The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption by Kamal Saleem Read Free Book Online

deceive her easily through lust.
    “Satan seduced her physically,” Father said. “Women are not strong. They bring sin to the house. This is why they must cover themselves from the tops of their heads to the bottoms of their feet.”
    Meanwhile, my mother taught my sisters how to be good wives, how to honor their husbands, how to cook and clean and serve. Among the strict Muslim families we knew, no girl was allowed to go to school beyond the twelfth grade.
    Reading from the Koran, Father taught us more about jannah. I learned that it was a wondrous place, dripping with fat grapes so juicy and sweet that the smell of them alone would fill you up.
    “If you see a bird in paradise and you desire to eat it,” Father told us, “it will fall down from the air cooked three different ways.”
    In jannah, plush empty beds flew through the air, available at any moment you wanted to sleep or relax. Father read to us from the Sura that jannah was populated with young boys, with bodies soft like velvet and smooth like marble, reclining naked on the ground.
    Why would they do that? I wondered.
    When I got older and understood more thoroughly what the seventy-two hūrīyah and young boys were for, I asked our imam, Shiekh Rajab, “How do the al-shaheed have the strength to service so many women?”
    He looked at me, amused. “Allah gives the al-shaheed extra horsepower to attend to them.”
    Basically, he said, the martyrs became like Superman.
    4
    One fall day, my best friend Eli and I were playing tag in the street, when suddenly he stopped and turned to me, huffing and puffing.
    “Kamal, when I grow up, I will go on journeys and see the world. I will go places and eat delicious things, and you will not be able to go with me because Islam will not let you.”
    Eli was a Christian. The Christian children were allowed to go to the chalets and on vacations and eat forbidden foods. I was a little envious and wished I could enjoy life in this way. On the other hand, these were Christians and not worthy, so what did it matter to me? I knew that someday I would probably have to rise up against them anyway.
    But one night, I had another dream: I was a little child running away with Eli. Strings of light like streamers fell down from the night sky. We ran through them, as though through a festival where the decorationswere fashioned by angels. In my dream, I felt the cool night whispering against my skin as Eli and I ran toward the sea where, strangely, a helicopter was parked in the sand. Its blades turned around and around, slow and silent.
    Eli ushered me into the helicopter, and as it floated away from the beach, fireworks lit up the heavens around me, bursting blue and scarlet, white and gold. Looking down, I could see Eli waving up at me as he receded.
    The sky shimmered with chrysanthemums of light, and I heard Eli’s voice echo up into the sparkling night: “Run away, Kamal! Run away!”

Beirut, L eb an o n
1965
    1
    Life was getting more expensive for my father. He had many children now, many mouths to feed but not enough hands to contribute. In the Muslim world, the prevailing view is that it is better to bear boys than girls. Boys can go out and work, as my older brothers did. They can produce, contribute, carry on the family name. But girls cannot go out and work. They stay in the house and eat and drink until they get married. Girls are raised up for somebody else.
    Where there had been joy in my household, warmth and good food, something began to change. By the time I was seven, my mom and dad had seven kids. With each new child, I watched my father change, grow old before my eyes. I did not know it then, but the blacksmith trade was falling out of demand. People were buying ready-made water heaters and washtubs and cabinets. A new world was leaving his old-world trade behind.
    Suddenly, Father was not coming home until much later in the evenings. I would wait and wait for him to come with his cologne and metal scent,