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schoolbooks. For little Najjar, incredibly bright but also small for his age, life consisted of mosque and school and nothing else. If he wasn’t memorizing the Qur’an, he was memorizing his textbooks.
    But today was different. Suddenly it seemed as if every Shia in Samarra had heard what Najjar had just heard from a woman shrieking in the hallway.
    “The imam has died! The imam has died!”
    Najjar was too much in shock to cry.
    It couldn’t be true. It had to be a vicious rumor, started by the Zionists or the Sunnis. Ayatollah Khomeini was larger than life. He simply could not be dead. Wasn’t he the long-awaited Mahdi? Wasn’t he the Twelfth Imam, the Hidden Imam? Wasn’t he supposed to establish justice and peace? How then could he be dead if he was, in fact, the savior of the Islamic world and all of mankind?
    Every Friday night for years, Najjar’s aunt and uncle made him listen to the latest audiotaped sermon from Ayatollah Khomeini that had been smuggled out of Iran and into Iraq. Then his aunt would tuck him into bed, kiss him good night, turn out the light, and shut the bedroom door. When the apartment was quiet, Najjar would stare out the window into the moonlight, meditating on the Ayatollah’s words and on his fiery insistence that a Muslim’s duty was to perform jihad—holy war—against the infidels. It wasn’t exactly the stuff of childhood dreams, but it stirred something deep within Najjar’s heart.
    “Surely those who believe, those who wage jihad in God’s cause—they are the ones who may hope for the mercy of God,” the Ayatollah would declare, citing Sura 2:218 from the Qur’an. Jews and Christians are the ones whom God has cursed, he would explain, saying the Qur’an taught that they “shall either be executed, or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off alternately, or be banished from the land.
    “Kill them!” Khomeini would insist, pointing to Sura 9:5. “Wherever you may come upon them, and seize them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place.
    “The Prophet and his followers are commanded to wage jihad against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and to be stern against them,” the Ayatollah argued year after year, “for their final refuge is hell.”
    Infidels, he insisted—citing Sura 22—will spend eternity in a blazing fire, “with boiling water being poured down over their heads. All that is within their bodies, as well as their skins, will be melted away.
    “Have nothing to do with them,” he argued. “Don’t befriend them. Don’t negotiate with them. Don’t do business with them.” After all, he loved to say—citing Sura 5:59-60—“Allah has cursed the Christians and the Jews, and those whom he has utterly condemned he has turned into apes, and swine, and servants of powers of evil.”
    Najjar had been transfixed by Khomeini’s courage and conviction. Surely this man must be the Mahdi. Who else could it be? he had wondered. True, his aunt conceded when Najjar occasionally asked innocent questions, Khomeini had not yet brought justice and peace. Nor had he yet established an Islamic empire that would transform the globe. But all this, she said, was just a matter of time.
    Now what? Najjar thought. If Khomeini had really died, who would lead the Revolution? Who was the real messiah, and when would he come?
    No one else was home, and Najjar felt scared and alone. Desperate to learn more, he fled his aunt and uncle’s cramped high-rise flat and ran down all seventeen flights of stairs rather than wait for an elevator. He ran out into the dusty street in front of their dilapidated building, only to find huge crowds of fellow Shias pouring out of their apartments as well. Seeing a group of older men huddled on a nearby corner near a fruit stand, smoking cigarettes and listening to a small transistor radio, Najjar ran to their side and listened in.
    “Radio Tehran can now confirm that the revered imam—peace be upon