Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [103]
She seemed to go away for a while, lost in a memory, then said, “You asked what happened to me. What made me join Brendan and the others.”
“I’m sorry, Sara. Really. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
She turned toward him and ran her hand along the side of his face. “I do want to tell you. I want you to know everything there is to know about me.”
He studied her. “I’m listening.”
It took her a moment to gather herself. “When I was a young girl in Yemen, I was just like Abdal al-Fida. A true believer. I think that’s why it was so easy for me to convince him that we were kindred spirits. I knew that fervor, that hatred. It was a hatred that had been nurtured in me by my own father.” She paused. “But I was female, and sickly, and when my brother Kafir was born all of my father’s hopes for a great soldier of Allah landed on him.
“But Kafir was an unusual child. Intelligent, very wise for his age. And he was a disappointment to my father because he didn’t share our passion. He was always questioning us. Why did we believe the things we did, when a careful reading of the Koran showed that it clearly preached peace?”
Tears filled her eyes now. “My father beat him, but Kafir never gave in. Never compromised his own beliefs. And I found myself coming to admire him for it.
“When I turned seventeen,” she continued, “I got very sick. One of my kidneys failed and the other required regular dialysis, and it was clear to the doctors that I needed a transplant. Neither my father nor my mother were a match, and the thought of going to a thirteen-year-old boy seemed wrong somehow. But Kafir volunteered—insisted on taking the test—and when the results came back it turned out that he was the perfect donor.
“Two weeks later I had this scar, this gift from my brother. Without him, I wouldn’t be here.”
She paused again, as she wiped her tears with her forearm. “A year went by and both of us had grown strong again, bound together not just by blood, but by flesh as well. Then, on a warm afternoon, Kafir left school early one day. Call it fate or coincidence or simply bad luck, but as he walked past a synagogue a car parked in front of it exploded, taking half the building and my brother along with it.”
“My God,” Jack said.
“No,” Sara told him. “Not God. Not Allah. This was simply the work of men, men like my father whose hatred was so strong that it took the life of an innocent young boy. A boy who had more potential, more nobility, in his small body than any of them would ever understand.”
Jack held her as she sobbed. Her tears were warm and dear against his chest. As much as their lovemaking, that gift of trust was precious.
“Did they find the bombers?” he asked.
Sara collected herself. “No. And that is the sickness of it. It could have been anyone. Rogue Muslims of the same branch or a different branch … Not knowing who had attacked him made me realize that their hatred was my hatred. It didn’t matter who held it. It was wrong.”
“That was a pretty big thought for a teenager to grasp.”
“It wasn’t just a ‘thought,’ Jack. It was a vision—from Allah. What you Christians call an epiphany. I could not shake it.
“My mother had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized. My father was inconsolable, and within the year I knew I had to get away from there.” She paused. “So I moved to London and vowed that I would do whatever I could to keep another Kafir from being lost to the world.”
She was silent then. Jack could feel the emotion draining away, her shoulders relaxing. He wanted to respond, to find the perfect words to soothe her.
But before he could speak, they heard a loud, steady beep coming from the living room.
Faisal’s laptop.
* * *
They had to scramble to get dressed before the beeping woke Faisal. They just made it to the living room when he stumbled in and plopped in front of his laptop, punching a key to cut the notifier and examine the results.