No One to Trust

The Cell

A group of men met in the back room of an old store in east Bakersfield that had been converted into a mosque.  The windows were painted over with green paint.  The walls of the dingy room were battleship gray.  The gray paint was peeling beneath the window sills where water had seeped through.  There were several pairs of sandals and loafers scattered near the door.  The dark floral patterned carpet didn’t quite reach to the surrounding walls and had a musty smell from dampness and the many bare feet that soiled its surface every day.  Today the 102 degree weather was warming the carpet and the stench was annoying. 

The attendees, a handful of shoeless men, were sitting on the carpet listening to an angry imam.  His message espoused hate and revenge.  He was fuming and his red face, accented by bulging neck veins, was the matrix from which his dark eyes blazed with anger.  “These American invaders continue to kill our brothers in Iraq, and their pawns, the Israeli Zionist, continue to build new settlements on Palestine land, the land of our heritage.  Have Americans learned nothing from the destruction of their trade center in New York?”  The all male audience was stirred to anger and their faces reflected the passion of their imam.  The continual newspaper reporting of terrorist deaths in Iraq was like iodine being poured into an open wound.

When it was time for morning prayers, they all stood in their customary line-up.  The prayers recited in Arabic were always the same.  Tradition required them to go through a series of movements during prayer; erect, bending at the waist, kneeling on the floor and then bowing with their head touching the floor.  They all knew the prayer, and changing positions was like a well-rehearsed choreography.  As devout Muslims they were expected to perform the same prayer five times each day.  Before Allah they were all equal regardless of any apparent gap in wealth or disparity in social status.  Human nature is what it is and even religious fanatics are not immune to envy.

Alcohol, drugs, and immodest dress for women is forbidden by Islamic teaching, but this radical sect would use any and all means; drugs, lying, corruption, stealing, prostitution, or murder if it would further their cause. 

To the casual observer Mahmoud Hamadi would appear to be a successful forty-some year old businessman in the midst of shop owners, unskilled workers and foreign students.  He had attended Cal State Long Beach and was getting his U.S. citizenship.  He spoke with an interesting British accent, a carry-over from the teenage years spent growing up in London.  His lean, athletic body was sharply dressed in a silk suit, white shirt and conservative tie, and he had a polished appearance considered attractive to women.  Emotionally he was cold, detached and sadistic.  It is said that eyes are the mirror of the soul, but even the experienced observer might miss the ominous evil that lurked behind his dark eyes.  Mahmoud like most of the men attending the mosque that morning was unmarried.  If he had one weakness, it was his attraction to women.   

Financially Mahmoud was successful and exuded a calm that concealed his inner resentment.  His bitterness stemmed from the tragic events of his childhood.  He was only six years old when his father, uncle and older brother were captured, and killed by paramilitary zealots in occupied Palestine.  Their bodies, when recovered, bore evidence of torture.  Over time his experience with the good life had lessened his zeal for self-sacrifice, and that was the one thing that separated him from the others. 

He was the mastermind behind the cell, but he had no intention of being the one to take the blame if anything went amiss.  Mahmoud’s goal was to set up and finance a terrorist training camp in a remote area of Mexico.  At present he had his eye on a large ranch east of the sleepy town of Guerrero Negro on the peninsula of Baja California, 450 kilometers south of the Mexican border.  He might have to use coercive measures to get the owner off the land as it had been in the owner’s family for six generations, but Mahmoud was used to getting what he wanted and he didn’t care what he had to do to get it.  He already had an office in Guerrero Negro and equipped it to turn out passports and other phony documents.  His training camp, when completed, would train terrorist for the Brothers of Gaza, an international terrorist group.  Th