The Camel Club

Under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, Djamila had been allowed to drive a car, whereas in Saudi Arabia this wouldn’t have been possible. The Saudis followed a very strict form of sharia, or Islamic law. This strictness required women to be completely covered at all times, and it prohibited them from voting and even from going out of the house without a permission note from their husbands. These rules were scrupulously enforced by the tenacious, whip-wielding religious police.

There was also the notorious “Chop-Chop Square,” the main square in downtown Riyadh. It was here every Friday where those who broke the sharia were punished for all to see. Djamila had been there once and watched in horror as five people lost both their hands and two others their heads. Far more subtle punishment was the fallaga, the beating of the bottom of the feet in a way that left no marks, although the victim was typically unable to walk, so great was the pain.

The rest of the world had largely looked the other way ever since King Ibn Saud, conqueror of Arabia and the ruler who had given his name to the country, hired geologists to come look for water but who struck oil instead. With fully one-quarter of the world’s black gold reserves under the country’s sands, a resource eagerly coveted by the industrialized world, the Saudis could usually do what they wanted without fear of repercussions.

However, Djamila had not entirely lied to Franklin. Living in Baghdad, and being a Sunni Muslim like Saddam Hussein, she had worn clothes mostly of her choosing, and she had been well educated. Despite that, she had hated living under the Iraqi dictator. She had lost friends and family who “disappeared” after speaking out against the despotic ruler. During the American invasion of Iraq she prayed that Hussein would be toppled, and those prayers were answered. She and her family at first welcomed the Americans and their allies as heroes for giving them back their freedom. But then things rapidly began to change.

Djamila returned from the market one day to find her family’s home reduced to rubble after an errant air strike. All of her family, including her two young brothers, perished. After that tragedy Djamila went to live with relatives in Mosul. But they fell victim to a car bombing in the resulting insurgency against the American presence in Iraq.

Next Djamila traveled to Tikrit to stay with a cousin, but the war had forced her to flee there as well. Since that time she’d been homeless, joining a growing number of people who had essentially become nomads, constantly caught in the fighting between an ever-larger army of insurgents, and America and its allies. In one of these groups she had met a man who spoke out against the Americans as being nothing more than imperialists after precious oil. He argued that all Muslims had the duty to strike back against this enemy of Islam.

Like most Muslims, the only jihad Djamila had ever practiced was the “greater jihad,” the internal struggle to be a better follower of Islam. This man was obviously speaking of another jihad, the “lesser jihad,” the holy war, a concept that originated with Islam in the seventh century. At first Djamila dismissed the man and his advocacy as mindless ravings, yet as her situation grew bleaker, she found herself beginning to listen to him and others like him. The things he was saying, added to the horrors she had seen firsthand, started to make sense to the young woman who’d lost everything. And soon her dismay and hopelessness turned to something else: anger.

Before long, Djamila found herself in Pakistan and then Afghanistan, being trained to do things she would never have contemplated before. While in Afghanistan she wore the burka, held her tongue and obeyed the men. She would go to the market and soon her clothing would swell because she shoved all the items she purchased under it. The burka had a grill in front of the opening for the face. It was designed to take away a woman’s peripheral vision. If she wanted to look at something she had to turn her entire head. In this way, it was said, the husband would always be able to tell what was holding his wife’s interest. Even with the Taliban gone, many burkas remained. But even women who took the burkas off were not really free, Djamila could see, since their husbands and brothers and, indeed, even their sons still controlled every aspect of their lives.

After months of training, she was on her way to the United States, along with scores of others like her, all with forged documents and all with a burning ambition to strike back against an enemy that had destroyed their lives. Djamila had been taught that everything about America was evil. That the Western life and values were in complete opposition to the Muslin faith and, indeed, had as its core mission the complete destruction of Islam. How could she not fight against a monster such as that?

Her first weeks in America had been divided between monotony and eye-opening experiences. For weeks she had little to do except carry messages back and forth. Yet she was seeing America, the great enemy, for the first time. She had visited some of the shops with an Afghan woman. The woman was shocked to see pictures of people on the products in the stores. Under the Taliban all such graphics had been blotted out.

Americans were large people with huge appetites and the cars they drove, Djamila had never seen such enormous cars. The stores were full, the people wore all sorts of different clothes. Men and women embraced in the streets, even kissing in front of strangers like herself. And things moved so fast she could barely follow them. It was as though she had been hurled far into the future. She found herself terrified but also curiously intrigued.

Then she had been taken from the group she had come to America with and brought to another city, where she received still more training. She was given a new identity, complete with references. And she was also given the very special van that she now drove. She was next sent to Brennan and became the Franklins’ nanny. She enjoyed the work and loved being with the boys, but as time passed she longed to go home. America was simply not for her.

Djamila had always looked forward to the time when she would perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to the most holy site in Islam, Mecca, the town in Hejaz where Muhammad was born. As a child she had heard stories from family who’d undertaken this most significant event in a Muslim’s life. She envisioned standing in a circle around the Great Mosque, or Al-Masjid al-Haram, in Mecca, performing her prayers.

The pilgrimage continued in Muzdalifa, where the Night Prayer was observed and twenty-one pebbles were picked up for symbolic stoning of Satan at Mina. Two or three days were spent in Mina for various ceremonies before the return to Mecca. Families who made the pilgrimage were allowed to add the term “hajj” to their name.

As a little girl Djamila had been especially drawn with anticipated delight to stories of the four-day celebration afterward, the ‘id al-adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, also known as the Major Festival. She had also looked forward to painting the mode of transportation she used to make the pilgrimage on her front door, an old Egyptian custom that other Muslims sometimes copied. However, Djamila had never gotten the chance to go to Mecca before her country had exploded into war. Now she doubted she would ever be able to do so. Indeed, she felt it very unlikely that she would return to her homeland in anything other than a coffin.

She packed her things for work and went down to her van. She glanced at the back cargo area of the vehicle. Hidden there was an add-on feature that the car manufacturer would never have dreamed of offering.

In the center of downtown Brennan, Captain Jack closed on the purchase of his new property, an automobile repair facility. Dressed in an elegant two-piece suit, the distinguished-looking “entrepreneur” took the keys, thanking the seller and his agent as he drove away in his Audi convertible. They had smiled and counted their money and wished him luck. Good luck to you too, he wanted to say. And good luck to the town of Brennan. It’s certainly going to need it.

A few minutes later Captain Jack parked his car at a curb, flipped open his iPAQ, went online and entered the chat room. Today’s film was The Wizard of Oz. He remembered watching it as a child. Probably unlike most viewers, he’d always sympathized with the plight of the enslaved flying monkeys. He left his message arranging a meeting at the park.

The auto repair facility would be one of the most critical elements of this operation, and that was where the woman came in. If she didn’t come through, none of his work would matter. Some things a person couldn’t get from faceless e-mails, like whether someone had the will necessary to do the job.

Sometimes you had to go see for yourself.

The day was overcast and a bit chilly, so the park was nearly empty. Captain Jack sat on a bench, read his newspaper and drank his coffee. He had spent half an hour making a careful reconnoiter of the park before ever leaving his car. The odds that anyone had him under surveillance were astronomically small. Yet one didn’t survive long in his line of work by tripping over the small but crucial details.

The front pages were filled with very important news: The stock market, amazingly, had gone up yesterday after having gone down the day before. American football was thick in the air; war on the gridiron they called it.