Chapter Something in the middle: In which we meet Ioannes Muhammad, the suicide bomber with a heart of gold.
Ioannes Muhammad threw up. He was outside of a diner in Athens, Greece and he couldn’t stop vomiting even when there was nothing left. A few people stopped to give him change, but nobody bothered to ask if he was okay or wanted to go to the hospital. It was okay, though: he didn’t. He just wanted to make it inside the diner and die a martyr.
The trespasses against Islam had been so great that the seventeen year old1 had to act. He was short for his age, had nervous, deep-set eyes and was afraid that if he didn’t become a martyr, he would send himself to hell from furious masturbation.2 But his heart was filled with faith and love for his people… which was why he was so afraid and hateful all the time.
Ioannes finally stopped heaving and stood up, resting against the building. Just then, an old, baldish man and his grandson walked into the building. The boy was trying to catch up with the man, but having a hard time of it. The old man seemed distracted. Ioannes was regaining his breath. At that moment, he tightened his trench coat, made sure the ball-bearings and nails in his pockets were sufficiently jangly and looked down at the change people had been giving him when they thought he was a homeless man in desperate need of medical attention. He almost took the change (it totaled to nearly 30 euros!), but decided against it. He was, after all, going to be walking in paradise in just a few short moments. What good would currency do him?3 Ioannes lifted his far-too-heavy coat and walked inside the building, glad to only have to walk one-way to the establishment.
He entered and saw it was a mostly muslim establishment. Apparently he had picked a Middle-Eastern themed fast-food place to destroy. He was beginning to have second doubts when a European couple came into the store.
Well, he thought to himself. At least that evens the odds a bit. And besides, all my brethren will die martyrs with me. He opened his trenchcoat with a flourish and shouted “Praise be to Allah!” as he pressed the trigger that would detonate his bomb.
But nothing happened! His bomb had not gone off!
… everyone turned to stare at him for a moment. They stared him up and down to see if he posed an imminent threat. Then all of the customers in the establishment went back to eating. Presently, a short, fat and bald manager came up to him to shoo him out.
“Shoo! Out! We don’t allow suicide bombers in here! Out!”
And the manager pushed Ioannes out of the store. Once outside, he looked him in the eyes with the deepest of sympathy, as if he were seeing a pregnant kitten surviving a llama attack only to be told it had incurable genital warts.
“Listen,” he began in a wooden, rehearsed-sounding tone, “I sympathize with you, I do. My maternal grandmother was 1/16th Arab and she tried to jihad a dozen times before she finally just settled down and married my paternal grandfather. But this is the wrong place to do it. First of all, this is an Islamic establishment in an Islamic neighborhood in an Islamic district of a Jainist city in an Irish-Catholic country. Second, we have a specific policy against suicide bombing. You understand.”
He pointed at a sign on the side of the store that said “For insurance purposes, we don’t allow anyone hoping to turn themselves into a living weapon inside the premises.” Underneath this, in permanent marker, it said “Herbert Mullin, this means you!”
“You’re just going to have to go, understand? You understand, right? Yeah, you understand.” And the little egg of a man walked back into the restaurant to assure the clientele that they were in normal levels of mortal danger.
Ioannes bowed his head in embarrassment. He hadn’t checked the detonating device (for obvious reasons, he thought), and now he was an embarrassment to his faith. He started to walk home, realizing his journey home would be as difficult as his journey to the establishment. For one, he was beat morally and spiritually. He doubted if he had ever felt so useless and self-loathing. Secondly, Ioannes had not brought enough money for a ride home in public transportation, and the money he picked up on the street was barely insufficient to cover the 31 euro fee back to his home, so he had to walk the 20 kilometers to his house… and he wasn’t sure which direction to go… and the heavy, large, black trench coat wasn’t exactly appropriate for what proved to be the hottest day of the year.4. But what really preoccupied his mind that day was that he had spent the previous two weeks handwriting letters to his family and all of his old girlfriends, telling them what he had planned to do that day. He doubted whether he could face the embarrassment.
No. He had had the best of intentions, seeking what he felt was the only solution to his plight of constant self-flagellation,5 but now he had failed at that too.
After nearly four hours of walking, he dropped the trench coat in the middle of the side walk. He had only walked a few hundred paces when he heard it explode, killing, ironically, another suicide bomber.
(Note to the Audience: for fear of forgetting crucial details of the other character’s storylines, I created this guy. I’d write a disclaimer of some sort here, but I just don’t feel like it. Hopefully, in a few days I’ll get my computer back and I’ll be able to tie everything together quite nicely.)————
- I’m referring to Ioannes here, it’s descriptive so that you can learn more about him without my having to waste dreary words describing him like “he was short for his age,” “he had nervous, deep-set eyes,” and “he was afraid if he didn’t become a martyr, he would send himself to hell from chronic masturbation.
- … I don’t even know why I do footnotes anymore…
- Actually, I understand Allah doesn’t accept wampum. The cover charge to heaven is supposed to be pretty steep, too. Oh, well, so it is with infidels.
- it was -213 degrees Kelvin, in case you’re imagining
- His real plight: he often thought about men
