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Any Black person in Atlanta could easily grow tired of beggars. The homeless and beggars were everywhere. If you merely stood in one spot in downtown for too long, someone would come and ask you for change. In downtown, they did so to everyone. But when you left downtown and went into predominantly Black areas of Atlanta except for Cascade and Ben Hill, then there would still be someone to come and ask others for change. Needy areas in other southern cities existed, but saw less begging than in Atlanta.
For Bilal, it was even worse. Back when he was Bill Caldwell as a small Baptist child, he had been to both poor and rich Baptist churches alike. But he hadn’t run into people begging. If it happened, he was never around. But then he became a Muslim with his parents when he was in middle school, he had begun to notice that just going to the Friday sermons guaranteed that someone would beg from someone else. When he left home and lived on campus in college, he could go to other locations for the Friday prayers and yet he saw the same thing. He quickly grew tired of begging and was especially incensed at seeing African Americans beg.
One evening he just snapped. Now, I don’t mean that he picked a fight at all. But he and his wife were exiting the West End MARTA station late one evening when a unkempt-looking stranger spoke to him. “Excuse me, brotha, kin I talk to you for minute?”
“As long as it’s not about three things, no problem,” Bilal answered.
“Man, I’m just trying to get a hold of some change--” the stranger said to him.
“One of those three things is money,” Bilal interrupted him.
The beggar looked shocked, wide-eyed for a second, then he got another demeanor. “What the ___ is your problem, niggah?!” he said, getting up in Bilal’s face and breathing his liquor breath in his nostrils.
“Let’s go home,” said Anisa, his wife.
“You can shut up, b___!” cursed the stranger. Bilal immediately upper-cut the man in his chin and knocked him back.
They both fought viciously, but Bilal took a punch in his forehead that was the last thing he saw or heard or felt before blackness engulfed him. He never forgot that he was in a fight even as he was unconscious, but he was unable to move, hear, or feel. As he was attempting to, he saw Anisa appear before him in the blackness, bleeding from her nose and smelling like incense. She sprouted green wings and then flew off from him, waving good-bye to him and saying “Stay strong!”
He regained consciousness to find her lying next to him, battered to death so brutally her face was unrecognizable. Apparently, she had fought the man when he lost consciousness and died attempting to defend his honor. But the stranger was gone. Sadness and hatred overtook him as they were carried to the emergency room. So much so that he never thought to ask himself why she would be taken there when she was clearly dead. He was not even in disbelief about his wife being dead. As a pessimist, that kind of news was too bad to be false.
The community masjid in his neighborhood was of little help. Not that the brothers were scared, just that they were too lazy to do the detective work. At one point, the Muslims would have been the police force of their neighborhood. Now, they were resting on their laurels after having cleaned out prostitution and drugs from their areas. One, a bounty hunter named Jafar Abdul-Qadr, was of some assistance, but only later on. In the meantime, Bilal grew impatient and he grew angrier that no one could seem to help.
“You had a concussion, Mr. Sawad. We don’t know what your brain waves were like before, but the scan we took came back the same as violent criminals. “
“Oh, so now that the werewolf bit me, I’m becoming one, too?” he asked sarcastically. “I’ve never been harmful to anyone, just fed up with being asked for change all the time. This time I had to lose my wife because I had enough. All it took was for me to tell him don’t ask me anything about money, and he killed her while I was unconscious! I’m not the violent criminal.”
“No, but what I fear is that your impulse-control may suffer. I can recommend a psychologist if you began to feel abnormal, not like yourself. Or if you suffer memory loss. I can almost guarantee that you’ll be more irritable and impatient but that’s normal if it doesn’t last more than a month. If it does, call me immediately and we’ll get you help.”
“No way I’m gonna call for that,” Bilal said to himself as he left the office. “I don’t care who doesn’t like it.”
That night, Bilal took a late train to a worse neighborhood south of his own. As soon as someone asked him for change, he started another argument. “Man, don’t you have anything to talk about other than begging?”
“Niggah, what’s your problem?” the guy said.
“That I’m tired of niggahs asking me for change all the damn time! That’s my problem! Everywhere I go, some niggah’s got to stop me and hit me up like I got money and no problems!”
“Look, I’m just trying to eat, but if you want to get something off your chest, come on, mother___!” Bilal took his cattle prod and shocked the hell out of the stranger. He kept shocking him until the man was foaming at the mouth and twitching even without the electrocution.
“Now it’s off my chest,” Bilal told him as he walked off. Had the man asked the people who had passed him before Bilal did, he’d have just been told no and left alone. Because Bilal was the first one he stopped, he was electrocuted and then left lying in the cold in his own urine. “And I’ll never hold it in again.”
The next week, at the Friday prayer, Bilal attended and sat in the front row as the khateeb preached. Before his concussion, he could sit through a boring sermon or a sermon in which the khateeb was encouraging the compromising of Islam. But this time, when the khateeb said “We should be nice to the non-Muslims, befriend them, so they can be drawn to Islam. They’re nice people, they just don’t know any better,” Bilal got up and walked out. And as he passed in front of the khateeb, he feigned a punch to make the khateeb flinch in front of the whole bewildered congregation before he continued on out.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked a brother in the parking lot he’d met a few times before. “You were the first one in the masjid to show up for Friday prayer, and yet you threaten the imam? Are you suffering that much from what happened?”
“Kind of, yes. You heard what he said. ‘They don’t know any better?’ Yes, they do. They’re learning about Islam right now but they don’t want to accept it because they have to give up things they want. So they stay whatever else they are. That’s all. But be nice to them and make friends with them?! Is he serious? He didn’t say be kind and be fair, he said to be friends with them so they get attracted to Islam! I have a few kaffir friends from my Baptist days and I can tell you they know what’s up! They know if they become Muslim they’ll be persecuted and then be told not to fight back when they come to Jumua. Dat’s just like church! Be persecuted for Christ’s sake and don’t fight back while they rape you and take everything from you! This is Islam, not some church-based civil rights movement!”
“But you walked out on Jumua! Your salah is incomplete! The hadith says to sit and listen until the salah, then pray two rakat to complete the salah.”
“If I pray behind him my salah is still incomplete! He knows better and that’s why I jumped at him. If he hadn’t…” He was interrupted by a voice on the loudspeaker that wasn’t the khateeb’s. Someone was taking the microphone and telling about some problems he was having at his job. True to form, he began to ask for charity.
Bilal excused himself from Hasan and re-entered the masjid, removing his shoes at the door. He approached the man through the crowd right off the bat and interrupted him when he got to him. “What if I can suggest a solution?”
“What’s that?” the beggar was saying.
“Take it from someone by force. That way, you can keep your dignity,” Bilal whispered.
“Haram, ock-kee!” exclaimed the beggar.
“So is begging when you have options.” Bilal punched the brother in his chest and knocked him into the wall behind him. When he got up as if to fight back, Bilal warned him flatly, “Do not retaliate. One is illegal but it only irritates the kuffar. So what? The other is wrong and it irritates the Muslims. You act like we’re not a poor community already, begging from us like we got money to spare! We don’t come to masjid to hear grown men beg from us as soon as we’re done praying! Man up! If you need money, go beg from the church, not us. Irritate them so we can pray with a peaceful heart!”
“Get out!” said the khateeb imam. “You cause more trouble than he does!”
“Yeah, by telling you the truth about your watered-down deen, huh? You know we’re not supposed to be loyal to the kuffar like what you were talking about! Make them friends?! All you said was for us to try to impress them with our weakness and hope they accept the truth! No one is ever impressed by non-violence and you should know this from the sixties! So don’t tell me not to come back! You’ll be hard-pressed to get me back in here whenever you’re giving the Friday khutbah!”
Bilal was losing patience, but he had never been a patient person to begin with. That was why he grew fed up with being asked for change everywhere he went. He got sick of strangers always asking for help, especially any stranger he had seen let others go unmolested and then stop him. It wasn’t unreasonable for him to feel that way because he had to work for every dime he got. He was always one paycheck away from being in the streets himself, and never sure of his financial future, but he still got hit up for money almost anytime he went out. It was getting worse in his city. What was changing was that Bilal was getting less patient with things that irked him even before. But he was also getting more violent and less sympathetic to people. He knew he was getting more violent because he would walk around at night when he couldn’t sleep and he would always be ready for another fight. He hoped to run into the guy who had killed his wife and ran off, but as a pessimist he didn’t believe Allah would ever deliver him something that good.
When he was walking with his sister and her friend downtown during a lunch break, they turned a corner and ran into a stranger who commented negatively about their covered heads. “Hot as it is, and y’all got them f___ blankets on your heads!” he slurred. Having lost his wife already, Bilal didn’t over-react at first but he did just half a minute later.
“You better turn around and run like hell before I lose my temper. You only get this one warning, chump!” he told the drunkard.
“Run?! From you?! Mother____, you better run! You ain’t scary at all, you little b___! You know what I used to do to you in jail?!”
They were on the sidewalk, so Bilal head-butted him in the nose and pushed him into the street right in the trajectory of oncoming traffic. The man was immediately hit by a car and flung two addresses further down, but the vehicle couldn’t stop before reaching his rolling body, and it couldn’t get over in another lane to avoid crushing him.
“I’m still hungry,” he said to his shocked sister and her friend. “I don’t feel like waiting. Let’s just say I head-butted him in self-defense and we left him alive on the sidewalk. Let’s go.”
“How can you eat after what you did?” asked Nurah as he finished up his sandwich quickly.
“I protected you, didn’t I? Why would that make me feel guilty? I’m hungry, so I’m eating. It’s that simple.”
“Yeah, I agree that you were right but don’t you feel nervous?”
“Very little, like before a test that you studied for real well. Nothing big. Do you?”
“Yes, Bilal. You threw his behind into the street and killed him!” she whispered emphatically.
“And he was gonna do us wrong. I learned the hard way what happens when I don’t kill them outright! When I get angry, my head hurts until I do something really corrective of the situation! Until the problem is solved, the headache doesn’t go away! This morning I decided not to suffer any headaches! None! And if I hadn’t killed that guy, you’d wish I did!”
When a police officer walked in and looked around, Bilal told them to stay calm and not look over their shoulders, a cop was coming towards him. When the officer got close to the table, Bilal said to him, “Oh! Let me guess! He said I started it because I’m a terrorist, huh? What else did he say through his liquor breath!”
“Say?! He can’t say anything, he’s dead!” Bilal acted surprised to hear this. “You mind coming with me to answer some questions?”
“I do mind, but I’ll answer them outside unless I’m under arrest.”
“You’re not under arrest because someone gave us a statement already, said you were defending these ladies and that he provoked it all. We just have to get your side of it, that’s all.” That was easy.
A man named Abdul-Samad was always in some kind of trouble, but usually minor. One day, though he was arrested for molesting a young child. He was bailed out by his brother, and then while out on bail, he was arrested again for molesting the same one! His brother, believing in him, bailed him out one more time. But the imam of the masjid he attended placed a letter on the bulletin board to the effect that he wasn’t to come to the masjid except to pray, after which he had to leave. He was not to be left alone with any children, either. Abdul-Samad didn’t understand why he was being followed one night after he had prayed Maghreb there, but he knew he was. When he finally broke out into a run, he was easily overtaken. It was a young man he didn’t know at all. “How could you!” asked the stranger.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I’m talking about, nigga! I was only 6 years old, man! How could you do that to me? What did I do to deserve this?”
“Man, I don’t remember ever seeing you before in my life! I never did anything to you!”
“Yes, you did, when you were sixteen! I remember!”
“No, man! You got it wrong! I never did that to anyone till I was nineteen!” Abdul-Samad explained, not realizing he had confessed.
“I know, you’re right,” Bilal admitted, pulling a pistol and attaching the silencer. “No one has ever molested me in my life. But you have molested some kids, haven’t you?”
“No, man, what I meant was…” but Abdul Samad couldn’t explain this away. “See, man, I just…”
“Just what?!” said Bilal impatiently. “You know what, never mind! Don’t say nothin’ except who did it to you.”
“My uncle, man. He got me when I was eight. I didn’t even know what he was doing. My parents never told me to watch out for that!” Abdul-Samad cried. “I just wanted him to stop, and I couldn’t tell anyone!”
“If you had seen him decapitated, would you have done this to anyone else?”
“I don’t think so, man,” cried Abdul-Samad into his hands, shaking his balding head.
“You know what has to happen to your kind under the Shariah. Tell me your last victim’s name and I’ll make sure he knows what happened to you so he might not grow up that way.” Abdul-Samad began to sob so much as Bilal led him to the woods that he couldn’t pronounce the name correctly. “Stop mumbling before I lose my temper!” Bilal growled to someone for the second time.
“Aliyah Rivers,” Abdul-Samad finally said through his sobs.
“I couldn’t hear you. Did you say Aliyah Rivers?” Abdul-Samad nodded his head. Just then, Bilal heard a train coming at the end of the street, which gave him another idea. He dragged Abdul-Samad out of the woods and back onto the street towards the tracks. “Hurry up before the train blocks us off, slow-poke,” he told him, shoving him. The train was still a ways away when they got to the tracks. “You got a choice. I shoot you now or you lay on the tracks and wait to get sliced up,” Bilal told him coldly.
“Man, please shoot me! I deserve it! I hurt those kids, man, I’m sick, I can’t help myself!” Abdul-Samad shouted as the train drew nearer.
“The easy way out, right?”
“Please!”
“No.” Bilal then shot him in the legs, then in one arm, eliciting a scream each time. He then drug the helpless, screaming Abdul-Samad across the tracks and lay him there. With only one arm to use, he would have to drag his other three broken limbs over some tracks to save himself. The pain was too great and the weight alone was too much for his one arm. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. “Please!” he begged Bilal to shoot him as the train’s headlight got brighter and the train got louder.
“Let me think about it. Okay, no is my answer still,” Bilal politely shouted above the increasing din. Just before the train was about to come upon Abdul-Samad and slice him, Bilal shot him through the back of the neck to paralyze him. If he survived, he would see and hear the train slice him up, but he wouldn’t feel it. He survived the shot. He was neatly cut in three by the train’s wheels, but the shock of hearing it hurt him more than the slicing did. Being sliced at the stomach, too, his diaphragm muscle no longer operated his lungs, and he died slowly and in shock. By the time he died, Bilal was already driving away, unnoticed by the Muslims still pouring out of the masjid.
After having to kill a Muslim for child molestation, Bilal began to talk to people a lot less. Not that he never talked, but that he made less small-talk with people, especially with any African Americans he barely knew, for fear that they might ask for money or a ride and drive him into a frenzy. Then, he began to talk less to other Muslims, too, because the whole Muslim American community was so dysfunctional that he couldn’t stifle his frustration from it.
In his silence, he got to ponder more and more clearly. His pondering didn’t help his anger at all, it only fueled it. He realized that almost every problem in the world boiled down to things; scarcity of resources and oppression. Allah created the resources and placed them in hard to reach places, but that was a test of greed. It was the human beings who failed the test, some oppressing others to satisfy the greed and extract the resources without sharing them. Everything else could be traced back to this. The solution was always in revolution, but revolutions failed, too. Inevitably, liberated peoples often oppressed someone else while letting their oppressors off the hook. South African blacks were more dangerous to each other than to any whites anywhere. Israeli Jews, often Germans who survived Hitler’s genocide, went on to oppress Palestinians in Israel. Europe had oppressed the Arab world and India, both of which looked down and oppressed Africans when they could. His problem with being begged for money by his brothers was traceable to America itself, not just poverty or Black laziness. No, not those scapegoats. Because those scapegoats were traceable to America being what it was; a nation that sucked blood from others to satisfy the greed of a few. It took too much in exchange for too little and never made amends for its wrongs. It impoverished his people and created a pool of unemployed, poor Black men from which to draw labor or throw in jail. The system was set up to make Mexicans and Blacks alike a pool of cheap labor. But African Americans were frustrated with this arrangement, so more of them would lash out and at one another and go to jail. Either way, it was oppression and only interest-bearing school debt or military service were ways out. Lately, Bilal doubted even these would help many in the near future. Islam was the revolution of revolutions by its very definition, with its financial system and its Shariah law. This was why the imams never gave solutions to problems plaguing the communities; the solutions were beyond revolutionary and were against the law.
Only by disrespecting and resisting American authority could anyone get ahead. Only with Islam and Shariah could they replace the current framework in their lives. Only by leaving the US could they do so. Only by giving up materialism could they come to tolerate life in lands where the shariah was being implemented as they were all poor lands being resisted by America and England. There was no solution as easy as just praying all five prayers or fasting or knowing fiqh. Those would only be the beginning. At some point, one would have to exit the western orbit of nations and give up on ideas of material success. But then poverty was still an evil and an oppression. Poor people couldn’t even resist the oppression of wealthy tyrants, much less oppress them. It was always the poor and middle class being oppressed. That meant there would have to be a financial resistance, too. Somewhere down the line for the innocent to not be oppressed in poverty, they’d have to force a redistribution of wealth and resources.
He once exploded when some Muslims began to request money after a Friday prayer in order to keep another masjid open. “You mean someone opened a masjid they couldn’t afford to maintain? They didn’t know better than to do that already? You don’t just raise money to build a masjid, you raise money to keep it, too! If you can’t then you hold off on building one till you can keep it!”
“Brother, here everyone has bills and rents to pay. That’s America. If we do like you say, we never have masjid anywhere in America,” said the East African brother in response.
“Exactly! That’s why we need to focus on saving up to leave here! Move out! Not entertaining false hopes about turning America Muslim by going into more debts to build more masajid that won’t be able to survive without haram money from these gas stations in the first place! America is not the answer to our problems. It’s the cause of a lot of them!”
This made the decision for Bilal as to how to react when he found the guy who killed Anisa. The bounty hunter, Jafar, one day came to Bilal as he was leaving the masjid. “Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah, Bilal. Got me some good news for you, ock.”
“Wa leikum salam wa rahmatullah. What’s up?”
“A brother that just got out of the county jail told me about another man in there who bragged about how he had knocked out a man and then beat his woman to death, except the inmate didn’t say ‘woman’. He gave me a name and even a prisoner number because he wanted to know if we could do anything to him once he got out. The muslims in the jail found out it was you and Anisa he was talking about so he had to be placed in protective custody.”
“So the deputies know this? Why didn’t they tell me they had him for her murder?”
“I think it’s because they’re not charging him with it. They’re just putting him in PC. That’s not the good news, Bilal. This is.” Then Jafar wrote down a name on a piece of paper. “Do you think you’ll ever forget this?” he asked Bilal as he held up a lighter next to the paper.
“Never!” So Jafar lit the lighter, then burned the paper on the concrete pavement. “Thank you for that. Hamdulillah, this is a big help.”
Bilal went online immediately and found the
name on the list of inmates in Fulton’s county jail. He was in on charges of
simple possession of marijuana. It was a misdemeanor, so he would be out soon as
he had only been in for a week. He would either be convicted and sent back, or
out on probation. But no homicide was listed, so Bilal would have to take care
of that himself. But in seeing the picture, he was sure that was the guy. I think I’ll try to get the police to charge
him before I do anything on my own, thought Bilal. I’ll give them their chance, then he’s all
mine.
When Bilal showed up at his trial for the possession, the next day, he asked to address the court. When the judge hesitantly gave him permission, he explained that the defendant was the same as the one who had murdered his wife at a MARTA station. He was advised to go to the MARTA police to tell them that the man who murdered his wife was in county custody on a misdemeanor charge, and to name him. Bilal immediately got out his cell phone and called the MARTA detective whose card he had. Looking the defendant in his eyes the whole time, he told her as soon as she picked up the phone, “This is Bilal Sawad, case number 08-1228, the murder and battery at the West End MARTA station about 6 weeks back. I found the killer. He’s in the Fulton County courtroom of Judge Carnes right now on a misdemeanor. I’m looking right at him so I have no doubt it’s him. He didn’t even cut his ugly-looking goatee. Come get him before I lose my temper.”
The defendant was acquitted of the possession charges and he was then held for transfer to the custody of MARTA police, though, they’d only take him back to the county jail for another processing. “Man, I’d be out there free if it wasn’t for your snitchin’ a__, b___!”
“Snithcin’?! You killed my wife! You know what?” then Bilal rushed him and was grabbed and held back by a deputy. “You better hope you don’t get free again now that I know your name! I couldn’t protect you if I wanted to!” He was drug into another room by the deputy, who asked him if he needed some water.
“I understand how you feel, and you have every right to be angry. I’m just doing my job so he can face trial for it and get his the right way.”
“I’ll be better when Georgia executes him for murder. But I’ll be all right for now. I just need one aspirin and one ibuprofen if you got any.”
Bilal would have been devastated when the defendant, whose name was Jay Grimes, pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and got a suspended sentence and probation. But he was not devastated because he was a pessimist and therefore he expected no better. Grimes never served a day in prison after the trial, and he was therefore free to do more dirt. He had no previous felonies, only two misdemeanors, and somehow had a good lawyer even though he had met Bilal by begging for change outside a rail station. It was as if this was happening just to hurt Bilal. Or provoke him.
Bilal followed him from the courthouse to a restaurant called Chickenheads. Since the waitresses wore short shorts and halter tops just to take orders, Bilal sat out in his car with shades on and pretended to be asleep. But Grimes was being driven by a friend of his, who was in there with him eating the wings and drinking. About forty-five minutes later they came out and Bilal followed them to College Park. When they turned into a neighborhood that had only one way in one way out, Bilal knew he couldn’t follow. It was an area that you couldn’t go into unless you lived there or knew a resident. The young dopeboys would stop strange cars unless they got a phone call from a resident saying they were expecting someone. But across from the entrance to the subdivision was a children’s park and basketball court. Bilal parked there and waited for nightfall. Grimes never walked out or drove out in another car, so he apparently lived there.
Once the sun was down, Bilal prayed Maghreb and then walked across the street to the entrance where now only two dopeboys stood guard. When he didn’t stop for them, one spoke to him and said, “Who you here to see, homeboy?”
“Grimes, bro. He owes me.”
“Hold on, folk. What’s the deal? You just gonna walk up in here all official and stuff? ‘Grimes, he owes me,’” the taller one mocked. “He got to let us know first and you ain’t on the guest list. Now go on before we whip that a__!”
“No, that nigga did some real dirt and I bailed him out. I’m collecting whether you try to whip me or not. I know you’re doing your job, but this is out of your jurisdiction.” Bilal then pulled his pistol and put in his mouth to the other’s shock and horror. Then to the other fellow, he said, “You tell me where to find Grimes or I’ll kill this baboon right here in front of you. I’ll make sure he dies slow and painful, bleeding on his insides. You want to save him or not?”
“Man, please let my brother go! I’ll tell you!”
“Take your gun out and his! Real, real slow. Put them in my left hand carefully. One false move and his brain stem is fried!” Bilal growled.
Grimes heard the doorbell ring, and his buddy answered it. His buddy came back in to the TV room and told him it was for him. When Grimes got to the door, Bilal shot him at point-blank range in the gut, then began to stomp him all over once he fell. His buddy came out and shot from the front hallway in a rush, missing because Bilal ducked when he saw the movement of a body. Then Bilal shot him in the genitals and the gut. “Vengeance, nigga! I want blood! He said as he stomped Grimes again. He was stomping Grimes to death in the head the same way that Grimes had beaten Anisa. “Die painfully!” he growled in his stomping. Then he jumped in the air and landed both feet back down on Grimes’ jaw and cranium, crushing both. With his hands gloved, he quickly took Grime’s shoes off and his own, then placed his on Grimes’ body. He put Grime’s shoes on himself, then ran to his car and took off. The dopeboys lay unconscious as he left them.
When the police came to question him the next day, they found he was there at home, not even at work. “Mind if we come in?” said the detective Bates.
“I do,” said Bilal.
“Look I’m sorry that Grimes was let off like that, but we’re not the prosecutors or judges. We investigate and make arrests.”
“So you came to apologize? You’re College Park detectives and my case was in MARTA jurisdiction. Why should you be sorry?”
“Where were you yesterday after the trial?”
“I sat at my wife’s grave. I even feel asleep there til about midnight.”
“Anyone see you?”
“Well, if they did, do you expect them to come out of the graves and tell you? No, I don’t know if anyone saw me sleeping, but I do know I was the only one alive while I was awake. Now, what do you want?”
“Grimes was murdered, pretty brutally yesterday. His roommate was killed, too. The roommate died this morning. Grimes was dead at the scene. Would you know anything about that?”
“He’s dead?!” asked Bilal surprisedly. But from his smile, it was a pleasant surprise. “Alhamdulillah! Allahu Akbar! He’s finally dead!”
“You seem pretty happy about it,” said Bates.
“Elated! I prayed that he die as soon as the gavel hit the desk in the courthouse! You kill a Muslim, that’s what should happen!”
“Bilal, come with us please.”
“No,” he retorted calmly.
“Then you’re under arrest,” Bates said, to which the silent detective pulled his handcuffs.
Bilal then stepped back once and pulled his pistol. “I guess this is it, huh? No chance of you leaving me the hell alone?” he asked as they drew their own and aimed at him.
“Drop the gun!” they screamed at him.
“Answer my question!” he screamed.
“No, there isn’t,” said Bates, shaking his head.
“Well, tell my parents that I was right and you guys were wrong.”
“How are we wrong? Your own statement said that this started because you told him not ask you for change. You could have just given him a dime and kept going,” said Bates.
“No, I’d have given him dollars if I could afford it. But I couldn’t. As far as I’m concerned the system you protect is what made some of us into beggars. If you won’t let me go elsewhere to another system, then bury me as a Muslim who wouldn’t surrender to yours. This is what real men do.”
“Drop the gun, now! We will shoot you!” said the other detective.
“Allahu akbar! La ilaha illa Allah wa Muhammad abduhu wa rasuluhu,” said Bilal to re-declare his faith. Then he raised his pistol and traded shots with them at point-blank range. He felt a minor stinging, like his muscles were going to sleep on him, then he lost consciousness again. Unlike last time, he was able to hear around him.
The first thing he heard was someone saying, “Salam aleikum, Bilal. Good news, Allah answered my request.” Bilal knew that voice, though. It was Anisa’s.
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