"In the year 2010 a mutant strain of the Bird-influenza virus became lateraly infectious in humans. The resulting epidemic first decimated, then devastated populations all over the world. Using the widespread chaos, outer-jihadist groups with access to Iranian weapons-grade fissionable material, carried out a series of co-ordinated suitcase-sized nuclear suicide atacks on all the major seats of Western Government. Headless, diseased and dying, anarchy reigned in Europe and the USA. And from the ashes, the sword of Islam arose.In the year 2023, the first of what would become known as the 'propaganda parks' were opened in the Middle East, themed on late 20th and early 21st century Western culture, and carefully designed to show it in the worst possible light, to counteract the rise of subversive intellectual literature apologizing the West at that time."
Ever since the age of 7 Arif had wanted to be a cowboy. His parents had taken him to the city's themepark where he'd marvelled at the whooping horsemen. The hot summer sun flashing off their bright spurs and chrome pistols, the snorting of the horses and the smell of sweat and gunsmoke, all had mesmerized him. He'd pestered his parents relentlessly for a costume for weeks. The day it was finally bought for him he'd torn it straight out of its wrapper in his haste to put it on. He'd stood and spun in front of the mirror, admiring the PVC chaps over the thin polyester masquerading as denim, the tassled real-leather waistcoat and the floppy brim of his pint-size ten-gallon hat. He'd fallen in love with the twin plastic Colt45's, snug in their holsters, and soon wore the silver paint off the trigger guards through days of twirling them round his pudgy fingers.
Even in the thoroughly air-conditioned dressing room, the day's heat manages to sneak in somehow and make him sweat. Nervously he re-adjusts the rake of his hat and twists the rubber mask in his hands. Today is his first day on the job.
Ahmet, the most senior of the horsemen, lolls by the water-dispenser, his spurred heels up on the desk. "Important show today people, Vengeance day celebrations. You all know what to do. Arif - if you get confused, just give your horse its head - it knows the steps better than you do."
Arif nods and stands to clink over to the full length mirror on the back of the door. He stares at his reflection. fleetingly, he sees the child spin and whoop behind the figure in the glass. He thinks the memory should make him feel something. "Yes Sir." He hears himself say, still lost in the depths, "Important day."
"Well then, newbie - we're on in a couple of minutes and I need a piss. Get your ass on your horse - You'll be leading us out."
He'd learnt to shoot with his cousin Abdurrahim, up in the hills behind his Grandfather's farm, in the week of the Sacrifice Festival, the year he turned 10. Abdurrahim had dragged him out of bed at dawn, putting a finger to his sleep dewed lips. Saying nothing, the older boy had tugged an old automatic out of his sash and pointed out of the window. Quiet as snakes they had slipped out and trekked a mile or so into the scrub. Abdurrahim left him by a wind-scoured tree and paced 20 yards or so, scooping up flat stones to stack as targets, his brown fingers darting into the sandy earth like a bearcub hooking dead salmon from a pond.
The gun had made an awful racket, an explosive bark that seemed to echo off every rock. Arif watched, half terrified, half entranced as Abdurrahim had first clipped one of the rock piles, and shattered another.Then his cousin very carefully passed the gun to him and, enclosing his small fingers in his own, had squeezed off a shot. The gun had kicked back hard, bruising the heel of his hand, and the sand had kicked up a full yard from the leftmost of the targets. Arif had squirmed, whining to be allowed to shoot alone. Abdurrahim stepped behind him and, admonishing him on pain of death and damnation to be extra careful, had let him shoot until the magazine was empty.
The stables smell of old horse-sweat and dust, Arif throws his saddle over the Arabian Mare and threads the buckles. Punching the horse in the ribs to get her to breathe out, he cinches the strap another notch tighter. Making sure no-one is watching he pulls out his guns. They are fairly faithful reproductions of the classic Colts from the movies, only the cylinders are wrong: the calibur too small and loaded with simple wads of black-powder and iron-filings for a bang and some sparks. Clicking them out he stuffs them into the saddle bag. Withdrawing the replacements he's painstakingly made, he reloads his weapons. The chrome plate is off-colour, but he's sure nobody will notice, or care if they do. He swings up into the saddle and soothes his horse.
He'd met Nilufer when his parents took him to visit at the house of one of his Father's business friends. She had been too young then, to have yet taken the veil. Overtall and gangly, she'd been all limbs and hair. Her teeth had flashed like pearls in the dim light of the sitting room when she'd smiled shyly in welcome. He remembered that smile now, the first of many.
Arif clutches at the pommel, his breathing suddenly ragged. Nilufer swims again before him in his minds eye, the memory of sunlight dappling her cooling skin beneath the water
They'd been too rich, Nilufer's family, too rich to consider arranging a marriage between him and her. At 16, Arif had sat and listened stoically as his father quietly explaned that he had to forget her. "You must marry a suitiable girl." The aging patriarch had said. "We will find you a good girl, don't worry - someone who'll look after you, bear you sons, do you think I married the girl I wanted..?" Arif had nodded, but in his secret heart, rebelled.
And so they'd continued to meet, stealing moments together at sympathetic friends houses, always scared, always hushed, always over too soon, always hopeless.
"...In the Year of the Prophet 1379 Allah set a pestilence upon the infidel, carried upon the wings of his creations. Like the avenging sword it cut a swathe through the enemy, sparing none but the most hardy of the unbelievers, so that they may come to understand the glory of the one true God..."
The tannoy cuts through his remembrances, it's harsh tones reverberating through the loose-nailed boards of the stable door. His horse dances nervously on spot, nudging up against the steeds of the other three horsemen, all packed close for an explosive exit. He leans over the mare's neck and breathes nonsense into the horse's ear. Snorting, she quietens.
"...And in the wake of this plague did the bearers of God's retribution spread their holy atomic fire from one city to the next, beheading the governments of the infidel with divine and potent wrath... And the faithful men of these unclean countries did arise from the ashes, and ascend and wrest away the reigns of power from the evil states..."
Arif still remembers her face when she'd unclipped the veil, the glory of it seeming to light up the room. The sudden revelation of the woman painfully displacing his memory of the girl. He remembers the feel of her hair, oiled silk through his blunt fingers. Greedy and stupid and young and frustrated he'd pulled the Burqua from the body of his beloved and pressed his fevered lips to her olive skin. Seeking desperately to set his brand upon a thing he could own only fleetingly, his hands had clutched her pliant flesh and marked it with his love, and with his teeth he'd left twin crescent moons upon her shoulders. Fighting but not fighting he'd pulled her down into the cushions. Thus his, he'd sent her out once more away from him and sat and smoked in the darkness of a room still heated by their passion.
"...And thus did Allah in his wisdom bring peace to all the Earth..."
This is their cue: the four horesemen of the West, led by Arif masked as Bush Jnr., explode through the weakened boards and out into the street. Their end of the street is backed by facades, life-size reproductions of wild-west frontier whore-houses, shops and saloons. The other end - a destination they now gallop to meet, is sculpted sand and nomads' tents. Watching their approach is a wall of tourists, all sweating in the hot sun. The show has begun.
Bush Snr. and Blair peel off to the right and left, fanning out to fill the width of the hard-packed dirt. Sharon keeps pace with Arif, shadowing him slightly back and to the right. They wheel to face the crowd. Arif, as scripted, vaults off his horse and scoops up some dirt in his gloved hand. With his other hand he pushes home a plunger concealed on his belt: a gout of black crude suddenly mixes with the soil in his hand and seeps through his fingers, to fall in glittering onyx blobs to the earth.
"Oil." He shouts. "War for Oil."
At once a group poor Arab villagers break from the tents and run to face the horsemen. All save one kneel at the booted feet of the cowboys. A woman, flower of İslam in virginal white, approaches the masked, forboding form of Arif slowly, on timid feet.
"Please." She begs, her hands outstretched, "you cannot take away the land of our fathers, the land allotted to us by Allah, the one true God..."
There is a brief silence as crowd holds its collective breath.Then Arif breaks the tableaux and seizes her chin through the veil. He hurls her sprawling upon the oil-fouled earth. "Kill her." He shouts to the other Wild-Westerners,"Kill them all."
Arif had killed her, his father had explained. Killed her as surely as if he'd pushed her in himself.
Nilufer's Mother had seen the marks he'd left on her body. Nilufer's Mother, a dutiful wife, had told Nilufer's Father. Nilufer's Father, a pious man, had told the Mullah. And the Mullah, a man without mercy, had condemmed her to death. Nilufer's Father had decided she would be drowned in the family pool, to wash away the stains upon the family honour.
And so the two famillies had assembled on the poolside upon the allotted day. Arif's family facing into the sun, and Nilufer's on the opposite side. Nilufer had been quickly stripped by family servants, her hands and feet bound and weighted with stones. The family doctor had clamped open her jaws and injected a local anaesthetic into the root of her tongue, that she may not further blaspheme. Nilufer had looked pale and stark in the harsh sunlight, her knees shaking and bright jewels of amber urine bedecking her thighs. She had teetered on the edge of the pool, the chlorinated water unrippled and azure-blue below, inviting perhaps, on any other day but that. Her eyes, suddenly wild, had locked on Arif's - pleading, imploring, hopeless. And Arif's Father had suddenly gripped his arm like a vice. "You cannot help her now." He'd hissed through gritted teeth, "This is your doing. Do nothing to further disgrace our family."
Nilufer's Father had pushed her in. It had taken her a long time to drown. She thrashed, she floundered, she shrieked and gargled and coughed water. For a time she had allowed herself to sink, only to spring up again from the bottom of the pool, breaking the surface and drawing in breath. Arif had briefly allowed himself to hope that they would be moved by her courage, but the faces of the other watchers remained impassive. Nilufer grew tired, she missed her footing, hampered as she was. Her body convulsed under the surface, as she had helplessly sucked in water. Vomit frothed and curled, wreathing her face like a soiled bridal veil. She'd sunken slowly, limbs quietening, liquid, to gently stand tiptoe upon the bottom. Her outline had wavered in the water, eyes open, lips blued, a pale statue had stood where once their had been life. Where once there had been love.
Honour restored, the famillies had left the servants to dispose of the body and clean the pool. After his Father's final stern words, Arif had been taken out and lashed, 30 strokes across his back. Then, beaten, bloodied and disinherited, he had been thrown out on the street.
The guns bark and cough, clouds of cordite smoke and sparks fill the air, the villagers, white robes besmirched with fake blood fall where they kneel, to lie unmoving. Only the virgin remains untouched. Spitting curses under his mask, Bush Snr. leaps off his horse and confronts Arif; leaning close whilst brandishing his weapon at the watching crowd he whispers fiercely:
"Shoot her you stupid son of a prostitiute..!"
"My gun's are jammed." Arif lies through gritted teeth beneath the mask, "You shoot her."
Turning, Bush Snr. points his gun somewhere slightly to the left of the woman's face and pulls the trigger. The Woman throws herself backward to lie spread-eagled. The crowd crane their necks to look at the white curves of her revealed calves. Arif sees the twitch of her hand as she empties the hidden syringe that cowls her head in red.
The crowd grows indignant and low hisses of disapproval sussurate through the bone dry air.
Suddenly frenzied hoof-falls make themselves heard from the far end of the street. From beween the landscaped dunes, sunlight flashes along the bright edge of the sword of İslam. Bearded and fierce-eyed, the righteous slayer of the infidel, the scourge of the unbeliever, the hero of the people gallops into view.
Osama rears his horse and roars into the face of the West: "Allahu akbar !!!"
Arif, alone and penniless and despairing, had cast himself upon the mercy of his friends. And soon found that he had none. All were too frightened to be seen with him, even to speak with him. He was feared and shunned. Finally he'd found work, tiring and tragically paid, as a lathe operator in a munnitions factory. He'd eaten badly and lived poorly and eventually saved enough money to buy himself a gun: An ugly snub-nosed revolver of indescriminate make. He'd pressed out the barrel and machined a new one. He'd re-tooled the grip. He'd stolen bullets and practiced by night, trekking into the hills as he had as a child. After a while he'd become able to shoot down a bird on the wing: simply a shadow in the starlight. When he'd allowed himself to sleep, with his bastard Colt beneath his pillow, he'd drempt of Nilufer.
Of Nilufer, and of Cowboys.
The crowd howls in adulation. Bush Snr. takes a scimitar thrust through the chest and crashes to the dust - hawking a capsule's worth of blood into the dirt. He crawls, hands scrabbling, to fall across the body of the woman he's 'killed', slumping with his head upon her breast, his hat knocked askew. Osama wheels his horse and, seemingly impervious to the gunblasts of Blair and Sharon, rides them down, buffetting them from their horses. He dispatches the two of them with casual downward slashes of his sword, leaving them hunched and writhing in the dirt. Osama's robes swirl like some desert djinn, and a wordless rictus of outrage lights his face in a corona of hatred. The crowd roars like some many headed hydra and pushes against the rope that restrains them. The security attendants look bored, and tug them back.
Osama springs down from his steed and paces to confront Arif-Bush Jnr, holding him at sword point.
"In the name of Allah I will drive you from this land..!" Cries Osama, "No longer will your infidel hands disgrace the sacred land of our Father's or your blasphemous ways pervert the minds of our children from the teachings of the prophet, blessed be his name..." Slowly he raises his sword, the shadow of its blade falling across across Arif's rubber cheek.
He had begun to attend the themepark shows weekly, studying the moves. He'd returned home each night and practiced the dialogue he could remember. He'd saved some more, and bought himself riding lessons. Seldom speaking, he'd made no friends. He'd stayed away from the general houses his work-mates frequented. He'd listened unwillingly to their stories of loveless rutting on the breaks, and stayed silent. Inside his guts had twisted in revulsion, for them, for himself, for everything. Nothing had shown upon his face.
The week Bush Jnr. had gotten his leg stamped on by a horse, and the crowd had heard the clean, greenstick snap as his femur broke even above the furore, Arif had left early, gone home and gotten his gun. Returning he'd presented himself at the park supervisor's office and offered himself as replacement. The man had laughed, a dirty mirth, all tobaccoed teeth, and told him to leave. Arif had silently risen up from his chair and opened the window. The wind had been shooing dust along the empty street outside. Drawing his gun he'd shot the head off the cock on the steeple. Swivelling he'd shot a Coke can off the lip of the horse-trough. Feathering the hammer he'd blown three tight concise holes in a triangle around the horse-shoe sign above the Blacksmiths. With his last shot he'd nicked the rope of the flag-pole, and sent the Stars and Stripes to puddle in the dirt at its base. After some shouting, and later a quieter haggling over his pay, he'd been given the job. Arif had smiled. The expression had felt alien upon his lips. Later he'd sent his company-complimentary tickets to addresses he knew by heart.
"Dieeee!!!!" Howls Osama, spraying saliva, and brings the blade arcing down.
Arif knows he's supposed to die now. Just like Nilufer. There isn't supposed to be any choice. It is written. But this time, this time, they've forgotten it's only written in a script. The inevitability of his fate is questionable.
His hand blurring toward his holster, Arif quick-draws and shoots the scourge of the unbeliever in the face. The heavy bullet, soft lead he's shaped himself, and pressed into a cartridge he's hand-machined and primed and capped himself, smashes its way through of the back of Osama's skull and balloons out his Sheik's headgear, bright red-white chunks of bone and maroon-grey brain ripping through the material. Osama collapses in a wreck of flesh, his eyeballs popped upon his cheeks and his scimitar tripping from his hand. The echo of the shot dies, leaving a breathless silence it its wake. To Arif it sounds like justice. He has eleven bullets left.
Ten - he turns and shoots Blair the butcher through the temple.
Nine - he turns and shoots Old father Bush in the heart.
Eight - he catches Sharon the Boatman rising to his feet and blows the vertebrae out of his neck.
Seven/six - he shoots the security guards in their Desert-robes, one in the throat and one in the forehead. Bang-bang, they fall.
Its chambers emptied, he drops the gun and draws the other. Tearing off his mask and striding into the panicked crowd, he finds a perculiar silence in the cacophony. There he sees, and there.
Five - he shoots Nilufer's Father, whom he had invited, in the belly at point blank. Gut-shot, the man, old now, withered and shaking, drops at Arif's feet. Arif stamps and dances on the hands that pushed his beloved, breaking and crunching them under his heels.
Four - he shoots his Father, whom he also invited, in the mouth, splintering teeth and cleaving the tongue that stayed so silent during the thrashings at the pool. He wastes a breath to spit upon the corpse.
Three - He shoots the sun that dared to dawn upon that day.
Two - He shoots the moon from the bloody flag in the hand of a child.
One-
One -
One-
Alone now, alone in the dust and surrounded by the ululations of the women he falls to his knees. Sirens begin to howl in the distance, and the shouts and footfalls of men running echo hollow in his ears.
One - He takes out the photo and clenches it in his fist. Lips stilled, he finds he no longer knows the name of God. Opening his mouth, he presses the hot muzzle of the gun into his soft palate, his saliva sizzling and bile breaking in his throat.
He pulls the trigger.
[Click.]
He revolves the last bullet back into place by touch and cocks and pulls again.
[click.]
He chips a tooth unfeeling as he pulls the gun from his mouth, and lets it slip from his fingers.
'Masha'Allah.' He thinks, remembering at last, and laughs bitterly.
'God wills it.'
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