11. Instilling in Recruits a Desperation to Return to “Paradise”
The temptresses convinced the besotted young man that he was in paradise, and that his seductresses were the houris promised those who made it into Heaven. After days in which the drugged recruit wallowed in delights and indulged in heavenly pleasures, he would be drugged senseless once more, and removed from the gardens. He would awake to find himself back in his bare cell and austere surroundings. He would then be informed that he had been in paradise, sent there by the grace of the Old Man of the Mountain, who held the keys to heaven. The recruit would then be told that he could return to paradise – provided that he died while killing the Sheik’s enemies. It proved highly effective: suicide squads of horny young fanatics, high on hash and desperate to die while killing the cult’s enemies, descended from the Assassins’ mountain holdfasts to terrorize the Middle East.
