Read Online A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka - Free Book Online Page B

thanks to Muhammad and to Allah, and he wondered at following the Prophet’s footsteps in this way, wondered if they were not, perhaps, deifying the Prophet himself, and this troubled him.
    The second stage of the Hajj began, and Shuneal and almost two million others made their way to those holy places outside Makkah, to Mina first, praying as was required of him, and then the next morning to Arafat, entering the Namira Mosque to hear the sermon and to pray to Allah over and over again, until his back ached from the motion and his legs felt cramped folded beneath his body. Around him others broke away from their supplication, engaged in quiet conversation, reading silent passages from the
Qu’ran.
But Shuneal found strength in his prayers, here, in the words, “There is no God but Allah, He has no equal. All dominion and praise are His, and His power is absolute over all things,” and he supplicated himself until the sun had all but vanished from the horizon.
    Without rest, he left Arafat the same night, making his way with a thinning crowd to Muzdalifah, and arriving just before midnight, with barely enough time to spare to pray. He offered thanks and supplications to Allah until just before sunrise, and though he had taken water on the journey, he felt himself wearied and weakened, his head felt light, and his thoughts wandered again. But this time they wandered not with his doubts but with his thoughts on Paradise and Allah and the Will of God. His worship had distanced him from his body.
    Just before sunrise, Aamil helped him to his feet, and the two young men made their way slowly back to Mina. Taking the pebbles they had gathered, they reached the first pillar, the Jamrah al-Aqaba, the one standing closest to Makkah, and they threw their stones at Satan himself, and Shuneal put what strength he had left in him into his arm as he let each fly, and with each throw he said, “God is the greatest,” his voice intense and cracking.
    He watched the pebbles bounce harmlessly from the Jamrah, and he felt himself begin to weep.
    He understood. Satan was not a pillar. Satan would not be stopped with a pebble. Shuneal looked on the Jamrah and saw instead his parents in Sheffield, complacent and arrogant in their simplicity; he saw Americans rolling into Baghdad and the British rolling into Basra; he saw Coalition bombs falling on Afghanistan; he saw Israeli rockets in Gaza.
    He threw his pebbles and offered his choked prayer, and when he had thrown the last, he bent to scoop more, enraged, and Aamil had to stop him then, to grab his hands and pull him away, telling him to be calm, that he understood, that he had seen it as well. Shuneal trembled with the anger, the effort of self-control, and though he could once again see the Jamrah for what it was, the image remained dancing before his eyes. Even as he ate of the goat that had been prepared, even as Aamil and he and the others shaved the hair from their heads, he found himself swimming in memories of fire and blood.
    “How do you fight Satan?” he asked Aamil insistently.
    “With everything,” his friend answered.
    •
    Shuneal completed the Hajj, returning again to the Ka’bah, making the prescribed circuits once again, finishing the pilgrimage as it had been completed for over a thousand years. He and the others returned to Madinah, back to the house that Prince Salih had arranged for their comfort. All of them, it seemed, had been touched by their journey, each feeling its effects in privately profound ways. Some of the students, freed from the weight of their pilgrimage, began to laugh and joke again, talking of what they had seen and experienced, speaking of what they would do upon returning to Egypt. Their time was almost at an end, their visas, specially acquired for them by the Prince himself, soon to expire.
    The impending departure filled Shuneal with a growing sense of despair. He had tried Egypt already and had been told there was no place for him there. He