The Good Son (28 page)

Mahmoud is not quite trembling now, but he looks ill at ease. He takes up his bamboo cane and whisks it back and forth a few times, perhaps to pump himself up.

Sonia fingers her beads and increases the volume of her chanting. The praise of God echoes from the low buildings. The lash descends.

Sonia feels the agony and her body records the damage but it does not reach who she is now. The nafs suffers but she is no longer it. She shouts
“Haram!”
and continues her chanting Sufi prayer.

Another stroke, although this one seems to spend much of its force on the seat of the chair.

“Haram!”

The mullah calls out for Sonia to be gagged. This is done, with rags. A new murmur floats through the crowd. It is a grave sin in Islam to silence prayer.

On the next stroke a voice floats out past the shutters of a house, a woman’s voice:
“Haram!”

On the next stroke, there are more voices from the hidden, a chorus of voices, and the chilling ululation, a sound like the insanity of all the birds.
Forbidden! Shame!

This is now the nightmare of the Pashtun male. The women are out of control and it is the women who have the honor of the men in their hands. The women know everything. They know who likes to fuck boys, and who is a drunk, and who can’t get it up in the marriage bed, and for this reason they can never be allowed to escape the iron grip of the men.

Now, almost as one, the men trot off to their homes, including the mullah, who has two wives and a boy. Sonia thinks they will beat all the women now, but not very hard. She is left alone on the dusty street with poor Mahmoud, who looks like he is going to cry.

“It is over, Mahmoud,” she says. “Untie me and carry me back to my room in the hujra. You have been saved from Hell today; God has been merciful to you. And when you have done that, I will interpret your dream for you.”

Mahmoud carries her toward the hujra, but on the way he is stopped by two armed men with the look of seasoned mujahideen. There is a brief argument. The men don’t want her returned to her prison; someone
wants to see her. For the first time she hears the name Alakazai and it seems to be a significant one, for on hearing it Mahmoud stops arguing and follows the men. They go down several streets, the roar of the diesel generator grows louder as they walk. They go through a gate in a high mud wall and enter a house. Mahmoud is dismissed, protesting, at the door, and Sonia is forced to hobble on the edges of her feet, following the men, who make no effort to help her.

One of them grabs her arm and hustles her through an open door and into a small room with a high window. In it there are two charpoys and a low table, upon which is a tray with a tea service and a covered basket from which issues the smell of fresh naan. On one of the charpoys sits a man. Sonia collapses on the other. The guard goes to a corner and squats down with his rifle across his knees.

The man on the other charpoy indicates the tea with a flick of his hand.

“Would you like some tea, Mrs. Laghari?” he says in English.

“Yes, thank you,” Sonia answers, and pours. To her surprise it is not the strong milky tea of the region but some herbal brew, flowery, like chamomile or jasmine. But it is hot and she drinks a whole cup and eats a piece of bread. The man watches her and she returns the favor.

He is a comfortably padded man, broad-shouldered, with a tan face and a neatly trimmed dark beard. His ethnic origins are not at once clear, for he has the hawk nose and the hazel eyes common among the Pashtuns, but his air of comfortable self-assurance, relaxed, faintly amused, is one she associates with the plains to the south. And there is something wrong about him, a cast of ill health; the whites of his eyes are yellowish, and there is a faint unpleasant odor in the room. That’s why the herbal tea. The man’s innards are not right.

“How are your feet?” he asks, after she has drunk the tea.

“How do you think?”

He shrugs. “That was a clever ploy. You almost started a riot there, among the women. Idris is very angry with you.”

“It wasn’t a ploy. I was perfectly sincere.”

“Were you?” A look of amusement here. “You consider yourself a Muslim?”

“I am as much a Muslim as you are.”

“Even though you wander around without your husband, unveiled?
Even though you are an infamous blasphemer and apostate?” He sips his tea, not taking his eyes off her. “You know, I saw you on television. It was quite a per for mance. I thought you seemed more an ally of our jihad than not.”

“Really. Then you couldn’t have been listening to what I said.”

“Oh, I listened. And I was intrigued. Who was this American who spoke perfect Urdu and had such interesting ideas? Why had I never heard of her before? So I made inquiries, and of course I quickly learned that I
had
heard of her before; the whole umma had heard of her. And I was amazed that this Sonia Bailey would have the arrogance to lead a party of spies into a Muslim country.”

Sonia surpasses a shudder of fear. She says, “We are not spies. We are scholars. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, says that the ink of scholars is more precious than the blood of martyrs.”

The man waves his hand as if shooing flies. “Yes, yes, anyone can quote from the Hadith when it suits them, but the fact remains that you have already been condemned by competent judicial authorities. I could have you executed this minute.”

“Yes, you could,” she says agreeably. “Or you could have me beaten five times a day and locked in a filthy stable. I’d be dead in a few days from septic shock, and you wouldn’t have to confront the women again.”

“I’m not afraid of a few women.”

“Nonsense, Mr. . . .?”

“My name is Alakazai.”

“Really? Then we are clan cousins of a sort. My son is an adopted clansman of the Barakzai.”

A transient look of irritation passes over the man’s face; Sonia observes it with interest and switches to English. “Although you’re not a big one for clan connections, are you, Mr. Alakazai? You’re not a real Pashtun at all. I suspect your father or grandfather was a detribalized Pashtun living in the south, what they call a Pathan in that country, and one or more of them must have intermarried with the locals, Punjabi or Sindhi perhaps, even Bengali. There is something of the babu about you, I think. Idris and the others are true Pashtuns; their lives revolve around honor, loot, and beating up any women or foreigners that come their way. But not you, and so we have to ask why they follow you. And the answer must be that you’re the one with the connections. the paymaster,
feeding money and arms from the Pakistanis. You might even be an actual ISI agent. On the other hand, I’m sure you have good connections with al-Qaeda as well. You’re just the sort of deracinated, half-educated, semi-Westernized misogynist they like to recruit.”

He regards her expressionlessly, tracing the line of his beard below his lip with a forefinger.

“And please don’t tell me you’re not afraid of women, Mr. Alakazai. Sexual terror is the motor of your entire movement. That’s why you blow up girls’ schools and toss acid in the faces of their students.”

“Is that what you really believe? Remarkable, when you have traveled so much in the umma. You must be willfully blind.”

“You don’t blow up girls’ schools?”

He made the fly-chasing motion again. “I have the greatest respect for women. A modest woman caring for her family is one of God’s greatest creations. But it is also obvious that when the head is full the womb is empty, as we observe throughout the West. In whatever nations that accept the curse of women’s education and freedom from the control of men, we see a rapid decline in population; we see pornography; we see sexual disease. Not a single one of the so-called advanced countries is reproducing its original population at replacement levels. In Europe, virtually all the population growth is Muslim, and it is clear now that in a certain number of years all these nations will have Muslim majorities. This is because we understand that the function of women is established by God and anything that seeks to destroy that function must be haram. Do you see? It’s really very simple. Islam is a simple religion, and therefore it is the truest and most beautiful of all religions. So tell me, who are you working for, the CIA?”

“That’s what everyone thinks, but I’m surprised you do too. I thought you would know that someone who speaks the local languages and is conversant with local culture couldn’t possibly work for the CIA. The CIA is a bunch of white men in suits having cocktails at the American embassy, when they’re not firing missiles into villages from drones, usually the wrong village.”

“Very amusing. But if you’re not a spy, what are you doing in the Northwest Frontier Province?”

“I was traveling to my brother-in-law’s house in the Leepa Valley to participate in a conference about how to bring peace to this region.”

“Oh? And how shall we bring peace to the region?”

“I have no idea. We didn’t get a chance to hold the conference.”

He makes a generous sweeping gesture. “Then by all means hold it. No one is stopping you.”

“You don’t mean that you’re setting us free.”

“Unfortunately not. But you can hold it here. The dining hall at the hujra will do very well. And I will attend. I too am a great lover of peace.”

“You’ll let me consult my colleagues.”

“You may inform them that such is my will. We will all attend, and we will provide burqas for you and the other female hostage. Perhaps you will learn something about modesty in your last days. You know, there is a long tradition in this region of kings bringing scholars before them to dispute philosophical matters. And I am, as you have perhaps observed, a quite traditional man. I believe I will find your conference entirely interesting.”

“In that case, I hope I can assure my colleagues that they will come to no harm while they are in your custody.”

“Well, yes, providing that our demands our met. I hope Idris was clear on that score. All of you are hostages for the good behavior of the crusaders. On any day that innocent Muslims are killed by their forces we will be forced to behead one hostage. Of course, I should not want to execute anyone whose presentation I had not heard, so I will trust you to arrange the speakers however you choose, and I would also insist that you personally select the hostages to be executed.”

Sonia stares at Alakazai and he returns her gaze blandly, as if he has just foretold the arrival of the next bus.

“Oh? Why me, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Because you are the enemy. In you is distilled in the purest form everything against which we fight. You are worse than a mere infidel. You are a Muslim who perverts and dirties everything that is most sacred in Islam. You are woman, who destroys modesty and encourages others to do so. I have read your books, you know, yes I have. I read them when I was a student, when you caused this great furor and you were condemned by the ulema. I wished to find you and kill you then, as did many others, but you know how it is with the enthusiasms of youth, one forgets, one gets involved in work and marriage, and so forth. But always in the back of my mind I thought I would do it. And now God has
placed you in my hands, all unknowing, like a gift. Don’t you find that remarkable?”

“I do. And it is just as remarkable, don’t you think, that a conference devoted to exploring the mental pathology that underlies terrorism should itself fall victim to someone who exhibits just such pathology in the most extravagant detail? You really should let us live, sir, so that we can study and write about you and your organization. Like the patients of Jung and Freud, you would achieve immortality in the pages of psychiatric textbooks.”

He smiled. “You mean to provoke me, but I am not easily provoked, not like our Idris. I am a patient man and I
will
appear in books, but not because I am insane. You know, it is the victors who write the psychiatry books just as they write the history books. If the Germans had won the war, would the Nazi leaders be considered madmen? I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps, but moral relativism ill befits a supposed leader of mujahideen. If you really believe that, I would rather take my chances with Idris.”

“And be beaten to death?”

“Perhaps, and perhaps he will remember that God is merciful and compassionate. At least he is still a Muslim. What you are, I leave to God, who knows all the secrets of our hearts. Death comes to everyone, and whether it comes today or in a week or in twenty years is of little account.”

“You have no fear of the Hell that awaits you?”

“I do fear it. I have done wickedness and I will be punished for it. But I look forward to at least one pleasure in the next life, which will be to see you roasting below me in a far hotter fire.”

“You really are a ridiculous woman, you know that? I am a mujahid and a leader of jihad, and God’s word assures me a place in Paradise. I will be interested to see if you speak so brazenly after you have condemned your friends to death, when you are the last one and the knife comes for you.”

“Not the knife, Alakazai: even you would not be so foolish as to behead a woman. But, as Rahman Baba says, ‘All the world travels to the grave, as the caravan heads homeward; death reaps all souls, as the farmer cuts the ripened grain.’ None of us can say what God has in store. You may kill me or you may not. For all you know, at this very
minute a drone missile is being targeted on this house, or perhaps, since I am an important CIA agent, they are waiting until I leave.”

She observes this last remark strike home: a little flicker of doubt, some fear in his eyes. She has spent much of her life reading the expressions on faces, in therapy and, before that, on her travels, when mistaking an expression, missing a lie, could be fatal. She is quite good at it, and even in this short interview she has learned more about her captor than he knows he has revealed.

He recovers his aplomb, makes a whisking gesture with his hand. “I assure you there is no chance of that; you will surely die, and your bones will be left to the dogs and birds. That will be your end. In the meantime, go and have your conference. There is little entertainment for a man such as myself in this place, and I look forward to seeing you perform.” He speaks an order to the guard, who walks over and pokes Sonia in the ribs with the barrel of his AK.