This night, he reflected, had begun in sin and ended in hell. Lust led to sin, sin led to death. Hellfires raged all around him. The Great Satan himself had delivered punishment to him and to Bahira. But Allah the merciful had spared his life, and as he ran he prayed that Allah had also spared his family.
As an afterthought, he also prayed for Bahira's family and for the Great Leader.
As Asad Khalil, age sixteen, ran through the ruins of Al Azziziyah, he understood that he had been tested by Satan and by Allah, and that from this night of sin, death, and fire he would emerge a man.
CHAPTER 17
Asad Khalil continued running toward his home. There were more people in this quarter of the compound-soldiers, women, a few children, and they were running, or walking slowly as if stunned; some he realized were on their knees praying.
Khalil turned a corner and stopped dead in his tracks. The row of attached stucco houses where he lived looked strangely different. Then he realized there were no shutters on the windows, and he noticed debris strewn in the open square in front of the houses. But even more strange was the fact that moonlight came through the open windows and doors. He suddenly realized that the roofs had collapsed into the buildings and blown out the doors, windows, and shutters. Allah, I beg of you, please, no…
He felt as if he were going to faint, then he took a deep breath and ran toward his house, stumbling over pieces of concrete, dropping his prayer mat, finally reaching the doorway opening. He hesitated, then rushed inside to what had been the front room.
The entire flat roof had collapsed into the room, covering the tile floor, the rugs, and the furniture with broken slabs of concrete, wooden beams, and stucco. Khalil looked upward at the open sky. In the name of the most merciful…
He took another deep breath and tried to get himself under control. On the far wall was the wood and tile cabinet that his father had built. Khalil made his way across the rubble to the cabinet, whose doors had been flung open. He found the flashlight inside and switched it on.
He swept the powerful, narrow beam around the room, seeing now the full extent of the damage. A framed photograph of the Great Leader still hung on the wall and this somehow reassured Khalil.
He knew he had to go into the bedrooms, but he couldn't bring himself to face what might be there.
Finally, he told himself, You must be a man. You must see if they are dead or alive.
He moved toward an arched opening that led further back into the house. The cooking and eating room had suffered the same damage as the front room. Khalil noticed that his mother's dishes and ceramic bowls had all fallen off their shelves.
He passed through the destruction into a small inner courtyard where three doors led to the three bedrooms. Khalil pushed on the door to the room that he shared with his two brothers, Esam, age five, and Qadir, age fourteen. Esam was the posthumous son of his father, always sickly, and was indulged by his sisters and mother. The Great Leader himself had sent for a European doctor once to examine him during one of his illnesses. Qadir, only two years younger than Asad, was big for his age and sometimes mistaken as his twin. Asad Khalil had hopes and dreams that Qadir and he would join the Army together, become great warriors, and eventually become Army commanders and aides to the Great Leader.
Asad Khalil held on to this image as he pushed on the door, which encountered some obstruction on the other side and held fast. He pushed harder and managed to squeeze himself through the narrow opening into his room.
There were three single beds in the small room-his own, which was flattened under a slab of concrete, Qadir's bed, which was also buried in concrete rubble, and Esam's bed, across which Khalil could see a huge rafter.
Khalil scrambled over the rubble to Esam's bed and knelt beside it. The heavy timber had landed lengthwise on the bed, and beneath the timber, under the blanket, was Esam's crushed and lifeless body. Khalil put his hands over his face and wept.
He got himself under control and turned toward Qadir's bed. The entire bed was buried under a section of concrete and stucco roof. Khalil's flashlight played over the mound of debris, and he saw a hand and arm protruding from the concrete pieces. He reached out and grasped the hand, then quickly let go of the dead flesh.
He let out a long, plaintive wail and threw himself across the mound of debris covering Qadir's bed. He cried for a minute or two, but then realized he had to find the others. He stumbled to his feet.
Before he left the room, he turned and again shone the flashlight on his bed and stared transfixed by the single slab of concrete that had flattened the bed where he had lain only hours before.
Khalil crossed the small courtyard and pushed on the splintered door of his sisters' room. The door had come unfastened from its hinges and fell inward.
His sisters, Adara, age nine, and Lina, age eleven, shared a double bed. Adara was a happy child and Khalil favored her, acting as more her father than her older brother. Lina was serious and studious, a joy to her teachers.
Khalil could not bring himself to shine his light on the bed or even to look at it. He stood with his eyes closed, prayed, then opened his eyes and put the beam of light on the double bed. He let out a gasp. The bed was overturned, and the entire room looked like it had been shaken by a giant. Khalil saw now that the rear outside wall had been blown in, and he could smell the powerful acrid stench of explosives. The bomb had detonated not far from here, he knew, and some of the explosion had blown down the wall and filled the room with fire and smoke. Everything was charred, tossed about, and reduced to unrecognizable pieces.
He stepped over the rubble near the door, took a few paces, then stopped, frozen, one leg in front of the other. At the end of the flashlight's beam was a severed head, the face blackened and charred, the hair nearly all singed off. Khalil couldn't tell if it was Lina or Adara.
He turned and ran toward the door, tripped, fell, scrambled across the rubble on all fours, and felt his hand coming into contact with bone and flesh.
He found himself lying in the small courtyard, curled into a ball, unwilling and unable to move.
In the distance, he could hear sirens, vehicles, people shouting, and, closer by, women wailing. Khalil knew there would be many funerals in the next few days, many graves to be dug, prayers to be said, and survivors to be comforted.
He lay there, numb with grief at the loss of his two brothers and two sisters. Finally, he tried to stand, but succeeded only in crawling toward the door of his mother's room. The door, he realized, was gone, blown away without a trace.
Khalil got to his feet and entered the room. The floor was relatively free of debris, and he saw that the roof had held, though everything in the room looked as if it had been moved toward the far wall, including the bed. Khalil saw that the curtains and shutters had been blown out of the two narrow-slit windows, and he realized that the force of the explosion outside had entered these windows and filled the room with a violent blast.
He hurried to his mother's bed, which had been pushed against the wall. He saw her lying there, her blanket and pillow gone and her night dress and sheets covered with gray dust.
At first he thought she was sleeping or just knocked senseless by the force of the collision with the wall. But then he noticed the blood around her mouth and the blood that had run from her ears. He remembered how his own ears and lungs had almost burst from the concussion of the bombs, and he knew what had happened to his mother.
He shook her. "Mother! Mother!" He continued to shake her. "Mother!"
Faridah Khalil opened her eyes and tried to focus on her oldest son. She began to speak, but coughed up foamy blood.
"Mother! It is Asad!"
She gave a slight nod.