fuller phrase preceding the doleful count of the hour – proves to be lulling, reassuring him, when the shaikh at last left him alone, that this room is indeed safe.
The previous residents of this little chamber have left few clues to their passage. Some scuff marks on the baseboards, two or three cigarette burns on the windowsills and bureau top, the shine left by repeated use of the doorknob and key-slot, a certain faint animal scent in the scratchy blue blanket. The room is religiously clean, more extremely so than Ahmad's room in his mother's apartment, which still holds unholy possessions-electronic toys with dead batteries, out-of-date sports and automotive magazines, clothes meant to express, in their severity and snug fit, his teen-age vanity. His eighteen years have accumulated historical evidence, which will become, he imagines, of great interest to the news media: cardboard-framed photos of children squinting in May sunshine on the brownstone steps of the Thomas Alva Edison Elementary School, Ahmad's dark gaze and unsmiling mouth embedded in the ranks of other faces, most black and some white, all lumped in the child labor of becoming loyal and literate Americans; photos of the track team, in which Ahmad Mulloy is older and fractionally smiling; track- meet ribbons, their cheap dye rapidly faded; a felt Mets pennant from a ninth-grade bus trip to a game in Shea Stadium; a beautifully calligraphed roll of the names in his Qur'an class before it dwindled to just him; his Class C driver's certificate; a photograph of his father, wearing a foreigner's eager-to-please grin, a thin mustache that must have seemed quaint even in 1986, and shiny, centrally parted hair, obsequiously slicked down where Ahmad wore his own hair, identical in texture and thickness, brushed proudly upright, with a whiff of mousse. His father's face, it will be broadcast, was more conventionally handsome than the son's, though a shade darker. His mother, like televised victims of floods and tornadoes, will be much interviewed, at first incoherently, in shock and tears, and later more calmly, speaking in sorrowful retrospect. Her image will appear in the press; she will become momentarily famous. Perhaps there will be a spike in the sale of her paintings.
He is glad the safe room is clean of all clues to his person. This room is, he feels, his decompression chamber for the violent ascent before him, on an explosion as swift and strong as the muscular white horse Buraq.
Shaikh Rashid seemed reluctant to leave. He too, shaven and wearing a Western suit, was engaged in a departure. He fidgeted about the tiny room, tugging open reluctant bureau drawers, and making sure that the bathroom contained washcloths and towels for Ahmad's ritual ablutions. Fussily, he pointed out the prayer rug on the floor, its woven-in mihrab giving the eastern direction of Mecca, and emphasized how he had placed in the miniature refrigerator an orange, and plain yogurt, and bread for the boy's breakfast in the morning-very special bread,
'I may not be hungry.'
'Make yourself eat. Is your faith still strong?'
'I believe so, master.'
'With this glorious act, you will become my superior. You will leap ahead of me on the golden rolls kept in Heaven.' His fine gray eyes, with their long lashes, appeared to water and weaken as he looked down.
'You have a watch?'
'Yes.' ATimex he bought with his first paycheck, a clunky one like his mother's. It has big numbers and phosphorescent hands to read at night, when the truck cab had been hard to see in, though easy to see out of.
'It is accurate?'
'I believe so.'
There is a plain chair in the room, its legs wired togetJier since the rungs are no longer held by glue. Ahmad thought it would be discourteous to take the room's one chair, and instead, allowing himself a foretaste of the exalted status he will earn, lay down on the bed, lacing his hands togetJier behind his head to show that he had no intention of falling asleep, though in truth he did feel suddenly tired, as if the tawdry room had somewhere in it a leak of soporific gas. He was not comfortable under the shaikh's concerned gaze, and wished now the man would go. He yearned to savor his solitary hours in this clean, safe room, alone with God. The curious way in which the imam looked down upon him reminded Ahmad of how he himself stood above the worm and the beetle. Shaikh Rashid was fascinated by him, as if by something repellent yet sacred.
'Dear boy, I have not coerced you, have I?'
'Why, no, master. How could you?'
'I mean, you have volunteered out of the fullness of your faith?'
'Yes, and out of hatred of those who mock and ignore God.'
'Excellent. You do not feel manipulated by your elders?'
It was a surprising idea, tliough Joryleen also had expressed it. 'Of course not. I feel wisely guided by them.'
'And your path tomorrow is clear?'
'Yes. I am to meet Charlie at seven-thirty at Excellency
Home Furnishings, and we are to drive together to the loaded truck. He will accompany me in it part of the way to the tunnel. Then I am on my own.'
Something ugly, a disfiguring little twist, crossed the shaikh's clean-shaven face. WitJiout his beard and richly embroidered caftan, he appeared disconcertingly ordinary- slight of frame, a bit tremulous in manner, a bit withered, and no longer young. Stretched out on the rough blue blanket, Ahmad was conscious of his superior youth, height, and strength, and of his teacher's fear of him, as one is afraid of a corpse. Shaikh Rashid, hesitating, asked, 'And if Charlie by some unforeseen mischance were not to be there, could you proceed with the plan? Could you find the white truck by yourself?'
'Yes. I know the alley. But why would Charlie not be there?'
'Ahmad, I am sure he will be. He is a brave soldier in our cause, the cause of the true God, and God never deserts those who wage war on His behalf.
'You march on.'
'Exactly. Good.' Shaikh Rashid lovingly yet warily gazed down upon the boy on the bed. 'I must leave you now, my prize pupil Ahmad. You have studied well.'
'I thank you for saying so.'
'Nothing in our studies, I trust, has led you to doubt the perfect and eternal nature of the Book of Books.'
'No, indeed, sir. Nothing.' Though Ahmad had sometimes sensed that his teacher in his studies had been infected with such doubts, now was not the time to question him, it was too late; we must each meet death with what faith we have created within, and stored up against the Event. Was his own faith, he had asked himself at times, an adolescent vanity, a way of distinguishing himself from all those doomed others, Joryleejfi and Tylenol and the rest of the lost, the already dead, at Central High?
The shaikh was hurried and troubled, yet had difficulty in leaving his pupil, searching for the final word. 'You have your printed instructions for the final cleansing, before…'
'Yes,' said Ahmad when the older man could not finish.
'But most important,' Shaikh Rashid urged, 'is the Holy Qur'an. If your spirit were to weaken in the long night ahead of you, open it, and let the only God speak to you through His last, perfect prophet. Unbelievers marvel at the power of Islam; it flows from the voice of Mohammed, a manly voice, a voice from the desert and the marketplace-a man among us, who knew earthly life in all its possibilities and yet hearkened to a voice from beyond, and who submitted to its dictation though many in Mecca were quick to ridicule and revile him.'
'Master: I will not weaken.' Ahmad's tone verged on impatience. When the other man at last was gone, and the chain lock secured, the boy stripped to his underwear and performed ablutions in the tiny bathroom, where the basin nudged the shoulder of anyone sitting on the toilet. On the inside of the basin a long brown stain testifies to years of a faucet dripping rusty water.
Ahmad takes the room's one chair to the room's only table, a bedside table of varnished maple scarred by ash-colored troughs of cigarettes allowed to burn down beyond its top's bevelled edge. Reverently he opens the gift Qur'an. Its flexible gilt-edged pages fall open to the fiftieth sura, 'Qaf.' He reads, on the left-hand side where the English translation is printed, a distinct echo of what Shaikh Rashid has said:
