Jihadi In Paradise

A Jihadi had just fallen to a Kurdish round to the head, his IS days were over, he had fought the good fight and was due his promised reward as shahid, as martyred witness to the expansion of the world's fastest goring religion. He had sliced and diced his way through half of Iraq and parts of Syria. He had hanged or crucified children, beheaded Christian and Yezidi captives, raped and sold and bought more women captives – children as well, boys included – than he could count, pillaged and burned, tortured or sodomized animals, prayed five times a day, pulled guard duty, punished slackers and backsliders, shot doubters or deserters, gunned down defenseless men, women and children of all ages and in any condition. And now he was dead.

He found himself in a room enclosed without walls, a silent throbbing space without definition, a place between places, a waystation if you will between that last expired breath and a tense feeling of expectation without a hint of what may transpire. He was visited by a smiling bearded brother in white who greeted him with all Muslim courtesies, bringing him tea. The air carried a pungeant sweetness which aroused nausea. Distant cries coming from the mouths of all his victims reached his ears, yet appeared to be trapped in reverberation within his own skull, and then receded. The brother playing host, or guide in this afterlife moment, reassured him with an odd smile and lightly veiled glance, "Don't worry, that'll all pass, you're about to enter paradise for your witness to Allah's cause and His Prophet, pieces and blasphemy be upon him. Relax, sit back, and I'll show you what awaits you, my brother."

At this he waved his hand: and the surrounding atmosphere opened into a panoramic scenario of our young, bloody, bearded jihadi zealot himself, putting on female garments and cosmetics, his own bodily form transforming into soft curves as he sensed his testosterone count ebbing away, his male pride given over to a narcotically induced stupor of trapped surrender of all resistance. He felt himself resembling a woman or a cute lad. The brother gestured with a light grin to a gate opening from seemingly nowhere, as in strode a horde of some fifty, maybe seventy, perhaps indeed 72, of the most bestially sweaty, bearded, blood-bedecked, unwashed and drunkenly laughing jihadi warriors he had ever encountered even in his own such existence on earth. They leered at him and waited, held at bay by with the raised finger of his brother-guide, circling like hyenas with a wild lust in their eyes which made him quite uncomfortable.

"Brother," explained the guide, "you did study your Qur'an and you do recall reciting with great anticipation those lines you'd been recruited with, from the Surat-al-waaqi'a, the sura of 'The Event', did you not?" And he recited for him in the manner of all Qur'an schools:

وَحُورٌ عِينٌ

كَأمْثَالِ اللُّؤْلُؤِ الْمَكْنُونِ

جَزَاء بِمَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ

"And fair females with wide, lovely eyes,
Like pearls in shells.
A Reward for what they used to do."

"Yes!" replied our dead jihadi, "Of course I did – and I'm expecting my due, when do I get that?"
"Oh, but wait, just another moment, my brother," the guide said, encouraging him with a pat on his now limp hand, "it will come – you recall the passage afterward, yes?" And he continued:

وَفُرُشٍ مَّرْفُوعَةٍ

إِنَّا أنشَأنَاهُنَّ إِنشَاء

فَجَعَلْنَاهُنَّ أبْكَارًا

عُرُبًا أتْرَابًا

"And endeared women.
Indeed, We created them of a novel creation.And made all of them virgins.
Loving their husbands and of equal age, fluent, and sweet of tongue."

"Yes, yes!" moaned our dead jihadi, "but what's happening with me, I feel so different!"

"You have been chosen, dear brother jihadi, my shahid," replied the guide grinning more fiercely, and this fierceness ran pretty close to the fierceness of this pissy-breathing horde of very horny looking students of Islamic traditions as it inched ever closer. "Chosen as a bride, chosen as a virgin for these jihadis, your fellow warriors, in the afterlife awaiting you."

"But..but..."
"But what, my glorious brother?"
"But I'm supposed to receive my 72 virgins to pleasure me in paradise, to do with them as I will, to have my way with them! This has been vouchsafed me!"

"Well," replied the guide, "not quite – you see, as it turns out, you will be privately raped in every possible manner you ever – or even never – imagined possible, by these very ones, this insatiably hungry mob of 72 of the ugliest jihadis we could muster, without a letup and for eternity. Or what will seem to you like an eternity, and this is their due, to do with you as they please and as often as they please. Allah is merciful, and just."

"What! THAT IS NOT WHAT IS WRITTEN!" protested the dead jihadi, "Allah has promised...!" – but his protests were in vain, you see.

"Ahhha," anwered the guide with a wide leering grin and a wild spark of sadistic coldness in his eyes, flashing out at the helpless dead jihadi. "I'm afraid YOU overlooked the main recurring clause there, my friend – YOU did not read the fine print!" And he recited once more, before giving him over to his fate:

  وَمَكَرَ اللَّهُ ۖ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ

"...And Allah is the best of schemers."