PRINCESS AMIDALA LIKE ZOHRA DRIF

excerpt from the spy novel

PRINCESS AMIDALA LIKE ZOHRA DRIF

Khuftullah, excited about his new phone, arrived at the camp at night. They did blindfold him for a while and when they got to their destination and he got his vision back, there was a minimum of light. No buildings lit up, all windows on structures blacked out. It was dark to beat the satellites, no one knew how much the American eye in the sky could see, and they could only pray that by relocating to the Sahel, Ribāt al-Tanzīh had outrun the world’s intelligence apparatus.

The first thing Khuftullah did was to hand over his SD cards carrying messages from the outside jihad front to Faraj al-Misri. The communication would be processed by the Ribāt’s war council. Of particular interest, Khuftullah knew, were the messages concerning money. Where it would be coming from, what alleys it would slither down to find the Ribāt’s people. Outgoing messages, among other things, contained proposals for projects. Future operations around the globe. The periphery pitched plans for attacks to the center of gravity, the leadership at AQ Central, the investors, where instructions and money came from. Many pitches were coming from Iraq, and meeting with green lights from the old men, and it was hard for backwaters like Africa to compete. Many messages from South Asia were telling African branches to hold tight. Lots of ideological messages that Abol Khaseb would digest and talk over with his people, including Khuftullah.

The messages had come through LaFleur’s hands. Khuftullah was nagged with questions, should he report the contact’s behavior to somebody? There was a sodomite in the chain of transmission. But telling the Emir or Abol Khaseb might lead to an investigation that would somehow ensnare Khuftullah. He considered that taking initiative to exterminate LaFleur on his own and hoping the chain would reformulate itself without the uncleanliness was one possible tactic. He had to think. About how to get rid of dirt without getting any on himself. He hadn’t done anything. He had just witnessed the men dressing up as women; he could plead ignorance as he was deceived. His issues were within himself and God knew his heart.

He asked where Maryam was. He was told she was with the other women. He asked that she be brought to his room, which had to be cleared of people now that he was there. He wished that Razi, Dawood, and al-Misri could have witnessed this flurry of activity to see just how important he was to the operation, but they had with haste dispersed when they arrived at the camp.

He looked around his room after they closed the door behind him. He was important but they never let him forget that while he was there he was at their disposal. At least they would let him see his wife before he was debriefed tomorrow.

When she arrived Maryam was cordial. Younger than Rula and more simple, his Ribāt wife lacked the emotional turbulence  that seemed to fill his other life in that apartment in Tunis. She never went on about movies or TV or fashion; Khuftullah preferred that Maryam be faraway from all that, pure from the garbage of the world.

“You came,” Maryam said. “Somehow I didn’t think you would this time.” Her hijab was red, one he had not seen before, and she wore dusty tight pants, like she had been out scrabbling in the dirt before he arrived.

“Why do you say that?” Khuftullah sat on the austere bed.

“I don’t know. I thought they might have had you graduate to bigger things.”

“I would never graduate from you, from coming back here.“

“Some wives here never see their husbands for years. Some never see them again.”

“Maybe that’s why I like you to be here. If you’re in the company of the Emir I know I will always be on my way back to seeing you.”

She smiled, standing in the doorway. Shy. He gestured to her to come and sit down.

She behaved not like Rula. She was very stiff and formal. She had been like this even after their wedding. It seemed to be a job to her. Her father in Egypt had been stiff too. He had been impressed with Khuftullah’s engineering degree: mohendis. Khuftullah lavished gifts on Maryam and her family. They had asked questions about his role in the fighting in Kashmir and he told them the truth and it didn’t seem to scare them off.

She sat down on the bed next to him. Demure. They were like strangers getting to know each other. It was always like so. He realized he had forgotten to bring her a gift. He had brought a gift for the Qadi but not his wife.

He put his hand on her hand. It was rough. She’d been working. Making herself useful around the camp. Maryam.

“Take off your cover,” he said.

She pulled back her hand.

“Don’t withdraw so much. I want to see you, my love.”

She looked down. Hesitant.

“I came all this way to see you.”

She half-laughed at this, a hint of bitterness. Teenager learning about the world, claiming just being jaded enough. Had she been watching movies?

“You’re not going to like it,” she said.

“Like what? I love you.”

She gave him a look like she knew. The gaps in that sentence he spoke. Her eyes were like a much older person’s eyes. She was far younger than him in reality but she had a fierce wisdom in her expression. Maybe it was him, he had been out in the world under cover for too long, so their gazes didn’t match anymore.

Her fingers went to her red hijab, her smile growing in bitterness and something pleading. She took off the headscarf and revealed it. Her haircut. She had cut off all her hair.

“What is this?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Did you do something wrong? Why did you cut it all off?”

Her frown returned. She looked down again, unable to meet his eyes. She looked about to cry.

“I wanted to. No. That’s not all of it. They wanted me to. It was a mutual decision.”

“They wanted you to? What about me, what about what I want? I’m your husband!”

“They’ll tell you about it tomorrow, I’m sure.”

“What business have they got in shearing your hair off?”

She looked to Khuftullah’s horror like a teenaged boy.

“It’s called a…a pixie cut,” Maryam said. She was standing up, following him after he stood up in recoil away from her. “Netali Poartman has it. The movie star. Princess Amidala.”

“I know who she is.”

“I saw her in a magazine and said ‘That’s what I want.’”

“Put your scarf back on, I don’t want to see it.”

“You’re horrible to me,” she said. “They told me to look in a magazine and find a new way to look. Do you understand?”

“They?”

“From higher up. You know?” She had her back turned to him and was wrapping her head with the red fabric.

“Because why? Just say it.”

“I thought I heard that Netali Poartman was a radical. V for Vendetta?”

“I forbid you to watch those movies.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t see it. I just read about it, what’s the harm in that?”

“Why do you need a pixie haircut like a movie star?”

“Zohra Drif,” she said after a long pause.

“What does that mean?”

“You know Algeria. The war. In the 50s. Zohra Drif bombed the Milk Cafe with all the French teenagers. But she needed to look French to get by the security checkpoints. You see?”

“They’re sending you to bomb teenagers.”

“No. I don’t know. They’ve been talking about sending me abroad. Maybe not to do anything violent. Maybe just reconnaissance of targets.”

“I don’t want this for you!” He loomed up over her, grabbing her shoulders. She looked up at him with terror in her eyes.

“The Emir wants it,” she said. “Abol Khaseb said so too. They said I’d be perfect. I know French. They found a spot for me.”

“You’d get lost in Europe.”

“I wouldn’t be alone. Maybe…maybe you could go with me?”

“It doesn’t sound all that worked out. The haircut and the European trashy clothes should be the last part of the preparations not the first.”

“Talk to Abol Khaseb tomorrow.”

“Zohra Drif. What if you get caught?”

“I won’t. I’ve been training.”

“You’ll have sex, with other men.”

“Never. You’re my husband.”

He sat down on the bed. Head in his hands.

She stood apart from him. “You know when the Emir says it, it has to be.”

“What will your parents think? About us? How would they think I would approve of you going to Europe?”

“They don’t have to know. They don’t know where I am right now. Truthfully they’d be proud. I’ll be a fighter in the eyes of God. I want to do my part.”

He grabbed a pillow and hurled it against a wall. He was aware of something inside himself, something driving his actions that wasn’t quite honest. He was playing a role, at the bottom, the role of the Arab husband forbidding his wife to do anything outside his approval. As if there were hidden cameras watching them. Which there very well could be…

“I’m tired,” he said. “I’ve had a long day. I’ll have a long day tomorrow. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

She stood by the door. “Should I go, husband?”

He looked at her, directly. The acting part of him held on for five seconds, crumbled like he’d seen actors do, and he said, “No. You can stay.”

She hesitated.

“Pixie,” he said, holding out a hand to her.

“I’m sorry.” She began to cry. Maybe everybody was an actor. She rushed to him and he held her. Maybe the only reality, the only real thing they could do, was to follow the orders of the Emir. Everything else was an act.

Later, in bed, with the lights out, he couldn’t. He ran his fingers through her newly shorn black hair. He liked it when her hair was longer. It felt more like control. There was nothing to hold onto now during sex. This was too confusing. It brought up LaFleur, who he hated, hated thinking of the man while he was in bed with his wife. If she had not mangled her beauty, to look like a pixie actress, a Jew no less, he would have found a way to be aroused.