52

GHAT, LIBYA —26 NOVEMBER

As Abu Nakba lay prostrate on the floor, there was a knock at the door.

He had been praying all night in his private study and reading the Qur’an by candlelight, and he had not stopped when morning came. No food had touched his lips in ninety-six hours. Nor had water or any other form of drink. His physician had warned him that at his age there could be grave consequences for fasting for so long, but the founder of Kairos refused to listen.

“Allah bids me to fast,” he would say. “If he also bids me to leave this world and enter paradise, so be it.”

Having left standing orders with his staff that he not be disturbed, he had no desire to see mere mortals. He longed only to enter the presence of Allah himself. The knock, therefore, startled him as he lay facedown on the prayer rug that had been shipped as a gift to him by Iran’s Supreme Leader. The door opened a crack, and Hamdi Yaşar stuck his head in.

“It is I, my father, and it is finished,” his closest aide said quietly. “Come and see.”

The old man lifted his head. Could it be over already? Had that much time truly passed? With much difficulty, he grabbed his cane and used it to pull himself back to his feet. Then he padded into the adjoining conference room. Yaşar was waiting for him and helped the old man into his favorite chair. As Abu Nakba fumbled to put on his glasses, both men looked up at the large screen on the far wall.

The TV was tuned to Al-Sawt and showed footage from a rooftop camera pointed at Number 10 Downing Street. The image showed billowing smoke and flames leaping into the air. The anchor, a veiled woman back in the studio in Doha, was explaining what had happened, but Abu Nakba wasn’t listening. He already knew, and tears of joy began to streak down his face.

“You have done well, my son,” the old man said after several minutes, when he had composed himself and wiped his eyes dry. “With three strikes against the Great Satan in less than two weeks, Allah will be well pleased. And for what it’s worth, so am I.”

“That means a great deal to me, my father,” Hamdi Yaşar said as he turned off the television and sat down beside the man. “Thank you.”

They sat quietly together for a while, eyes closed, savoring the moment.

“As you know, I grew up in the desert,” the old man said after some time. “An orphan. Poor. Very little education. No prospects for a better life. But Allah saw me. He saw my heart and knew my soul and took pity on this little orphan boy. He had a plan for me. He raised me far above my station, enabled me to become a warrior for his name. And everything in me is shaking, telling me that the time of the Mahdi’s arrival and the rebuilding of the once-and-future Caliphate is fast approaching. This is what drives me. This is what gives me joy and such strength in the season of my sunset —the hope of striking a fatal blow to the Crusaders and the Zionists and ushering in the End of Days.”

“Your vision has always inspired me, my father,” Yaşar said. “But never more than today.”

“Come, join me on the veranda,” said Abu Nakba.

The younger man helped his elder rise to his feet, and the two walked out of the private study to a spacious balcony. They settled down in cushioned chairs beside a small glass table. The sun was high and bright over the vast expanse of desert. The sky was a brilliant blue, and there was not a cloud to be seen to the very edge of the horizon. The air was cool. The thermometer read twenty-three degrees Celsius, about seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit. A slight breeze was coming from the north. Abu Nakba felt there would soon be rain, and he said as much to his protégé.

“Rain, my father?” Yaşar looked doubtful.

Winter was approaching, to be sure. There were typically only six or seven days of any rain in a year in Libya, usually in November and December. Today it did not look as if rain were imminent. Yet Abu Nakba had always been able to feel precipitation coming, rare though it was. In childhood he’d astounded the adults in the madrassa by his uncanny ability to predict the first day of rain every year without fail. It would not be today, though, he said; of this he was certain.

After a time, the old man asked, “What progress have you made on our Iranian friend’s request?”

“I have good news there, too,” Yaşar replied.

“You have my undivided attention.”

“Very well, here is the short version. At your command, I have been setting up a Kairos cell in Palestine. We began last year, recruiting a few low-level people, building a bit of infrastructure, but it has been slow going. Until now.”

“Go on.”

“Last week, I received a message from a man you may have heard of, a Dr. Hussam Mashrawi —he lives in Jerusalem.”

“The son-in-law of Amin al-Azzam? The director of the Waqf?”

“The very same,” Yaşar said. “So you know him?”

“Not personally,” said the old man. “I certainly know of them. Al-Azzam is a good man from a good family. Devout. Brilliant. The son-in-law, I’m not so certain.”

“Actually, Mashrawi portrays himself as a moderate, but that’s a facade. In truth, he is one of us.”

“How do you know?”

“I met with him a while back in Cairo. We spent several hours together. I went back to Doha convinced, and we have stayed in touch ever since. He’s ready to help us in any way we ask. In fact, he’s already been recruiting people, acquiring assets. As a result, I now have a dozen Palestinians and Israeli Arabs on the Kairos payroll. On my orders, they are lying low for now. But they are itching for battle.”

“And?”

“And last week he contacted me with incredible news —he said President Clarke was planning to come to Jerusalem in mid-December to deliver a major speech outlining his so-called peace plan on the Haram al-Sharif.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I am,” Yaşar said. “The intel is good. An advance team came last weekend from Washington to make all the preparations for the trip. Mashrawi even sent me pictures of him meeting with them. Here, take a look.”

As per their standard security protocols, Yaşar had turned off his mobile phone and removed its SIM card before coming to the compound. But he had brought a half-dozen printed images of the photos Mashrawi had texted him. They were in a sealed envelope, which he now handed over to the old man.

“Miraculous,” said the Kairos founder, chuckling to himself. “The president of the United States. Very likely the prime minister of the Zionists as well. Standing together in al-Quds. Together on the Haram al-Sharif. A man on the inside of the Waqf. A team in place. And all within the window the Supreme Leader asked of us. How great and merciful is Allah?”

With this, the old man rang a silver bell. A servant appeared immediately. Abu Nakba instructed him to bring tea and some freshly baked bread.

It was time to break his fast. There was much work to be done, and he needed his strength.