The Language of the Mute

The Language of the Mute is Khalil’s description of the Holy War as speech on behalf of those unable to speak for themselves. Spoken to Oscar Fate in a basement near Baychester, the phrase turns silence into a political claim, but its force is complicated by the interview’s conspiratorial and increasingly extreme assertions.

The Phrase in the Interview

Fate keeps an appointment arranged by members of the Mohammedan Brotherhood. Three members and a black van take him to a basement, where a heavyset, shaved-headed man introduces himself as Khalil; the others do not give their names. When Fate demands an explanation of the Holy War, Khalil answers that it speaks when its adherents’ mouths are parched and calls it “the language of the mute, of those who’ve lost the power of speech, of those who never knew how to speak.”

The formulation gives the Holy War a double character: it is presented not merely as a struggle but as a substitute for speech, a means of making the unheard audible. The words move from bodily deprivation—the parched mouth—to social and personal exclusion, encompassing both those deprived of speech and those who never possessed it. Yet the interview does not establish whose silence Khalil is speaking for or how that claimed representation might be tested.

Grievance and Conspiracy

Fate asks why the Brotherhood marches against Israel. Khalil answers that Jews are keeping them down, then expands the accusation into a conspiracy: he claims the Ku Klux Klan is everywhere, including Tel Aviv, London, and Washington, and that many of its leaders are Jewish. When Fate asks him to identify them, Khalil first says the matter is off the record, then names three film directors and two actors. He further claims that Woody Allen belongs to the Klan, interpreting the absence of Black men in Allen’s films as evidence.

This exchange places the phrase about voicelessness inside a rhetoric that offers a hidden enemy as the explanation for grievance. Fate’s questions press Khalil to specify and account for his claims; Khalil answers with sweeping allegations rather than verifiable support. The contrast matters: the Holy War is described as a voice for the silenced, but the interview gives that voice through Khalil’s own assertions, whose conspiratorial content makes his claim to speak for others uncertain.

Atta and the Limits of the Account

Asked why the Brotherhood carried a portrait of Osama bin Laden, Khalil says bin Laden understood the nature of the fight. The discussion turns to bin Laden’s innocence, Pearl Harbor, and the September 11 attacks; Khalil suggests the attacks benefited stockbrokers, people hiding incriminating papers, and arms dealers. Fate tests the argument by asking whether Khalil thinks Mohamed Atta was a CIA or FBI undercover agent.

Khalil does not offer a settled account of Atta’s role. Instead, he questions whether Atta was aboard one of the planes, says he believes Atta is dead, and imagines that he was tortured or shot, dismembered, ground down, and disposed of in a cement-filled box in a Florida swamp. He extends the same fate to Atta’s companions. The image is presented as Khalil’s speculation, not as established fact; its grotesque detail pushes the interview from political explanation toward an unverifiable tale of disappearance. Against that ending, “the language of the mute” remains a charged but unresolved claim: the interview stages the need for a voice while offering no reliable way to distinguish testimony from conspiracy.