The Caliphate, André Gallo [best books to read ever .TXT] 📗

some time with my cousin Thiyya, who helped raise me, will be a good thing. I will visit you in the States. I’ll work it out, I promise. And I want to take you to the airport tomorrow.”

     The doorbell rang again, and Steve knew that Kella’s taxi had somehow made its way through the security gauntlet.

7. Blida, Algeria

Tariq al Khalil and Hussein al Kaylani followed El Maghrebi’s men out of the city and headed south toward Ghardaia, where al Khalil hoped to meet with a local leader. They expected to get to Timbuktu in about ten or twelve days, struggling through heat and the occasional sand storm during the day and stopping in oasis towns at night.

     So far, the road to Ghardaia was broad and paved. Both cars were equipped for desert travel with special sand filters for the air intakes, an extra jerry can of water and another of gasoline in retaining holders on each side, an additional spare tire, and tools that neither Al Khalil nor Hussein knew how to use.

     Hussein, normally physically unimposing, now was even less so in his oversized jellaba. His eyes, slits in his dark face, reflected an alertness and cleverness that some had under-appreciated at their expense. Keeping his eyes on the road and the watery-looking mirages that shimmered in the distance, he asked, “What did you think of El Maghrebi?”

     Al Khalil replied, “El Maghrebi said he was a Salafist, committed to pushing the borders of the Land of Peace back to their former boundaries and to impose Sharia law. I think that he just wants to rearrange Algerian furniture. We will rebuild Allah’s house.”

     “We need activists, doers, more than we need ideologues,” Hussein said. “Your vision is our guide. I wish we had somebody like El Maghrebi in Morocco.”

     “You’re right. In forging a pure faith, in the heat of fire if need be, to the glory of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, we need no more interpreters of the faith. But we can use all of the El Maghrebis we can find.”

     He paused for a second then continued.

     “You’re right about Morocco. It’s been very quiet. The leader of the cell, Lahlou, is neither a thinker nor an activist. Maybe you should pay them a visit, soon.”

     The men lapsed into silence. The world was losing its color; everything was becoming a sun-worn brown collage of sand and rock.

     Al Khalil dozed off but Hussein’s voice woke him. Hussein gestured at the desert and said, “I hope that you have thought about this strategy very carefully. Is governing this sandbox really the way to recreate the Caliphate that you want?”

     Al Khalil looked out the window at the arid, monotonous ground with the occasional group of nomads riding, or walking alongside their camels. He woke from his reverie and looked at Hussein.

     “The Prophet, may Allah bless him, started from Medina and conquered Arabia. His companions and successors then conquered most of the known world. They started from the desert. We, too, can start from the desert.”

     The thought provoked a vivid memory of Al Khalil’s uncle Said, and of his protégé Salim Salheldin, who were the reasons he was now driving through what Hussein called the “sand box.” The decision point for al Khalil had occurred after Said’s death. Drinking dark coffee in a Brussels apartment on Avenue Albert 1er, he had listened to Salim, his uncle’s protégé and replacement.

     Salim was tall and spare. Although dressed in a double-breasted suit, he could have spent the last forty days and nights in the desert. He had a hawkish profile and his hairline had receded to the top of his head. Al Khalil had always thought he dressed like a banker.

     “What the movement needs you to do in the countries bordering on the Sahara is what your uncle and I did in Europe. Already, we either control or can control entire towns in France, in Holland and Belgium through Sharia law.”

     Al Khalil knew that immigration combined with a high birth rate made Islam the fastest growing religion in Europe. He also knew that alienation was driving many immigrants to the mosque. Some immigrants were more Muslim in Europe than they ever were at home in Algeria or in Pakistan. One only had to look at the growing number of the faithful, especially the young, dressed in Levi jeans, Harvard sweatshirts and Yankee baseball caps, crowding around the mosques of Europe. It was easy to screen and recruit the more zealous.

     Tariq hadn’t replied right away, thoughtfully taking Salim’s cup and his own and refilling them. When he came back with the small, steaming cups with their scent of cardamom, he stood by the window and looked down at the traffic on the broad avenue below.

     “Isn’t putting my efforts in the Sahel a waste of my time when the countries of the Middle East, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are ruled by apostates? Our future, the Caliphate, needs those countries as the pillars of our empire.”

     Salim leaned back in his chair.

     “If you go to Cairo and speak out you’ll be killed just like your grandfather and what will we have gained except another martyr? Martyrs are plentiful. Besides, playing the Americans’ game of democracy is helping us make inroads through elections.”

     Tariq savored the irony of taking over through democracy for the purpose of later imposing the dictatorship of the mosque through Sharia.

     Salim went on, “Others are focusing on the Far Enemy, the United States and the other Western countries supporting the apostate leaders in the Middle East. If you can bring the populations of North Africa home, the tide will be irreversible; the Near Enemy, the corrupt leaders in Egypt, Syria and other countries will fall like ripe dates.”

     He paused. Tariq felt