in her ear: “That one about the virgin, I think the narrator is Jabir . . .”
“In which the Prophet asks Jabir why he didn’t marry a young virgin he could play with and who could play with him?”
“That’s the one. He told Jabir not to hurry home on his camel, but to give his wife a chance to comb her hair . . .”
“. . . and shave her pubic hair!”
Bent over the mehndi designs, they snorted behind their hands. Then they paged on in silence. Sajida imagined that Nida was thinking what she was thinking: who could explain Hadith number 16 in Book 62? What exactly did it mean? Were Muslim women expected to shave down below?
* * *
Sajida went first. In a cubicle the mehndi artist began to draw the bird on the soft skin of her stomach. The woman’s hands, even her palms, were covered with beautiful floral designs.
She told Sajida how popular henna tattoos had become, even in the West, among women who didn’t want permanent markings. What was more, there were no needles, only the red henna of Lawsonia inermis. Never the dangerous black henna of Indigofera tinctoria, which left permanent scars and could infect the skin. For more colour, one could use yellow pigment from the rhizome of the turmeric plant, Curcuma longa, known as Indian saffron.
The artist mixed the henna paste with essential oils. “It’s an excellent natural remedy against ageing,” she said, applying the design with delicate brushstrokes, and using the tip of the jacquard bottle for the fine outlining.
When she had finished, she said: “Keep it covered with tissue paper, plastic or a medical bandage for five hours. You want to retain the body heat so that the henna can interact with the keratin in the epidermis. After that, keep it moist with a mixture of lemon juice and sugar so that the paste doesn’t dry out before the dye has fixed on your skin. After three weeks, daily use of soap and water will have caused it to fade. Then you can come back for a new one. Are you trying it out for your wedding?”
“No,” said Sajida, “I have no wedding plans.”
Her father, as far as she knew, had no such plans for her either. There had been a possibility a few years ago, when her father had mentioned Nasir Raza’s name. He’d told Sajida she was eligible for marriage, and a second cousin would be a good choice. The Razas had camels and goats, and a herd of sheep, shorn every year by Nasir and his brothers, the wool sold to textile merchants in Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar. But she had soon discovered that Nasir didn’t see his future as a shepherd of goats and sheep in the valleys and on the slopes of the Pre Ghal mountains of South Waziristan. His fundamentalist streak had been fuelled in Mullah Wada’s madrasa in Kanigoram. The mullah had suggested that Nasir further his studies at a famous madrasa in Karachi.
Chatting in the kitchen around pots on the stove, Sajida’s mother had told her about Nasir’s grandfather, who years ago had left with a big group of men from the tribal areas, crossing the Toba Kakar mountain range to Kandahar, for jihad against the Soviets, who had wanted to lay claim to their Pashtun land. Like other, greater Mongol empires over the centuries, the Russians had also been unsuccessful. Sajida’s mother was proud of the history of the Pashtuns, and had taught Sajida the myths and legends of their warrior nation. It was all just speculation though, because such matters were discussed among the men, in the privacy of the hujra.
But the young man who’d returned from Karachi after his studies at the madrasa Dar ul-Ifta ul-Irshad was no longer the Nasir she knew. He was a mujahid, speaking in battle cries: “Inqilab inqilab, Islami inqilab!”
She thought of him often, of his gentle voice and fiery eyes. She wondered how it might have been with him. They’d treated each other with respect. If he hadn’t left for Karachi, they would have been married. She would have been a good wife, she would have been submissive, borne him children, not tried to silence him when he wanted to talk about politics.
But when he returned, it was in the company of the Uzbeks, and it was with them that he’d fled ahead of the choppers armed with machine guns and the aeroplanes loaded with bombs and ahead of the Jeeps and trucks of the Pakistani security forces, who were like clay in the hands of the American infidels, intent upon wiping out the Pashtun nation in Afghanistan and Waziristan.
Nasir had been her father’s choice, and she would not have gone against his wishes. She would have agreed to marry Nasir. It was the way it had always been; it was the way it would always be. She and Nasir were both born in Kanigoram, had played together, grown up together, and it had been a good life. Not easy, but good.
Now he was gone. And during her last visit home her mother had told her in the kitchen of Nasir’s heroic exploits against the infidels.
4.
On his way back from the strat session, cyber-warrior Danny Hatt remarked: “It’s going to be a long shift.”
“What does Jill say – are you coming over for the Steelers game on Sunday?” asked Frank. “It’s going to be a bloodbath.”
“Steelers? I thought it was the Giants.”
“Giants is the week after.”
“I’ll ask her – I don’t think she has anything planned, she didn’t mention going to her mother. Did you see yesterday’s Post?”
“Yes,” said Frank. “Called us cowards again.”
“Anonymous cowards,” said Danny.
“Fuck those liberals.”
“Coward” was becoming a popular handle. Danny Hatt had read about it in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and listened to the talking heads on TV: liberals and Muslim activists calling the UAV attacks on Taliban, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia cowardly. Human rights activists calling the drone strikes illegal, calling it murder authorised by the White House – the president in the role of prosecutor, judge and executioner.
Danny, techno-savant in the CIA’s S&T directorate, with degrees in computer science and information technology, had been a student at the CIA’s Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, along with Frank. They’d completed a course in terrorism analysis at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and had graduated together from the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program (PISAP), focusing on “movements and organisations that use religion for political purposes and use religious ideology to attempt to change the existing political, social, or economic order”.
On paper, Danny’s qualifications were good, though he’d never trained as a soldier or a fighter pilot. He’d never been deployed in battle. He’d been at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib for PISAP orientation, in Building 59 at Bagram, at Camps Delta, Echo, Iguana and X-ray at Guantánamo. He’d gone to them all, and come face to face with the enemy and his ideology.
Danny was thirty-five. He and Frank now manned an office at the George H.W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence, an enormous complex on 258 acres of land on the riverbank in McLean, a suburb of Langley, Virginia. On the opposite side of the Potomac lay Washington DC, seat of American power.
At just after six in the morning, Danny and Frank were in the lift on their way down, having been on night
