The Caliphate Read online

  4. Rue du Bac Metro

  Kella turned her back on a driver obviously trying to attract her attention. She was at the entrance of the station where she and Steve had agreed to meet. Dressed in loose clothing down to her ankles, she was surprised that she would attract any male attention. Then she heard her name and turned back toward the car parked at the curb, to the great annoyance of the cars behind.

  “Kella, come on before I get run over,” Steve shouted.

  She recognized him and ran toward to the car.

  Steve explained the car and, glancing at her clothes, said, “Very chic. Is that the latest Paris fashion?”

  “The Saint-Denis suburb is very North African. Faridah told me to dress like this to fit the role of a friend her father would want her to have. The idea is to reassure her father that Faridah hasn’t gone to the dark side, that she hasn’t rejected her Muslim roots.”

  Steve nodded and said, “You better give me directions to St. Denis.”

  Kella navigated and continued talking about her friend. She was conscious that she was trying to justify to herself the wisdom of her idea.

  It sounded better yesterday, she thought.

  “Faridah’s father is very strict, very fundamental. Now, he suspects that she is not being chaste. She does have a French boyfriend, and her father is assuming the worst. He is talking about moving the family back to Algeria.”

  “So what do you hope to accomplish? Make a moderate of the father?”

  A bit annoyed at Steve’s negative tone, she said, “I’m just trying to help her, show her father that she has decent, well, non-threatening, friends, like me. Faridah said that her father often beats her mother, on the smallest pretext. He probably hits Faridah also, although she didn’t say so.”

  “You think that going to their apartment is a good idea? If I understood you last night, you aren’t Muslim, well not any more, right?”

  Kella took out a scarf from her shoulder bag and refolded it before putting it back inside.

  “That’s why I told Faridah to convince her parents to come and have coffee in a public place.”

  As planned, Steve and Kella met Faridah at the exit of the St. Denis Metro. Kella made the introductions while Faridah appraised Kella’s outfit.

  “Perfect, except you do need to cover your head.”

  Kella put on her scarf.

  “What if I came with you?” Steve asked. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  As Kella seemed about to agree, Faridah spoke up turning toward Steve.

  “Absolutely not. Unless your name is Ahmed and you are a Muslim. I’m not even sure if bringing Kella is a good idea. Bringing an American male? That’ll burn my father’s short fuse in an instant. And, by the way, we’re going to my apartment rather than to a café as you suggested. I talked to my mother about your idea and she said that my father wouldn’t do it. So this way is simpler. It’s also the only way.”

  Kella turned to Steve.

  “Why don’t you go to the Basilica and I’ll meet you there in, say, an hour?” Pointing, she said, “There’s a sign for the Basilica, it’s about five minutes from here.”

  Kella and Faridah walked from the Metro, past the Hotel de Ville, toward a row of drab buildings much like those put up in Eastern Europe’s socialist heavens after World War II. A car full of young men passed. Faridah looked down instinctively and Kella followed suit. They walked quickly to an intersection and crossed catty-corner to a faceless apartment building. Faridah held the front door open.

  “Le Grand Palais,” she said sarcastically. “The security buzzer and combination pad have not worked for as long as I can remember,” she added.

  Inside, the small lobby’s walls and mailboxes were nicked. A graffito in Arabic, ISLAM IS THE ANSWER, was spray-painted on the far wall.

  We’re on the third floor,” Faridah said with a slightly encouraging smile.

  She and Kella went through the small hallway, which reeked with a perceptible odor of urine, and started up the stairs. On the way up, a family passed them on its way down, the mother dressed in loose clothing that hid her shape and shooing three handsome children ahead of her. The youngsters looked up at Kella with curiosity.

  Once they reached the third floor Faridah said, “Wait out here a minute, just in case my mother hasn’t mentioned your visit yet.”

  She rolled her eyes and smiled. She walked up to her apartment door taking keys out of her pocket. The hallway’s only light seeped in from a small window at the end of the hall, although Kella noticed a light bulb hanging from a wire over the stairwell. Faridah turned her key in the first door lock, but before she could find the key for the second lock, the door flew open.

  “I was just asking about you!”

  A dark-skinned, full-bearded, bulky man in his early fifties grabbed Faridah’s left wrist and pulled her into the apartment before Faridah had time to say anything. Kella presumed the man to be Hamad, Faridah’s father. The door began to shut, but Kella rushed forward and braced her foot at the bottom of the door to keep it from closing completely. At first, she leaned toward the slight opening and listened. She was prepared to walk in when the angry tone of Hamad’s voice stopped her inside the dark hallway.

  “You are not the daughter I knew when we lived in Algiers. You have become someone else, someone who shows no respect, a girl who is anxious to show her body. You no longer attend the Mosque.”

  Hamad’s voice was rising in tone and in volume. Kella felt that he was on the verge of physical violence. Kella stayed in the hallway, out of sight.

  “Stop” Faridah cried. “You’re hurting me. Please! Let go!”

  Kella could see Hamad standing in front of Faridah in the kitchen. There was a stove on the left, a square table with metal legs and four folding chairs. A woman that Kella assumed was Faridah’s mother sat at the table. She wore a loose gray house dress. Along the wall on the right was a narrow but lengthy shelf on top of which she could see dishes and glasses. Under the shelf was a small refrigerator with silverware scattered on it as if Faridah’s mother had been interrupted in the act of putting them away. Kella assumed there was a sink next to the refrigerator but she couldn’t see it.

  Hamad shouted, “I know that as soon as you got on the Metro, you took off your scarf. You went to the Ile de la Cité and met your Christian devil. You touched and kissed in public. I know you’ve done more. And with an infidel! The neighbors know and talk about it. It shames us!” Kella had originally assumed that Hamad simply wanted to protect a daughter for whom he cared. Instead, Hamad’s rantings reflected more concern about what others thought about him. Should she step forward and make her presence known? She was undecided.

  In a weak, pleading voice, the woman said, “She is your daughter. For the love of Allah, have pity on your flesh and blood.”

  She sounded upset, but not surprised. Kella wasn’t catching every word of the woman’s high pitched and rapid appeal. Kella guessed that much of the woman’s speech was in a Berber dialect, from the Kabyle Mountains of Algeria.

  Still holding Faridah’s wrist, Hamad turned toward his wife now on her feet and approaching him. Fearfully, she brought her arms up to protect her head.

  “Fatima, our daughter, may she be forever damned, has soiled our flesh and blood. You know what I must do. It is Allah’s will.”

  “Allah would have pity,” Fatima replied in a weak voice.

  Kella drew closer. She noticed that Faridah’s mother was looking at the top of the refrigerator and Kella now could see a large knife lying apart from the silverware.

  Hamad’s voice grew louder. “You whore! You’ve disgraced us, dishonored me and the whole family!”

  He pulled Faridah’s arm hard toward him and she lost her balance as Hamad let go of her wrist.

  “Filth!” he shouted as she sprawled on the discolored linoleum floor of the kitchen.

  Kella’s thoughts raced. What could she do? She looked for something she might use as a we
apon, something to hit him with, but she saw nothing. She wished that Steve were here. She didn’t move, paralyzed by the fear that she might make things worse for Faridah. She looked at Fatima, trying to judge whether the two of them together could help Faridah. But, at that moment, Hamad, his eyes fixed on his wife, turned away from her. He then quickly rotated his muscular shoulders back toward her and, clenching his fist, whipped his right elbow like a piston into her chest. The blow knocked Fatima to the floor.

  He returned his focus to Faridah and kicked her in the stomach as she tried to get up. She fell again and brought her legs up and wrapped her arms around her body trying to make herself as small as possible. Hamad aimed his next kick to her head, which started a slow trickle of blood down her cheek. His strength increased by his wrath, he stood her up and pushed Faridah back until she was wedged against the waist-high refrigerator. She leaned away from him and to the side to avoid the shelf in back of her. For an instant she uncovered her face to look at her mother. Kella felt guilty. Was Faridah looking for her? The blood from her scalp continued to flow down her face mixing with the tears, and onto her clothes. There was blood on the floor.

  “You’re insane! Stop it!” Faridah shrieked.

  “You’re going back to Algeria, tomorrow!” Hamad said, his voice viciously calm. “You’ll spend the rest of your days atoning.”

  Thrusting her hands out, Faridah tried to keep Hamad at bay.

  “Never! I’ll never go back there!”

  Hamad froze, struck by his daughter’s statement. Like a boxer in training, he struck her head and arms with his fists as she tried to protect herself. Faridah let out a piteous wail and, unable to move away in any direction, leaned her upper body back until her head touched the wall behind the refrigerator. Then, pressing her back with his left forearm, Hamad reached behind Faridah for the knife on the refrigerator. Kella saw his rage subside and another quieter but more menacing emotion took over.

  As Hamad raised the knife, Kella sprang forward, no longer able to stand by. She seized his arm from the side with both hands. Surprised, Hamad lifted his foot and tried to kick Kella’s knee. But she was too close. With his knife hand still up over Faridah, he swung his left fist into Kella’s stomach, hitting the nerve center of the solar plexus. She dropped her hands to her stomach, unable to breathe. Aware that she was now extremely vulnerable, she backed off, still doubled over and breathing in short gasps. Still bent over, she looked up at Hamad terrified that he would attack her but he refocused on Faridah. With a violent swing of the knife, he slashed Faridah’s shoulder. Her blood sprayed his shirt.

  “Allahu Akbar,” he said in a loud voice.

  Again, he raised the knife, but Fatima sprang up and hit him with her fists. He shoved her aside. Then, Hamad brought the knife slowly and deliberately over his head with both hands, chanting, “Allahu Akbar,” a sacrifice to his God, and plunged the blade into Faridah’s chest, again and again, each powerful thrust accompanied by its own “God is Great!”

  Kella forced out a scream of horror. To her ears it sounded like a weak squeal. Taking as deep a breath as she could, she managed a louder, “Murderer!”

  Hamad pushed Fatima away and turned toward Kella, the knife still in his hand, blood on his shirt. Their eyes met. She felt the hatred and rage burn into her soul. Acting instinctively, she turned and ran from the kitchen, through the dark hallway and out the door of the apartment.

  She pushed past neighbors who had assembled on the landing and took the steps down several at a time despite her bulky clothing, aware that her life depended upon getting to the street before Hamad caught up with her.

  Kella reached the street-level hallway, still breathing with difficulty. She ran toward the entrance but was stopped by four hefty men bringing large boxes into the building. The entrance was blocked from side to side by heavy looking cardboard containers. One was more than halfway inside and two men were struggling with another. Kella briefly wondered if she could get over the container but was instantly convinced that she could not. She looked around and saw a wood and glass door in the back of the lobby. She ran to it but could not see through the greenish opaque glass. She feared another dead end, but she nevertheless turned the white porcelain handle and found herself in a narrow corridor that led out to a small courtyard. She jogged past garbage cans and entered a corridor similar to the one she had just left and reached the front hallway of the building next door. She kept moving and reached the sidewalk.

  She nearly lost her balance when she saw the movers who had blocked her exit in front of Faridah’s building and barely managed to turn course and run the other way. After a few steps, she realized she had no idea how to get back to the Metro. On the way to the apartment, she had been talking and had paid little attention to direction, expecting that Faridah would guide her back.

  But Faridah was dead—dead!

  The thought and the word shocked her. She looked back for Hamad but did not see him, just a crowded sidewalk with working people going about their daily routine. Kella’s scarf came undone and she first tried to put it back on, but decided after a few steps that the effort was slowing her down so she crumpled it into her left hand as she ran. The images she had just witnessed were seared in her mind―Hamad’s face a nightmarish demon’s mask; Faridah bleeding and screaming; the knife plunging into Faridah’s body. She was now only fifty yards away from Faridah’s building and already breathing hard.

  She ran around a corner, slowed to a walk and put her scarf back on. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to her. She scanned the street for a taxi and tried to get her bearings. No taxis in sight. She glanced at her watch wondering if Steve would still be at the Basilica and was surprised that less than twenty minutes had elapsed since she and Steve had separated at the Metro station. She glanced at the Tuareg tattoo on the back of her right hand wistfully and looked up hoping to spot the Basilica’s spires but the street was too narrow and its buildings, while not particularly high, were still too tall to enable her to see anything beyond them.

  What she did notice for the first time was the number of young Arab men on the streets, in small groups. Most had a cigarette protruding defiantly from the corner of their mouths as if each was an Ali La Pointe, the small-time thief who had become the psychopathic hero of the movie The Battle of Algiers, and all with no particular place to go. Every Arab male on the street seemed like another Hamad, full of anger ready to erupt if provoked. She saw a sign for the Basilica and she hastened her steps in that direction, consciously avoiding eye contact with any of the loiterers.

  She came to an intersection that broadened her line-of-sight, and saw the market she had passed after leaving the Metro. As she crossed the street she noticed a man walking quickly, half running, in her direction. He seemed to be searching over and around the people in front of him. She did not get a close enough look to determine if it was Hamad. Instead she stayed close to the other pedestrians crossing the street, using them as concealment.

  At the open-air market, she stopped briefly at a stall and bought a long dark-gray scarf, to change her appearance a bit from the beacon of a bright white scarf she had worn earlier. As she completed her purchase, she spotted Hamad. He was scanning the market. Kella moved behind a display of Damascene tablecloths. With the intention of appearing to be just another shopper, she examined the material. She could no longer see Hamad and she directed her steps toward the Metro beyond the Hotel de Ville.

  As she detached herself from the crowd at the market, Hamad reappeared, now running toward her. Spurred by energy born of desperation, Kella also started running. She looked for a policeman, but the police were wherever the absent cab drivers had gone. Kella, who had considered going straight for the Metro, veered to the right toward the Basilica.

  She realized that she would have no protection from Hamad’s violence in the Metro unless a gendarme showed up or unless she could hop on a departing metro with quickly closing doors, both unlikely to happen. The B
asilica had Steve and Catholic priests who, in her mind, stood for safety and sanctuary. Further, there would be tourists, Westerners, visiting the necropolis of the French Kings. All in all, the environment would be more protective. She raced to the front doors of the church and went in.

  She took a breath and got her bearings. She was in the middle of a thin crowd that was starting to disperse. A mass must have just ended. Two priests stood in the back of the church, not far from the main entrance, talking with parishioners. Kella looked for Steve but did not see him.

  The area in which she stood was partially occupied by rows of chairs in the middle flanked by wide columns rising up about thirty meters toward the vaulted ceilings. Statues and mausoleums took up the far half of the Basilica. Not far from her in the public area and on the right was a small souvenir shop. Further away from her in the center of the mausoleum area a guide was leading a tour group. Kella started walking toward the tour, in the hope that Steve was with the tourists. But a railing about a foot and half high that divided the public area from the tombs stopped her. Kella saw a side door that the tourists must have used to enter and guessed that the ticket booth to pay for the tour was outside that door.

  Not seeing any authority that might object, Kella quickly stepped over the railing and headed toward the tour now behind a large monument with four arches on one side and two on the other. She noticed two effigies inside the monument, and with great relief, saw Steve listening to the guide and reading an inscription beneath the figures of Anne de Bretagne and her husband Louis XII.

  Steve saw her, moved closer and, with a false intellectual air, said, “I’ve always wanted to know more about Anne de Bretagne. Did you know that her marriage made Brittany a part of France?”

  Kella was not listening. She tried to peer through the openings of the arches but could not see over the effigies inside.