-1-
MUHAMMAD’S HAJJ

Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black who isn’t an extremist and I’ll show you one who needs psychiatric attention. ---Malcolm X



Turning his back on Jerusalem, Muhammad Arafat laid down his prayer shawl and faced towards Mecca. He was on his journey there, the first Hajj he had ever made. He was a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps; a 30-year man, working on his fourth hitch; he had 24 years in the Corps and three in grade and was so determined to make a Hajj that he had taken thirty days leave to do just that.

His name was Rodney Johnson and he had entered the Marines in 1979, at 19, long before the Koran was introduced into his life and long before he became a Muslim.

Prejudice was rampant in the 1960’s and, growing up in the Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C., where black ghettoes were rampant, had intensified it’s by-product of hopelessness in Rodney ‘Lil Bit’ Johnson’s life. He had been but 8 years old in 1968 when the poorest sections in the country erupted in violence, upon hearing of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, as to many residents in the all too numerous ghettoes around the country, Dr. King was thought to be their last hope, in securing even a vestige of a decent life. Rodney Johnson had been privy, on many occasions, to examples of prejudice in his short eight years upon this earth; he had never known anything but dishonesty and destruction from the numerous white cops who made it their duty to bust heads and break backs in his neighborhood and ask questions later. When he came upon a trio of street toughs from his block, that steamy April night in 1968, and saw that they were beating up a particularly vicious, venal cop he couldn’t help but run over and kick the prostrate policeman, just before a siren spirited the four boys into an adjoining alleyway. And so it was that one of the street toughs, a 16 year old living in the same tenement as Rodney, joked with his buddies that little Rod had tried his best to help, even though he had only gotten in just a lil’ bit of a kick, to the fallen cops’ head, and Rodney’s streetname was born. He carried it throughout his youth, right up until he enlisted in the Marines, on a day that the cops were, not coincidentally, on the lookout for someone fitting his description, who had just taken part in a strong-arm robbery.

You had to be tough to be a Marine and Rodney Johnson was as tough as they came. Standing 6’1" tall he weighed a solid 175 pounds and could bench press twice that amount. He played varsity football in high school and boxed in the local P.A.L., but got in with the wrong crowd and started doing burglaries and robberies; never quite getting busted but being within seconds of being caught, on numerous occasions, including the last strong-arm robbery that propelled him into the nearest hideaway, a Marine recruiter’s office, where he ended up signing up for a 4 year hitch; not unlike many other Marines, in order to stay out of a jail-cell, although, of course, Rodney Johnson’s was quite a bit more transcendental. He ended up liking the discipline and regulation, something he had very rarely experienced at home, his single mother, alone, raising him and two older brothers, both of whom ended up in prison. He had gotten out after that first four-year hitch, in the summer of 1983 but had re-enlisted just a month later, when he realized that he was in danger of returning to the streets and ending up like both his brothers. He had always had a desire to see the world and see it he did, being stationed in such faraway lands as the Philippines, Japan, Germany, Somalia, Cuba and Turkey. It was in Turkey that he first became introduced to the Koran, by another soldier, a private who had been a Muslim his entire life and who introduced Rodney Johnson to numerous Muslims from that area of the world, none of whom carried any prejudice with them, towards black men, even though many were as white as any other Anglo the two American soldiers had ever met. The reason for this was the fact that they were all Muslims and it propelled Rodney Johnson into a serious study of that religion.

Rodney Johnson became Muhammad Arafat in the summer of 2002, the same day that he married Hannah Hanifah, an Afghani Shia Muslim living in Turkey, in a Muslim ceremony in Ankara. He had taken the name Muhammad as many had before and after him and the name Arafat, more for Mt. Arafat, a city close to Mecca than the chairman of the PLO, and had made a conscious decision to make a Hajj as soon as he possibly could, even if it meant trouble for him on this earth, for Muhammad Arafat was now more concerned with his soul than with anything that the world could offer him, be that a military promotion, money or any other worldly possession. When his battalion had been deployed to Kuwait, in May of 2002, being that close to Mecca, he had quickly made the decision to make his Hajj, which was the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that was required of every able Muslim at least once in his lifetime, and being as the Hajj was only once a year, in July, Muhammad Arafat, Gunnery Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, took thirty days leave, notified his wife of his decision, and prepared himself for his journey.






-2-
OIL



Do you know how "Baku" is pronounced in American? It is pronounced "oil." And American capitalism is striving to establish a world monopoly of oil. On account of oil, blood is being shed. On account of oil, a struggle is being waged in which the American bankers and the American capitalists attempt everywhere to conquer the places and enslave the people where oil is found.---John Reed, American Communist, Quoted in John Riddell, ed. To See the Dawn: Baku 1920-The First Congress of the Peoples of the East. (New York: Pathfinder, 1993.)



Abel Steinmetz glanced down at the map before him and grimaced. He was an executive for a major American oil conglomerate and he was worried, a not unusual state for him to find himself in. Chevron, a major competitor to his company, had, years ago, found a huge, untapped amount of oil and gas in Kazakhstan but, due to the political climate, in the aftermath of the Cold War, had been unable to exploit this information, a nightmare to any capitalist business, to say the least.

In late 1996, Steinmetz, along with numerous other oil company executives, had attempted to create a pipeline to carry oil and gas from Baku, Azerbaijan to Ceylan, Turkey. The oil companies dubbed it the new Silk Route, referring to the age-old trade route, between Europe and Asia. And so, the games soon began, with all the major Asian and American players volleying for a say in the choice of the pipeline route.

But, the Clinton administration began focusing more and more on combating terrorism in the region and when, in 1999, a new terrorist group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, burst upon the scene, they began pouring funds into the region to help the combating regimes build up their military strength.

When the Bush administration came to power, it was a forgone conclusion, for Steinmetz, as well as many other gas and oil executives, that their demands for easier access to oil would become reality; after all, Bush and Cheney were both oilmen and Condoleezza Rice had worked for Chevron for a decade, and they all well-knew that it was their money that had helped, substantially, to put this administration in office.

And then, in January, of 2003, it looked as if the oil companies would cash in their chits, as the administration decided to take out Saddam Hussein and take over his country, an oilman’s paradise. They all knew that Vladimir Putin would be against any move against Iraq, because of the oil deal he had with Saddam and the huge amount of money, rumored to be in the billions, that Saddam owed Putin, who could always take it back in oil, but they also knew that too many central figures in the administration, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were hawks, ready to swoop down on Saddam with everything they had. And so, Abel Steinmetz sat before his map, pondering how much of the reconstruction of Iraq, even though it had yet to have been destroyed, he could wrangle for his corporation, which owned engineering as well as construction companies, and how much of the oil he could wrangle for his company. He looked up, as the general counsel for his company walked into the room

Jesse Levine smiled at Steinmetz and chuckled inwardly; Steinmetz always thought someone else had beaten him to the prize, and now was no exception, as Steinmetz nodded at Levine and barked:

"What are we gonna do Jess’ Chris’sakes I know Chevron’s got the ace inna hole."

"Yeah, the ace ah spades, huh Abe."

" C’mon Jess, everybody knows Halliburton’s gonna run the show; Cheney wasn’t Cee-E-Oh there for nothin’. And Bechtel’s gonna get in before us too."

"We’re gonna be bigger’n Halliburton or Bechtel Abe, we’ll buy ‘em both. Put ‘em in with Unocal and Amoco, Chevron, hell we’re getting the green light to buy ‘em all."

Steinmetz apprehensively glanced towards the door and barked:

"Jessie, I’ll give you the partnership you make this happen! Who’d you talk to?"

Before Levine could answer him the door opened and Steinmetz stood up hesitantly, then beamed at Levine and nodded at the entrant, rasping:

"Ah, Mister Secretary, how nice to see you."


-3-
SERGEANT ROCK



I never expect a soldier to think.---Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple. Act iii.

The glory and the Nothing of a Name.---Byron, Churchill’s Grave.



John Rockiligiuo inhaled deeply; they were in Central Iraq, in the small village of Hajil and white pickup trucks were scattering everywhere. White pickups that were almost certainly being driven by the fedayeen, Saddam’s henchmen, as machine gun’s mounted over the roofs or tailgates were spitting forth their rounds and one of the fedayeen soldiers shouldered an RPG-7 and fired a round that landed just short of a tank, sitting just adjacent to where Rockiligiuo’s platoon had been reconnoitering, under the supervision of Colonel Frank McGuire, who immediately pulled a hand grenade from his belt and let it fly, yelling as he did:

"Return fire men, return fire!"

But the Marines were already shouldering their M-16’s and RPGs and were firing at the now retreating pickups. Rockiligiuo, a private first class who had been nicknamed Sergeant Rock, scored a direct hit when he blew out the front tire of one of the pickups and it skidded sideways and crashed into another truck, causing Rockiligiuo to pull a grenade from his belt, pull the pin and throw it, scoring a direct hit on the other pickup and causing them both to explode violently, into a huge blaze of fire and smoke. The Marines all let out a whoop and the colonel himself, the Regimental C.O., walked over to Rockiligiuo and slapped him on the back, bellowing:

"Nice work son." He glanced at the Battalion Sergeant Major and said:

"Sergeant Major get this soldier’s name, there’s a stripe or two to be had here."

Sergeant Major Glen Jones nodded at the colonel, who was accosted by a junior lieutenant and spirited away; one of the all too numerous generals had summoned him to a conference.

Sergeant Major Jones smiled from ear to ear and shook his head, as several of the platoon walked over to where he was standing, just next to Rockiligiuo, who also had an ear-to-ear grin on his face.

Corporal Ron Hastings reached for a cigarette and when he lit one several others mimicked him. He offered Rockiligiuo one and the Rock took it, lighting it and inhaling greedily, as one after the other of the Marines, some sarcastically, and some genuinely,
praised the Rock’s deadly accuracy.

Rockiliguio took it all in and modestly stated it was just luck, even as the Sergeant Major summed up everyone’s sentiments, when he barked:

"Yeah, well, you jus’ keep up wid that luck, Private, and in no time at all we’ll all be callin’ you by your nickname but for real, huh men?"



-4-
ABDULLAH AHMAD ABDULLAH




Famine is in they cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act v, sc. 1, 1. 69.

A hungry man smells meat afar off.---Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia. No. 224.



Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah scowled ruthlessly, as he drove his dump truck towards Karbala; if he had been from anywhere in America they would have nicknamed him Triple A but Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah had never been closer to America than one time when he had seen it on a map; he had, in fact, in his 41 years on the planet never been out of Iraq, and he was hungry, as were his wife and seven children and everyone else in his village. He nodded at his brother-in-law, Mohammad Ijam, and his scowl deepened, his brother-in-law’s cheeks were so hollow his lips had literally been sucked into his mouth and disappeared; you could only see his mouth now when he opened it to speak, which was very rarely nowadays, as even speaking was an effort that physically drained the 43 year old farmer. Their truck was full of onions and garlic that they prayed that Allah would see to it they could sell or trade for bread, milk and meat, in Karbala. They knew that the American soldiers had sealed off several cities and that Karbala was probably one of them but hunger knows no master and Abdullah drove on ruthlessly, knowing that Karbala was their best chance to get money or food.

About a dozen miles behind Abdullah’s dump truck a battered 1979 Chevrolet rolled towards Karbala; filled with three women in the front seat and four children in the backseat. They were from Wahdah, and were going to Karbala, where they had relatives and where, according to government soldiers, it was safe. Wahdah was inside Baghdad and bombs were going off everywhere and when Maryum Hussein’s home had been totally destroyed she had packed up her mother, her aunt and her four children and fled towards Karbala, 60 miles away.

*********

Private First Class George Young nodded at Private first Class Jesse Simons and they both lit cigarettes, exhaling streams of noxious smoke into the humid, desert air. They both stared at the razor wire that was strung across the road and then at the half dozen Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks that were parked near the checkpoint. They cradled their M-16s and savored the last of their cigarettes. Easy duty, manning this checkpoint, as least as far as Young and Simons were concerned, after all, considering the firepower staring them down, who wouldn’t stop.



-5-
MOHAMMAD MUHAMMAD




The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I’m sure—
Or else his dear papa is poor.
R.L. Stevenson, System.

The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.
Milton, Paradise Regained. Bk. iv, 1. 220.



Mohammad Abdullah Muhammad was 12 years old and he was the fastest, strongest runner of all the Iraqi children in his neighborhood, a poverty-stricken slum in aptly named Saddam City. Mohammad loved to play soccer, he always scored ninety percent of the goals, and played with men who couldn’t contain him, as he could outrun any boy or man ever since anyone could remember and he could do it in a short sprint of fifty yards or a longer run, he had beaten them all in distances of up to one mile and everyone knew that if he could just get out of Saddam City, where his father, as well as most of the other residents were so poor that they barely had enough to eat and depended upon raising livestock, that was kept near and sometimes even inside their small apartments, that he would become a world-class soccer player because anyone that could run the way Mohammad could was a sure thing; they were already scouting him for the Iraqi Olympic soccer team. They all saw the innumerable statues of Saddam Hussein everywhere they went but they also knew that he was a ruthless tyrant who had been the cause of many disappearances of innumerable people from the many neighborhoods, in Saddam City. Many had been disfigured or disabled but most never came back, once they were taken by Saddam’s henchmen. Mohammad smiled at the other boys with him, as they spoke in low monotones, copying their elders, as you never knew when there was a government spy, or just a neighborhood rat, around to squeal on you so that they could get a ‘favor,’ or some food. Mohammad and his half-dozen teenage friends were planning a trip to Old City, in the heart of Baghdad’s sprawling commercial center, where the marketplace contained the most precious of all commodities, food.

Mohammad wanted to go that very day, it was Monday March 24, 2003, and they all knew that America’s troops were bombing sporadically, but he was voted down by his friends who wanted to go that Friday, the 28th, because one of them, Hashim Ramadan had a cousin whose uncle was driving his truck into Sha’b, which was smaller than Old City but nonetheless a city with a marketplace, and that meant food, food that they all decried they would get some of, even if they had to beg, borrow or steal it.



-6-
FRIENDLY FIRE



The soldiers of America have killed more Americans, twenty times over, than they have foreign foes.--- Elbert Hubbard, The Philistine. Vol. Xx, p. 38.



Gunnery Sergeant Rodney Johnson, a.k.a. Muhammad Arafat, had a problem, a big problem; it was March 27, 2003 and his unit was on its way towards Baghdad, where he would have to kill fellow Muslims, something he had taken a solemn vow not to do. He had taken his vow some eight months in the past, in July of 2002, on his Hajj and he could still remember it. On July 2, 2002, Muhammad Arafat had begun his pilgrimage to Mecca. He still had memories of that fateful month, when he had stood on Jabal Al-Rahma, the hill on the plain of Arafat and listened to a sermon by a Muslim Imam, a sermon that was burned into his brain, a sermon that spoke about Jihad and how every Muslim must be ready to make his own Jihad, against non-Muslims, whenever and wherever it was needed. The Muslim Imam had stood on the same Mount of Mercy that the prophet Muhammad had stood upon and delivered his farewell sermon. Gy. Sgt. Rodney Johnson, Muhammad Arafat, knew that Muhammad had been a soldier too, a leader in many battles, but battles against the Meccans and the Jews, never against other Muslims and he made a solemn vow to Allah, that day, to never kill any Muslims, either. As the ever-darkening sky approached, he said his fifth prayer of the day, the ‘isha, and then prayed for wisdom from Allah, prayed that he be given the strength to do a Jihad on his own if it was Insh’allah, (God willing) and reached for his M-16, which he checked to make sure was loaded with a full clip. The scuttlebutt was that a firefight in Karbala was likely and that his unit would be in the thick of it; they were going to go door-to-door and flush out any known or suspected terrorists. Karbala was where Imam Husayn, in 680 A.D., the youngest son of Ali and Fatima, and grandson of Muhammad, was killed with 70 of his followers while attempting to seize the Islamic caliphate, the caliphate ruled the Muslim faith, from Yazid ibn Mu’awiyya, the second Umayyad ruler. It was, therefore, a sacred Muslim city and Muhammad Arafat would not go there to kill his brother Muslims and he prayed now to Allah, for an answer to this problem.

*********

The captain explained to the gunny what the mission was to be and that they would be leaving first thing in the morning; he barely heard the soft reply the gunny made, that he wasn’t going, as he turned abruptly on his heel and headed back towards his tent. It was then that Muhammad Arafat, Gy. Sgt. Rodney Johnson, U.S.M.C., leveled his rifle at Captain William McMann’s back, yelled that they were under attack, and squeezed the trigger on his M-16. The first 7.62-millimeter high-velocity, full-metal jacketed bullet slapped into the back of Captain McMann’s head and threw a clod of bloody bones and brain matter onto the side of a P.F.C’s helmet. The P.F.C. turned abruptly and saw the Gunny pointing his M-16 towards where he stood; he saw the captain, lying several feet away, in a pool of blood, and turned just as another Marine, about a hundred yards away, yelled that they were under attack and began firing his M-16 at the PFC, who shot back just before being cut down by a .50-calibre sniper rifle, as they opened up on each other with everything they had. Within ten minutes there were thirty injured Marines and seven who lie dead, including Gunnery Sergeant Rodney Johnson, who, along with the other six, would be awarded the Purple Heart, posthumously.

*********

Not far from this battle, a British Challenger 2 tank, rolling down a trail just outside Basra saw what he believed was the enemy, on his radar, just as the "enemy," an M-1 tank saw what he also took to be the enemy, on his computer screen, and they both fired simultaneously, and blew each other to bits. Four dead Brits and five dead Marines, which, in retrospect, would not have been too bad had several more M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles not rolled up and spotted what they thought were the enemy, firing upon each other, just as a U.S. patriot missile shot down a British Tornado, overhead, and an A-10 Warthog wiped out two British armored vehicles, while an AWAC called in fire on a camp in Nasiriyah that he thought was a Republican Guard hideout but was, in reality, a Marine unit. Thirty Marines were wounded and fifteen were killed. They called it "Friendly fire," but don’t try telling that to any of the dead soldiers’ relatives; you’d be in for quite an argument.



-7-
UNFRIENDLY FIRE



Death in my boots may-be, but fighting, fighting!
Robert W. Service, Song of the Soldier-Born.

Misdeeds often return to their author.---Seneca, Thyestes, 1. 311.



Private First Class George Young exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke and nodded at his compatriot Private First Class Jesse Simmons, as a Marine corporal walked over to them. Young smiled at him and barked:

"Hey, it’s Sergeant Rock, hey Rock, when you gonna get that next stripe?"

Corporal John ‘Sgt. Rock’ Rockiligiuo lit a cigarette and returned Young’s smile. His unit had just pulled into Karbala, as a force was being built up on the outskirts of the town, where they expected to incur heavy enemy forces and were planning to take over the city in a few more days. Young and Simmons had heard the scuttlebutt about Sgt. Rock and his promotion, from PFC to Corporal, two grades for one heroic deed. They had heard the story but both Marines eagerly awaited Sgt. Rock’s version of the tale.

Cpl. John Joseph Rockiligiuo exhaled a stream of smoke from his nostrils and shouldered his M-16, taking aim at an imaginary white pickup truck like the one whose tires he had blown out in Hajil, just two weeks ago, and described it in detail for his two avid listeners. He was telling them about the grenade that he had pulled from his belt to blow up that truck and the one it had collided with after he had blown out its front tires, when he first saw the large dump truck heading their way. He lowered his M-16 when both PFC’s began yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs at the dump truck, as PFC George Young ran out and began waving his arms at the driver.

Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah stepped down on the gas when his brother-in-law, Mohammad Ijam, said that they must continue forward because the soldiers certainly would not let them through the impasse, several strands of razor wire strung across the roadway and they desperately needed to get through to Karbala, for their lives and those of their families, depended upon them getting through and getting some food. They ignored the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles because no one seemed to be operating them and continued past the two sentries, just as they heard them yelling, yelling unintelligible words to the ears of two Iraqi Shia Muslims, neither of who spoke a word of English. It was at this juncture that Cpl. John ‘Sgt. Rock’ Rockiligiuo raised his M-16 to his shoulder and drew a bead on the large dump truck’s front tire; he inhaled slowly, just as he had done in Hajil thirteen days ago, and just as he always did when he was on the rifle range, where he always shot an expert score, and delicately squeezed the trigger several times, as the copper-jacketed bullets blew the front tire apart, just as Rockiligiuo heard a commotion behind him and turned to see a beat-up Chevy Impala roaring past the checkpoint, causing him to immediately swing his M-16 towards it and take deadly aim at the front tires. He squeezed off three quick rounds and the loud pop told him that he had scored a bulls-eye, as the Impala swerved and skidded into the dump truck and the veteran Rockiligiuo knew immediately what he had to do, as he pulled a hand grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and let it fly. A star pitcher in the little league’s throughout his youth and also on his high school varsity baseball team, Rockiligiuo pitched a strike and both vehicles were incinerated, as they blew apart, depositing glass, metal and the body parts of four children and five adult Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims, in all directions.

That very evening Cpl. John Joseph Rockiligiuo would become Sergeant John Joseph Rockiligiuo and his namesake became a reality; everyone still called him Sgt. Rock but with a much more elevated tone of respect, for in the United States Marine Corps, such things were what legends were made of and John Joseph Rockiligiuo, a 20 year old who had barely made it through high school would forever more become a legend, of sorts, in Marine Corps history. He would become a lifer, a 30 year man, and one who would rise through the ranks to Sergeant Major, the highest rank an enlisted man could rise to, unless he chose to become a warrant officer or was awarded a battlefield commission, which Rockiligiuo would be offered, in the future, but would turn down, only adding to his mystique and legend among enlisted personnel in the baddest of the bad, the toughest of the tough and the elitist of the elite, the most proficient of all the killing machines, a trained killer among trained killers, a highly tuned, highly trained human being who could kill with the highest technology known to man, in the daytime or night, a detached, decorated, deadly machine, known more commonly throughout the civilized world as a United States Marine.

*********

The boys ran through the marketplace, at Sha’b, where they had come, in the back of 11 year old Hashim Ramadan’s cousins’ pickup truck, with abandon, taking foodstuffs as they went. Mohammad Muhammad, the fastest 12 year old any of the merchants had ever seen was leading the charge and stuffing fruits and vegetables inside his shirt as he ran, his hands almost as fast as his feet. They ducked into an alleyway and huddled around Mohammad, who had gotten maybe three times as much as the others. They were sharing the booty with one another when the first explosion sounded an ominous warning, of more, yet to come, destruction and decimation.

*********

Captain Robert Toney had the target coordinates that he had just received from Central Command, in his AWACS plane, and was in the process of passing them on, to a B-1B bomber flying over western Iraq, when Major Ben Franks nodded at him and intoned:

"Is this Saddam’s location coordinates?"

Toney shrugged his shoulders and replied:

"Who the hell knows Ben, y’know, ours is not to question why ours is but to pass it on to the Bee-One crew and let them figure it out, what the hell they’re all Saddam sightings nowadays, anyway, huh?"

Franks nodded, as Toney passed the information along to the B-1B crew, who triple-checked them before arming four 2,000 lb. JDAMs, more commonly known as smart bombs and, only minutes later, the B-1B’s computers released two hard-target-penetrating JDAMs, then, three seconds later, dropped two more but with greater explosive power inside their warheads.

********

They all heard the sonic boom but only Mohammad was quick-witted enough to drop the food he was eating and do what he did best, run.

The 8500 degree fireball sliced through buildings, streets, tables and chairs, and flesh and blood, collapsing the lungs, bursting the arteries and blowing apart the bodies of any human being that was caught in its path, as were Mohammad Muhammad’s four compatriots, along with 35 other Iraqi civilians that day, on March 28, 2003, in a marketplace, in Sha’b, Iraq. Mohammad Muhammad’s winged feet carried him away from the incineration but not far enough or fast enough to leave him completely unscathed, as the most precious thing to him was what he lost that afternoon, his legs, which lie some thirty feet away from his bloody, battered and twisted shell of what would, forevermore, pass for his body. It was twisted and torn beyond recognition and when, two hours later, it was carried towards a pickup truck and on to medical assistance, the two Iraqi’s carrying it wondered silently if it would not be better, for this human being, if they just left him lying, where they found him, until he died. But, they couldn’t leave another Muslim’s body lying ignomiously in the street; if it was Allah’s will for him to live then they would not be the Muslims to go against the All-mighty, for Allah might very well have something else for this boy to do, in the future.




-8-
BIRTH OF A GRAND AYOTOLLAH



A great revolution is never the fault of the people but of the government.---Goethe.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when that same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.---Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays.

Revolutions are not made. They come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak, It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid back in history.
Wendell Phillips, Speech at Boston to the Anti-Slavery Society, 1852.

God has given us all the rules of the game.---Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini



They took over the entire country; they ruled everywhere, with soldiers and guns and tanks and they established a military base where their soldiers lived. The soldiers were very much sought after by the peasant women, whose state of poverty never really changed, it only shifted gears. Before the soldiers came, there was Saddam, who ruled with an iron fist; you couldn’t trust anyone and they could take you away and you’d never be heard from again but you could eat and you could work, even if the wages made you poor. With the soldiers, you could also work but the good jobs were already taken, by English-speaking Iraqis, most of who had gone to school in America. An American general ran the country until he handed the presidency over to an Iraqi born businessman who had lived in America two-thirds of his life. They ruled the country on one premise and one premise alone; those with money ruled those without money; the American dollar was worth fifty times the Iraqi dollar and, so, many women and children became unable to support themselves because their parents couldn’t afford to send them to school, in America or Great Britain, the Iraqi schools being frowned upon, even though run by Americans and Brits, and if you had no money your children were quickly shunted out of these schools, as soon as they turned 16. And so, many of the women became prostitutes in the many American-owned bars and red-light districts, which were also owned by the American businessmen, whom all Iraqis knew were either oilmen, soldiers or former soldiers, or politicians or former politicians.

The hospitals in Iraq were run no differently from any other business and if you had no money, or insurance, you got no treatment. The insurance was tied to the jobs and the good jobs were all taken by the college-educated, English-speaking Iraqis, the ones the government approved of. The average worker couldn’t afford the insurance and the businesses they worked for took so much out of their check that if they wanted health insurance they couldn’t afford to live, just like the American system. And so many of the war-wounded were shunted from place to place, home to shelter, in an attempt, by the government, to contain any costs to keep them alive. Unless they had a family with money they would be cast out, upon the streets, sooner or later.

*********

Mohammad Muhammad lay in the filth and the stench of his own feces. He was lying in an alleyway and he wanted to kill himself. Someone had kicked over his begging cart and he couldn’t right himself back up, on it. They passed him by and they didn’t look at him because they were in such a hurry to get where they had to go and to do what they had to do, for themselves, and they always made excuses why they couldn’t stop for a lowly beggar, just like in any big city in America.

Several hours passed and Mohammad Muhammad wondered silently if he were dead. He turned his head just enough so that his right eye could see blurry visions, he had lost his left eye in the explosion in Sha’b, a year and a half ago but what seemed like ten years ago to Mohammad, who had turned 13 and was the only one to realize it. Then, a strange thing happened, he felt himself rising off the ground and felt as if he were flying; ‘maybe this is what it feels like when you die,’ he thought, as he blacked out, as much from malnutrition as anything else.
*********

Mohammad Muhammad awoke, a day later, staring out at the Red Sea. He was being cared for by several clerics and they immediately welcomed him to their home, which would now become his home. They fed him and changed his clothes for him and read to him. After several days of this, he was well enough to have them begin making artificial legs for him, prosthetics, something he would eventually abandon, as his legs were missing, all the way up to his hips. After awhile, he asked one of the clerics what they were reading to him and they told him it was Allah’s book.

A month passed and one day, after questioning one of the Mullah’s about a verse in the Koran, a tall, stately Arab walked over to him. He had a long, dark beard speckled with silver, and he sat next to Mohammad, on the Persian rug that Mohammad used as a bed and a table to eat off of and spoke softly to him. He handed him a book and when Mohammad asked what it was, he softly replied:

"It is the Holy Quran Mohammad; it is Allah’s Words, it is the path to freedom and enlightenment. We will teach you here. There are many Mullahs and Caliphs here to teach you and I will teach you also. A Mullah that Mohammad particularly liked approached them from a short distance and the man turned his head.

"Ah, Khan, they are ready for you to lead them in prayer."

The man nodded and stood up. He appeared to be a giant, to Mohammad, who asked him who he was and what he would be taught. The tall man kneeled down and moved his mouth to within inches of Mohammad Muhammad’s. He lowered his voice and the 13 year-old amputee felt a chill go through him; here was a great man and he was interested in him, he was going to tell him something for only his ears. The man smiled and whispered, almost conspiratorially:

"I am Muhammad’s messenger and I am going to teach you Mohammad because I feel you have suffered enough at the hands of the infidels and everyone here knows you were sent to us from Allah; you will be a great man someday."

"But what is your name? What shall I call you?"

"I am Osama!"



EPILOGUE
MUHAMMAD’S REVENGE



No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
---Luke 15:13

Those who avenge themselves when wronged incur no guilt.--- The Koran



Abel Steinmetz sat behind his large desk and exhaled a stream of noxious smoke. He was the CEO of Unicorp, or Universal Corporation, and he was one of the most powerful men on the planet. The year was 2024 and Unicorp controlled everything, in one form or another, in America, because they owned everything, they or one of their many subsidiaries. It had all begun back in 2003 when Steinmetz had gone into business with the government when his company, or one of their many subsidiaries, had taken over the reconstruction of Iraq and had then gone about taking over every country, or obtaining that country’s petroleum rights, that they could, throughout the world. Besides Iraq, they had taken over Nigeria and most of the African Coast, Iran and turkey, had drained Alaska’s petroleum and almost the entire Persian Gulf, with the exception of some of the rogue Muslim majority states around the Caspian Sea, like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Siberia, a blow to Steinmetz, as huge new reserves were discovered there in 2010 and the Muslims had been capitalizing on them ever since, a nightmare for Steinmetz and his conglomerate cronies, including, of course, the innumerable politicians who had helped Unicorp take over Iraq in 2003. Some of them now called for a war with the IMW, or the International Muslims of the World, which was headed by who Steinmetz considered the most corrupt and despotic leader the world had ever seen but, nevertheless, one who, he had to admit, had brought all the Islamic movements and terroist groups together, under one umbrella, that being the IMW; such groups as the IMU, the Mujahedeen, the IRP, the HT, the PLO, the Taliban, the IAP and several others, all of whom joined with IMW to produce a movement of such proportions that it was unheard of in past world history. Said to be in excess of a billion Muslims, they had enough nuclear warheads to blow up the earth ten times over and although Unicorp had fifty times that capacity, what was the difference how many times over you could destroy the earth? Steinmetz pushed the button on his desk that opened the front door to his office and Jesse Levine, the president of Unicorp walked in.

"C’mon Abe, we got a dozen of the most important people in the world waiting on you to tell them what to do. The most powerful people, besides us of course, inna world. Cheer up fah Cris’sakes, the Pope’s out there. You know we got all the religious leaders on our side, hell that Eye-M’aw-W’yaw may have all the A’rabs an’nah rest ah them Muslims but we got all the Christians and Jews. Cah’mon Abe we got a hundred times their money, we can’t lose, we never do, not since, Gee’zuz, two thousand and what, three? Been a long time comin’ huh? C’mon your ol’ pal George Bee is out there, with the president. C’mon Abe, I know you memorized your speech.

Abel Steinmetz stood up and inhaled deeply; his 6’6" frame was always impressive and he straightened his shoulders, as he walked towards the huge conference room that adjoined his office. He smiled as he walked into the room, even as a sense of foreboding and doom enshrouded his entire being. He shook hands all around and walked to the podium. Levine had his speech laid out on the platform, and, even though he had memorized it thoroughly, he stared down at it and suddenly his mind went blank and his emotions put words into his mouth that hadn’t been written down, or rehearsed.

"That damned Mohammad Muhammad, Grand Ayatollah hell, if it was’sin for him we’d of controlled the world a decade ago. He’s threatened us once too many times, gentlemen and I say this time we don’t back down."

The Pope looked around and then addressed the room:

"You know gentlemen, I have just been in office barely a month and many are trying to remove me because of my alliance with Unicorp and…………..

"Your alliance with us has always been above board Your Excellency and I………

The Pope raised his right hand and Jesse Levine stopped talking.

"I just want to say one thing and that is that the Grand Ayotollah, Mohammad Muhammad wishes to be a martyr and he will probably get his wish, he is very dangerous, he wants to take the world with him; one more thing you should know; a fact many have overlooked about this wish for martyrdom; he is thirty-three years old."

Silence reigned until the president of the United and Universal States rasped:

"He’s thirty-three years old? What in God’s name has that got to do with anything?"

No one spoke and the Pope just smiled. After an interminable silence, the Pope cast a thoroughly disgusted glance around the room and rasped:

"Gentlemen, our Lord, Jesus Christ was thirty-three when they crucified him."

*********

Mohammad Muhammad sat in front of the phalanx of microphones and stared into the monitor, the monitor that would broadcast this speech to 2 billion listeners around the word, half of them Muslims. Next to him sat the IMW’s leaders, there were several Mahdi’s and Emirs, including his teacher, and second in power only to him, Emir Osama Bin Laden, and a Mullah for every Muslim sect, the world over. He sat his speech before him and rose up, in his wheelchair, to his full height of 3’3" then clenched his jaws; the speech was to be a Fatwa, a Fatwa that was backed by every leader on the podium and he, the Grand Ayotollah, would call for the destruction of the world’s infidels, which were all non-Muslims and he would call for it in the name of Allah. The light, that signaled to him that he was on, lit up and he stared brutally into the camera and began his speech, the speech that would bring an end to the world, and all because he had lost his legs and all his family and friends, in a bombing raid on his country, Iraq, some twenty-one years ago, and now, in the name of Allah, it all began, as he spoke in Arabic, which was automatically translated into whatever language the listener had his set programmed for:

"Bismiullah ar-Rahman, al-Rahim……………(In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful………..