Despite the traffic it was pleasant on Bani Otbah. Palms swept the far side of the palace wall, fronds swaying in a sea wind that down here, between the buildings, he could not feel. Across a wide avenue the glass stories of a new hotel flashed in the sun. Its angular façade contrasted oddly with the ornate domes and needling towers of the emir’s palace. Younger men in Western suits, older men in spotless thobe and Western street shoes, children on their way to school walked rapidly past a gleaming new peach-colored Mercedes at the curb.
Young girls in a giggling line hugged books to incipient breasts. He watched their bare calves glowing in the sunlight. Smiling faintly, as he remembered how the fat Yemeni, bin Jun’ad, had looked away. To follow the path of jihad did not mean one lost sight of everything else.
Sometimes he found the cell’s less-sophisticated recruits amusing. They had no life outside the mosque. Could not think outside the strictures of Qur’an. But what mattered was not that you’d memorized the Book. It was whether you had the courage to kill.
The girls swept by, and he looked after them. Youth and beauty…
Spoiling the moment came a picture of his own daughter, blind, mindless, and obese. Poor simple Badriyah. She’d be eighteen now; but she’d never been able to speak, or sing, or recognize her parents … Her only pleasure was to touch soft things, velvet and silk and fur. With them in her hands she was happy. He remembered her mindless croon.
He lit a cigarette with quick short motions, struggling with anger, regret.
Too bad the Sheikh hated them. It was the furtive and brilliant Imad Mughniyeh, head of Hezbollah’s secret service, who’d masterminded the suicide truck bombing that had driven the American marines out of Beirut.
Together what could we not do, al-Ulam thought. But the Sheikh loathed the “heretics,” “apostates,” as a wolf abominates a dog. So did Mullah Omar, who was killing thousands of Shi’a as the Taliban rolled across Afghanistan.
But there were enough volunteers. With each bulldozed house, the Jews made martyrs. With each arrogant, fumbling intervention America created more
As for himself… the final task … then, the fishing business … and perhaps then it would be time to marry again. Sudanese families would compete to provide a girl-child. Thirteen, fourteen, young enough to obey anything a husband might ask.
So, was that a plan, then? Marry again… perhaps have a normal child? Surely a son was not too much to ask of God, after his work for Him. He smoothed thinning hair. His skin prickled where powder and metal were still embedded. A blasting cap had gone off prematurely. Since then he’d seen the world half in darkness, only half in light. Fortunately, the cap had not yet been inserted into the main charge … It was growing warm, the sky rolling toward its noontime glare.
The fishing business was doing very well. Perhaps he could still become wealthy before he grew old. It was time for a younger man to do this sort of thing. Youssef, Ajaj, Mohammad Atta, several he’d helped train might serve.
But first he’d have to settle with the nervous-looking, silver-bearded Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. The Shiekh’s advisor had told him any profit from the boats was the Organization’s. But he’d made that money, with hard work in the engine rooms of decaying dhows, endless arguing with crews and masters about staying out overnight rather than putting in each day. Salim would have to be put straight. One way or another.
