B) A Week From Now

Will it really matter a week from now?
Will I be remembered a week from now?
Will it be the same?
Will you know my name?
Will I be a hero a week from now?

She turned in front of the mirror, pleased with the rhyme she'd made up. She liked poetry it pleased her, she had many pleasures.

Had many pleasures.

Passed tense.

Like she said in the rhyme would it really matter a week from now? Now she only had one pleasure remaining to her, to serve the country to which she claimed allegiance. Not even her country, not geographically but she knew this was the homeland her sprit would roam.

I'm going to the land of my dreams.
Where my bones will crumble to sand.
Returning to my sacred home.
Sprit of steel borne to atone,
A rest in its homeland a week from now.

She was still young, pretty. Blonde, she cursed her blonde hair and pale skin. How could it be that she was borne in this country of insipid sun? A place where football hooliganism is the only cause the people were ready to fight for. How she hated her British genes, her freckles and her perfect university life.

That's where she'd met Fayez Hanan He was studying Economics and had a fire in his belly that ate into him and clouded his eyes with hatred. He was at the forefront of any debate or political rally, and was thrown off the university newspaper for infiltrating it with Middle Eastern propaganda. He was different from any stupid boy with watered down sperm that she had ever known. Fayez was a man and he fascinated her, controlled her without knowing it, and commanded her thoughts day and night.

She loved him. She knew that long before he took her seriously, long before he even noticed her existence. She fought alongside him shouting from Speakers Corner until he had no choice but to notice her. And afterwards, high on the thrill of reaching the people he drove his penis into her in the same manner that he drove his life into her, hard and without mercy. He refused to use protection and ejaculated into her, sharing the fire of hatred between his own body and hers. Their lovemaking was hard, but she didn't care, she knew that when they got to that other place he would soften. Once in their own, personal paradise everything would be perfect.

She changed her name Alison was no good, it was a stupid name, it had no bearing on who she really was. She took a name of honour. Suha in memory of the first female Palestinian suicide bomber. Palestine her homeland, the place where her spirit belonged.

The day she moved her few meagre possessions into his room was the happiest day in her life so far. Because she loved him, she came to truly love his cause, believe strongly in what he believed in.

Today was going to surpass even that because today she was going to be bound to her love forever in the sacred bond of total commitment.

She looked at her dress in the mirror, certainly nothing that a western woman would normally choose for the most important day in her life. Her eyes, the only part of her body visible, searching her reflection's eyes for any sign of weakness, any glimmer of wavering doubt but the cool, grey eyes looking back at her were steady. She was committed. She made the fist of the Al-Aqsa in the mirror and felt strength anew flowing through her body.

She ran a hand over her belly, pulling the black material down over the bulge, feeling again the gift that he had given her. The few people she had told of her plans had cried, begged her not to go through with it. But they were Westerners they didn't understand. She was embracing a whole new culture now. It was what she believed in.

On the plane over London she fingered her European passport. She glanced at her watch and ran her hand over her belly searching for the mechanism.

She pressed the tiny button.

That was it, it was done.

She craned her neck to see if she could catch a glimpse of Fayez at the front of the plane, she couldn't see him in the cockpit but that didn't matter, he might as well have been sitting next to her, or be inside her. They couldn't ever be more connected than at the moment they detonated the devices together. The plane was starting to dive now, slowly at first so as not to alarm the passengers too quickly. Right on time.

Will Parliament still stand a week from now?
Will Blair smile so smugly a week from now?
One of his own In a plane overhead.
One of his own soon to be dead.
But nothing will matter a week from now.

The nice lady sitting next to her stared at her alarmed by the rhyme and look of calm detachment on the blue-eyed Arab's face. But it was too late to raise the alarm. Five &;#8230;Four&;#8230;Three&;#8230;Two&;#8230;

Suha smiled.