Salim

Let me tell you a story from my village. It was told to me by my father, and on and on, right? Actually, I don’t know anything about that. For all we know the bastard made it up. He had passionate sexless affairs with both whiskey and wine.

But the story, I think, can give you an idea of what hate feels like in other parts of the world. And, even without that, It’s still in a nifty story. It should be heard.

***

Salim was the tallest and strongest boy in the entire village. In my village, the Village of the Stalking Night, that was saying something. Boys there were bred towards physical prowess and violence. Sons were a prized thing and great honor was conferred upon them from early age, and none more than Salim. His father was a respected doctor, his mother a midwife. So much of our peoples well-being woven into the destiny of one house, some became nervous, they doubted and cast aspersions on the family‘s good intent. After Salim though, no more. The family was blessed with patience, fortitude and good fortune. Their fellow villagers could only benefit!

Salim made it known he would train as a doctor at Oxford just as his father had. The townspeople knew though, that he was strong and fierce and that he’d someday make himself known on the field of battle as well. They watched his life like a movie. A shoot’em-up mystery, with a twist ending. An exploration of this unique individual, Salim, and his miraculous family. Everything they did was discussed and celebrated. Each passing day brought new adventure. Especially when Salim joined - as every village son here does - with the Red Hand on the day he turned eighteen.

The Red Hand. It is a ghost. A specter. It’s a protective force and an unstoppable karmic entity. A militia born of the village, some say a thousand years ago when the sea was smaller. Lead - in those days - by Salim’s Uncle Misketh. As Salim began his training, and also began to plan for an Oxford pre-med schedule in six months time, the townspeople acted as if Allah himself had come to walk amongst us. They speak of it to this day. Salim. He could do it all. When would he sleep?

***

Salim finished at Oxford in three years and prepared to take up a residency in Bombay. He’d served with the Hand honorably during his entire curriculum at Oxford, and the a heavy schedule hadn’t worn on him in the least. Just the opposite actually, Salim bragged of his need to sleep only if he thought the times would allow it, saying:

“Sleep happens only when I can afford it, my friends, and lately those minutes and hours come at a price far too dear.”

On the day of his graduation, Salim also took his first meeting with your American CIA. He told them he was waiting patiently along with the rest of the village for the day when the Taliban pigs were driven out, when democracy would shine it’s heavenly light on the village and the country and the family and extended family of he: Salim!

The CIA knew who he was and knew what he meant to the village. They knew also that Salim could tell them where and when with regards to the fundamentalists, because the villages they damned with their presence were abuzz with news of their disrespect. The countryside wanted the Taliban warlords out, and Salim would help America to do it.

But, Salim, great man that he was and is, was only human. His father and mother, birthing babies and taking care of general health amongst his people for years, had naturally some of their own axes to grind. Salim’s father went to him with a list.

Why not have your American friends rid us of a few more bad seeds, Salim? Is there such a shortage of lead and gunpowder in the great USA that a few Kashmiri miscreants will be noticed and line-itemed?

Of course not. And as Salim hung his sign outside his own practice in the heart of the village, so he began to assassinate Taliban agitators simply by saying their names into the telephone given to him by the CIA. Salim’s patient census filled and his family’s enemies disappeared. Things were good.

Now Salim took another meeting. The CIA wasn’t looking anymore for brigands in the countryside. Rather, they needed Salim to confirm reports of extremism and the sponsoring of it in the safe cradle of Salim’s own village. Salim struck out to his parents just on leaving a meet with the CIA men. He implored his father to advise him. To show him the way.

Well, birthing the babies and looking after the general health of the village for so long, of course Salim’s parents had a few people who they’d rather not have to see every day. Tell me: who amongst us does not have such people in their lives? Was it so awful to deceive the USA in pursuit of punishment that’s just? Of course not. Salim gave the CIA his parents list.

***

A Tomahawk Missile fired, as they usually are, from a drone piloted remotely is quite something. Naturally, there are few first-person accounts of such things as the destruction they cause is thorough. We do get to see the aftermath however, and maybe this is even more telling than the impact instant, no? After all, an event is just that. An event. Short-lived, fleeting, it’s truth subject to it’s myriad witnesses and no two accounts the same. Effects are forever. We hear of events, we live their effects.

Salim, our great favorite son, storied and honorable as he was, he gave the American’s too little. In the end, they got what they wanted out of hundred’s of Salims‘. Thousands even, all along the countryside. One day, just after his fathers retirement, Salim left us, left my village for good. Gone for London, to hang a shingle on Harley Street. The day after that a predator drone, on it’s 5th similar mission of the afternoon, destroyed Salim’s village and everyone in it. What was left looked to those who would gaze, like the inside of a much used fireplace in an American McMansion. Nothing but ash and dirt.

Morals? You and I are too smart for morals. But let’s consider the facts. A good man from a good family trying his best to do what is right for those he loves…Sometimes that is most dangerous, no? Most dangerous. The other lesson, a more specific one if you ask me, is that anytime you enter into secret talks with American interests and personnel at stake, the violence will be sudden and total. It will subsume everything in it’s path indiscriminately.