Everything they thought they knew about the nature of reality, about how things worked and what things were, was wrong, the iron mullah said. That was the first thing for the true warrior to understand.-Yes, Shalimar the clown thought, that’s right, everything I thought I knew about her was a mistake.-The visible world, the world of space and time and sensation and perception in which they had believed themselves to be living, was a lie.-Yes, that’s so.-Everything that seemed to be, was not.-Yes.-By crossing the mountains they had passed through a curtain and stood now on the threshold of the world of truth, which was invisible to most men.-Thank God, thought Shalimar the clown. Truth. At last. Truth that endures. Truth that will never become a lie.-In the world of truth, the iron mullah preached, there was no room for weakness, argument, or half measures. Before the power of truth, every knee must bow, and then truth will protect you. Truth will keep your soul safe in the palm of its mighty hand.-In the palm of its hand.-Only the truth can be your father now, but through the truth you will be fathers of history.-Only the truth can be my father.-Only the truth can be your mother now, but when the truth has won its victory all mothers will bless your names.-Only the truth can be my mother.-Only the truth can be your brother, but in the truth you will be a brother to all men.-Only the truth can be my brother.-Only the truth can be your wife.-Only the truth can be my wife.
Time itself was the servant of truth, the iron mullah told them. Years could pass in an instant, or a moment could be infinitely prolonged, if the truth were best served by doing so. Distance, too, was as nothing in the eye of truth. A journey of a thousand miles could be accomplished in a single day. And if time and distance could be moved and changed, if these great things were the malleable disciples of truth, then how much more easily molded was the human self! If the so-called laws of the universe were illusions, if these fictions were no more than the fabric of the veil behind which truth was concealed, then human nature was an illusion also, and human desires and human intelligence, human character and human will, would all bow to truth’s imperatives once the veil was removed. No man could face the naked truth, defy it and survive.
The new recruits listening to the iron mullah felt their old lives shrivel in the flame of his certainty. The invisible commander who called himself Dar from Shirmal even though there were no Dars in Shirmal leapt up suddenly and flung off his woollen balaclava-style hat, his polythene outer garments, his woollen waistcoast, his gumboots, the woollen blanket-strips wrapping his feet, his grey sleeveless V-neck woollen jumper, his long khaki-colored woollen kurta and pajamas, his socks and his underpants, and stood before Bulbul Fakh stripped and ready for action. “I have no name,” he cried loudly, “except the name of truth. I have no face but the face you choose for me. I have no body but the one that will die for the truth. I have no soul but the soul that is God’s.” The iron mullah came to him and gently, as a father might, helped him to dress again. “This warrior,” Bulbul Fakh tenderly announced when the man whom Shalimar the clown thought of as Naked Mountain was fully clothed once more, “has put off the garments of the lie and put on those of truth. He is ready for the war.”
While the invisible commander was naked, Shalimar the clown had understood how young he was: probably only eighteen or nineteen years old, young enough to be prepared to erase himself in a cause, young enough to make himself a blank sheet upon which another man could write. For Shalimar the clown the total abnegation of the self was a more problematic requirement, a sticking place. He was, he wanted to be, a part of the holy war, but he also had private matters to attend to, personal oaths to fulfill. At night his wife’s face filled his thoughts, her face and behind hers the face of the American. To let go of himself would be to let go of them as well; and he found that he could not order his heart to set his body free.
“The infidel believes in the immutability of the soul,” said Bulbul Fakh. “But we believe that all living things can be transformed in the service of the truth. The infidel says that a man’s character will decide his fate; we say that a man’s fate will forge his character anew. The infidel holds that the picture of the world he draws is a picture we must all recognize. We say that his picture means nothing to us, for we live in a different world. The infidel speaks of universal truth. We know that the universe is an illusion and that truth lies beyond the illusion, where the infidel cannot see. The infidel believes the world is his. But we shall drive him from his redoubts and cast him into darkness and live in Paradise and rejoice as he plunges into the fire.”
Shalimar the clown rose to his feet and tore off his garments. “Take me!” he cried. “Truth, I am ready for you!” He was a trained performer, a leading actor in the leading bhand pather troupe in the valley, and so of course he could make his gestures more convincing, and imbue his journey toward nakedness with more meaning, than any eighteen-year-old youth. He stripped off his shirt and shouted out his acquiescence-“I cleanse myself of everything except the struggle! Without the struggle I am nothing!”-he screamed his assent-“Take me or kill me now!”-and stripped off his undergarments. The passion of his avowals made an impression on the iron mullah. “We knew that those who chose to make the arduous winter journey over the Tragbal Pass must have been driven from within to do so,” he said. “But in you the desire burns more fiercely than I had thought.” He helped Shalimar the clown put his clothes back on, to dress himself in garments transformed by his shedding of them into the raiment of belonging. When he was fully clothed again Shalimar the clown prostrated himself at the feet of Bulbul Fakh, and almost believed his own performance, almost believed that he was no longer what he was and could indeed leave the past behind.
Later that day, however, he was accosted at the mess table by a little Far Eastern-looking guy with an almost absurdly innocent face, a man in his late thirties who looked ten years younger, who seemed to shine with some sort of crazy internal light, and who spoke enough broken Hindi to make himself understood. The little guy asked politely, “Okay? I sit? Okay?” Shalimar the clown shrugged and the little guy sat down. “Moro,” he said, tapping his own chest. “Filipino Muslim. From Basilan, Mindanao. You can say this?” Shalimar the clown went along with it. “Basilan, Mindanao,” he said. The little guy applauded. “Was fisherman there, son of fisherman,” he said. “Janjalani, Abdurajak Abubakar. This also you can say?” “Janjalani,” repeated Shalimar the clown. “Not fish long. Fish stink. Fish rot from head. Filipino state stink like rotten fish. Join Moro National Liberation Front,” Janjalani said in his faltering Hindi. “But broken away. Join al-Islamic Tabligh, good movement. Cash from Saudi, also Pakistan. Send me to school West Asia. Which is, you say, Mideast.” Shalimar the clown twisted his mouth to show he was impressed. “You’re far from home,” he suggested. “Study. Learn,” said the little man. “Saudi Arab. Libya. Afghanistan. Study at the Base. You know the Base? Brother Ayman, brother Ramzi, Sheikh Usama. Learn many good thing. Field-strip rifle, I learn. Ambush I learn. Kidnap I also learn. Extortion, bombing, assassination. Fight Russian, kill Russian. Good education.” He laughed heartily. “Education in person’s character I have already. So I see through you, sir. I see through you like window. You are not man of God.” Shalimar the clown’s body tightened and he calculated the speed at which he could draw his knife and attack if an attack became necessary. “No, no, sir,” the little man replied in mock alarm. “Peace, please. I here in observer capacity only. Noncombatant status. Ha! Ha! Full respect, please. Man of God in his place, fighter killer in his. Man of God inspire. Man of war do. Combination person of Bulbul Fakh style very rare. You not combination person I think. You act combination person to please iron Bulbul but really you a fighter killer. It is okay. I however am combination person like Bulbul, same same. Fighter, also ustadz. Preacher. It is my fate.”