The Witness Page 8

  Slowly, he leaned in. With each inch he moved forward, the soft whisper began gaining definition.

  “. . . . . . . . here? . . . . . dead. . . . . . . burn . . . . . . Why . . . . here? . . . . all dead. . . . . you burn . . . . Why did . . . here? . . . all dead. I . . . you burn in . . . Why did you come here? . . . They’re all dead. . . . I hope you burn in hell. . . . Why did you come here? . . . They’re all dead. . . . I hope you burn in hell. . . . Why did you come here? . . .”

  Marwan stumbled back from Kadeen, lost his balance, and fell to the floor. His head rapped the tile, and he was momentarily stunned. As he lay there, he tried to process his friend’s words.

  It’s my fault! If I hadn’t come here, Kadeen would still be alive! Wait. . . . He said, “They’re all dead.” A knot formed in his stomach. Oh, please, it can’t be! Tell me it’s not true! Maybe if I don’t look, it won’t be true; this all won’t be real!

  But even as these thoughts raced through his mind, he knew he had to look. Keeping his eyes squeezed tight, he turned his head toward the back of the room. Come on, you have to look! You need to know! Open your eyes on three. One . . . two . . . three!

  Marwan snapped his eyes open. Sitting on the ground, leaning against a doorway were Kadeen’s wife and two little girls. Oddly, they were arranged exactly how they were in the one picture that Kadeen had e-mailed of them with the older daughter next to her mom and the younger one in her mother’s lap. The only difference from the picture was the 6mm hole in the center of each forehead.

  “No!” Marwan tried to get up, tried to go to them, but something held him down. He kicked and thrashed, but still he couldn’t seem to move. “No! Please, no!”

  “Marwan! Marwan, stop! Wake up! Marwan!”

  Marwan’s eyes popped open. Kadeen was leaning over him, holding him down with one arm on his left shoulder and the other across his chest. There was blood dripping from Kadeen’s nose.

  “Marwan, wake up! It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Marwan said, still trying to sit up. “I’ve put you all in danger!”

  A slight smile crossed Kadeen’s face, but he didn’t let up his hold. “You’re not going anywhere, my friend. Now stop moving around before it’s more than just my nose that’s bleeding.”

  Marwan couldn’t understand why his friend was having such a hard time comprehending the danger he and his family were in. “You’re not hearing me, Kadeen! I’m in real trouble, and I’ve brought it here with me!”

  “It’s obvious you’re in trouble. But like I said, you’re not going anywhere—at least not yet. The doctor said you need to rest to get your strength—”

  “Doctor!” Marwan yelled, renewing his attempts to get up. “Did you bring a doctor here?”

  “Relax! Dr. Ajjedou is a friend. He and I work together on a kind of . . . underground operation. I trust him completely. He knows how to be discreet, and he knows when to ask no questions. Now, please, would you stop moving around? You’re scaring my daughters,” Kadeen said with a nod behind Marwan’s head.

  Immediately Marwan stopped struggling. Tilting his head back, he saw two little girls holding tightly to their mother. The younger one had tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” Marwan said, embarrassed and ashamed. Looking at the girls, he added, “I was just having a nightmare. But it’s over.”

  “That’s right; it was just a nightmare,” Kadeen echoed. “Mr. Accad is awake; right, Mr. Accad?”

  And for the first time since his eyes had opened, Marwan was fully awake. The terror of the dream had left him, and he could finally assess his surroundings.

  It was obvious by the furniture that he was in a living room—nicely decorated but not ostentatious. As for himself, he was lying on a couch, shirtless, with his right shoulder heavily bandaged. He knew that he must be on some serious pain meds because, although it seemed that his body really wanted to tell him how messed up his shoulder was, his brain just didn’t seem to want to hear it.

  Marwan forced a smile onto his face. “Rania, it’s good to see you again. I’m so sorry to cause such a fuss.”

  “You are welcome in our home,” Rania said with a slight bow of her head. She continued to hold on tightly to her daughters.

  “You must be Laila,” Marwan continued. “And that means you’re little Maryam. It’s so good to see you in person. Your daddy’s told me so much about you.”

  “Welcome Mr. Accad to our home, girls.”

  Laila said a quiet “Welcome to our home.” But Maryam just burst into tears again.

  “Habibti, would you take the girls into the other room so that Mr. Accad and I could have a talk? Thank you.”

  Marwan watched as Rania led the two girls through an arched entryway to another part of the house. When he turned around, Kadeen had a smile on his face but was shaking his head.

  “You certainly know how to make an entrance,” Kadeen said. “You ready to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Any chance I could get you off of me first?”

  “You’re not going anywhere?”

  “Seems I don’t have a choice but to stay.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Kadeen said, lifting his arms from Marwan’s upper body. He snatched a couple tissues, then lowered himself into an out-of-place chair that looked like it had been pulled over for whoever was on Marwan duty.

  Kadeen held the tissues to his nose to stop the blood and said, “Well, I always knew you were hardheaded.”

  Marwan chuckled quietly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t quite myself. Although . . .”

  “Although what?”

  “Although you probably deserved what you got—trying to hold me down like that!”

  Kadeen laughed. “There wasn’t any ‘trying’ about it. You were locked up tighter than a widow’s purse.”

  Marwan joined his friend’s laughter. “Believe me, if I hadn’t lost all that blood, there’s no way you could have kept me down.”

  “Probably not . . . probably not.” Kadeen pulled the tissue from his nose, looked at it, then put it back in place. “Now please, Marwan, tell me what’s going on.”

  The details were still a bit sketchy in Marwan’s brain. But as he told his friend the story, the memories became much clearer to him, as did the plan for what he had to do next.

  22

  “But that’s all the more reason for you to stay here,” Kadeen protested as Marwan finished his story.

  “No, it’s all the more reason for me to go. I don’t know who I’m going up against. I don’t know how many there are. I don’t even know exactly what it is they want, other than me dead.” Marwan was getting more exasperated as he spoke, the helpless ambiguity of his situation causing his gut to tighten. “If I had been fully in my right mind, I never would have come here to begin with.”

  “But you are here. And whatever the situation, I am glad you came. And you must promise me that you will at least consider staying here for a few days to recover.”

  “We’ll see,” Marwan said simply.

  “We’ll eat in twenty minutes,” Rania called from the kitchen. Ever since Kadeen’s family’s departure from the living room, Marwan had seen little of them. Rania had brought in cold drinks and a plate of M’hanncha, but though the almond pastry looked and smelled delicious, Marwan bypassed it; he didn’t think his stomach was quite ready for something that sweet.

  No, I think I’ll save my appetite for what’s still in the kitchen. For the past twenty minutes, the smells coming from that room had been drawing Marwan’s attention to the point of distraction. I hope I can keep the food down. If I can, I’ll leave right after we eat.

  “If I can’t convince you to stay, where will you go?” Kadeen asked, revisiting a line of conversation that Marwan had twice deflected already.

  He was about to deny his friend again when he saw Laila and Maryam in the doorway to the kitchen. They were staring at him, and Laila held a sheet of
paper in her hand. Thankful for the distraction, Marwan waved them over. He grimaced at the pain the movement caused but tried to cover it with an oversize smile.

  Slowly, cautiously, the girls walked toward him. Laila held out the paper. It was decorated with hearts and crosses and the words We hope you feel better. Love, Laila and Maryam.

  “I made the crosses,” Maryam said.

  “They’re wonderful. Thank you, girls.”

  They continued to stare at him, and Marwan, who never really knew what to say around children, continued to stare back.

  Just as it reached the point of awkwardness, Kadeen leaned forward and whispered something in the girls’ ears. Their faces lit up. Laila picked up the leftover M’hanncha, and the two girls ran from the room.

  Despite the pain he was feeling, Marwan had to smile.

  “They’re beautiful, Kadeen.”

  “On that we agree, my friend.”

  “I look at them. I look at your wife. You know what I wonder?”

  “Whose family they really are?”

  Marwan chuckled. “No, I wonder what you’re doing here in Morocco. With your education and your intelligence, you could be living the high life anywhere—Paris, New York, Dubai. Instead, you’re here in Casablanca—not exactly the hotbed of cultured civilization.”

  “My company transferred me here. Simple as that.”

  Marwan rolled his eyes. “‘Simple as that,’ my foot. From what you told me before you came here, you could have had your company send you anywhere. So come on. Spill it.”

  “You really want to know?”

  Marwan’s silent stare gave his answer.

  Reaching to a small table, Kadeen picked up a leather-bound Bible and flopped it down on the coffee table in front of Marwan. “There you go.”

  Partly wishing he had never brought it up, yet partly curious, Marwan asked, “So God told you to come? What, did you come across a burning bush or something?”

  Kadeen laughed. “Or something. No, this book is not just the reason I came to Morocco, but it is also my true work here.”

  Instead of taking time to sort through his friend’s riddle, Marwan leaned back farther into the couch and nodded for Kadeen to continue.

  “I’m here working for my company. That is my daytime job. As long as my work gets done, my employer doesn’t care what I do with the rest of my time.”

  Marwan looked up sharply, then grit his teeth at the screaming of his shoulder with the sudden movement. More slowly, he reached for his bottle of water. “And just what do you do with the rest of your time?”

  “Smuggle Bibles.”

  Marwan almost spit the water out of his mouth. “You do what?”

  “Well, actually, we don’t really call it smuggling anymore. We prefer ‘Bible couriers.’ But be that as it may, Rania and I felt the Lord leading us to get the truth of God’s Word into as many hands as is possible. We chose Morocco because it is the perfect launching point to reach Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, even as far as Libya.”

  “But that’s crazy! Why would you risk your job, your freedom—possibly even your life—all for this book?” Marwan said, picking the Bible up from the coffee table and letting it drop with a thud.

  “You ask why. Let me put it this way. Suppose you had the cure for cancer. What kind of person would you be if you kept it to yourself? Think about it. Even if the government was against you, even if everyone laughed and called you a fool, even if it meant a risk to yourself or your family, wouldn’t it still be worth getting that cure out to the world?”

  “Okay, I get your point. But the fact is, this isn’t a cure for cancer.”

  “You’re right. It’s not a cure for cancer. It’s more important.” Kadeen leaned forward in his chair. “I’m not doing this to save people’s lives. I’m doing it to save people’s souls.”

  Marwan dismissed the claim with a wave of his hand. “Now you’re being melodramatic. Come on, Kadeen, when it comes down to it, the Bible is just a book. No offense—I mean, it’s got a lot of good stuff in it, but . . .”

  “No offense taken. And I hope you will take no offense when I tell you that you’ve got the Bible all wrong. It’s not just a book with ‘a lot of good stuff in it.’ It is the very Word of God.”

  This had rapidly turned into a religious discussion, something Marwan had promised himself long ago he would never get into with Kadeen. He knew about his friend’s conversion to Christianity in college. He had also witnessed the change in his life from hard partyer to what Marwan considered to be a much more boring version of the original. On the flip side, if he was forced to admit it, he had also seen peace and purpose enter Kadeen’s life for the first time in as long as he had known him.

  The truth was, Marwan was happy for Kadeen—even proud of the changes that had taken place in his life. But he also knew religion wasn’t for him. He was doing just fine without God in his life. He had made that very clear early on after Kadeen’s transformation, and his wish to not be preached at had always been respected. Until now, apparently.

  Still, if he had to admit it, he was a bit intrigued. Picking up the Bible again, Marwan said, “Okay, if this is really the Word of God, what about all the contradictions?”

  “Like . . . ?”

  Marwan was momentarily flustered. He began flipping through the pages, not knowing what he was looking for, much the way someone who doesn’t know a thing about automobiles still looks under the hood when their car stalls along the side of the road. Finally he put the Bible down with a grunt of pain and a laugh. “You know that’s not fair, Kadeen. I’m not a Bible scholar.”

  “Then how do you know there are contradictions?”

  “Well, everyone knows,” Marwan answered weakly.

  “Listen, if there was one provable contradiction, don’t you think that those who are against Christianity would have published it in every single newspaper and shouted it on every street corner of the world?”

  Marwan shrugged his acceptance of the point.

  Kadeen opened the Bible to the table of contents and passed it to Marwan. “The fact is that the Bible was written by around forty different authors over a period of fifteen hundred years, and yet it is still entirely consistent throughout. Think about that! How utterly unlikely, if not impossible, is that? Friend, you can trust the truth of that book.”

  “Okay, then, what about the changes that have taken place over the years?” Marwan countered, passing the Bible back to his friend.

  “Again, give me an example,” Kadeen said with a smile, offering the Bible back. Marwan waved his hands, refusing the book, so Kadeen continued, “Did you know we have more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament than any other written work in history?”

  “It’s a popular book. So what?”

  “So what? Think about it. Archaeologists have found some twenty-four thousand ancient New Testament manuscripts and manuscript fragments—some from as far back as AD 130—more than any other ancient work, and all are essentially identical.”

  Shaking his head, Marwan said, “Again, so what?”

  “The ‘so what’ is that it proves that the New Testament that we have today has been accurately copied and transmitted through the ages. Do you know we only have 643 ancient manuscripts of The Iliad by Homer, putting it in a very distant second place? Yet does anyone doubt the historical authenticity of what we read back in university?

  “And take Caesar. He wrote his history of the Gallic Wars somewhere around 50 BC. There are only nine or ten known copies in existence in the entire world, and all of them date to almost a thousand years after his death. Aristotle wrote his poems around 343 BC, but the earliest copy we have is dated AD 1100. That’s nearly a fourteen-hundred-year gap. Yet nobody doubts the veracity of either of these works.

  “But the Bible—that’s a different story. Never mind the Old Testament with its ridiculously detailed ancient copying processes. Forget those twenty-four thousand New Testament copies I mentioned. It still can’
t be trusted. Sense a bit of a double standard?”

  “Fair enough,” Marwan said in order to buy himself time. His mind was racing, trying to come up with a hole in Kadeen’s argument. Then he halted in midthought. Why? Why am I trying so hard to prove him wrong? “Okay, what if I concede the point that the Bible is all true? Still, I ask, so what? How about I get you an accurate history of ancient Greece. Are you going to risk your life to get that into people’s hands?”

  Kadeen smiled. “Good question. The answer is obviously no. But you’re missing a critical point. The Bible is not just a true book; it is also a book of truth. It doesn’t just tell you what happened in the past; it tells you how to live now. And most importantly, it tells you how to prepare yourself for when this life is over.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning it tells you how you can have eternal life in heaven. The Bible contains the good news about Jesus Christ, who said, ‘Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friend.’ That’s exactly what Jesus did—he laid down his life so that anyone who believes in him and accepts the sacrifice he made can enjoy eternity with God. He died for you, Marwan.”

  Marwan fidgeted, feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. Talking about the authenticity of the Bible was one thing, but all this talk about Jesus and dying and eternal life . . . this was something very different. “All that’s in the Bible, huh?” he finally asked.

  “Exactly. And that’s not all—”

  “The food’s on the table. Are you two ready to . . .” Rania, who had just come walking into the room, stopped short. Marwan could see the frustrated look that Kadeen gave her.

  “Could we have just five more minutes?” Kadeen asked.

  “Of course. I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Not at all,” Marwan said, taking the opportunity to extricate himself from the conversation. It had been interesting, but it felt like Kadeen was about to take it to a deeper level than he was ready for. “If you could convince your husband to help me off this extremely comfortable couch, I think I might actually be ready to eat something.”