Mustafa looked at the photograph in his hand. “No,” he said, surprised by his own answer. “No, it sounds like something an American would do . . .”
“I must have a touch of American in me as well then,” the jinn said smiling. “To grant such a request. Ah, but I do love a challenge . . . And I was most grateful to be released from my confinement.”
“What did I wish for, then? If not this . . .”
“Smaller things,” the jinn said. “Harder things. Things I could not give you, grateful though I was.” He gestured towards the cityscape, and Mustafa saw, through windows that opened in the sides of the towers, Fadwa in two aspects. She was riding a crowded subway train; she was also, in a parallel reality, home alone, praying for the return of her husband, who had walked out after their latest argument. Then the planes flew in over Baghdad, and Fadwa looked up, and looked up, and was no more.
“I could not bring her back to you,” the jinn told Mustafa, whose cheeks were wet now with tears. “I tried, but God wouldn’t permit it. Not her. Considering some of those He did allow back, perhaps that’s a good sign . . .”
“And her misery?” Mustafa said. “If you could not spare Fadwa’s life, could you not at least have done something about that?”
The jinn didn’t answer.
“And Noor?”
“Ah, Noor,” the jinn said, looking embarrassed. “A misguided attempt at consolation. I thought she would at least make you happier. But it appears I miscalculated.”
“I would say so,” Mustafa agreed. “You should not have given me a second wife. You should have given Fadwa a better husband.”
“That would not have been her wish,” the jinn said, “and I could not have granted it anyway. Look again at the city.”
Mustafa looked. The skyline appeared to rush towards him, and the towers and skyscrapers which seemed so solid from a distance were revealed to be composed of tiny, discrete particles whirling through empty space.
“Sand,” the jinn said. “So much of this world, sand, and easily reshaped, God willing. But not everything.”
The city receded again. Mustafa, feeling as though he were reciting a line in a play, said: “Human beings from clay.”
“Some parts softer than others,” said the jinn. He laid a hand against his own skull, beside the seat of memory. “Pliable enough with the right touch. But the characters of men and women—their strengths and weaknesses, their passions and fears, the sins and vices they are prone to—those are made of iron, and steel, and brass. Those I cannot alter. Oh, perhaps a detail here and there . . . But at your core, you are who you are. I cannot make you someone else.”
“Well,” Mustafa said, fresh tears starting. “Well, that’s wonderful then.”
“You should not weep,” the jinn said. “I can’t make you a better person, but God, who gave you both life and free will, can help you try to become one. Try honestly, and when you stumble, ask His forgiveness and try again.”
“If only it were that easy,” Mustafa said.
“It isn’t easy. It is a struggle. But struggle is better than self-pity. You do not honor Fadwa by continuing to dwell on what cannot be undone. You only distract yourself from the good you still can do—and the evil you may still prevent. You are a sinner, Mustafa al Baghdadi, but you are not the only sinner. You are surely not the worst.”
Something in his words made Mustafa look at the city again. Most of the skyline had faded away, leaving only the twin towers—two sets of them, side by side. Behind them loomed the shadow of a man, like a devil come to claim them. It was just a silhouette, but Mustafa thought he knew who it belonged to. How many other men were that tall?
“Iron and steel and brass,” the jinn said. “A wicked prince in one world is a wicked prince in all worlds.”
They landed at Al Kharj Air Force Base in late afternoon. The outside temperature was 121 degrees, and a curtain of heat haze made the hangars and control tower shimmer like protean objects that had yet to assume their final shape. Mustafa stepping out onto the tarmac wondered whether he might still be dreaming.
Amal helped Salim into a wheelchair. Mustafa watched them together and was suddenly struck, as he had not been before, by the resemblance between them. And not just between them: Staring at Salim in profile he flashed back on a magazine article Abu Mustafa had shown him recently. The focus of the article had been Senator Al Maysani’s career, but there’d also been a sidebar about Amal’s father, Shamal, the corruption-fighting cop . . . Yes, Mustafa thought, I must still be dreaming.
A bright flash of light drew his attention back to the heat curtain. He held up a hand to shield his eyes and the light resolved into an ambulance with sun glaring off its windshield and front grill. A man in civilian dress was leaning out the passenger window, and before the ambulance had come to a complete stop he leaped out onto the tarmac, dashed up to the wheelchair, threw his arms around the young Marine, and began showering him with kisses.
“Father,” a red-faced Salim said, several moments later, “this is my new friend Amal. She saved my life.”
“Thank you,” Anwar said, his eyes brimming with tears. He leaned forward as if he might embrace Amal too, but restrained himself. “Thank you.”
Amal offered him a complicated smile. “It’s what we do in Homeland Security,” she said. Lowering her eyes, she added: “I’m sorry about the leg.”
“What for, that wasn’t your fault,” Salim said, thinking this was addressed to him. “Anyway, I’ll be up in no time. Come visit me in a month and I’ll outrace you!”
Amal said: “You should go home now and see your mother.”
“Yes,” Anwar said nodding. “She is waiting for us.” He looked at Salim. “We have many things to talk about.”
“I know,” Salim said. But then he smiled and handed Amal a slip of paper. “My email address is on there. Write to me!”
“You just take care of yourself and be good to your parents,” Amal told him. She stepped back and Anwar got behind the wheelchair and pushed it towards the ambulance. He and the driver helped Salim into the back. Anwar waved solemnly at Amal and climbed in beside his son.
Amal stood beside Mustafa watching the ambulance drive away. “The boy looks a lot like his grandfather,” Mustafa said—and then blinked, not having meant to speak the thought aloud.
Amal took it in stride. “He really does,” she said. She looked at the slip of paper in her hand and then spread her fingers. An updraft caught the paper and carried it away into the sky.
Boots tramped on the cargolifter’s loading ramp. An airman jumped down onto the tarmac and spoke into a radio: “All clear.” A squad of military policemen brought the prisoner out of the hold.
The prisoner was hooded and shackled and still dressed in the bathrobe he’d been wearing when captured. He was also barefoot, and when Mustafa saw the MPs intended to march him onto the scorching hot concrete he called out: “Hey, what are you thinking? Get him some shoes!” The MPs hesitated. The airman, looking embarrassed, ducked back inside the plane and returned with a plastic pallet. He dropped this on the tarmac and the MPs sat the prisoner on it as though he were cargo.
Wavering black shapes like patches of oil appeared in the heat curtain. These too resolved into vehicles: a fleet of black SUVs. Unlike the sparkling-clean ambulance they were covered in dust, as if they’d driven a long way across the desert; instead of reflecting the sunlight they absorbed it.
Feeling eyes over his shoulder, Mustafa turned and looked up at the plane. He saw Samir, his face framed in one of the windows of the passenger cabin, staring nervously at the approaching vehicles. When Samir noticed Mustafa looking up at him, his face collapsed into shame and he vanished from the window.
The SUVs pulled up to the cargolifter. Idris Abd al Qahhar got out of the lead vehicle; the others disgorged bearded mujahideen who, but for the dark suits they wore, might have stepped straight off a battlefield in Afghanistan.