Mohammed was carried along by the rush-hour crowd, surging out
of the carriage onto the platform of Newgate Street Station. The
air was heavy with the hot crush of people; perfume, garlic, human
sweat. Perspex screens closed behind them and the train swept
away. The whisper of wind whisked hair from under silk headscarves.
The mass pressed onto ancient metal escalators, which whined and
groaned under the weight.
Mohammed broke out of the crowd as soon as he could, hanging to
one side of the entrance and letting the crush spill out onto
Old Paternoster Row. He breathed out stale air that formed clouds
in the chill. Over the rooftops to the west, lances of weak sunlight
broke through purple cloud.
The ticket office here was fully automated and largely redundant,
but the little kiosk inside was still open despite the time of
day. A saffron-turbaned man stood inside, a Sikh. He watched with
disinterest as the crowd hurried past, one eye out for any of
the umma, the voting faithful, who might happen to want
a recharge or souvenir, an illicit snack or illegal drink.
The other eye was on a little interactive set that murmured behind
the counter, showing images of the War: green flashes of brightness
over a dark city; streaks of tracer fire; a cameraman running
from monochrome smoke and ruin, drips of his own blood spattering
the lens.
"Look ja," his boss, his friend had said to him
in the office earlier. "Why are you going all that way tonight?
This piece of yours about the new millennium is excellent, we
should pray together to give thanks for the inspiration! The end
of Hajj, our new millennium and the Christian Americas'
New Year all occurring within a few days? Imagine - two thousand
years since the Flight to Medina! Maybe it is a good sign for
the War ja? It is a good time. Maybe we can settle our
differences, in peace?"
Mohammed looked at him with a doubtful frown. "Like that's
gonna happen" he replied. "They're crazy. Fanatics.
Look what their suicide bombers did to our Skynet satellites eight
months ago. Whole planes full of passengers on commercial orbiters,
women... children! Their stomachs all stuffed full of submunitions!
Crazy! And 'cos of that we're blind and we all sit inside, shitting
ourselves every day, wondering if their fucking Pillars of Fire
are gonna fall on us any minute.
"That's why I'm going. To pray. I need people around me,
I need to feel... just to do... something. I can't live
like this any more!"
"Look it is New Year" said Jaleel. "You said it
in your piece today, no? 'A time for reflection, to think about
the past, and the future'. This is a time of peace, inshaAllah.
You should be spending time with your friends, praying together.
With us, not a group of pukdoo English strangers."
Jal grinned suddenly, his teeth stark white against brown skin.
"Sorry ja, I didn't mean you."
Mohammed half smiled. "I don't know" he said, shutting
down his connection and powering down the system. The Scimitar
was a small bureau with millions of young subscribers, but as
yet they had little revenue and had to scrimp on energy bills.
"I just have to be with... people. I'm sorry. Look, I'll
be along later." He pulled on his coat. It was a still, frozen
afternoon. They quickly embraced, and he had found the nearest
tube station.
Now Mohammed's PDA vibrated gently on his arm in reminder, as
the first strains of sound rose achingly across the city.
Allah-u-Akbar...
Hairs raised across his pale skin as he stood in the draughty
station hall. He trembled with the cold, and the beauty of the
Call to Prayer. The muezzin was old but his voice was true;
amplified through powerful speakers and carried from here across
London, relayed from towers and minarets and pocket handsets throughout
the inner city, announcing the setting sun, the new day, and the
time for prayer.
Ash hadu al la ilaha il Allah...
I bear witness that there is no God but Allah, sung the
muezzin, his voice rising and falling in mesmerising tones. Mohammed
remembered morning assemblies at school, a similar call leaking
out of a scratchy speaker. They had all sung in unison, their
little voices rising in Arabic and English over the green countryside,
giggling and nudging, not knowing what the words truly meant.
Ash hadu an-na Muhammadar Rasul Allah...
I bear witness that Muhammad is his Messenger. He glanced
at the bored Sikh. You will burn, he thought sadly, if
you do not embrace your submission to Allah.
He crossed the street and stepped onto the plaza, tiled in
black and white like a chessboard. The setting sun illumined the
arches of the mosque's grand west portico in cool salmon pink.
The marble glittered with frost.
The Kalim Siddiqui Mosque was not the most revered in the
country, or even in London. But it was certainly the largest in
the city, and the most symbolic. Despite the towers and minarets,
the shells, the pyramids, the vast corporate follies that fought
for airspace in the business heartland, its famous old dome was
still an impressive feature of the London skyline. Centuries ago
it had decayed to a shameful ruin, its dome cracked and haunted
by pigeons, as the old faith lingered on like a dying regime.
Mohammed knew it was an ancient building, built in misguided glorification
of the Prophet Jesus. He had taken the tour of the Whispering
Gallery when he was a child, with his parents. He'd stared up
into the vast dome with wonder and awe, as the guide relayed the
history of its restoration, almost three centuries ago, to the
glory of Allah. His parents had looked pained and bored, his mother
listening to music through earphones under her hajab.
He had hated them, then, for their soft suburban ways, their ignorance,
their weekly lip-service to the words of the Prophet (peace be
upon him), in the rural mosque where people were more concerned
about what cars they arrived in than dedication to prayer. Their
great-grandparents had embraced membership of the Umma
long ago, with true faith. But he despised his parents and their
whole liberal generation, for their laxity, impiety and decadence.
Look at where it had brought them: huddled in their homes every
night, frozen with terror, while they waited for destruction to
fall upon their impious heads.
The voice of the muezzin ululated far above as he crossed the
plaza. The crowd had formed orderly queues on the steps of the
mosque, women on one side, men on the other. Unlike many older
ethnic mosques around the country, such as the Abu Hamza Mosque
in Finsbury Park, or the vast steel edifice of the Grand Central
Mosque next to Parliament in Birmingham, here the sexes prayed
together, separated only by a wide carpet.
A chill breeze blew and as the dying sun sunk beneath the clouds,
his skin prickled. He felt dizzy. His mouth and eyes opened wide.
His scalp tingled, and his hair felt on end as an impulse rippled
through him. He trembled with a cold anger as he watched those
endless ranks of white faces, trudging up the steps in orderly
queues like factory lines, like machines.
He ran across the plaza and leapt up onto the fountain.
"You!" he cried. "Hey, yes you!"
The muezzin's call was coming to an end as the sunlight faded.
Many had already taken their places on mats inside, and the imam
would already be preparing the Jumu'ah Prayer.
"You! All of you! What are you doing, going in there?"
He shouted. The streets around were silent, all the faithful at
prayer.
"What are you really doing? Think! You don't really believe!
Not wholly. Not truly! War is tearing across our world. We live
in war every minute of the day, like our parents did, and their
parents. We celebrate two thousand years of our faith in two days
time, but what is there to celebrate?"
The crowd began to mutter amongst themselves, and men approached
with angry shouts. Some had descended to the bottom of the steps;
others peered out of the great doors to watch this strange young
man shouting into the darkening sky.
"There's war everywhere in the world. You think the Christian
Americas are united against us, but even they're at war amongst
themselves! But you stick your heads in the sand and refuse to
see the horrors in Gilead, the caste conflicts in California.
The Pope in Nuevo Sao Pietro condemns the war, but do you think
any of those Christian Americans really listen? Do you think they
really care, any more than you do?"
The sky was almost dark and a sea of angry faces washed around
the base of the fountain. Shouts tried to drown him out. He knew
he was moments away from violence.
He spoke louder. "You're pigs! You're sheep! You pray because
you think you should! Because everyone else does. You pray because
you think we're absolutely right, and they're absolutely wrong.
You don't care what the Holy Book really means except in stupid
legal terms. You use it to exercise your bigotry and hatred under
cover of righteousness. You twist its words to see what you can
get away with!"
He backed away in fear as the crowd surged forward, his legs pressing
against the frozen stone. He swallowed as the men gathered round,
but carried on.
"And what about the Zensunni? They hold half of China! We
called them evil, heretics, unbelievers, perverters of our True
Faith. But when they took over the Moon and used it to crush the
Americas' eyes in space, you cheered and laughed and called it
Victory. Retaliation for what the Americas did to us. You hypocrites!
"And what has that destruction given us? Fear! Horror! All
of us, on both sides of the world, living in terror that we could
annihilate each other any moment, without a word of warning!
"Do we celebrate two millennia of peace? Two millennia of
enlightenment? No! We celebrate war and hatred on every side."
He threw his hands into the air. "But we must all change!
We must truly believe, we must embrace the principles of our Holy
Book, we must look to the words of the Prophet. We must look to
Allah to guide us! Allahu..."
His words faltered as the crowd suddenly fell silent. They were
looking up. Wide eyed. Mouths open. A woman's voice whimpered
in astonishment.
He turned and behind him in the west, the sky was dark. But the
clouds above had parted for a moment in the winter chill, and
through them a bright star burned, brighter than anything he had
he ever seen. He blinked into the brightness. He was bathed in
a burning column of light.
"The fire! The spears! Crusaders! The end!" Voices screamed
and wailed across the plaza in panic. Pushes and shoves were pointless.
There was nowhere they could run. They would be destroyed in seconds.
But when the spears of flame did not instantly fall to the ground
to engulf them all, they cried out in amazement. Instead, the
crowd gasped at the burning yellow radiance, illuminating the
face of a pale young made, blinking open-mouthed atop the fountain
steps.
It was a sign. A sign. A sign...
Mohammed closed his eyes in prayer, and the power of his faith
flowed through him. He opened his mouth and the words came to
him, soft at first. He was singing, singing the words of prayer
he had heard and memorised all his life. He expected to be dragged
from the fountain any moment, beaten and broken, but as he sang
on, he opened his eyes. He was amazed.
In the glistening cold and the unearthly light, the crowd had
turned as one to Mekkah. On their knees on the hard frozen tiles,
they prayed to the sound of his voice.
The story was everywhere across the Muslim world, from Beijing
to Reykjavik, from Novgorod to Capetown.
The next evening the government sent police to control the crowds.
They had been uncertain about New Year celebrations from the start,
and religious trouble-makers at the end of Hajj always made them
nervous.
The police now stood in a line around the plaza, in black glossy
riot gear, stunclubs at the ready. Mohammed couldn't tell the
size of the crowd, but it grew every moment. Office workers, cleaners,
doctors, set technicians: every moment more of them poured from
side streets and cabs and the ever-open mouth of Newgate Street
Station.
There had been violence that day. The fortress embassies of the
Christian Americas: California and Gilead, Canada and Mexico,
Brasil and the Papal States had all seen ugly crowds. Mohammed
was angry.
"How many of you were here yesterday? Did you listen to a
word I said?"
He glared at those nearest him, where he stood on an improvised
platform. Those from yesterday had made sure they'd stayed closest
to him. They whisper proudly to the others: we were The First
to see The Sign. They jostled to touch him. He was embarrassed
to lead the prayers.
"Look it's not my place," he said quietly to the imam,
who had come out to see the crowd. "You must lead
them in prayer."
"No no", the old man replied, his round brown face smiling
uncertainly. "It is for you these people have come."
And now the crowd watched him, quiet except for one constant word,
whispered endlessly amongst the crowd. He cleared his throat,
and there was silence.
"There is war in the world, and it must stop. It is not just
since the time of the Prophet we have had war. It has been for
all time. God meant us to live in peace, and what have we done
with his gift of this world? We have fought and murdered and destroyed.
We have raped his gift, and perverted it. We have twisted his
words to our own ends. We have used them, all his gifts to all
the peoples of the world, not as a blanket of peace, but as swords
of destruction.
"It is time for a new world. The third millennium since the
Hajra, is upon us: two thousand years since the Prophet's
enemies drove him from his home. But it is a new Christian year,
too. The first time our calendars have coincided in who knows
how long. It has been two and a half millennia of their years,
and have they achieved any more peace than us? No! They are no
better than us, and no worse!"
The crowd listened in awe, their faces bathed yellow with starlight.
"We must forget our divisions! We must stop our wars! We
must work together with the word of peace!"
The whispered word rose from beneath the surface, muttered back
and forth across the crowd. Whispers echoed round the plaza until
one old man, the muezzin himself cried it out in triumph:
"Mahdi!"
Like blood from an artery the cries came forth. "Mahdi!
Messiah! He is the Prophet returned! Lead us into Victory!
Allahu akhbar!"
The crowd screamed and tore at his arms and legs. He shouted as
he was thrown aloft, but they ignored his words. He was held fast
and high, awash in the light of bright yellow star, The Light
of God that burned above them all. He was carried above the crowd,
through the feeble line of riot police that broke like silk in
a storm.
He was exhausted. He had shouted until he was hoarse but it had
made no difference. The crowd had rampaged through the city. In
Birmingham a peaceful demonstration against the war had turned
into a riot that had only ceased with the dawn.
He had hardly slept, he had hardly eaten. Around the world fighting
had worsened. Jerusalem burned. Tokyo bled. A line of cab bombs
destroyed monuments in Washington.
And above it all the starlight beat down, burned and blazed, lighting
the night sky, outshining the sun.
Riot police had cut off the Mosque in the late afternoon, with
stun barriers and armoured cars. Eyespies buzzed menacingly overhead.
The crowds had stormed the barricades, bodies falling stunned
and crushed underfoot. The crowd climbed piles of bodies as they
pushed and scrambled ever forward. More and more and more pressed
on, until the barriers were overwhelmed with the living and the
dead. Waves of flesh spilled into the empty streets around the
plaza, in their desperation to hear him speak.
And now Mohammed stood in the plaza before the mosque, beneath
the bright yellow gleam of the star. The sun had set but the star
had grown so bright that it was hard to tell night from day. He
held out his hands to quiet those assembled before him. Bloodied
and panting, they fell to their knees. "Mahdi!" came
their cries, in breathless voices.
He spoke quietly. He was young and pale but felt old, the weight
of centuries of bloodshed on his shoulders.
"Peace. Peace I said. Peace be upon you all. And what is
there?" He looked up with anger, his heart torn and crushed.
"Only violence. Anarchy. Destruction.
"Perhaps God spoke through me, but who am I to say? I am
weak. I'm just a man. What can my words alone do, to change the
whole of humanity?
"But Allah is coming. I can feel him. We all see his sign.
We must pray that he will intervene. All of you, pray! Great God
above us, come to us! Intervene for us!"
The light was growing stronger, so strong now that Mohammed had
to squint to see the crowd before him.
He cried out. "Put an end to all war! Put an end to all suffering!
An end to all pain! An end to division in the world! Great God,
Great Allah, hear us. Allahu akhbar! Allahu akhbar!
Answer our prayer!"
The crowd cried with him and knelt in final obeisance, pressing
their foreheads to the warming tiles. They looked up and their
faces were bathed in the brilliance of the Hand of God, stretched
forth to touch the Earth.
All across the world other voices raised in prayer; in supplication,
in every language, to every face of god. To Jesus, Allah, Jahweh,
Vishnu, Bhudda, Shiva, Ahura Mazda.
Mohammed cried and screamed in triumph, his eyes burning as the
Word and Will of God descended, to put an end to war and suffering
and hatred and human folly.
And as one, ten billion souls screamed as the vast mountain of
incandescent interplanetary rock crashed down into the sea.
And at last in all the span of human history, there was peace.
