The king remembers 9/11 very well. He was in Italy. That afternoon he had trouble in the St. Bernard pass.

The King’s Baba, Abdullah Shauck Mustafa, was a sportsman, through and through. The only thing greater than his sports was the mark on his forehead from his devotion to Allah. He’d been an Olympic runner-up in wrestling, but made his money coaching every wrestling team from Egypt to India. He’d tried every last sport that crossed his path. When Abdulla Shauck Mustafa had a son, he named him Muhammad. And Muhammad would bring his country the gold medal. Since before young Muhammad was old enough to talk, he was running, climbing, shooting, footballing, skiing, skating, and tumbling. His father gave him direction.

Muhammad grew up more athletic than anyone he ever met. Every athlete at track meets, skating competitions, skiing events, regattas, and tourneys. No one could compete with young Muhammad.

Father and son always wore the same track suit: Purple Team Shauck.

His Baba never blew his top in public. He never really spoke in public, especially at an event. They weren’t great at European languages. No one spoke their native Arabic, so they were free to be as mute as they liked. No one minded the Muslims.

Muhammad was young in those days. He loved Islam, loved reading the Qur’an (though it wasn’t as cool as G.I. Joe). “Wallah, Capitalist nonsense,” his dad would tell him, but Joes were the manliest ever. Manlier than sports, than soldiers, than his own Baba. They didn’t just know how to shoot guns. They knew how to own their enemy. How to win. Muhammad would sneak GI Joe on the hotel TVs when Baba was doing his business calls.

When he caught Muhammad sneaking Joe, he would make his son pay with sweat. Abdullah Shauck didn’t want his son to end up like his own father as a mujahid. Sports would set his son free.

That’s why the morning of September 11th was so special. Muhammad remembered seeing his ski boots thrown into the hall. He’d been watching cartoons.

“Practice. Inshallah,” was all his father said slamming the hotel door.

Tears would do him no good. He was team Shauck. Baba needed him to focus and get back to the mountain. Qualifiers were coming up. The Olympics were no joke. Neither was Baba Shauck. So he had to haul himself outside, with a proud face, and get to the ski rack.

The rack was a mile long, at least. On his way, he saw a beautiful German skier who kept finding him on the mountain. Brigette. She was that girl you couldn’t help but notice. Muhammad found her noticing him, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He definitely found her sexy. Was that a problem? That’s all Muhammad could think of: What would his father Shauck think?

She would speak to him in long bursts of German. Then try her French. She didn’t know any Arabic, so she had to use winks, blue eyes, and curving smiles.

As Muhammad unlatched his skis, he felt her eyes tickling the back of his neck. She was by the fire pit. She was frisky. She was his age.

His mind was aflame feeling her gaze. He saw pictures in his head. Gritty images of him wearing medals, and her worshipping his feet. Letting all of Muhammad exist in her. He would shake these images away like mosquitos on a lake. They were wrong. She was wrong. And most importantly, he was wrong.

He was wrong to his Baba.

He was wrong to this girl.

He needed the mountain.

He strapped into his skis. Right first, then left. He scooted to the chairlift. It was incredible that they finally connected a line into the St. Bernard Pass. This was the dreaded pass they named dogs after. This pass claimed more lives than the Titanic. They finally made it safe enough for skiing in September.

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Muhammad skied forward, about to sit down into the chair. He heard a ruckus. It was Brigette, shooting through the crowd on her skis. The coy girl slapped some slush onto Muhammad’s knees as they both dropped onto the same chairlift. The sleepy operator shut down the lift. He unfortunately stopped the line a full 10 meters from the edge. It was too far a distance to kick Brigette off. He started to yell off at her in Italian.

She popped back at him. Give me a break, she might have said.

Rules are rules, he might have said back to her.

Are you going to come up here and kick me off? she might have replied back.

Without understanding a word, Muhammad felt the lift start moving. Brigette had won. With gusto, she waved the lift operator off.

So there they were, Brigette and Muhammad.

For a full minute Muhammad sat paralyzed. He knew very well now that Brigette had a thing for him. He thought if he was still, bug-eyed, and face forward, Brigette wouldn’t notice. She might just shut up, and not put her hands on his thigh. Not take off her shirt and—

Nope. He would look straight.

And Brigette looked at him. She started giving sad doggy noises. He could hear her German accent through every sound. He knew that those sounds would have sounded different from an Iraqi girl. The German tongue changed the way the voice developed. Germans just sounded different to his ears. Like looking through the world with sunglasses on. And she kept asking for him to look at her. She was tempting, and he was snapping.

He couldn’t focus.

He couldn’t think of her.

He couldn’t just. Just look at her.

So he turned and looked at her.

And he saw a pair of icy blue eyes. So icy it chilled his stomach. He was staring into her soul. Into the galaxy of her life. Her life in that moment. Her life where it might be 30 years from now. Would he find himself in her galaxy in 30 years?

He wanted to tear off all her clothes. He wanted to but fought it as best he could. Because he didn’t want any trouble. She smelled his fear. She laid her head onto his shoulder.

They were decently cozy next to one another, and she realized that if there was a first move, she would be making it.

And with her mittened hand

She reached out lightly

Pulling her hand out

And positioned her

light pink skin,

warm and

pensive,

on his.

His stomach bounced. His doubts were answered. He gazed down on his arm, and then over to her. She smiled.

Their lips met.

Their eyes were closed. As he made his first kiss, he wondered how long will this last?

But he was mostly thinking, yes. This is right.

They kissed, and they collapsed into one another’s faces. He relocated his hand behind her neck, and she kept both hands now on his thigh.

And they kissed,

and they shared one another and smelled one another. They tasted Bologna, Swiss cheese, Halawa, and Tabouli. What both of them ate that morning. It was something that neither had tasted before in another person. Her tongue was bigger than his. He briefly became nervous that a woman was bigger than him, but let it crawl to the back of his mind. He might love this girl.

He might love a girl.

That seemed a little off to him. It didn’t jive with what he was there to do.

No he was there to impress Baba Shauck.

Baba Shauck was everything to him. What was he doing on this ride? Why was he thinking about Baba while kissing a girl?

She started to creep her hand up his thigh. He tried hard not to be rude, but he was changing. Baba Shauck made him feel shame. Muhammad’s anger made her seem like more of a whore. An evil blonde. His kisses started becoming more aggressive, but she didn’t feel threatened. It was something she could fix. She could ease his pain. She could take him and melt him into butter.

And he was pissed. How dare she, how dare this woman tempt me. I’m a proud athlete, he thought. I’m something bigger than this big Brigette.

The anger was bubbling, and she was ready for him. She was ready to put him into her. There on the chairlift. As soon as she slipped her hands into his ski pants, he lurched his left hand forward. Pushing Brigette’s neck, he threw her off of him. She gripped hard onto his cock and whipped it out of his ski pants. Had she reached for his base she might have torn it off or carried him down with her. She grabbed the tip, and it snapped out of his pants. She left one scratch from her long nails.

She screamed all the way down. Those screams haunted Muhammad for a long time. She slipped down the air, 41 meters, breaking 10 ribs, a femur, her clavicle, her ankles, 6 bones in her feet, and her neck.

Muhammad put his cock back in his pants. He was bawling. He begged Allah for forgiveness, hoping and praying that he wasn’t just wasting empty mountain air. He needed to speak to someone. He needed something to process his pain.

He arrived at the summit and skied down. When he arrived back at the cabin, he saw lots and lots of medics. Brigette was long gone, evacuated. All he remembered was the scared looks of every white man, woman, and child at the resort. Muhammad didn’t know. He was on the mountain, of course he didn’t know, but the news trickled in about 9/11 and the towers coming down.

Everyone was officially afraid of Islam. Here was Muhammad, returning to a crowd that witnessed Brigette rush the chairlift with him. She returned in a stretcher. On 9/11. You do the math.

They all wanted to retaliate. Instead they just feared him. They feared him like he was a weapon.

That was the last day Muhammad saw the snow of the Alps. It was the end of his athletic career. Muhammad knew his calling, and it was not what Baba Shauck wanted. It was the call of the Mujahedeen.

The king carried this pain, all the way into the desert of his life. Looking at Hefty, the king could see his life was a culmination of this pain. In the Zeb-Rover, morning started to come. It was a brand new day.