“I hate Americans. I hate them more than I hate myself, more than I hate a hangover. I hate them morally.”
–John le Carré
“Do you really want to know why we hate Americans so much?” Raza asked McMahon, repeating his question.
McMahon, still belly-down on his rack, looked at Raza over his shoulder.
“Yes, I do,” McMahon said. “We’ve had conflicts with other nations but afterward everyone gets over it. We all but obliterated Germany and Japan in World War II. We did the same to Vietnam as well, but now all those nations and the U.S. are best of friends. Their people love America. Not the countries in your region though. We’ve done relatively little harm to nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, yet everyone there hates us and would nuke us off the face of the earth, given the chance. Why?”
“Because deep down inside, what our people truly despise about you,” Raza said, “is your devotion to science, your dedication to education and industry. Unfortunately, those things that we deem heretical are the very things that make you stronger and more advanced than us,”
“I don’t understand,” McMahon asked.
“You honor scientific advancement and intellectual achievement,” Raza said. “We view those activities as Satanic, as overreaching the One True God. Yet those endeavors have also produced a military machine that dwarfs ours and reduces our attempts at self-defense to absurdity.”
“What do you honor then,” McMahon asked, “besides Allah and the Koran?”
“We honor the respect our men and women show one another,” Marika said.
“The respect your women show to your men,” McMahon said, “translates in our culture as slavish obedience.”
“Since our men protect us,” Marika explained, “we are obliged to show them our gratitude.”
“But are you are obliged to let them tyrannize you?” McMahon asked. “To force you to suffer in chadors and chains?”
“Mr. McMahon,” Marika said, “it is the way things are in our world. We don’t expect you to understand.”
“I understand your code of honor—your ird, your men call it,” McMahon said, “but it holds women back. Your ird will keep you forever in the Dark Ages. No society that keeps its women—fifty percent of its assets, half its human capital—in bondage can compete in the world today, especially in this new digitized industrialized hyperscientific age.”
“Mr. McMahon,” Raza said, “you have it exactly right. But the world you have created and have attempted to force on our people is one of corruption and licentiousness, which is why our world can never accept yours.”
“To do so,” Marika said, “would offend our ird, which you so ignorantly disparage.”
“And to adapt to your ways would be to blaspheme Allah,” Raza said.
“But what about accepting modest reforms,” McMahon said, “which would radically improve the lives of your people?”
“Mr. McMahon,” Raza said, “there can be no truce with radical evil and no compromise with your hellish creed. Your country wages war not merely on us, but on life itself. We live in the Holocene, otherwise known as the Sixth Major Extinction Event, to which your country is the number one contributor and creator.”
“Your own biologists estimate that by the end of the century,” Marika said, “your digitized, industrialized world—through environmental degradation, through your poisoning of our atmosphere and waterways, by heating the planet to infernal levels—will extinguish half the species on land and in the sea.”
“You created nuclear bombs and every kind of delivery system imaginable,” Raza said, “then mass-manufactured them by the tens of thousands and retailed them promiscuously—not only to ourselves but to our most implacable enemies. You even proliferated the nuclear technology to those same nations so they could manufacture these superweapons themselves.”
“And then you express dismay,” Marika said, “when nations such as Pakistan, India and North Korea utilize that technology in order to master the black arts of nuclear annihilation, which you created and gave us.”
“I cannot defend America’s nuclear proliferating,” McMahon said, “but nothing that America has done justifies your attacks on us—your suicide bombings and your own pursuit of terrorist nukes.”
“Were that only true,” Raza said, “but you created and proliferated the Arms of Armageddon. You threaten, intimidate and destabilize our Muslim brothers and sisters throughout Dar al-Islam with them. You invade Iraq and Afghanistan, throwing half of the Mideast into anarchy, exile and civil war. We cannot attack you at home and do to you as you have done to us, because we fear your nuclear wrath. Therefore, we have no choice but to develop nuclear weapons of our own in hopes of deterring your future attacks. Then we can requite your violence against us with a true quid pro quo.”
“Eye for an eye leaves both combatants blind,” McMahon said.
“Yes, but it is also the way of our world—and yours. We all recognize only one unbreachable mandate—lex talionis, the Law of Retaliation. That is our sacred inviolable code of honor—the only commandment governing all people’s lives—blood for blood, a life for a life.”
“Is that also how your society justifies its barbaric abuse of women as well as its war against the infidel?” McMahon asked. “Lex talionis?”
“But of course,” Marika said. “Throughout history, our men have feared that a woman’s licentious nature inevitably compels her to resist her master’s stern command. That our men gratuitiously persecute their women for this alleged weakness is wrong, but that is the way things are. Our men avenge themselves on any and all people who do not bend to their will, be they women or infidels. Blood will have blood, and only blood vengeance can sate the rage of men. The strong rule, the weak obey—or suffer their wrath—and that is life. Our faith demands it, and to pretend otherwise is to deceive ourselves and to go against the natural order of things.”
“So compassion has no place in your world?” McMahon asked.
“Of course, compassion has its place,” Raza said, “but not in your sense of the word.”
“To us,” Marika said, “compassion does not mean feeling kindly toward one another. It means two souls sharing the same pain. It means literally ‘to agonize with.’”
“And that is how you justify torture?” McMahon asked.
“Bravo, Mr. McMahon,” Raza said. “You are finally starting to understand us. Yes, we are teaching you compassion.”
“Think how compassionate you will be in the future,” Marika said. “Henceforth, when you see people suffer, you will feel their pain, know their sense of hopelessness and you will care. We will have taught you to ‘agonize’ with them, and one day, if you survive this long dark night of your hideously sinful soul, you will see us as your mentors and your gurus. You will view us in a kinder, gentler light.”
“I will see you as kinder, gentler psychopaths,” McMahon muttered through gritted teeth, staring up at them from his rack.
“Perhaps,” Marika said, “but you will also understand, at last, the natural order of things, the way the world really works.”
“And I am so proud,” Raza said, “that Marika and I could serve as your spirit guides.”