The Ruins of Us (32 page)

Chapter Ten

FAISAL WAS NOT
sure how he came to be where he was at that moment, hurtling down a dark highway with two hostages, one of whom was his mother. Sweat beaded across the bridge of his nose. He’d seen her airplane ticket, Manama-London-Houston, and an exit visa, which showed a signature that was most certainly not his father’s. As a boy, he’d stared at his father’s many impressive framed certificates and memorized every straight edge and curlicue of Abdullah Baylani’s calligraphic signature, and the collection of lines and dots on the paper beside him bore a greater resemblance to Tibetan than Arabic. Regardless of whose signature it was, it meant his mother was trying to leave the country. Had she planned to tell them, or would he and Mariam awaken one morning to an empty house? Did his father know, or was it just one more thing to pass like water through his open hands?

It was late now, the side roads dark and silent. Hassan had been skittish, and rightfully so. He’d been released by the secret police after they took Sheikh Ibrahim because he was only fourteen years old. After Hassan heard they had Rosalie, too, he’d immediately backed out of the plan. He had said, “What about Mariam? Have you considered her?” which was not what Faisal wanted to hear at that moment, so he’d ignored him. Instead, Majid had decided to take the hostages to Qut al-Wisoum, fortress ruins along the Gulf two hours outside of Al Dawoun. Before leaving town, they’d stopped at Hassan’s to gather the supplies they’d stocked in his basement—a sack of rice, a woolen blanket, a small radio so they could hear the authorities announce the sheikh’s release. Hassan had also provided them with a propane stove and water to drink and to boil the rice, enough for two days. That was the worst part of the new plan—they could no longer rely on the indoor plumbing of Hassan’s basement, or Umm Hassan’s cooking. But the region surrounding the fortress was known for its natural springs, the threads of freshwater that made it an ideal spot for a port. If they were forced to hide for longer than expected, they could drink from the springs and be fine.

Once they got there, Faisal would have time to settle his nerves. He would have the fortress ruins, the bay like mercury beneath the full moon, the lights of Bahrain like so many yellow diamonds. He would sleep among the ghosts of the thousands of men who had first made Arabia great, the traders, the seamen, the tribesmen. They didn’t need Hassan; they had the desert and all of its history waiting to make room for them.

Driving south into the darkness, Faisal longed to shut his eyes, to give in to the lolling forward motion of the car. Since Sheikh Ibrahim’s arrest, he had not slept well. Instead, he had lain in his bed for hours, imagining the many ways in which Ibrahim was being tortured: through enforced sleeplessness, or by a loutish interrogator pulling the fingernails out of his clean and elegant fingers, the fingers of the hands that he had countless times raised up above their small group as if trying to protect the young men from some terrible force that would descend upon them. Ibrahim was short but broad, and with his arms winging out to his sides, he weekly made room for their small ecstasies. The sheikh knew the difficulties of believing—he had watched his country of devout and simple herdsmen, fishermen, and merchants run headlong into modernity, gaining material wealth while losing themselves. Ibrahim tried so hard to keep burning the flame of truth that Muhammad had lighted for all of the Ummah, the believers.

And yet the al-Saud wanted to punish him. Every day, the royals overlooked the misdeeds of blasphemers and unbelievers who cared more about money than truth but posed no threat to the monarchy. Only the men who believed in God more strongly than they believed in the al-Saud were punished, and it was the worst kind of betrayal coming from the family who had given itself the title of Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques. Faisal was tired of the hypocrisy, but before Ibrahim’s arrest, he’d never considered that he might protest against it. In truth, it had never deeply affected him, and he was intimidated by what fighting might bring him—jail time, exile from the only home he knew. “Complacency wins the royal family decades,” Majid had said when trying to convince Faisal that they should take Dan. “Why do you think jihad takes place in poor countries? It’s because the people have nothing left to lose, and who can govern desperation? The poor, they’re the ones that get things
done
. So for today, you’re not al-Baylani, OK? You’re some poor son of a whore with nothing left to lose.”

After Faisal told Majid what his father said, that the morning light would not look so good on a dead man’s face, Majid had taken him by the shoulders, hard, so that Faisal could feel his friend’s panic moving through his fingertips and into his arms. “If Ibrahim dies, he will look down on the al-Saud from paradise and laugh as they are escorted to their special place in hell.” Majid’s face had been so close to his. When someone moved that close to you, it seemed like you should either kiss them or punch them in the nose. Faisal had never done either to anyone, and looking at Majid’s set mouth, the urgency in his eyes, he had the desire to do both. He was afraid, and he was grateful for Majid’s certainty. When Majid repeated the plan he had started to hatch in the pool, Faisal had said,
Yes, yes!
with a conviction that he didn’t feel but hoped would come to him. He wanted to be the kind of man who stood up for what he believed in. With Majid’s help, and through his plan, he could become that man.

Majid told him that they would be the eyes that watched the al-Saud, because when the royals thought that no one was watching, they were brutes, as if they forgot that God and the devil were always watching. Majid had watched over his shoulder as Faisal carefully composed the letter on Majid’s computer, in Arabic and English, addressed to the king:
We demand the immediate release of our honorable teacher, Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Sayid. We have taken one American hostage, Daniel Coleman. We will release him unharmed once we receive confirmation of the sheikh’s freedom. You have twenty-four hours to respond. Do so via radio address.
Majid had wanted him to add a sentence about how they would harm the hostage and send the videotapes to Al Jazeera if they received no response, but Faisal had refused. “They will respond,” he’d said. “They will do anything to avoid public embarrassment.” Perhaps his A’m Nabil was making the call to the prince or the police right then. He felt nauseated at the thought, but whether from dread or anticipation, he couldn’t tell.

It wasn’t until the next day, hours before they were to set the plan in motion, that Majid had shown him the handgun, which looked like a toy until he felt the weight of it. “Take your jadd’s khanjar,” Majid had urged. “It’s got a diplomatic blade. I know it’ll do some negotiating for us.” Faisal had tucked the sheathed blade into his boot.

But now that plan was ruined, and all because of his mother. After seeing the travel documents and feeling the sting of her betrayal, Faisal couldn’t bring himself to say the words that would have saved her:
She’s my mother
, and
I never saw anything at the house
. In the parking lot, she had watched them, her face filled up with a knowingness that Faisal had come to despise.
Poor young fools,
her eyes said.
I know, I know; you think I don’t, but I know.
It was maddening, her knowingness. When he was a boy, she’d known everything: when he’d kicked skinny Bassim in the shins; when he’d eaten the entire tray of sweets that she’d been saving for her ladies’ coffee; when he copied off of Sayf on his fourth-grade aptitude test. She’d used her knowledge as power, never punishing him outright but instead bartering with him:
Do your homework and I won’t tell Baba about Bassim
, or
Eat your lentils and I will forget that I have no sweets left in my pantry
. But she didn’t know him anymore. She didn’t know a thing about him.

Just a few weeks ago, while his mother had moved through her grand house, Faisal had kept the secret of Isra deep inside like a jewel nestled in his guts. He knew that if he decided to reveal it to his mother, she would be forced to take it and wear it around her neck for all to see. But then the secret was out, spilled by some idiot merchant at the souq.
If you don’t like it, then leave,
Faisal had wanted to tell Rosalie when she walked the house like a red-eyed zombie in the days after her discovery. And yet, when faced with the proof of her imminent departure, he hadn’t experienced the joy or relief that he’d predicted. Instead, he felt a little sick to his stomach, as if he’d eaten too much on a hot day.

The car brimmed with the different silences of each person: Dan’s anger, his mother’s resigned stance, her shoulders curled forward. In his own silence, Faisal wanted to appear sure and strong. He wanted his to be the kind of silence adopted by righteous fathers reprimanding their water-hearted sons, or that of thin-lipped generals refusing to waste words on their quaking soldiers. During the two days since the sheikh’s arrest, Faisal had said at least a thousand prayers for his teacher’s safety, so perhaps this was God’s answer. And what did Faisal care for Dan Coleman? He was nothing. He was less than nothing. Kafir. Hatab al-nar. A destroyer of families, his own and those around him. Besides, Majid was right—the only way to get the government to be reasonable with prisoners was to get the West to pay attention. The only way to get the West to pay attention was to threaten one of their own. Faisal remembered that fat, tattooed contractor up in Riyadh, Paul Johnson, who built Apache helicopters that killed Iraqi civilians and who lost his head because of it. Faisal remembered the photos, the body belly-down on the floor, the head propped on the back like a growth from some genetic mutation.

Faisal swallowed. This wouldn’t be like that. Unlike al-Qaeda, he and Majid wouldn’t make outrageous demands, like wanting the Americans to empty out Guantánamo or the al-Saud to expel all Westerners from the peninsula. This was going to be simple: a man for a man. Or at least, it
had
been simple, before his mother had gotten herself involved.

The road was deserted, and outside the car window the dirty public beach stretched for miles around a hook of land, marked by the moonlight on the water and the lighted concrete picnic areas that spanned the shore. In the reflected fluorescent light, he could see the soda cans and candy wrappers floating in the murmuring water. His family had never come to the public beach. The sand was too dirty, and his mother said what was the point in going to the beach if she had to keep her abaya on. They may as well boil her in oil, that’s how hot she’d be, and besides, she wanted to wear her bathing suit. OK, OK, OK, his father always said. Before Isra, his father let his mother decide things, so much that Faisal was embarrassed for him. What man let his wife choose all things? It was no wonder Abdullah took a second wife. He’d let his first one take too much and he could never get his power back. Faisal was disgusted by both of them. In time, he would renounce them entirely; leave them to erode each other slowly with their words, like water that has come undammed. He would move to Mecca where he would study and build a family who would know each other as they knew God: from birth and to the very core.

In Faisal’s boot, the Khanjar dagger pressed hard into his anklebone. In the rearview mirror, he saw that Majid cradled the gun between his legs. It had belonged to a cousin who’d left the National Guard but managed to hang on to his smallest gun. They’d decided it would be best if Majid handled the weapon, since he’d been trained. Though, there would be times when Majid would need to sleep and Faisal would then take the gun. Majid said that as long as you
appeared
to know what you were doing, everything would be fine.

Faisal’s stomach growled audibly, and he thought longingly of the rice that they had brought with them. They would have to ration food and water carefully, but it was enough for the four of them for two days—double the amount of time they’d given the royal family to respond.

“We’re almost there,” Majid said. “Are you ready, brother?”

Faisal grunted. He was still angry at Majid for forcing the issue of his mother, and furious at his mother—for being where she shouldn’t have been, for trying to leave them. Again, he glanced in the rearview mirror, but he couldn’t see his mother’s face. She was sitting directly behind him. He wondered if she was afraid, or angry with him.

In the distance, Faisal saw the outline of Wisoum, spread low along the beach. The lagoon was still, a shimmering extension of the land. Just decades ago, traders had docked their boums at the port and set off by camel caravan for Riyadh and Jeddah and Mecca. When Faisal was younger, his father brought him to see the fortress, and they had walked to the Portuguese watchtower and stood staring across the Dahna to the horizon. There was only the sound of the wind cutting around the sandstone tower. The dunes were not the smooth, endless red of the interior. They were coastal dunes, lighter in color and pocked by shrubbery, a sign of the saltwater nearby.

“This is your inheritance, Faisal,” his father had told him that day at the watchtower. “There is no force greater than that of the desert. It conquered the Europeans, the Turks. Only your grandfathers knew how to manage it. They understood they must work with it, not attempt to control it. And now it gives back to us. How it has given back!” But Abdullah had forgotten that the grandfathers kept God by their sides when they took the Peninsula. They could not have done it without God, of that Faisal was certain. But now that the people on the Peninsula had so thoroughly tamed their surroundings, they felt free to forget their God. They had their piles of money and thought they no longer needed Him, their spirits growing impoverished. He often wondered when the desert would take it all back from them. It would not be long now if the Kingdom kept to its crooked path.

Faisal slowed the car and turned off of the paved road. The tires of the BMW spun in the desert’s soft sand and he cursed under his breath. It wasn’t the right car for the desert. They were unprepared. But they couldn’t turn back, not with the note already under the newspaper’s door. The car regained traction and they edged onto the rudimentary path that connected the road to the fortress. After driving several kilometers, and at the dark tidal line on the far side of the old customs building, they parked the car. The structure’s porticoed doors gaped a dark black in the moonlight. Faisal got out, opened the rear door. Dan lifted his head from his hands and looked around, blinking.