Atiq picks up his whip, pushes aside the man, who’s trying to pull himself upright, and hastily disappears.
“A genuine lout,” grumbles Mohsen Ramat as he dusts himself off.
Zunaira aims a few blows at the bottom of her burqa. “He didn’t even apologize,” she says, amused by the expression on her husband’s face.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“He gave me a little scare, but that’s all.”
“Well then, it could be worse.”
They readjust their clothing. Mohsen’s movements display his irritation, while Zunaira chuckles under her mask. Mohsen perceives his wife’s smothered laughter. He mutters for a moment, but then, mollified by her good humor, he bursts out laughing, too. A club immediately comes down on his shoulder.
“Do you think you’re at the circus?” A Taliban police agent, his milky eyes bulging out of a face scorched red by the summer sun, is shouting at him.
Mohsen tries to protest. The club whirls in the air and strikes him in the face. “No laughing in the street,” the police agent insists. “If you have any sense of shame left, you’ll go home and lock yourself inside.”
Pressing one hand to his cheek, Mohsen quivers with rage.
“What’s the matter?” asks the Taliban agent, taunting him. “You want to gouge my eyes out? Come on, let’s see what kind of guts you’ve got, girl-face!”
“Let’s go,” Zunaira entreats Mohsen, pulling him by the arm.
“Don’t touch him, you! Stay in your place!” the thug yells, thwacking her across the hip. “And don’t speak in the presence of a stranger.”
Attracted by the commotion, other agents approach in a group, whips at the ready. The tallest of them strokes his beard with a mocking look and asks his colleague, “Is there a problem?”
“They think they’re at the circus.”
The tall one stares at Mohsen. “Who’s that woman?”
“My wife.”
“Then lead her like a man. And teach her to stand aside when you’re talking with a third person. Where are you going like this?”
“I’m taking my wife to her parents’ house,” replies Mohsen, lying.
The Taliban agent scrutinizes him intensely. Zunaira feels that her legs are about to give way. A panicky fear seizes her. Deep in her heart, she begs her husband not to lose his composure.
“You’ll take her to her parents later,” the tall agent decides. “For now, you’re going to join the congregation in the mosque over there. In about fifteen minutes, Mullah Bashir is going to preach a sermon.”
“I’m telling you that I have to accompany my—”
Two whips interrupt him. They land simultaneously, one on each shoulder.
“I tell you that Mullah Bashir is going to preach in ten minutes, and you talk to me about walking your wife to her parents’ house. What exactly do you have inside your skull? Am I supposed to believe that you attach more importance to a family visit than to a sermon from one of our most eminent learned men?”
With the tip of his whip, he raises Mohsen’s chin, forcing him to look him in the eye, then scornfully thrusts him back. “Your wife will wait for you here, by this wall, out of the way. You’ll take her home later.”
Mohsen raises his hands in a gesture of capitulation. After a furtive glance at his wife, he directs his steps to a green-and-white building, around which other police agents and militiamen are intercepting pedestrians and compelling them to join the faithful who are waiting to hear Mullah Bashir’s words.
Eight
“THERE IS NO DOUBT,” says Mullah Bashir over his goiter. His ogreish finger slashes the air like a saber.
Elephantine and domineering, he pulls at the cushion he’s sitting on, adjusting it amid the creaking of the platform that serves as his rostrum. His massive face seems to burst from his stringy beard. His alert eyes, twinkling with lively, intimidating intelligence, sweep the assembly. “No doubt about it, my brothers. It’s as true as the sun rising in the east. I have consulted the mountains and examined the signs in the heavens, in the waters of the rivers and the ocean, in the branches of the trees, and in the ruts in the roads; and they all affirm that the long-awaited Hour has arrived. You need only listen, only take heed, and you will hear everything on this earth, every creature, every murmuring sound, telling you that the moment of glory is within our reach, that the Imam El-Mehdi is among us, that our path is bathed in light. Those who would doubt this for a second are none of ours. The Devil dwells in them, and Hell will find inextinguishable fuel in their flesh. You will hear them for all eternity, bewailing their failure to seize the chance that we offer them on a silver platter: the chance to join our ranks, to place themselves once and for all in the shelter of the Lord.”
He strikes the floor sharply with his finger. Again his flaming eyes subdue his audience, petrifying them in a sidereal silence. “Though they implore us for millions of years on end, we shall remain deaf to their pleas, just as they are deaf today to the voice of their salvation.”
Mohsen Ramat takes advantage of some stirring in the front rows to cast a look over his shoulder. He sees Zunaira sitting on the steps of a ruin across from the mosque, waiting for him. A Taliban thug with a rifle slung across his back approaches her. She rises, pointing at the mosque with a timid hand. The thug looks in the direction indicated, nods, and withdraws.
Mullah Bashir drums on the floor, demanding close attention. “Henceforth, there is no doubt. The Word of righteousness resounds in the four corners of the earth. The Muslim peoples are gathering their forces, and gathering their most deeply held convictions. Soon there will be but one language on earth, but one law, one sole command.” Brandishing a Qur’an, he cries out, “This! The West has perished; it no longer exists. It proposed a model to fools, and that model has failed. What is that model? Exactly what kind of emancipation does it offer? What does it consider modern? The amoral societies it has set up, where profit takes precedence over all else? Where scruples, piety, and charity count for nothing? Where values are exclusively financial? Where the rich become tyrants and the wage earners slaves? Where business takes the place of the family, isolates the individual, subjugates him, then dismisses him without further ado? Where women willingly give themselves over to vice? Where men marry one another? Where bodies are sold and bought openly, for all to see, without provoking the least reaction? Where entire generations are penned up in primitive existences, reduced to marginalization and impoverishment? Is that the model they’re so proud of, the basis of their success? No, true believers, it is futile to build monuments on shifting sands. The West is finished, it’s over and done with, its rising stench smothers the ozone layer. It is a world of lies. What you may think you discern in it is nothing but an illusion, an absurd, insubstantial phantom collapsed amid the rubble of its own flimsiness. The West is a hoax, an enormous farce, a dissolving dream. Its pseudoprogress is a flight forward, its colossal facade a masquerade. Its zeal betrays its panic. It stands at bay; it’s caught like a rat in a trap. When it lost its faith, it lost its soul, and we will not help it to regain either one. It thinks that its economy is strong enough to keep it safe; it thinks it can impress us with its cutting-edge technology and intercept our prayers with its satellites; it thinks it will dissuade us with its aircraft carriers and its gimcrack armies. And it forgets that those who have chosen to die for the glory of the Lord cannot be impressed; that even though our radar may fail to detect stealth bombers, nothing escapes the eyes of the Lord!”