Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 16 September 1731 Local (GMT+3.00) Sinan watched as Matteen moved to the entrance of the tent, closed the flap, then slipped and turned the four wooden toggles through their frogs, trying to ensure against interruptions. Finished, he returned to the small table, propped his rifle against it, and sat on the rickety stool. On the table was a blue and black knapsack, a knockoff of a popular Western design, with several pockets and flaps and zippers. Matteen opened the pack and began loading it with boxes of ammunition, to weigh it down.
Sinan didn't sit and, after confirming that Matteen was getting the weights correct, turned his attention to Nia. They were in one of the smaller tents, and there wasn't a lot of room, and among the smell of the canvas and the heat and the dust, Sinan was sure he could smell her, too, and he cursed his imagination, willed himself to focus on the task at hand.
"We are your brothers in this," he said to Nia gently. "And you are our sister."
She nodded, hesitant, but the gesture was clear enough, even under her cloak and veil.
"You are shahid, and our purpose is to see you attain Paradise."
Another nod, and Sinan was suddenly uncertain if he was trying to reassure Nia or himself. Behind him, he heard the sound of the zipper running over its teeth as Matteen closed the knapsack.
"Show us," Sinan told Nia.
The woman hesitated again, then turned away from him, toward the wall of the tent. She reached up, unfastening her veil from her cowl, removing the abaya. Sinan looked away at first, when her bare arm revealed itself, and saw that Matteen was watching Nia's movements with a decided disinterest. He envied his fellow the ability, wondered how he could manage it.
Sinan couldn't.
But he couldn't not look, either, and when he forced his eyes back to Nia, she was pulling the abaya away from her body, and he saw her bare legs. They were smooth, their curve gentle, her thighs slim but strong, and when she shifted her weight, he saw the muscles move, disappearing up beneath the shorts that were too short, the kind of shorts the Zionist girls wore. Her skin reminded him of her eyes, the eyes he'd caught himself thinking about too many times. Warmth seemed to emanate from her and, for the first time, Sinan wanted to touch her, to feel it for himself.
And he knew he was too weak, then, and he prayed to Allah, the Compassionate, for mercy.
She folded the abaya carefully, then shyly turned back around to face him, her eyes on the dirt floor of the tent.
Sinan looked, and even though he was supposed to look, even though it was his job to look, he felt guilt and shame surge through him, seeing her like this. She'd been given one of the Western tops to wear, powder blue to match the dark blue shorts, and there were three thin white stripes on the top, running around the center, and they made her breasts seem bigger, more defined. Her arms, like her legs, were slender and graceful, and her black hair fell thickly below her shoulders.
When he looked at her face, he was certain she was beautiful, and he thought, for the first time, that he must be very ugly to her eyes.
It was Matteen who spoke first. "Good, I believe the clothes. But your hair will have to be cut, you understand?"
Nia's left hand started toward her head, then stopped, fell back, and she nodded, still looking at the floor.
How old is she? Sinan wondered, still drinking her in, unable to stop himself. Eighteen? Nineteen?
"Come sit here," Matteen said, and he got to his feet, making room for Nia at the table.
She did as he instructed, and when she moved, she glanced to Sinan, and he knew she saw how he was looking at her, and still he couldn't stop it. She knew it, it was in her eyes, and he expected displeasure or contempt.
But he saw none.
"Sinan?" Matteen asked. "You want to do this?"
Sinan looked at him quickly, but Matteen appeared just as bored by their activities as before.
"We have scissors?"
"I thought I brought them, they're in our tent," Matteen said. "I'll be right back."
He opened the flap just enough to slip out, leaving them alone, before Sinan could offer to do it himself.
Nia shifted on the stool slightly, hands in her lap. Sinan tried to find something else in the tent to look at, settled ultimately on the main support for the roof.
"Is it heavy?" she asked softly. "The bomb?"
"Ten pounds," Sinan said. "Maybe more. When we're finished with your hair and your clothes, you will try on the knapsack. Matteen's weighted it down, so you know what it will be like."
"I thought there would be a belt. In Gaza, they showed us pictures of the belts."
"The knapsack is easier to make than the belt," Sinan explained.
"Ten pounds." After a moment, Nia added, "That's not too heavy. My books were heavier."
It took him a second. "You were a student?"
She nodded.
"Why aren't you a student now?"
"They killed my friend."
Sinan moved to the tent opening, peered out between the flaps. There was no sign of Matteen, no sign of anyone about, really. From one of the larger tents, he could hear the sounds of a recording playing a sermon, Dr. Faud's voice.
"Your friend," Sinan began. "Your friend… you were close to him?"
He heard Nia shift again on the stool. "I am a Muslim woman."
He turned back to her then, feeling utterly like an ass. "I did not mean to insult you. I know you are a good woman and that you are proper. I didn't mean to say otherwise."
"He was my friend," she repeated, and she looked up at him, and Sinan thought her eyes were colder now. "In Nablus, and he was shot, and he died, and he didn't do anything to them."
"I understand."
She turned her head away, the gesture angry, and Sinan felt even more an ass. He looked to the tent flaps again, wondering what was taking Matteen so long.
"You aren't an Arab," she said. "You're English."
"I am a Muslim."
"But you are English."
"No, I am a Muslim. What I was before I found the Truth is nothing. It is what I am now that matters."
Nia seemed to think about this, then shook her head. "Why are you here?"
"I want to help my brothers."
"Did they kill someone close to you? Did you lose a friend to them?"
Sinan thought about Aamil.
"No," he said. "Not like you mean. But I have seen my brothers dying, my sisters dying, and that was enough for me. The imam in my mosque, before I came here, he taught me about what it meant to be a Muslim, he taught me that there were six pillars, not five, and it was he who helped me find a madrassa that would take me."
"So you came here?"
"I was in Cairo first. For many months, and then I was sponsored on the Hajj by the Prince, Allah have mercy on him. And on the Hajj, I saw…"
Sinan faltered, afraid to share what he had seen. Aamil had been there, and Aamil had understood, but only barely. There had been times, since then, when Sinan had wondered if his vision of the Satans, of the suffering they brought, hadn't been the result of hunger, or dehydration, or exhaustion, or all of those things combined. It did not matter; he had seen what he had seen, and he had known what he had to do, as a man, as a Muslim, but mostly, as a Wahhabi.
"What did you see?" Nia asked softly.
She was looking at him again, curious and beautiful. He opened his mouth to answer and then felt the sunlight splash him as Matteen slipped through the tent flap.
"Yassir was using them," Matteen explained, handing the scissors to Sinan. "Sorry it took so long."
"It's all right," Sinan told him.
Nia straightened in her seat, pushed her tumbled hair back off her shoulders, and none of them said anything as Sinan began to cut it.
When he was finished, Nia wiped at her eyes, and he realized she had been weeping.