A New Faith: Part 1: Chapter 14

Sara had been hiding as much as possible over the last few days. She went out only for her classes and work. Even then, she had taken to wearing a hoodie and masculine clothes. Anything that would cover up her complexion and the fact that she was a woman. Someone at L&S had overheard the back-and-forth that Alia and Nadia had with the smokers outside the bar. Then that person had promptly mentioned it online and it had become public information.

With a sickening feeling, Sara had read that the cops were looking for a large black woman. There were tens of thousands of black women in Sequoia and many were large, whatever that meant to the cops. It had indeed been her who had sat next to Nadeem at L&S that evening. She couldn’t have avoided it. She had to drug his drink so that she could stuff him in her van. She thought that she had been unobtrusive. But alas, she had been seen and even if the description was vague, it did match her. She had no idea if the cops had discovered any additional information about her. As far as she could tell, there was nothing else that connected her to Nadeem. Still, it was better to stay out of sight. No point in attracting any attention, if she could help it. What she couldn’t help was, was having regular panic attacks. 

That is why, she could not believe her luck when she saw the news about the terrorist attack in Vatican City. Of course, she agonized over the deaths of the innocent tourists since that was a direct consequence of her actions. Then she heard about the retaliatory massacres in Washington DC and New Delhi which made her feel even more guilty. When the explosive video of Santosh’s murder swept through Sequoia, she found herself in a very dark place indeed. Her nightmares were entirely composed of different forms of punishments that she was being subjected to.

The second emotion, initially a mere spark somewhere at the back of her mind, was that of relief. Slowly but surely, that spark grew stronger and forced itself from the back of her mind to the front. She not only became fully aware of it, she started nourishing it. A sense of exultation spread across her entire body as she told herself that if the two murders were being considered to be linked and it was turning into a conventional tribal confrontation, then she was going to be safe.

She had, of course, no idea who Qasim was and she definitely did not know who had killed him and why. She started convincing herself that the rapid global escalation of events would diminish the importance of solving the murders. All the attention would switch over to preventing the escalation from affecting Sequoia. It was quite curious how her initial compassionate impulse - the pity she felt for the world-wide victims and Santosh - was surprisingly quickly replaced by an almost entirely self-centered interest in preserving herself whatever the cost. 

In her mind, regardless of the fact that her actions had resulted in deaths of many innocents, Nadeem deserved to die. He was the leader of the band of thugs who had laid waste entire villages in Darfur. He had to be punished, swiftly and decisively. She had delivered justice because others had failed to do so. No doubt, she thought, Nadeem had powerful friends who had helped him to leave Darfur, unpunished. 

She even told herself that he was sent to Sequoia for causing the same kind of harm that he had done in Darfur. By killing him, she had simply made sure that he wouldn’t be able to damage Sequoia. But a small voice in her head would firmly insist that the damage to Sequoia had been done after all. Santosh had died an untimely death. The damage was also spreading across the world.

Sequoia had also caught the fever that had spread around the world like a plague. People had started looking at each other with suspicion. Seemingly overnight, overt displays of anger had materialized out of nowhere. Minor confrontations between the generally phlegmatic citizens of Sequoia had started mushrooming into full-blown fights, fortunately, often verbal and seldom physical. The powerful muscle memory of normalized violence that resided in each and every citizen of Sequoia had been brought forth, at last. 

Everyone, as if ordered by someone, had started segregating themselves in their tribes. As if whatever unique and beautiful identity that they had painstakingly cultivated for themselves over the past five years had been wiped off by a dirty rag to reveal the ugliness within. Were their new selves so superficial that they could be discarded so easily? Or had they never really let go of their former selves, the ones they had been born with?  

All Sara knew at the moment was that she did not want to be caught and forced to leave Sequoia. She did not care about the other consequences of her actions. She had run into Shahid while she had been stalking Nadeem. She had struck up a conversation with him while she had waited for Nadeem to show up on one of the days. Once she had sussed out Shahid’s overall personality - a bit dim and paranoid while also being shy when it came to talking with girls - she had decided to play the part of a demure and devout Muslim girl. She had used him to know as much about Nadeem’s social life and his routine as possible. Even though she had loomed over Shahid, the impression that she had conveyed was that of a shy Muslim girl who was diffidently asking him for tips about running a cafe. Shahid had opened up quite easily and had, in fact, become quite talkative. In his expansive monologues, he had never noticed how he had been frequently nudged to talk about his neighbors, especially, Nadeem.

Sara took to stalking the online forums in the aftermath of Santosh’s murder and she soon noticed that Shahid had become quite a vocal defender of Santosh’s murderer. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to view Santosh’s video in its entirety even once, but she had caught some snippets of it. A couple of times, she felt that there was a hint of Shahid in Santosh’s murderer. The voice had been distorted but the words were just as stilted as she remembered Shahid’s had been. The murderer had also seemed to be stocky and short despite the free-flowing robe. She couldn’t imagine that shy barista having the guts to abduct a cop and then kill that cop in a gruesome way on video. But what did she know of people anyway? On the face of it, even Nadeem’s appearance had not exactly advertised that he used to be the leader of a gang of killers. Nadeem had looked like a sad and lonely guy, quite harmless.

The sudden spate of extreme violence around the world including that in Sequoia had somewhat dampened the ardor of most folks for more violence. No one in Sequoia really wanted to see things get completely out of hand and lead to more violence. They all had everything at stake in Sequoia. No one wanted to ever leave Sequoia and go back to whatever hell they had all come from. Tensions simmered and got vented verbally, but outright violence was still in check. 

All of this was happening, voluntarily. It was not as if the Sequoia police force had to be deployed to manage the situation. And that was not good for Sara. If the Sequoia police were not out in the streets maintaining the peace, then they were trying to solve the murders. She had looked up the lead investigator’s record. Alia had no experience when it came to solving murders but her record at solving other crimes was topnotch. This was one smart cop who was no doubt spending all her time figuring out who Nadeem’s murderer was.

Sara needed to change this situation as quickly as possible and she was trying to decide whether Shahid could be used to distract the cops. What had to happen was some good old-fashioned rioting on the streets to get all the cops to leave behind the murder investigation and do some fire-fighting, metaphorical as well as real. 

It was not difficult to manufacture a scenario to trigger Shahid into taking some extravagant action. The tricky part was ensuring that there was a critical mass of people around him who would in turn fan the flames into a substantive altercation. Ideally, it would be good to have that altercation evolve into a full blown riot. But she would be okay if it was just an altercation involving a crowd and not just one that was between two individuals.

Sara found that opportunity almost immediately after she had decided on her plan of action. Early in the day, she was picking up an order in one of the warehouse districts of Sequoia. As usual, the warehouse district was most crowded at that time of the day because everyone was stocking up. Shahid happened to be negotiating for bulk coffee at the warehouse next to the one Sara was loading up at.

She heard his voice clearly and recognized him without having to look at him. He was agitated because the warehouse didn’t have sufficient stock of the particular brand of coffee that he wanted to purchase. Shahid had started dressing in all black clothes including a black turban in the last few days. The guy he was talking to seemed to be a Caucasian guy who was wearing a conspicuously large cross on a chain hanging around his neck. There was even a cross with Jesus stuck on the wall behind the counter. Overt displays of religiosity had substantially ticked up since the death of Santosh. 

Shahid shouted, “you imperialist infidels are always trying to shortchange us Muslims. Why can’t you sell the stock that you have to me? 

The seller glared at Shahid and made a brief gesture to one of his colleagues. Just in case Shahid decided to go beyond shouting, the seller wanted to make sure that he had backup. 

Shahid continued his rant, "you are all the same. For centuries you have looted us. We have slaved for you. It is never enough for you. Even here in Sequoia, you are oppressing us. GIVE THAT STOCK TO ME!”

Sara quickly dumped her load into the van, locked it up, and wandered over to Shahid’s side. She plastered a bewildered look on her face. She had also wrapped a scarf around her head in a typical Muslim manner.

She stuttered, “what happened, brother Shahid? What seems to be the problem?”

Shahid looked crossly at her and then seemed to recognize her. He also noticed the scarf and his face softened into a smile. She was one of HIS people.

The seller gave her a withering look and turned back to Shahid, “Sir - that stock has been reserved for another customer who will be here later today to pick it up. I don’t have any deliveries coming in until the next week. If you want, you can order for next week.”

“Who is this special customer? Must be one of your kind,” Shahid glanced disdainfully at the cross on the wall. 

“Sir, please could you consider brother Shahid’s request and maybe inform your other customer to wait until next week?” Sara stepped forward and reached out to touch the seller’s arm. Instinctively, the seller shrugged his arm as if to free himself. The tensions were running high all the time and the seller was in no mood of getting double-teamed by these Muslims.

Sara was no light-weight. But she used that shrug of the seller to somehow engineer a stumble and a loud scream as if the seller had violently pushed her to the ground. She stumbled backward and fell down is a dramatic manner. She would have put to shame any professional footballer who routinely and theatrically fell down without ever being touched by the opposition players, all in an effort to eke out a penalty kick. 

Shahid was stunned. Violence was still not instinctive for him. Sara was going to have egg him on some more. She whimpered pathetically as if her wrist had been broken. That seemed to do the trick. Instead of helping her, Shahid launched himself at the seller. He had to protect his people - a Muslim woman at that - from these infidels. He was short and the slap that he aimed at the seller from across the counter barely scraped the guy’s face. But that was enough for the seller to retaliate with a punch of his own to Shahid’s jaw. 

“Good,” Sara thought. Now it was time to pull in some reinforcements. She flailed around shouting at bystanders, “they are attacking us. Just like they had attacked Qasim and Nadeem. HELP! Please save us.”

At least a dozen people, all presumably Muslim, immediately started running toward Shahid and her. At the same time, the seller’s colleagues closed ranks around him.

"Time to fan this small flame into an inferno," thought Sara. She jabbed a finger fearfully and also angrily at the seller, “he threw me to the ground and then punched Shahid. We had done nothing to him. Brother Shahid was only demanding his right as a customer. It was only fair. But they will never treat us as their equals. They will always look down upon us and treat us like dirt. They have done that for hundreds of years. They will never stop!”

That was that. The two sides, all men, closed in on each other and a regular fist-fight erupted. Sara was pleased with the outcome. For a brief moment, she thought, maybe she should have gone for a career in acting. She was a natural. She swung a couple of good punches in. Then she conveniently stepped back and called the cops. There already had been a couple of calls made about the fight and the cops were getting into gear. They told her to step away as far as possible from the melee. For good measure, Sara threw in a couple of hearty sobs in the call and then hung up. 

By then quite a few folks had joined in and the air was thick with all kinds of things flying around. This being the warehouse district, quite a few of them were heavy boxes. No one seemed to be holding back in throwing them at whoever caught their eye. Sara noticed a few scrapes and bruises but no blood in sight, yet. She fully expected that to change as the volume and frequency of the shouts kept going up. There it was - someone had finally drawn some blood. It was one the seller’s colleagues whose nose had been broken and copious amounts of blood was streaming down his face and shirt.

That inflamed the fighters further. Someone had lit a box on fire and threw it inside the warehouse where the flames quickly grew. There was a lot of combustible material stored there. The sprinklers instantly turned on but the fire appeared to be winning the initial round. A bit of lull dawned on the crowd as everyone looked at the fire and the sprinklers raining down water on it. In that quiet moment, the sound of the sirens crept up surreptitiously at first and then was suddenly upon them and no one could hear each other talk at all. Some of the fighters half-heartedly tried to throw a few more punches at their opponents but the fire and wailing sirens had taken the wind out of most of them. The cop vans screeched in, followed closely by a fire engine and an ambulance.

Sonia and Alia led a dozen police officers into the middle of the riot as the fire-fighters rushed into the warehouse to squelch the already fading flames. The severely hurt people were taken to the ambulance and then the police lined up all the rioters by the wall. Sara slipped away from the scene unobserved or at least that’s what she thought. But Alia had noticed her. Alia felt that she had seen that big black woman a few times in recent days but couldn’t place her. In any case, she was distracted by the task at hand.

The rioters were to be arrested and taken to the jail until the powers-to-be decided what was to be done with them. Luckily, no one had died. There were lots of cuts and bruises but nothing that would require hospitalization. As she was scanning the long line of rioters, at least four dozen in all, she saw Shahid. She hadn’t recognized him earlier because the left side of his face was red and rapidly turning into purple. “Was that a coincidence?” Alia wondered. Finally, the boiling point had been reached in Sequoia. The pressure on her to solve the murders had just gone up by a few more notches.