And he was gone, moving in the other direction. And here is Josh Thompson alone, with fewer people on the sidewalks, fewer cars or buses or trucks. He is aimed at the river, facing the street of cobblestones leading to the old mosque, leading to Aladdin’s Lamp.
He begins pushing the wheels, slowly. Heading west. To the minarets. He looks back for the old Mexican woman who was so nice to him. She’s nowhere in sight.
7:10 p.m. Malik Shahid. Muhlenberg Branch of New York Public Library, West 23rd Street, Manhattan.
Malik is alone at a small table near the windows, the snow falling on the street behind him. Again, he is trying hard to look normal. A solitary man among seven or eight other solitaries. Wearing his coat as if permanently cold. His cheap black beret stuffed in a pocket. Far from the radiator on the far end of the room. He is making marks on a ruled yellow pad with a new ballpoint pen. Both letters have been written and he wants to read the long one again. The envelope is addressed to Michael Daly at the Daily News. The columnist. They’ll put it on the front page, with big fat headlines. The envelope already carries a stamp. It is not yet sealed.
Malik has a large book open in front of him, and is trying to look as if he is studying it and making notes. The book is The Thousand and One Nights. The heathen book that tells the story of Ala’ad-din, meaning “nobility of the faith.” What faith? Not Islam. He looks intensely at a page, holds a finger to a sentence, then writes on the yellow pad. Like a scholar doing research. Pressing angrily with his ballpoint pen. If the heavy white bitch behind the desk even bothers to look at him, she will see a young black man, doing work toward a degree, maybe. The words written on his yellow pad say something different from the words he fingers in the book. He does not see the words in the book.
Aladdin’s Lamp.
Aladdin’s Lamp.
Aladdin’s Lamp.
Aladdin’s Lamp.
In his head, the words are like a chant. From a madrassa. Or like Sirhan Sirhan in his journal, the words used as the name of a book Malik once read.
RFK must die.
RFK must die.
Malik glances at the clock. Thinks: Almost time to leave. He removes the longer letter and reads:
To Everybody:
If you read this, I am in Paradise. I have obeyed the commands of Allah to do my best to cleanse the world of sin and corruption. I have chosen to obey the Quran. In the filthy corrupt West, all sin is permitted. I have chosen to follow the command of Allah. To erase. To purge. To cleanse.
I have purged my own mother, as commanded. I have purged her slave owner. I have purged the sinful imam who defied his faith by collaborating with enemies. I wish I could have purged my so-called father, who is a policeman for the oppressors, and dared to use the name Ali. That will be the duty of some future servant of Allah, some other soldier in jihad. In another few hours I will purge many other sinners who defile what was once a holy mosque.
In Paradise, I shall live forever in the company of those I love and those who loved me. I shall live with the blessed ones. I shall live with Allah’s heroes and servants. I hope my example will inspire others.
Allahu akbar!
His signature is boldly written at the bottom. With the date.
He folds the letter, slips it into the stamped envelope, licks the gummed edges of the flap, and seals it. He does not need to read the stamped and sealed letter to his so-called father. It’s very short. Addressed to him at the house in Brooklyn.
All I wanted was to borrow some money to take my woman to a doctor. Your wife sneered at me, told me to leave, threatened to call the police. She is dead now, along with her slave owner, and so is my woman and our child. And the fake imam.
I didn’t kill them.
You did.
M.
Time to go. He pulls on his beret and closes the book, tears off the top page of the yellow pad, and slips the pad beneath the book. He folds the page and pushes it into his back pocket. Thinking: I don’t care if they find out I did it. After I do it. But some cop stops me on the way, he might wonder what this nigger is doing with a yellow pad. Malik stretches in a feigned sleepy way, zippers his coat, pulls the beret more snugly on top of his head. Then he nods and smiles like a young Uncle Tom at the white woman behind the counter, and goes out into the snow.
Across the street, Malik sees a young woman leave the Chelsea Hotel with a large black dog on a leash. A Lab. Thinking: Just like the Lab we had at home when I was what? Ten? His name was Sarge. My so-called father trained him. Had a guy come over from the bomb squad to help. Taught Sarge to wait. Taught him to sit. Teaching me at the same time. Telling me to sit. Like it was a joke. Doing that to me all my life, even after Sarge died, only four years old. Blamed me for the dog’s death too. I was walking him down by Myrtle Avenue, and some bitch crossed his path, some bitch in heat most likely, and Sarge lunged for her, I lost the leash, and a bus hit him and killed him. Allah surely had some reason. But I didn’t know that then.
He walks to Eighth Avenue, drops the letters in a mailbox, crosses the street, heads downtown. Thinking: I better not take another bus. The bus I took to 23rd Street, that worked. A gamble I won. Thinking: They don’t check the buses like they do the subways. They put a cop on every bus, they’d have to start a New York draft. Subways are different. He remembers the signs: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Yeah. Be a snitch. God bless America.
He sees a black man in the doorway of a shuttered store. Cardboard cup loose in his right hand. His eyes closed. No hat. No gloves. One leg under his ass, the other stretched out, snow gathering on his jeans and his unlaced sneaker. Malik thinks: How you like that fucking Obama now, baby?
He walks to the next block, steps into a deep doorway of a store with metal shutters covering the windows. Stamps his feet. Flexes his hands. Stands there watching the snow fall. And remembers that meeting he went to, out past Brownsville in East New York. Two years ago? Three? Less? Set up by Aref. Four other believers showed up. No names, please, said Aref. Malik didn’t know one of them. Most of them Malik’s age. Two guys with Paki accents, but all of them arriving separately. Nothing in the room but a table, folding chairs, and couches. A safe house. For believers on the run.
Then an older guy arrived, maybe sixty, clean-shaven, a little fat, losing his hair. Gray suit and tie. Carrying a briefcase. He looked like a professor Malik had during his first semester at CUNY. Teaching some course in literature. He laid the briefcase on the table, nodded at Aref, who locked the door. Then he snapped open the top of the briefcase and took out a vest. Spread it wide. Said, “You all know what this is, right?”
They all knew. They’d seen the vests on all the filthy anti-Muslim TV shows and the pages of tabloid newspapers. Yeah, they knew. Holding the vest, the older guy gave a brief lecture. Explained that Semtex was a plastic explosive, made in the Czech Republic. That it had no smell, he explained, but even one of those red bars had tremendous explosive power. The vest held six. They could only be ignited by one of these. At which point he held up a small detonator. “You slide the wire inside one of the pouches, attach it to a wire wrapped around a Semtex bar, and then press the button. That’s all.” And if the wearer is shot at, one bullet hitting a Semtex bar would do the same thing. Ka-boom.