Soldier of God

THE LETTERS

“My dearest mother,” the letter began, as so many had begun before it. “The day of joy will soon arrive. Send out presents and sweets. Prepare my father and my brother for my wedding to come. My black-eyed wife waits for me in Paradise. Rejoice, 0 my mother, for we will meet in heaven.”

The imam, Mustafa Amir Qasim, who was taking the boy’s dictation, looked up and offered a comforting smile. “You may continue. You’re doing fine, Muhamed.”

The boy was shivering. At nineteen he knew very little of the real world, although he had been raised in the refugee camps of Lebanon, in what was called Hell’s Bootcamp, and he had seen at least something of the United States, including the stab in the heart of capitalism where the World Trade Center had once proudly stood. But he was frightened to be away from a place he knew; horrible, a hell on earth, but home nevertheless. He nodded uncertainly.

He was a slightly built boy, narrow-hipped, sloping small shoulders, an almost feminine face except for the intensely dark scraggly beard and deep-set coal black eyes. His name was Muhamed Ali Abdallah, and when he volunteered he had left behind his parents, one brother, two sisters, and many uncles and aunts and cousins, though many more were dead or in the hospital because of the attacks on their homes from the Zionist pigs. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

At four he was already going with his brother and some other boys in a neigborhood in Nablus to throw stones at the armed Israeli soldiers. When his mother found out, she had, for the first time in her life, stood up to her husband. “Rashid you may have. But Muhamed is mine. He will not die on the streets to prove he is a man.”

His father had dismissed her with an indifferent wave of his hand. “For now,” he said.

Muhamed had not heard this conversation, of course, but he had been told over and over again that his duties, for the moment, lay with the household, with his mother and sisters, and not outside the camps. Read books, he was told. Write dissertations; learn the mysteries of mathematics so that you can go to college and bring back knowledge — and money.

Money was the key to their salvation from the grinding poverty that would kill them all eventually, though such an heretical thought could not be spoken aloud.

He had learned to read and write. He had learned mathematics and physics and even engineering. But since the righteous attacks in New York and Washington, the doors to his education were closed. He was from the West Bank, he was a resident of Lebanon, his family were supporters of the PLO, his father and two uncles were wanted men in the U.S., and there never could be a legitimate visa for Muhamed to any Western country — where the good universities were located.

This now was his only way out, the only way in which he could help his family. To repay their years of love and devotion. This was his duty.

The imam was dressed, as he should be for this occasion, in a black galabiyya and white head covering, but Muhamed wore jeans, an L.A. Lakers sweatshirt, and Nikes. All-American, or at least a Muslim who appeared to have embraced the American ideal. The room they were in was small, without a window, and with only a small, cast-iron light fixture hanging from a plain plastered ceiling. They sat on a carpet facing each other, no furniture or other fixtures in the starkly familiar space.

Muhamed felt a measure of comfort being here, composing his last will and testament, his death letter to his family. And another, deeper part of him even felt a serenity that he would soon die and be transported to Paradise.

The death letter of the martyr Hamdi Yasin, who’d given his life to kill an Israeli officer years ago, had been read to him in Palestine before he left: … It is not correct when some people say that we commit suicide because we do not value life. We love life, but life in dignity.

Muhamed managed to smile, and the imam nodded his understanding that a sense of holiness had finally descended into the boy.

“‘Our flowers are the sword and the dagger,’” Imam Qasim quoted from Ali ibn Abi Talib as he calculated the profits from his nine 7-Eleven stores that would go to pay the fifty thousand dollars to this boy’s family and the families of the other three young men here this afternoon also dictating their death letters to other imams. Financial help would come as usual, but care had to be taken with the money trail.

The boy began to speak again, stealing and changing the lines of his death letter from Yasin because he could not remember them exactly. “My dearest mother, I cannot allow God’s houses to be violated without defending them. I pray to Almighty God that my mission may result in the death of one hundredfold of God’s enemies.”

Dictating the letter to an imam, rather than writing it himself, made sure that the words would be closer to Allah’s liking.

The boy straightened up a little. “I profess that there is no God but the One God, and that Muhammed is the messenger of God.”

Imam Qasim finished the flowing script, then passed the paper and pen to the boy for his signature. “It is a fine letter,” he said. “You are a soldier of God now.”

Muhamed signed his name. “You will make sure that my mother gets this?”

“Yes. As well as the money.”

“May Allah bless you,” Muhamed said, rising to go.

“And you, my son,” Iman Qasim responded. He handed the boy a sealed manila envelope with new identification papers, Greyhound bus tickets, some cash, and instructions.

Muhamed hesitated just a moment, wanting to say something else, but not sure what it was; then he left the room. Down a long corridor he passed a series of arches that opened to the main room of the mosque where a few old men were praying, their heads bowed to the floor. Such a scene had been perfectly familiar to him all of his life, but this afternoon he seemed to see this place as if for the first time, through the eyes of a newborn.

Outside, the noise, swirling colors, movement, and the sheer volume of the traffic on the downtown streets were almost staggering. America was so vast. So alive. So busy. Surreal.

Muhamed walked four blocks to the memorial on the site of what had been the Murrah Federal Office Building, the warmth of an early September Oklahoma afternoon reminding him of Palestine. Unbeknownst to him, the three other martyrs to the cause would make the same pilgrimage from the mosque to this place this afternoon before continuing on to their targets. They were Ibrahim Hablatt, also from the camps of the West Bank; Abbas Adri from the deserts of Algeria; and Iskander Zia from Peshawar near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Insha’allah.