Acts of faith (33 page)

“No good reason for him to do it, but there is a reason,” she says, picking up where she left off. “Your dad has this need to think of himself as a tough-minded, hard-nosed guy without a sentimental bone in his body, who never lets an opportunity pass him by and never lets anything stand in the way of him getting what he wants. Why am I telling you this? Same reason I tell it to myself. So I can understand him better. He’s just got to prove that he isn’t like the rest of his family. He wouldn’t have loaned P. K. Wrigley a few bucks, he would have made himself his partner and then taken over the whole shebang.”

She pauses in this analysis to glance at a settlement of squalid adobe shacks, in front of which dark-skinned children play in the dust and the inevitable pickup trucks squat on deflated tires. Douglas, who has never been on this reservation before, feels vaguely uneasy, as if they’ve crossed the border into Mexico.

“And all the deed restrictions and covenants and conservation easements that old woman put into the contract were in his way,” Lucille resumes. “Stopped him from building a high-density development at double, triple the profit. So he got those Phoenix lawyers to change the contract and they somehow got the old lady to agree to the changes. How, I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to know.”

“Mom, the paper said the woman’s heirs, her kids and all? It said they said she didn’t agree.”

His mother shrugs.

“They told the paper they might do more than sue. That they might go to—to—“

“The attorney general. Criminal fraud. Maybe they will, but I don’t think it would stick.”

“He didn’t do that, fraud, you’re saying?”

“I told you, I don’t like to get into the legalities.”

This is not the answer Douglas hoped to hear.

PART TWO

Warlord

T
HE RAINS HAD
been sparse throughout the wet season and were falling but once or twice a week as the season drew to a close. Conditions were good for a raid, and Colonel Ahmar ordered Ibrahim Idris to lead one into the Nuba hills, where the infidel’s forces were becoming a nuisance and foreign airplanes were bringing in contraband, in defiance of the government’s decrees. He was to teach the Nubans and the foreigners a lesson by destroying a town and a smuggler’s airfield about two days’ ride from Kadugli. Ibrahim Idris studied the colonel’s maps and hired guides—good Nubans loyal to the regime—and then mustered his men, pulling them out of their fields and pastures—a very big nuisance, for they were busy bringing in this year’s millet harvest and gathering their herds for the annual journey to the southern grasslands. Still, as he’d answered Colonel Ahmar’s call, so did the Brothers answer his. They said farewell to their families, saddled their horses, and with Kalashnikovs strapped across their backs and magazine belts full, they rode out from Babanusa town and across the wadis Ghallah and al-Azraq to Kadugli—two hundred kilometers through hard country in a little over three days. There they waited for a company of militia from the Kadugli garrison to join them. The rest was welcome. The horses were worn out, and so were the men, and so was Ibrahim. How he ached. He guessed he was getting old, he
was
old, forty-five, possibly forty-six or -seven.

A woman should now be massaging my legs with liquid butter, he thought, sitting in the shade of an ebony tree. Yes, the woman Miriam, with butter churned in a calabash and warmed over coals, not this nephew, who rubs my calves with the smelly stuff from that chemist’s shop in the souk at Babanusa. A balm, excellent for the sore muscles, the Lebanese chemist had said. Half price to you, omda. For the jihad. Ibrahim smiled a sarcastic smile, thinking about the plump chemist, pretending that he was making a sacrifice by peddling his smelly balm for half price. The Lebanese knew how to turn a profit, and that one probably had charged double. He would wager that he was not even Muslim but some Greek born in Lebanon who did not give a damn for jihad or know the meaning of the word. Proud, like all his tribesmen, of his ability to do without, contemptuous of full-bellied townsmen like the chemist, Ibrahim was working himself into one of his fits of rage. I should have told him, “Take off your shirt and pants, fat-ass, and put on a jelibiya and come with us if you want to do something for jihad. Don’t sit here on your fat ass and lie to me, telling me you’re charging half price.”

“Where does this stuff come from?” he asked Abbas.

“Why, we bought it in Babanusa, don’t you remember, uncle?”

Abbas was not as clever as Ibrahim Idris wished.

“My meaning was, where is it made?”

“The chemist said in China.”

“Perhaps it works best if you’re Chinese.”

“It isn’t working?”

“It burns and it stinks.”

Abbas rolled his calves vigorously between his palms, gave each calf a parting slap, and then wiped his hands on his jelibiya, declaring that the burn signified that the balm was working.

“When I was your age, I could spend one month in the saddle and not feel this that I do now. Ya Allah! On our migrations to the south.”

These words evoked an image of himself as a lithe-limbed young man mounted on a white gelding, herding his father’s cattle that flowed like a river through the woodlands, and the image evoked some envy for his nephew, in full possession of the youth that he had lost.

” ‘Mesarna ‘izz al Ataya,’ “
Abbas said, quoting from the poem.

“Our migration is the glory of the Ataya,” his uncle repeated.

“But now we have the glory of jihad.” For emphasis, Abbas smacked the stock of his Kalashnikov. He would have been a handsome lad if not for his nose, bent sideways by the fall he’d taken from a horse when he was a boy. “Tell me, uncle, which is the greater glory, the glory of our migrations or the glory of jihad?”

An odd question, but then Abbas was in the habit of asking odd questions. Why the devil doesn’t he ask something sensible, like what qualities to look for in a breed bull or a riding bull, like which grasses are best for cows? Ibrahim looked around, at the men brewing tea and resting in the shade of the trees, at the horses with noses buried in the feed bales that the militiamen had delivered this morning. He drew in the odors of hot horseflesh and saddle leather and smoke. It all looked and smelled like cattle camp, except of course that no cattle were in sight, nor tents, nor kraals nor hearths nor one
angereyb
of wood, rope, and leather. Oh, what he would give for one of those portable beds now.

“They’re two different things. The one is a glory of this world. It means, as I’ve told you before, that we Humr together with the Rizeygat and Hawazma and Messiriya taste to the full the fruits of the cattleman’s wandering life. That among all the Baggara Arabs, we are the best. The other is a glory of the world to come. The martyr’s paradise.”

Pleased with this answer—it sounded wise, as if spoken by a mullah—he leaned forward, grunting at the stiffness in his back, removed the copper pot from the warm ashes of the fire, and filled his tea glass. The
chay
was overbrewed, bitter and strong, and his thoughts turned suddenly bitter, recalling the tea Miriam had made for him. Light and sweet and just right, the best he’d drunk. Surely she must have loved him to take such care with his tea, surely there had been love in her hands as she massaged his legs in the evenings.

“I wonder if I will become
shaheed
tomorrow,” Abbas said, drawing Ibrahim’s thoughts away from the girl, though not completely. “As you say, uncle, to be a martyr for the faith is the greatest glory.”

“That’s not exactly what I said.”

Abbas looked at him with a puzzled squint. “What is, then?”

The older man took out his tobacco pouch and paper and rolled a cigarette, licked it lengthwise, and lit it off a twig pulled from the fire. He smoked for a while, calculating how best to answer. Days ago, as he was preparing for this raid, his sister-in-law had begged him to look out for Abbas; she’d pleaded with him to restrain the young man’s zeal, and that was a commission he’d been happy to accept. Having sacrificed one of his own sons to the jihad nearly four years ago, he had no stomach for losing the nephew whom he’d raised like a son after his brother, Abbas’s father, died of fever. He thought the desire for martyrdom, which the government and the mullahs were drumming into the heads of so many young men, was mistaken, but he dared not say that to his nephew, a pious youth who had been a favorite among his teachers at the
madrassah
in Khartoum. How strange that he, a rich man honored and admired throughout the House of Humr, needed to be so cautious in speaking to a callow boy not yet twenty. He resented it, but that’s how things were these days, with the National Islamic Front so firmly in power. Everyone had to watch his words in matters of religion, even in private conversations, and leaders such as himself had to be doubly careful. His office—
omda
of the Salamat, one of the ten omodiyas of the Humr tribe—was a government appointment, and this government required its officials to be men of strong faith, or at the least, men who made a convincing show of faith. If he didn’t try hard enough to dissuade his nephew from martyrdom, Abbas was likely to attain it by taking a foolish chance; if, on the other hand, he tried too hard, Abbas could begin to gossip among the other young men that his uncle was growing weak, his belief in the jihad wavering. Such gossip would spread quickly to the ears of his rivals and enemies, who would use it to intrigue against him. It was well known that Ibrahim had set his sights on being appointed nazir over all the Humr, for the present nazir was very ill and expected to die. So his dilemma was to make good on his pledge to his nephew’s mother while saying nothing that might undermine his present position and threaten his future.

“The greatest glory is submission to God’s will,” he replied at last.

That all his uncle’s pondering should produce so obvious a truth appeared to disappoint Abbas.

“If God wills you to become
shaheed,
you will, if not, you won’t. In any case, He will favor you if you accept His will. There is no shame in not attaining martyrdom if that’s what God wishes.”

“Before the last raid, when I caught the fever and could not go, oh, my mother and sisters were so happy! I couldn’t understand it. I asked my mother, for why you are so happy? Now for sure you will not be
umma’l shaheed.
”

“And she said what?”

“That it was all right if she was not the mother of a martyr. I couldn’t believe my own hearing, and I was ashamed, uncle. It is my hope to see my cousin Ganis in Paradise, to sit beside him.”

He was getting tired of talking to this kid, but he saw that he hadn’t gone far enough toward fulfilling his promise.

“It pains me to hear Ganis’s name mentioned. Listen, what does the Holy Koran say about those who fight for the faith?” He motioned at his saddle and bags, lying a few meters away. “My book is in there. Let’s see how much you learned at the madrassah.”

Abbas fetched the Koran and paged through it, his black eyebrows pursed.

“Is it this? ‘God has indeed promised everyone Paradise, but God has preferred those who fight for the faith before those who sit still, by adding unto them a great reward, by degrees of honor conferred on them from him, and by granting them forgiveness and mercy; for God is indulgent and merciful.’ ”

“What say you to the meaning of that?”

“Why, that verse is clear. Those who are martyred for the faith are forgiven their sins and go to Paradise straight away.”

“Read what it says, nephew. It doesn’t say those who
die
for the faith but those who
fight
for it.”

“Yes.”

“So you see, merely by fighting in the jihad one earns mercy and honor. You will see Ganis even if you are one hundred years when you die.”

“But the mullahs would say that by dying in the fight he earned a higher place.”

“Then you can look
up
from your place and see him,” the older man said, his patience nearly at an end. “Ya, Abbas! Explain something to your uncle. He’s getting old, see the gray.” He stroked his short beard. “His mind isn’t as keen as it once was. There are things he doesn’t understand.”

Abbas assumed a mature, dignified air, raising his chin while squaring his turban. His skewed nose spoiled the effect and made him look a little silly.

“You’ve laid claim to Nanayi, and you’ve told her father that you hope to return from the raid with cattle for a bride-price, even though I have offered to loan you the cattle.”

“My refusal wasn’t meant to insult you.”

“I know that! You believe that presenting Nunayi’s father with cows you captured in a raid brings you more renown than cows loaned to you. My question is, how will you seize these cattle if you’re martyred? How will you marry Nunayi if you’re dead?”

“The Prophet, blessed be his name, teaches that those who die for God are not dead.”

“Don’t play these games with me, Abbas. You see the contradiction, don’t you?”

“Of course, uncle. Martyrdom is my chief desire, but if God wills it not to be so, my next desire is to capture some cattle and marry her.”

“I understand you now.
Esmah,
Abbas! Stay close to me, and I’ll lead you to the cattle, I’ll show you which are the best and those will be yours.”