Blackmail Earth

Chapter 4





Rafan turned from the row of fresh graves and the harsh glare of white headstones, and lowered his eyes to where Basheera lay buried. Yesterday, under the same strong sun, his little sister had been shrouded in a white cloth and placed on her right side to face Mecca. In accordance with Islamic practice, the other eleven victims of the bombing also rested with their eternal gaze on Islam’s holiest city, while their killers—men of renegade faith—took noisy credit for the carnage, promising more blood with every breath, and claiming that God Himself had anointed their mission.

Muslims murdering Muslims. Rafan shook a fist at the burning sky.

They would have murdered him, too, if he’d been seconds slower walking down that crowded street. If he hadn’t tried to carry his dying sister to hospital. If he hadn’t hurried.

If … if … if … An army of ifs had marched him to the borderlands of life and death, and spared him the miserable instrument of their choosing.

He sank to his knees. The newly settled dirt received him softly, and he tried to pray, as he’d tried at the burial with seven men beside him, all of them staring into her open grave. None of them had known Basheera well. For her sake he’d cast prayers to heaven, trying to reel in grace, forgiveness, hope. But his eyes had returned unsoothed to this fresh wound in the earth.

Basheera’s three dearest friends, fellow teachers at the English Language School in Malé, were not permitted at her gravesite, for “Allah has cursed women who frequent graves for visitation,” a quote attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. It gave rise in many locales to the rule barring women, made and enforced by men, to spare them the emotions of wives, sisters, daughters.

Basheera would have hated the ceremony, so male and mannerly, though she might have laughed, as she had many times, at the irony of her life as a Muslim woman: torn by her faith, troubled yet true—and scorned by extremists whose anger stifled debate and silenced dissent.

Do you know you killed one of your enemies? Rafan had wanted to scream yesterday as dirt darkened the shroud that covered Basheera. She hated what you do. What you say. But to shout would have granted them a greater victory, and he never would have done that.

Instead, he would defy them—and honor his sister—under the quiet cover of darkness. He would usher Fatima, Musnah, and Senada—the dark-eyed, dark-haired married woman whom he loved dearly—to Basheera’s grave. The three women, all friends of his sister’s, planned to scatter petals of the pink rose, her favorite flower.

No one guarded the cemetery. No one would stop them when night came. Even prying stubborn eyes had to sleep.

* * *

Hours away, on the small island of Dhiggaru, Adnan took his first clumsy steps in a pair of black flippers. Like a seal on a beach, he thought. He turned to look at his impressions in the sand, so big he could have been a giant. Or a monster?

Just nine steps to the water. That’s all. The strip of sand had narrowed and trees had fallen. They’d washed away, or languished in the gentle surf, shifting side to side with the thrust and parry of the sea.

Parvez had loaned him the mask, snorkel, and fins. “You must see for yourself,” he’d said.

“But I know about it.”

“See it,” the religious leader had insisted. “Touch it. It is not only sand that disappears. The reef is dying.”

The warm water swirled around Adnan’s legs; but in the distance the ocean appeared flat and still, reflecting the sun’s blinding rays like a mirror.

He rinsed the mask before he put it on, and swam with his eyes on the ocean bottom, watching the scalloped sand slowly recede as the water deepened. He’d swum with sea turtles as a boy, when his fears of sharks had lessened and he’d chanced the dark blue waters far from shore, once shadowing a turtle as large as himself. The creature had glided fathoms below him, fins lifting and falling in unison, effortless as palm fronds in a breeze. For many minutes he’d trailed the turtle, mesmerized by a hard shell so alive in the soft embrace of sea. He’d felt buoyant and free, unfettered by land or air or need.

The turtle swam away, and the spell was broken. Adnan had treaded water and looked to shore, so distant that it had been almost impossible to see. Yet he’d been filled not with the immensity of the ocean—his speck of life on the blank face of water—but with the vastness of the universe itself, for that’s what he’d known in his absolute isolation: the endless unraveling hand of God.

Only the memory remained—not the overriding sense of the divine—as he swam the last few meters to the coral reef, white and lifeless as sand, killed by an invisible gas that spilled from the sky and formed a deadly ocean acid.

“They have played God with our world,” Parvez had said when he’d handed Adnan the snorkeling gear. “They took all of creation in their hands and squeezed it like a lime until no more juice ran into their bowls.”

Adnan had listened. Now he placed his hand on the coral. Dead. He’d never known that a reef could feel so devoid of life, but this one did. The silent heartbeat of the ocean’s hardest growth had vanished. He remembered an admonition of his youth—“Don’t touch the reef”—because human contact killed it, but Parvez had told him that you can’t kill the dead, and Parvez was right. Adnan could touch this reef for hours and he’d never harm it because … you can’t kill the dead. Parvez had pointed to the resort islands, where tourists stayed in sprawling beach bungalows. “You can only give them rest. Let them dream. Let them sleep. We are coming.”

* * *

Starlit, Rafan crept alongside Fatima, Musnah, and Senada to within whispering distance of the cemetery.

“Wait behind there.” He pointed to two towering palms that rose inches from each other.

The three women in headscarves crouched down. Rafan took a steadying breath and walked to the entrance. An Islamic inscription had been chiseled into the arch centuries ago: ALLAH GIVES LIFE, AND ALLAH TAKES IT AWAY.

He headed directly to where Basheera’s body salted the earth with minerals and blood. He did not sink down, as he had earlier that day. Instead, he listened with the ears of a sentry as his eyes studied the commanding stillness, looking for those who would condemn him and the three women by the palms.

Slowly, he walked back to the gate, hanging his head as a bereaved man. But he was still searching for what he did not want to find.

* * *

Adnan had stopped snorkeling more than a decade ago, when the reefs began to die. He’d been sickened by the disappearance of batfish, with their bold stripes and wing-shaped bodies; and the loss of speckled green puffer fish with their long, snoutlike faces, bulgy eyes, and professorial airs. So many whimsical species—angelfish and triggerfish and the grumpy-looking grouper—had vanished as quickly, it seemed, as the tiny tessellated schools that had darted away in flashes of yellow, pink, blue, and orange.

Only this whiteness remained. This blankness. Adnan touched the coral again. White was the color of death. Not black.

Swimming over the reef, he peered down into the small caverns where moray eels once lurked, evil-looking and sly, and nattily attired parrot fish had nibbled contentedly on algae. The emptiness shocked him.

He circled back over the reef to swim to shore. He would tell Parvez what he had seen: nothing. The blank white face of nothing.

A shadow passed so swiftly on his left that it didn’t register fully. Then he turned and saw that the shadow had a body fifteen feet long and a mouth that could crush his skull.

* * *

Fatima, Musnah, and Senada stepped away from the palms. None of them spoke, but Rafan saw light in Senada’s moist eyes, and thankfulness. Basheera had been at Senada’s side when she gave birth to a stillborn son; and his little sister, who had always been the quiet one, had stood up to Senada’s husband when he had screamed at his grieving wife, “Murderer. Murderer.”

To be out at night with Rafan and two women was dangerous for Senada. Not so much for Fatima and Musnah: As single women, they did not have threats to fear in their homes. Only threats from those who might be spying on the cemetery.

“You are sure no one is there?” asked Senada, half a head taller than the other two.

“I am sure,” Rafan said, though certainty was never possible with so many followers of Allah searching for the sins of others.

They did not pass under the arch. Rafan walked them along the perimeter, four hunched, hurrying figures moving through starlight and shadows until he turned and led them to Basheera’s grave. The women gathered side by side. Rafan stepped back to keep watch.

A murmur of prayer arose. Rafan’s surveillance revealed not a trace of movement in the cemetery. A stillness as absolute as death.

Fatima, Musnah, and Senada reached into a woven bag and released handfuls of lush pink petals. They glittered and floated to Basheera’s grave like the snow the women had never seen. A blanket, luminous and pure, covered the freshly dug earth.

* * *

Adnan stared at the massive tiger shark and tried to tread water with the slightest movement possible, torso and legs dangling in the water like bait from the great hook of heaven. Dozens of shark species lived in the seas around the Maldives, most no more threatening than a squid, but tiger sharks attacked swimmers, divers, even boats.

This one swam so close that Adnan felt water shift against his stomach. Then the shark moved on.

No, it was turning back for another pass. Hunting. Adnan looked wildly for a fisherman, sailor—anyone—to haul him aboard, but saw only a fin cutting the glassy surface of the sea.

The shark circled him, a lazy, rippling whirlpool. Any second it might bump him, see if he was a living creature.

Adnan prayed, guilelessly and true for Allah to save him, and imagined his God saying, “For what? What shall I save a such a sinner for?”

Adnan gave Allah the first answer that came to mind, repeating what Parvez had whispered in his ear: A life for a life.

* * *

Rafan led the three women from the cemetery, forsaking care for a hasty retreat. He saw no gain in staying a moment longer, for now it was essential to escort Senada home before her fisherman husband returned from days at sea.

When they stepped back on the street, Musnah, dark hair cascading from under her headscarf, breathed loudly in relief. Rafan smiled to himself, for he felt the same freedom. They moved a few more steps before a voice ordered them to stop.

Imam Reza walked up to them. He’d conducted Basheera’s funeral and burial, always keeping his back to the young woman’s body, his eyes on the faithful, though Rafan knew he would question their faithfulness now. If he knows.

“You have been to the cemetery,” Imam Reza said. His beard was a dark bush that brushed his chest, and in the sparse light his turban could be glimpsed only in outline.

“Yes,” Rafan said. “I took a message from Basheera’s friends to her.”

“We watched him go,” Fatima said.

“You have no faith that your prayers can be heard in paradise?”

“Yes, Imam Reza, I’m sure they can.” Musnah spoke without looking up. “But we miss her so.”

Rafan noticed that all three women kept their heads bowed. Senada stood behind her friends, almost cowering. Imam Reza would like that.

“What prayer did you take to your sister?” Imam Reza asked him.

This was a test. Rafan refrained from glancing at Senada; as a married woman, she would not wish to be noticed under such compromising circumstances.

“The prayer of forgiveness for all my sister’s sins,” Rafan answered. “The prayer of hope for all the faithful. The prayer of memory, that she would never be forgotten.”

Imam Reza’s eyes moved over the headscarves that faced him. “Did you enter the cemetery?”

“No, they did not,” Rafan said “Only I—”

“I asked them.”

“No,” answered the women, keeping their heads low.

He doesn’t believe us, Rafan thought. But he doesn’t have to. This isn’t Iran or Waziristan. Not yet.

Imam Reza walked toward the cemetery, leaving Rafan chilled by the man’s sudden silence, by what it promised for the future. By flower petals resting on a grave, and footprints in the dust.

“Did he believe us?” Musnah whispered after they’d walked on.

“I do not know what he believed or what he saw.” Rafan looked over his shoulder. “I know only that these imams never forget.”

* * *

Senada stepped lightly toward the back door of her home, sticking close to the wall, away from the starlight. What would she say if Mehdi was waiting in their bedroom? She would tell him the truth.

That you lied to Imam Reza? That you were with Rafan?

Mehdi hated Rafan. A man who consorts with women. A man who doesn’t go to mosque. A man who doesn’t pray. A man too proud for his faith.

Senada touched the door handle, wondering if her husband had left a trace of his heat, if he’d gripped it so hard in anger, twisted it so violently—as he had her—that she could sense him even now.

But the metal was cool in the night air, and when she opened the door the room was black. Silent. She struck a match and held it out like a frightened child, peering into the pitch. Her bed was empty. She did not smell fish.

She climbed under the covers and said a prayer of gratitude: for safety, for friends, for Rafan.

* * *

“Allah saved me,” Adnan told Parvez, who stood in the door of his one-room house on the north end of Dhiggaru. A lantern burned behind him, lighting a simple desk and an open Koran. “He drove the shark out to sea after I made a vow.”

Parvez nodded knowingly, but then asked which vow. Adnan spoke without moving: “The vow of paradise.”

Parvez took the lantern and walked him along the path through the palm grove still teeming with their secrets. He didn’t stop until he brought Adnan to the end of the seawall, where he placed the lantern before putting his arm around his friend’s shoulder.

“If you could see through the darkness for many miles,” Parvez said, “you would see diamond island.”

* * *

Not its real name—what the Maldivians called the richest resort island. Adnan’s mother took a boat there every weekday to make sure that the rooms were cleaned and that every toilet was scrubbed till it shined. Then, on Saturdays, a small supply ship picked her up on its way back from Malé. She usually added a big bag of locally grown limes to the hold, already heavy with cases of champagne, caviar, chocolates, and the other everyday luxuries of diamond island. Her job, though she wasn’t paid for the crossing, was to watch the seamen for pilferage. Not a lime, not a single dark chocolate truffle could be missing when they docked. Bags and cases had to be sealed tighter than a hatch in a storm.

His mother had been astonished the first time that she’d seen the resort. The “bungalows” were larger than any house she’d ever known, almost as big as the presidential palace, but roofed with ornamental thatch to look native. Each was lavishly appointed with silver, gold plate, marble, and exotic hardwoods, and came with a staff of three, a private pool, and a yacht for $10,000 a night. More than his mother earned in four years of hard work on diamond island.

“Your mother could put the dead to rest,” Parvez said in the quiet that had fallen.

“No.” Adnan shook his head. “You said I would do this. I would put the dead to rest.”

“So you will. But your mother can do what you cannot: She can go to the heart of diamond island and stop their sins forever. Every hour of every day they slap Allah in the face.”

Liquor, sex, drugs, parties with unmarried girls. Muslim girls corrupted by the West. Muslim men corrupted by the West. And she worries about their truffles and toilets. That thought—and Parvez’s words about Allah—stung more sharply than the memory of his mother’s hand when he was nine years old. All his young life he’d waited for his father to come home. “Mother,” he’d said one afternoon when he realized that the sandy path to their house had never borne any footprints but their own, “he’s not coming home.”

She’d slapped him. Just the once. Told him that his father was a jihadist fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. “Maybe a martyr, and you say such things.”

But then she’d wrapped him in her arms, weeping as she wiped away his tears.

It is so much worse for Allah to witness the sins of diamond island, Adnan thought, than for a boy to feel even his mother’s deepest grief.

“You can bury the gift of paradise in a bag of limes,” Parvez said. “She’ll carry it to them. She’ll never know. We can time the arrival.”

“But this is what they did in Malé. They made a bomb.” And you said it was wrong.

“No, they killed many brother and sister Muslims in Malé. Out there,” Parvez turned his gaze seaward again, “the dead still wait for their rest.”

“But what about me? The vest?” So much more willing to take his own life than his mother’s.

“The vest will still be filled, and when the time is right and Allah speaks, you will wear it. You will see your mother in paradise. Someday, you will see me, too.”

Parvez turned away, leaving Adnan trembling in the sultry tropical night.