10: FURTHER INSIDE THE WATCHMAKER

THEY FOLLOWED AVICENNA OUT OF THE WORKSHOP INTO A NARROW archway, which opened abruptly into a small courtyard garden ripe with the smell of olives. Hoffman, long accustomed to finding strange hidden places in this city, was nonetheless stunned by the geometric perfection of this space. An empty bird cage hung from a stunted tree, the small door unlatched. Beneath the cage, there were two weathered benches, shaded no doubt in the morning heat, now deliciously cool and speckled by moonlight. Avicenna motioned them to sit and then rang a small bell. A manservant came from the interior, bearing a silver tray of refreshments and glasses of black coffee. After the service, the old man turned to them.

“Now, gentlemen, what do you know about the Druze in Iraq?”

“There aren’t supposed to be any,” Hoffman said. “It’s right there in the CIA country report. I checked.”

Behruse sniggered.

“Hush, Behruse,” Avicenna said. “You’re quite right, Hoffman, there are no civilian Druze in Iraq. What do you know about the religion?”

“Nothing,” Hoffman said. “A cult?”

“Close enough,” Avicenna said. “What faith are you, Hoffman?”

“Protestant agnostic.”

“Clever,” Avicenna smiled. “Would you agree that every religion has an esoteric core underneath the orthodox literal meaning?”

“Man, I don’t even understand what that means,” Hoffman fiddled with a vest pocket and produced a joint. “Do you mind if I light this up?”

“Feel free,” Avicenna said. “The smoking of hashish was a common practice for the founders of this city. I was speaking of hidden metaphoric meaning, beneath the literal words and rituals of our religions.”

“I guess,” Hoffman coughed and waived away smoke.

“It is certainly one of the dividing lines of Islam,” Avicenna said. “Among our philosophers, the esoteric core is almost universally accepted. The Sunni orthodoxy maintain that the inner meaning is truly fathomable only by the divine will. It is out of reach of mankind, in other words, and we must be content with following the literal will of God.”

“Makes sense to me,” Hoffman said. “Most people don’t bother with all this shit. Just give us clear easy rules to follow.”

“Other sects have different approaches, the gist of it being certain men can access the deeper meanings found in the religion, either through intellectual power or inspiration or through direct divine revelation,” Avicenna said. “I’m not boring you, am I?”

Hoffman, whose eyes had indeed begun to glaze over, now attempted to prop himself upright. “No, no, it’s all fascinating,” he protested. “The fact book doesn’t have any of this shit in it.”

“The Druze started as something close to the Ismaili faith, but its radical divergence was very fast,” Avicenna continued. “The Druze believe in layers and layers of arcane knowledge, each accessible to fewer and fewer people. A most secretive sect. Are you familiar with the concept of ‘Taqiyya’?”

“Erm, no,” Hoffman said.

“It is the art of dissimulation. A verse in the Koran allows us to hide ourselves, should we be threatened by unbelievers,” Avicenna said. “It is a practice the Druze have emphasized from the very beginning. They might spend generations pretending to be Sunni or Shi’a or Christian or Jew. They have been persecuted almost from the beginning of their founding. It has made them most adept at hiding.”

“Like the Mukhabarat,” Hoffman said.

“Precisely. Hidden in plain sight,” Avicenna said. “The modern day intelligence cells, or terrorist cells, are nothing compared to these people, who have hidden the core of their faith for over one thousand years. Their religion, too, is organized along ranks of knowledge. The laymen—the Jukkul—are exposed only to esoteric knowledge and make up the visible part of their population. They are mostly harmless, living in picturesque Syrian villages, campaigning for minority rights, etc.

Their leadership is veiled in layers of secrecy; the higher one ascends, the greater the knowledge and resources revealed. The true beliefs and aims of the Druze are known to only this upper echelon, the Uqqul. Indeed, there are higher levels that are not spoken of, the true power of the Druze on this earth, who would never reveal their face and who keep with them the most abstruse of the esoteric knowledge, the very highest truths they have discovered in their ages of study.”

“So you guys think these secret Druze are in Iraq?” Hoffman asked.

“Assuredly they are,” Avicenna said. “Behruse himself knows something of this. Speak, Behruse.”

“There were persistent rumors in the service some years ago,” Behruse said. “The Mukhabarat were compromised…infiltrated. Barzan Ibrahim the Tikriti, half brother to Saddam himself, ordered at least four known purges of the secret service. The word Druze was never mentioned explicitly. The official line was Syrian Ba’athists.”

“And did you find anything?” Hoffman asked.

“No Druze,” Behruse said. “No one confessed to being Druze. Over twenty low level agents confessed to being Syrian Ba’athists.”

“That is not surprising,” Avicenna said. “To understand fully, you must know certain other things about the Druze. First, the circumstances of their founding: their founding imam was the Caliph Al-Hakim Amr Allah, of the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo. Caliph and messiah, two roles in one, a most powerful conjunction. His divinity was proclaimed by his people, among whom certain followers would come to be known as the Druze. This was in 1010 AD. For a period of eleven years, the entire Fatimid Caliphate, one of the most powerful Islamic empires ever in existence, was run by the Druze. They became so powerful, in fact, that the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad grew alarmed. He gathered his Sunni and Shi’a scholars and created a doctrine that he had proclaimed from mosque to mosque.”

“Denouncing the Druze, I take it?”

“At that time, it was aimed largely at Al-Hakim, who was imam and caliph of all of Ismailidom,” Avicenna said. “Only later would the majority of the Ismailis abandon him. You see, Al-Hakim could not be defeated by force. He was far too powerful, and he enjoyed the full fervor of his people—messianic support. He was repeatedly proclaimed the Mahdi, the final prophet of the Ismailis. The Baghdad proclamation was aimed at defaming Al-Hakim. The Abbasids were afraid of him. Afraid that he was, in fact, the Mahdi, that he was the final caliph and imam on earth. They said that he was no true descendent of Mohammed and Fatima but, rather, the son of Christian and Jewish forefathers. The treatise on his lineage was shouted from minaret to minaret, all throughout the Abbasid demesne.”

“Let me guess. It didn’t work?” Hoffman said.

“Indeed, Al-Hakim’s philosophies were shaking the entire edifice of Shi’a. But then, in 1021, poof.”

“Poof?”

“He disappeared,” Avicenna said. “His practice was to go out of the city to meditate. His donkey was found, with bloody remnants of his clothes. No body, however.”

“So you Iraqis killed him,” Hoffman said. “No wonder the Druze are pissed.”

“Not so,” Avicenna said. “Well, perhaps. It is disputed what happened to Al-Hakim. His elder sister might have killed him. The Abbasids might have. There is a third alternative.”

“He went into hiding?”

“There is a Druze—and Shi’a—concept called occultation. Perhaps you are familiar with it, Mr. Hoffman?”

“Avi, dude, now you’re just jerking me around,” Hoffman said. “This is worse than high school.”

“Necessary, nonetheless,” Avicenna said. “For you to understand what you are dealing with, certain background information is critical. Occultation is the disappearance of the prophet—the removal of his person from the earthly realm, in fact. The Druze claim that Al-Hakim removed himself from imminent danger and will reappear when the time of his kingdom is ordained.”

“Judgment day?”

“Not so much,” Avicenna said. “As I understand it, when his time comes, he will return to earthly rule and bring justice to the world. I have heard some versions where his return will reveal some power to his true followers—the faithful Druze—allowing them to rise up.”

“Like literally?” Hoffman frowned.

“There is such a train of thought,” Avicenna shrugged slightly. “But others say that his return is symbolic, that indeed, the concept of the last prophet, the Mahdi, is symbolic. Anyway, after Al-Hakim’s disappearance, things went downhill very fast. His son, under the regency of his elder sister, started persecuting his followers. The movement centered on Al-Hakim’s divinity: the Druze—was persecuted. The new caliph declared in no uncertain terms that his father was not the Mahdi. They were driven underground, the tenets of their faith derided and subverted. They were deemed heretical by both Sunni and Shi’a, accused of Gnosticism, devil worshipping, plurality, subversion of the Koran—the usual litany of heresies.”

“So they closed up shop. Went into hiding, started speaking in code, started creating cells of information, started chains of command to protect their top people.” Hoffman, stoned, happily imagined it all.

“Like the Mukhabarat,” Behruse cut in. “Like Al Qaeda.”

“Like the other famous society, the Hashisheen of Alamut of Hassan ibn Sabah,” Avicenna said. “The principles of covert action, my friend, are ever the same. The Druze went one further. In 1043, they closed their ranks completely. Proselytizing was forbidden. No more new members since then. For almost a thousand years now, you have to be born to full blood Druze parents to be considered Druze.”

“But are these Druze dangerous?” Hoffman asked. “What do they want?”

“They want the return of their Mahdi, of course,” Avicenna said. “A return to pre-eminence, perhaps. Certainly, they want their vengeance against Sunni and Shi’a alike. The rest is conjecture, really. Who knows what their mandate is after so many years.”

“And the watch?” Hoffman sniffed at the air. A lot of time seemed to pass before he could shake himself awake: “What the hell is up with this watch?”

“Ah the watch,” Avicenna leaned forward. “The watch, I believe is a kind of map. It is a cipher to help the Druze preserve their knowledge.”

“What knowledge?” Hoffman asked. “Do they have any weapons of mass destruction?”

“Conjecture, again.”

“Well your guess is certainly better than mine,” Hoffman drawled tiredly.

“I firmly believe the watch hides the knowledge of finding the one thing the Druze have yearned for all these years.”

“And what’s that?”

“Nothing less than the old dream of the alchemists, the secret to—”

But Hoffman was slumping, losing the thread.

“Cool, man,” he muttered, “You think you could alchemize a sandwich or something for me? I’m starving.”