HOLY SHIT!
‘Stay strong, Ismael,’ Pir’s cool and even voice purred through my head.
‘I’m trying,’ I replied silently, turning to look at Abba. My father, like every other man in the room, had his eyes fixed on the screen with his hand in a fist pressed to his side.
Stunned, I stared at the screens as the surreal blooming continued atop three of the four minarets. The metallic panels continued to slowly fall away to reveal missile warheads rising toward the sky. It was all so simple and obvious. Damn!
Khalifa began to speak again. ‘What you see on the screens are indeed as they appear, missiles, the fruit of the labour of those who are no longer with us in body, but who remain with us in spirit through their sanctified work. Each of the three missiles is loaded with a very powerful nuclear warhead.’
With a pointer he scribbled across his laptop screen and names appeared in red on top of the four images of the minarets: Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, Ali—the four Caliphs of Islam who succeeded Prophet Muhammad—the name Ali was on the image of the tower that had not opened.
‘Abu Bakr will be heading to Israel to annihilate the eternal enemies of Islam. Omar is destined for Iran, the troubled land of the Shias, the apostates who, according to my intelligence sources, are preparing to fire their own atomic missile right now, the Mehdi, on us. Uthman is headed for India, the land of the polytheists and conspirators. We did not have enough raw materials for the tower of Ali at the moment, but if we had enough uranium, he would have been aimed at the Americans in the Strait of Hormuz.’
He paused for a breath. The ominous vibration under my feet had become louder and my whole body quivered. The missiles, affixed to their launching pads fitted within the hollow of three minarets, continued their rise into the sky and Khalifa glanced at the live video feed for a few seconds before turning back to his mesmerized audience.
‘O you who believe! Know that the time has come for the Final Battle. O you who are faithful! Know that Allah has prepared a great reward for you in the Next World, and a grievous punishment for those who rebel. O you who desire none other than Allah! Know that I am commanding Ismael, son of Ibrahim, to recite to you the surah Al-Qiyamah, The Resurrection.’
My head snapped. He was addressing me! I ran through the holy text as it streamed across my eyes and I pulled up the desired surah in less than five seconds, gasping when I saw the English translation running beneath the Arabic text. Pir had indeed thrown in an upgrade for me.
‘That’s exactly what I need!’ I thought, beaming my thanks to Pir.
‘Since you’ve wished for it.’
‘Do you think I can pull it off?’
‘Shush!’
Khalifa’s voice was booming over the crowd once again.
‘All missiles will fire simultaneously, bringing our sacred jihad to the enemies of Allah. Once they disappear from sight, everyone here must recite their shahaada three times and then place the ticket to Jannah under their tongue. Am I clear?’
The crowd started chanting ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ over and over.
‘After the recitation of Al-Qiyamah, I will push the button and seal the fate of all the evil-doers forever.’ His voice sliced through the deafening battle cry. ‘O Allah, accept our sacrifice as you have Hazrat Ibrahim’s.’
Khalifa stood up, glided over the carpet toward me and tore off one of the tiny paper squares from the last page of the book. Lowering my eyes, I opened my right hand and prayed it wasn’t shaking enough for him to notice. Without a word he pressed the little paper into my palm and then closed my fingers tightly around it.
‘I can tell from your face that you’re dying to wet your tongue with the sweet water of Hauz-e-Kauser,’ he said.
‘Surely, your eminence, surely,’ I muttered, keeping my gaze fixed on the floor and remembering the orange Hazmat tape stretched around that most famous of ponds with its contaminated water spilling over.
Suddenly, a solid wall of noise consumed the place, growing louder by the second. The sunlight pouring in through a multitude of skylights and cutaways in the walls dimmed as if the sky were covered with clouds. The warm glow of indoor light was transformed into a sickly piss-yellow haze. Khalifa’s head shot around as the whole congregation stared upward.
‘Here they come again,’ Khalifa hissed in a low voice.
One look at the screens showed that the missiles had disappeared behind a dense black wall. Ababeels!
‘It’s time, Ismael,’ Pir’s voice gave me jolt. ‘Take your weapon out. Now!’
‘What weapon?’
‘The Quran! Take it out of your pocket and pretend you need it for inspiration. Even the best hafiz can forget a line or two.’
With a fluid motion, my hand disappeared into my robe and slid the Quran out of my pocket and pressed it to my navel.
‘Done.’
‘When you’re half-way through the surah, open the Quran and rip out the opening surah al-Fatiha, then tear out the last page, surah Al-Nas. Drop the pages. Raise the book above your head and close one of your eyes. Use your hand to cover it if you have to. And that’s all there is to it.’
Shit! I remembered his words from a long time ago: One day this Quran may have to be ripped apart to have its power activated.
I remembered how he and Chacha Khidr had laughed at me for having expressed my fear of dying young. At that time, I thought they were joking!
One thing was certain: I wasn’t getting out of here alive, one way or the other. I stared at the little piece of magic paper in my hand. The option of getting beamed out of here and straight into Paradise was starting to look really good. The alternative, of course, was getting torn to shreds by the mob for blasphemy. I wasn’t too keen on that either, particularly since it would probably involve Abba’s enraged face leading the pack.
‘Ismael, remember. You are on Pul Siraat—one slip and you’re gone. Failure is not an option.’
‘I know, I know.’ Unfortunately, I knew quite well.
The noise of the birds died. As their mass sped away from the mosque, the full light of day returned. The missiles had risen a good fifty feet above their point of exit and stood fully unsheathed against the clear blue sky.
My heart began to pound inside my chest. Dying for a glass of water, I glanced over at Abba who sat at the far end of the first row staring at me. His face was twitching; never a good sign even at the best of times. He gave me a quick nod. The poor man genuinely seemed to have no clue about the elaborate proceedings Khalifa had underway. If we survived, Abba would banish me forever, maybe shoot me in the head, or better still, have me wear a Mujahid vest and detonate myself at the time and place of his choosing.
The pirate-faced Mufti, sitting behind Abba in the second row, looked restless. He elbowed General Hajjaj whose face was a mask of resignation. They whispered to each other while glancing back and forth at the screens. Did they know what was going on or were they just as clueless and out of the loop as my Abba?
‘Khalifa is a master at keeping his real intentions to himself. No one in this hall knew the full scope of his mission,’ Pir elaborated.
‘But that’s not possible.’
‘It’s possible when you’ve made a pact with the Master Chemist.’
‘The Devil? But that can’t be!’ But why not? I thought to myself. If Hell and Paradise were real, the Devil had to be real as well.
‘Concentrate!’ Pir commanded.
Khalifa returned to his divan, sat down and stared into the screen of his laptop. I craned my neck forward and brought my dry quivering lips to the microphone. After clearing my throat a couple of times, I weakly uttered the bismillah: In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Compassionate. Then I began reciting as the surah’s text slid before my eyes from right to left. Underneath, the English translation ran from left to right. Pir’s attention to detail was absolutely marvelous.
I swear by the Day of Resurrection.
And I swear by the reproaching soul.
Does man think that We shall not gather his bones.
Yes! We are able to make complete his very fingertip.
Nay! Man desires to give the lie to what is before him.
He asks: When is the Day of Resurrection?
So when the sight becomes dazed,
and the moon becomes dark,
and the sun and the moon are brought together,
Man shall say on the day: Whither to fly to?
No! There shall be no place of refuge!
With you Lord alone shall on that day be the place of rest.
Man shall on that day be informed of what he sent before and what he put off.
Nay! Man is evidence against himself, though he puts forth his excuses.
Do not move your tongue with it to make haste with it,
surely on Us is the collection…
‘Surely on us is the task to deny this sorry lot Paradise,’ Pir’s voice echoed in my head. ‘Now, let’s see some action, Ismael.’
Continuing the recitation, I opened the Quran and tore its first and last page from its leather-bound spine. The torn pages fluttered to the ground along with my ticket to Paradise. A scream shattered the air.
‘What are you doing?’ somebody shouted from the front row.
‘Unbelievable! Did you see what he just did?’ Mufti bellowed in rage as he sprang to his feet. ‘He has torn the pages of the Holy Book.’
General Hajjaj stood up and fixed me with a stare of rage that pierced my resolve.
‘Did you all witness what he has done?’ he roared. ‘Blasphemy!’
The disordered chaos ignited and spread through the assembly like a wildfire. Everyone leapt to their feet, their faces writhing with red, hot anger and barely contained as they stood like the feral jinn cats. I just stood there, not even able to draw a breath or move a muscle. There was no way to escape.
Only Pir could come up with such a ridiculous scheme. My legs trembled and I looked around for something to hold on to.
‘That’s Hajji Ibrahim’s son!’ someone cried out. ‘Where is Hajji Ibrahim?’ somebody else demanded hoarsely.
‘The blasphemer must be killed first. Now!’ a voice screamed hysterically from the back row.
Every man in the room was on his feet and heaving with rage. The crowd was ready to spring on me, all except Abba. He just sat there with his head in his hands as he stared at the ground in front of him. He couldn’t even bear to look at me.
Sweat poured out from every inch of my body. Panicking, I looked over my shoulder at Khalifa who sat on his divan a few feet behind me. He gritted his teeth and his lips moved over them like an animal. His face quivered and his brows arched as he stared at me. He then lunged at me while his bodyguards aimed their guns at my head. The ominous click of a dozen safeties being switched off was the only sound in the place. Every heartbeat in the room waited for al-Amir ul Momineen to give the sign as to what to do next.
‘Shit!’
‘Shut one of your eyes, Ismael! Do it now!’ Pir screamed inside my skull.
As Pir’s voice faded, the sound of static short-circuiting came from the Quran in my hand.
‘Put the Quran in your palm and raise it over your head,’ Pir said, as a luminous crack like a miniature lightning bolt appeared in the black binding of the book. With one eye shut, I raised the book over my head.
Khalifa grabbed my arm and screamed in my ear.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘It’s the light…’
The moment I uttered these words, the book burst into brilliant white effulgence. Millions of tiny laser-like bands of molten light shot out in every direction. The air shimmered with a palpable energy and crackled with what sounded like a bug zapper going to work on a hapless swarm of mosquitoes. The rage, which a moment ago had seized the crowd, was now replaced by a stunned nervous confusion. It was one step away from utter pandemonium.
Khalifa let go of my arm. Dazed, he looked around and then staggered for a moment before dropping to his knees. He had stopped blinking and just looked ahead with an empty gaze. Oblivious to my presence, he sank onto his folded legs, his hands placed on his thighs. He might have been praying. Two of his bodyguards lurched ahead and fell flat onto their guns, their noses smashed against the ground.
The men in the khaki robes, who had been hammering away at their laptops, slumped where they sat. In a matter of seconds, the stupor spread through the entire assembly. People staggered, their knees hitting the ground with a thud. They were oblivious to their tickets falling to the ground.
In less than a minute, everyone had slumped into the same posture as Khalifa with their palms resting on their thighs. Everyone except Mufti and General Hajjaj. Strangely, they had remained standing and seemed unaffected by the light. Mufti raised his arm and pointed his finger at me.
‘Sorcerer!’ he screamed, and then ran toward the entrance, followed by General Hajjaj close on his heels.
‘Pir, what the hell is going on?’
‘Phototherapy—designed to give the mind a hard reset,’ Pir said.
‘Hard reset?’
‘It’s the light of the higher spheres concentrated in the book form. It’ll purify their minds so their brains can resume working like those of normal human beings,’ Pir said.
I kept my hand over my shut eye and grappled with the meaning of what he had just said as I watched Mufti and General Hajjaj cutting through the radiant beams which were illuminating the Prayer Hall.
‘Well, apparently it didn’t work on Mufti and General Hajjaj—just so you know.’
‘Because they both are one-eyed,’ Pir said. ‘For the light to work, it has to enter both eyes.’
I remembered how General Hajjaj’s right eye didn’t blink when Abba introduced me to him. Now I knew why.
There was a long pause before he continued. ‘We’ll worry about them later. Let’s get our job done. You must abort the launch. Now!’
‘Yes,’ I said, returning to where Khalifa kneeled like a statue, his body prickled by hundreds of tiny points of light. He didn’t respond even when I waved my hand in front of his face a few times.
Holding the book over my head, I went over to the divan, sat down and examined the screen on Khalifa’s laptop. It displayed the same shots as were projected on the bigger screens behind me. At the bottom of the display were two thumb-sized buttons: a red one on the right labelled ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ in black letters. The green one on the left had the word ‘Inshallah’ on it. Sliding my finger over the track pad, I moved the pointer to the green button. Inshallah, God willing, could very well mean the same as Allah Hu Akbar, God is great, under the present situation. I moved the pointer to the red button and scratched my head.
‘It has to be the green button,’ Pir said.
‘What do you mean has to be?’ I said aloud, my right eye still shut.
‘Do what you think is right,’ he said. For a fleeting moment I saw myself tight-roping over Pul Siraat: one wrong move and all would be blown to hell.
I moved the pointer to the green button, said a prayer, and clicked on it. A dialog box appeared: Are you sure you want to quit? I clicked yes. A faint humming vibration shook the room and the missiles started to slowly retract into the modified silos of the minarets. I exhaled in relief, though shaking uncontrollably.
‘Done!’ I cried, noticing the glow of the book dimming.
‘Congratulations! You’ve saved the Caliphate from becoming a mountain of radioactive ash,’ he said.
‘Caliphate? I thought we’ve just saved India, Iran and Israel?’
‘I’m not sure if Khalifa’s nukes would have even worked, to tell you the truth, but the retaliatory strikes would have killed a hundred million people in the Caliphate alone,’ Pir explained.
‘Would you please guarantee that I have a place in Paradise now? I mean for real.’
‘We’re not done yet,’ Pir replied. ‘Now you must help Khalifa get to Paradise.’
‘What?’
‘Put one of the little squares in his mouth.’
‘But he should be in Hell!’
‘Just do it.’
Feeling confused, I walked over to Khalifa with the Quran glowing faintly in my left hand. I picked up the book of tickets lying beside his knees. There was still half a page of little squares left in it. I tore one out and shoved it in his mouth. He showed no signs of consciousness and shivered for a second or two; then his eyes rolled up and he turned white.
Khalifa fell backward and began convulsing like a fish in a skillet. Saliva poured out of his mouth and his face was a mask of agony as his laboured breath rattled in his chest. The Master Chemist’s Paradise Potion was certainly not for the fainthearted. As I watched the poor wretch flailing around, I remembered my own experience in the bathroom of the hospital. Had I suffered like this? There was no way to tell. The mighty had surely fallen now.
The missiles had fully descended back into the silos and the huge panels were slowly closing. A few seconds later the minarets were harmless once again. Then the book stopped emitting light and went out like an extinguished candle. In my hand was a weightless mound of black ash. Letting my long-shut eye open, I blew on it and watched a few tiny flecks swirl into the air.
Khalifa was completely still, his eyes were closed and his chest ceased heaving. I put my thumb on his jugular. He was dead.
‘Done.’ I said, turning my palm and pouring the remainder of the ash over Khalifa’s face. It was impossible to fathom that it was all coming to a successful end.
‘Mission accomplished,’ Pir said.
‘What’s going to happen to the rest of them?’ I asked, glancing at Abba who, like everyone else, looked like he was under some kind of spell.
‘They’ll be detoxed from all those years of drinking Paradise Water; but not without losing some of their memory and a few of their healthy brain cells. It’s collateral damage, if you will. You’ve been drinking it too, by the way. We’ll need to get you into rehab too,’ he chuckled.
His words made me realize that never before had I felt such an urge for Paradise. It wasn’t exactly a burning desire, but it was definitely there—an unmistakable, insinuating presence, like an itch you don’t really want to scratch. I could only imagine how intensely these men must have longed for Paradise for so many years.
‘How am I supposed to get out of here, Pir?’ I asked, picking up my own tiny slice of Paradise from the blue carpet where it had fallen during my Quran-shredding session. If push came to shove—and in my experience it usually did—and I was captured by Khalifa’s men, this could be my only way out.
‘No! No!’ Pir said. ‘You’re not to do that.’
‘I deserve it,’ I said defensively, staring at the corpse of Khalifa where it lay in an inglorious heap on the floor. How on earth was this man, who had planned to destroy half of the world, being given a free pass to Paradise was an affront to my already boggled imagination.
‘First of all, no human has ever been tested for using the ticket twice, and you surely don’t want to be a lab rat on this one. Secondly, you can’t be leaving your body at the scene of the crime for reasons too complicated to explain right now,’ Pir said.
‘So what is going to happen to me?’ I asked, as I heard a familiar noise growing louder. The ababeels were back, darkening the sky over the mosque once again.
Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of howling cats. They poured into the Prayer Hall in waves, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. They were gigantic and reminded me of the rats materializing off the walls of my grave. They were followed by armed men in black uniforms.
‘They’re here! Pir!’ I screamed in my mind. ‘I’m willing to take full responsibility for cashing in on my ticket. I want out!’
‘Don’t! I’m sending someone to pick you up. Meanwhile, take refuge behind the Holy Book,’ he ordered. ‘The sculpture.’
Still clutching my ticket, I dashed towards the sculpture. Once behind it, I looked through a vertical chink of its central column. The cats and their handlers had advanced halfway through the hall.
‘Pir, I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I stared at the ticket pinched in my fingers.
‘Patience.’
Suddenly, it looked as if night had fallen and the cats’ cries were drowned by a deafening screech. Like an arrow, a long dark band shot through the wide entrance of the Prayer Hall. The stripe widened into a flying carpet of black feathers. I tried to see if they carried the traditional stones in their talons and beaks and remembered how the ababeels had rained them down upon the elephants of Abrah’s army, turning them into pulp. But these birds were far too swift for me to catch sight of the mythic stones.
A flash of light momentarily illumined the marble of the sculpture. Startled, I looked back. Chacha Khidr was standing three feet away from me, his eyes shining as bright as ever, his solitary tooth sticking out of his gummy smile. He wore his usual clothes: the white dhoti and kurta with a long white cloth around his neck like a shawl.
‘Babu Ismael, your ride has arrived,’ he said, greeting me with a big smile.
Speechless, I stared at his bright, happy face. He then stepped forward and peeked through the opening. ‘Pir likes to play rough,’ he said.
The birds, now obscuring the ceiling, formed a huge black spiral overhead which began to circle the interior of the hall at a dizzying speed. Under the golden glow of the chandelier hanging from the centre of the place, Mufti appeared with his hands over his temples as he stared above.
The cats halted in their tracks. Overhead the feathered mass broke off into many spirals like coiled springs ready to crush the mighty cats.
‘It’s going to take a lot of cleaning to dispose all that cat pulp,’ Chacha said in a matter-of-fact tone. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘The place will need a new carpet.’
Stunned, I watched this incredible remake of the original epic as encoded in the surah Al-Fil, The Elephant, of the Quran. In this version, the birds didn’t carry any payload as they had 1,500 years ago, when each bird would carry three pellets made of baked clay, one clutched in each talon, one held in the beak.
Had Pir and Chacha been active then? More than likely. For they were clearly operating outside time. Had the ababeel event, as documented in the Quran, been their idea too?
The birds now hurled themselves down on the cats, burying each under a convulsing mound of feathers. I realized that I was witnessing the operation of a highly efficient live meat shredder. The job of turning the entire army of these specially bred creatures into husk took less than two minutes.
Having discharged its function, the cloud of ababeels took on the form of a giant stingray and began to exit the Prayer Hall. A crimson hue, having splattered off the pulped feline flesh, floated above the heads of the still dazed men; their Paradise tickets scattered on the blue carpet. The sorry lot had remained oblivious to the action that took place.
‘Come. Let’s go!’ Chacha gave my shoulder a squeeze and we burst into light.