Free Jihadi by Yusuf Toropov

her revised career plan on a helpless, battered legal pad, she told Thelonius that she refused to spend thirty years interviewing people and making notes, even though she was very good at that.
    She wanted to set the vision. She wanted to be in control of the planning.
    A consensus arose within the Directorate that, despite her brilliance, despite her overseas experience, she was never going to be in her father’s league, either as a strategic thinker or as a builder of internal coalitions. Some of her ruder rivals claimed she couldn’t assess, or even accept the existence of, data that challenged her own assumptions.
    Becky denied all of this too loudly and too often, which, her rivals suggested, only proved the point. Jealous of her name, wary of her ambitions, secure at last in the knowledge that Dad was not out to establish a genetic dynasty, they did their best to reinforce existing negative perceptions of her and added to their list of Troubling Things a growing concern about her own potential for personal imbalance.
    Her career plateaued. She responded to Dad’s discreet efforts to find her work elsewhere in government with a series of startlingly obscene, unanswered emails, all of which she showed Thelonius. Whose star was rising.
    She became the subject of many jokes, some cruel. Among these was the nickname ‘Cleopatra’, which started out somewhere in the upper regions of the Directorate and worked its way down to the support staff. One beaming, oblivious receptionist made the mistake of saying ‘Cleopatra’ to her face, while Becky was issuing instructions to a subordinate. The next morning, the receptionist had vanished. Thelonius thought he spotted her working at a LensCrafters.
    That receptionist probably thought she was paying Becky a compliment. A lot of people thought that at first. But the people at the very top of the Directorate called Becky ‘Cleopatra’ not because she remained quite beautiful, but because they liked implying the phrase ‘Queen of Denial’ without actually coming out and saying it.
    T said ‘Cleopatra’ in this context just once in conversation, during a particularly boring meeting that needed livening up. He felt instant shame at his enjoyment of that word, spoken loud and inBecky’s absence, and deeper shame at the laughter it produced around the table.
    Dick Unferth didn’t laugh.
    She believed in herself. Should Thelonius mock that with the others?
    Although he could not agree with the decision, he did respect her efforts to stay on at the Directorate, her resolving to ride out the storm, and he said so. One night, he suggested she begin exploring career opportunities with local or federal law enforcement. She snorted in disgust. Then, perhaps ten seconds later, made a brief hmm sound, as though she were considering the idea. She wrote something on that disintegrating yellow legal pad she always kept by the bed. Thelonius pretended to be asleep, that being one of the best ways to ensure that a point raised with Becky remained raised. The next morning, while she was in the shower, he read the top sheet on the pad.
    It said, in huge letters: ‘CONTROL = RESPECT’.

13 Does the 9/11 Thing Go Here?
    The dead guy relating this story suggests that the imam – a man of intimidating calmness who looked to be in his late twenties but was approaching thirty-nine – sat on a cushion on the carpeted living-room floor in front of a small pot of tea set in the centre of a clean straw mat. The imam gave his salaams, received salaams in return, and gestured to the two women to take a seat before him. Each had been assigned a cushion. Fatima took the gold one, her opponent took the grey one.
    On the wall was a piece of intricate calligraphy, inscribed: Be useful in all things .
    xli. Be useful in all things
    An unlikely motto for an Islamic scholar, attributable as it is to the Japanese swordsman and tactician Miyamoto Musashi. Track one, McCartney’s ironic Cold War parody (it