Today the sun’s axis shifted. Its marigold luminosity fell into thick Arctic darkness.
The Saviours killed Belkis.
Our mentors, the Leviathans, submit this truth: ‘Death is a lie.’
I should believe that.
But aren’t there other truths that are not lies? Such as fire once doused can’t be rekindled?
The Leviathans warn us constantly: these days the Saviours, determined to claim their godhood, will hunt us, the Dolphin Children, relentlessly.
But we’re young. We think time is on our side. Hubris – a tragic flaw.
Today is History Unbound, a national holiday bombastically decreed by Numen. It will inaugurate a duumvirate – a joint governance – that will put our country in a pastiche confederacy with the other regional power, an oil-rich Islamic Republic striving to emerge under its Transcendent Leader, Grand Mufti Hajj Qutaybah Abd ar-Rahman.
The duumvirs’ propagandists forecast that the alliance, systematising Numen’s progressive Western politics with the Grand Mufti’s piety, will create a new age that will finally cure humanity’s fratricidal disposition.
Whether the duumvirs believe in such an oxymoronic future is a moot point. Many pundits intimate that this aspiration conceals a new dark age as its main agenda, namely, the degradation of Numen’s subjects into lotus-eaters and the Grand Mufti’s into theoleptics.
The Leviathans are more forthright: since the duumvirs enslave their own people and lavishly support various terrorist groups as proxies for their end game, the alliance will last until one duumvir liquidates the other.
Early this afternoon, having broadcast the mandatory Friday sermon from his Russian-built aircraft carrier, the Grand Mufti, surrounded by his personal warriors, the Ghazis, arrived regally arrayed in bisht, ghutrah and agal.
Numen and the specially invited leaders from neighbouring countries – all prospective Saviours prowling in the wings – welcomed him with red-carpet protocol. Belkis and I, endowed by our Leviathan mentor, Hrant, with the ability to perceive the invisible, murky, auric fields enveloping the duumvirs. We identified some of these spectres as their own role models – prominent among them, Batista, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein.
Eventually the tyrants, waving blessings to the crowds, boarded a festooned statemobile – a light armoured personnel carrier projecting Numen’s martial credentials. Escorted by a long tail of outriders, half-tracks and limousines – and a flight of helicopters – they set out for the Presidential Palace, Xanadu, where the Grand Mufti would be staying. Xanadu is an eyesore of 1150 rooms built by Numen with misappropriated public funds. A cartoonist once drew it as a Ziggurat, with the caption, ‘Mr Tickler’s Shack’ – an allusion to Numen’s Hitler moustache. The cartoonist withered in dungeons, but his derision lives on.
About today’s demonstration: Hrant and his peers agreed that History Unbound would be an appropriate occasion for it.
But Belkis and I disagreed where and when to mount it.
Belkis insisted that a protest during the Grand Mufti’s arrival would rouse the superpowers which, even as they condemned both despots’ dismal Human Rights records, indulged them as useful also-rans.
I maintained that since Numen, flaunting his machoism, persistently disparaged the superpowers as neutered dinosaurs, our demo would be more effective if it occurred on the Sunday afternoon when he and the Grand Mufti signed their concordat at Xanadu. Our clamour would goad the superpowers to re-evaluate the duumvirs’ agendas. Moreover, as Numen would aim to show the democratic countries that his subjects have the freedom to demonstrate, we would expose his brutal rule by provoking his Security forces to react heavy-handedly.
The Leviathans agreed with my rationale. But Belkis, impetuous as ever, remained inflexible. In the end we yielded to her and tabled my proposition as Plan B.
Leaks about our demo galvanised the people. Defying Homeland Security, they thronged the cavalcade’s route.
Homeland Security has six forces: Pinkies (Informers), Police, Riot Gendarmerie, State Intelligence Agency, Scythes (National Guards) and Dragon’s Teeth, Numen’s personal bodyguards. The last outfit, recruited from various terror groups and famed for their barbarity, are supposedly inconspicuous in neat suits; but with machine-pistols bulging under their jackets, they look like Robocops.
No banners or placards; they’d be confiscated as weapons. Just seasoned demonstrators with techsets trumpeting the nation’s grievances. Then the Houdini act: slipping into anonymity like herrings in shoals.
As the best location, Belkis chose Genovese Plaza, a landmark for state visits.
In bygone times, the Plaza’s Great Tower kept vigil for fires, armadas and floods. The Plaza itself, a Romanesque rialto, was where citizens could personally vent their grievances to their rulers. Latterly, however, politicians had appropriated it for demagoguery – prompting the people to call it Fartheads’ Pulpit.
Today some illuminati – internationally esteemed therefore as yet unpurgeable by Numen – are trying to reinstate Genovese Plaza as a Global Forum. Belkis, embracing this vision, predicted that one day the Tower will be reconstituted as a Tower of Babel which, unlike the one in the Bible, would solve the world’s problems and enrich us with umpteen languages and cultures.
According to a legend Genovese Plaza is also the one place on earth where gods, alerted to oppressors’ iniquities, would rush over and cast the despots into hell’s cauldrons.
This morning the gods stayed away and let the Saviours kill Belkis, soul of my soul.
I think Belkis knew she’d be killed. She started the day not as La Pasionaria of previous demos, but like Joan of Arc calmly waiting for the English to ignite her stake.
While we blended with the crowds, she kept watching the Scythe snipers on the Tower’s observation platform. Did she see them as a warning that her time was up?
I tried to distract her but to no avail. Silence imprisons thoughts.
Then, as the cavalcade approached, she caressed my cheek. ‘Sorry, Oric, I wandered into limbo. All our missions, all the countries we went to became one. Now I’m back on the earth. The earth I know. The earth that knows me. If it’s my time to be killed, I’ll be glad it’ll be here.’
‘Nonsense! We’ll waft away like we always do.’
Again she scrutinised the snipers on the Tower. ‘Life is everlasting. Even stones say so. If only Saviours understood that. But they can’t … all they know is carnage. They worship it. It’s the god they’ve chosen. The god that demands the sacrifice of untold innocents. That anoints their hands with blood. That tells them the more they massacre, the more godlike they’ll be.’
‘Only until the day they see how deluded they’ve been.’
‘Why can’t that day be today, Oric?’
‘If only.’
‘Let’s forget if onlys. Let’s make it today. Let’s stop them today!’
I grimaced. ‘With slogans?’
She rebuked me. ‘With our example.’
I should have looked into her mind then, but I was scanning the Plaza. The cavalcade was approaching the arched entrance. We’d switch on our sound systems when it reached the middle.
She held my hand vigorously. ‘We met in this beautiful city, Oric. Fell in love here. Became Dolphineros here. Home turf – best place.’
I looked at her quizzically, still unable to read her mind.
She kissed me fervidly, reading the doubt in my face. ‘Death is a lie! That’s the Truth!’
The cavalcade entered the Plaza.
She slipped out of my arms.
I froze.
Somehow, she scrambled past the Riot Gendarmerie at the barricades, past the Grand Mufti’s retinue of hajjis distributing copies of his favourite hokum, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and past his Ghazis. She managed to avoid Numen’s outriders, ran into the road and stopped not far from the duumvir’s statemobile.
I tried to run after her.
I couldn’t move. I was cemented by fear. Hidebehind had me by the throat and was choking me. The ancients called Fear Hidebehind. Ascribed to Him countenances of spiked scales, ogre heads, bats’ wings, ophidian hair – the usual phantasmagoria to depict a demon that’s never seen, never shows chest or testicles, never exposes an inch of sinews that one can spit at or strike.
Belkis switched on her sound system.
Her voice filled the Plaza. ‘No to despotism! No to this duumvirate! We want Liberty! Equality! Justice! Social Care! We want Life!’
The Scythes on the Tower opened fire.
Belkis crumpled.
I watched, still paralysed by Hidebehind, as Numen shouted orders at his Dragon’s Teeth.
He needn’t have bothered.
Burning their motorcycles’ tyres, they were making for Belkis.
Still waving her tiny speaker, Belkis was trying to stand up. ‘No to Big Lies! No to Post-Truths! No to mass catacombs!’
Then thuds. One, two, several as the Dragon’s Teeth outriders tossed her about.
Finally, Numen’s statemobile ran over her broken body.
I bellowed and bellowed.
Some Riot Gendarmerie veered towards me.
I should have confronted them.
Instead, winged by Hidebehind, I fled.