Page 124 of Whisper

“We had him on the edge, though. You did. You rocked him hard with the faith angle.” Kris sat beside David on the cot, slumping against the warehouse wall.

David felt Kris’s stare on the back of his head.

“Did you actually pray?” Kris asked, his voice strained.

David twisted. He stared at Kris. “What do you think?”

Kris shrugged.

“No, ofcoursenot.” Snorting, David whipped around, paced faster. There was an itch in his bones, a heat in his blood. Four steps took him back and forth across Kris’s small office. The world was still spinning, had never stopped spinning, not since he’d fallen into Mousa’s gaze. Faster, faster. He was going to be sick. He was going to die.

“Even if—” His lips clamped shut. “There’s—There’s no one to prayto.”

Kris stayed silent.

“Nothere. Not with these monsters.” David’s voice cracked, warbled. “They’ve ruined it. They all have! Mousa, Saqqaf, Bin Laden, Qaddafi, all of them!”

Memories tore at David. Sunshine and his father’s voice. His little djellaba, a miniature of his father’s. His father’s hand in his, teaching him the prayers.Every chapter opens with the love and mercy of Allah, ya ibni.

“None of this,this shit, is my father’s faith!Noneof it! He taught me about… submission and gratitude and love and thanking Allah for life and joy and living in peace—” His voice choked off. Heat rose in his chest, behind his eyes, a volcano erupting within his soul, so suddenly he couldn’t tamp it down. “Nothinghere, none of what they’ve built, is from Allah. My father wouldnever—”

His voice, his body, his soul, quaked. He couldn’t stand any more. The world was spinning out of control, spinning off its axis, spinning into space. He was ten years old, and his father was on the TV, in a basketball stadium Qaddafi had built in Benghazi.

“This isn’t Islam becauseAllah has abandoned us! He’s gone, he left, and we’re all just fighting over the Hell He left behind! And that’s fine! I want nothing to do with Him!”

Where was the world he’d glimpsed when he was nine years old? Where was the faith his father had taught him, had shown him through quiet devotion and whispered prayers? Where was the future of warmth, of his soul filled with light and gratitude, secure in the knowledge that he was loved, by his blood father and the Father of all? What had happened to that life? To that love?

Ten years old, and he’d watched his father’s faith, his peace, be turned into a crime.

Days and nights after his father was taken he’d spent in prayer to Allah to deliver his father back to him. To bring them together, to make them a family again. The prayers of a child, the simple pleading, the offers of exchange. He’d be the best Muslim, the best worshipper. He’d never talk back to his mother again, and he’d eat all his dinner, even the disgusting vegetables. He’d always listen to Baba, always. Just please,please, bring his father home.

His prayers were answered by a screaming mob in a basketball stadium and a rope tied in a noose, swinging from one of the bright orange hoops. Thunderous applause, shouts and cheers, thousands of Qaddafi loyalists screaming for his father’s blood. Over the TV, over the live broadcast he and his mother were forced to watch, guns held to the backs of their heads by the Mukhabarat, the roars had faded in and out, overpowering the tinny speakers, the shitty microphones.

His father had cried as they forced him to climb the ladder to the hoop. To the noose. He’d prayed, too, steadfast in his faith until the end, not even stumbling on his tears. David had watched his lips move, had recognized the shape, the movements.

He had memorized the shape of his father’s prayers as he sat at his side, his little body trying to grow into the image of his beloved father.

His mother had screamed when they shoved him from the ladder’s rungs, let his body swing. The Mukhabarat agents in their home had let her hide her face. But a ten-year-old boy was old enough to watch, to experience the seconds that stretched for hours, the minutes turning to years, to an eternity that still lived in the base of his brain. Hands had held his head forward, forced him to keep his eyes open.

The drop from the hoop wasn’t long enough. His father struggled to breathe against the noose. Someone grabbed his legs, hung from him. Pulled him down.

He’d watched the rope stretch.

And the crowd wailed, wild with exultation. With a mob’s delight, and the glee of being safe from the wrath of Qaddafi’s mercurial mercy. They screamed for his father’s death, and screamed for their own lives.

It was not the first, and was not the last, televised execution Qaddafi put on.

But it washis father’s.

He’d been murdered for the crime of loving Allah more than he loved Qaddafi. He’d loved Allah with his whole heart and soul, and the only thing he’d wanted in his life was to share that love with his son and his wife.

No one and nothing had saved him from the pain, the humiliation, of his murder. He’d lost control of his bladder, his bowels, as he died. David’s last image of his father, the best man in his life, was a piss-and-shit-stained djellaba swinging on the end of a rope, eyes bulging, tongue protruding, tears and snot smeared over his once-proud face.

No boy should see their father, their ideal, struck down, destroyed by hatred and violence.

Somehow, he fumbled enough words for Kris to understand, for Kris togetit. He watched the truth hit Kris, the weight of David’s confession, a truth he’dneverspoken aloud, not once since sneaking out of Libya’s sandy desert, smother Kris’s soul.

Evil, the truth of it, was a weight that a soul could barely carry. They’d already shouldered so much together. When would they break? When would the world, and all of its evil, shatter them?