THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller (19 page)

“Don’t overdo it, Agent Decker. You’ll only make this whole thing more distasteful for me.” He opened the Muslim holy text. He lay the volume gently inbetween them. “Here, in Sura eighty-one of
Al Takwi
r.” The professor began to read. “‘When the sun is veiled, and the stars are dimmed, and the mountains are made to move, and ten-months pregnant she-camels are discarded as a means of transportation and the wild ones are gathered together, and the rivers are diverted, and people are brought together, and when the female infant buried alive is questioned about: For what crime was she killed? And when books are spread abroad, and when heaven is laid bare, and when hell is stoked up, and when the Garden is brought nigh, then everyone will know that which He has wrought.’”

“I can read what it says, Professor. What does it mean?”

“It’s a prophecy. Some believe it refers to the present age. Today, the sun
is
veiled, and pollution and city lights dim the stars. Mountains are made to move, through monumental mining practices, although some scholars think this refers to the toppling of kings – like Saddam Hussein. Real trains and other high-speed means of transportation have supplanted camel trains. I’ve no idea who the wild ones are. Gangs, perhaps. Terrorist groups. Your guess is as good as mine. Rivers are constantly diverted, and some believe the reference to people being ‘brought together’ speaks to the Internet. As far as the ‘infant buried alive’ is concerned, clerics speculate it refers to the practice of abortion. Even Christians are asking, ‘For what crime was she killed?’”

“And books have been spread abroad,” said Decker, catching on. “Through Amazon and modern digital printing presses. Heaven’s been laid bare through the Hubble and other telescopes, revealing the limits of the visible universe. What about hell being stoked up?”

“Could be volcanoes, like Mount Saint Helens and Etna. But many well-respected clerics believe it refers to nuclear power and the bomb. And the Garden has been brought nigh. A few years ago, several scientists determined – leveraging the Legend of Gilgamesh, ancient place names, and the historic location of rivers and mountains – that the legend of Eden was based on a real valley in western Iran.”

“I don’t know, Professor. One could read almost anything into these quotes. What are they meant to prophesy?”

“The end of the world,” said Hassan. “Armageddon.”

Decker felt an electric chill run up his spine. He pointed at the illustrations of the wallpapers on the bench between them. “Tell me about calligraphy, about this type of arabesque design?”

“In the hierarchy of the arts, Islam accords the highest rank to calligraphy,” Hassan replied, “since it’s the art that embellishes the word of God. The Qur’an itself bases its authority on its being the literal word of God, dictated to the world through the mouthpiece of a messenger, the Prophet Mohammed. Qur’an literally means ‘a reading.’ The visible Qur’an is but a reflection of the Preserved Tablet, the supernatural archetype laid up in heaven, which is a kind of metaphor for the mind of God.” The Professor paused, deep in thought. Then he added, “This principle of mirroring, of reversibility recurs throughout Islam. For example, in Islamic architecture the dome represents the vault of heaven. But in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a highly stylized Cosmological Tree spreads
downward
, upside down – the
arbor inversus
. In the same way, from each of the four corners of the earth and in Mecca itself, one always prays
towards
the Ka’aba. But once within the Ka’aba, one prays in the reverse direction; that is,
outwards
, toward any of the four walls.

“The Ka’aba is the holiest site in Islam,” said Hassan. “In fact, the location was considered sacred even before Islam, but after the Muslim conquest of Mecca in 630, Muhammad destroyed the numerous pagan idols in the building. Within the courtyard of the Ka’aba are several sacred sites, including the burial place of Abraham and the Zamzam well, which sprang up miraculously for Ishmael and his mother, Hagar. Today, there is an ablution fountain between the external and internal features of every mosque, generally located in the center of the courtyard. In Islam, water is the vehicle of purification.”

Decker recollected the tapestries in the hall behind him. One featured the unicorn – before his death – dipping his horn in water, purifying a well.

Hassan picked up the second illustration, the one from Moussa’s locker. He studied it for a moment before confirming what Decker had already translated:
Death Will Overtake You
. Unfortunately, said Hassan, there wasn’t enough for him to guess at a source.

“And the numbers?”

The professor shook his head. “I’ve no idea. Wait a minute,” he added. He studied the first illustration. Then he picked up the second again. “You know,” he said. “This is interesting.”

“What?”

“See these lines here, this kind of T-junction in both drawings?” His hand swept across the designs. “These indentations, and this round shape in the arabesque over here?”

“What about it?”

“Both of these illustrations are laid out like . . . like virtual mosques.” He pointed at the illustration from the apartment in Queens. “This one looks like a
masjid
, the kind of mosque used for individual prayer.” Then he pointed at the other, the one from the jukebox dealer. “But this one looks like a
musalla
or
idgah
, a community mosque. They both have
qibla
and transversal axes, but this one has a
minbar
. See?” He stabbed a finger at a small rectangular shape. “And look how open it is – a true place of
Id’
.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Decker. “What’s a kibla and a minibar?”

Hassan laughed. “Not a minibar! A
minbar
– a pulpit.” He paused to explain. “In Islam, prayer –
salat
– is conducted at four different levels. For three of these, there are distinct liturgical structures – mosques. The first mosque, the
masjid
, is said to be for Individual prayer. The prayer rug also corresponds to this level. It’s used for daily worship, performed at the five liturgical hours: dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening. It’s not used for the Congregational or Friday prayer, nor during Community prayer. But, like all mosques, it has a
mihrab
, a niche in the center of the
qibla
. You see these lines and this concave niche?” He pointed at Decker’s rough illustration.

“I’m still not following you. What’s a kibla again?”

“A mosque is a building erected around a single horizontal axis, the
qibla
, which passes invisibly down the middle of the floor, and terminates eventually at the Ka’aba in Mecca. Imagine Mecca as the central point; all mosques sit at right angles to Mecca, as if Mecca is the hub of a great wheel with lines, like spokes, fanning out in a great circle. At the point where the
qibla
axis meets the far wall of a mosque – the transversal axis – an indentation is produced, a directional niche called the
mihrab
, which is the liturgical axis made visible. This is where the
imam
or prayer leader stations himself to direct the congregation in prayer.”

Hassan pulled the second etching before them. “But this one is different. You see this here?” He pointed once again at the rectangle in the center. “It looks like a
minbar
, a pulpit. Of course, this mosque could be a
jami’ masjid
, which is used for Congregational prayer. That’s the second type, employed on Fridays. But I don’t think so. It’s too open and airy. I’d say it’s more likely a
musalla
or
idgah
, used in the third, Community prayer. Think of it as an open prayer area with nothing but a
qibla
wall and a
mihrab
. In other words, a mosque reduced to its barest essentials. It’s designed to accommodate an entire town or Community, hence the name.”

“What about the fourth kind of mosque. You said there were four.”

“Four types of prayer, or
salat
. But there is no liturgical structure or mosque for the fourth prayer. There couldn’t be. It’s meant for the
Ummah
, the entire Muslim community – worldwide. It would have to encircle the globe. The fourth prayer is reserved for the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Unless he’s sick or otherwise incapable, every Muslim is required to make the Hajj at least once in his lifetime, although pilgrimages are encouraged every year.” Hassan paused for a moment, studying the second illustration. It was muddy and smudged. He looked up at Decker with a quizzical expression on his face. Then he said, “Was this traced or something, from another sheet of paper?”

Then Hassan told him that one of the most basic tenets of Arabic architecture was the focus on the inside, as opposed to the outside of a building. Rarely did a façade of a Muslim building give any indication of the organization within. Indeed, hidden architecture could be considered the dominant motif of Islamic architecture.

“That’s often the function of calligraphic texts,” explained Hassan, “to identify the purpose of a building.”

“But Western buildings use calligraphy,” Decker said. “I remember a book I had when I was a kid about the Notre Dame cathedrals. Calligraphy isn’t unique to Islamic architecture.”

“Perhaps not. But while European architecture is created as a balanced plan, Islamic architecture shows no such characteristic. Indeed, there is a kind of dissolution of this balanced plan, its . . . ” He paused for a moment, struggling for the word. “ . . .
absorption
into a maze of additional structures which accumulate around the nucleus of the original design. Like crystals.”

“Crystals?”

“Exactly. And like crystals, there is a basic geometrical organization to this growth. Islamic architectural drawings are executed across a grid of squares, which represent the structural modules of the plan. Simple divisions of the basic grid determine all the dimensions, such as those of the dado, the door, the doorframe, the rows of upper windows, and so on. The walls form a perfect cube, while the height of the dome corresponds to the diagonal of the generating square. This is almost universal in Islamic architecture. Proportioning is based primarily on arcs drawn from the diagonals of squares to give ratios of one to the square root of two – the ‘Golden Ratio,’ as Pythagoras called it.”

“I’ve heard of that. That’s
Phi
,” said Decker. “It’s used in Western architecture too. Like at Monticello, in Virginia. The house that Thomas Jefferson built.”

“The formula was carried back by the Crusaders from the Middle East,” Hassan said with a nod. “The masons who built the Gothic cathedrals of France used the same ratio. And Jefferson was a freemason. Freemasons are the intellectual and spiritual cousins of the original medieval masons.”

Decker closed the book and handed it back to Hassan. The professor had been so reluctant to speak at first, and now he could scarcely contain himself. It was clear why he was legendary as an academic, and why he was so often sought after as an expert on Islam. A lifelong, ferocious advocate on behalf of the Palestinians, he made great copy, a dramatic yet incredibly well-researched and well-balanced counterpoint to the pro-Israel intellectuals he so often combated on TV. Not only was his knowledge of Middle Eastern politics considerable; not only did he serve, from time to time, as an advisor to PLO General Secretary Mahmoud Abbas himself; not only was he an architect of the American Muslim sensibility, but he was charged with passion, driven by a deep abiding interest in, and a great love for all facets of Islamic cultural history.

“The very possibility of enlarging a given structure,” Hassan said, “in almost any direction by adding units of every conceivable shape and size to the original scheme, totally disregarding the form of the original structure, is a characteristic that Islamic architecture shares with no other major culture. Furthermore, the multitude of decorative treatments goes hand in hand with this non-directional plan, the tendency toward an infinite repetition of individual units – bays, arches, columns, passages, courtyards, doorways, cupolas, what have you.”

He sighed and leaned against the wall. He stared at the fallow garden. “Islamic art is an art of repose, Agent Decker, intellectual more than emotional, resolving tensions by design. Patterns are limited to well-defined areas but are, at the same time, infinite – in the sense that they have unlimited possibilities of extension. Water and light are also of paramount importance since they generate additional layers of patterns, and help to transform space. It is this variety and richness of decoration, with its endless permutations, that characterizes Islamic buildings rather than their structural elements. In the Islamic context, these infinitely extensible designs have been interpreted as visual demonstrations of the singleness of God. His presence everywhere. Indeed, Islamic architecture is like the Qur’an itself. There are those who think there is little order in the sequence of the Qur’an. In truth, those who reflect upon the flow discover not one order, but a multiplicity of orders in the sequence and juxtaposition of its Sura, depending upon the character of their quest.”

Professor Hassan stiffened. Decker heard voices and a group of students began to file in through a door at the far side of the cloister. He could hear French – Parisian French. Hassan began to fiddle with his briefcase. He slipped the two volumes back inside, slammed the case shut, and clambered to his feet. Decker stood beside him. “No, no, sit down,” Hassan said, hissing through his teeth. “I’ll contact you again,” he added, moving off.