The Command

Barrel-chested, muscled, their vests and leathers were studded with bright metal and dangling with chains. They wore boots and wristbands, head wraps, heavy rings that flashed in the firelight. They passed bottles from hand to hand, and the smell of marijuana came with the crackle and heat of flame. The firelight flickered on their machines, slanted in black shoals. He had not realized here existed no obligation to welcome the stranger. Had just walked past, sandals digging into the cool sand.

Someone had called out. And something in his voice had given him away, when he answered.

“Hold on there a minute,” a contemptuous voice had said, when the light fell on his face. “Look what’s tryin’ to sneak up on us. Where you think you’re going? Wherever you think, you ain’t.”

He’d known then to run, at least, but someone else had dropped his beer and tackled him, slamming his face into the sand.

He’d begged, but up in among the dunes they’d pushed him from one to the next. Made him strip off shorts and T-shirt, sandals and underwear. Then made him kneel in the sand.

He tried to laugh. Naked. Alone. Hoping once they saw he was harmless, wouldn’t fight back, they’d let him go.

Then one of them, coming up from the fire, had picked up a pointed stick.

Alone at the café table, the slight dark man who’d passed through so many identities he had no longer any name at all sat motionless, staring out at the sea.

* * *

At a little after three o’clock another plodded into the shade. He was heavyset and bearded, with a wide, sunburned nose. He wore the thobe, the long white shirt or robe many wore on this island on the street or in the shops, especially during the hot season, and a ghutrah on his head. Their gazes touched, then slid off. Al-Ulam took sunglasses from his jacket and slipped them on. They looked around the café, noting those others who sat sipping coffee or lemonade or beer, foreigners mostly. At last the new arrival shuffled to his table. Murmured in classical Arabic, “I still feel the loss of Al-Quds, like a fire in my intestines.”

“What excuse have I to surrender, while I still have arrows, and there is a tough string for my bow?”

The other bowed. “Peace be to you, sir. Do I address the honored Abu al-Ulam?”

“I am Doctor al-Ulam.”

“I am Rahimullah bin Jun’ad. We are honored to have you among us.”

“May God increase your honor, Rahimullah bin Jun’ad,” al-Ulam said politely, waving to the seat. “Please, sit down. Join me.”

The heavyset man glanced at the cigarette, but said nothing as the waiter listened and presently brought freezing glasses of sweetened lemonade tinkling with ice.

There was no hurry to their talk. They became acquainted gradually, both wary, both formal. Al-Ulam learned bin Jun’ad had two sons and that he was a customs clearance manager for InterFilipinas International, a shipping company. He was originally from Yemen, but had lived in Bahrain for twenty-two years. He in turn told the other rather less, and only part of it true.

As two dark-haired beauties came swinging along the corniche, bin Jun’ad frowned. Flicked stubby fingers in their direction. “Are these muhajaba?”

Al-Ulam thought this might be the first approach to their business. As bin Jun’ad closed his eyes, he admired them. They were bold, attractive. Their skirts did not cover their legs, their scarves did not cover their hair. As they clicked by on high heels, he caught the hot glance of dark eyes.

“They must be foreigners. Indians? Lebanese?”

“Unfortunately, they are our women; but seduced by the devil, and the West, which serves him. This regime”—opening his eyes, bin Jun’ad gestured at everything around them, speaking in a thick low murmur unintelligible a few feet away—“is jaahili: ignorant, false, deeply corrupt. The land is kufr, the law kufr, the regime kufr, the people kufr, all save a few. The al-Khalifas and al-Sauds permit this evil.”

“The shadow cannot be straight, when the source is not.”

“Indeed. They call themselves Muwahhidun. But those who have knowledge say that to use man’s law instead of shariah, and to support the infidels against the Muslims, turn those who do so into mushrik, those who are no longer in Islam.”

“You are eloquent,” al-Ulam told him.

The stubby fingers fluttered. “No, Abu, I am an ignorant one. But I am a Qari; I have memorized the Book. These spewers of filth call adopting the ways of the polytheists modernism. But did not the Prophet, peace and the blessings of God be upon him, say, according to al-Bukhari, and ibn Maajah and others: ‘Whoever brings anything new into this affair of ours that is not from it, it is rejected from its doer.’” Bin Jun’ad glared out as more women passed, laughing and commenting as they watched a young man run along the beach.