I've started posting the chapters of Resolution 786. I'll post each successive chapter roughly every 3 or 4 days. Here's Chapter 3:
The Nairobi streets dozed under a blanket of moonlit night by the time they started their drive home. Albert Hueghlomm drove, his wife to his left, sitting in the black leather passenger seat. Adam sat in the back of his parents’ comfortable car, a white Corsair.
“That was nice of Marty and Rachel,” said Fatima.
“Yes it was,” her husband agreed. “Thanks for coming tonight. I haven’t been to a Passover Seder in a while. They did a good job with it.”
A block of streetlight moved through the car, lighting Fatima’s face for a moment. It brushed across her husband softly, over Adam, and then quietly stole away, stepping outside through the back window.
“Mommy, I didn’t like it,” said Adam, staring into the dark.
“Jewish food isn’t spicy, Adam,” said Fatima. “We’ll get you something spicy at home.”
“No, the seder,” Adam mispronounced it see-der.
“What about the seder?” his father asked, curious. He glanced for Adam in the rearview mirror, finally finding his young eyes.
“The dead babies at Passover,” said Adam, staring back at his father. “Why did Allah kill all those Egyptian babies? Why do we celebrate the killing of babies?”
No one answered. No one said another word.
They drove home quietly, swimming through the peaceful African night. The tires crooned a soothing hum as they swept across the cooling asphalt, a thin sheen of evening dew forming on its smooth, black surface. A forest of enormous trees zipped by on one side, a dark, surrounding rim of thick trunks and wide, floppy leaves hanging like elephant ears, dimly lit in the silvery shadows of moon. Blocks of streetlight took turns coming into and out of the car, sweeping over them like an endless caravan of silent, faceless nomads. Adam watched the side of his mother’s face. The light did a sultry dance with the shadows around her eyes and nose.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
The Old Man from Nairobi, Chapter 2
I've started posting the chapters of Resolution 786. I'll post each successive chapter roughly every 3 or 4 days. Here's Chapter 2:
Adam Hueghlomm was eight years old and on school holiday. Every morning he would wake, wash, and put on his favorite gray shorts and red flip-flops. The cool Nairobi air always tasted full of blossoming vegetation when he climbed down the cement steps at the front of their house. A tall, black wrought iron fence surrounded the property. By sunrise, the street outside the gate came alive with dusty cars and busy walkers. The vegetable lady regularly passed along a couple of hours after daybreak, strolling on the gravel sidewalk, her booming voice announcing the day’s produce while she carried a heavy basket atop her head, its content brimming with shiny green, yellow, and red spheres and cones.
Adam’s mother, Fatima, came down the hard steps, drying her hands with a dark blue dishtowel along the way. She wore a long, loose cotton skirt with a gentle floral pattern. Although far from tight, her long-sleeved yellow top held her thin form more snugly than her skirt. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair shone in the morning sun, bouncing softly around her light brown neck as she walked, a burst of color moving against the gray cream of the house.
Fatima shouted over her son, at the vegetable lady, “Aye, aye!” Her husband loved spaghetti and tonight she would make the sauce with fresh tomatoes.
The vegetable lady stopped immediately outside the wrought iron gate, “Ah, mama need vegetable this day.” Her words carried the heavy soak of a Swahili accent. She lowered her basket from the top of her head and held it below her waist, grasping it steady by two side handles, tilting it towards Fatima. She invited Fatima forward with a broad smile, lips stretched across a pristine set of bright, clean teeth.
Fatima leaned into the basket and picked over the day’s produce, culling out the best tomatoes of the lot, picking up this one or that, turning each around in her thin hands, running discerning eyes over the skin, gently pressing her fingertips into the firm spheres, testing freshness. The vegetable lady watched patiently, mentally tallying her total sale. Fatima made her final selections and placed the chosen tomatoes into the blue dishtowel, holding it like a miniature hammock. She began the bartering ritual, wanting to save every possible shilling, more on the basis of principle rather than need. Adam caught fragments of the Swahili conversation.
“These look like they were picked yesterday,” opened Fatima, a subtle British accent woven through her words.
“Noooooo, no, no. They were picked todaaay,” countered the vegetable lady, her words stretched in African inflections, her dark face nodding no, gently.
“But they’re bruised and the skin isn’t tight. They must be from yesterday.”
“The skin is very tight, good lady.” The vegetable lady tilted her head, mentally selecting the most compelling images for her next sentence. “My old, old mother work soooo hard. She pick these todayyyy, no matter how much her back hurrrrrting.”
Fatima decided that she would pay the asking price today, but she continued a token negotiation so that she wouldn’t be branded an easy mark in future transactions. “Yesterday they seemed bigger.”
“Same plant, same plant. Same size.” The vegetable lady nodded her head gently from side to side and made little clucking sounds with her tongue.
“OK, OK. But only because I know you,” said Fatima.
“Madam will like these tomatoes,” said the vegetable lady, smiling, her mind rolling numbers behind her eyes like a cash register.
Paper, coins and tomatoes changed hands.
Amid the bartering, Adam watched the old man on the other side of the road. He was shuffling down the sidewalk, the same as every day, bobbing along, his face the color of eggplants, his torn, dusty khaki pants crinkling and uncrinkling in cadence with his shuffling gait, a mud-caked burlap bag clutched close to his bare, ebony chest.
Fatima and the vegetable lady parted, exchanging smiles, bidding each other goodbye in Swahili, “Kwaheri!” The vegetable lady continued moving down the road announcing and hawking her produce, “Mboga safi na fresh kweli-kweli.” Fatima turned and hopped back up the cement steps, blessing the tomatoes in Arabic along the way, “Bismillah.”
Adam stayed on his side of the unlocked gate, watching the old man. The man had just gotten to where a side alley met the road. He dodged quickly into the hidden path, the same one he vanished into every day. Circumstances fused with curiosity, creating an enticing opportunity to discover the old man’s secrets. Adam buckled under the heavy weight of temptation. He turned sideways and slipped through the gate, glancing back from the corner of his eye at the cement steps to make sure his mother wasn’t looking. Outside the home compound, he stood on his side of the road, waiting for traffic to subside. When it did, he moved forward and across the road, walking in a quick, stilted gait.
Adam turned into the side alley and moved down the hidden, red-soiled path. A blanket of stillness nestled around him. He listened to the sound of gravel crunching underneath his flip-flops. Blossoming African weeds loomed taller than him, beautiful, on both sides of the path. Then he saw him. Around a gentle curve and a few feet off the path, the old man stood with his shiny, thinly muscled purple back facing Adam, his legs slightly apart, burlap bag crumpled on the ground beside him. He was peeing into the weeds.
The gravel stopped crunching. The tall weeds disappeared. Adam stopped thinking. He followed his limbs, walking closer. The old man grew bigger. He had one wrinkled, leathery palm resting gently on his hip, the other in front of him guiding a yellow stream into the weeds, its parabolic curve visible through the thin space between the back of his legs. The button on the old man’s rear pant pocket hung by a thread and was caked in dried blood. He cleared his throat noisily and gasped a parade of deep breaths. His lungs sounded like old newspapers fluttering helplessly in a strong gust. The yellow stream made a final lurch into the weeds like a falling rope. The old man smelled like sweat, urine and salt boiling together in a teapot. He bent his knees and hunched to one side to pick up the muddy burlap bag. He suddenly turned to stone.
Adam froze, icy fear.
Slowly, almost without moving, the old man’s onyx head turned towards the little boy until his tilted visage locked eyes with Adam’s. His wrinkled, leather eggplant face slowly broke into a bright ivory smile, squinting black pupils like bottomless wells drilled into the white snowfields of his eyes. And it was his eyes that then invited Adam to come look into the mud-caked burlap bag.
Adam pulled forward, a reluctant puppet on a horizontal string. The old man’s stance and expression remained unchanged, his wrinkled coal hands holding the dirty burlap bag open by its two frayed loop handles. Adam craned his neck to peer inside. Nothing. No, wait…he heard a faint, muffled tweet, tweet, tweet. He stepped closer, gazing to the bottom of the bag. A gang of bright yellow chicks scurried about inside the bag alongside a worn and sunburned copy of the Quran.
Adam looked back up at the old man, still hunched around his own ivory smile. The old man thrust a deep gaze into Adam’s eyes, silently asking him what he thought of the content of his bag. And then his squinting, ivory-framed eyes grew together into one large eye that absorbed his forehead. Adam blinked and the old man’s face became an enormous dark pupil reflecting scenes of war and death and pilgrimage, like a speeded up old movie reel, oscillating and rushing scenes that eddied into one final peaceful tableau of the giant black cube in Mecca — still, deserted, quiet, bathed in soft blue moonlight.
Adam screamed. He turned and ran, his heart beating hard inside his throat, rushing blood that clutched at his windpipe until he almost couldn’t breathe.
He lost one flip-flop forever.
He never followed the old man again.
Adam Hueghlomm was eight years old and on school holiday. Every morning he would wake, wash, and put on his favorite gray shorts and red flip-flops. The cool Nairobi air always tasted full of blossoming vegetation when he climbed down the cement steps at the front of their house. A tall, black wrought iron fence surrounded the property. By sunrise, the street outside the gate came alive with dusty cars and busy walkers. The vegetable lady regularly passed along a couple of hours after daybreak, strolling on the gravel sidewalk, her booming voice announcing the day’s produce while she carried a heavy basket atop her head, its content brimming with shiny green, yellow, and red spheres and cones.
Adam’s mother, Fatima, came down the hard steps, drying her hands with a dark blue dishtowel along the way. She wore a long, loose cotton skirt with a gentle floral pattern. Although far from tight, her long-sleeved yellow top held her thin form more snugly than her skirt. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair shone in the morning sun, bouncing softly around her light brown neck as she walked, a burst of color moving against the gray cream of the house.
Fatima shouted over her son, at the vegetable lady, “Aye, aye!” Her husband loved spaghetti and tonight she would make the sauce with fresh tomatoes.
The vegetable lady stopped immediately outside the wrought iron gate, “Ah, mama need vegetable this day.” Her words carried the heavy soak of a Swahili accent. She lowered her basket from the top of her head and held it below her waist, grasping it steady by two side handles, tilting it towards Fatima. She invited Fatima forward with a broad smile, lips stretched across a pristine set of bright, clean teeth.
Fatima leaned into the basket and picked over the day’s produce, culling out the best tomatoes of the lot, picking up this one or that, turning each around in her thin hands, running discerning eyes over the skin, gently pressing her fingertips into the firm spheres, testing freshness. The vegetable lady watched patiently, mentally tallying her total sale. Fatima made her final selections and placed the chosen tomatoes into the blue dishtowel, holding it like a miniature hammock. She began the bartering ritual, wanting to save every possible shilling, more on the basis of principle rather than need. Adam caught fragments of the Swahili conversation.
“These look like they were picked yesterday,” opened Fatima, a subtle British accent woven through her words.
“Noooooo, no, no. They were picked todaaay,” countered the vegetable lady, her words stretched in African inflections, her dark face nodding no, gently.
“But they’re bruised and the skin isn’t tight. They must be from yesterday.”
“The skin is very tight, good lady.” The vegetable lady tilted her head, mentally selecting the most compelling images for her next sentence. “My old, old mother work soooo hard. She pick these todayyyy, no matter how much her back hurrrrrting.”
Fatima decided that she would pay the asking price today, but she continued a token negotiation so that she wouldn’t be branded an easy mark in future transactions. “Yesterday they seemed bigger.”
“Same plant, same plant. Same size.” The vegetable lady nodded her head gently from side to side and made little clucking sounds with her tongue.
“OK, OK. But only because I know you,” said Fatima.
“Madam will like these tomatoes,” said the vegetable lady, smiling, her mind rolling numbers behind her eyes like a cash register.
Paper, coins and tomatoes changed hands.
Amid the bartering, Adam watched the old man on the other side of the road. He was shuffling down the sidewalk, the same as every day, bobbing along, his face the color of eggplants, his torn, dusty khaki pants crinkling and uncrinkling in cadence with his shuffling gait, a mud-caked burlap bag clutched close to his bare, ebony chest.
Fatima and the vegetable lady parted, exchanging smiles, bidding each other goodbye in Swahili, “Kwaheri!” The vegetable lady continued moving down the road announcing and hawking her produce, “Mboga safi na fresh kweli-kweli.” Fatima turned and hopped back up the cement steps, blessing the tomatoes in Arabic along the way, “Bismillah.”
Adam stayed on his side of the unlocked gate, watching the old man. The man had just gotten to where a side alley met the road. He dodged quickly into the hidden path, the same one he vanished into every day. Circumstances fused with curiosity, creating an enticing opportunity to discover the old man’s secrets. Adam buckled under the heavy weight of temptation. He turned sideways and slipped through the gate, glancing back from the corner of his eye at the cement steps to make sure his mother wasn’t looking. Outside the home compound, he stood on his side of the road, waiting for traffic to subside. When it did, he moved forward and across the road, walking in a quick, stilted gait.
Adam turned into the side alley and moved down the hidden, red-soiled path. A blanket of stillness nestled around him. He listened to the sound of gravel crunching underneath his flip-flops. Blossoming African weeds loomed taller than him, beautiful, on both sides of the path. Then he saw him. Around a gentle curve and a few feet off the path, the old man stood with his shiny, thinly muscled purple back facing Adam, his legs slightly apart, burlap bag crumpled on the ground beside him. He was peeing into the weeds.
The gravel stopped crunching. The tall weeds disappeared. Adam stopped thinking. He followed his limbs, walking closer. The old man grew bigger. He had one wrinkled, leathery palm resting gently on his hip, the other in front of him guiding a yellow stream into the weeds, its parabolic curve visible through the thin space between the back of his legs. The button on the old man’s rear pant pocket hung by a thread and was caked in dried blood. He cleared his throat noisily and gasped a parade of deep breaths. His lungs sounded like old newspapers fluttering helplessly in a strong gust. The yellow stream made a final lurch into the weeds like a falling rope. The old man smelled like sweat, urine and salt boiling together in a teapot. He bent his knees and hunched to one side to pick up the muddy burlap bag. He suddenly turned to stone.
Adam froze, icy fear.
Slowly, almost without moving, the old man’s onyx head turned towards the little boy until his tilted visage locked eyes with Adam’s. His wrinkled, leather eggplant face slowly broke into a bright ivory smile, squinting black pupils like bottomless wells drilled into the white snowfields of his eyes. And it was his eyes that then invited Adam to come look into the mud-caked burlap bag.
Adam pulled forward, a reluctant puppet on a horizontal string. The old man’s stance and expression remained unchanged, his wrinkled coal hands holding the dirty burlap bag open by its two frayed loop handles. Adam craned his neck to peer inside. Nothing. No, wait…he heard a faint, muffled tweet, tweet, tweet. He stepped closer, gazing to the bottom of the bag. A gang of bright yellow chicks scurried about inside the bag alongside a worn and sunburned copy of the Quran.
Adam looked back up at the old man, still hunched around his own ivory smile. The old man thrust a deep gaze into Adam’s eyes, silently asking him what he thought of the content of his bag. And then his squinting, ivory-framed eyes grew together into one large eye that absorbed his forehead. Adam blinked and the old man’s face became an enormous dark pupil reflecting scenes of war and death and pilgrimage, like a speeded up old movie reel, oscillating and rushing scenes that eddied into one final peaceful tableau of the giant black cube in Mecca — still, deserted, quiet, bathed in soft blue moonlight.
Adam screamed. He turned and ran, his heart beating hard inside his throat, rushing blood that clutched at his windpipe until he almost couldn’t breathe.
He lost one flip-flop forever.
He never followed the old man again.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Chapter 1, We Got Him
I've started posting the chapters of Resolution 786. I'll post each successive chapter roughly every 3 or 4 days. Here's Chapter 1:
“The Lord has been captured and is in our custody. He is in a secure location awaiting his trial for crimes against humanity,” read the global public release statement. Adam Hueghlomm, the prosecuting attorney, stared at the Lord in his cell, a plain looking middle-aged Caucasian man with an air of resignation and just a hint of sadness.
“I promise a fair trial,” said Hueghlomm. “I’m reviewing your five-count indictment to tally the specific charges. You’ll be given every opportunity to defend yourself. You have right to counsel. You may make a motion to disqualify me as your prosecuting attorney. I assure you that I will follow procedure, with reverence for and adherence to the rule of law.” Hueghlomm stopped to gauge the reaction of the accused, to see whether his words were being acknowledged.
Stone silence.
Hueghlomm turned to walk away.
“Six millennia!” the Lord shouted at his back. “Six millennia,” quieter now, speaking half to himself and half to Hueghlomm. “I’ve been watching you stumble about, whining, crying, killing, shifting blame and belching abuse on earth’s bounty. You spoiled, demented, half-baked irreverent child. You wouldn’t know what to do with great opportunity if she stood naked before you. God help you if true adversity ever visited you.” He stopped and looked down. Then a faint smile appeared on his face and his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Is the Fallen One available?”
“What do you mean?” said Hueghlomm.
“You said that I have right to counsel. Is the Fallen One available?” said the Lord.
“Stop playing games. There is no Fallen One.”
“You are telling me to stop playing games! Not only a lawyer, but a comedian too. How multi-faceted. Your mother must be proud.”
“My mother’s with you,” said Hueghlomm.
“Don’t bet on it.”
More stone silence. Hueghlomm and the Lord stared at each other. Hueghlomm was short, a little over five and a half feet tall with a stocky torso and thin legs. His round, light brown face brimmed with character, somewhat attractive, although not at all classically handsome. A prominent nose held up a pair of thin-framed glasses with circular lenses. His black hair was parted on the side and cut over his small ears, framing a set of dark brown eyes that conveyed a feminine kindness most times. When he fell into thought, those eyes ran a thousand miles away. Although in his early forties, less than a handful of grays had found their way into the hair around his temples. His smooth, soft face had no wrinkles. Taken together, his features often gave strangers the impression that “this is a pretty smart guy.”
Hueghlomm started to speak again, slower than before, deliberate words, maintaining a square fix on the Lord’s eyes. “Sir, you are under indictment and arrest for a number of serious crimes against humanity. You are accused of mass infanticide. You are accused of homophobic genocide. You are accused of felony animal cruelty. You are accused of violating Resolution 786 against societal leaders, against innocent women and children, and against unwitting animals, sir!”
“Am I, who am I? You’re shortsighted beyond your wildest imagination,” said the Lord, sitting back on the metal bench inside his cell, gently folding his arms across his chest.
Hueghlomm’s Cereb-Ear beeped. He gave it mental permission to sound.
“Chicken tonight, Sweetie?” Her playful voice ran through his inner ear.
“You mean for dinner?”
“No, stupid, I mean to choke.” She loved sarcasm, teasing. “You silly pervert.”
“Burgers,” he said.
“OK, but no cheese. Let’s not clog up your arteries any more than they already are, Mr. Limpy Dingy.”
“I need to go,” he said.
“Don’t get bent.” Her inflections were full of inside jokes. “Busy?”
“Yes.” He snapped his Cereb-Ear off.
“All well?” asked the Lord, looking at Hueghlomm. Hueghlomm didn’t reply. He felt that the Lord knew whom he had just spoken with. The Lord looked as if he knew that Hueghlomm knew and that he wanted Hueghlomm to know that he knew.
“It’s all in my mind,” Hueghlomm thought to himself. “He’s trying to get into my head.”
“The Lord has been captured and is in our custody. He is in a secure location awaiting his trial for crimes against humanity,” read the global public release statement. Adam Hueghlomm, the prosecuting attorney, stared at the Lord in his cell, a plain looking middle-aged Caucasian man with an air of resignation and just a hint of sadness.
“I promise a fair trial,” said Hueghlomm. “I’m reviewing your five-count indictment to tally the specific charges. You’ll be given every opportunity to defend yourself. You have right to counsel. You may make a motion to disqualify me as your prosecuting attorney. I assure you that I will follow procedure, with reverence for and adherence to the rule of law.” Hueghlomm stopped to gauge the reaction of the accused, to see whether his words were being acknowledged.
Stone silence.
Hueghlomm turned to walk away.
“Six millennia!” the Lord shouted at his back. “Six millennia,” quieter now, speaking half to himself and half to Hueghlomm. “I’ve been watching you stumble about, whining, crying, killing, shifting blame and belching abuse on earth’s bounty. You spoiled, demented, half-baked irreverent child. You wouldn’t know what to do with great opportunity if she stood naked before you. God help you if true adversity ever visited you.” He stopped and looked down. Then a faint smile appeared on his face and his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Is the Fallen One available?”
“What do you mean?” said Hueghlomm.
“You said that I have right to counsel. Is the Fallen One available?” said the Lord.
“Stop playing games. There is no Fallen One.”
“You are telling me to stop playing games! Not only a lawyer, but a comedian too. How multi-faceted. Your mother must be proud.”
“My mother’s with you,” said Hueghlomm.
“Don’t bet on it.”
More stone silence. Hueghlomm and the Lord stared at each other. Hueghlomm was short, a little over five and a half feet tall with a stocky torso and thin legs. His round, light brown face brimmed with character, somewhat attractive, although not at all classically handsome. A prominent nose held up a pair of thin-framed glasses with circular lenses. His black hair was parted on the side and cut over his small ears, framing a set of dark brown eyes that conveyed a feminine kindness most times. When he fell into thought, those eyes ran a thousand miles away. Although in his early forties, less than a handful of grays had found their way into the hair around his temples. His smooth, soft face had no wrinkles. Taken together, his features often gave strangers the impression that “this is a pretty smart guy.”
Hueghlomm started to speak again, slower than before, deliberate words, maintaining a square fix on the Lord’s eyes. “Sir, you are under indictment and arrest for a number of serious crimes against humanity. You are accused of mass infanticide. You are accused of homophobic genocide. You are accused of felony animal cruelty. You are accused of violating Resolution 786 against societal leaders, against innocent women and children, and against unwitting animals, sir!”
“Am I, who am I? You’re shortsighted beyond your wildest imagination,” said the Lord, sitting back on the metal bench inside his cell, gently folding his arms across his chest.
Hueghlomm’s Cereb-Ear beeped. He gave it mental permission to sound.
“Chicken tonight, Sweetie?” Her playful voice ran through his inner ear.
“You mean for dinner?”
“No, stupid, I mean to choke.” She loved sarcasm, teasing. “You silly pervert.”
“Burgers,” he said.
“OK, but no cheese. Let’s not clog up your arteries any more than they already are, Mr. Limpy Dingy.”
“I need to go,” he said.
“Don’t get bent.” Her inflections were full of inside jokes. “Busy?”
“Yes.” He snapped his Cereb-Ear off.
“All well?” asked the Lord, looking at Hueghlomm. Hueghlomm didn’t reply. He felt that the Lord knew whom he had just spoken with. The Lord looked as if he knew that Hueghlomm knew and that he wanted Hueghlomm to know that he knew.
“It’s all in my mind,” Hueghlomm thought to himself. “He’s trying to get into my head.”
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Prologue
The prologue from Resolution 786
Prologue: 2036 Anno Domini
She brought a gnarled, frail hand to her wasted mouth, lying in cadaverous repose on stiff white sheets draped over a small hospital bed that sat on top of a sterile frame of gray metal tubes. Bright plastic light filled the tiny, colorless room, ricocheting in impersonal waves off four vacant walls. Her being quivered, alone, in rushing pain as she struggled to feed her papery lungs with sharp little sips of air sucked between savagely broken lips, precious oxygen dragged across an acrid, twirling black tongue. Her skull twitched with each labored breath, patches of bare scalp reflecting a cold sheen of bleached white between wispy mounds of lifeless, brittle hair. Her fractured trunk languished in a sunken crush, no breasts, bony humps of sternum studded through the top of a loose hospital gown. A set of desolate, listless hands and feet lay destitute at the ends of her surrendered circulatory system, writing their armistice in blue ice.
The hospital intercom spoke in a booming, loudspeaker voice, prompting her eyes to open a moment, reflexively, bulging spheres ailing in forced effort. The unseeing, jaundiced glass balls rolled about in a film-soaked swirl, pupils finally becoming lost inside her forehead. Her mouth and eyelids fell in unison. The lids stopped unclosed, marking a set of thin, grotesque yellow-white lines where her eyes had been. Her open mouth, coal tongue still, became an aged hollow with stubs of broken, muddy rocks ringed around its entrance.
The world’s best medical specialists had not been able to diagnose the former presidential advisor’s ailment. It had started strangely, almost three decades back. At the time, Madam Advisor had been a national figure and a key proponent and architect of the first war of the twenty-first century, a war that she argued would be won easily, resulting in the quick emergence of a Jeffersonian democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a fully functioning egalitarian state that would provide the people of the region a stable and secure beacon of enlightened ideals, a new nation, conceived in liberty and perpetually beholden to the morally superior West. So she argued.
Instead, one decade into the twenty-first century, Madam Advisor’s war had given rise to an oil rich, nuclear powered fundamentalist theocracy that ruled from the former Soviet Union to the south of Turkey, one that oppressed its women, threatened its neighbors and had plausible designs for the conquest of southern Europe. The theocracy’s passionately fundamentalist leaders detested the Western powers that had funded and nursed it through its birth, the countries that had invested an enormous treasure of life, limb and gold to vanquish the region’s secular dictators and place them, the fundamentalists, into power.
And so, as the Islamic Federation of Greater Iran grew, so did Madam Advisor’s inexplicable ailments. The theocracy’s birth pangs had come in a tumultuous maelstrom of blood, tears, sorrows, and loss. As above, so below — the anguished turmoil crossed the gossamer curtain between Heaven and Earth. The angels, disturbed, drew lots to repay the turmoil to its mothers and fathers. And so it was Azrael who collected every drop of blood spilled in Madam Advisor’s war, collected them into a bottomless grail, which he then poured into Madam Advisor’s spleen. And it was Malik who collected every tear shed in Madam Advisor’s war, collected them into an ancient chalice that he then poured into Madam Advisor’s glands. And it was Mukar who cast a net of air over every sorrow born of Madam Advisor’s war and he cast that net, full and brimming, deep into Madam Advisor’s heart. And it was Nakir who tossed a canopy of still space over every loss suffered in Madam Advisor’s war and emptied that canopy one loss at a time into Madam Advisor’s dreams.
The blood, the tears, the sorrows, the loss — all rightfully hers, pressed themselves into her body in a complex of twisted sinews that wrapped and clung to her soul like a poisonous vine.
Thirty years ago, when her ailments had slowly begun to fester, she had busied herself in avoiding responsibility for the war, hiding behind clever and contrived rhetoric founded on the ambiguities of war, the wrongness of others, the inaccuracies of information. No matter the cunning of argument, no matter the volume of assertion, no matter the minions of sophists dispatched to every media outlet imaginable, the facts remained true. The war was long and bloody. Fundamentalism had grown exponentially as a result. The world was now a much worse and infinitely more dangerous place.
Childless, loveless, friendless, alone — she decayed in a maelstrom of exhaustion, uncontrolled crying, piercing headaches, recurring infections, hair loss, eczema, and auditory hallucinations.
Her lonely descent to death’s doorstep had lasted three bone-numbing decades. Tonight, she had reached the last rung. A thin, blonde nurse with a kind face gently stabbed an anesthetic needle into to the top of Madam Advisor’s wrinkled, wasted hand, a needle made from recycled metal, metal that contained two atoms of iron from the shell casing that fired a final bullet into Adolf Hitler’s temple in Berlin in 1945. Madam Advisor’s rotating glass eyes stilled. Her worn out mouth closed and she appeared to be thinking. Her breaths came further and further apart as her mind assembled her last full thought. It was a thought about the Lord, a Lord whom she adored, a Lord whom she looked forward to finally meeting. She spoke to him in her head in devoted and loving tones, reminding him of the dire sacrifices that she had made in his cause. “Dear Lord Jesus Christ, I did all I could to follow your hallowed teachings, up to and including giving my all to your Doctrine of Preemptive Strike. That’s in the Gospel, isn’t it? Yes, I know it is, for I have given myself to you. And thank you, Lord Jesus, for loving me so.”
Her mind lost words forever behind a drape of sounds and tastes and scents and colors and she heard an antique piano recital playing along side a mix of proud parental pronouncements, affirmations that seeded a limitless ambition into her child’s heart and then…a crimson moment of searing, ripping anguish swept through her Universe and she thought that she heard a distant Echo approach and speed over her like a screaming war plane…I never knew you...It said…and vanished. Her tired lungs nudged away air one last time. At that moment, a moment without Time and outside of Space, a dozen dutiful angels stood around Madam Advisor in a perfectly symmetrical ring. They cycled about her seven times as she gasped last. Not one angel fluttered even a feather to relieve a single pang of her mammoth agony.
Prologue: 2036 Anno Domini
She brought a gnarled, frail hand to her wasted mouth, lying in cadaverous repose on stiff white sheets draped over a small hospital bed that sat on top of a sterile frame of gray metal tubes. Bright plastic light filled the tiny, colorless room, ricocheting in impersonal waves off four vacant walls. Her being quivered, alone, in rushing pain as she struggled to feed her papery lungs with sharp little sips of air sucked between savagely broken lips, precious oxygen dragged across an acrid, twirling black tongue. Her skull twitched with each labored breath, patches of bare scalp reflecting a cold sheen of bleached white between wispy mounds of lifeless, brittle hair. Her fractured trunk languished in a sunken crush, no breasts, bony humps of sternum studded through the top of a loose hospital gown. A set of desolate, listless hands and feet lay destitute at the ends of her surrendered circulatory system, writing their armistice in blue ice.
The hospital intercom spoke in a booming, loudspeaker voice, prompting her eyes to open a moment, reflexively, bulging spheres ailing in forced effort. The unseeing, jaundiced glass balls rolled about in a film-soaked swirl, pupils finally becoming lost inside her forehead. Her mouth and eyelids fell in unison. The lids stopped unclosed, marking a set of thin, grotesque yellow-white lines where her eyes had been. Her open mouth, coal tongue still, became an aged hollow with stubs of broken, muddy rocks ringed around its entrance.
The world’s best medical specialists had not been able to diagnose the former presidential advisor’s ailment. It had started strangely, almost three decades back. At the time, Madam Advisor had been a national figure and a key proponent and architect of the first war of the twenty-first century, a war that she argued would be won easily, resulting in the quick emergence of a Jeffersonian democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a fully functioning egalitarian state that would provide the people of the region a stable and secure beacon of enlightened ideals, a new nation, conceived in liberty and perpetually beholden to the morally superior West. So she argued.
Instead, one decade into the twenty-first century, Madam Advisor’s war had given rise to an oil rich, nuclear powered fundamentalist theocracy that ruled from the former Soviet Union to the south of Turkey, one that oppressed its women, threatened its neighbors and had plausible designs for the conquest of southern Europe. The theocracy’s passionately fundamentalist leaders detested the Western powers that had funded and nursed it through its birth, the countries that had invested an enormous treasure of life, limb and gold to vanquish the region’s secular dictators and place them, the fundamentalists, into power.
And so, as the Islamic Federation of Greater Iran grew, so did Madam Advisor’s inexplicable ailments. The theocracy’s birth pangs had come in a tumultuous maelstrom of blood, tears, sorrows, and loss. As above, so below — the anguished turmoil crossed the gossamer curtain between Heaven and Earth. The angels, disturbed, drew lots to repay the turmoil to its mothers and fathers. And so it was Azrael who collected every drop of blood spilled in Madam Advisor’s war, collected them into a bottomless grail, which he then poured into Madam Advisor’s spleen. And it was Malik who collected every tear shed in Madam Advisor’s war, collected them into an ancient chalice that he then poured into Madam Advisor’s glands. And it was Mukar who cast a net of air over every sorrow born of Madam Advisor’s war and he cast that net, full and brimming, deep into Madam Advisor’s heart. And it was Nakir who tossed a canopy of still space over every loss suffered in Madam Advisor’s war and emptied that canopy one loss at a time into Madam Advisor’s dreams.
The blood, the tears, the sorrows, the loss — all rightfully hers, pressed themselves into her body in a complex of twisted sinews that wrapped and clung to her soul like a poisonous vine.
Thirty years ago, when her ailments had slowly begun to fester, she had busied herself in avoiding responsibility for the war, hiding behind clever and contrived rhetoric founded on the ambiguities of war, the wrongness of others, the inaccuracies of information. No matter the cunning of argument, no matter the volume of assertion, no matter the minions of sophists dispatched to every media outlet imaginable, the facts remained true. The war was long and bloody. Fundamentalism had grown exponentially as a result. The world was now a much worse and infinitely more dangerous place.
Childless, loveless, friendless, alone — she decayed in a maelstrom of exhaustion, uncontrolled crying, piercing headaches, recurring infections, hair loss, eczema, and auditory hallucinations.
Her lonely descent to death’s doorstep had lasted three bone-numbing decades. Tonight, she had reached the last rung. A thin, blonde nurse with a kind face gently stabbed an anesthetic needle into to the top of Madam Advisor’s wrinkled, wasted hand, a needle made from recycled metal, metal that contained two atoms of iron from the shell casing that fired a final bullet into Adolf Hitler’s temple in Berlin in 1945. Madam Advisor’s rotating glass eyes stilled. Her worn out mouth closed and she appeared to be thinking. Her breaths came further and further apart as her mind assembled her last full thought. It was a thought about the Lord, a Lord whom she adored, a Lord whom she looked forward to finally meeting. She spoke to him in her head in devoted and loving tones, reminding him of the dire sacrifices that she had made in his cause. “Dear Lord Jesus Christ, I did all I could to follow your hallowed teachings, up to and including giving my all to your Doctrine of Preemptive Strike. That’s in the Gospel, isn’t it? Yes, I know it is, for I have given myself to you. And thank you, Lord Jesus, for loving me so.”
Her mind lost words forever behind a drape of sounds and tastes and scents and colors and she heard an antique piano recital playing along side a mix of proud parental pronouncements, affirmations that seeded a limitless ambition into her child’s heart and then…a crimson moment of searing, ripping anguish swept through her Universe and she thought that she heard a distant Echo approach and speed over her like a screaming war plane…I never knew you...It said…and vanished. Her tired lungs nudged away air one last time. At that moment, a moment without Time and outside of Space, a dozen dutiful angels stood around Madam Advisor in a perfectly symmetrical ring. They cycled about her seven times as she gasped last. Not one angel fluttered even a feather to relieve a single pang of her mammoth agony.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Introduction
I've started posting the chapters of Resolution 786. I'll post each successive chapter roughly every 3 or 4 days. We'll start with the Introduction:
Introduction
I’ve walked the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem’s Old City. I was baptized in the Jordan. A Presbyterian minister taught me the Lord’s Prayer on the Mt. of Olives one peaceful April evening, just the two of us sitting above the Kidron Valley in full view of the Temple Mount. I’ve sailed the sloshing eddies of the Ganges at dawn with a Brahmin. I’ve prayed in Sarnath alongside American-born Buddhist converts at the spot where Buddha gave his first sermon after enlightenment. I’ve knelt in Mecca shoulder to shoulder with Muslim pilgrims from all over the world, immediately before the Kaaba, so close that each time I leaned forward to place my forehead to the earth, my head touched the base of the large black cube. I’ve greeted the Lord at Israel’s Western Wall, praying together with orthodox Jews at the base of the temple wall that Herod built.
God has many faces, and I have had the enormous privilege of celebrating several of them.
But Resolution 786 is not at all about the Creator. It’s about us. It’s a story about our journey from Here to There and about the sometimes tender and the sometimes savage things that happen to us in between, the swirling, rushing currents of love and lust and loss that form into experiences that become the building blocks of our lives. And if the story sometimes seems a confused patchwork of discordant imagery — well, it was written by an American of Indian heritage who was born in Africa, raised a Muslim, turned into a refugee by another Muslim, given safety and sustenance by a Christian church, and who is now happily married to a Jewish woman.
I beg forgiveness if my introduction will in any way prejudice a reader’s individual interpretation of this novel. Interpretation of literature is not at all the province of the writer. It is wholly and solely the province of the reader.
God bless you, dear reader. God bless us all.
Mohamed Mughal
Baltimore, Maryland
September 11, 2007
Introduction
I’ve walked the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem’s Old City. I was baptized in the Jordan. A Presbyterian minister taught me the Lord’s Prayer on the Mt. of Olives one peaceful April evening, just the two of us sitting above the Kidron Valley in full view of the Temple Mount. I’ve sailed the sloshing eddies of the Ganges at dawn with a Brahmin. I’ve prayed in Sarnath alongside American-born Buddhist converts at the spot where Buddha gave his first sermon after enlightenment. I’ve knelt in Mecca shoulder to shoulder with Muslim pilgrims from all over the world, immediately before the Kaaba, so close that each time I leaned forward to place my forehead to the earth, my head touched the base of the large black cube. I’ve greeted the Lord at Israel’s Western Wall, praying together with orthodox Jews at the base of the temple wall that Herod built.
God has many faces, and I have had the enormous privilege of celebrating several of them.
But Resolution 786 is not at all about the Creator. It’s about us. It’s a story about our journey from Here to There and about the sometimes tender and the sometimes savage things that happen to us in between, the swirling, rushing currents of love and lust and loss that form into experiences that become the building blocks of our lives. And if the story sometimes seems a confused patchwork of discordant imagery — well, it was written by an American of Indian heritage who was born in Africa, raised a Muslim, turned into a refugee by another Muslim, given safety and sustenance by a Christian church, and who is now happily married to a Jewish woman.
I beg forgiveness if my introduction will in any way prejudice a reader’s individual interpretation of this novel. Interpretation of literature is not at all the province of the writer. It is wholly and solely the province of the reader.
God bless you, dear reader. God bless us all.
Mohamed Mughal
Baltimore, Maryland
September 11, 2007
Monday, October 24, 2011
Our World
We live in a world where it's OK for every global media outlet to run multiple photos of a mutilated corpse, but a photo of a topless woman breastfeeding her child would be censured as obscene.
Presentation, Cedarhurst Unitarian Church, 23 Oct 2011
I gave a presentation at Cedarhurst Unitarian Church last Sunday. This was my fourth presentation at a Unitarian Church this year. Many people have asked me to post the text of the talk. I've provided it below. Remember, these are just my talking points. Each talk becomes a separate and unique exchange of ideas based on the interests and questions of the audience.
I think the that topics that I speak on are important and timely. I thoroughly enjoy the open-minded sharing of perspectives during the talks.
The Basic Beliefs and Practices of Islam and the Notion of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys
Good Morning. My name’s Mohamed and I want to thank you for inviting me to join you here today. I’m speaking on two topics this morning. The first is Islam, its basic beliefs and practices from an American Muslim’s perspective. Our second topic is the notion of good guys vs. bad guys, an exploration of who’s good and who’s bad. I’ll discuss these topics for about 20 minutes after which we’ll have an audience-driven Q&A session.
It’s difficult to synopsize any world religion in 10 minutes, but I’m going to try. I’ll start by discussing the five pillars or basic practices of Islam. After that, we’ll read from an English translation of the Quran, the scriptural basis for Islam.
The five pillars are:
1. Profession of Faith: There is no God but Allah and his prophet is Mohammed.
2. Prayer: Practicing the 5 daily prayers.
3. Fasting during Ramadan from sunup to sundown (not just food but any kind of bodily appetite).
4. The paying of alms.
5. Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.
In doing a top-level summary of those pillars, we see that Islam is not that different from most other theological frameworks in that it places emphasis on prayer, fasting, alms and pilgrimage.
Now what about the Quran, a book that some churches in the U.S. believe ought to be burned? We’ve heard so much about this book in the last few years, but does anyone know much of its content? I’ve brought along my family copy of the Quran and I’ve tabbed some passages for reading.
Read passages on: Jesus, Garden of Eden, Moses, Noah, Lot
To recap what we’ve learned so far, we see that Muslims have 5 pillars of faith that range from prayer to fasting to alms to pilgrimage. Their sacred text is the Quran, a book of vignettes, lessons, prescriptions and warnings.
We’ve taken a sampling of readings from this Quran. Let’s use this sampling to begin discussion of our second topic, the notion of good guys vs. bad guys. We’ll start by trying to collectively answer, “Is the God of the Quran a good guy or a bad guy?” Let’s take inventory of what we’ve heard about him.
1. He killed a generation of babies because the Egyptians didn’t grant the Israelites freedom.
2. He massacred two entire cities because of their sexual orientation.
3. He killed every living creature on our planet because he was unhappy with the actions of a few humans.
Killing babies, genocide driven by homophobia, mass annihilation of all life – maybe he is a bad guy?
That’s a possible example of a bad God. Are there examples of a bad people?
- Read Matthew – ask audience, where from?
-Read Luther – ask audience, who wrote?
-Read Amin
We have a bad God, two groups of bad people. Do we know any bad individuals? Here’s a description. (Read from 1984); ask audience, who is this?
(note how closely the content of a work of fiction from 1948 mirrors what we’re experiencing today).
So What Do We Make of It All?
Human thinking tends to operate in dichotomies, black and white, yin and yang, good and bad so I think we trap ourselves into finding a bad guy because we need to fulfill this dichotomy.
In all this discussion of bad guys, there’s a side of the coin that’s missing. We didn’t discuss the good guys; who are the good guys? I’ve looked through scripture and literature and listened to theologians and commentators from many parts of the world. My conclusion is this: when you ask the question, “Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?” the good guys are always the people you ask. If Adolf Hitler was sitting here with us this morning and we asked him who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, I can virtually guarantee that he wouldn’t designate himself the bad guy. The point: Invariably, the good guys is us, the bad guys is the others.
Conclusions
I want to read something from one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, something that’ll move us towards a concluding thought about our discussion.
(Read the short piece by Kurt Vonnegut where he discusses a conversation he’d had with his father before his father passed away)
Vonnegut said that he didn’t believe in villains. In a universe void of absolutes, I tend to agree. Is this moral relativism, a philosophy that can leave people believing that there are no good guys and no bad guys, a type of intellectual cop-out? No, I don’t think it is. I think this perspective espouses the tenants of a philosopher who himself was branded and punished as a bad guy. That poor fellow also asked us to not brand bad guys when he told us “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
We’ve covered a lot of material here in a very short amount of time. If anyone asks me, “Mohamed, out of all you shared with everyone this morning, what’s the one thing you’d want them to remember most?” It’d have to be that one sentence: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
I think the that topics that I speak on are important and timely. I thoroughly enjoy the open-minded sharing of perspectives during the talks.
The Basic Beliefs and Practices of Islam and the Notion of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys
Good Morning. My name’s Mohamed and I want to thank you for inviting me to join you here today. I’m speaking on two topics this morning. The first is Islam, its basic beliefs and practices from an American Muslim’s perspective. Our second topic is the notion of good guys vs. bad guys, an exploration of who’s good and who’s bad. I’ll discuss these topics for about 20 minutes after which we’ll have an audience-driven Q&A session.
It’s difficult to synopsize any world religion in 10 minutes, but I’m going to try. I’ll start by discussing the five pillars or basic practices of Islam. After that, we’ll read from an English translation of the Quran, the scriptural basis for Islam.
The five pillars are:
1. Profession of Faith: There is no God but Allah and his prophet is Mohammed.
2. Prayer: Practicing the 5 daily prayers.
3. Fasting during Ramadan from sunup to sundown (not just food but any kind of bodily appetite).
4. The paying of alms.
5. Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.
In doing a top-level summary of those pillars, we see that Islam is not that different from most other theological frameworks in that it places emphasis on prayer, fasting, alms and pilgrimage.
Now what about the Quran, a book that some churches in the U.S. believe ought to be burned? We’ve heard so much about this book in the last few years, but does anyone know much of its content? I’ve brought along my family copy of the Quran and I’ve tabbed some passages for reading.
Read passages on: Jesus, Garden of Eden, Moses, Noah, Lot
To recap what we’ve learned so far, we see that Muslims have 5 pillars of faith that range from prayer to fasting to alms to pilgrimage. Their sacred text is the Quran, a book of vignettes, lessons, prescriptions and warnings.
We’ve taken a sampling of readings from this Quran. Let’s use this sampling to begin discussion of our second topic, the notion of good guys vs. bad guys. We’ll start by trying to collectively answer, “Is the God of the Quran a good guy or a bad guy?” Let’s take inventory of what we’ve heard about him.
1. He killed a generation of babies because the Egyptians didn’t grant the Israelites freedom.
2. He massacred two entire cities because of their sexual orientation.
3. He killed every living creature on our planet because he was unhappy with the actions of a few humans.
Killing babies, genocide driven by homophobia, mass annihilation of all life – maybe he is a bad guy?
That’s a possible example of a bad God. Are there examples of a bad people?
- Read Matthew – ask audience, where from?
-Read Luther – ask audience, who wrote?
-Read Amin
We have a bad God, two groups of bad people. Do we know any bad individuals? Here’s a description. (Read from 1984); ask audience, who is this?
(note how closely the content of a work of fiction from 1948 mirrors what we’re experiencing today).
So What Do We Make of It All?
Human thinking tends to operate in dichotomies, black and white, yin and yang, good and bad so I think we trap ourselves into finding a bad guy because we need to fulfill this dichotomy.
In all this discussion of bad guys, there’s a side of the coin that’s missing. We didn’t discuss the good guys; who are the good guys? I’ve looked through scripture and literature and listened to theologians and commentators from many parts of the world. My conclusion is this: when you ask the question, “Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?” the good guys are always the people you ask. If Adolf Hitler was sitting here with us this morning and we asked him who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, I can virtually guarantee that he wouldn’t designate himself the bad guy. The point: Invariably, the good guys is us, the bad guys is the others.
Conclusions
I want to read something from one of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, something that’ll move us towards a concluding thought about our discussion.
(Read the short piece by Kurt Vonnegut where he discusses a conversation he’d had with his father before his father passed away)
Vonnegut said that he didn’t believe in villains. In a universe void of absolutes, I tend to agree. Is this moral relativism, a philosophy that can leave people believing that there are no good guys and no bad guys, a type of intellectual cop-out? No, I don’t think it is. I think this perspective espouses the tenants of a philosopher who himself was branded and punished as a bad guy. That poor fellow also asked us to not brand bad guys when he told us “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
We’ve covered a lot of material here in a very short amount of time. If anyone asks me, “Mohamed, out of all you shared with everyone this morning, what’s the one thing you’d want them to remember most?” It’d have to be that one sentence: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
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