Again, Mordechai was taken aback.
“He is risen indeed,” he whispered in return. “How long have you been a follower of Yeshua?”
“Almost three months,” she said. “I kept seeing you on TV before everything happened. I read your memo on the Internet. At first I thought you were a lunatic. But then everything happened, just like you predicted.”
“Just as Ezekiel predicted,” Mordechai gently corrected.
“Yes, of course,” the young woman conceded, still in a whisper. “Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you. I know it hasn’t been easy for you. But most of my family now believes as I do. Not my father. He thinks we’re all nuts, but we’re praying for him night and day, just like you tell us to do.”
The woman had tears in her eyes, and Mordechai found himself moved by the passion of her new faith. Thousands of people had posted similar thank-you’s on his weblog (while many others posted curses). But this was the first Israeli he had met with the courage to thank him face-to-face, and it meant more to him than he could possibly tell her.
“Don’t forget Psalm 122:6—keep praying for the peace of Jerusalem,” he told her. “And I’ll be praying for your father.”
“Thank you, Dr. Mordechai,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re most welcome,” he replied. “You’ve made an old man’s day. God bless you.” Then he scooped up his briefcase and bags and headed out front to find his driver.
9
Security was tight around the Great Tower of the People.
Outside, dark clouds were rolling in and a cool breeze was picking up. The winter rains were coming, and the temperature, now hovering in the low sixties, would soon plummet. Inside the luxuriously appointed and newly completed Iraqi capitol, the National Assembly speaker called for order.
One by one, all 434 men and 16 women — some in finely tailored suits from London and Paris and New York, others in the traditional robes of the Arab sheikhs — took their seats and grew quiet, eager to understand why they had been summoned on such short notice and with such secrecy.
“Members of Parliament and distinguished guests and neighbors, I realize many of you have come a great distance at your own personal expense and with very little notice. It is my honor to welcome you to the city of Babylon,” the speaker began to polite applause. “On behalf of our president and our people, I want to thank you personally for joining us for what I believe will prove to be a most historic event. For most of you, this is your first time inside the walls of this great city. We hope it will not be your last. Indeed, we will do everything we can to make your stay here as enjoyable as possible. Please do not hesitate to ask if there is anything you need.
“For many years, as you know, Baghdad was our capital, but as you can see, it is no longer. Why? you may ask. It is a reasonable question and there is a simple answer. Baghdad, my friends, was Saddam’s capital, the capital of a past we wish to forget. Babylon, on the other hand, is our future — not just mine or my colleagues’ but yours as well. President Al-Hassani and I firmly believe that together we can build something great, something enduring, something that will cause the whole world to stop and take notice, and this is why you have been invited here tonight.”
From his seat, Mustafa Al-Hassani looked out over the packed chamber.
It was being used for the very first time, and even though he had approved every detail in the design phase, now that it was finished, he could not help but admire its marble pillars and crystal chandeliers and handsome mahogany desks. It was the perfect venue for this decisive event.
He scanned the crowd, taking special care to make eye contact with each and every one of the fifty VIPs who had accepted his personal invitation, assembled from across North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union. They were not heads of state, of course, for most of those had perished in the firestorm. But they were men and women of great respect and influence, a potpourri of ministers and deputy ministers and tribal leaders and CEOs who happened to have had the good fortune of being far from their capitals when the tragedy struck. Now their countrymen back home were looking to them to rebuild their devastated nation-states as they struggled to comprehend the loss of family members, friends, and business and political allies. But the question looming large over the heads of all those now assembled was, where — and how — could they begin?
As he surveyed the audience, Al-Hassani was a cauldron of mixed emotions. In many ways, he — like them — was still in shock. Tehran and Moscow were all but gone. So were Riyadh, Kuwait City, and Tripoli, and cities such as Beirut, Tunis, Ankara, and Tashkent had fared little better. Aside from Babylon itself, only Cairo, Amman, and Rabat seemed to have been spared the magnitude of destruction the other major Middle Eastern Islamic capitals had faced.
Yet at the same time, Al-Hassani privately found himself relishing the apocalyptic turn of events. In one single, horrifying, history-altering day, the leaders and military forces of all of his enemies — save the Israelis — had been wiped off the face of the earth. For the moment he didn’t know how or why; nor did he care. All he knew for sure was that his initial assessment was as true today as it had been three months earlier.
He had been given a gift, an opportunity unparalleled, perhaps, since the days of the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. The ancient empire of his ancestors had once stretched from the mountains of Iran in the east to the western deserts of Egypt, from Saudi Arabia in the south to Georgia and lower Russia in the north. And now events were conspiring in his favor to rebuild it.
Who could now prevent him from consolidating his control over the same territory, a vast and wealthy region of more than half a billion people and two-thirds of the world’s known energy supplies? The Americans? The European Union or the Chinese? Not likely. They all saw him as an ally, not an enemy.
Indeed, if he played his cards shrewdly, the U.S., the E.U., and the entire United Nations would soon all but beg him to take this enormous burden off their shoulders. After all, it was one thing to “nation build” in some poor, war-torn, despotic African jungle. It was quite another to rebuild the economic and political infrastructure of a region as vital to the global economy as the oil-rich Middle East.
Who else was going to do it? Iraq was the only major OPEC member left standing. The industrialized world was desperate to get oil flowing out of Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Gulf, and the Caspian Sea once again. And with the price of oil north of two hundred dollars a barrel since the Day of Devastation, hundreds of billions of dollars were already pouring into Iraqi coffers. Soon trillions would be. Why not offer the world Iraq’s help in rebuilding the drilling, pumping, and refining facilities throughout the region needed to bring sanity back to global energy prices?
For a small price, of course.
10
Al-Hassani suddenly heard his name echo through the hall.
He saw the gathering of dignitaries rise to give him a standing ovation. How far he had come, he now realized, further than he had ever imagined, and it was as intoxicating as it was surreal. He basked for a few moments in the warmth of his colleagues’ affection, then slowly rose and made his way to the podium to share his vision with a people perishing without one.
Without the aid of notes, he greeted each of the visiting VIPs by name and expressed his condolences for their losses, and then he said, “The Iraqi people share in your suffering. We have seen the horror that has been inflicted upon you. We have heard the cries of the suffering. We have responded as quickly as we could, but this is only the beginning. You have my word, and that of the people of Iraq — we will move heaven and earth to help you recover and rebuild; you will not be left alone.”