The setting sun swept over the Big Apple, painting the buildings on its way into a bright, golden gloom. With its hands it caressed the water turning it into liquid gold, lazily flowing towards the ocean just past the Verrazano-Narrows bridge. The streets were still packed, and the sun waved goodbye to the hustle and bustle of the metropolis on its way to restart its eternal cycle after getting a well-deserved rest. It smiled apologetically to the cabbie, a Russian immigrant, who has been blinded by one of its stray lights and now was cursing out of breath in both Russian and broken English as he was searching for his sunglasses in the glove box. Then, as the sun went on on its heavenly path, relentlessly driven out by the night, shadows became longer and paler, until they finally disappeared.
The man – just one man on the streets, at this point – took off his sunglasses and raised his face to meet the last rays of the day. Closing his eyes, he welcomed the warmth emanating from the celestial orb, known in scientific terms as "infrared radiation". For him, it was merely warmth, a gentle caress of Mother Nature, and it pleased him as no one other. He certainly enjoyed it after the freezing cold winter he'd just left behind, the eight-months long winter up north in Scandinavia.
His eyes roamed on the buildings at the expensive residential area on the waterfront, searching for the one window he'd come for. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of identical or almost identical windows, as far as he could see, but his instincts, aided by a expertly performed Supersensory Charm, were drawn to a specific building, where his target was hidden. During his long life he'd learned how to blend in, how to stay out of attention. He let a small smile form on his face as he remembered the ancient proverb: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." He nodded. This was one of his basic principles which had saved his life more than once during his almost 80 years of life.
He was born somewhere at the end of the twenties, just after the Earth had been shattered by the first of the modern wars and a chain of bloody revolutions, then clean-swept by a pandemic flu taking away fifty millions of lives in mere months, more than the Big Burn in its four years. Fifty million Muggles, fifty million useless, infectious rats, he corrected himself. On contrary to his age, he looked not more than sixty, slightly above six foot, broad-shouldered, with a markant face, heavy chin and two youthful, piercing, steel blue eyes. His hair – still retaining his original blondness – was cut short in a somewhat old-fashioned way.
The man folded his sunglasses and replaced them in one of his internal pockets of the long, black overcoat he was wearing. Putting his hands in his pockets, he set off in a lazy tempo towards the building he'd been watching for the past fifteen minutes, whistling a song, his eyes still transfixed on that window.
Suddenly, he felt someone bumping into him and he almost lost his balance.
"Dra åt helvete!(1)"he swore instinctively, but the other man already flashed an apologetic smile, so he swallowed the continuation. He looked into the eyes of the other man with a piercing gaze until he turned and rushed away from him, shaking his head, as he was trying to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling from the contact with the steel blue eyes.
Muggle scientists would have called it "hypnose"; in his world it was referred to either as "one-way ticket to Azkaban" or "Imperius Curse", depending on the current circumstances. He knew only of one single person who was capable of performing this curse wandlessly and non-verbally, his own father, killed nine years ago. In his younger years, such an obvious demonstration of his imminent mental powers would have caused him enormous pleasure. As years went by, however, he learned his real place in the world, he understood the real powers he was holding, and his mind games with these men and women, children and elderly, surrounding him as cockroaches, no longer brought him the level of satisfaction he was craving for. He rose on the next level and had other, more important things to attend to.
Mullah (2) Kareem Abdoul ibn Kareem was devoid of all cliches the Western world loved to attribute to the Islam. He was a peace-loving, very friendly man, openly calling for dialogue and cooperation of all churches of the world for a better future, to stop wars, tearing the Middle-East apart, causing countless victims, refugees, tears and grief, leading to even more hostility between nations. He met Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic church leaders, received a private audience from the Pope, visited the Dalai Lama in Paris and was a frequent and welcome guest – partly because of his erudite nature – at most major TV stations of the world.
Barely fifty years of age, Mullah Kareem has been elected as Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America, the biggest Islamic organization of the USA, much to the distaste of the more old-fashioned, more radical, more traditional clergy leaders, who'd rather preferred a more hardcore leader. Barely a month ago the police arrested a man who'd been hired "to rid the Islamic world from this shame". Yet, Mullah Kareem continued to work for what he'd believed in and he was gaining followers by the thousands.
It was shortly after 8 pm when the speakers of his computer came alive and the digital muezzin (3) started to chant, calling all faithful Moslims of the world to the salat am-maghrib, the prayer at sunset. He rose from his desk where he was consulting the evening newspapers. Having taken off his sandals, he performed the ritual washing of his feet, rolled out his expensive, 4-by-3-feet, handmade carpet, and, heading towards al-Ka'bah (4) sank into a comfortable meditation pose and closed his eyes. This carpet was one of his greatest treasures, a gift from no less than His Majesty Hussein, King of Jordan for his fiftieth birthday, made by the very best manufactury ever existed. It was very well worth its weight in gold, but for Mullah Kareem, this gift had a deeper, more symbolic value, a token of appreciation of his efforts from the most progressive Head of State in the Islamic world.
An ethereal smile came upon his face as he recited the Sura al-Fatiha, the Pillar of Belief.
"In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful: All Praises to Allah, Lord of the Universe. The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Sovereign of the Day of Judgment. You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help Guide us to the straight path; The path of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not of those who have earned Your anger, nor of those who go astray."When he ended the prayer, he remained in his meditation pose, just to clear his mind and think. This was his favourite time of the day, and this Sura (5) was his favourite quotation from the Qu'ran (6), a piece of text he had found – with minor changes but incorporating the same ideas – both in the Bible and in the Torah (7). Together with the Sura
"We believe in what was revealed to us and in what was revealed to you, and our god and your god is one and the same; to Him we are submitters."it formed the pillar of his life philosophy, the basic principle behind all his work: the cooperation of churches into one common future.
Slowly rising from the carpet, he gently rolled it up again. He stretched his legs and went into the kitchen to make a coffee and grab some baklava (8) from the fridge. With the cup in one hand and a small tray loaded with sweets in the other, he walked up to the huge window, occupying the whole wall of his study, overlooking the magnificent view at the waterfront. "There is always something magnificent in the dying of a day and the birth of a new one," he thought while he enjoyed the last golden rays of the sun and a healthy bite of the crisp baklava, graciously enriched with sweet syrup.
A loud knock stopped his train of thoughts. "It must be the housekeeper," he concluded. She came four times a week, normally between asr (9) and maghrib (10), which means today she was really late. With an exasperate sight he placed the cup and the tray on his desk, and went up to the door to open it.
On the corridor stood a man, with blond hair and piercing, steel-blue eyes. "He must be in his sixties," Kareem concluded.
The stranger spoke in perfect Arabic, with the slightest hint of an accent Kareem could not place.
"Aassalaamu Aleikum, Mullah Kareem! (11)"
"Wa-Aleikum Aassalaam! (12)" Kareem answered the greeting the same formal way and invited the stranger inside. This was usual practice; he'd been receiving visitors all the day round, mostly completely unknown people.
The stranger acknowledged the gesture with a curt node and stepped inside. With several quick looks he memorized the internals of the study and smirked. "This would be easier than I've thought. No security, no cameras, nothing. But then, what chance would any Muggle security stand against me?"
Kareem closed the door behind the guest. "What can I do for you, Sir?" he inquired in his usual, polite tone. The steel-blue eyes pierced him again and Kareem got an uneasy feeling that he shouldn't at all have let this man into his apartment, which was justified to full extent when the man started to speak.
"Go to Hell!", Swedish
a man, educated in Islamic theology and sacred law, Arabic
the person who leads the call to the five daily prayers, Arabic
the most sacred site in Islam, Arabic
"verse", Arabic
The central religious text of Islam, Arabic
The founding religious document of Judaism, Hebrew
sort of sweets, common in the Middle East
"afternoon", Arabic
"sunset", Arabic
"Good day, Mullah Kareem!", lit. "Peace be with you!", Arabic
Formal response, lit. "Peace be with you as well!", Arabic