His voice is hoarse, exhausted. “Every night I have the same dream,” he says. “I am in the mountains, fighting against the idolators. I am on jihad. I am pursued down a narrow canyon by five Indian soldiers. I set an ambush, and I kill all five of them with my rifle. Then I come out of hiding and look at their bodies, and I see that they are not Indian soldiers at all but my three brothers, my mother, and one other who is dear to me. Then I seem to wake from the dream with a cry. I am in my bed at home, with my brothers sleeping beside me and I am relieved. Then my mother comes into the room and says, ‘What is wrong, my son? I heard you cry out,’ and I tell her about the dream, and she reaches out to touch my face and I see and feel that her hand is a withered skeleton. I look at her face and I see a black corpse face, and I leap from the bed and I see my brothers are corpses too, blackened and rotting. And then I wake truly.”
Sonia says, “God is sending you a warning. He is saying that you are not doing as you should, which is fighting the Indian soldiers. Instead, you are slaughtering Muslims, which is the same thing as murdering your family.”
“What must I do to make it stop, then?”
“Hold fast to God and the true faith! Reform your life! You have been led astray by hypocrites who pervert religion. As it is written in the sura an-Nisa of the Holy Qu’ran: And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell to abide therein, and the wrath and the curse of God are upon him and a great punishment is prepared for him. Does God speak falsely? And have I not seen you kill believers intentionally with my own eyes? God has cast you out, you have such dreams as a foretaste of Hell.”
“That is a lie! I kill only those who oppose the jihad, and they cannot be true believers if they oppose the jihad.”
“If it is a true jihad,” she replies mildly.
“Of course it is a true jihad. All the mullahs have given their judgment.”
“Well, perhaps you are right, Idris. What do I know? I am only a woman, although I am the mother of a hero in a jihad that everyone in the entire umma recognizes as being virtuous, and whose dead are surely in Paradise. And my son has told me that in the Russian jihad they did not murder innocent Muslims nor send women with bombs to blow up children. Perhaps the martyrs of the true jihad will welcome you as comrades. Perhaps they will ignore the blood of innocent children on your hands, and perhaps God will allow you to refresh yourself by the lake of Kausar and consort with the hura promised to true martyrs. No man knows these things, least of all ignorant village mullahs. But I was also for years the murid of a holy man, a true Sufi pir-”
“Impossible! No murshid would have a woman as a murid.”
“True, but he prayed and God turned me into a boy for a space of time. Yes, even in the dark I can see you don’t believe me, but it’s true. I traveled with him through all the Muslim lands that were in former years oppressed by the godless Russians, and no man bothered us. He could make us invisible. Once we slept in Tashkent and in the morning awoke in Osh, where we prayed at the tomb of Solomon there. He had summoned a djinn, who carried us in the night.”
Idris laughed. “You must think I am an ignorant peasant to believe such tales.”
“No, but you believe mullahs who are just as ignorant, and about matters that affect your fate in the next world. Do you imagine that Mullah Latif has ever read the Holy Qur’an with understanding? Yes, he can mumble through the suras, but do you imagine he can understand classical Arabic? No, and neither can you, for which reason you are far from God’s word and so do evil and dishonor the Pashtuns.”
“You are a woman and an apostate. What do you know of honor?”
“Women know everything about honor, since you men kill us if you even suspect we have harmed it. But we can argue about who is right until the sun rises and never agree. The only fact here is that because of your dream you cannot sleep. Now I will bless you and you will sleep. You want to kill me, but I bless you all the same, and tell you that tonight you will have a good dream. And you will come tomorrow and tell it to me, and then I will interpret, God willing. Now, go and sleep, and let the others come.”
For a moment the man is still, and then he says something she doesn’t hear and she feels the wind of his movement on her face. The door slams. She hears angry voices from the corridor outside.
The door opens. Mahmoud enters silently and sits by her side; she can hear his heavy nervous breathing. After a moment, he clears his throat and begins.
“Idris has ordered that you interpret no more, but I have had a dream and you will interpret it for me. I was in the hills and my water bottle was empty and I was thirsty. A boy came down the path and I asked him if he had any water, and he laughed and leaned against a rock wall and his body become a flowing spring, and I drank from it.”
She says, “The hills mean you will achieve the power you desire, for in the sura Saad we read, Our servant David, that mighty man, was penitent. With him we subjected the mountain to give glory at dusk and at sunrise. So you will have glory, but only if you reject your sins. A flowing spring means a reward for a good deed. So said God’s Apostle, peace be upon him, when interpreting a flowing spring in a dream about a good man who had died. This good deed will concern a boy who is not a boy, as in your dream.”
“I don’t understand. How can a boy not be a boy?”
“Don’t ask me that, Mahmoud. Only God sees the future, not God’s Messenger, peace be upon him, as he attested many times as recorded in the Sunna, and certainly not me. But the dream says it is connected with such a thing. God will reveal it in His own time.”
Rashida brings news of the village along with the noon meal. Her father has suspended the marriage negotiations with the one-eyed Khaliq, so she regards Sonia with something close to worship. The following day is the seventh day of their captivity, and there is something even more astounding. Some Arab mujahideen are due to arrive that night, and they are bringing a very important person. He is the one they call the Engineer, who is in charge of building bombs for the jihad, but this is a great secret and musn’t be told to anyone. Idris is so excited he is yelling at everyone.
Sonia asks, “It that what they are building all night in the house with the generator? Bombs?”
“Yes, so I hear, but they don’t let any of us in there. That is what makes all this gray dust that falls everywhere. It gets in the food and the women complain. It is from the metal grinding, for the bombs.”
“Who is making them?”
“They are all men from Dara who were brought here, and some others, foreigners.”
“Not Pashtuns, you mean.”
“Yes, but Muslims. These are big bombs that can even blow up American tanks, so it is very important. And we hear there will be beheadings. I would like to see them behead an infidel. They say that women cannot see it, but we will watch from the houses anyway.”
“What if they behead me, Rashida? Will you still watch?”
Rashida laughed. “Oh, no, you they will not behead, only the infidel men. You they will only cut off one arm and one leg. They have talked to the Internet, and he has said you are guilty of great crimes against Islam so it will be done.”
“Do you know what the Internet is?”
“Of course!” says Rashida in an offended tone. “I am not an ignorant girl. I have been to Mingaora. It is like the television but it shows beheadings and messages from the jihad.”
“Yes, that is the Internet,” says Sonia. “Well, I am happy that you will not be given to Khaliq. But tell me, what has happened to Patang? I have not seen him among the men when they let us walk out.”