"No offense, sir, but do understand," Ahmad says, rather loftily. "I am not thrilled to think of my mother fornicating with a Jew."
Levy laughs-a coarse bark. "Hey, come on, we're all Americans here. That's the idea, didn't they tell you that at Central High? Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans; there are even Arab-Americans."
"Name one."
Levy is taken aback. "Omar Sharif," he says. He knows he could think of others in a less stressful situation. "Not American. Try again." "Uh-what was his name? Lew Alcindor." "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar," Ahmad corrects. "Thanks. Way before your time." "But a hero. He overcame great prejudice." "I think that was Jackie Robinson, but never mind." "Are we approaching the low point of the tunnel?" "How would I know? We're approaching everything, eventually. The tunnel doesn't give you much guidance, once you're in here. There used to be cops stationed along these walkways, but you never see them any more. It was discipline detail, but I guess the cops gave up on discipline when everybody else did."
Forward progress has been halted for some minutes. Cars behind them and in front of them begin to honk; the noise travels along the tiles like breath in a huge musical instrument. As if this halt gives them endless leisure, Ahmad turns and asks Jack Levy, "Have you ever, in your studies, read the Egyptian poet and political philosopher Sayyid Qutub? He came to the United States fifty years ago and was struck by the racial discrimination and the open wantonness between the sexes. He concluded that no people is more distant than the American people from God and piety. But the concept of jahiliyya, meaning the state of ignorance that existed before Mohammed, extends also to worldly Muslims and makes them legitimate targets for assassination."
"Sounds sensible. I'll assign him as optional reading, if I live. I've signed up to teach a course in civics this semester. I'm sick of sitting in that old equipment-closet all day trying to talk surly sociopaths out of dropping out. Let 'em drop out, is my new philosophy."
"Sir, I regret to say you will not live. In a few minutes I am going to see the face of God. My heart overflows with the expectation."
Their lane of traffic nudges forward. The children in the vehicle ahead have grown bored with trying to attract Ahmad's attention. The little boy, who wears a billed red cap and an imitation Yankees shirt with pinstripes, has curled up and dozed off in the relentless stop and go, the squealing and chuffing of truck brakes in this tiled Hell of refined petroleum being turned into carbon monoxide. The girl with bushy pigtails, a thumb in her mouth, leans against her brother and gives Ahmad a glazed stare, no longer courting recognition.
"Go ahead. See the bastard," Jack Levy is telling him, ceasing to slump, sitting up, his sickly color chased from his cheeks by excitement. "Go see God's fucking face, for all I care. Why should I care? A woman I was crazy about has ditched me, my job is a drag, I wake up every morning at four and can't get back to sleep. My wife-Jesus, it's too sad. She sees how unhappy I am and blames herself, for having gotten so ridiculously fat, and has gone on this crash diet that might kill her. She's in agony, not eating. I want to tell her, 'Beth, forget it, nothing's going to bring us back, us when we were young.' Not that we were ever anything out of the ordinary. We had a few laughs, we used to make each other laugh and enjoyed the simple things, eating out together once a week, going to a movie when we had the energy, now and then taking a picnic up to the tables by the falls. The one child we had, his name is Mark, lives in Albuquerque and just wants to forget us, and who can blame him?
We were the same with our own parents-get away from 'em, they don't get it, they're embarrassing. That philosopher of yours, what was his name?"
"Sayyid Qutub. Properly, Qutb. He was a great favorite of my former teacher, Shaikh Rashid."
"He sounds good on America. Race, sex-they spook us. Once you run out of steam, America doesn't give you much. It doesn't even let you die, what with the hospitals sucking all the money they can out of Medicare. The drug companies have turned doctors into crooks. Why should I hang around until some disease turns me into a cash cow for a bunch of crooks? Let Beth enjoy the little I can leave her; that's the way I feel. I've become a drag on the world, taking up space. Go ahead, push your fucking button. Like the guy on an airplane on Nine-Eleven said to somebody on the cell phone, it'll be quick." Jack reaches across his body toward the detonator and Ahmad for the second time seizes his hand in his own.
"Please, Mr. Levy," he says. "It is mine to do. The meaning changes from a victory to a defeat, if you do it."
"My God, you should be a lawyer. O.K., stop squeezing my hand. I was just kidding."
The girl in the back of the station wagon has seen the brief struggle, and her interest has woken up her brother. Their four bright black eyes stare. In the side of Ahmad's vision, Mr. Levy is rubbing his fist with the other hand. He tells Ahmad, perhaps to soften him with flattery, "You've gotten strong this summer. After our interview you gave me a handshake so limp it was insulting."
"Yes, I am no longer afraid of Tylenol."
"Tylenol?"
"Another graduate of Central High. A dull-witted bully who has taken possession of a girl I liked. And who liked me, odd as I must have seemed to her. So not only you have romantic difficulties. It is one of the pagan West's grave errors, according to Islamic theorists, to make an idol of an animal function."
"Tell me about the virgins. The seventy-two virgins who will minister to you on the otlier side."
"The Holy Qur'an does not specify that number of buriyyat. It says only that they are numerous, and dark-eyed, and have modest glances, and have never been touched by men or djinn."
"Djinn, yet! Oh, my."
"You mock, without knowing the language." Ahmad feels a hated blush steal over his face as he tells his mocker, "Shaikh Rashid explained the djinn and houris as symbols of God's love for us, which is everywhere and ever renewed and cannot be directly comprehended by ordinary mortals."
"O.K., if that's how you see it. I'm not arguing. You can't argue with an explosion."
"What you call an explosion is to me a pinprick, a little opening that admits God's power into the world."
Though it has seemed the moment might never arrive in the balky flow of the traffic, a subtle flattening and slight upward tilt of the tunnel floor tells Ahmad that the low point has been reached, and tlie curve of the tiled wall ahead, fitfully visible through the tall procession of truck bodies, marks the weak spot where the fanatically tidy and snugly cinched square of plastic barrels should be detonated. His right hand detaches from the steering wheel and hovers over the military-drab metal box, with its little well where his thumb will fit. When he pushes it, he will join God. God will be less terribly alone. He will greet you as His son.
"Do it," Jack Levy urges. "I'm going to just relax. Jesus, I've been tired lately."
"For you there will be no pain."
"No, but there will be for plenty of others," the older man responds, slumping way down. But he cannot stop talking. "This isn't the way I pictured it."
"Pictured what?" The echo comes on its own in Ahmad's cleansed and hollowed state.
"Dying. I always thought I'd die in bed. Maybe that's why I don't like being in it. Bed."
He wants to die, Ahmad thinks. He taunts me to do the deed for him. In the fifty-sixth sura, the Prophet speaks of the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his throat. That moment is here. The journey, the miraj. Buraq is ready, his shining white wings rustling, unfolding. Yet in the same sura, "The Event," God asks, We created you: will you not credit us? Behold the semen you discharge: did you create it, or We? God does not want to destroy: it was He who made the world.