Елена Чудинова: The Mosque of Notre Dame

Eugène-Olivier, moving his lips out of habit, repeated all the instructions he had received from Sevazmios. Usually, he repeated everything word-for-word once an hour, but this time he did so once every half an hour. Not because he was afraid that he would forget something; it was simply pleasant through repetition to recollect her voice, intonation, eyes, the movements of her hand holding a cigarette. It was not often that one got one’s orders directly from Sevazmios. What he was feeling could have been described as infatuation, but it wasn’t really that. It was a special feeling of adoration unlike anything else, adoration that one can only experience during youth when the soul is still growing and absorbing ideals, disregarding age and sex. It is bodiless and savage, more like death than life.

The gleaming purple Mercedes slowly came to a stop in front of the department store. The qadi was sitting at the wheel. It was well known that he liked to drive new cars. But he did have a driver who could have been on the job today. Had that been the case, Eugène-Olivier would have been forced to return empty-handed. A driver (who always doubled as a bodyguard) could have spent his down-time nibbling on sunflower seeds, but he could also have decided to inspect the car one more time. An unexploded device is an awkward thing; it has fingerprints and many other things on it. One could say it is simply papered with business cards. Moreover, the next attempt would have been at least twice as difficult. But today, the qadi was alone.

He pulled his corpulent body out of the car with difficulty. Eugène-Olivier’s vision suddenly became focused. As if he were less than an arm’s length away, he saw the round face tanned on the beach (back from Nice a week ago), the trimmed beard, the tinted eyeglasses with thin gold frames, the thirty-two unnaturally shiny porcelain implants in his calculated smile of satisfaction.

Qadi Malik was smiling. Not even an hour had passed since he had said talak to an attractive girl whom he had married three hours earlier through the imam . The girl (what was her name?) truly deserved the praise she received from his friends at the club. A lusty, red-haired girl with blue eyes and a pug nose, rounded and elastic—the body of poor Zeynab didn’t bear comparison. It may be that Zeynab wasn’t much fatter, but it wasn’t just a question of being fat. Her thighs and buttocks were like gelatin, and they trembled under his hand like jellyfish. And were about as attractive. But this girl… ah.

So he didn’t mind taking the time now to fetch his wife from the store. Zeynab must also get what she had coming to her. No rags could possibly make her attractive again in her husband’s eyes, but rags themselves make women happy. Let her be happy. A sensible man values peace in the home, and dedicates attention to each of his wives.

Eugène-Olivier forced himself to interrupt this endlessly long moment. In actuality, he had been observing Qadi Malik for no more than a few seconds. Enough, it was time! Five, four, three, two, one, go!

Qadi Malik frowned as he shut the car door. Right in front of him, some girl—young, judging from her abrupt walk and her thinness that not even her clothing could hide—apparently mesmerized by the window display, dropped her bag of groceries. White onions began to bounce on the pavement. Fool! What was she doing here anyway, with such cheap food? She was wasting time looking at the display window of a store where she would never be able to buy anything in her life, while her family at home was waiting for lunch!

A few onions rolled right under the wheels of the car. The woman bent to retrieve them. That’s right, go ahead and pick them up! Another man would have intentionally stepped on it, but Qadi Malik only pushed away a tomato he found in his path with his foot.

Several young men stopped to laugh. The woman swiftly gathered her groceries and put them back in her bag.

The tinted doors of the store had already begun to open, but Qadi Malik suddenly stopped and angrily slapped himself on the forehead. He had forgotten his cell phone! He wouldn’t have gone back for it, but he was expecting a call from Copenhagen. Every second could cost him dearly—the market wouldn’t wait.

The same clumsy young woman jumped away from the car in fear. Apparently, the phone was already ringing. Qadi Malik hastily took it out, put it to his ear, and got back in the car. Of course, he needn’t have. He could have let the phone wait and gone into the store. Or he could have simply retrieved his phone and then talked as he walked. By choosing either of these things, the eminent qadi of District 16 of the city of Paris could have prolonged his life by as much as half an hour. But he preferred to sit back down in the comfortable leather seat and shut the door.

Eugène-Olivier pressed the remote-control button.

The caller from Copenhagen could not understand why his client responded to his very important news by simply hanging up. He tried to call back, but Qadi Malik did not answer.

Zeynab and Aset stood next to the lingerie counter. The sales clerk was packing the exquisite pink teddy Aset had chosen into a mauve bag. Zeynab would have preferred a juicier tone, like raspberry. But she was sorely disappointed. In her size (50), they only had white and blue! What could possibly be worse, for a pale brunette! It was an insult, pure and simple. They had said they could order it. Of course they could order it, but she wanted it today! She was tempted to pinch the poor sales clerk until she hurt her, and Aset, too—who was nonchalantly writing out a check with a diamond-encrusted pen.

“Shall we have a coffee, my dear?” asked Aset, replacing the gold pen cap. “I just can’t resist their baklava .”

“But of course.” Zeynab hid her annoyance and decided she would have a glass of pomegranate juice.

She was not sure if her best friend had mentioned the baklava casually, or if she were alluding to the fact that not every woman had to watch what she ate for fear of gaining weight. It was true that the baklava here was superb; maybe she would allow herself just a small piece after all.

The two friends were already walking toward a corner with comfortable mahogany chairs when the glass wall behind the counter shattered into thousands of brilliant pieces. An entire sky of sunlight burst into the aquarium-like dimness of the store. The blue sky outside started filling with billows of smoke. Shoppers on the store’s second floor looked down to see throngs of people running and screaming below.

But all the screaming was soon drowned out by the siren. It wailed above the crowd like a mortally wounded leviathan. Eugène-Olivier got up from the asphalt, where he had been crouching. As could be expected, the fact that someone had dived to the sidewalk a split second before the explosion had gone unnoticed.

The ambulance parted the throng of people. It wasn’t clear where they were heading—some were running away from the scene of the explosion, while others approached out of curiosity. The result was chaos.

One of the youngest store employees, not a sales clerk but a cleaning woman, carefully made her way through the glass and hurried out to look, still wearing her rubber gloves, not in the least concerned that her face was uncovered. Who would punish her now?

“What is it, Shabina?” shouted a woman with a manager’s card, staying at the counter with its samples of silk drapery.

“An explosion!” the girl called back.

The mellifluous voice of the girl clashed with the bass of the siren and carried well on the upper floor. “They’ve blown up a car, a purple Mercedes, right in the parking lot! A fancy SUV; I saw it parking! They’re not even trying to pull out the driver; the car is burning like a torch. There’s a man behind the wheel. He’s all in flames. The firemen are not even trying to put him out! The ambulance is here, too, but the doctor just waved his hand and went to help the wounded; he didn’t even approach the Mercedes. They blew it up right in our parking lot!”