I’m in Nestville, that motley of shanties which, erected overnight, shingle the Eastern hills. This is the district where flocks of landsmen winged over with their families and built their ‘nests’. The ‘ville’ derives from a Swiss environmentalist’s report.
Like the landsmen, they came seeking employment. Some did find work, mainly menial. Others, taking on casual jobs for pittances, toil day and night. The lucky few who’ve acquired a trade valiantly feign assimilation, but their eyes remain jaundiced with alienation.
In Numen’s social categorisation, Nestvillians are squatters. Their petitions for the basic amenities of sewage, water, gas, electricity and refuse collection end up in shredders. Recently, however, in the way all activists are born from a necessity that others do not always see, they’ve demanded a council of their own in lieu of the tin-gods the municipality occasionally sends.
Today, vaulting like ibexes through mazes where shacks stand only by leaning against each other, they’re on the move. Speculating that the celebration of the Union Made in Heaven would spotlight their demands, they’ve organised a demonstration to take place in Glorious Acre.
This is the lea where, in bygone days, the nation’s armies drilled and paraded. A French historian awed by the expanse which enabled pikemen, archers, harquebusiers, grenadiers, cannoneers and cavalry to train together called it Champ de Mars after the Roman God of War. Later, as advances in weaponry raced away and warfare became an art, the Military relocated its Forces to grandiose garrisons. Thereafter the citizens reclaimed the lea, particularly the areas that quartered supply depots and camp followers.
The location, rapidly developing into an agglomeration of band stands, pleasure gardens, food-stalls and booths that sold everything from buns to saints’ relics, soon gained popularity. For almost a century, it was extolled, in evocation of the lush grounds in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, as Beulah Moor.
Today, imbued with nostalgia, people still wax lyrical about Beulah Moor. They remember the heady ambiance of shady trees, fragrant flowerbeds, raffish musicians, enticing booths and exotic eateries. This was not only the city’s sole corner that belonged to everybody, but also the turf where they could dexterously hone their ingenuity. Here was the subversive melting pot where bachelors, spinsters, matchmakers, fortune-tellers, peasants, shepherds, coachmen, labourers, chisellers, artisans, hawkers, scribes and mendicants could haggle, laugh and squabble with the upper classes. This was the place, too, where the hungry found crusts, the plebs overspent on knick-knacks, the porcine gorged on confection and the parvenus regaled rare delicacies. Remarkably, they did so without forfeiting dignity or losing the illusion of freedom that permeated the minty air.
Today Glorious Acre is again a military showpiece. Numen trumpeted the appellation with the declaration that he was, at last, bestowing upon the country its long-merited apotheosised site – a site as evocative as Moscow’s Red Square. ‘Glory’, he rhapsodised, is epitomised by the grandstand that overlooks the vast parade ground where the procession of his armaments warns the world that, like the shark, he has ‘pearly white teeth’. ‘Acre’, he piously added, conjures ‘God’s acre’, the graveyard where the dead await resurrection on Judgement Day. Latterly, in one of his oxymoronic statements, he declared that without his arsenal, without his lionhearted warriors, without the fertilisation of fallen heroes’ sacred blood, he could not have become the fervent pacifist that he is.
Nestvillians are unmoved by such cant. Their concern is the present. With that sudden vigour of turtle-paced, faceless folk that repeatedly surprises history, they’re marching for a decent now!
Belkis and Childe Asher appear.
I tease them. ‘Still watching over me?’
Belkis caresses my cheek. ‘We’ve come to support the demo.’
They join the marchers.
I’m not here to march. I have my own protest tomorrow. But since they’re here, I might as well follow …
The marchers approach Glorious Acre’s iron gates.
Scythes in half-tracks have set up barriers.
Helicopters hover like kestrels.
Pinkies film the demonstrators.
Inside Glorious Acre, Numen’s elite troops and the Grand Mufti’s Ghazis are already parading in goose-steps. The rumble of tanks and missile carriers shake the earth.
The spectators – some hand-picked, the rest resigned to joining the silent majority in order to live untroubled lives – cheer and applaud. The sound system amplifies their clamour.
On the Grandstand it’s time for speeches.
The Grand Mufti and Numen declare their visions of the future.
Were they not venomous, their ramblings would be farcical. But then history loves farce. Witness how it allows Saviours to duel with their cocks constantly.
The Grand Mufti affirms, through his interpreter, that he’s ready for Armageddon, ready to emerge as Al-Mahdi, the twelfth Imam and Prophet’s successor. Thereafter both he and Numen will syncretise their orthodoxies into the true religion humankind craves. To achieve this they will first extirpate the apostate creed, Judaism, that has poisoned humanity with its Mother of Big Lies – its claim to be the progenitor of both Christianity and Islam. For Numen the duumvirate will establish a devotion that immortalises rulers. The Grand Mufti, endorsing that fact, assures the world that as duumvirs they will at long last establish a final unalterable universal religion that will govern the emotions, social roles and standings of all the peoples. However, both Numen and the Grand Mufti give notice that to attain this objective they’ll have to wait for Chaos to engulf the planet. Fortunately, there are indisputable indications that Chaos has already arrived. Which is good. Because it means that Chaos will soon be destroyed – if not by Saviours, then by the terror proxies the duumvirs unstintingly fund as advance units.
Disregarding the grandiose clichés, what is noteworthy is the duumvirs’ tenor – a regression from the florid courtliness of yore to the pugnacious dictums of our brave new age.
The Grand Mufti has already been denounced by many ulema as Al-Massih ad-Dajjal, the false Messiah, the counterpart of anti-Christ and Armilus. But the crowds still flock to hear him speak.
I observe the Security Forces. Heavily armed and equipped with gas masks, they’re in U-formation.
Platoons of Riot Gendarmerie are guarding Glorious Acre’s gates. Other units in half-tracks are stationed at the edges of the throughway leaving the centre clear for the marchers.
Yet more Scythes down the road have closed ranks to block a retreat.
The Nestvillians, defying the encirclement, march on holding their banners aloft.
I look out for Belkis and Childe Asher.
I can’t spot them.
I have a sense of déjà vu.