The Secret Servant

job. My daughter. My dignity.”
    “And so you decided to leave Egypt?”
    “I had no choice. To remain would have meant living underground. I wanted to sever my ties with the Sword. I wanted no part of jihadist politics. I wanted a new life, in a place where men did not murder little girls in torture chambers.”
    “Why Amsterdam?”
    “My wife had family living in the Oud West. They told us that the Muslim community in Holland was growing and that for the most part the Dutch were welcoming and tolerant. I applied for a visa at the Dutch embassy and was granted one straightaway.”
    “I take it you neglected to inform the Dutch of your connection to the Sword of Allah.”
    “It might have slipped my mind.”
    “And the rest of the story you told me that night in Amsterdam?”
    “It was all true. I built roads, then I swept them. I made furniture.” He held up his ruined hand. “Even after I lost my fingers.”
    “And you had no contact with other Sword members?”
    “Most of those who fled Egypt settled in America or London. Occasionally one would blow through Amsterdam with the wind.”
    “And when they did?”
    “They tried to draw me back into the fight, of course. I told them I was no longer interested in Islamic politics. I told them I wanted to live an Islamic life on my own and leave matters of governance and state to others.”
    “And the Sword abided by your wishes?”
    “Eventually,” Ibrahim said. “My son wasn’t so accommodating, however.”
    “It is because of your son that we’re here tonight.”
    Ibrahim nodded.
    “A son who is half Egyptian and half Palestinian—a volatile mix.”
    “Very volatile.”
    “Tell me his name.”
    “Ishaq,” the Egyptian said. “My son’s name is Ishaq.”
     
     
     
    “It began with harmless questions, the kind of questions any curious adolescent boy might ask of his father. Why did we leave our home in Egypt to come to Europe? Why, if you were once a university professor, do you sweep streets? Why do we live in the land of strangers instead of the House of Islam? For many years, I told him only lies. But when he was fifteen, I told him the truth.”
    “You told him you were a member of the Sword of Allah?”
    “I did.”
    “You told him about your arrest and torture? And about the death of Jihan?”
    Ibrahim nodded. “I hoped that by telling Ishaq the truth, I would snuff out any jihadist embers that might be smoldering inside him. But my story had precisely the opposite effect. Ishaq became more interested in Islamic politics, not less. It also turned him into an extremely angry young man. He began to hate. He hated the Egyptian regime and the Americans who supported it.”
    “And he wanted revenge.”
    “It is something you and the Americans never seem to fully comprehend about us,” Ibrahim said. “When we are wronged, we must seek revenge. It is in our culture, our bloodstream. Each time you kill or torture one of us, you are creating an extended family of enemies that is honor bound to take retribution.”
    Gabriel knew of this phenomenon better than most. He scooped up a bit of rice and beans with the bread and motioned Ibrahim to keep talking.
    “Ishaq began to withdraw from Dutch society,” he said. “He no longer maintained friendships with Dutch boys and started routinely referring to Dutch girls as temptresses and whores. He wore a kufi and galabiya. He listened only to Arabic music and stopped drinking beer. When he was eighteen, he was arrested for assaulting a homosexual man outside a bar in the Leidseplein. The charges were dropped after I went to the injured man and offered to make restitution.”
    “Did he go to university?”
    Ibrahim nodded. “At nineteen he was accepted into the school of information and computer sciences at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I hoped that the demands of his studies would temper his Islamic fervor, but once he settled in Rotterdam he became more Islamic in his outlook, not less. He fell in with a group of like-minded young jihadists. He traveled constantly to various marches and meetings. He grew his beard. It was as if my youth were being played out in front of me all over again.” He ate in silence for a moment. “I came to Europe to get away from Islamic politics. I wanted a new life, for myself and for my son. But by the mid-nineties radical Islamist politics had come to the West. And in many ways it was more radical and toxic than the Islam of the Orient. It had been