The Aisha Prophecy by John R. Maxim Read Free Book Online

make her first stop. But she’s definitely coming, says the Internet buzz. Well if so, she certainly took her time getting round to it. The original prophecy that foretold her return is more than nine hundred years old.
    Not only old, but obscure in the extreme. He, a scholar of no small repute, could not recall reading or hearing about it even in terms of apocrypha. He’d had to ask an assistant to research it. He’d expected the assistant to come back and report that nine hundred hours was more like it.
    But there really was such a prophecy.
    The original still existed, written in Berber, or rather in one of that language’s dialects no longer in use in written form. It is on a vellum scroll that is stored in the vaults of the old Hassan Mosque in Morocco. Rarely seen, of little interest to historians or scholars. No record of anyone examining the text since Morocco was under French Colonial rule. The only other references that Mansur could find were by some Sufi mystics a few decades later. These said that she will come when all hope seems lost that Islam will ever regain its old vigor. She will bring a new dawn. She will show the way back. She will do so by raising up Islam’s women. Woe to anyone who gets in their way.
    But nothing from them since. Not from anyone else either. And yet here it is. And it’s everywhere. Worldwide. Wherever there is access to the Internet.
    Why, he’d wondered, would a prophecy so long ignored suddenly be a topic in chat rooms? His assistant could think of only one reason. His guess was that someone was researching its author, found a reference to it on Google or wherever and saw that it seemed to foretell, not just Aisha, but also the invention of the internet.
    “Look at the language,” said his assistant. “She will speak to all nations with words writ on wind. Her words will ride the lightning. They will be as shooting stars.’ Whoever found it couldn’t help but be struck by the fact that these words fit the internet very nicely.”
    “Too good not to pass on?”
    “But anonymously. This is playing with fire.”
    Mansur rubbed his chin. “So… we’re to believe that Aisha sat back for nine hundred years waiting for technology to make her job easier?”
    His assistant could only spread his hands.
    He’d asked the assistant, “She’s still coming here first?”
    “To Tehran? Some still think so, but now most are not sure. It was only that so much of the original traffic seemed to come from one Internet café here.”
    “The one at Jaam-e Jam Mall? Where our young people congregate?”
    The assistant nodded. “In the food court there, yes.”
    The food court, thought the mullah. With its pizza and burger stalls. Where young singles are allowed to intermingle unmolested. Not legal, strictly speaking, but winked at until lately. And Aisha, according to the language of the prophecy, will be making her move when she reaches full womanhood. What’s full womanhood these days? Sixteen or so? Eighteen? That’s about the average age of those young singles.
    He asked the assistant, “So this started with the mall rats?”
    His man blinked. “Excuse me?”
    “An American expression. Girls who hang out at malls. Do we now have a patron saint of mall rats?”
    The question troubled his assistant. “You would, of course, know better than me… that in Islam we do not have saints.”
    The mullah made a calming gesture. “It’s a joke, my young friend. Just a figure of speech. Another one would be, ‘Let us lighten up a little.’ I ask you again. That’s where this started?”
    The assistant shook his head. “Not started at. Spread from. It popped up one day on several screens at that café. Where from? No way to tell. It’s untraceable.”
    “Like most urban legends,” said the mullah.
    “Not many urban legends cause this much excitement. Young people all over our region these days are arguing about where she ought to come first. They discuss what regimes have held