Chapter 2

KHOZEM IN COMMAND

11th of Safar 1436

(December 4, 2014)

Khozem Bengaliwala sat against the walls of his father’s home in Mecca. He propped himself on the hard pillows which lined the perimiter of the spacious room. He had been through much in the last few years. His beard had grown as well as his belly. A white turban crowned his head, and he had purchased new glasses. He finished university in Cairo in accordance with his father’s instructions. Even though he completed the many years of arduous study and training, he never believed school or education in general helped anyone. He remembered his training as a fierce burden. He believed that academia, especially the type which concentrates only on Allah, His Prophet, and the Prophet’s writings was downright boring and insulting. He compared such training to water dripping from a faucet or hearing a clock making its slow revolutions around and around a faded dial. But he had acquiesced to his father’s commands. Otherwise he would have been banned from the kingdom and whipped by some proud mutawaf.

He stayed among the clerics and students of Al-Azhar for ten years. He withdrew himself from judging students and attending regular classes. He reluctantly studied with a select group of clerics renowned throughout the Islamic world, and he disliked each of them. He thought them too stern and laconic. Their strict codes had little appeal.

Each day he awoke at sunrise and prayed in a specially appointed room with these chosen clerics. He would have much rather judged the students or take long strolls to the women’s campus in the hopes of finding Rashida there.

Most of him died when Rashida died, although strangely he would gaze from the quadrangle of the main campus onto the dusty road which led to the women’s dormitories. He never set foot on the women’s campus. This would have caused a great stir, and Khozem had matured enough to avoid scandal. He no longer kept in touch with the students, as his training was confined to very old men who asked him to read and interpret page after page of text. He followed what they said, and he hated every moment, because deep in his heart he longed for Rashida.

He never escaped from this singular fascination. He created the illusion that she still lived, if not through reincarnation, then through the spirits with plaintive voices. Yet he knew these voices false and misleading. To believe in these voices he would have to leap from his cold and calculating demeanor to mystical realms, and he was unwilling to take that leap. He disliked mystical things, and at the same time he could not let go of Rashida.

Bereaved as he was, he had wandered the campus alone, mostly in the middle of the night. He had looked into the stars and searched for some sign of her presence. He found the stars twinkling at him, almost laughing at the loss he suffered. He wanted to shout into the sky in the hopes Rashida would hear. But this would alert the campus police.

In the years during his rebellion he would have done so. He would have searched through every bunk of the women’s dormitory just to find a scrap of her clothing or that musky scent which once defined her. Instead he stood beneath the glittering sky, a sky which had once connoted a goodness and purity, and he found within this same sky a darkness and despair. The bright stars were only a subterfuge for the remaining blanket of darkness which consumed his soul. He thrived off this darkness. It gave him strength, a strength which he now unleashed upon those who even thought of crossing him.

In front of these clerics he performed well, but he did not perform in the usual sense. He in fact ‘acted’ the part of bavasaab, and such a brilliant performance, disguised by his willingness to read and interpret Islamic text, allayed these intense emotions of hatred for himself and for others. Rashida remained the only light, but a light extinguished.

He envied the young men of the main campus, for their lives would go on without tragedy. He rarely saw women, and the one’s he did see he despised. They would make the men happy as wives and mothers. He found only one reason to live, and she had died.

During the first few years his sadness was profound. He cried to himself if the sun did not creep into his room at the proper angle. He read the Hadith but could no longer comprehend the words. He knelt and prostrated to a God he secretly hated, because no God, if God is to be filled with an ultimate goodness, would confiscate his Rashida and mangle her in that fashion. He played the part with precision. He had learned the ways of the faith and had not absorbed a single glint of its knowledge. He knew only his Rashida had been taken.

He suspected his father, Tariq. But he blamed Allah. He withheld this anger, which escalated during the remaining years of his training. Many hours within the specially appointed rooms was spent drifting in and out of affairs with her, whether these fantasies took place now or later, in his room or while wandering the quadrangle in the middle of the night. His loss eclipsed the sun and pulverized the moon which appeared in preposterous crescents. The illusion of the sky’s beauty fueled his hatred.

Khozem had toured with his father through certain parts of Far East Asia. There were fewer followers than the Middle East or Africa. Touring mosques was the most essential part of his job. The tours gave Khozem experience in the matters of his flock. Tariq handled Khozem’s vocational training in a more relaxed manner. Khozem never argued with his father while on these tours, although on many occasions he thought he would burst into argument with him. He played the role of the dutiful son, not the prodigal son which had characterized his behavior before Rashida. He looked to his father for a guidance he never valued. They would enter a mosque together, sometimes hours before the followers arrived, and Tariq would advise him how to perform prayers meant for large crowds: how the verses needed to be articulated to perfection, or else the believers would lose confidence in his leadership, or the timing of kneeling and prostrating himself to remain synchronized with the crowd, or walking the optimal number of steps behind the bodyguards so that all the believers could see the glorious bavasaab. And especially the important blessings the bavasaab must give to the most charasmatic believers. Out of this performance the final benediction was most important. The small gesture of blowing a quick breath upon a believer could animate even the dullest crowd. All tours had strict protocols, and Khozem found himself learning more with Tariq than with the clerics at the university.

Although Khozem was satisfied and at times overwhelmed by the tour of the Far East, he sensed that these tours and his training for the position were only a means towards the end of unleashing that bitter hatred he kept close to his heart. His father spoke of marriage, and Khozem smiled. He would never love another woman. He thought the world too evil for his offspring, although he himself contributed to such a darkness. This same darkness made him wish his father would trip on a fold in the Persian rug, breaking a hip or fracturing a collarbone. Khozem had suspected him all along, a man who he was supposed to love but could never fathom loving, not for one moment, despite the thin smile he wore.

When Khozem and Tariq returned to Mecca, they discussed the other major responsibility of the bavasaab’s position. This was the vast Organization and particularly the Organization’s funds. The money came in the protean forms of vast and heavy contributions from Islamic countries, private donations from organization members, spot donations from touring, and affiliate mosques from which the organization took a cut. The organization’s fund supported an intricate bureaucracy comprised of ministries of finance, education, culture, information, intelligence, religious affairs, and a ministry of executions. The bloated fund was derived mostly from the Middle Eastern countries. The funds also supported a series of complexes and cultural centers throughout the Islamic world. Khozem was shown an organization chart which displayed these many cultural centers along with a global display of the affiliate mosques which had been growing in the Western World. Khozem made the inference that the mosques gathering in the West would eventually shape and determine his touring schedule. Lending his support to fledgling mosques would increase converts and solidify a constituency within Western cities and towns. Khozem told his father he never cared for the West, an area which thrived on infidelity and corruption, but his father said to keep a close eye on these developing countries, because “the future of Islam shall be found there.” Khozem had repeatedly questioned his father about this, especially at the beginning of his tenure, but he knew he delayed this talk for a reason, even though the delay filled his curiosity.