Horses of God

Our orders were to follow each other at a distance, not to spread out, to speak to no one, but Emir Zaid and Abu Zoubeir looked the other way. They were walking behind, monitoring us discreetly.

At the training room, everything was ready. The Oubaida brothers had prepared the equipment meticulously. There were real explosive charges in the pockets of the vests. We’d done our initiation with bricks. That was why Emir Zaid advised us to be extremely careful. The Oubaida brothers explained to us that once the devices had been set, they were the only ones who could disco

17

THE DOORMAN OF the Ge

I was relieved to see Nabil enter the lobby. I signaled to him to walk slowly because of the slippery floor. In those clothes, with his chestnut hair and graceful walk, he could have been one of the hotel guests. He behaved normally, skirting a young woman who was sitting behind a table and seemed to be advising people. He walked past me, acting as if he didn’t know me, and paused for a moment near the restaurant, where foreigners were sitting at tables, though it was early afternoon. Maybe that was their custom. Unless in these places people were so rich they never stopped eating. I thought that as paradises go, this one would suit me just fine. There was no need to go right up in the sky to be happy. Snacking all day long and sprawling in the shade, surrounded by gorgeous sirens, would do for me. Satan had already started to undermine me, complicate my job, stop me from pulling the cord, so that he’d save the godless. Nabil was growing impatient; Fuad hadn’t showed. We were starting to worry about him. A westerner walked past my friend, eyeing up his backside. I thought to myself that even here Nabil’s ass would cause aggravation.

Behind a gleaming mahogany desk, two men dressed to the nines were greeting the tourists. Their smiles weren’t like ours. They seemed false, because it’s impossible to smile all day long, even when you’re happy. They must have had a lot of training to make their cheeks move like that, but the rest of their face remained expressionless. The tourists seemed to have no problem with these fixed grins and made a similar face themselves as they went about filling in forms. Watching their kids playing around the suitcases, I thought of the young Palestinian boy who’d died in his father’s arms. As soon as the loop started in my head, I stood up and walked toward them, advancing like a sleepwalker. I was myself and someone else at the same time. I noticed the tiniest details, as if my mind had suddenly woken up and entered a higher dimension. I looked over toward the entrance, but there was still no sign of Fuad. The doorman was still at his post and the future corpses were still pushing the revolving glass door. Time was passing and the tension was mounting. It was possible that Fuad had panicked and fled into the backstreets of Casablanca. Nabil must have been thinking the same thing because, as he came up to the desk, he nodded. That “yes” froze the blood in my veins, because it meant it was time to act. When he disappeared into the restaurant, my heart was thudding so hard I thought it would burst. Sweat ran down my forehead as I said my prayers; my trembling hand gripped the cord as if it were a lifeline. I was wrestling with Satan, who, by some diabolical trick, had turned the blond kids playing near the suitcases into the Palestinian boy who’d died in his father’s arms. I muttered a sura under my breath, then louder and louder, but the kids were still Palestinian. I squeezed the cord between my fingers but some evil force stopped me from pulling it. Then I saw the security guard approaching from a long way off with a determined look on his face; I knew he was coming for me. He was an inch from grabbing me when the explosion reverberated through the restaurant. Then I saw nothing, because I was catapulted through the air, blown away by another explosion, along with all the tourists around me. The guard, too, exploded into a thousand pieces, along with the little dog and the old bag carrying him, the guys behind the desk and their fixed grins. I’d pulled the cord inadvertently, because Satan’s cu