Publicly, the cleric said it was his duty to bring all to Islam. Privately, Nedim suspected the real reason was that Sami’s family had wealth. Nedim was a good Muslim and was attending university by means of a scholarship. He studied hard, but the computer lab was open to students only so many hours per day. He really needed his own computer to meet the academic requirements for his scholarship, but the scholarship would not provide one.
Nedim was snapped back to the situation at hand by a stiff slap to the side of his head. The man had said something and he had missed it. One of the two he could not see snapped at him to answer the question he had not heard. He responded that he had not heard the question because he was praying as all good Muslims should be doing at this time. That answer earned him a strike on the other side of the head.
The man asked his question again. “Do you know the penalty for being a terrorist?”
“I am a good Muslim, not a terrorist,” responded Nedim. Closed-fisted blow from behind this time, so fast and hard he had no idea which of the two delivered it, mainly because his nose had borne the brunt of the impact with the table and sprung his head back upright. He knew he was upright because blood was running down over his mouth. Vision was not a sense he had at the moment as everything was a whirl of color and light, but it seemed things would come back into focus soon.
He tried to wipe the blood from his face and had his hands firmly pulled behind the chair, then tied.
The man asked his question again. “Do you know the penalty for being a terrorist?”
“I am a good Muslim, not a terrorist,” responded Nedim. This time the blow was from a club of some kind.
“I did not ask if you were a terrorist. We have the answer to that question lying before us. I asked if you know the penalty for being a terrorist in this country?”
After a moment, Nedim responded, “Life in prison or death, depending upon how wealthy your family is and how famous you are.”
“Are you famous or from a wealthy family?” asked the man.
“No,” Nedim was forced to respond.
Before him on the table was an email that had grown to haunt him. This was the email that selected the Nairobi embassy for bombing and the date in 1998 when it was to be bombed. He had no problem with the killing of infidels. The problem with this bombing was how the Islamic reporters had covered it. Across the street from the embassy had been a secretarial training school for women, and near it a day care center. Muslim women should not be attending school, nor should their children be in day care. All good Muslims know this. There had been a fatwah justifying it, yet the outrage had happened. It appeared there were no good Muslims left in the land of the prophet. That bombing caused a lot of the money to dry up as well. It was the reason Nedim didn’t have a better color printer at home.
“We are prepared to execute you tomorrow,” the man said.
Nedim said nothing, but his mind raced wildly. Others were supposed to die, not him! He did not believe in martyrdom, nor that there were any virgins to be had. Besides, logic told him that unless there were thousands of them, within a month or two of his arrival in paradise they would just be used and complaining wives anyway. Unless he was getting seventy-two beautiful virgins per month for eternity, martyrdom simply wasn’t worth it.
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