was not sure it made them a more effective tool of war, but if it kept them running at the American lines, wearing down their numbers with the sheer relentlessness of their attacks, it could not be a bad thing. Especially not if it meant that when the time came to reconsider their truce with the bandit leaders, the janissaries were much weakened.
He was about to bend himself to the task of disentangling the mess of differently colored squiggle lines and saif designations on the big map in front of him when a commotion in the outer office drew his attention. Two of the janissary guards were manhandling a small African boy toward the door. The emir did not recognize him, but he had the look of a street fighter about him, and from the filthy scarf around his neck he was obviously fedayeen, even if only a lowly spear carrier in one of the saif. The boy was struggling fiercely and seemed very distressed. Bashir and Dujana looked unconcerned, but Ahmet Ozal glowered furiously at the scene before turning his back on the map table and stalking out into the main room.
'What the hell is going on here?' he roared. 'This boy fights with one of my saif. Let him go now.'
The janissaries seemed unsure what to do. They obviously had a reason for detaining the boy, and they looked to the emir to resolve the dilemma. They were charged with securing this office, and the boy had no good reason that the emir could see for being in there. But Ozal was fiercely protective of his men, and they were fiercely loyal to him. The emir smiled as warmly as he could at the two guards while waving them away and indicating to the young one that he should come forward.
'What is your name, boy? And whose saif do you fight with?'
Ozal frowned and answered for him. 'I do not know his name, Emir. But from his keffiyeh I'd say he fought with Mustafa Ali on Ellis Island.'
A hush fell across the room as the boy came forward. He looked frightened but also angry. When he spoke, it was in slow halting English rather than Arabic, which told the emir that he was probably a recent convert who was still learning the language of the fedayeen. The fact that he was fighting in Manhattan, however, marked him out as someone with some skill and experience of at least township war and possibly full-blown urban conflict. Possibly more so than the emir himself could boast.
'Yusuf Mohammed, my sheikh,' answered the boy. 'And yes, I was on Ellis Island.'
He seemed ashamed to admit as much, but to the emir there was no mystery about that. Every man he had sent to Ellis Island was either dead or captured. If they were fedayeen, the former only. The holy warriors had all taken a vow to die, by their own hands if necessary, before allowing the infidel to capture them. Again, the grand mufti had issued a fatwa absolving any man who took his own life in such circumstances. Greater glory in heaven awaited those who took a number of the enemy with them, of course. The emir was curious as to how and why this young man had escaped such a fate, especially since he must have traversed the city to make it to this command bunker.
'Bring us some tea and some fruit,' he commanded nobody in particular. One of the junior officers hurried out to the little kitchen down the corridor where they kept a small stash of field rations. 'You must be hungry and thirsty, is that right, Yusuf?'
The boy's eyes went wide, and he nodded with nervous vigor.
'Yes, my sheikh. But I… I did not…'
The emir smiled and walked over to pat him on the shoulder, steering him toward a chair. He gestured for the boy to sit. Seeing this Yusuf Mohammed treated with such deference and respect changed the atmosphere in the room from surprise and a vague sense of threat to something more akin to curiosity. A small bowl of dried apricots and dates appeared, followed shortly by a steaming mug of black tea.
'I'm afraid we have no milk or sugar,' the emir explained. 'It's just a guess, but I imagine that you learned your English on a mission station somewhere, perhaps in Uganda or Kenya.'
The boy regarded him with frank disbelief. He nodded slowly. 'I was taught by nuns… sorry, infidels… in a village not far from Moroto. But I do not remember much of that time,' he hurried to add.
Ahmet Ozal lowered his massive frame to sit on the desk next to the boy, towering over him. He encouraged Yusuf to eat from the small bowl of fruit and to take a drink of tea.
'You will need your strength, boy, if you have somehow escaped from the Americans and made it here through the Serbs and the Russians. Is that the way you came? Through their territory on the western shore?'
Yusuf nodded anxiously. It appeared as if he was about to pour forth some long explanation of his trip before Ozal silenced him by gesturing at the dried fruit again.
'Eat up, boy,' he said before turning back to the others to explain. 'Yusuf would be one of a number of converts we found among the barbarians of the Lord's Resistance Army in the borderlands between what used to be Uganda and Somalia. Child fighters, mostly. They have attended to the message of the Prophet and allowed him into their hearts with great sincerity and eagerness, for the most part.'
The emir regarded the boy with some respect.
'That is hard country, Yusuf, especially since the abomination of the Jews' atomic strike. You have done well to make it to such a ripe old age. What are you, fifteen or sixteen years old?'
The boy soldier shook his head.
'I do not know, my sheikh. I was with the LRA for a long time, and I was very young when they came and took me from the village.'
The emir let his compassion show openly on his face.
'I can understand that after being forced to fight for most of your life you might have wanted something other than a warrior's fate when the fedayeen liberated you. I must thank you, Yusuf, for having the faith and the courage not to walk away from your calling. It is a good thing you have done coming here to the city, a good thing you did in the battle at Ellis Island, and an even better thing you have done finding your way back to us to add your strength to ours for the battle yet to come.'
Nobody spoke or even seemed to so much as breathe while the emir thanked the thin African boy for his service. The rumble of battle was distant but forever with them as the Americans expended enormous stockpiles of heavy ordnance in trying to pulverize the faithful and their allies at the southern end of the island. The whining scream of jets, the thud of helicopters, and the occasional tock-tock-tock of heavy weapons fire did not relent. But in the stuffy third-floor office where the emir had established his temporary command post, a blessed silence held. Yusuf Mohammed seemed overwhelmed. His eyes welled with tears, and all his limbs shook. Hitching sobs began to rack his upper body.
'But I'm not worthy… I didn't…'
The emir squeezed his shoulder and hushed him.
'Only God can judge our worthiness at the end of days, Yusuf. It is not for me to sit in judgment on you who have had so much harder a time of it in this battle.'
The boy blinked away tears and pressed trembling lips together in an effort to maintain the last of his dignity.
'Are you still willing to fight, Yusuf? Will you take God's message to the heathen who would bar it from this land?' the emir asked.
'Yes,' he answered in a small, quavering voice. 'Always.'
'Then God will judge you worthy of his mercy and indulgence in this life and the next,' said the emir. 'Go now. Get some rest. Spend this night in my own harem and be sure to tell Sheikh Ozal's men everything of what you learned on Ellis and in the territory of the Slavs. It will be useful. It may even be important.'
The boy looked as though he wanted to say more, but in the end he simply put aside the small bowl of dates and apricots he held and reached out to kiss the emir's hand.
Bilal Baumer, sometimes known as al Banna and now the putative emir of the promised lands, rubbed Yusuf's filthy, matted hair with obvious affection and shooed the lad away.
Within an hour the story of the emir's generosity and kindness would spread all the way to the front line. Especially the bit about the harem, a small caravan of captured women he saved for just this sort of thing. Although he would never actually partake of them himself-God only knew what sort of filth a ragamuffin like Yusuf was carrying-the idea that he might share his bedroom slaves with the lowest ranks of the fedayeen would add powerfully to his myth.
