On the corner of Stanford and 116th, Monk hears a siren: sometimes the sirens seem like inanimate muses, calling, directing him toward scenes of police action or tragedy where he finds some new or strange graffiti for his notebook—but this wailing fades north to silence. Studying the pavement, an iron fence, peeling houses across the street, a bullet-riddled stop sign, its pole bent by some old automotive assault so the sign tips to the west. Monk heads west down 116th: signs are everywhere, it’s just a matter of tuning oneself to receive.
Near Avalon he stops. A huge crowd throbs in the intersection, people shouting. Bottles explode against brick like muffled mortar rounds. At the corner he pushes through a knot of shirtless young men, beer bottles clutched in hands. “What’s goin’ on, man?”
“Fuckin’ cops killed some brothers and a pregnant gal.” Cars glide along Avalon, slowing down as they pass the gathering crowds. Across the street, a heap of trash is on fire in a vacant lot, tapering black smoke in the darkness like a funeral pyre.
A green Ford Falcon slows, a young white couple staring out at the fire and the throngs. “Go home, whitey!” someone shouts behind Monk. A rock bounces off the Ford’s hood and the car accelerates away.
Monk heads south, down Avalon, no signs literal or otherwise now, just away from the crowd, which seems to be growing with each passing moment, spilling up and down Avalon. He can feel the fear, a tension in these summer silences between distant sirens. Passing Joey’s Jug, a handful of young men smash the windows of the liquor store, grabbing bottles and cases of whiskey and vodka. Across the avenue, at the Muslim Oasis Shoe Stand, a blind man leans propped on his white cane, his steel-wool beard and crazy, duct-taped black glasses seeming to nod over at Monk. Distant sirens echo, coming from the north. Behind him, a wall of flames licks up toward the night: the vacant lot is engulfed, a pulsating orange carpet of fire.
It is Wednesday, August 11, and this is ground zero.
Three cop cars wail past. Up ahead, sounds of shattering glass as two men run across the dark band of Avalon between street lamps. Avalon is not a good place to find an RTD Freeway Flyer. Monk heads west on 118th, then south on San Pedro Street. Sirens peal in and out of the humid blackness that presses like a shroud against Monk. At 119th, two brick-front stores, a furniture place and a pawnshop, are engulfed in fire, flames and black smoke billowing from shattered windows. Another mob converges over sidewalks and the street; a knot of men rock, then turn over a parked Ford Fairlane. Fear and excitement, a visceral electricity shocks through him as he walks faster, shaking his head: Man, what the fuck is going on here? Two patrol cars screech sideways, blocking the intersection: four officers scramble out, forming a line, leveling shotguns at the crowds running, breaking up in the darkness like night phantoms. Monk is skulking along the shadow line of an old tenement, hoping to slip past to 120th Street. As he passes a dingy doorway, a whisper: “Brother, come inside, take sanctuary.”
Monk turns: two huge black men in ebony suits and bow ties, wearing purple fezzes. Their coat pockets are stuffed with pamphlets bannered Muhammad Speaks. Before he can answer, huge hands guide him gently but forcefully down steps and through the peeling door, Monk clutching his blue notebook with its sheaf of renegade and unspiraled paper to his chest like a shield.
Inside the apartment has been converted into a great lobby, wall lights shaded with blue cloth sconces, casting a cobalt sheen on rows of purple-painted doors and bronze-tinted tapestries unfurled on cracked walls. The two giants escort Monk through the lobby, past conference tables, men hunched over stacks of papers and open files, men on telephones or sitting at small tables, legs crossed, drinking from teacups: all black men, no women, everyone dressed in dark suits and bow ties, crew-cut hair, no banks of cigarette smoke, no beers or cocktails on tables. Monk notes the purple fez many wear, with its crescent and star symbols, and the gold letters pinned to lapels: FOI, the Fruit of Islam.
They lead him through two great paneled doors and into a large foyer. In the center is the biggest rug Monk’s ever seen, woven in a web of interlocking Arabic glyphs and symbols. He resists the urge to copy the strange script into his notebook. Sitting at a massive oak desk in the heart of the dizzying rug, a shrunken old man gazes up at him with milky, rheumy eyes shadowed beneath his purple fez. “I am Elijah Muhammad,” rising, extending his hand. “Welcome to the temple.”
“Nation of Islam.” Monk, shaking his hand. “Monk.”
“You’ve heard of us? Allah be praised!” Elijah beams. “I am gratified whenever fine young black men have heard the word. Please join me for some hot tea. You must rest a short while, it is dangerous to venture outside now that the great siege has begun,” steering him by an elbow toward a tea table near another closed door. A basket of fruit on the table, figs, dates, apples, oranges. No bananas: the profane, phallic fruit banned from all Islamic tables.
“Great siege?” Monk protectively places the notebook on his knees under the table. Another FOI enters through the great doors, balancing a silver tea set, past those two bodyguards, who now flank each side of the door.
The FOI pours tea: all these matching suits, bow ties, crew cuts, they all look like undertakers. “Thank you, Brother Shabazz.” Elijah nods curtly and the server stalks away silently. “You are aware of our teachings?”
“Oh, you know, just what I hear around the ’hood.” Sipping tea, waiting. I’m being interrogated by a man wearing a purple fez and a bow tie.
“We, in the Nation of Islam, are always eager to recruit clean young men, such as yourself, Mr. Monk.”
“Well, I ain’t so clean, Mr. Muhammad,” passing dirty fingers through his long locks.
“Your hair is only an affectation of the ghetto. It is easily cut. It is only a pathetic trend from Africa, the atavistic fantasy of the jungle nigger.”
“Well, maybe I’m just too jungle for your organization, ah, I’m just tryin’ to get home, sir.” Monk steals a glimpse of the bodyguards still framing the doorway. How the fuck do I get out of here?
“And where is home, young man?” Pouring more tea in both cups.
“Ah, around Los Angeles Harbor.” Monk’s fingers secretly glide over the springy spine of the notebook under the table.
“It will be impossible to reach your destination tonight. Please accept the hospitality of Islam and stay the night. You may have your own comfortable room and a good dinner. In the morning, it will be safer to continue your journey. Tonight the first battle has begun of a long-prophesied war, the siege has begun. Tonight will be the Night of the Jinn, the night of the fire demons.”
“You keep talkin’ about this siege, man.” Monk sips the hot tea; the old crank’s drinking from the same pot, so it must be safe.
“Young man”—setting down his teacup, a disturbing light dancing in his eyes—“you are witness to the end-times prophesied in the book of Muhammad … the final war between black Islam and our oppressors, the degenerate white Christian race. The epic confrontation of good and evil, a struggle that has raged since the Crusades and further back into the millennia.” Narrowing his wizened eyes suspiciously: “You are not an idolater or have been brainwashed by their white Jesus, have you, brother?”
“Well, ah, I’m kind of on the fence, cosmically speaking.”
“I was young once and full of mystical fantasies,” smiling, “but you will see the path. Watch and see how your brothers and sisters are treated by the white oppressors. You will come to Islam in time. Don’t let them kill your spirit with their false gods. They will try to teach you love and compassion, to turn the other cheek so they can strike it with their police batons. Don’t pray for and love your enemies, destroy them ruthlessly before they destroy you. That notebook: the brothers think you are a police spy, but I think you are a writer. May I?”
Monk frowns, sizing up the old man, like a dark wizard in his purple cap. He slides the blue notebook across the table. Elijah thumbs through a few pages of graffiti symbols neatly copied in pencil and ink, labels and arrows, margins scratched with his cribbed, voluminous notes. “I study graffiti and gangs, I’m kind of an amateur urbanologist.”
Muhammad flicks through the notebook and loose papers, as if searching for something. Monk, getting that sour feeling in the pit of his stomach, reaches tentatively for the notebook. Muhammad frowns, closing it, slides it to Monk. “I know who you are and what you do. These too are signs long prophesied by the holy book. When cities begin to sprout this filth, it is the cancer manifesting in the body. It is the first sign of the beginning of the end. Rome too had these obscenities scrawled on every column and portico before the end.” Monk remembers a photograph in a history book, an ancient graffito carved into a Roman basilica: Illegitimi non carborundum—Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Elijah shakes his head. “These gangs, brother killing brother, black against brown, young man, all this too is part of their conspiracy. It is not an accident that whites have isolated us in urban zones, eliminated any economic or industrial bases from these zones, then flooded us and the Mexican hordes from the south with cheap guns and unlimited drugs. The Nation of Islam is the sword of the new Negro. The white man and Uncle Toms like Martin Luther King, Jr., have anesthetized the Negro. Their dreams of a Negro middle class and integration are just that, my son—dreams. Only the Nation’s way will bring us salvation, will smash white imperialism.” Monk drains his tea, nods, forces himself not to gaze toward the guards and the doorway from the temple. “Some will accuse the Nation of fomenting the coming rebellion. They will say the Nation cached arms and explosives, that we ordered gangs and secret undercover operatives to fan the flames of revolution. They will use their white propaganda machines to try to destroy us, mark my words. Perhaps,” the old man sighs, sets the teacup on its plate, “you will set the record straight in your book.”
Elijah Muhammad stands. “I have prepared a room for you,” beckoning Monk to follow.
“Ah, I really should get goin’, sir.” Get the fuck out of here, boy, get— But Monk can’t think, the old man keeps talking … it’s as if Monk’s mind has slowed, submerged in some kind of foggy static … everything is confused, jumbled … how can he be in this Islamic temple in the middle of the ghetto? What is really going on outside in his city? The spark of some kind of riot … or the gathering of night armies into a great race war?
“You are not a prisoner. But please stay, if only for a hot meal. I’ve already made arrangements. Leave after you gain your strength, or in the morning, I hope, when it will be perilous but safer. You are under, as the white man’s TV commercial says, no obligation.” Muhammad opens another door.
“Thanks, sir, but I—” Monk walks inside a large apartment, soft lemon light dimmed by a thick curtain over a window. In the room’s center is a dining table, a service of silver domed platters, porcelain plates, and cloth napkins neatly pyramided, set for two: sitting facing him is a black woman, her red lips and jade eyes made even more strikingly beautiful by the hijab covering her hair and neck. The abaya Muslim gown she wears covers her entire body, but even this medieval armor can’t disguise the voluptuous curves under heavy black cloth. The door clicks behind them.
“Laylah Nefertiti,” extending her hand. The faintest smile plays under her eyes.
“Americo Monk.” The food smells good as he tries to clear his mind: Think, boy, get the fuck out of here, back on the street before that shit out there gets worse.
Her smile broadens. “A name at once ecclesiastical and adventurous. Please sit down, eat.” She uncovers silver platters: orange roast duck and roast beef garnished with onions and carrots.
“Ah, I really need to get goin’, ma’am,” glancing at the door.
“Don’t worry about Elijah.” She laughs, forking a pink slab of beef onto his plate. “There is no relationship, we are … free agents.”
Monk reluctantly sits down, his notebook next to his plate. “What, no clams or oysters on the half shell?”
She smiles. “So the old man gave you the usual speech,” scooping vegetables onto his plate, “about the Nation.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He’s starving. A hot meal, I have to eat something, then I’m out of here.
“Elijah is a fanatic. Be careful, when fanatics have power, they are dangerous.” Nefertiti pours Monk a cup of hot tea.
“You dislike him.” Monk sips tea: beyond the draped great window, muffled sirens wail in the night.
“The Nation only cloaks itself in religion, it is a political organization. Elijah only cares about amassing wealth and power and, of course, concubines and beautiful consorts.” Her green eyes sparkle above the steam from her teacup.
“Well, you are beautiful. You don’t have to lie about having no relationship.” Monk smiles, slipping a carrot in his mouth. “You his wife? Is that why you hate him?”
Her eyes flash. “I apologize. You are not a fool. I am not his wife, only a mistress. One of many. He has twenty-one children out of wedlock. He’s planted what he likes to call his divine seed in half the women in this ghetto. He sermonizes against zina, Islam for adultery.” She forces a bitter laugh. “Women are chattel for breeding. He treats you like some princess out of the Arabian Nights, but if you get knocked up you’re back on some bus bench on Crenshaw Boulevard. I am lucky. I cannot become pregnant, so he gave me the Islam name Sh’laylah, Laylah, Lilith, Hebrew for ‘night.’” A rueful smile. “The succubus that lay with Adam and begat Cain, the first monster unleashed in the world. He is the satyr god, whose holy mission is to multiply the fruits of the Nation, to create some crazy future dream of a world ruled by black men.”
Nefertiti stands, pulling him up, whispers in his ear. “You are in danger, come, where we can talk.” She leads him to a pile of giant gold-embroidered pillows where they sit near the draped window. “He won’t stop until you’ve joined the Nation, he sees you as a possible caliph, a kind of successor, perhaps.” She nods over to the notebook on the table. “You are a young scholar, as he was. Beware if you betray him. Six months ago, Brother Malcolm discovered his dirty little sex life and was assassinated.” Her lips move close to his, her lilac scent envelops them, jade eyes drooping sensuously. Beyond the window, a faint cry of sirens. “The only way you can be safe is to become a Fruit of Islam.”
She claps her hands and another door opens from an adjoining suite: two other black women in translucent silver sarongs prance into the room, wiggling down into the golden pillows between Monk and Nefertiti. Hands with copper bracelets caress his thighs, lips brush against his as a tongue from somewhere nibbles on his left earlobe.
“Ah, ladies, I should be going.” Monk presses back as gauzy breasts brush against him. “I have a woman waiting for me at home.” A siren, muffled beyond the draped window, screams forlornly as it dies away: Sirens, too many sirens, can’t think.
“How jejune.” Nefertiti’s green eyes blaze as she stands and claps her hands twice. The two girls rush to their feet, then are gone. “Pity, I must be losing my gifts.” Laylah Nefertiti stalks to the doorway. The door closes behind her exquisite abaya-curved secrets.
The adjoining door opens again: a black arm spills from a silver silk sleeve, bronze bracelets jingling, her hand motioning him. “Quick! Follow me! A fire escape.”
He follows the woman through a dark, musty corridor, terminating in a blacked-out window. “Hurry!” she whispers as he bangs the rusted latch free and pries the ancient window open. “Be careful, the Nation wants your notebook. They are dangerous. They are stockpiling weapons, he’s planning some kind of race revolution.” Monk’s making a heroic effort to focus on her frantic eyes instead of the dark nipples heaving under diaphanous folds. “You’ve written a phone number, somewhere in your notebook. You must call the number, keep trying until someone answers. He will help you.”
“Who?”
“They’re coming!”
Monk jams the notebook under his belt and he’s over the fire escape’s rusted railing, out into the night. The sirens are louder now, as if converging upon him. Hanging from the fire escape he sees, below the dark strip of 120th Street, a few street lamps flickering toward Avalon: somewhere to the east is an orange radiance, fire beyond the tenement blocks ahead. A metallic thumping, and he gazes up. Elijah Muhammad stands on the grating, purple fez gleaming in the night like some wizard’s cap as he raises some terrible weapon to smash Monk’s hands gripping the warm rails. Monk lets go, drops to the next railing six feet below, grabs hold, legs locking around the rusted ladder as it creaks and echoes, pulling away from the brick walls with a terminal groan of distressed bolts.
But it’s not a weapon raised above Elijah’s fez, it’s a guitar Monk sees as the old calypso troubadour slings it around and starts strumming. “You’ll be back, my son, into the Nation’s waiting glory.”
A final, terrible iron groan as the rusted ladder fails and Monk plummets toward just another ghetto death here by misadventure: not free-falling, the ladder telescopes down, gliding Monk past bricks and windows until the rungs jar and lock to a stop, extending eight feet above the sidewalk where he sprawls. Up and he’s running, cuts into an alley off San Pedro, calypso guitar and the old imam’s sweet falsetto fading into the night. Blocks ahead is Main Street. He walks toward the distant lights and sirens, his fingers brushing the notebook still safe beneath his belt.