"Faith losing its power?" Valerie chewed her lip, uncertain. If that was happening, no one had told Reverend Carter or Yehuda Ibrahim.

She stepped outside the shop.

The image maker still stood, perplexed, in the middle of the alley.

Suddenly two men sprinted around the corner. A third, who seemed to be an acquaintance, stopped in front of him, breathless.

"Come to Mahdi's shop and see. It is a terrible thing." He waved to them to follow and ran on ahead.

"Mahdi, who's that?" Valerie asked.

The Egyptian shrugged. "Just someone with a coffee shop."

More men rushed along the street now , calling to others to join them. Valerie and Najya followed them to the corner where a crowd had gathered. Valerie tried to peer through the legs of the crowd to * 243 *

the ground, thinking that someone, Mahdi perhaps, had been hurt, but quickly saw everyone was staring upward. She moved back and forth behind the men until she found a space to see between heads. Najya came behind her and rested a hand on her shoulder.

Bolted high on the wall just inside the cafe doorway , a television played. Someone turned up the sound, but the rumbling from the street was too loud for her to make out the announcer 's words. It made no difference; the images spoke for themselves.

She understood now why the ka had fl ed. She also knew , as the rest of the world did not yet know , that the atrocity was carried out in the name of the Almighty and that in some other name of the Almighty, there would be retribution.

She laid her hand over Najya's, which clutched her shoulder, and leaned back against her for support. Grimly, she watched the two towers burn like sooty fl ares sending off thick gray smoke against the bright September sky over New York City.

"The power of faith, Najya. Just wait. Soon we'll see more of it."

* 244 *

About the Author.

Justine Saracen was a college professor for fi fteen years before leaving academic life for classical music management and then writing. Her scholarly book, Salvation in the Secular, addressed themes that persisted into later fi ction, the evolution of religion, the leitmotifs of fanaticism, and the power of language. In the 1990s she acquired an online following with "The Pappas Journals," "In the Reich," "Lao Ma's Kiss," and "Women in Prison."

More important were research trips to Egypt and Palestine, which gave rise to the Ibis Prophecy , a series that follows a lesbian archeologist through modern, medieval and ancient Egypt. The fi rst novel of the series, The 100th Generation, was a fi nalist in the Queerlit 2005 contest. The sequel, Vulture's Kiss, reveals the drama's bloody antecedent in the First Crusades.

Her upcoming project is The Mephisto Aria, a lesbian Faust story set in WWII and the world of opera. Justine is a member of the Publishing Triangle in New York City, and currently studying Arabic and Islamic History. You can visit her at her website at http://justine-saracen.tripod.com.

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end.