Terrorist - A Novel Part 10

"Boy. You're a man, all right. Always wanting one more thing."

"Just a little song. I loved it, in the church, being able to pick your voice out from all the others."

"And now somebody's taught you how to sweet-talk. I got to sit up. You can't sing lying down. Lying down's for other things." This was needlessly coa.r.s.e of her to say. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s there in the light from the lone lamp in that ocean of mattresses have crescents of shadow beneath their rounded weight; she is eighteen, but already gravity tugs them down. He has an urge to reach out and touch the jut of her meat-colored nipples, to pinch them even, since she is a wh.o.r.e and used to worse, and wonders at this itch of cruelty within him, fighting that tenderness which would seduce him away from his innermost loyalty. He that fights for Allah's cause, He that fights for Allah's cause, the twenty-ninth sura says, the twenty-ninth sura says, fights for himself. fights for himself. Ahmad closes his eyes as he sees from the tensing little muscles of her lips, with that delicate welt of flesh that runs around their edges, that she is about to sing. Ahmad closes his eyes as he sees from the tensing little muscles of her lips, with that delicate welt of flesh that runs around their edges, that she is about to sing.

" 'What a friend we have in Jesus,' " she croons, quaver-ingly and without the jumping syncopation of the version he heard in church, " 'all our sins and griefs to bear . . . ' " As she sings she reaches out a pale-palmed hand and touches his brow, an upright square brow bent on carrying more faith than most men can bear, and, her fingers with their two-toned nails straying, pinches the lobe of his ear in conclusion. " '. . . take it to the Lord in prayer.' "

He watches her briskly put her clothes back on: bra first, then, with a comical wriggle, her skimpy underpants; next, her snug jersey, short enough to let a strip of belly show, and the scarlet miniskirt. She sits on the edge of the bed to put on her long-toed boots, over some thin white socks he hadn't noticed her taking off. To protect the leather from her sweat, and her feet from the smell.

What time is it? The dark comes earlier every day. Not much past seven; he has been with her less than an hour. His mother might be home, waiting to feed him. She has more time for him, lately. Reality calls: he must get up and smooth any shadow of their shapes out of the plastic-wrapped mattress and restore the carpet and cus.h.i.+ons to their places downstairs and lead Joryleen among the tables and armchairs, past the desks and the water cooler and the time clock, and let them both out the back door into the night, busy with headlights less now of workers coming home than of people out hunting for something, for dinner or for love. Her singing and his coming have left him so sleepy that the thought, as he walks the dozen blocks home, of going to bed and never waking up has no terror for him.

Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d greets him in the language of the Qur'an: "fa-inna ma a 'l-'usri yusrd." "fa-inna ma a 'l-'usri yusrd." Ahmad, his cla.s.sical Arabic rusty after three months of skipping his lessons at the mosque, deciphers the quote in the head and ponders it for hidden meanings. Ahmad, his cla.s.sical Arabic rusty after three months of skipping his lessons at the mosque, deciphers the quote in the head and ponders it for hidden meanings. Every hards.h.i.+p is followed by ease. Every hards.h.i.+p is followed by ease. He recognizes it as from "Comfort," one of the early Meccan suras placed late in the Book because of their shorter length but dear to his master because of their compressed, enigmatic nature. Sometimes called "The Opening," it addresses, in G.o.d's voice, the Prophet himself: He recognizes it as from "Comfort," one of the early Meccan suras placed late in the Book because of their shorter length but dear to his master because of their compressed, enigmatic nature. Sometimes called "The Opening," it addresses, in G.o.d's voice, the Prophet himself: Have We not lifted up your heart and relieved you of the burden which weighed down your back? Have We not lifted up your heart and relieved you of the burden which weighed down your back?

His encounter with Joryleen had been arranged for the Friday before Labor Day, so it was not until the next Tuesday that Charlie Chehab asked him at work, "How'd it go?"

"Fine" was Ahmad's queasy reply. "It turns out I knew her, slightly, at Central High. She has been led sorely astray since."

"She do the job?"

"Oh, yes. The job is done."

"Good. Her thug promised she could do it nicely. What a relief. To me, I mean. It didn't feel natural, you still having your cherry. Don't know why I took it so personally, but I did. Feel like a new man?"

"Oh, yes. I see life through a new veil. A new lens, I should say."

"Great. Great. Great. Until your first piece of a.s.s, you really haven't lived. I got mine when I was sixteen. Two, actually- a pro with a Trojan, and a girl from the neighborhood bareback. But that was when things were wilder, before AIDS. Your generation is smart to be cautious." Until your first piece of a.s.s, you really haven't lived. I got mine when I was sixteen. Two, actually- a pro with a Trojan, and a girl from the neighborhood bareback. But that was when things were wilder, before AIDS. Your generation is smart to be cautious."

"We were cautious." Ahmad blushed at the secret he was hiding from Charlie, that he was still pure. But he had no wish to disappoint his mentor by sharing this truth. There had perhaps been too much sharing between them, in the closeness of the cab as Excellency processed New Jersey beneath its whirring wheels. Joryleen's advice to get away from that truck rankles.

An air of apprehension, of nervous multi-tasking, clung to Charlie this morning. The quick creasing of his face, the flitting expressions of his mobile mouth, seemed excessive in his office behind the showroom, where morning coffee was consumed and the day's plan was sketched. Unwashed olive coveralls waited here, and yellow slickers for days of delivering in the rain; they hung on their hooks like flayed skins.

Charlie announced, "I ran into Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d over the long weekend."

"Oh, yes?" Of course, Ahmad reflected, the Chehabs were significant members of the mosque; there was nothing strange in an encounter.

"He'd like to see you over at the Islamic Center."

"To chastise me, I fear. Now that I work, I neglect the Qur'an, and my Friday attendance has fallen off, though I never fail, as you have noticed, to fulfill salat, wherever I can spend five minutes in an unpolluted place."

Charlie frowned. "You can't do just you and G.o.d, Madman. He sent His Prophet, and the Prophet created a community. Witbout the ummah, ummah, the knowledge and practice of belonging to a righteous group, faith is a seed that bears no fruit." the knowledge and practice of belonging to a righteous group, faith is a seed that bears no fruit."

"Is that what Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d told you to say to me?" It sounded more like Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d than Charlie.

The man grinned-that sudden, engaging exposure of his teeth, like a child caught out in a trick. "Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d can speak for himself. But he isn't calling you to him to rebuke you-quite the contrary. He wants to offer you an opportunity. Shut my big mouth, I'm speaking out of turn. Let him tell you himself. We'll end deliveries early today, and I'll drop you at the mosque."

Thus he has been delivered to his master, the imam from Yemen. The nail salon below the mosque, though well equipped with chairs, holds one bored Vietnamese manicurist reading a magazine, and the Checks Cashed window, through its long Venetian blinds, affords a narrow glimpse of a high counter, protected by a grille, behind which a heavyset white man yawns. Ahmad opens the door between these places of business, the scabby green door numbered 2781V2, and climbs the narrow stairs to the foyer where once the customers of the departed dance studio would wait for their lessons. The bulletin board outside the imam's office still holds the same computer-printed notices for cla.s.ses in Arabic, for counseling in holy, proper, and seemly marriage in the modern age, and for lectures in Middle Eastern history by this or that visiting mullah. Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d, in his caftan embroidered with silver thread, comes forward and clasps his pupil's hand with an unusual fervor and ceremoniousness; he seems unchanged by the summer past, though in his beard perhaps a few more gray hairs have appeared, to match his dove-gray eyes.

To his initial greeting, while Ahmad is still puzzling over its meaning, Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d adds, "wa la 'l-dkhiratu khayrun laka mina l-uld. wa la-sawfa yu'tika rabbuka fa-tardd." "wa la 'l-dkhiratu khayrun laka mina l-uld. wa la-sawfa yu'tika rabbuka fa-tardd." Ahmad dimly recognizes this as from one of the short Mec-can suras of which his master was so fond, perhaps that one called "The Brightness," to the effect that the future, the life to come, holds a richer prize for you than the past. Ahmad dimly recognizes this as from one of the short Mec-can suras of which his master was so fond, perhaps that one called "The Brightness," to the effect that the future, the life to come, holds a richer prize for you than the past. You shall be gratified with what your Lord will give you. You shall be gratified with what your Lord will give you. In English Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d says, "Dear boy, I have missed our hours studying Scripture together, and talking of great matters. I, too, learned. The simplicity and strength of your faith instructed and fortified my own. There are too few like you." In English Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d says, "Dear boy, I have missed our hours studying Scripture together, and talking of great matters. I, too, learned. The simplicity and strength of your faith instructed and fortified my own. There are too few like you."

He leads the young man into his office, and settles himself in the tall wing chair from which he does his teaching. "Well, now," he addresses Ahmad, when both are seated in their accustomed positions around the desk, upon whose surface nothing rests but a well-worn, green-bound copy of the Qur'an. "You have travelled in the wider, infidel world- what our friends the Black Muslims call 'the dead world.' Has it modified your beliefs?"

"Sir, I am not aware that it has. I still feel G.o.d beside me, as close as the vein in my neck, cheris.h.i.+ng me as only He can."

"Did you not witness, in the cities you visited, poverty and misery that led you to question His mercy, and inequalities of wealth and power that cast doubt on His justice? Did you not discover that the world, in its American portion, emits a stench of waste and greed, of sensuality and futility, of the despair and la.s.situde that come with ignorance of the inspired wisdom of the Prophet?"

The dry flourishes of this imam's rhetoric, delivered by a two-edged voice that seems to withdraw even as it proffers, afflict Ahmad with a familiar discomfort. He tries to answer honestly, somewhat in Charlie's voice: "This isn't the fanciest part of the planet, I guess, and it has its share of losers, but I enjoyed being out in it, really. People are pretty nice, mostly. Of course, we were usually delivering something they wanted, and they thought would make their lives better. Charlie was good fun to be with. He knows a lot about state history."

Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d leans forward, resting his shoes on the floor, and presses the fingertips of his fine small hands together, perhaps to suppress their tremor. Ahmad wonders why his teacher should be nervous. Perhaps he is jealous of another man's influence upon his student. "Yes," he says. "Charlie is 'fun,' but is possessed of serious purpose as well. He informs me that you have expressed a willingness to die for jihad."

"I did?"

"In an interview in Liberty State Park, in view of lower Manhattan, where the twin towers of capitalist oppression were triumphantly brought down."

"That was an interview?" How strange, Ahmad thinks, that the conversation, in the open air, has been reported here, in the closed s.p.a.ce of this inner-city mosque, whose windows have a view of only brick walls and dark clouds. The sky today is close and gray in wispy layers that may produce rain. At that earlier interview, the day had been harshly bright, the cries of children in holiday packs ricocheting between the glitter of the Upper Bay and the glaring white dome of the Science Center. Balloons, gulls, sun. "I will die," he confirms, after silence, "if it is the will of G.o.d."

"There is a way," his master cautiously begins, "in which a mighty blow can be delivered against His enemies."

"A plot?" Ahmad asks.

"A way," Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d repeats, fastidiously. "It would involve a shahid shahid whose love of G.o.d is unqualified, and who impatiently thirsts for the glory of Paradise. Are you such a one, Ahmad?" The question is put almost lazily, while the master leans back and closes his eyes as if against too strong a light. "Be honest, please." whose love of G.o.d is unqualified, and who impatiently thirsts for the glory of Paradise. Are you such a one, Ahmad?" The question is put almost lazily, while the master leans back and closes his eyes as if against too strong a light. "Be honest, please."

Ahmad's rickety feeling, of being supported over a gulf of bottomless s.p.a.ce only by a scaffold of slender and tenuous supports, has returned. After a life of barely belonging, he is on the shaky verge of a radiant centrality. "I believe I am," the boy tells his teacher. "But I have no warrior skills."

"It has been seen to that you have all the skills you need. The task would involve driving a truck to a certain destination and making a certain simple mechanical connection. Exactly how would be explained to you by the experts that arrange these matters. We have, in our war for G.o.d," the imam lightly explains, with an amused small smile, "technical experts equal to those of the enemy, and a will and spirit overwhelmingly greater than his. Do you recall the twenty-fourth sura, al-niir, al-niir, 'The Light'?" 'The Light'?"

His eyelids close, showing their tiny purple veins, in the effort of remembering and reciting, "wa 'l-ladhlna kafaru a'mdluhum ka-sardbi biqi'atin yahsabubu 'z-zam'anu ma an hattd idhdjd'ahu lamyajidhn shay'an wa wajada llaha 'indahu fa-waffahu hisdbahu, wa 'lldhu sarl'u 'l-hisab. "wa 'l-ladhlna kafaru a'mdluhum ka-sardbi biqi'atin yahsabubu 'z-zam'anu ma an hattd idhdjd'ahu lamyajidhn shay'an wa wajada llaha 'indahu fa-waffahu hisdbahu, wa 'lldhu sarl'u 'l-hisab." Opening his eyes to see a guilty incomprehension on Ahmad's face, the shaikh, with his thin off-center smile, translates: " 'As for the unbelievers, their works are like a mirage in a desert. The thirsty traveller thinks it is water, but when he comes near he finds that it is nothing. He finds Allah there, who pays him back in full.' A beautiful image, I have always thought-the traveller thinks it is water, but he finds only Allah there. It dumbfounds him. The enemy has only the mirage of selfishness, of many small selves and interests, to fight for: our side has a single sublime selflessness. We submit to G.o.d and become one with Him, and with one another."

The imam shuts his eyes again as in a holy trance, his closed lids shuddering with the pulse of the capillaries within them. His voice emerges from his mouth cogently, however. "Your translation to Paradise would be instant," he states. "Your family-your mother-would receive compensation, i'dla, i'dla, for her loss, even though she is an unbeliever. The beauty of her son's sacrifice may perhaps persuade her to convert. All things are possible with Allah." for her loss, even though she is an unbeliever. The beauty of her son's sacrifice may perhaps persuade her to convert. All things are possible with Allah."

"My mother-she has always supported herself. Could I name another, a female friend my age, to receive the compensation? It might help her to achieve freedom."

"What is freedom?" Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d asks, his eyes opening and breaking the skin of his trance. "As long as we are in our bodies, we are slaves to our bodies and their necessities. How I envy you, dear boy. Compared with you, I am old, and it is to the young that the greatest glory of battle belongs. To sacrifice one's life," he continues, as his eyelids half shut, so just a wet gray glitter shows, "before it becomes a tattered, exhausted thing. What an endless joy that would be."

"When," Ahmad asks after letting these words sink into a silence, "will my istishhdd istishhdd take place?" His self-sacrifice: it is becoming a part of him, a live, helpless thing like his heart, his stomach, his pancreas gnawing away with its chemicals and enzymes. take place?" His self-sacrifice: it is becoming a part of him, a live, helpless thing like his heart, his stomach, his pancreas gnawing away with its chemicals and enzymes.

"Your heroic sacrifice," his master quickly amplifies. "Within a week, I would say. The details are not mine to specify, but a week would approximate an anniversary and send an effective message to the global Satan. The message would be, 'We strike when we please.' "

"The truck. Would it be the one I drive for Excellency?" Ahmad can grieve, if not for himself, for the truck-its cheerful pumpkin orange, its ornate script lettering, the vantage from its driver's seat that puts the world of obstacles and dangers, of pedestrians and other vehicles, just on the other side of the tall winds.h.i.+eld, so that clearances are easier to gauge than when driving an automobile, with its long and bloated hood.

"A truck like it, which should give you no trouble in driving a short distance. The Excellency truck itself would of course incriminate the Chehabs, if any identifiable fragments remain. The hope is that none will. In the first World Trade Center bombings, you may be too young to remember, the rented truck was traced with laughable ease. This time, the physical clues will be obliterated-sunk, as the great Shakespeare puts it, full fathom five."

"Obliterated," Ahmad repeats. The word is not one he often hears. A strange layer, as of a transparent, disagreeable-tasting wool, has come to enwrap him and act as an impediment to the interaction of his senses with the world.

In contrast, Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d has come sharply out of his trance, sensitive to the boy's queasy mood, quickly insisting to him, "You will not be there to experience it. You will already be in Jannah, in Paradise, at that instant, confronting the delighted face of G.o.d. He will greet you as His son." The shaikh bends forward earnestly, changing gears. "Ahmad, listen to me. You do not have to do this. Your avowal to Charlie does not obligate you, if your heart quails. There are many others eager for a glorious name and the a.s.surance of eternal bliss. The jihad is overwhelmed by volunteers, even in this homeland of evil and irreligion."

"No," Ahmad protests, jealous of this alleged mob of others who would steal his glory. "My love of Allah is absolute. Your gift is one I cannot refuse." Seeing a kind of flinch on his master's face, a clash of relief and sorrow, a disconcerted gap, in his usual composed surface, through which his mere humanity flashes, Ahmad relents, joining him in humanity with the joke, "I would not have you think that our hours studying the Eternal Book were wasted."

"Many study the Book; few die for it. Few are given your opportunity to prove its truth." From this stern high plane Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d relents in turn: "If there is any uncertainty in your heart, dear boy, speak it now, without penalty. It will be as if this conversation has never taken place. I ask from you only silence, a silence in which someone with more courage and faith may carry out the mission."

The boy knows he is being manipulated, yet accedes to the manipulation, since it draws from him a sacred potential. "No, the mission is mine, though I feel shrunk to the size of a worm within it."

"Good, then," the teacher concludes, leaning back, lifting up his little black shoes, and resting them in view on the silver-threaded footstool. "You and I will not speak of this again. Nor will you visit here again. Word has reached me that the Islamic Center may be under surveillance. Inform Charlie Chehab of your heroic resolve. He will arrange that you soon receive detailed instruction. Give him the name of this sharmoota sharmoota whom you value above your mother. I cannot say that I approve: women are our fields, but our mother is the Earth itself, from which we drew existence." whom you value above your mother. I cannot say that I approve: women are our fields, but our mother is the Earth itself, from which we drew existence."

"Master, I would rather entrust the name to you. Charlie has a connection with her that might lead him to disrespect my intent."

Shaikh Ras.h.i.+d resents such a complication, which mars the purity of his pupil's submission. "As you wish," he says stiffly.

Ahmad prints joryleen grant on a piece of notepaper, just as he saw it, not many months ago, inscribed in ballpoint on the edges of the pages of a thick high-school textbook. They were nearly equals then; now he is headed for Jannah and she for Jahannan, the pits of h.e.l.l. She is the only bride he will enjoy on Earth. Ahmad notices in writing that the trembling has pa.s.sed out of his teacher's hands into his own. His soul feels like one of those out-of-season flies that, trapped in winter in a warm room, buzz and insistently b.u.mp against the gla.s.s of a window saturated with the sunlight of an outdoors wherein they would quickly die.

The next day, a Wednesday, he wakes early, as if at a shout that quickly dies away. In the kitchen, in the dark before six o'clock, he encounters his mother, who is back on the morning s.h.i.+ft at Saint Francis. She wears, chastely, a beige street dress and a blue cardigan thrown across her shoulders; her footsteps pad silently in the white Nikes she wears for the miles she traverses the hospital's hard floors. He gratefully senses that her recent mood-the short temper and distraction caused by one of those obscure disappointments whose atmospheric repercussions have bothered him since early childhood-is lifting. She wears no makeup; the skin beneath her eyes is blanched, and her eyes are reddened by her swim in the waters of sleep. She greets him with surprise: "Well, you're an early bird!"

"Mother-"

"What, darling? Don't make it long, I'm on duty in forty minutes."

"I wanted to thank you, for putting up with me all these years."

"Why, what a strange thing to say! A mother doesn't put up with her child; die child is her reason for being."

"Without me, you would have had more freedom to be an artist, or whatever."

"Oh, I'm as much of an artist as I have talent for. Without you to care for, I might have just sunk myself in self-pity and bad behavior. And you've been such a good boy, really- never giving me real trouble, like I hear about at the hospital all the time. And not just from the other nurse's aides but from the doctors, doctors, with all that education they have and the lovely homes. They give rfieir children with all that education they have and the lovely homes. They give rfieir children everything, everything, and yet they turn out horribly-self-destructive and other-destructive. I don't know how much credit to give your Mohammedanism. Even as a baby, you were so trusting and easy. Everything I suggested, you diought was a good idea. It worried me, even, you seemed so easily led, I was afraid you'd be influenced by the wrong people as you grew and yet they turn out horribly-self-destructive and other-destructive. I don't know how much credit to give your Mohammedanism. Even as a baby, you were so trusting and easy. Everything I suggested, you diought was a good idea. It worried me, even, you seemed so easily led, I was afraid you'd be influenced by the wrong people as you grew older. But look at you! A man of the world, earning good money just as you said you would, and handsome besides. You have your father's lovely lanky build, and his eyes and s.e.xy mouth, but nothing of his cowardice, always looking for a shortcut."

He does not tell of the shortcut to Paradise he is about to take. He tells her instead, "We don't call it Mohammedanism, Mother. That sounds as if we wors.h.i.+pped Mohammed. He never claimed to be G.o.d; he was just G.o.d's prophet. The only miracle he ever claimed was the Qur'an itself."

"Yes, well, darling, Roman Catholicism is full of these fussy distinctions too, about all these things n.o.body can see. People make them up out of hysteria and then they get pa.s.sed on as gospel. Saint Christopher medals and not touching the wafer with your teeth and saying the ma.s.s in Latin and no meat on Fridays and crossing yourself constantly, then it all got tossed out by Vatican Two as cool as you please-stuff that people had believed for two thousand years! The nuns put such ridiculous stock in all of it, and expected us children to, too, but all I saw was a beautiful world around me, for however briefly, and I wanted to make images of its beauty."

"In Islam, diat's called blasphemy, trying to usurp G.o.d's prerogative of creation."

"Well, I know. That's why there aren't any statues or paintings in mosques. To me that seems unnecessarily bleak. G.o.d gave us eyes to see what, then?"

She talks while rinsing her cereal bowl and slapping it into the drainer in the sink, and hurrying her toast up out of the toaster and slapping on jam between gulps of coffee. Ahmad tells her, "G.o.d is supposed to be beyond description. Didn't the nuns say tiiat?"

"Not really, that I remember. But, then, I only had tJiree years of parochial school before switching to public, where they were supposed not to mention G.o.d, for fear some Jewish child would go home and tell his atheist lawyer parents." She looks at her watch, thick-faced like a diver's watch, with big numbers she can see while taking a pulse. "Darling, I love having a serious conversation, maybe you could convert me, except there are all these baggy hot clotb.es they make you wear, but now I'm truly getting late and must run. I don't even have time to swing you by work, I'm so sorry, and anyway you'd be the first one tJiere. Why don't you finish up your breakfast and the dishes and tben walk over to the store, or even run? It's only ten blocks." they make you wear, but now I'm truly getting late and must run. I don't even have time to swing you by work, I'm so sorry, and anyway you'd be the first one tJiere. Why don't you finish up your breakfast and the dishes and tben walk over to the store, or even run? It's only ten blocks."

"Twelve."

"Remember how you used to run everywhere in those little track shorts? I was so proud, you looked so s.e.xy."

"Mother, I love you."

Touched, even stricken, sensing some abyss of need within him but able only to dart to the edge and away, Teresa pecks a kiss on her son's cheek and tells Ahmad, "Well, of course, you sweet thing, and I do you. What is it the French say? Qa va sans dire. Qa va sans dire. It goes without saying." It goes without saying."

He is blus.h.i.+ng, stupidly, hating his own hot face. But he must get this out: "I mean, all tJiose years, there I was obsessing about my father, and you you were the one taking care of me." were the one taking care of me." Our mother is the Earth itself, from which we drew existence. Our mother is the Earth itself, from which we drew existence.

Her hands flit over herself to check that everything is in place; she looks at her watch again, and he can feel her mind flying, flying away. Her response makes him doubt that she heard what he said. "I know, dear-we all make mistakes in relations.h.i.+ps. Can you possibly see to your own supper tonight? The Wednesday-evening sketch group is starting up again, we have a model tonight-you know, we each kick in ten dollars to pay her and have five-minute poses followed by a longer sitting, you can bring pastels but they discourage oils. Anyway, Leo Wilde called the otber day and I promised to go with him. You remember Leo, don't you? I used to go out with him, a little. Stocky, wears his hair in a ponytail, funny little granny gla.s.ses-"

"I remember remember him, Motber," Ahmad says coldly. "One of your losers." him, Motber," Ahmad says coldly. "One of your losers."

He watches her rush out the door, hears her rapid padded steps in die hall and die m.u.f.fled heave of die elevator answering her call. At the sink he washes his dirty bowl and orange-juice gla.s.s with a new zeal, the thoroughness of a last time. He leaves tbem in the drainer to dry. They are utterly clean, like a desert morning, die crescent moon sharing die sky with Venus.

At Excellency, out on die lot, witb the freshly loaded orange truck between themselves and the office window from which old, bald Mr. Chehab might see diem talking and sense a conspiracy, he tells Charlie, "I'm in."

"I heard. Good." Charlie gives Ahmad a look, and it's as if his Lebanese eyes are new to the boy, crystalline in complexity, tbis part of us not quite flesh, brittle witb its amber rays and granulations, die area around the pupil paler than the dark-brown ring r.i.m.m.i.n.g the iris. Charlie has a wife and children and a fadier, Ahmad realizes; he is tied to diis world in a way Ahmad isn't. His substance is knottier. "You sure, Madman?"

"As G.o.d is my witness," Ahmad tells him. "I burn to do it."

It always faintly embarra.s.ses him, he does not know why, when G.o.d arises between himself and Charlie. The man makes one of his intricate quick mouths, a pinching of the lips together and then puffing them out, as if something inside has been regretfully kept from escaping.

"Then you'll need to meet some specialists. I'll arrange it." He hesitates. "It's a little tricky, it may not happen tomorrow. How're your nerves?"

"I have placed myself in G.o.d's hand, and feel very serene. My own will, my own cravings, are at rest."

"Right." Charlie lifts his fist and punches Ahmad on the shoulder with it, in a gesture of solidarity and mutual congratulation such as when football players b.u.mp helmets, or basketball players exchange high-fives even as they backpedal into their defensive positions. "All systems go," Charlie says; his wry smile and wary eyes mix in an expression in which Ahmad recognizes the mixed nature-Mecca and Medina, the rapt inspiration and the patient working-out- of any holy enterprise on Earth.

Not die next day but the next, a Friday, Charlie, sitting in the pa.s.senger seat, directs the truck to leave the lot and go right on Reagan, then left at the light up on Sixteenth down to West Main, into that section of New Prospect, extending some blocks west of the Islamic Center, where emigrants from the Middle East, Turks and Syrians and Kurds packed into steerage on the glamorous transatlantic liners, settled generations ago, when the silk-dyeing and leather-tanning plants were in full operation. Signs, red on yellow, black on green, advertise in Arabic script and Roman alphabet Al Madena Grocery, Turkiyem Beauty, Al-Basba, Baitul Wahid Ahmadiyya. Al Madena Grocery, Turkiyem Beauty, Al-Basba, Baitul Wahid Ahmadiyya. The older men visible on die streets have long since discarded the gallabiya and the fez for the dusty-black The older men visible on die streets have long since discarded the gallabiya and the fez for the dusty-black Western-style suits, shapeless with daily wear, favored by the Mediterranean males, Sicilians and Greeks, who preceded them in this neighborhood of tight-to-the-street row houses. The younger Arab-Americans, idle and watchful, have adopted die bulky running shoes, droopy oversize jeans, and hooded sweats.h.i.+rts of black homeys. Ahmad, in his prim white s.h.i.+rt and his black jeans slim as two stovepipes, would not fit in here. To these co-religionists, Islam is less a faith, a filigreed doorway into the supernatural, than a habit, a facet of their condition as an undercla.s.s, alien in a nation that persists in thinking of itself as light-skinned, English-speaking, and Christian. To Ahmad these blocks feel like an underworld he is timidly visiting, an outsider among outsiders.

Charlie seems at ease here, cheerfully exchanging jabber for jabber as he directs Ahmad to park the truck in a jammed parking lot behind a Pep Boys and the Al-Aqsa True Value hardware store. He pleadingly holds up ten fingers to trie True Value clerk who has emerged, arguing that n.o.body in his right mind could refuse him ten minutes of off-street parking; to clarify his point, a ten-dollar bill changes hands. Walking away, he mutters to Ahmad, "Out on the street the d.a.m.n truck sticks out like a circus van."

"You do not wish to be observed," Ahmad deduces. "But who would observe?"

"You never know" is the unsatisfactory reply. They walk, at a pace brisker than Charlie's usual one, along a back alley running parallel to Main and haphazardly lined with razor-wire-topped chain-link fences, asphalt lots forbiddingly marked private property and customers only, and the porches and front steps of housing meekly fitted into back-lot slices of urban s.p.a.ce, their original wooden sides covered with aluminum clapboards or metal sheets patterned to imitate bricks. Non-domestic structures of real, time-darkened brick serve as warehouses and back-lot workplaces for the shops that front on Main Street; some are now boarded-up sh.e.l.ls, with every exposed window smashed by methodical delinquents, and from others emerge the glow and clangor of small-scale manufacture or repair still being carried forward. One such building, of a brick painted a dour tan, has rendered its metal-sashed windows opaque with an interior coating of the same tan paint. Its wide overhead garage door is down, and the tin sign above, advertising in clumsy hand-painted letters Costello's Machine Shop All Repairs and Body Work, All Repairs and Body Work, has faded and rusted into near-illegibility. Charlie raps on a small side door of quilted metal, with a s.h.i.+ny new bra.s.s lock. After a considerable silence, a voice from within asks, "Yes? Who?" has faded and rusted into near-illegibility. Charlie raps on a small side door of quilted metal, with a s.h.i.+ny new bra.s.s lock. After a considerable silence, a voice from within asks, "Yes? Who?"

"Chehab," Charlie says. "And the driver."

He speaks so softly that Ahmad doubts he has been heard, but the door does open, and a scowling young man steps aside. Ahmad is coping with his sensation that he has seen this man before when Charlie roughly, witli fear's rigid touch, takes his arm and pushes him inside. The interior s.p.a.ce smells of oil-soaked concrete and an unexpected substance that Ahmad recognizes from two summers spent, in his mid-teens, as a junior member of a lawn crew: fertilizer. The caustic dry odor of it parches his nose and sinuses; there are also the scents of an acetylene welding torch and of closeted male bodies needing to be bathed and aired. Ahmad wonders if the men-two of them, the younger slender one and a stockier older, who turns out to be the technician- were among the four in the cottage on the Jersey Sh.o.r.e. He saw them for only a few minutes, in an unlit room and then through a dirty window, but they exuded this same sullen tension, as of distance runners who have trained too long. They resent being asked to talk. But they owe Charlie the deference paid a supplier and an arranger, at a level above them. Ahmad they regard with a kind of dread, as if, so soon to be a martyr, he is already a ghost.

"La ildha Ma Allah," he greets them, as a rea.s.surance. Only the younger-and though young he is older than Ahmad by some years-replies in kind, he greets them, as a rea.s.surance. Only the younger-and though young he is older than Ahmad by some years-replies in kind, "Muhammad rasvlu Allah, "Muhammad rasvlu Allah," muttering the formula as if tricked into an indiscretion. Ahmad sees that no merely human response, no nuance of sympathy or humor, is expected of them; they are operatives, soldiers, units. He straightens his posture, seeking their good opinion, shouldering his similar role.

Traces of the building's former life as Costello's Machine Shop linger in the cloistered, layered air: overhead, beams, chains, and pulleys for hoisting engines and axles; workbenches and arrays of small drawers whose pulls are blackened by greasy fingers; pegboards painted with the silhouettes of absent tools; sc.r.a.ps of wire and sheet metal and rubber tubing left where the last hand set them aside at the end of the last repair; drifts of discarded oil cans and gaskets and traction belts and emptied parts packages in the corners, behind oil drums used as trash cans. In the center of the concrete floor, under the only bright lights, with extension cords feeding into its cab like the tubes sustaining a patient on life support, sits a truck much the size and shape of Excellency. Instead of being a Ford Triton E-350, it is a GMC 3 500, not orange but a bleak white, the way it came from the factory. On its side has been lettered, in carefully but not professionally done black block letters, the words Window Shades Systems.

Ahmad dislikes the truck at first sight; the vehicle has a furtive anonymity, a generic blankness. It has a hard-used, slummy look. At the side of the New Jersey Turnpike he has often seen ancient sedans from the 'sixties and 'seventies, bloated and two-tone and chrome-laden, broken down, with some hapless family of color cl.u.s.tered waiting for the state police to come and rescue them and tow away their shabby bargain. This bone-white truck savors of such poverty, such pathetic attempts to keep up in America, to join the easy seventy-miles-per-hour mainstream. His mother's maroon Subaru, with its Bondo-patched fender and its red enamel abraded by years of acid New Jersey air, was another pathetic attempt. Whereas bright-orange Excellency, its letters gold-edged, has a spruce jolliness to it-as Charlie said, a circus air.

The older, shorter of the two operatives, who is fractionally more friendly, beckons Ahmad to come look witii him into the cab's open door. His hands, the fingertips stained with oil, flow toward an unusual element between the seats-a metal box the size of a cigar box, its metal painted a military drab, with two terminal k.n.o.bs on the top and insulated wires trailing from these back into the body of the truck. Since the s.p.a.ce between the driver's and pa.s.senger's seats is deep and awkward to reach down into, the device rests not on the floor but on an inverted plastic milk crate, duct-taped to the crate's bottom for security. On one side of the detonator-for such it must be-there is a yellow contact lever, and in the center, sunk a half-inch in a little well where a thumb would fit, a glossy red b.u.t.ton. The color-coding smacks of military simplicity, of ignorant young men being trained along the simplest possible lines, the sunken b.u.t.ton guarding against accidental detonation. The man explains to Ahmad, "This switch safety switch. Move to right"-snap-"like this, device armed. Then push b.u.t.ton down and hold-boom. Four thousand kilos ammonium nitrate in back. Twice what McVeigh had. That much needed to break steel tunnel sheath." His black-tipped hands shape a circle, demonstrating. Four thousand kilos ammonium nitrate in back. Twice what McVeigh had. That much needed to break steel tunnel sheath." His black-tipped hands shape a circle, demonstrating.

"Tunnel," Ahmad repeats, stupidly, n.o.body having spoken to him before now of a tunnel. "What tunnel?"

"Lincoln," the man answers, with slight surprise but no more emotion than a thrown switch. "No trucks allowed in Holland."

Ahmad silently absorbs this. The man turns to Charlie. "He knows?"

"He does now," Charlie says.

The man gives Ahmad a gap-toothed smile, his friendliness growing. His flowing hands describe a larger circle. "Morning rush," he explains. "From Jersey side. Right-hand tunnel only one for trucks. Newest built of three, nineteen fifty-one. Newest but not strongest. Older construction better. Two-thirds through, weak place, where tunnel makes turn. Even if outer sheatJi hold and keep out water, air system destroyed and all suffocate. Smoke, pressure. For you, no pain, not even panic moment. Instead, happiness of success and G.o.d's warm welcome."

Ahmad recalls a name dropped weeks ago. "Are you Mr. Karini?"