Peace on Terror

By Kirtimaya Varma

Sadiq is a Pakistani American. He has a love-hate relationship with America and gives himself up to hatred when America declares what he thinks is war on Islam.
He leads an Islamist group aiming to nuke America. As he is about to bomb Washington, he discovers how much America is in him.
His conversion from an Islamist to a true Muslim and nationalist American is the novel’s story, set mainly in the U.S., Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
The story takes the War to a victory for both the sides, while Islamists discover secularism, democracy, and globalization are concepts as much rooted in Islam as in the West, and must be put into operation in the entire Muslim world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eTreasures Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Aug 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781942391166

Book preview

PEACE ON TERROR

By

Kirtimaya Varma

Published by eTreasures Publishing, LLC at Smashwords

ISBN 978-942391-16-6

*****

Copyright 2014 Kirtimaya Varma

All Rights Reserved

Cover Art by Suzannah Safi of SuzieDesign

No part of this book may be reproduced, except for review purposes, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any format or by any means without express written consent from the publisher. This book in electronic format may not be re-sold or re-distributed in any manner without express written permission from the publisher.

Print version published available at eTreasures Publishing, LLC

This book is entirely fiction and bears no resemblance to anyone alive or dead, in content or cover art. Any instances are purely coincidental. This book is based solely on the author’s vivid imagination.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any format or by any means without express written consent from the publisher. This book in electronic format may not be re-sold or re-distributed in any manner without express written permission from the publisher.

DEDICATION

Dedicated to Dada (my elder brother Jyotirmay Varma) for leading me to the path of literature.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The writer acknowledges the contribution of Islamic literature by the 877-WHY-ISLAM, an international Outreach Program managed by the Islamic Circle of North America.

Chapter One

Sadiq dreamed there were no Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, God-denying communists, United States, Israel, or India. In the world there were only Muslims and only one nation, the Islamic ummah. Jihad after jihad had destroyed dar al-harb, the territory of war, and established dar al-Islam, the territory of Islam, in all of Allah’s lands.

Many times he had seen this dream-vision when awake. But it remained unrealized. Now he saw its fulfillment while snoozing.

Yet he felt more frustrated. With the world becoming Islamic, he could not get any outlet for the Muslim anger surging in his body, mind, and soul for fourteen hundred years, though he was hardly forty.

He came out of his nap. I’ll not be in the world for long, he muttered beneath his breath, and I don’t want to be anywhere except in the paradise. All I ask, almighty Allah, is the chance of taking as many as possible Americans and other enemies of Islam while leaving the world.

Allah, he intoned as he continued, first raising and then dropping his voice and feeling sacredness throughout his being. The holy sound could sanctify even Peshawar.

Two decades ago he was in Peshawar in the jihad against the Soviets. Now he was in Peshawar in the jihad against the Americans. In-between the two jihads, the world had turned a full circle. But he saw no roundness. Indeed, the world had become more skewed than before.

Allah, he called again.

He found himself seated on a white plastic chair with a high back. He was alone. Another plastic chair with a broken arm and a table of varnished maple were the only furniture around. Cigarettes allowed to burn beyond the table’s beveled edge had left depressions and ash-colored scars. He consulted his wristwatch, a gold Breitling with several dials. It was past midnight. The best time for secret conclaves, according to Mullah Rashid. Sadiq was waiting for the Mullah.

He heard low taps on the wooden door. Yes? Who?

Recognizing the answering voice, he rushed toward the door. With a metallic sound, he unbolted the latch, opened a chink, then wider.

"Salam-alaikum," Sadiq said with a half-smile to Mullah Rashid and his driver Majeed, and pushed the door ajar.

"Alaikum salam," they replied together.

The Mullah smuggled himself into the room. Majeed held a rifle he gave to Sadiq without stepping in. He said he would wait in his vehicle, turned around, and hurried down the staircase. Sadiq shut the door behind him and glanced at the weapon. It was a VR1 semi-automatic sniper rifle.

Sadiq looked up at the Mullah. The Mullah’s beard was twelve inches of gray turbulence obscuring his face and firmly rooted like his beliefs. His forehead was pinched and lined, and his eyes, set deep below his overhanging brows, were sharp and clear, taking their shine from inside his Islamic being than from the outside world. Beyond his lacy skullcap and white tunic, and the small stoop on his shoulders, making his robe longer than his body, Sadiq discerned the Mullah’s bonds with all the mullahs in the last fourteen centuries after the Prophet. The strength in Mullah Rashid’s convictions seemed to subdue the wrinkles on his face.

Death to United States. Death to Israel. Liberate Palestine. If we can defeat one superpower, why not the other? March, march, march toward Jerusalem, the words tumbled from the Mullah’s mouth as if by rote. There were no tremors of age in his voice. His eyelids closed briefly, showing tiny purple veins.

His mouth locked in a grimace and eyes latched on Sadiq, he went on, "In compliance with Allah’s orders, we must carry our jihad more to al-Adou al-Baeed from al-Adaou al-Qareeb. To the far enemy, the United States of America, from the near enemy, Muslim pro-American rulers."

When talking to jihadis, mullahs operating globally translated Arabic theological terms into English, more for emphasis than for clarity. They spoke with greater authority when conveying Allah’s orders than their own.

Sadiq was convinced more than the Mullah that the holy man had a hotline to Allah. The Mullah’s stern pronunciations were like poetry to Islam. Sung for Sadiq. There had been no end to the poetry through their meetings in the last ten years that the Mullah had been Sadiq’s religious teacher, theological guide, and spiritual mentor. Indeed, he was Sadiq’s character, mind, and wisdom.

May Allah’s curse fall on Columbus for discovering America, the Mullah continued, explaining his philosophical beliefs. Muslims would have been saved a lot of misery if America hadn’t been discovered.

Wouldn’t Muslims have suffered more misery if there were no America for the Muslim rage to expend on? Sadiq asked, drawing from his dream a while ago.

The Mullah looked thoughtful. Perhaps. That’s the reason Allah has made America. America is a necessity so that Muslims can destroy it. Islam may lose its appeal if Muslims give up their goal of obliterating America.

Such was Mullah Rashid’s aversion toward the Americans that when the United States intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo to protect Muslims from Christians, he criticized its actions as anti-Islamic and pro-Christian. Such was his fear of United States pervasiveness that when he saw trucks bearing Red Cross or UN logos providing succor to Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, he lamented the United States presence in these two countries.

Sadiq motioned Mullah Rashid to a chair. The Mullah staggered toward it and parked himself as if lightening his own burden. In his right hand he held the Quran. Throwing furtive glances here and there, he coughed against his left fist. Sadiq pulled a chair near the Mullah’s and sat down.

The room on the top of a three-story building was one of Sadiq’s safe houses, apartments lost among clusters of dwellings in the tangle of side streets and dirt roads on city fringes. He could disappear for days or at times for weeks in such places he occupied alone. He chose them at random. They were rented under false names, so that they could never be tracked back to him. His fake passports supported his many identities. He was a rising star of the al-Qaeda, with a growing influence in the Taliban and Islamic State. How much of the world would be chasing him some day was less of a fear and more of a nourishment feeding his jihadi self, giving meaning to his life and life to his meaning.

~ * ~

The Mullah looked up as if pleading to Allah. Cobwebs, ready to collapse, yet strong crisscrossed the ceiling. They teemed with spiders bringing the room to life. The smell of dead fish pervaded the air.

Mullah Rashid sighed. He closed his eyes as if in a trance. His eyelids shuddered with the pulse of the capillaries within them. He felt an invisible extension into realms purer than the three dimensions of his everyday world. A sensation of pouring in and pouring out. Of silence in speech. Of speech in silence.

He opened his eyes and struggled to position his small frame comfortably into the chair. Through a broken windowpane he saw smoke and fire curdling the city by night. The sounds of gunfire and explosions disconcerted him only a little. He knew to share in the spoils of hatred.

That night will change the world, the Mullah said, measuring each syllable. You’ll witness history. More than that, create it. The world is watching the war. You’ll decide whether it’s victory for us jihadis, and defeat for the United States and its allies, or the other way round.

Sadiq held the rifle for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’ll create history with this. Islamic history, he said, and looked up prayerfully. "Inshallah, I’ll succeed," he reiterated in a husky voice and leaned toward the Mullah.

The Mullah stood. Sadiq followed. The Mullah rested his hands on Sadiq’s shoulders. There was something in that touch which flowed from Sadiq’s soul to the Mullah’s, and from his soul to Sadiq’s. It was the nectar of Islam.

Sadiq was leaving for the border city of Lahore on his way to India to strike at America. The Mullah’s facial sturdiness gave way to a paternal concern. Sadiq might never return. He raised his arms and tried to reach Sadiq’s hair. He could not reach his disciple’s head which was six feet and more above the ground. He held Sadiq’s arms instead. In their girth and power, he sensed a promise. The promise of a favorite disciple. He saw a word written invisibly on Sadiq’s face made larger than life by beard flowing in a hirsute wilderness down his cheeks and chin across his chest to his navel. That word was invincibility.

~ * ~

Sadiq scrutinized the rifle, holding it in both the hands and turning it up and down and sideways. With its laser-sight attachment, night vision goggles, and telescope, he could hit his target at night by firing long range ammunition such as .338 Lapua Magnum or .408 Chey-tac. How much of America would be in his life if he were to live after his mission? How much of America would be in his death if he were to die in his mission?

There was so much of America in him. Earning a Ph.D. in the United States wasn’t the peak of his student life, whose culmination he saw not in the academic institutes he had attended in the United States after graduating in Pakistan, but in the battlefields of Pakistan and Afghanistan where the CIA made him what he wanted to be, a jihadi fighting in the defense of Islam. Could he ever forget those days and nights of CIA training in terror warfare against the Russians in Afghanistan?

Peshawar was a forward command post for CIA, who trained the mooj, the CIA’s fond appellation for mujahidins, and transformed Peshawar into a warfare training ground, and also a weapons producer of Chinese AK-47 assault rifles, British Lee Enfield rifles, and Russian pistols in huge quantities.

Such was his commitment to the CIA that he took training in warfare as well as weapons production and fought the Russians even as, to contain the Soviet Union, the United States sent Afghanistan and Pakistan to the paths of their own destruction, paths eagerly taken by both.

The CIA made Peshawar the choice land of jihad during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. To meet, train, fight, and forge connections, jihadis came to Peshawar from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Indonesia, and many countries, including Yemen, a single nation divided into two on the ground of tribal rivalry and united into one on the basis of common religion, but always split, whether united or divided. Sadiq discovered with them reasons for jihads and more jihads. If discovery failed him, invention did not.

Sadiq saw Peshawar emerging as the clearing-house of global jihad. The city’s villages and streets and alleys resounded day and night with gunfire. The jihadis made it impossible for people to sleep on a peaceful night. Peace was disturbing with its jarring silence grating into the ears. Thanks to these fighters in their fatigues, such disturbance was rare. Did they all have visas? The answer did not matter. The laws of Islamabad were for those who wanted to break them, and not for those who did not want any laws to break or follow.

His fighting spirit, like that of other jihadis, did not slacken after the Soviet defeat and withdrawal. Indeed, it became stronger. As there were no enemies to confront, the jihadis turned their guns on one another. The staccato sound of gunfire became the distinctive Voice of Peshawar heralding jihad to the world. Jihad against whom? Whomsoever. Gunfire could be heard intermittently everywhere in Peshawar. The city continued to be driven by lungpower, firepower, and Islamic power, which found violent expressions, and at times reasons.

Yes, there was so much of America in Sadiq that America was a part of his jihadi nostalgia. Could he think of harming America? No.

He narrowed his eyes with a forward movement of the head and peered at the Mullah and then at the rifle. From where did uncertainty come during those moments when actions were about to reach the climax? A lump rose in his throat that he swallowed down. But it seemed to rise again.

Wasn’t America the country where his late parents’ aspirations for wealth and prosperity, and his own, brought him? The country where he got married and became a father. His wife, son, and daughter flashed smiles before his mind’s eyes. No, don’t go, he heard them say in the silent space between him and the Mullah. The jihadi in him superseded the father in him and the husband in him. That was a moment he validated to himself his truth as a Muslim over and above his other truths.

The Mullah walked with short steps up and down the room, at times swaying from side to side shaking his head, and muttered, Look at the audacity of these Americans? They teach us morality. How dare they? They go to the church just once a week. If at all they go. That, too, on Sundays and not on Fridays. We go to the mosque five times every day.

Sadiq entreated something from Mullah Rashid in silent words. The Mullah was such an Islamic force that when perceived through Sadiq’s Islamic mind could solidify molten steel or melt solid steel. They sat down and discussed their plan at length.

When the sky brightened fractionally in the east proclaiming the dawn, Sadiq was ready to go. He wore a voluminous salwar and a loose kameez stretching from his shoulders to below his knees. He hid a dagger in the right pocket of his kameez, and the rifle in a heavy-duty protective box. The Mullah blessed him as he stepped out of the room. The box dangled in his left hand.

"Allahu Akbar," Sadiq said before turning to leave. The fire of hell burned in his eyes that dreamed of the heaven promised in the Scriptures.

"Allahu Akbar, the Mullah replied edging toward the door. I know you crave for shihada, martyrdom. As a person close to Allah, I promise you Allah is waiting to reward you in the paradise."

Sadiq walked down the stairs on the way to the paradise. He was assailed by a dank smell, but when he stepped out of the building, a wisp of air greeted him. The air was not as fresh as in the normal times. It reeked of smoke and chemicals. Yet there was something in it to enable him to start anew. Majeed waited for him in a red Dunbar, an armored truck, stolen from the military. Such vehicles had a better chance of reaching the destination.

Where shall I take you? he asked after Sadiq had settled down on the rear seat.

Peshawar railway station.

To the middle of the city? In this kind of situation?

Sadiq read Majeed’s fears. "Inshallah, we’ll reach the station. I know the warlords here."

There could be somebody you don’t know.

I’ve enough dollars to take care of all circumstances.

Fake dollars or genuine? Majeed asked with a mischievous smile that showed his knowledge of the state of affairs in Peshawar.

Both. We can use whichever works. Sadiq, too, smiled.

If anything happens to us?

Allah shall wait to welcome us in the heaven. After all, we’re in the service of Islam, Sadiq said in a booming voice he always used when drawing strength from Islam.

The logic was irrefutable.

The Dunbar chugged and coughed, and then seemed to die. It came alive again with a series of low sounds before getting into motion, kicking clouds of dust into the air with a stench of cordite. Then it began moving forward, bumping and jolting and trundling on the shoddy track that passed for road.

Occasional bursts of gunshot. Rumbles of explosives. Screeches of metals. Shouts of war. Flashes of lightning. Various sounds and sights, definable as well as indefinable. Sadiq looked at the piles of rubble. Would these soon outnumber livable houses? Buildings burned in the distance, spewing columns of smoke. Some showed their entrails after blowing apart. Peshawar had become uglier than what it had been before the Soviet defeat, with the perpetuity of war looming amid pranks of peace, while lawlessness fed to fundamentalism, and fundamentalism, to lawlessness.

There was a hint of pink and orange in the eastern skies. Gradually, the city limped into the day. Chai-khanas cropped up by the roadside. Such a tea-house was made with a fire, a brew of tea, and a group of men around the fire. Sheds that passed for eateries began sprouting, with men struggling to kindle the coal in circular mud furnaces. People started coming out on the street. They had to do something for a living, even if it meant endangering their lives.

Sadiq’s accustomed eyes could differentiate between the turbans of Pashtuns, Waziris, Ghilzai, Afridis, and Pakistanis, contrasting with the fur-trimmed winter hats of Uzbeks and Tajiks. He gazed at a person with an RPG launcher on his shoulder.

At a street corner the Dunbar turned right. A shack with open sides and a thatched roof supported on wooden pillars gave out an aroma of meat grilled over tongues of fire from coals. The odor overrode the diesel smell from the vehicles and tickled Sadiq’s appetite. He wished he could stop and relish in the food delight, but knew the risks. In most cities one would generally keep one’s weapons hidden so as not to attract attention. But in Peshawar one would attract attention if one were to hide one’s weapon and invite bullets if one were to display it. It was best not to be seen, especially when on an important mission.

When he saw the two minarets of the Mohabbat Khan Mosque, he felt relieved reaching the city center. The floral and geometric designs of the prayer-hall sheltered beneath three low-fluted domes floated before his eyes in a wide range of colors. The Dunbar headed toward the Church Road, a name that smacked of blasphemy, crossed the Reti Gate, the business center of Peshawar, and continued on to Ashraf Road before turning left to the ancient Grand Trunk Road, initiated by the Maurya Empire in the third century before Christ, and now linking Bangladesh, across north India, to Peshawar and beyond to Kabul.

The Dunbar swerved to Saddar Road. Sadiq thanked Allah when a board on his left declared Peshawar Chhavani in Urdu, with Peshawar Cantonment written in small letters in English under the Urdu words. He got down from the armored truck, bade Majeed goodbye by waving his hand, and walked toward the railway station, bracing up for the five-hour journey from Peshawar to Lahore.

Chapter Two

Dr. Ghulam Ahmed led Sadiq to a brown leather sofa in his drawing room at his mansion in Lahore. They sat down. Sadiq felt the cushioning and the multi-layer padding at the back. A smoked-glass coffee table lay in the front. He rested his left hand on the saddle bag arm, and glanced at the clean lines and channel stitching, while his mind went back to his childhood days in Lahore when he had lived in the neighborhood of this mansion before migrating to the United States for post-graduation studies at the Colorado State University.

You’re visiting Lahore after a long time, my boy, Ahmed said.

There wasn’t any occasion for me to come here after I sold off my house when my parents passed away, Sadiq replied, his voice many notches lower than Ahmed’s. If I’d half as many family members in Lahore as you have, I would have come here every two or three months like you. Ahmed had been his childhood neighbor in Lahore and his professor and guide at the Colorado State University.

They talked for some time about the transformation of Pakistan from a state supporting terror to terror supporting the state, and got up for dinner.

Let’s have some whiskey first, Ahmed proposed.

They walked to the dining room, taking their seats facing each other at the table.

I’ve stopped drinking whiskey, Sadiq replied.

Mullah Rashid doesn’t like it? Ahmed asked peering through his angular-framed spectacles minimizing his facial roundness. His patchy hair was drawn backward accentuating his wide forehead. Virtues are difficult to cultivate over a long period, especially when you’re close to a holy man, Ahmed went on, smiling at his dig at Mullah Rashid. Someday you’ll nurture great virtues. Not merely singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments, but also the Islamic value of seeing Muslim and non-Muslim alike inherent in the Quranic teaching of equality of mankind.

What a dereliction of Islamic duty. More than that a theological and logical absurdity, the words stalled in Sadiq’s throat.

At times he avoided arguing with Ahmed on religious matters. He knew if he argued, Ahmed would inundate him with quotations from Islamic scriptures. Ahmed had thoroughly studied Islam and was one of those Muslims who could get the best of both the worlds, of science and technology, of Islamic theology.

What’s the matter, Sadiq? Ahmed asked. You look tense. I hope you aren’t going for another jihad. As long as you’re close to Mullah Rashid, you’ll never be far from a jihad.

Sadiq did not reply. He attributed Ahmed’s thinking to his origin from Turkey, the country which had debunked Islam a century ago under Kemal Pasha Ataturk, and after Ataturk’s death, tried to balance itself between secularism and Islam. He wondered whether he should inform Ahmed he was leaving for another jihad the next