Chapter 3: The Jihadist

My laboratory is a cramped office with its atmosphere made stale by air conditioning and the perspiration and perfume of hundreds of sedentary human beings, and their packed lunches which they eat at their computers because there is no canteen. Some bring in curries or sandwiches from M&S. Cleaners from Colombia, Peru and Somalia come round in the early hours and at dusk to clean the carpets and empty the bins. The windows are mostly sealed shut. Those that are not, such as in the men’s toilets, carry warning notices declaring: “DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS”. If you did open the windows, you could hear the traffic and the police sirens of the City, the relentless hum of a metropolis in constant movement. That movement was required so that the circulation of capital could continue. If it were ever to stop, perhaps because of some natural or man-made catastrophe, the consequences would be unimaginable. The noise and the movement were as essential as the buzzing of insects and the munching of leaves and the tearing of flesh in nature. This was our own man-made jungle. Of course, we believed we were different than the beasts and the insects, we had evolved toward freedom and consciousness. We were in the age of market democracy, each masters of our own destiny. But how could that possibly be true? Sons of politicians became politicians, daughters of monarchs became monarchs, sons of rock stars became rock stars, sons of lawyers became lawyers and sons of labourers became drug dealers.
Unlike the queen, worker and soldier ants, we did not look obviously different from one another and we were genetically indistinguishable. But to each other we were subtly but unmistakably divided into discreet species, living parallel, separate lives. As it was before, so it is now. Our parents bought their houses when they were cheap. We waited until they died so that we could get our hands on their money and property, or we married someone who had the good fortune to inherit early. Or we got onto a council house waiting list. As it was before, so it is now. Freedom is to choose supermarkets and TV channels. True freedom – from bosses, the state, banks and landlords -- that belongs to the very rich and the very poor. The rest of us are like the moths buzzing around a light bulb all the while failing to realise that the hot blinding glass is not, as we imagine, a gateway to freedom, but a dead end, a false moon. Like the moth we are genetically programmed to keep flapping our wings and bouncing against the smooth, impenetrable glass. To stop would mean madness or death.

When I started out as a budding reporter I believed that I could use my position to expose injustice and reveal the truth to the world. I was given the opportunity when a few years back I had been assigned to investigate a dodgy financial services company. It all went well, and my story pleased the editor very much. I held the front page and imagined the financial sector trembling as they picked up their copy of The Financier. Even the chief executive of our publishing house dropped me a complementary email on my sterling work. I could feel the laurels caressing my scalp, that is, until the real-life subject of the articles read them and issued a threat of legal action. One small error in my front-page expose undid me. I was always a little bit too eager to file my copy and I sometimes found all the checking of the details both tiresome and overwhelming. This was my Achilles’ heel – except I was no Achilles. The financial director who I had exposed as a crook, who cheated his clients and his employees, had found the flaw in my copy he needed to undo me and the rest of my work. My editor decided to print an apology and hang me out to dry. That was the end of my dream of being an intrepid investigative reporter. From now on I would play it safe and stick to harmless business profiles and press release rewrites.
There were two kinds of really good reporters that I had encountered in my time – first, the weasel, the kind who snuffled around in the garbage of his or her beat, searching for small morsels of information. These weasels often had sharp features, a snout-like face and tended to be shortsighted from spending so much time peering into dark corners. They were relentless and determined and no detail was too dull for them to pick apart for tasty morsels or first-to-the-wire scoops.
Then there were the heroic correspondent types, the warriors for truth. They tended to have soldierly virtues, being brave and combative. They were best suited to report on wars and crime; they could mix company with rough sorts, soldiers and policeman, and head off to the world’s danger spots. They drank and had emotional problems. Unfortunately, I was neither of these. I was now your classic corporate reporter, the third and least admirable breed of hack. I was on friendly terms with the subjects, the PRs and generally good at quaffing the wine and eating the freebie breakfasts and flirting with the PAs. I belonged in the trade press, where 90% of journalists lived a life of unglamorous desk-bound toil. This middling sort did not resemble the legendary reporters known to screen and fiction, since their subjects were too dull for a writer of fiction to bother with. I suffered the frailties of both sorts and enjoyed the virtues of neither, being somewhat weasel-like in appearance, with a growing realisation that I was shortsighted and needed to wear glasses. I was more Clark Kent than Superman. Of course, at times I considered myself an Adonis and lady killer, as long as I stayed away from mirrors and listened to my mother when she had had a drink or two and was feeling affectionate towards me.
Through lack of dedication and seriousness, we workaday corporate hacks were perhaps stumbling and failing to spot magnificent scoops on corporate malfeasance every day. Ever so occasionally, a genuinely interesting story would come to us, by pure accident or because somebody decided to do you a favour and use you to get to someone else, to make you their tribune for truth even though you were nothing of the sort. Even then, the truly mediocre reporter might miss the huge steaming turd of a story that had been handed to them. Perhaps today, one of those bits of rank good fortune would come my way.
9.06AM. Check MyFace to see if my jihadi friend Ibn Khattab, more of whom later, has dropped me a line. He has.
Msg from Ibn Khattab to Nick Day:
Good morning Nick. Today is a good day, my friend. It appears that both God and the Devil are taking revenge on the unbelievers. First the volcano, then the righteous blow against the Jewish Banking Thief. Believe me, this is just the beginning….
9.11AM Me to IK:
Well, I wouldn’t read too much into it. Remember, capitalism survived the credit crunch and it will definitely survive the absence of Mr Magdoff. As for the volcano, that could be serious but I don’t think God or the Devil has anything to do with it. Iceland is like the spout of a teapot that is constantly boiling. It’s always letting off steam. To think it’s got anything to do with Magdoff getting shot is a fairy story. Your team lost last night I see – and against Fulham – was that also the work of God?
9.13AM Ibn Khattab:
It’s easy to mock. The true Muslims are like that volcano, we are at one with God and his mysteries, and when God is angered, it comes out in the world. We are the living volcano, the instrument of His wrath. And we have cause. The Muslims are fighting the crusaders because it is their duty to defend their fellow Muslims against years of aggression by the west. We will take the fight to him, as the crusader has taken it to us in our lands and homes, among our women and children.

9.21AM Nick to Ibn Khattab:
IK, I am not a supporter of the Middle East wars. I did not support the invasion of Iraq even though Saddam was a world-class bastard who deserved to be brought down. Bush and his cronies were almost as bad. Still this argument is tired and has been rehearsed over and over again. Can’t we talk about something else?
9.22AM. IK to Nick
Did you watch Z List last night? What a bunch of talentless, desperate idiots. I voted for Smudge, as at least they had a few good moves. Keep watching the news bro.
9.23AM. Nick to IK.
No I didn’t watch Z List. I always watch the news my friend.

Ibn Khattab is a jihadi I ‘met’ in a forum on the WhoWasReallyBehind911.com website. I say jihadi, but to be honest I don’t really know who he is other than he claims to be a Kashmiri who was born in Lahore and moved to Britain when he was eight. For all I know he is just a sad fantasist, although he does seem to know quite a lot about explosives, aircraft technology and Pakistani politics. He introduced me to the struggle in Kashmir, which I knew nothing about. “India has killed 80,000 people in Kashmir but somehow that doesn’t count because Kashmiris are just Muslims. If only we were Buddhists, like in Tibet, then the world would do something about it.”
I started looking at jihadi websites after 7/7, when I was going through a bout of insomnia and began to take an interest in alternative theories about 9/11 and terrorism. It was a low patch and I was looking for answers. I had turned 30 and the girl who I thought I would spend the rest of my life with had left me. It was as if all my plans and dreams of a future mapped out before me had turned to sand. All I had left was the job, and then, after my errors at The Financier had been exposed, that part of the dream also crumbled. I was mystified and, in turn, angry at the unexpected twists to my life journey. A dead end reared up in front of me. For the first time in my thirty years, I had to face the possibility of failure. The illusion of progress through the stages of life toward the sunny uplands could not hold. I stared into the grey distance, and looked around at all the ashen faces on the streets and thought, I am one of them. One of the countless invisibles, the people whose lives did not merit the world’s interest, or their neighbours. They existed, they shopped, they slept, they worked, and, if they were lucky, they fucked. When hope begins to die, or a quiet disaster strikes, one looks for an explanation. Perhaps that was what drew me toward conspiracy theories and the apocalyptic visions of destruction that swirled around the internet and burst daily from the TV screens, from the places of horror in Iraq and other distant lands. Reap what you sew, said the jihadists on 7/7. I was repulsed and yet attracted. Surely anything was preferable to complacency and indifference to the suffering of others. I did not really voice this sense of disquiet and fury. But I sought out those who did. And I found IK.