In a detention cell at Gizmo, umma Obikhan Khan, supposedly blind as the proverbial bat (having dwelt in many caves, the umma knew well that bats are not at all blind, but simply prefer the efficacy of echolocation), darted his Blue Eye at one of the simpleton guards who had, a few days earlier, confiscated the umma’s Qu’ran out of spite.
“You bein’ blind and all, ahm sure you’d favor a Braille edition…we’re expectin’ one special for you any day.”
Huck, the simpleton’s name was, Huck Finnish, and he’d met with a rather close shave almost instantly after removing the umma’s sacred book, a spill down a flight of cement stairs that had only resulted in wrist injury. The umma had, moments prior to this mishap, fixed his Whirling Eye on the imbecilic Huck, a corn-fed specimen of the American Midwest of unquestionable virility and fitness, yet infinitely suggestible, ripe for the umma’s special brand of theological seduction.
Obikhan Khan told Huck in Arabic, a language utterly alien to the strapping lad, that Allah would bless him for his attentiveness to the spiritual needs of his handicapped charges. At the same time, he caught Huck’s artless azure orbs with his Whirling Eye, until the boy was well under, deep in a mesmeric trance.
“I know that you can see, Huck,” the umma’s gentle voice murmured in the young American’s ears, its tone as pensive and quiet as a prayer. Somehow, Huck now understood Arabic perfectly. Moreoever, the umma was murmuring in English. “How miserably your brothers here in Gizmo are being treated. Stripped of their dignity as men, tortured pointlessly for information they would never give, even if they possessed it: nothing, Huck, is accomplished by torture. Torture strengthens the resolve of the true mujahidin, who intend no harm to your people, nor to your so-called American way of life.”
“Yes,” Huck whispered, “I do see. What we are doing here is criminal and wrong and an offense to God.”
“The beatings. The humiliations. Your brothers are forced to stand for hours at a time, to endure the barbaric immersions your masters treat as sport, to offend each other’s modesty and even to be set upon by vicious dogs.”
“It is wrong, umma Khan. Especially the dogs.”
“And the panties, Huck. The panties pulled over their faces as they are forced to manipulate their private parts.”
“Yes. Yes. The panties.”
Huck now understood how dastardly and wrong it all was: Gizmo, and his previous deployment at Fizzmoral, that outpost of horror at the easternmost tip of the Aleutian Islands, which had become, in recent years, tropical tourist havens. And the one before that, the Black Ops detention center on Diego Charabia, formerly Diego Garcia. It was as if the scales of a ravening crocodile had fallen from his eyes like drops of morning mist, eyes which gazed for the first time into the Pure White Light, a celestial beacon illuminating the path of righteousness. Others, Huck’s reptilian brain informed him, dwell in darkness and must be guided towards the same obliterating whiteness.
“And your government denies to your brothers their basic human rights and liberties under international law, forbids them to meet with attorneys to defend them, and defiles the principles it claims to uphold.” The umma’s head shook with tremulous sadness. Barnum certainly got it right, he reflected. There’s one born every minute. Perhaps two or three, these days. Of course, it helps when everything you’re saying is true, as far as it goes.
“I am guilty before Allah,” Huck declared dreamily. “I have wronged my brothers and been set against them by the inhuman creatures who rule this accursed hell. How can I free myself from the bonds of this terrible guilt?”
The umma paused, stroking his long beard, his Blue Eye darting in vigilant surveillance of the filthy corridor outside his cell, his Whirling Eye maintaining its grip on Huck’s powerless gaze.
“You must bring me others, Huck, others who have not yet understood. Your fellow soldiers, one by one, who act as pawns in the evil that has set brother against brother. You must also find a means to supply your brothers who languish behind bars the weapons they must have to destroy these prison walls. You must provide us with C2, C3, C4, and with chargers, cell phones we can deploy as detonators, with AK-47s, with mortar shells and claymore mines…if you wish to enter Paradise, these things you must bring us. And you must enlist others to embrace our jihad, but only those who have seen the White Light.”
A ship already awaited them, actually a modified cigarette boat, just round the shark-infested tip of Gizmo, prepared for the short haul to Martinique and the island, more of a sand spit really, a few miles east of its pristine beaches, where Dr. Fu Manchu had ensconced himself after his recent scrape with Weymouth Smith and that drug addict he hung around with, who had, the umma knew, married a Eurasian woman who’d formerly acted on behalf of the ChoFatDong.
The Island of Isitme-Oryou, all but inaccessible owing to the vast quantity of gigantic pointed rocks ranged beneath its lush rain forest—where, it was said, prehistoric birds and beasts had survived the Triassic Era and its massive die-off, though the Umma considered this an infidel myth, concocted by a pernicious Jewish film director and a money-grubbing author of drearily lowbrow best-selling books.
Huck, meantime, felt a growing eagerness to bring Tom Sawbone, his fuck buddy from base, into the Umma’s presence, that Tom could share the spiritual nectar the flowed from that radiant light. Huck and Tom had shared so many coarse and earthly things that Gizmo offered a boy on the cusp of manhood, yet all those things were as nothing in comparison to this lysergic ecstasy of Pure Beingness.
“You bein’ blind and all, ahm sure you’d favor a Braille edition…we’re expectin’ one special for you any day.”
Huck, the simpleton’s name was, Huck Finnish, and he’d met with a rather close shave almost instantly after removing the umma’s sacred book, a spill down a flight of cement stairs that had only resulted in wrist injury. The umma had, moments prior to this mishap, fixed his Whirling Eye on the imbecilic Huck, a corn-fed specimen of the American Midwest of unquestionable virility and fitness, yet infinitely suggestible, ripe for the umma’s special brand of theological seduction.
Obikhan Khan told Huck in Arabic, a language utterly alien to the strapping lad, that Allah would bless him for his attentiveness to the spiritual needs of his handicapped charges. At the same time, he caught Huck’s artless azure orbs with his Whirling Eye, until the boy was well under, deep in a mesmeric trance.
“I know that you can see, Huck,” the umma’s gentle voice murmured in the young American’s ears, its tone as pensive and quiet as a prayer. Somehow, Huck now understood Arabic perfectly. Moreoever, the umma was murmuring in English. “How miserably your brothers here in Gizmo are being treated. Stripped of their dignity as men, tortured pointlessly for information they would never give, even if they possessed it: nothing, Huck, is accomplished by torture. Torture strengthens the resolve of the true mujahidin, who intend no harm to your people, nor to your so-called American way of life.”
“Yes,” Huck whispered, “I do see. What we are doing here is criminal and wrong and an offense to God.”
“The beatings. The humiliations. Your brothers are forced to stand for hours at a time, to endure the barbaric immersions your masters treat as sport, to offend each other’s modesty and even to be set upon by vicious dogs.”
“It is wrong, umma Khan. Especially the dogs.”
“And the panties, Huck. The panties pulled over their faces as they are forced to manipulate their private parts.”
“Yes. Yes. The panties.”
Huck now understood how dastardly and wrong it all was: Gizmo, and his previous deployment at Fizzmoral, that outpost of horror at the easternmost tip of the Aleutian Islands, which had become, in recent years, tropical tourist havens. And the one before that, the Black Ops detention center on Diego Charabia, formerly Diego Garcia. It was as if the scales of a ravening crocodile had fallen from his eyes like drops of morning mist, eyes which gazed for the first time into the Pure White Light, a celestial beacon illuminating the path of righteousness. Others, Huck’s reptilian brain informed him, dwell in darkness and must be guided towards the same obliterating whiteness.
“And your government denies to your brothers their basic human rights and liberties under international law, forbids them to meet with attorneys to defend them, and defiles the principles it claims to uphold.” The umma’s head shook with tremulous sadness. Barnum certainly got it right, he reflected. There’s one born every minute. Perhaps two or three, these days. Of course, it helps when everything you’re saying is true, as far as it goes.
“I am guilty before Allah,” Huck declared dreamily. “I have wronged my brothers and been set against them by the inhuman creatures who rule this accursed hell. How can I free myself from the bonds of this terrible guilt?”
The umma paused, stroking his long beard, his Blue Eye darting in vigilant surveillance of the filthy corridor outside his cell, his Whirling Eye maintaining its grip on Huck’s powerless gaze.
“You must bring me others, Huck, others who have not yet understood. Your fellow soldiers, one by one, who act as pawns in the evil that has set brother against brother. You must also find a means to supply your brothers who languish behind bars the weapons they must have to destroy these prison walls. You must provide us with C2, C3, C4, and with chargers, cell phones we can deploy as detonators, with AK-47s, with mortar shells and claymore mines…if you wish to enter Paradise, these things you must bring us. And you must enlist others to embrace our jihad, but only those who have seen the White Light.”
A ship already awaited them, actually a modified cigarette boat, just round the shark-infested tip of Gizmo, prepared for the short haul to Martinique and the island, more of a sand spit really, a few miles east of its pristine beaches, where Dr. Fu Manchu had ensconced himself after his recent scrape with Weymouth Smith and that drug addict he hung around with, who had, the umma knew, married a Eurasian woman who’d formerly acted on behalf of the ChoFatDong.
The Island of Isitme-Oryou, all but inaccessible owing to the vast quantity of gigantic pointed rocks ranged beneath its lush rain forest—where, it was said, prehistoric birds and beasts had survived the Triassic Era and its massive die-off, though the Umma considered this an infidel myth, concocted by a pernicious Jewish film director and a money-grubbing author of drearily lowbrow best-selling books.
Huck, meantime, felt a growing eagerness to bring Tom Sawbone, his fuck buddy from base, into the Umma’s presence, that Tom could share the spiritual nectar the flowed from that radiant light. Huck and Tom had shared so many coarse and earthly things that Gizmo offered a boy on the cusp of manhood, yet all those things were as nothing in comparison to this lysergic ecstasy of Pure Beingness.
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