The Taste of Fear by Jeremy Bates Page A

colorful hijab, picked up an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and went inside. Jahja did not know what her body looked like beneath the long garment, but she had a beautiful face. He had thought that for as long as he had known her, though he had never told Qasim this, of course. As a devout Muslim he shouldn’t have had such thoughts about his brother’s wife. Yet he was a man, and men had thoughts like that, regardless of how strong their faith was.
    Jahja and Qasim were sitting on the second-floor veranda of Qasim’s house in the Kinondoni District of Dar es Salaam. It was not a bad neighborhood, but it was not a good one either. To the east, Jahja could see the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean; to the north and west, the sprawling buildings of the city. Across the street, on the corner, was a branch of the American Subway restaurant chain. Two men stood outside it, laughing loudly.
    “Tell me, brother,” Qasim said. “How is Hana?”
    “She is good.”
    “And Sara?”
    “She is also good.”
    “She believes you are in Germany again?”
    Jahja nodded. He was a salesman for a German pharmaceutical company. In the past he had often traveled for business to visit clients. Those trips had ceased after he was burned. The sales director had never told him the burns were the reason for keeping him at the London office, hidden away, out of sight. But a lot of people no longer told him what they were really thinking. Regardless, the decline in business travel coincided with an increase in personal travel, most of which was to come here, to Dar, to visit his brother and his associates.
    Sara was never the wiser.
    “You will see her again,” Qasim said.
    “Do you believe that?”
    “If Allah wishes it, yes.” He stabbed out another cigarette in a fresh ashtray. “You are not having second thoughts, are you, brother?”
    For a moment images of London—the good times in London—flashed through Jahja’s mind: his wedding at Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire, the birth of Hana at St. Bartholomew’s, Hana’s first steps at their South Bank flat. Then, as always, those images vanished as quickly as they had come, replaced by scenes from the day his life changed forever.
    He had been in Algeria, visiting his parents in his ancestral town of Tamanrasset. They had all been at Friday evening service at the mosque he had attended since he was a child. He and his father were in the main hall, a barren room devoid of furniture, statues, and pictures; Islam did not condone any form of representation of Allah. Sara, Hana, and his mother were with the rest of the woman in a separate area closed off with panels of fabric. Everybody, however, was faced toward the mihrab —the niche in the wall that denoted the direction of Mecca. They were reciting the first chapter of the Qur’an when there was a thunderous explosion and the high ceiling blew inward. Jahja was knocked unconscious, waking up in a hospital sometime later, where he received news that his father had perished—and where he saw himself in a mirror for the first time after the bandages were removed.
    Multiple Arab-speaking television networks reported the destruction was the result of a stray American cruise missile. They cited twenty-three dead and forty-seven injured. Jahja knew this to be the truth because he knew many of the victims personally. The Pentagon and U.S. mainstream corporate media dismissed this reality with “the claims of civilian casualties could not be independently verified.”
    An all too familiar rage churned inside Jahja.
    “No,” he told his brother. “I am not having second thoughts.”
    “Come then,” Qasim said, standing. “Let me show you what you have no doubt been waiting to see.”
    They went downstairs to the attached garage where two white vans were parked side by side. Both were several years old and slightly beat up. Qasim handed Jahja a set of keys and pointed to the van on the left. Jahja unlocked and opened the