threaded through it begin to pull tight. Through the six-inch opening Ahmad smells the mixture of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer and nitro-methane racing fuel; he sees the ghostly-pale plastic drums, each as high as his waist and each holding one hundred sixty kilograms of die explosive mixture. The glossy white plastic of the containers glimmers like a species of flesh. Spliced yellow wires loop from the blasting caps, enhanced by aluminum powder and pentrite, which are embedded in the bottom of each drum. The twenty-five containers, he can make out in the shadows, have been arranged in a five-by-five square, neatly roped together with doubled clothesline and secured against sliding by taut attachments to the cleats and side bars within the truck body. The whole const.i.tutes a work of modern art, a.s.siduous and opaque. Ahmad remembers the squat technician, the dainty smooth gestures of his oil-tipped hands, and imagines him smiling, gap-toothed, with a workman"s innocent pride. They are all, all in this scheme, parts of a beautiful machine, fitted one against another. The others have vanished but Ahmad remains, to put the final piece into its place.
Gently he slides back the little wooden door, restoring the array of loaded plastic drums to their fragrant darkness. They have been entrusted to him. Like him, they are soldiers. He is surrounded by fellow-soldiers even though they have gone silent, leaving no instruction behind. The door at the back of the truck has been padlocked. The big hasp has been swung over and its slot closed over the thick protruding staple and a heavy combination padlock snapped shut there. Ahmad has not been told the combination. He understands the message: he must have faith in his brothers, just as they have faith in him, in their unexplained absence, to proceed with the plan. He has become the surviving lone instrument of the All-Merciful, the Perfect. He has been provided with a truck the twin of one he habitually drives, to make his path straight and smooth. Tentatively, he sits in the driver"s seat. The old imitation black leather feels warm, as if just vacated.
An explosion, he remembers from his physics cla.s.s at Central High, is simply a solid or liquid being rapidly turned into a gas, expanding in less than a second into hundreds of times its former volume. That is all it is. As if from the rim of such an impa.s.sive chemical event he sees himself, small and precise, climb into the unaccustomed truck, start the engine, rev it gently, and back it out into the alley.
One small thing nags. Getting out to lower the rattling garage door behind them-him, the truck, and the invisible company of his collaborators-Ahmad feels the juice of the breakfast orange and a suppressed nervous excitement press upon his bladder. He had best lighten himself for the journey ahead. He parks the truck, with its motor idling, on one side of the alley, raises the garage door again, and finds the machine shop"s toilet behind a smirched unmarked door in a corner beside the workbench and the pegboard. There is a string that turns on the naked bulb, and a bright porcelain receptacle with an oval eye of dubious water to be flushed when he is done adding the little stream out of himself. He washes his hands scrupulously, using the dispenser of grease-cutting detergent in readiness on the sink. He returns outside and pulls down the rattling door on its knotted cord and realizes with an inner lurch how foolish and dangerous it had been to abandon the truck, its motor running, even for a minute or two. He is not thinking normally, in this exalted yet thin atmosphere of last things. He must keep his head level by conceiving of himself as G.o.d"s instrument, cool and hard and definite and thoughtless, as an instrument must be.
He consults his Timex: it says eight-oh-nine. Four more minutes lost. He rolls the truck forward, trying to avoid potholes and sudden starts and stops. He is behind the schedule that he and Charlie set, but by less than twenty minutes. Calmer now that the truck is moving, part of the flow of the daily traffic of the world, he turns right out of the alley and then left on West Main, pa.s.sing again the Pep Boys, with its disturbing cartoon image of three men, Manny, Moe, and Jack, conjoined in one three-headed dwarf body.
The fully awakened city twinkles and swerves around him. He imagines his truck as an encircled rectangle in a heli- copter view of a car chase, threading through the streets, stopping at lights. This truck handles differently from Excellency, which had an easy sway to it, as if the driver were sitting on the neck of an elephant. Driving Window Shades Systems, he feels no organic sympathy. The steering wheel doesn"t fit his hands. Every irregularity in the road surface jars the whole frame. The front wheels persistently tug to the left, as if some accident left the frame bent. The weight- twice what McVeigh had, greater and denser than any load of furniture-pushes him from behind when he brakes at a red light and holds him back when he pulls out on green.
To avoid the center of the town-the high school, the City Hall, the church, the lake of rubble, the stubby gla.s.s skysc.r.a.pers supplied as sops by the government-Ahmad turns on Washington Street, called that because, Charlie had once told him, in the other direction it goes by a mansion the great general used as one of his New Jersey headquarters. The jihad and the Revolution waged the same kind of war, Charlie explained-the desperate and vicious war of the underdog, the imperial overdog claiming fouls by the rules he has devised for his own benefit.
Ahmad punches on the dashboard radio; it is tuned in to an obnoxious rap station, spouting unintelligible lewdness. He finds WCBS-AM on the dial and is breathlessly told that traffic on the helix into the Lincoln Tunnel is a logjam as usual, stop-and-go, ho-ho-ho. Rapid chatter from a helicopter and rackety pop music follow. He punches the radio off again. In this devilish society there is nothing fit for a man in his last hour to hear. Silence is better. Silence is G.o.d"s music. Ahmad must be clean, to meet G.o.d. An icy trickle high in his abdomen reaches his bowels at the thought of meeting the other self, as close as a vein in his neck, that he has always felt beside him, a brother, a father, but one he could never turn to confront directly in His perfect radiance. Now he, the fatherless, the brotJierless, carries forward G.o.d"s inexorable will; Ahmad hastens to deliver Hutama, the Crushing Fire. More precisely, Shaikh Rashid once explained, Hutama means that which breaks to pieces. that which breaks to pieces.
There is only one New Prospect interchange off Route 80. Ahmad steers the truck southeast on Washington until Washington meets Tilden Avenue, which feeds directly into 80 in its thunderous plunge, this time of day, toward New York City. Three blocks north of the interchange, at a broad corner where a Getty service station faces a Mobil that includes a Shop-a-Sec, Ahmad sees a somewhat familiar figure hanging on the curb waving, not waving like a man absurdly hoping for a taxi-which don"t range free in New Prospect and must be summoned by phone-but waving directly at him. him. Indeed, he points to Ahmad through the windshield; he holds up his hands as if stopping sometJiing physically. It"s Mr. Levy, wearing a brown suit coat that doesn"t match his gray pants. He"s dressed for school on this Monday but instead is standing outdoors a mile south of Central High. Indeed, he points to Ahmad through the windshield; he holds up his hands as if stopping sometJiing physically. It"s Mr. Levy, wearing a brown suit coat that doesn"t match his gray pants. He"s dressed for school on this Monday but instead is standing outdoors a mile south of Central High.
The unexpected sight stymies Ahmad. He fights to clear his racing mind. Perhaps Mr. Levy has a message from Charlie, though he didn"t think they knew each other; tlie guidance counselor had never liked his getting the CDL and driving a truck. Or an urgent message from his mother, who for a while this summer would mention Mr. Levy a little too often, in that tone of voice that meant she was embarra.s.sing herself again. Ahmad will not stop, no more than he would for one of those writhing, importuning monsters, made from plastic tubes and blowing air, that bewitch consumers into turning off a thoroughfare.
However, the light at the corner changes and the traffic slows and the truck has to halt. Mr. Levy, moving faster tiian Ahmad knew he could, dodges through the lanes of stopped traffic and reaches up and raps commandingly on the pa.s.senger"s window. Confused, conditioned not to show a teacher disrespect, Ahmad reaches over and pushes the unlock b.u.t.ton. Better have him inside next to him, the boy hastily reasons, tJian outside where he can raise an alarm. Mr. Levy yanks open the pa.s.senger door and just as the traffic has to move again hoists himself up and flops into the cracked black seat. He slams the door shut. He is panting. "Thanks," he says. "I was getting afraid I"d missed you."
"How did you know I"d be here?"
"There"s only one way to get to 80."
"But this isn"t my truck."
"I knew it wouldn"t be."
"How?"
"It"s a long story. All I have are bits and pieces. Window Shades Systems-that"s funny. Let in the light. Who says these guys don"t have a sense of humor?" He is still panting. Glancing at his profile, where Charlie used to sit, Ahmad is struck by how old the guidance teacher is, removed from the youthful commotion of the high school. Weariness has acc.u.mulated under his eyes. His lips look loose, the lid skin below his eyebrows sags. Ahmad wonders how it feels, to be sliding day by day toward a natural death. He himself will never know. Perhaps after being alive as long as Mr. Levy, you don"t feel it. Still short of breath, the man sits up, pleased at having achieved his purpose of getting into Ahmad"s truck. "What"s this?" he asks, of the drab metal box taped to the plastic crate in the s.p.a.ce between the two seats.
"Don"t touch it!" The words come out so sharply that Ahmad out of politeness adds, "Sir." The words come out so sharply that Ahmad out of politeness adds, "Sir."
"I won"t," Mr. Levy says. "But don"t you touch it either." He is silent, inspecting it without touching it. "Foreign manufacture, maybe Czech or Chinese. It sure isn"t our old standard-issue LD20 detonator. I was in the Army, you know, though they never sent me to Vietnam. That bothered me. I didn"t want to go, but I wanted to prove myself. You can understand that. Wanting to prove yourself."
"No. I don"t understand," Ahmad says. This abrupt intrusion has confused him; his thoughts feel like b.u.mblebees, blindly b.u.mping at the walls inside his skull. But he continues to steer smoothly, gliding the GMC 3500 through the curving connector onto Route 80, b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper at this commuting hour. He is getting used to the unforgiving way this truck handles.
"As I understand it, they used to rig up explosives inside the Cong"s spider holes and seal them in and detonate them with these. Woodchucking, they used to call it. It wasn"t pretty. But, then, there wasn"t much pretty about the whole business. Except the women. But I heard you couldn"t trust even them. They were Cong, too."
Ahmad, his head buzzing, tries to state his position clearly: "Sir, if you make any move to break the wires or interfere with my driving, I will set off four tons of explosives. The yellow is a safety switch, and I"m turning it off now." He moves it to the right-snap-and both men wait to see what will happen. Ahmad thinks, If something happens we will not know it. If something happens we will not know it. Nothing happens, but the switch is now off. It remains only for him to sink his thumb down into the Nothing happens, but the switch is now off. It remains only for him to sink his thumb down into the little well whose bottom is the red detonation b.u.t.ton, and to wait the microseconds for the ignition of the blasting powder to ripple up through the enhancing pentrite and racing fuel into the tons of nitrate. He feels the smooth red b.u.t.ton at the tip of his thumb, without taking his eyes from the jammed highway. If this flabby Jew moves to deflect him he will brush him aside like a piece of paper, like a tuft of carded wool.
"I have no such intentions," Mr. Levy tells him, in the falsely relaxed voice with which he advises failing students, defiant students, students who have given up on themselves. "I just want to tell you a few things that might interest you."
"What things? Tell me, and I"ll let you out when we get closer to my destination."
"Well, I guess the main thing is, Charlie"s dead."
"Dead?"
"Beheaded, in fact. Gruesome, huh? He"d been tortured before they did it. The body was found yesterday morning, dumped in the Meadows, by the ca.n.a.l south of Giants Stadium. They wanted it found. There was a note attached to it, in Arabic. Evidently Charlie was CIA undercover and the other side finally figured it out."
There had been a father who vanished before his memory could take a picture of him, and then Charlie had been friendly and shown him the roads, and now this tired Jew in clothes as if he dressed in the dark has taken their place, the empty s.p.a.ce beside him. "What did the note say, exactly?"
"Oh, I don"t know. Same old same old, to the effect that he who breaks his oatii punishes himself. G.o.d will not deny him his recompense."
"It sounds like the Qur"an, the forty-eighth sura."
"It sounds like the Torah, too. Whatever you say. There"s a lot I don"t know. I"m coming in late."
"May I ask, how do you know what you do know?"
"My wife"s sister. She works in Washington for Homeland Security. She called me yesterday; my wife had mentioned my interest in you, and they wondered if there was a connection. They couldn"t find you. n.o.body could. I thought I"d give this a try."
"Why should I believe any of what you say?"
"Don"t, then. Believe it only if it fits with what you know. My guess is it does. Where is Charlie now, if I"m lying? His wife says he"s vanished. She swears he was just in the furniture business."
"What of the other Chehabs, and the men to whom they supplied money?"
Ahmad is being tailgated by a midnight-blue Mercedes driven by an impatient man too young to have earned a Mercedes, unless it was in stock manipulation at the expense of the less fortunate. Such men live expensively in the so-called bedroom towns of New Jersey and jumped from the towers when G.o.d brought them down. Ahmad feels superior to this Mercedes driver, and indifferent to his tooting and swerving back and forth as he seeks to dramatize his wish that the white truck were moving less sedately in the middle lane.
Mr. Levy answers, "Gone underground and scattered, I suppose. They caught two men trying to fly to Paris out of Newark, and Charlie"s father is in the hospital with what"s supposed to be a stroke."
"He suffers from diabetes, truly."
"Whatever. He says he loves this country, and so did his son, and now his son has died for this country. There"s one theory that he"s the one who fingered his son. The uncle in Florida, the feds have had an eye on him for some time. These agencies are overwhelmed, and don"t communicate with one another, but they don"t miss every every trick. The uncle trick. The uncle will talk, or somebody will. It"s hard to believe one brother had no idea what the other was up to. These Arabs all pressure each other with Islam: how can you say no to the will of Allah?"
"I don"t know. I have been denied," Ahmad says stiffly, "the blessing of a brother."
"Small blessing, to go by what I see at school. In jackals, I read somewhere, the pups fight to the death as soon as they"re born."
Less stiffly, remembering with a smile, Ahmad tells Mr. Levy, "Charlie was very eloquent for the jihad."
"That was one of his acts, apparently. I never met the guy. He sounds like a loose cannon. His mistake, my sister-in-law said-and all she does is echo her boss, she worships the bozo-his fatal mistake was to wait too long to spring his trap. He"d seen too many movies."
"He watched a great deal of television. He wanted some day to direct commercials."
"My point is, Ahmad, you don"t need to do this. It"s all over. Charlie never meant for you to go through with it. He was using you to flush out the others."
Ahmad reviews the unfolding, slithering fabric of what he has heard and concludes, "It would be a glorious victory for Islam."
"Islam? How so?"
"It would slay and inconvenience many unbelievers."
"You"ve got to be kidding," Mr. Levy says, as Ahmad deftly maneuvers the transition from 80 East to 95 South, seizing the inside lane and not allowing the Mercedes to pa.s.s him on the right as the bulk of the traffic continues east toward the George Washington Bridge. On the left, the Overpeck River crinkles in the breeze as it flows toward the Hackensack. The truck is on the New Jersey Turnpike, above swampland being exploited in every sc.r.a.p that can be drained. The Turnpike branches; the leftward branch leads to the Lincoln Tunnel exit. The plotters saw to it that an E-Z Pa.s.s transponder is fixed to the center of the truck"s windshield; it will let him roll smoothly through the toll booth, without more than a moment"s exposure of the youthful driver to the eyes of a toll-taker or guard.
"Think of your mother." The conversational ease has gone from Mr. Levy"s voice; a touch of stridency has entered. "She"ll not only lose you but she"ll become known as the mother of a monster. A madman."
Ahmad is beginning to take pleasure in not being moved by this intruder"s arguments. "I have never been essential to my mother," he explains, "though she did, I admit, stick with her a.s.signment once I was unfortunately born. As to the mother of a monster, in the Middle East the mothers of martyrs are highly esteemed and receive a substantial pension."
Mr. Levy says, "I"m sure she"d rather have you than a pension."
"How are you sure, may I ask, sir? How well do you know her?" are you sure, may I ask, sir? How well do you know her?"
Gulls, at first a few in his vision through the windshield, then dozens coming into focus, and the dozens becoming hundreds, wheel above a waste site. Beyond their greedy gathering of wings, beyond the sullen Hudson, stands the stone-colored silhouette, notched like an immense key, of the great city, Satan"s heart. Lit from the east, its towers loom in shadow from the west, a dust of haze radiant between them. Mr. Levy"s silence foretells a new attack on Ahmad"s convictions, but for now driver and pa.s.senger share without comment their glimpse of one of the world"s won- ders, suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed from view as the traffic hurtles onward and is replaced by relatively empty expanses on either side of 95-marsh gra.s.s shot through with blue flashes of sky reflected by the watery channels as they wander in the mud. High in his windshield, a silvery cruciform glint escapes Newark International Airport, carving in the milky blank sky a twin-tipped trail like a highway for others to follow, in the web of patterns the air controllers enforce. Ahmad momentarily feels exhilarated, like a plane lifting free of gravity.