“War,” she said.

Through the haze of sleep, the young man felt a hand shaking his shoulder. Urgency causing his father to be less gentle than he would otherwise have been, “Wake up,” his parent says, “come and watch this, your kids will ask you about it some day.”

He climbed out of bed as his father left the room, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and stretching the crinks out of his joints. He found his family in the living room, each of them staring at the television, entirely too silent, too absorbed upon the flickering screen. He had never seen them so still before, as if each of them existed only in the space between the screen and their senses. Something caught at the edge of his mind, and his attention shifted to the ‘Live’ on the corner of the screen.

“Oh my god,” the newscaster said, “the tower just crashed.”

“In any good war,” said the Angel of the Silence, “in a war that is to be remembered, it is necessary to have both good and evil. That conflict – that eternal conflict – provides the essential quality that elevates the war from tragedy to epic.”

“The good guys always win,” said the Angel of the Aftermath.

“That is so,” he replied to her, “because they are the ones who write the stories.”

The angel, looking on as the crowd celebrated, noted that it was very much like Carnival, a parade and a party, national pride spilled over into the city streets. The angel watched as the crowd shifted, as the people went by, their faces changing but their celebration the same, watched the joy on faces worn by suffering, and listened, as they cheered for the blow that has been struck against the great evil.

It was a blow for justice, a fire straight from God.

And, in a few of them and more than a few of them, the fire in their hearts can be seen burning in their eyes, saying, the first blow of many to come.

“Faith,” he said, “this is very much a holy war.”

“Good and evil,” she nodded.

“An attack on God’s country by God’s soldiers.”

“No more ironic than the number of prayers heaven-sent, now that the world is no longer safe.”

Two men were holding the Sikh, each with an arm in his grip, while a third was punching their victim in the stomach. The angel stood in the shadows, studying the lines on their faces, the fire in their eyes. The third pulled the man’s turban off, releasing waist-long hair to fall with the cloth.

“Look,” he sneered triumphantly, “he’s a fag as a well!”

“Yeah, they all are, fucking Islam homos.”

The pair released their man, who fell upon his knees, then crumbled to the ground, unmoving, barely breathing through a broken nose. When they had approached him, he had wanted to say that he had nothing to do with the attacks, that he was as angry they were, but he knew that they did not care. Knew that they did not care that he was neither Arab nor Muslim, only that he looked different.

The leader kicked him, once, before turning to go. One of them, the smallest of the three, spat on the wounded man before he left, his contempt flying through the air before mixing with the spilled blood.

“Hate,” said the Angel of the Aftermath, “usually breeds more hate.”

“Why usually?” asked the Angel of the Silence.

“Sometimes people rise above their natures.”

“Only sometimes?”

“They’re usually too ignorant to.”

“So it’s ignorance that breeds hate, isn’t it?”

“Ignorance, hate, fear, envy. I don’t know why. I only know it happens.”

The pair, a young lady and her escort, sat at a cafe. They were attracted to each other, obvious by their glances, stolen and shy, obvious in the way they used any excuse to touch one another, and how they sat close to each other without sitting close to each other at all.

“What do you know of the Middle East?” she asked him, during a lull in their conversation.

“Not much,” he replied.

“I don’t know much about it either,” she said, “but the thing is, they’ve been fighting there forever, people have been dying every day, and America doesn’t care, not until now.”

“But now all they care about is kicking some ass. They’re going to support Israel more than ever, now. And that’s all part of American arrogance, isn’t it? Being the only superpower, director of the global stage, thinking themselves invincible.”

“What does it matter if they’re arrogant?”

“America has been supporting Israel, which makes them part of the war, except they’ve been keeping their hands clean. And now somebody is saying that you can’t fight a war without spilling some blood.”

“When the unthinkable happens, there is uncertainty. When there is uncertainty, there is fear. And where there is fear, people turn to God,” said the Angel of the Aftermath.

“Nothing is more certain than God.”

“The nature of faith precludes certainty.”

“Yet both sides are certain enough that they are willing to die.”

“And to kill.”

“It is as sinful to die for something as it is to kill for something.”

“Jesus died.”

“Yes, in order that no one else has to. It is one thing to die that another may live, it is another to die, that an idea may flourish.”

“If we lived in a democratic world,” the Prime Minister said in a weary voice, far from the confidence he exuded so easily on television, “we’d be nuking the hell out of each other right now. I’m sure that their guys will want our blood as much as our guys want theirs. Let’s bring it to a vote and then we can drop the bomb.”

His wife looked at his back as he sat down at the foot of the bed; he looked tired, tired and old. She wasn’t sure when was the last time he had slept, and she felt her heart breaking, tearing with the impossible need to take on some of his burden. She moved behind him, and started to massage his back, smiling as he gave a grateful sigh.

The angel, looking at her, saw her fear, saw the unspoken words in the bags beneath her eyes – that India, Pakistan, China and Russia were nuclear powers, that too many nations had biological if not nuclear arms, nations with regimes that would use them, if given enough reason. She feared that China might attack Taiwan, now that America’s attention was elsewhere, or someone, anyone, might attack someone else, and more people would take sides, more sides than will already have to be taken.

But she didn’t say a word, she only soothed his aching muscles, until her hands were worn, then she pulled him to bed, holding him until he fell asleep, even though she lay awake behind him.

“What does America believe in?” she asked.

“America believes in America.”

“What’s so holy about that?”

“What’s so holy about this Jihad?”

“Touchι.”

“‘Holy’ isn’t what’s important in a holy war.”

“‘Pearl Harbour’, that’s a term that’s been going around a lot lately,” the taxi driver said, before switching off the radio.

“A lot of old wounds have re-opened. Did you watch the movie?” his passenger asked, halfway between wanting to talk and wanting to be left alone.

“No, I don’t really like romances.”

“Neither did I.”

“They keep calling it a cowardly act. But it wasn’t, it was a pre-emptive strike, against a military target.”

“Pearl Harbour? It was an unprovoked attack.”

“Up until December seven, I think, or the sixth, after the ships had set sail for Pearl Harbour and Thailand, they still had diplomats talking in the States, and the attack could have been called off at any time. That wasn’t what you might call a usual practice.”

“Diplomacy didn’t come through? Well, they didn’t make a formal declaration of war, either.”

“Does that make it cowardly? Yamamoto made the attack a pre-requisite of his involvement. He didn’t want the American navy behind him while they conquered South Asia. He didn’t want to attack at all, actually, but that wasn’t his choice to make.”

“I don’t know, really. You can drop me off at the next turning, thanks,” the passenger said, thinking, who still has choices, now?

“What’s going to happen?” asked the Angel of Silence.

“There will be mourning,” she replied, “And then a calm before the storm, as the white men hold the council of their tribe. More planes will crash, more accidents will happen. They will say it’s not terrorism, whenever possible, to avoid panic, but it’ll become harder for anyone to be sure. There will be more uncertainty, more acts of violence. And then there will be payback, because if you let people get away with murder, instead of thanking you they will kill some more. More people will die, because it is necessary that they do so.”

“And after that?”

“After that life goes on. Movies will be made, it will find its way into history books, life goes on.”

“What if this is different? What if it escalates? What if this really is the end?”

“Then we make the most of the time we have left, which is what we should be doing either way.”

“Who is Osama bin Ladin?” he asked himself. He lay in his bed, his hands behind his head, his lips moving as he vocalised the question. His eyes were open, though it was too dark for anything to register. The reply to his question came as fast as thought. His lips moved again as he framed another question. Thus he spoke with himself, almost-voicing half the conversation, hearing the other half as he thought it.

“Osama bin Ladin is a hero. Born into wealth beyond the petty dreams of normal men, he gave up a lifestyle of unimaginable affluence. It is said that he fought in the front line, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, carried arms in the trenches. And he did that because he is Muslim, not because he was born or had lived in Afghanistan. He is a man with conviction of belief.”

“Osama bin Ladin is a monster. A terrorist that creates terrorists, that has no respect for human life. Even before these attacks, his group profits from drug operations, death fuelled by misery. With foreknowledge of the attacks, he reaped millions from the stock markets. He built a machine that feeds itself, delivering death.”

He felt a deep and profound sadness at the loss of the world – had bin Ladin’s convictions been different, the world would have been moved in another direction by the strength of that belief.

She reached for his hand, their fingers curling around each other’s. She smiled at him, pulled him to a stand, then leaped into the air.

Her white wings spread out behind her as she pulled him along.

“Where are we going?” he asked, a voice in her head.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

“Aftermath…” he said.

“Yes?”

“It is only the beginning.”

“It is.”

“You’re right, then. It doesn’t matter where we go, as long as we go together.”

She didn’t reply, and he kept his peace.

Together, in the silence, the angels flew.