Free Rotten Gods by Greg Barron Page A

jewellery.
    Still, the grief of being spurned by the man she had supported all her life weighed upon her. She smiled only rarely, and spent hours staring out through the window at the world of men that she could not join.
    Abdullah, meanwhile, rose through the ranks of a force that expanded almost daily, until from a ragtag band of just forty men he commanded a division of five hundred. The keys to his leadership were high expectations, supreme personal standards and a willingness to try new techniques, often gleaned from overseas forces: London, New York, and Paris.
    Into his thirties he remained at home with his mother, refusing social invitations. Apart from riding weekly, he had few engagements outside work and home. With no father to plan his marriage, he made no efforts in that direction, and he lavished attention on his mother, even as she became devout — mindful of a thousand tiny superstitions, many of which revolved around the Holy Qur’an itself. The book, for example, could never touch the ground. Abdullah’s mother insisted on using stands purchased to hold the book at eye level. It must never be left open or the Devil would come and read it, assimilating the wisdom inside. When not in use it must be wrapped and placed on the highest shelf in the house.
    Like much of the population of the Arab world, she burned bakhoor  — incense  — in the belief that it discouraged devils, or jinn, from inhabiting the house. After cutting her own orAbdullah’s hair, she collected every fallen strand, wrapped it in newspaper and hid it in a closet. It was well known that Jews and other potential enemies might use discarded hairs or nails to cause sickness and death to good Muslims.
    Each morning mother and son would together recite the thirty-sixth Surah, the Ya Sin, with its powers of healing, protection of property, defence against the jinn and an eventual easy passage to Paradise.
    You, O Muhammad, are one of the Messengers, on a Straight Path. This is a Revelation sent down by the Almighty, the Most Merciful, in order that you may warn a people whose forefathers were not warned, so they are heedless. The Word has proved true against most of them, so they will not believe. We have put on their necks iron collars reaching to chins, so that their heads are forced up. And we have put a barrier before them, and a barrier behind them, and we have covered them up, so that they cannot see. It is the same to them whether you warn them or you warn them not; they will not believe.
    Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and the resulting First Gulf War, when half-a-million American servicemen flooded the region, rattled Dubai’s economy, but still it rebounded. Further concessions brought more foreign companies into the trade zones, and money flowed into an economy boosted by ambitious local infrastructure projects.
    Abdullah’s mother sank into a depression no doctor could comprehend or cure. One morning he woke to silence. No soundof activity in the kitchen where she had prepared his morning meal for fifteen years.
    They found her in Dubai Creek, between the pylons of al-Maktoum Bridge, yellow nightshirt wound tight around her body. She had, according to the coroner, been dead for three hours. Abdullah used his position to have the details suppressed, and a short press release issued, explaining that his mother had drowned while swimming. He sold the apartment and took a smaller one.
    He remained friends with Ahmed, who went on to head Dubai World, a government-backed corporation worth a hundred billion dollars in assets at its peak. He watched the building of the Palms, towering hotel after towering hotel, then some of the most extravagant shopping malls in existence. Countless thousands of Pakistanis crossed the Arabian Sea to slave for this empire of money.
    Finally, he watched the economic ravages of the first and second Global Financial Crises, then the slow rising of the sea so that