Pretty Birds Read online

  HE DID NOT need to clear his throat, tap a glass, clap his hands, or shout. The din of the room just stopped, as if someone had clicked off a switch. When the quiet was complete, the Prince received it with a small smile.

  “Allah Akhbar, God is great,” he said quietly. And then he took a long, jaguar stride toward the windows. With wiry arms he took hold of the curtains and yanked them open. Somebody’s coffee cup was knocked to the floor. Somebody’s pad of paper sailed a few inches across the ledge. Twenty cries of surprise sprang up around the room. Two men sank onto the bed, eyes brimming. The malevolent mountains, cloaked by snow and swarming with unseen snipers, looked grim and gray in the top of the window frame. The Prince turned his back to them and faced the room.

  “God will protect us,” he announced softly. “There is no God but Allah. In the name of God the most merciful, I bring you greetings.”

  “Allah Akhbar! Allah Akhbar!” Shouts and cries moved over the room.

  THE PRINCE BEGAN in a low, slow tone.

  “You here in Sarajevo live on the edge of the West,” he told them. “You live within the hot breath of the beast. In fact”—and here the Prince leveled one of his lean, elegant fingers at the blank screen of the mute television—“the beast has revealed himself to you. Now that the lack of electricity has blinded him, your own eyes can open. You can see how this beast was filling your lives with vile and useless images. Sex without love. Flesh without humanity. Bloodshed without consequence. Prosperity without spirituality. Nike, Marlboro, Rolex, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Air Jordan. You know those names, don’t you?”

  The men around the room gave amused and knowing murmurs of assent.

  “They mock us with things that adorn or invade our bodies. But these things do nothing to nourish our souls. What you have seen should not make you envious. The beast is rich but empty. Violent but cowardly. He is surrounded by things, but lonely inside without our real God.”

  Heads nodded. People murmured low, involuntary sounds of enchantment as the Prince continued in a voice as soft as spun wool.

  “We can see now, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, how much of history has been manipulated by Jews. I don’t say this as an anti-Semite. Whenever the West hears some truth it would rather conceal, they dismiss it as anti-Semitic. We Muslims cannot be anti-Semitic. It would be against ourselves. We are Semites. When it comes to Semites, we Muslims are far more numerous than Jews.

  “The people of the East are Muslims. The people of the West are the Crusaders. They may call themselves Christians, Jews, British, French, Italians, or Americans. These days, even Russians. But those are different brand names for the same lethal cigarette. They are the Crusaders. They are the infidels. They defile our faith. They rape our sisters, mothers, and daughters. God says, ‘Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion.’ ”

  The Prince stopped for a moment to peer above the heads of the men and women in the room. “World War I began here. Just steps away, right? Were it possible for me to walk around outside, like a simple visitor, I would see the plaque on that spot where it began. Someday we must chisel in the truth. With that war, which the Serbs began, the whole Islamic world fell under the Crusaders’ banner. The British, French, and Italian governments divided the world. Britain got Palestine, our Holy Land. Who divided Palestine, our lands and families? The British Lord Arthur Balfour, servant of the Jews Weizmann and Rothschild. How many hundreds of thousands of Muslims have since been killed, imprisoned, or maimed?”

  “Millions,” a voice called out.

  “This war in Bosnia is a continuation of this genocide,” said the Prince. “This battle is part of a chain of the long, fierce, and ugly Crusader war.”

  Irena finally noticed his eyes. They were milky brown, warm, and light. The Prince pitched his voice even lower, but the silence of the room seemed to deepen as people stood on their toes and drew in their breath to hear him.

  “In the twentieth century, whenever a nation tries to protect itself against craven Jews, the Jews cry genocide. The vast armies of the Crusaders march to save Jews. Jews like Weizmann and Einstein invent the most terrible weapons and use them against those who do not accept the god of the Crusaders.

  “But when Muslims are killed those vast armies stay home. They play games. This war here is practically within the Crusaders’ breast. It is on television all over America. Our Muslim brothers are being killed, our women raped, our children massacred—all under the watch of the United Nations. And the Blue Helmets sit idly by. And should we be so surprised?”

  Several men had to pinch tears from their eyes as the Prince permitted his voice to rise.

  “No. No! God cannot be deceived. The United Nations partitioned Palestine at the command of the British and turned Muslim land into a Jewish nation. A Jew can be British or French prime minister or the richest man in America. Who owns the great newspapers of London, New York, Paris, and Toronto? Who controls the eyes of the beast?”

  Here the Prince slapped the tip of his finger against the television screen.

  “Who controls the movie studios in Hollywood, and even in India? And yet it is the Jew who screams genocide. The Jew who says he needs a homeland and steals our land. Those who cannot see this disavow the Holy Book and the Prophet Muhammad, God’s peace and blessings be upon him.”

  “Allah Akhbar! Allah Akhbar!” Calls went up again.

  “I will warn you,” the Prince continued. “When the Muslim begins to strike back, the Crusaders call us terrorists. If a terrorist is a man who fights for freedom with the rocks God has placed in front of him, then I am a terrorist. But how can we be terrorists? The West has atom bombs, smart bombs, and rocket ships. We have only a few rocks, a few bullets, and bombs made from gas poured into their filthy Coke bottles.”

  Laughter flickered around the room. Irena heard her own laugh mingling in.

  “History keeps count,” said the Prince. “If you take all of the victims of the Crusades, all who were slaughtered by imperialists, all of the Palestinian mothers and children slaughtered in the name of Israel, they would not add up to our small bombs and satchels of dynamite. The United Nations, which created Israel, will not let Muslims defend themselves here in Bosnia. They permit us to be only fatalities. But when the victim starts to take revenge for those innocent children—in Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, the Philippines, and now Bosnia—the Crusaders defend this blasphemy by calling us terrorists.”

  By now the laughter of the men was rolling and boiling in their throats. The Prince widened his eyes, as if he had just heard something bizarre and confounding.

  “Now there are Muslims in Sarajevo who say—perhaps some of you have said it yourself—’But, Prince, we are Europeans.’ I say, you are mocking God and fooling yourself. The Crusader does not call you European. Ask the Muslims of Brixton in London. Or Saint-Denis in Paris. Or Brooklyn, New York. Ask the Muslims in Haifa if they are treated as European. The Crusaders drove you here, five centuries ago, with the sword, the lash, and the word of their depraved Jew god, who feasts on the blood of children, even his own son.”

  “Jews were driven here, too!” a voice rang out, a woman’s voice. Irena snapped around to see that it was Jackie, and the men around her seemed to be stepping back slightly.

  “Who is that, please?” asked the Prince in a mild voice. “No, please,” he said when a moment passed with no response. “Let her be heard.”

  Jackie raised her hand, and lowered it quickly to tug her head scarf forward. “I spoke, Your Highness,” she called out.

  “I am glad,” said the Prince. “I congratulate you. I would rather hear the voice of a brave person challenge me than a thousand cowards shower me with compliments. May I ask, are you Jewish?”

  “I am Muslim,” Jackie called back in a rising voice. “I may have a touch of Jew. I know I have a touch of Serb. I also refuse to eat animal flesh—a touch of Hindu. You will find, Princ
e, that here in Sarajevo we all have a touch of something.”

  Jackie’s performance sent a hissing spark of laughter around the room. The Prince smiled and seemed to cough out a laugh himself.

  “We seek only the pure of heart. Not purity of race. Muslims come in all stripes and colors. I admire Jews greatly. We Muslims can—we have to—learn from the Jews. They are not just smart. They fight. They scheme and succeed. Small in number, yet they control great nations.”

  “Muslims, Serbs, Christians, and Jews have gotten along here for five centuries,” said Jackie. Irena thought that she had permitted her black head scarf to slip to the back of her head. She could see more glints of shiny chestnut hair and creamy cheeks.

  “Five centuries?” asked the Prince. “Is that all?”

  The laughter in the room surged back decisively toward the tall Prince standing so boldly against the view of the mountains.

  “Certainly the Serbs,” he continued, “who say you have deprived them of their kingdom, believe that five centuries is the blink of an eye.”

  “I don’t want to live in Iran,” Jackie shot back. “I don’t want to go through life in a black sack. I don’t want women to be locked away in closets, like vacuum cleaners that get rolled out for occasional service.”

  Jackie won a round of snorts. She was still standing, nearly as tall as the Prince, shoulders back, hands strapped against her incomparable hips. The Prince was in no peril of losing the encounter in front of his court, and so he relaxed to enjoy a smart and pretty challenge.

  “We haven’t built our kingdom yet,” he told her.

  Irena wondered how many times he had spoken directly, even as he made love, into a woman’s face.

  “Saudi Arabia, Pakistan—they are sham Islamic states. They mock Islam to flatter the Crusader. They let him roll his armies across our holy places. They think they can adorn themselves with his things but not catch his diseases. When we get the chance to create our own Islamic state—here, elsewhere, or everywhere—you will see how glorious it will be.”

  “Will the mullahs let me drive?” Jackie persisted. “Will they let me get rid of a bastard husband? Will they stone me for showing my elbows, telling a dirty joke, or listening to Madonna? Would the mullahs let girls like me go to school if they knew what kind of pains in the ass we could all become? Will they let me be a Jew, a Christian, an atheist, a vegetarian, or whatever else we risk our lives here for?”

  “Surely you can be a vegetarian,” the Prince countered with more laughter. Jackie refused to concede the round.

  “Jews die for Bosnia, Mr. Bin Laden,” she said evenly. “So do Serbs. So do Crusaders. You shouldn’t mock them.”

  “Don’t mock yourself,” the Prince said. He was not ruffled by the unexpected mention of his name. “Use the Jews, if you think you can. Use the Crusader. But know that they bring themselves close only to use you. There is a holy war going on here,” the Prince continued as he took a pointed step away from Jackie and gathered the room in his mild brown eyes. “A genocide that we fight with jihad. The West sends Blue Helmets and dried beans. We bring you guns and men. It is our faith. It is our duty. When our enemies lie slain before us, Sarajevo will become a monument to God and his Prophet. Sarajevo will be Mecca.”

  The Prince pressed his back against the precarious, tempting pane of cracked glass behind him, squared his shoulders, and raised his voice until it sounded like the urgent call of a lover. “You are not alone,” he declared. “Every Muslim suffers with you. The tears you shed scour our hearts. Your blood gives us life. Let the faith of hundreds of millions of Muslim men, women, and children, from the camps of Palestine to the golden holy spires of Mecca, offer you strength. We stand with you! We bleed with you! Every Muslim stands under your banner. There is no God but Allah! There is no faith but his! We have heard you! Islam calls you! I pray I have conveyed God’s message. His peace and blessings be upon you.”

  The hand clapping gathered under the Prince’s last words. He tipped his chin into his chest and bent his head in the swelling thunder of exaltation and tears. The clapping and crying seemed to gust through the room. Irena was raised to her toes. The pealing rang in her ears like the retort of a shot. Her eyes shone red, and wet with awe and dread. Irena didn’t like the talk of Jews, blood, and jihad. But something in the room had shot electricity into her veins. She could no more keep tears from her eyes in the rush of clapping, cries, prayers, and shouts than she could keep herself dry in a rainstorm.

  Jackie was still on the other side of the room, and more than ever the center of attention. She twitched her hips, flicked a cigarette, and flipped the ends of her hair like a chestnut switch from beneath her head scarf. She leaned toward Irena.

  “Ingrid, darling, hi.”

  They brushed each other’s cheeks with their lips. They took one another into their arms.

  “You were quite magnificent,” Irena told her.

  Jackie squeezed Irena’s elbow tightly and switched to the Bosnian language.

  “I was scared.”

  “The Prince loved it,” said Irena. “He is in love with you. I could tell. You brought out the best.”

  “Not of him,” said Jackie. “Them. The crew we are supposed to work with. One of the reasons I spoke up is they were getting a little too attentive to me.”

  “Why not?” Irena said. “I love you, too. You are so amazing and beautiful.”

  “I’m not wearing a black potato sack,” said Jackie. “They hear that Bosnian women are like Western ones—we drink, smoke, and fuck. We’re crazy for it in all ways.” Jackie revised her vocabulary to avoid offending—or alerting—Bosnian speakers standing nearby. “To them, it’s like romancing a sheep. Allah is not offended if you screw Bosnians. Lipstick, tight pants, Madonna—we are not women. We are another species.”

  Irena laughed and leaned over Jackie’s shoulder to breathe a question into her ear.

  “Did you scare them away?”

  Jackie laughed so powerfully that her head scarf began to slip to her shoulders. Irena caught it and held it against her ears.

  “Now they say, ‘Jackie, you are so brave. We must keep you very close to us.’ ”

  IRENA AND JACKIE joined Charif and his three colleagues the next morning in a van that Tedic had provided. Molly met them, his pale skin whiter than the winter sun, wearing an AK-47 slung across his shoulders the way a long-haired German college student might carry a guitar while hitchhiking. Molly wordlessly took the passenger seat of the van and Jackie did the driving. The Arab men rather quickly got the point of that.

  “We know women can drive,” Charif said gently. “We are sure that women can drive moon rockets, if they have to.”

  “Not much to show you on the way over,” Jackie said as they made their way along Marshal Tito Boulevard. Charif and his crew were quiet and, Irena thought, alert and anxious in their seats.

  “This used to be a leafy street, like the Champs-Élysées,” Jackie called back to the men in the van. When she heard Irena stifle a small laugh from the back, she chuckled aloud. “All right, not quite. But leafy.”

  “There is not much traffic,” observed one of the men in the crew, Heydar. Nervous talk, thought Irena; it was like driving around Rome and saying, “A lot of history here.”

  “Fuel is impossible,” Jackie explained. “Serbs took the best cars anyway. And there’s the snipers.”

  “Snipers knocked down all these trees?” asked Heydar. She could hear apprehension tightening his voice.

  “People here,” Irena said. “To get wood for heat and fuel.”

  “Burning your furniture might be better,” observed Charif, “than giving snipers an easier shot.”

  “Furniture is going up now,” Jackie said. “Doors, chairs. Even clothes and shoes. A worn-out old shirt can make a small pot of tea if you have the water.”

  Irena thought the men took a moment to puzzle over the sense of her remark, and look down at their own clothes and shoes.

&
nbsp; Jackie steered the van into the courtyard of the Presidency Building and pulled it alongside the upturned undersides of an old delivery truck that formed part of a barrier. Irena threw open the doors in the back of the van and helped the men put down battered black and silver cases. She helped a short man they called Abdullah sling a band of silvery lights over his shoulders.

  “Everything will have to be checked,” Molly admonished them; it was the first time Irena had heard him speak that morning.

  Charif cast a glance at his watch. “We are even a little early,” he observed.

  “No traffic jams,” Jackie said. “We’ll go inside.”

  “So early? I don’t want to inconvenience anyone,” said Charif.

  Irena was taken by his consideration.

  “Better inside than out here,” Jackie said simply, and cast a glance at the overturned carriage of the delivery truck that now rose above their heads. “Even so.”

  But the Home Minister had sent a functionary to wait for their arrival. Gerry heard the van pull up to the building. Irena remembered him from the basement in Dobrinja, all bluff and roly-poly. He stepped out from behind a scarred steel door in a thick blue jacket and began to fill his hands and arms with some of the crew’s cases. His words burst into puffs in the cold.

  “We have some coffee inside, good and hot,” he told them. “German. The Home Minister gets nothing on the black market, of course. But friends give him some for honored guests.”

  Irena took up a small silver case that was studded with travel stickers: Lufthansa, Royal Jordanian, Air Pakistan. First class all the way, she noted. Two police officers, a man and a woman, kept the steel door open while they all stamped in heftily, boots and latches clattering. The crew snapped opened their cases. The police picked up their lenses and lights and looked them over, tapping, peering, occasionally unclasping.

  “I’m sure everything is in order,” Gerry said with apology coating his voice.

  “And we understand you must be certain,” Charif said.