War Verses

Framed within a year of jihadist terrorism, WAR VERSES tells how a family in Arkham, Massachusetts confronts the supernatural ambition behind holy war. The husband and father of this family is an Arabic professor with a jihadist past who travels to India to protect a medieval manuscript written by the blind Nestorian priest who declared Muhammad a prophet. The manuscript promises the secret to ending religious terrorism. Contrary to this hope, the professor's daughter descends into a hallucinatory kingdom where she must choose between life in humanistic culture or life as a child-bride princess in a hate-fueled fairytale. WAR VERSES: PART ONE: MUHAMMAD AND THE ORIGIN OF JIHAD tells the following story. After dying in acts of violence, terrorists in Somalia, China, and Turkey are transported to Jannah, the jihadist Paradise, where they are eaten by ghoulish houris. These murderers, it becomes apparent, are also the victims of their ideology of hatred and abuse. In Arkham, Massachusetts, the Wheatley family - Ali, Rhoda, and Gemma - are pulled into the petroleum vortex of jihadism's theological horror. Ali, an Arabic professor with a jihadist past delivers a lecture about the life of Muhammad. He is fired because of the Brotherhood's picketing. His wife, Rhoda, explorers how childhood abuse initiated a telepathic bond with her mother. Their daughter, Gemma, journeys to a fairytale world where she encounters threatening jinn, a thousand-and-one-headed Blood Leech, and the man with no face. Gemma, calling herself Princess Aludra, drags her friend Iphigenia into this Unhappy Kingdom, where she sees the Blood Leech, al-Alaq. Terrified of being "of two minds," Gemma confronts the jinn and releases herself from its power. The jinn laughs, however, saying that even this is Kismet, Fate. Ali's mentor Alexis is in India, brooding in self-reproach about the death of his daughter, Iphigenia. He contacts Ali about a history-shattering translation project. Gemma keeps it a secret that Iphigenia visits her as a ghost. The night before Ali leaves for India, Gemma is told to keep her mouth shut, given Quranic threats of hellfire, and a war verse is carved into her skin.