By: Chris

We started our six hour trek on a Friday afternoon. There is one small road from Quito out to the beaches. It winds its way through the jungle, in the process, carrying you from 9000 feet to sea level. The drive, like much else in Ecuador, is as dangerous as it is beautiful. For hours I sat on the edge of my seat, as we raced around corners on the two lane mountain road, in pitch black.

Sal had started this trip off with his usual reticence. He had a lunch to attend the following day. He had heard how dangerous the night time drive to the beach was. As we ate lunch in a cheap little café in Quito’s tourist district, Mariscal, he listened quietly as Christian and I talked off-handedly about how fun this particular weekend at the beach was supposed to be, and what a shame it was that we were going to miss it. This was Ecuador’s Independence Day weekend, a celebration of Ecuador’s independence won after defeating Spanish royalist forces in 1822.

On this weekend, over a million Ecuadorians would travel to the coast to celebrate the victories of their ancestors. The result is a raucous 3 day party on the beaches for “la gente”. Christian (an Ecuadorian himself) and I were intent on joining them. So we talked to each other about the experiences we were missing out on. How this was a once in a year opportunity. There would be women everywhere. The booze was cheap. The food was delicious, and fiestas would blast into the night along all the bars, set literally in the sands of the beach. Sal dismissed us, rolling his eyes, and reminding us of his more “adult” responsibilities. Sal actually has a real job here, in Quito. Christian runs a hostel/bar in Mariscal, which is a nice mixture of work and play. I am what I like to describe as “enthusiastically unemployed”, on an indefinite vacation following my escape from military life.

So Christian and I gave up our efforts to convince Sal to do what was best for him. We wasted the hours of the day away, walking the streets of Marizcal, having some drinks, eating some hot dogs covered in potato chips (a local delicacy), and buying pirated 2 dollar DVD’s. Time passed, and we had simply resigned ourselves to a quiet night in Quito, among the small group of people who had actually decided not to make for the coast. And then Sal, who had spoken only the occasional word in the last few hours, stood up and made an announcement.

“Alright guys, pack your bags for 3 days. We need to get going if we are still going to make the beach in time to enjoy it. I’ll drive, you guys get gas. Deal?”
I stood, stunned and stupefied. A small moment passed. “Yeah, deal!”
“Ok”, he continued, “let me call this lady, cancel lunch, make up some excuse and get rolling.”
————–
Two hours later Christian and I were screaming as Sal’s SUV veered around sharp mountain turns.
“GO! GO!”
“No, don’t go! You don’t have the space!”
“CURVE!!!!”
We found ourselves in the middle of a deadly game of chicken in the dark jungle between Quito and Atecames. Sal had started this drive off with apprehension, having heard the tales of wild drivers on this twisting, narrow road. It didn’t take long before he had become infected with the wild lust that seemed to grip all the Ecuadorian drivers.

“Move over you fuck!” Sal screamed out his window, “I will end your miserable god damned life, move over!”
Christian and I exchanged knowing glances. We were both thinking the same thing: what the hell had we gotten ourselves in to?

This game of “chicken” I speak of is quite simple. The road to the beach is only two lanes wide, and winds through the mountains, covered on all sides by thick vegetation. The road typically doesn’t straighten out for more than a hundred meters before the next curve. It is impossible to see anything coming around the next curve. But the cars are all going different speeds, and the Ecuadorians are not a people known for their patience, or their caution. Cars veer into the opposing lanes of traffic to pass each other. The idea is to try and make it around the car in front of you before a car, or bus, or eighteen wheeler comes flying around the curve to meet you. This was frightening enough, but the real danger laid in the drivers coming the opposite way. We had no way of knowing, as we took one of these curves, that a crazed driver wouldn’t be on a collision course with us in our lane.

At first we were frightened at the boldness of the Ecuadorians on these roads, as they passed each other on curves, at high speed, with no way of knowing what would be coming around the other side. Only an hour in to the drive Sal was giving them a run for their money. Christian and I served as a sort of judging panel, advising Sal through our adrenaline fueled screams as to what his decision should be. The final call of course, was his.

We came upon another slow driver. A rickety old station wagon with no backdoor, full of blankets and boxes, held in by a precarious tangle of bungee cords.

Sal leaned to the side, peering anxiously around. I knew he wanted to pass.
“I can’t see where the next curve is, it’s too fucking dark” I cautioned him.

On this drive I served as the voice of reason. Or, as the others would tell the story, “the grandma”. My heart had dropped into my stomach the moment I saw my first Ecuadorian driver veer past another in the opposing lane of traffic, oblivious to the possibility that something might be barreling around the curve at him.

Sal bounced nervously in his chair, gripping the wheel “yeah, yeah, I know” he muttered.

We rounded a curve, and came upon a straightaway. We looked ahead, didn’t see any oncoming traffic.
“Ok, go!” Christian yelled.
I followed “yeah, take it!!”

Sal dropped the SUV into overdrive, the engine roared, and we raced past the station wagon, veering back into our lane right before the next curve. We stared, steely-eyed, at the road ahead. This was one of our safer passes—the best you could ask for on this drive.

We rounded a few more curves and approached a bus. Many Ecuadorians get around the country by taking buses that cost only a few dollars apiece. As these bus drivers race through the mountains, the passengers sleep in these crowded sardine cans, apparently unconcerned with the many brushes with death they will experience.

This particular bus was only mildly aggressive– driving fast, but only passing when it was truly safe.

“We should stay behind this bus” I advised, “He’s keeping good pace, and if someone comes shooting around corner in our lane, he will take the crash”. In high stakes situations, It won’t take long before anyone will find themselves wagering their lives against those of others.

Sal kept looking ahead, peering around the side of the bus. I knew he wouldn’t listen to me. I knew because I had pitched this same idea for the last six buses we had come upon. Yet Sal had roared past each one. I was perfectly content adding an hour to our drive time in order guarantee our safety.

But I’ve known Sal for awhile, and I knew what he was thinking: you assholes prodded me all day long to take this road trip. Now we will do it on my terms.
“Bah!” Christian blurted out, “I don’t want to stay behind this thing for three more hours.”

I had been outvoted, Sal would make the pass shortly.
The engine roared again, and Sal swerved into the oncoming lane—no traffic. Good. We had a good 100 meters clear before the next turn. But the bus driver must have felt slighted by our attempt to pass. When we had almost reached the halfway point on the bus he picked up to match our speed. A curious course of action, considering that any possible collision would surely take him out with us.

“You dick!!” Christian screamed, “He’s not letting us pass!”
“Drop behind!” I yelled.
“Beat this fucker!” Christian broke in.
Sal jammed the pedal into the floor and the SUV lurched forward. We sped alongside the bus, a pair of screaming titans taking up the full road as we raced towards the turn.

I opened my mouth, ready to tell Sal to step on it harder, when a pair of head lights drifted around the corner, and lit our faces.
“Car! Drop back!” I yelled.
“Go!” Christian screamed.
“Stop!”
“Go!”
“STOP!!”
“GO!!!!”

Sal raced ahead of the bus, slipping in front of it just feet before the oncoming car passed us, horn blaring.

We all sat back in our seats, and looked at each other– hearts racing, adrenaline surging, with our hands gripping our door handles like vices. And then we broke into roaring laughter.
“Holy shit we almost died!”
“I can’t believe it, oh my God, that bus almost got us killed.”
“Ok, ok, let’s chill out for a bit, that was a big dice roll.”

We all agreed, as our laughter died into chuckles. We would play it safe now. No more high speed passes. No more jostling for position on the constricted road. Just nice, tranquil travel.

But it was too late for such conservative talk. We had already tasted the sweet nectar of mortal danger. We had three more hours of mountain driving to go, and we were all addicted to the thrill of this high stakes contest.

Our chuckles and comments eventually died into silence, and our relief quickly turned to boredom. After fifteen minutes of staying in our lane, behind another driver, watching the Ecuadorians race past us, we reached a silent consensus. We leaned forward in our seats, peering around the sedan in front of us. We would have to pass him and two other cars all at the same time—they were too close to each other to squeeze in.

“Pass?” I asked.
“Yes!” they responded in instant unison.

And so we passed those three cars, and countless others as we tore our way through the mountains. The night was dark, but the bits and pieces of jungle lit up by our headlights were breath-taking. Huge palm leaves, and vines, and tall grass, all drenched in rich, vibrant shades of green. When we weren’t screaming, racing past cars, we would stare and marvel at the illuminated sections of jungle before us. In these parts of Ecuador one always has a sense of being surrounded by something more permanent, and more beautiful than yourself—the trees seem to stare down at you, whispering in your ear, reminding you: you are just another little animal in this place, and when you are snuffed out like the smallest rabbit, we will persist without you, unconcerned.

As the hours passed we soon became accustomed to the regular high speed pass, and even the occasional insane driver, who would fly past us with no headlights. This happened on multiple occasions, and soon the things that had made us tense with fear were now making us howl with laughter. But just when I thought we may have been completely gripped by the madness, another man put us in our place, reminding us of our amateur status. And our mortality. I’ll never know this man’s name, but he drove an eighteen wheeler, dragging a huge gas tank as his cargo. He came upon us as we rounded another curve, by this time beginning our descent out of the mountains.

“What the fuck is this guy doing?” Sal said, peering into his mirror.
“Oh shit, this guy is nuts!” Christian piped in, with an unusual nervousness in voice.

I turned around just in time to see the gas tanker fly by our car with a booming rumble. He was passing us on a sharp curve, in the oncoming lane. He flew ahead of us and swerved back into his lane. We could hear horns blaring ahead, as little Kia squeezed past the tanker, having barely avoided being squashed.

We gazed ahead.
“I never saw his brake lights come on once,” Sal murmured.
“Let’s just let this crazy guy go,” I said after a brief pause.

But Sal kept pace, about 200 meters behind him. I didn’t argue. We were all driven by a grim curiosity to see just what this man would do. He didn’t disappoint. On the next straightaway the gas tanker swerved into the oncoming lane to pass another set of cars. As we did, a bus came around a turn. We watched their lights move towards each other from behind.
“Oh no” Christian said with a deadening thud.

We all saw it. The tanker wasn’t slowing down. He was speeding up, moving towards a bus full of people.

For a moment nobody in the car spoke, as we watched the disaster unfold in front of our eyes. I had figured that eventually we were going to see a crash on this six hour drive, and this was going to be it.

“He’s going to hit that guy” Sal broke in.

He was right, they were about to collide head on. There was nowhere for either of the behemoths to go, and they were going too fast to stop.

“That tanker is full of gas!” I screamed with realization.
“Brake, brake!” Sal slammed on the brakes, but we all knew that 200 meters was too close if that gas tank exploded. We braced for a crash, and maybe more. I readied myself to duck my head below the dashboard as the distance between the vehicles closed.
The two sets of lights converged.

And then… nothing. The bus disappeared from view, and then rumbled past the back of the of the gas tanker. The bus driver had managed to slip past the tanker by going into the grass, only inches from metal and gas monstrosity.

I released the air I’d been holding in my lungs.

“Hey, let’s let him go this time”, I said.
“Ok, good idea”, Sal replied.

An hour later we reached our destination—a small coastal town known as Atecames. We drove slowly through a maze of run-down buildings, and small store fronts along narrow gravel roads. We were hopelessly lost in a labyrinth of farmacias, liquor stores, and cheap hostels. It must have been Christian who decided to open his window for fresh air. This benign action proved a good fortune. The sounds of distant music and crowds instantly permeated our vehicle. Sal turned the radio off, and began following the noise. As we made one turn after another the sounds of fiesta grew, and our anticipation swelled.

We made a right, and in an instant we emerged onto main road, and found our car sitting in a massive sea of flesh. The road running alongside the beach was packed elbow to elbow with Ecuadorians who came to the weekend celebration, most of them already healthily intoxicated. After six hours of deadly driving through the pitch black jungle, we had arrived at one of Ecuador’s fabled beach fiestas. Our night was just beginning.
Christian cracked open the last bottle of rum in the backseat.

“Let’s go boys!”

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By Jane Stillwater

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2010/08/holding-onto-eroding-houma-bayous.html

In March of 2006, my son Joe participated in the American Indian Movement’s Sacred Run, traveling from San Francisco to Washington DC on foot — and I joined him for the New Orleans leg of the journey.   He ran.  I drove.

Joe ran through the Ninth Ward and he ran through the bayous.  I drove behind him through both, getting a windshield tour of Katrina’s incredible destruction.  Following along behind Joe in my car, I saw the Katrina damage up close.   “You think the outsides of the houses look bad?” someone in the Ninth Ward told me. “You should see the insides.”

For several nights, the runners and the rest of us camped out in the back yard of the chief of the United Houma Nation, an organization formed by a Native American tribe that has lived in Louisiana’s southern bayous for possibly a thousand years.  Houmas were definitely living in these bayous back in 1682, when French explorer Rene-Robert de La Salle passed through.  Plus I got a “United Houma Nation” T-shirt from the chief herself and now I wear it every single time that I fly in an airplane.   Call me superstitious, but it has definitely brought me good luck — I’ve never crashed yet.  Just as long as I keep wearing my United Houma Nation T-shirt, I’ll be safe!

Anyway, after we ran/drove through the Ninth Ward, we then ran/drove through various bayous south of New Orleans and we ended up at the very tip of the bayous, in a small town on Isle de Jean Charles.   This town’s major occupation in 2006 seemed to be trying to think up ways to prevent the Gulf of Mexico from drowning the town.  The main road past the fire station was at sea level already.  I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like here during Katrina.  All the houses were already built on stilts, ten feet off the ground.  What could they do next?  Build their homes 20 feet off the ground and swim to the store when they needed supplies?  Things didn’t look hopeful for Isle de Jean Charles.  Not at all.

“People don’t realize,” said one of the tribal elders I talked with there, “that we are losing more and more of these outer islands every single year.  When I was a child we used to go fishing and crabbing over there, where there used to land.  If I had a nickel for every crab we caught, I’d be rich!   We ate better than any rich man.   Fresh crab for dinner every day.  We were poor but we lived well.  A lot of that land is now under water.   I miss those days.”

As of March 2006, this town at the end of the bayou was just barely holding on.  “During a hurricane, this road is under four or five feet of water.  If you don’t get out before it starts to blow, you just don’t get out.  And being in one of these homes on stilts during a hurricane is like being in a washing machine during the spin cycle.  Levees are being built to protect the nicer homes further inland, but nothing is being done to protect these outer areas — where we were born and raised.”

“Are the people living out here mainly Houmas?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Then we passed by a straw man hanging from a tree.  Someone had put it up in the aftermath of Katrina.   The sign around its neck read, “Help me!”

I asked the tribal elder about how he saw the future unfolding for Isle de Jean Charles.  “We have several seers in our tribe,” he replied.

“And what do they say?”

“They just tell us to pray.”

The Houmas of Isle de Jean Charles were just barely holding on to their homes four years ago.  I wonder how hard it is for them to hold onto their homes today, after the huge BP oil spill disaster.   I bet that it’s like holding onto a greased pig.

And the eroding lives of the Houmas in the bayous of Louisiana could also be an analogy for the eroding lives of all Americans today — as inch by inch, town by town, the corporatists and militarists who own my country take over more and more of our land, our wealth and our rights.  Soon we too will be lamenting the loss of our native lands and our traditional lifestyles.

But the Houmas are doing things and organizing and campaigning to try to save what is left of their beloved bayous.  And what are most Americans doing?  They are happily gulping down anti-depressants, watching Fox News and blaming all our troubles on welfare recipients and immigrants — NOT on the corporatists and militarists who are the ones who are actually eroding our lands — and greasing our pigs.

PS:  Speaking of oil, Betty Soskin just sent me a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1syI0UA3Y) on how to solve California’s budget crisis — by getting oil companies who drill here actually start to pay their fair share of taxes, like they do in Texas and Alaska.

Let’s make this video go viral!

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This is Part 3 of the Bisaria Quartet, of which the first part is The Most Frightening Thing of All and the second Fun And Games.

MALAKA

One day before her fourteenth birthday, Malaka’s mother called her aside.

Malaka had a kind of vacation, because the school had closed down a week ago when the one remaining teacher had finally fled. She had been out on the red earth playground of the school, playing football with a few of her friends, when her mother had come and taken her home. She went under protest, bitterly arguing, her shorts and oversized T shirt flapping around her bony limbs as she gesticulated. But her mother had not even turned her head until they were both back home. She had even made Malaka change from her mud-stained clothes into a clean dress and wash her hands and feet properly. Then she had suddenly broken down.

“Listen,” she said urgently, that gracious lady, kneeling on the floor before her daughter, tears in her eyes. “Listen,” she repeated. “Tomorrow, we’re sending you to live with Aunt Koral in Keke.”

“Why?” asked Malaka, astonished. “Tomorrow is my birthday. Why do I have to go to Aunt Koral? I don’t even like Keke.”

“Don’t argue, baby, please.” Her mother only called her “baby” when in the grip of powerful emotion. “It’s not safe for you here.”

“Why? Is it the war?” The war had been coming closer for weeks, and the people were frightened and worried. Some of them spoke in hushed whispers about the atrocities the dreaded Karibu rebels were inflicting on the civilians they captured. Others had scoffed and said nothing like that ever happened. Everyone waited, unhappy and uncertain, for the fighting to reach them.

Her mother nodded, now. “Yes, the war. You don’t have to worry about it. You’ll be all right with Aunt Koral.”

“But…what about you and father?”

“Well, we’ll be coming, just as soon as he can arrange leave from his job.” Malaka’s father was an overseer at the tin mine near the town. It was an excellent job. Malaka’s mother had been told many times over by various people how lucky she was to be the wife of a man with a job like that. It was not a job that could be lightly abandoned, even with the war. Besides, the victors – whoever they might be – would want the mine and would need people who knew how to run it. Malaka’s father had explained this to her mother in great detail, over and over, during the last months.

“It’s just that your father can’t get leave right away,” Malaka’s mother told her. “But we’ll be coming soon enough, don’t worry. Or if things settle down here, we’ll just fetch you back.”

“I don’t want to leave you!” And for all her fourteen years and the maturity that came with being a teenager, Malaka burst into tears.

“I know, baby,” her mother said unhappily. “I know.”

*********

The bus to Keke was overcrowded. It was always overcrowded, even at the best of times, but now it was so full that there were people riding on the roof and hanging on to the window bars. It was an old bus, for all that it was brightly coloured in green and blue with a yellow hood, and its ancient engine wheezed and groaned and made a grating pained noise when the driver changed gear. Inside, Malaka sat on one of the hard wooden benches between a fat old woman carrying a box in her lap and a thin man with a grizzled beard who coughed continuously into a grubby blue handkerchief. The driver was sharing his own small seat with a passenger and had to lean over between the man’s legs to reach the gear lever.

Malaka’s mother had put her on the bus. Her father was on a double shift at the mine, so she had not seen him since the previous day. Her mother had given her a small bundle, containing her good new dress and the football shorts and T shirt she played in, and a little food. She had also given Malaka some money, enough to pay the driver for her trip to Keke. Malaka had thrust the tattered orange and brown Bisarian shillings into her socks to keep them safe.

The crowd at the bus was so great there wasn’t a chance to say goodbye. Malaka’s mother had thrust her through the door and was instantly pushed away by more people frantic to climb on. Malaka had caught a glimpse of her mother over her shoulder, looking lost in the crowd for all her height and majestic carriage, and then she was inside the bus and lucky to find a little space to sit.

“Can you move over a bit, girl,” the fat old woman said. “I need some space to breathe.”

Malaka tried to oblige and pushed against the coughing man with the grizzled beard. He glared at her and pushed back at her with his bony shoulder. His eyes were red-rimmed and there was purulent matter caked at the corners. “Get away from me,” he hissed and began coughing again, his body shaking. After that, Malaka sat very still.

Across from Malaka was a family she knew vaguely, the parents, wife and children of a colleague of her father’s at the mine. The old couple looked as though they were trying to sleep, while their daughter-in-law glared at Malaka across the aisle for some reason with concentrated hatred. Her lips moved, muttering something. Malaka tried not to look at her. Only once, as the bus drove away from her little town, did she wipe the tears away.

The road to Keke was bad, potholed in numerous places, with deep ruts where the tyres of hundreds of passing vehicles had worn the exposed earth away. On either side were sparse forests interrupted by scattered farms, the fields mostly lying fallow in this, the dry season. The heat was suffocating, and inside the bus, with the passengers crammed together, there was so little air that Malaka began to feel dizzy. She leaned her head as far back as she could in an effort to catch what little wind was coming in through the window behind her, and closed her eyes, swaying back and forth as the vehicle rattled and bounced.

Suddenly the bus stopped, so suddenly that Malaka fell forward into the aisle. For a moment she thought there had been an accident, as there had been once when she had been riding a truck and it had tipped over. Everyone seemed to be scrambling up from their seats at the same time, so that Malaka was almost trampled on the floor before she could somehow get to her feet. Someone outside was shouting, the voice all but drowned in the noise of the bus engine. Then there was a sudden loud banging noise and the bus engine stopped.

“Everybody out!” the person outside shouted, in heavily-accented Kudu, Malaka’s language, and then again in Sambar. “Everyone out. At once!”

Muttering and craning their necks, the passengers disembarked. As she followed the others, Malaka saw the driver still sitting behind the wheel, his hands held up by his ears. Then the people just in front of Malaka stopped. Some of them tried to push back into the bus.

“Out!” shouted the man outside again, his voice high and angry, and fired again into the air. “Out, quickly.” The passengers fell silent at once. Slowly, one by one, they left the bus. Malaka was one of the last.

She felt hands grab her and push her to one side. “Here’s another.” She was in a line of young people and children, both boys and girls. Older people had been pushed into a second and larger line. The driver was now getting down from the bus, in front of which the road had been blocked by a barrier made of old boxes, oil drums, the branches of trees and piles of rubber tyres. Around the bus and the barrier were a group of boys and young men, in shorts and dirty T shirts, most of them carrying guns. A few carried machetes with gleaming blades. One of these grabbed the driver by the scruff of the neck and threw him to the ground, saying something in a language Malaka didn’t recognise.

A thin, very tall man came round the back of the bus. He was dressed in a kind of military uniform, comprising dark green trousers with a khaki shirt and a cap with a blue and red cockade on it. He had a pistol in his hand and brandished it in the air and shouted. His voice was thin and high, almost like a woman’s.

“You lot,” he was shouting, “were running away, were you? Enemies of the revolution.” Malaka could understand enough Sambar to recognise how heavy his accent was. “You,” the man shouted, kicking the driver, “you were helping them. Traitor!” He shouted something else and suddenly shot the driver, who shivered and lay flat on the ground. A dark red circle began to form round his head.

Malaka stared, fascinated with fear, at the driver’s body. One of the boys laughed uproariously and scooped up some of the blood on his fingers and licked them clean. Another pointed his gun at the line of older people and fired. A woman screamed, lying on the ground and kicking with her legs. It was Malaka’s father’s colleague’s wife, who had been glaring at her on the bus. The boys laughed and a couple of them clapped. There was almost a festive air. Then the man in the military uniform shouted and they fell silent, except for the woman, who was still moaning.

“Here.” The tall man pointed at one of the younger boys in Malaka’s line. “That’s your mother there, isn’t she?” He pointed at the moaning woman. “You kill her.” He gave his gun to the boy and pushed him gently towards the injured woman. “Go on, point the gun at her and pull the trigger. Do it!” The boy, staggering with the heft of the revolver held at arm’s length, fired, and almost fell with the recoil. The older people moaned in horror. The woman stopped screaming and kicking. The armed boys cheered happily.

“That’s the way,” the tall man said, and took back the gun, slapping the boy on the back. “You’ll make a fine warrior.” He turned to Malaka’s line. “I am General Kadimba,” he said, in his heavily accented Sambar. “You all understand Sambar, don’t you?” He pointed at the boys with the guns. “These are all National Front warriors. You all will learn to be like them.” Then he said something in the unknown language to the armed boys and pointed. A couple of them came over and began pulling the girls out of the line. They were pushed along the road to where an old truck waited, forced onto it, and driven away.

***********

Malaka awoke. Her entire body felt as if it were covered in bruises. Every movement was an agony. She gently touched herself at the centre of the pain, between her legs, and her fingers came away wet. When she held them up to the strip of moonlight coming through a chink in the wall, she found them to be black and sticky with blood.

“You’re awake,” another of the girls said. Like Malaka, she only wore the tattered remnants of her dress and was sitting with her chin on her knees. In the darkness, it was difficult to make out her features. “How’s the pain?”

Malaka ignored her, as she did the six or seven other girls in the small room. She got up and walked over to the little bathroom and washed herself. Afterwards she returned, found a spot in the corner, and fitted herself into it. When the waves of pain came, she bit her lip and was silent.

In the days that came, Malaka was moved around a lot. The General’s little army of boys were always on the go, and swollen with its new recruits, it needed food and shelter and drugs. The boys were all on drugs, and soon most of the girls were getting some too. It helped with the pain.

By now Malaka was beginning to learn the rudiments of the Karibu tongue used by the General’s men. They all had to learn it because speaking in Sambar was an offence that could get one beaten, and speaking Kudu was worse. Speaking Kudu could get one killed, because if there was any people the Karibu hated above all others, it was the Kudu.

Little by little, Malaka formed a friendship with one of the other girls, who was also a Kudu, like her. This girl was not from the group taken prisoner on the bus. She had been working as a farm labourer when the Karibu had come. Her name was Sifaka and she was slightly older than Malaka, a typical country lass, as large-boned and wide-hipped as Malaka was slim and tall. They made an odd couple, having absolutely nothing in common except their status as Karibu property.

Then one day the General met them. They were on a farm then, and the girls had been sent to wash clothes at a hand-pump that was still in working condition. The day was hot and sunny and the girls stripped down to as little as possible as they worked, and the General had stopped and watched.

“Come here,” he said in his high voice, pointing to Malaka. “Come here, girl.” And he had taken her with him without a further word.

At first it was slightly better being the General’s personal property. Malaka had a little better food than the other girls, and usually a place to sleep, and only had to do one man’s cleaning and cooking. Also, most of the time the General scarcely noticed she was even there, and treated her as part of the furniture. But it was only most of the time. As for the rest, it didn’t bear thinking about.

But time passed, and Malaka began to become more experienced at being able to hide who she was, and she became more used to controlling her emotions. Time passed, and she could watch limbs severed without a qualm. Without pity she learned to watch babies skewered on stakes beside their mothers’ heads, and when the victorious boy soldiers would lick the blood flowing from their victims, she even managed to fight down her nausea. In time she scarcely felt anything at all.

But time passed, and the moons grew and shrank, and Malaka grew to dread even the shadow the General’s elongated frame threw on the ground. The scuff of his shoes on the hard earth sent a thrill of terror through her body, and each night she would lie in fear, awaiting his coming, and doze off only when she could hear the strident noise of his snoring. Once he began snoring she knew she was safe for the night.

But time passed, and the fortunes of war turned against the Karibu, and the General’s mood turned worse, and the beatings and the rapes Malaka endured turned more vicious still. Every day they retreated now, back across the country towards the Karibu Nation, and every day the rapes and beating got worse, until Malaka learned that she had underestimated her own capacity to tolerate pain.

One day, Malaka met Sifaka again. The General was meeting some of his officers, and Malaka was loading his belongings into a captured civilian pick-up truck, when she saw the older girl passing by. A quick look around showed that they were unobserved, so she trotted to Sifaka, who watched her coming expressionlessly.

“How are you?” Malaka asked, speaking Kudu. Sifaka shrugged. “Why should you care? You’re fine now, aren’t you?”

“It’s not what you think, Sifaka.” But even as she said it, she knew that it was useless. Sifaka’s eyes were dull and expressionless, her mouth pinched and turned down at the corners. “Leave me alone,” the girl said and turned away. “You have a good time with the General. You aren’t one of us anymore.”

And then Malaka discovered she was pregnant.

She had missed periods before, several times, in the last months, and no wonder, too, given what she was going through. But this time there was no doubt. She waited until she was absolutely sure, and then she decided to tell the General.

That time they were camped in a little village, whose inhabitants had fled so long ago that the huts were beginning to crumble. The General had kept the village chief’s house for himself, of course. It was the rainy season now, and the downpour was so strong that it trickled through the roof and dripped here and there from the ceiling, but even so it was the least uncomfortable house in the village. The General’s boys had found a few oil lamps and a couple of them were burning in the old chief’s living room, the light flickering on the damp walls. The General was moodily eating the dinner Malaka had cooked for him.

She told him then, simply, that she was carrying his baby.

He looked up at her, his yellow eyes expressionless, his sharp teeth still ripping at a piece of roast mutton. He said nothing for a long time, and then went back to his food. Malaka finally decided he wouldn’t say anything, and turned away.

The blow was so sudden that it caught her by surprise, and so strong that it sent her sprawling. She rolled over just in time to receive the General’s first kick, which was meant to hit her spine, in the side of the hip. Her leg seemed to go numb with the force of it. The second kick hit her somewhere in the torso, and then the General reached down and dragged her up by her woolly hair. Throwing her down on her back on his bed, he knelt on her, his hand rocking her head back and forth with slaps. Malaka began to lose sensation in her face. Her vision was dimming and she could no longer feel the pain of the slaps. Only her head rang with each blow, like a bell.

Frantically trying to defend herself, she hit back at him with her hands. With his free hand, he easily swatted her blows away. Dimly, she heard a high gasping sound and realised the General was laughing.

Then the laughter turned to coughs and the General stopped hitting her. Slowly, like a toppling tree, he fell on her and rolled to the side. Malaka shook her head and tried to push herself away from him, and fell off the bed. The sharp agony of her knee hitting the floor brought her back to her senses. Slowly, wiping her eyes, she sat up.

The General lay on the bed, trembling. The haft of a knife protruded from his side, and dark blood had stained his uniform black in the lamplight. The General’s hand was uncertainly trying to pull at the knife.

There was a noise behind Malaka. She looked around, quickly. The door to the house was wide open, and for just a moment she saw a face looking in, a face streaming with rain, eyes glaring white in the black skin. Then the face was gone, and scurrying footsteps faded away in the hiss of the rain.

Malaka had recognised the face, though. It was the farm worker girl, Sifaka.

There was clearly no point in going after her. Nor could she stay here with the General, who was still fumbling at the knife. He would kill her if he recovered, and if he didn’t, his men would; and she had seen enough deaths at their hands to know what she could expect. Hardly taking a moment to think, pausing only long enough to snatch up her shoes. In the toe of one of them, she still had the Bisarian shillings her mother had given her on the day she had been put on the bus. It had been her birthday, she remembered suddenly, as she slipped in the mud outside the house, the rain beating down on her. Everything that had happened to her since then seemed a strange birthday present indeed.

The darkness and the rain made it impossible for her to see where she was going, but at the same time they were her shield, her protection. Although she was soaked to the skin within moments of leaving the house, she welcomed the rain, and let it wash the pain and blood from her. Slipping ans sliding in the mud, she trotted through the night, making her way along the path until she was too exhausted to go much further. By then the rain had faded to a drizzle, and she went off the path and into the forest. Orienting herself by the touch of her fingertips on the trunks of trees, she walked until her legs were buckling under her, and then she lay down under a tree and fell almost instantly asleep.

Dull and throbbing pain woke her, seeping up from her hips and torso. Her head ached too, from the blows. Touching her front teeth with her tongue sent a shaft of agony through her, and she realised that some teeth were broken. Her eyes were swollen shut, too, and it was difficulty that she prised them apart far enough to see.

She was lying by a riverside. The river was sluggish, narrow, and winding, and the banks and water muddy and turbid. On the far side low humped hillocks were covered by forest. The sun had come up and was baking the steam off the mud and the leaves.

Slowly, using a tree trunk for support, Malaka stood. When she tried to walk, she tottered and nearly fell. After some time she went down to the river, stripped, and washed herself. After that she felt better and – slowly, staying in the shelter of the forest – began to walk down the river.

She walked through the forest for five days before she reached the road. For most of those days she kept as close to the river as she could. The river gave her water to drink and to wash her bruises. It kept her from getting lost and wandering in circles. And a few times she waded into it and managed to catch a few small fish, which she ate raw and still half-alive, since she had no means to cook or clean them. It was nauseating but it was the only food, apart from a few fleshy brown mushrooms she found, that she had.

Each day she would start walking just after dawn, and walk until she could no longer. Then, she would rest under the trees until she felt strong enough to go on again. She would walk until the dusk began to close in and then she would find a place to sleep for the night, a hollow tree or an overhanging rock.

She had no real idea where she was going. All she wanted to do was to get as far away from the General’s people as possible. If at all she thought of it consciously, she hoped to find people some time, someone who might tell her how to get back to her parents if that was possible. If not, she was looking for a place she might be reasonably safe. That was all.

On the third day, she noticed smoke rising in the distance, and soon afterwards she saw debris floating by on the river, half-burned wood and pieces of charred paper, and later what she thought might be corpses. It was difficult to be sure because it was raining by then and the water was muddy, and the objects were out in the middle of the stream. Whether they were bodies or just logs of wood, the river bore them away, and after that Malaka was very careful and stayed far in the shelter of the trees.

The day before she reached the road, Malaka heard voices, and instantly lay on the ground, pressing herself flat to the earth. The river was quite narrow at that point, and on the other bank she saw a flash of red. A moment later a boy in a red T shirt and khaki shorts strolled out of the forest and stood, a rocket launcher over his shoulder, watching the stream. After a while some more boys came out of the forest, talking, and sat on the bank in the sunshine and passed cigarettes back and forth. Malaka could smell the marijuana smoke. She stayed very low, listening to the boys talking, unable to make out most of what they said, but hearing frequent references to the General. Which General they meant, she didn’t know, of course. The civil war was full of generals on both sides. But each time she heard the word her throat went dry with fear.

A long time after the boys had gone, Malaka got up and went on. Now that she knew there was at least one army somewhere near the river, she moved away from it and went up through the forest, away from the boys. At times she swayed, dizzy with hunger, and twice she fell. Each time it took a while before she could get up again.

She began to see things. The trees, it seemed to her, reached for her with their branches and gibbered at her with fanged mouths that dripped blood. Great birds with iron beaks flapped by overhead, waiting for her to drop, and she could hear a great roaring noise, which she decided was a fire come to burn the world.

That night, while she slept, her body shaking with fever, she dreamed that she was back home and that her mother had come running to her with open arms, and behind her, her father, too, stood smiling, and they told her it was all a bad dream she had had and everything would be all right now. It was a cruel dream because the waking from it was such agony.

When she found the road, at first she decided it was another part of the delirium. It lay before her, full of people hurrying along, bundles on their heads and leading children or livestock. Once in a while an ancient car or truck, grossly overloaded, drove slowly through the throng.

Once Malaka had finally decided that the road was real, she wiped her feet with grass, put on her shoes (which she had been carrying round her neck, tied with the laces) and, hobbling because of the shillings still tucked in the toe of one, went down to the road.

She approached an old woman who was pulling along a barrow loaded with sacks. The woman glared at her suspiciously out of eyes that were milky with cataract, and kept going. “Grandmother,” said Malaka, speaking Sambar because she knew many Sambar resented the Kudu and blamed them for being the cause of the war, “can you tell me, where does this road lead? Where are you all going?”

“Keke,” said a man walking behind the old woman. “Most of us here are going to Keke. Where are you going?”

He was a thin man with a scarred face. Malaka fell into step beside him. “I wanted to go to,” she named the mining town where she had grown up, “Harada. How do I get there?”

“Harada?” The thin man peered at her. “But the town was destroyed in the fighting months ago.”

“Are you sure?” Malaka felt a knot forming inside her. “You’re sure it was destroyed?”

“Positive. Just about everyone was killed, and the few who survived ran away. Where have you been that you don’t know that?”

“Nothing…it’s not important.”

“Are you ill? You don’t look right.” The thin man was still staring at her, and Malaka knew that if anyone suspected her to have been part of one of the rebel armies she would be in serious trouble. So she fell back, sitting down on the grass at the roadside, and retied her shoes. Only after a long time did she feel able to go on again.

That evening there was shooting from somewhere near the road, and explosions. Many of the people left the road and fled into the forest. Malaka, feeling too weak to go back into the jungle, stayed on the road, and was rewarded by finding a bag of dried meat which someone had abandoned. The strips of meat were salty and tough as leather, but it was the first real food she had eaten in days.

Later on, after the shooting ended, she passed through a little roadside village which was still burning. Corpses lay everywhere, some of them headless or naked. There was not a live person to be seen, and Malaka did not linger.

Just after darkness she came across a truck which had broken down by the roadside, its hood open. The driver was trying to make repairs by torchlight, but he was having a hard time focussing the torch with one hand and working with the other. He looked up when he saw Malaka coming, and seemed to decide she was harmless. “Here,” he said, holding out the torch. “Hold this a moment, will you.”

For the next few minutes he bent over the engine compartment, occasionally telling Malaka where to focus the torch. Finally he grunted and slammed the hood closed. “There,” he said, “now that should be all right.” Stepping into the cab he turned on the engine, which ground to life. “All right,” he said. “Get in.”

“What?” Malaka was taken by surprise, but the man was obviously waiting impatiently for her, so she got in on the passenger side. The interior of the truck’s cabin was full of stale cigarette smoke, and the driver was already lighting up again. “We’ll be lucky to get through to Keke,” the driver said, puffing away, “what with the fighting coming back this way.” He glanced at Malaka. “You sleep if you can,” he told her. “You look ready to drop.” And, snuggling into the corner of the truck cabin, Malaka slept.

She was woken by a terrific noise, a blast so loud that it seemed to her that her eardrums had been ruptured. A huge hand plucked her up, threw her into the air and smacked her down, so hard that it drove the breath from her body. White hot things came raining down too, and where they touched her, they burned. Rolling frantically until she stopped burning, she fainted.

When she opened her eyes it was dawn. She was lying on the roadside. A short distance away was the wreckage of the truck. It was charred and surrounded by a huge blackened circle on the road. The driver’s body lay in a tangle of broken metal, burned black as coal, his hands still grasping the steering wheel.

“Don’t go along the road,” a boy called to her when she sat up. He stood in a nearby field, watching the smouldering wreck, a goat on a rope beside him. “It’s mined. Soldiers came yesterday.”

“How far is Keke?” asked Malaka, rubbing the dust off her arms and legs.

The boy pointed. “That way…it’s a couple of hours’ walk. My father used to work there.” He was very young, six at the most, and his eyes returned with fascination to the wrecked truck and the dead man. Malaka left him and went on, every step an agony of pain.

It was early afternoon before she reached the outskirts of the city. On the way, she had met almost nobody. In the distance, now, she could see the tall buildings of the city centre, and nearer, a tangle of plastic and tin on a huge stretch of open ground. She would have to pass it to get to the city.

A green military jeep drove up and stopped a short distance down the road. There were five or six soldiers in it, and they watched her curiously. One, tall and fat, got down and sauntered over to her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Keke.” She indicated the city behind him.

The fat soldier grinned. “From the provinces, are you? Refugee? Then that’s your place.” He pointed at the tangle of plastic sheeting and tin. “Off you go.”

Malaka stared. What she had taken to be a garbage dump turned out to be a refugee camp, the sheets of plastic and tin makeshift tents and shanties. “There?”

“Where else?” The fat soldier pointed impatiently. Slowly, Malaka changed direction. Then the fat soldier called her back.

“One minute. Forgetting something, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“What do you give us, for our trouble? We keep you nice and safe in that camp from the Karibu hordes, so what do we get?” He studied her face and figure, and shrugged. “No, forget that…you’re too dirty to fuck. Diseased bitch.” He looked down at her shoes, which she had only been wearing since the previous day and which were still clean and undamaged. “Those shoes. Give me those shoes.”

“No, I…” The soldier held up a huge hand, ready to slap. “Give me the shoes,” he repeated. “Or I might just change my mind about the other thing.” Slowly, reluctantly, Malaka squatted and unlaced the footwear. For a moment she wondered if there was any way she could grab the shillings inside, but the fat soldier was watching too intently. He grabbed the sneakers and shoved her with his hand in the direction of the camp, making her stagger. “Where are you from, by the way?”

“Harada.”

“It was destroyed, wasn’t it?” said the fat soldier indifferently. “Mind you, I think there are a few of the rats from there in the camp. You might get along together in the same filth.” Laughing, he got in the jeep, and drove slowly away.

Malaka hobbled into the camp. It was very large, and very filthy, the ground covered with refuse, and flies buzzed everywhere. A few people stared at her apathetically.

There was a tap in the distance, at which an old woman was filling a bucket. There was only a trickle of water, but Malaka suddenly realised how thirsty and exhausted she was. She walked over to the tap and waited. The old woman glanced at her, removed the bucket, and motioned her to the tap. Malaka nodded gratefully and splashed the water over her head and arms, and scooped up a little to drink. Then she stepped back from the tap and replaced the bucket under it.

“I thank you, Old Mother,” she said formally, as she put the bucket down. “I’ve come from Harada. Can you tell me if there is anyone here from those parts?”

“Harada?” The old woman craned her wizened neck towards her. “You’re from Harada?”

“Yes,” Malaka turned round. “I’ve been away from there for months, though. Do you know anyone from Harada here?”

The old woman looked at her for a long moment. “You’d better come with me,” she said at last.

**********

“There were many from Harada,” the old woman said.

Malaka and she sat together on low wooden stools in her shanty, which was little more than a tin-walled shed with plastic sheeting stuffed into the cracks to keep out the weather. In the corner was a rolled-up mat which evidently served the woman for a bed at night. A few cooking utensils stood by the opposite wall.

“Yes,” the old woman continued, “there were quite a lot of them, mostly from the mining families. They came here just before the war reached them, and they were all put into the camp. It was a smaller camp then, and cleaner.”

“So what happened to them?” Malaka asked. “Are any of them still here?”

“No,” the old woman said. “They went away…they were sent back.”

“Sent back?”

“Yes, the army came after they recaptured the mines and told the people from Harada they were needed, and it was safe there. They were all loaded into trucks and sent back. Some of them didn’t want to go, but they weren’t given a choice.”

“But then they must be there still!” Malaka jumped up with excitement. “And I was told the town had been destroyed.”

“No…they aren’t there, unless there are really ghosts. The town has been destroyed.”

“I don’t understand…you just told me the army recaptured the town.”

“The war came back,” the old woman said. “One of the rebel armies came, and the army – the real army, you know, those men outside in green uniforms who had told the people it was safe – well, they just ran away. And then the rebels destroyed the town and killed everyone.”

“But then – where is safety? I have a baby inside me. Where can I give birth to it in peace and safety, Old Mother? Where?”

“Nowhere,” said the old woman, and the word was a primal cry of despair. “Nowhere.”

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My mother never left my side even when all others had forsaken me. She was always there, no matter what, and though I broke her countless times, her love was the one constant in my life. As a person, she modeled courage, determination, and a lust for life for life I have rarely encountered. This is not to say my mother was a saint — she was far from it! She was (and still is) impulsive, stubborn, and willful. My mother led an essentially hilarious life with her children in tow. This story is just one of many. Sorry, Moms, this one had to be told.

We were all crying because the bad men were going to take the TV away.

There was little else in that living room, I don’t think there was even a couch. We would sit on the plastic covered kitchen chairs to watch TV. And that’s what we were doing when these two strange men came into the room and started taking the TV away. I couldn’t have been more than five and my two sisters Darlene and Yvette were 3 and 2 respectively.

We were crying.

These two big bad men were taking the TV away.

There were two things I remember most about that Lower East Side five-story walk-up apartment. One was that the bathtub was in the kitchen which made for funny situations during dinner time. The other was that it had this long, narrow hallway. So long, in fact, that I used it to ride a tricycle up and down its length. My mother was obsessively clean and the worn linoleum would gleam with floor wax and we would take a running start in our socks and slide across that long hallway.

But most of my memories of that apartment weren’t so good because it was the first time I would remember my father not being around. And when my father wasn’t around, things were hard for my mother and we had less to eat, less furniture.

But we had this nice, brand new TV and these strange men were getting ready to take it away, so I cried, and my sisters followed suit. And my mother was standing there, not knowing what to do.

Then she started arguing with these men. At first it was more of a plea. She was actually begging these men not to take the TV away. You see, the TV was bought on the ghetto “lay-away” plan which was actually a scam to rip off those who had nothing to rip off in the first place. You would put an item on “lay-away” and that would allow you to take it home. You paid for the item in weekly installments. The thing was that the weekly installments often added up to more than twice the sticker price. In fact, most of what you got on “lay-away” was used — items that were taken away from other families who had failed to pay the weekly installment.

Aside from the long, narrow hallway, it was the only form of entertainment we had.

Soon, my mother was engaged in an all-out argument with the men, who seemed to care less and weren’t even paying attention to my mother. You have to understand my mother is a petite woman who barely measures five feet tall — not an imposing physical presence. So the men were ignoring my mother which made her more pissed off, which made us cry more.

“You can’t do this!” My mother yelled.

And everything stopped. We stopped crying because we knew that tone of voice. We had heard that tone many, many times before and it usually meant someone was going to get their ass kicked. So we stopped crying, perhaps hoping it wasn’t one of us. The men stopped because it was a defiant, authoritative voice. I guess they were used to taking orders and my mother had just barked one out that would’ve made a marine drill sergeant proud.

The pause lasted a split second and the men continued preparing to take the TV and we got back to crying, knowing that it wasn’t one of us that was going to get our asses beat down.

I remember my mother tried pleading one more time to no avail and then I got really scared because when I glanced over to her, she had The Look. I can’t ever sufficiently describe The Look. It was the look of death and it actually made my mother look taller, more powerful, but these guys just weren’t getting it, but we knew. We knew some shit was about to jump off. I felt so bad, I almost warned the men, but, having learned even at that early age that discretion is the better part of valor, I chose to stay quiet.

My mother, seemingly defeated and frustrated, left the room…

And when she came back, she had the largest knife she owned in her hands. It was the same knife used for special occasions for cutting a pernil (roast suckling) or something like that, and she had this wild-eyed look in her eyes. I swear her hair was standing up!

“YOU’RE NOT TAKING THAT TV!!!” She roared.

“You will take that TV over my dead body! My children are not going to suffer.” and with that, she yelled her death roar and made her charge, willing to die.

Now, I was really scared because I feared for my mother’s safety. My mother was small and petite and she was a woman. Surely she wasn’t a match for these two big idiots who didn’t even know better to leave. The men, who had until then been ignoring my mother, freaked out when they saw my mother charging them with this huge knife in her hand. They tried to calm her down, but it was too late, I could’ve told them that. She went after them and the funniest thing happened:

The men started to run!

Or rather, they tried to run, but my mother had them pinned down, slashing at them with her knife and she meant to cut them. Through some miracle, they managed to elude my mother’s slashes and make it out the living room into that long hallway, whereupon they slipped and slid through the length of that recently waxed and gleaming long expanse. Somehow they managed to make it out of the apartment, though my mother almost managed to stab the unfortunate one who slipped and fell.

But that wasn’t enough for her. My mother chased those men down five flights of stairs and down the street where they had their truck parked. They almost didn’t make it. By then my mother had ripped open her blouse and was yelling, “Rape! Rape!” at the top of her lungs which caused all the unemployed Puerto Ricans who happened to be hanging out on the street corner that fine summer day to join in on the chase of these two poor men. I know this because I was running behind my mother the whole time. I’m her oldest, after all.

They jumped in the truck making their final escape in a squeal of tires and a cloud of dust, never to be seen again, a mob of oppressed and frustrated Puerto Ricans on their tail.

There we were in the middle of the street, my mother with a knife in her hand, clutching her blouse closed. She looked at me and said, “C’mon, let’s go home.” Somehow, I remember, my mother managed to look regal, her head held high, and no one dared say a word to her…

And that’s what we did; we went home up five flights to that sad almost empty apartment. She put the TV back, plugged it in and told us that we could watch as much TV as we wanted and that no one would ever take our TV away. She left and got some overpriced, stale meat and other things on credit from the corner bodega. It is said that Cuba, the proprietor notorious for refusing credit to his own mother once, took one look at my mother and decided that was not best time to mention her credit was stretched too far. Later she cooked us dinner, with a Blackout Special as a treat.

And we were so happy.

That was the kind of mother she was: ferocious, fiercely protective of her children. Later in life, it was her power of example that maintained me and taught me never to give up when the odds seemed insurmountable. It was also her fierce love that nurtured and protected me, serving as beacon to a path for becoming a better man. I believe that if I were to carry my mother on my back for the rest of her life, I still could never repay her…

I love you, moms.

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By: The David

The “controversy ” about the building of a religious and cultural center two blocks away from the site of the horrific 9/11 bombing in lower Manhattan should be generating no questions at all. If this Center was to be used by a Christian population it would be considered blessed and the questioner would be derided rather than those who have proposed this building.

But, of course, we all know by now that it isn’t Christian. It is Muslim. Because it is Muslim it has become acceptable for this Center to have evolved into an object of controversy, scorn and downright hatred by some who should know better. The question that occurs to me when I read or hear the arguments as to whether this Center should be allowed repeated over and over: Why is it that the loudest voices in this situation come from those who protest that they themselves are the true and ardent Defenders and Guardians of the Constitution? These are the people who constantly and shrilly point accusing fingers at others in the name of patriotism. They are the self-appointed guardians of all that is American, all that is patriotic, all that is true. Yet when it is politically expedient, they are the first to show a willingness to do away with the fundamental rights of the people. (The former President Bush did it when he chose to go to war against the Iraqis and suspended several fundamental rights of the American people in the infamous “Patriot Act.”)

These so-called great Americans seem to be the first to desecrate the ideas of Freedom of Religion and Freedom from Religion. I am talking to you Newt Gingrich. I am taking to you Sarah Palin, I am talking to you Jeff Green, I am talking to you Rand Paul, and I am talking to you Rudy Giuliani. I am talking to all of the shrill, loud mouth haters: The Center being proposed is Muslim. It will have a religious purpose. As such, it is protected by the laws of this country. The City of New York has issued a permit for its construction on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory outlet. The site is already being used as a place of worship by the congregation that owns it. They simply want to have a new and larger building.

The Government is forbidden to make laws that will govern or restrict the practice of any religion… including Islam. Yet the loudest protests come from the conservative right wing. These heroes of the Tea Party movement who want to “take back their country” are the first to want to sell out the original concepts and values of that Country. One of the Freedoms we Americans are so known for and that we constantly preach about is this “Freedom of Religion.” What makes these “patriots” think it should be different for Muslims? Why is Islam not being given the same consideration as any other religion? How does our National Conscience excuse what is happening? How does our National Conscience excuse the strident voices who time after time light a fire under any situation and watch with delight as the fire becomes a conflagration of heat and flame?

We, members of the public and the voters of this land are also responsible. We listen to these loud mouthed idiots and we give what they say credence, when all the time they are hollering words designed to inspire anger and to rouse the rabble of this country. The very worst part of it is that they absolutely know that what they are spouting is not true, that it is a fabrication that will strike a nerve in those they want to manipulate.

Even those of us who sincerely feel for the victims and survivors of the 9/11 disaster know that it is not this mosque proposal that brings hurt to them, but rather this huge controversy that is the gift of the manipulators. We have to ask if the protests and stridency we are seeing on the news and reading about in the newspapers are really the result of mass-caring about the 9/11 horror, or a manifestation of the Islamophobia fueled by the Right Wing and in particular the Fox News disinformation outlet.

Freedom of religion or freedom from religion, it is the same and comes from the same root. If we can disallow the construction of a place of worship already owned by a congregation that is led by a Clergyman (the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf) who has proven time and again to be a friend of the U.S., where would such interference end?

Where will such interference end? What other lame-brained protests will we see next? What causes will the Right Wing embrace next as they troll for votes by pushing every emotional button they can find to cause their followers such distress that the distress over-rules the brain and their vote is secured on an emotional rather than on an intellectual level?

It is when I see such behavior as this that I have to wonder how we can ever expect to be considered a great country when too many of those who would lead have anything but the spark of greatness.

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I walked between the two columns of pews towards the altar, gingerly stepping over the bodies of those parishioners that had been thrown into the aisles from the force of the bullets ripping through their bowed heads during mass twenty minutes before. It had only been seconds since I had received the vision that paged me to this church and less than a second for the burly cherubs to whisk me half way around the globe. Eighty-two, eighty-three, I counted silently to myself as I held my beige duster tight against my body to avoid tarnishing the alcohol, puke and back alley road kill that had stained it from the previous night with blood; looking like a derelict didn’t draw too much attention, looking like a used tampon floating in a toilet bowl was a different matter. As I drew closer to the front left pew where the sandy closely cropped haired man sat I had counted ninety-six bodies; twenty three men, nineteen children and fifty four women – a good men to women ratio if I had been looking to get laid…the night before, that is. According to the vision the choir had just begun their second hymn, trying desperately to be heard over the un-tuned pipe organ when the man had burst in from the back and began firing from his silenced automatic rifles into the churchgoers, moving briskly to the front without taking his eyes from the linen draped altar. The man had issued no warning and had showed no mercy; if the first spray of bullets did not mortally wound someone, he concentrated his fire upon that person until there wasn’t enough of that person to make a decent hamburger with. I wondered what set him off this time.

A quick survey of the man revealed nothing; there weren’t the hunched shoulders of rage, there weren’t the sagged shoulders of pain – he looked peaceful sitting relaxed on the pew with two Austrian automatic AUG rifles laying flat beside him closest to the aisle where I stood. He didn’t look like he had planned to go commando, dressed in a white tee shirt and matching shorts, shoes and socks over his slim but athletic frame; he looked more up for a rousing game of tennis.

He watched me as I did a small hop over the preacher’s corpse, pushed the body of a woman over a bit and sat down opposite of the AUGs. I stretched out my legs, crossing them at the ankles, being dismayed that I had unknowingly had picked up a stray intestine on the tip of my black Alligator cowboy boots – and to think some people were embarrassed about a couple of sheets of toilet paper stuck to their heels. I rubbed it off onto the panty-hosed leg of the dead woman beside me as I flicked the front brim of my grey fedora, pushing it up slightly from my forehead. I then proceeded to do…nothing but sit there and look as if I was expecting the Sunday sermon to begin shortly, ignoring the man beside me. It seemed like minutes before the man broke the ice.

“Jared Club, I presume,” he said as he inspected the communion serving tray he had sitting in his lap. I told him that was who I was. “So I rate God’s human bounty hunter – He must be pissed.”

“Firstly, it’s the gods – no apostrophe –bounty hunter,” I corrected the man, “And no, Melvin wasn’t the one who dispatched me; he’s busy playing chess in some recess.” It didn’t seem right to further disappoint the man by telling him that I wouldn’t have been summoned if it hadn’t been a new trainee on dispatch and the supervisor had seen this as a learning opportunity when a real crisis happened.

There was no reaction to evoking the name of his creator on such a personal level; I didn’t expect one since the man was quite aware of the true nature of the cosmos and its relation to Melvin. Ever wonder why the Old Testament as written to make “God” seem like such a hard ass? Think about it this way: You hang around for eons on the cosmic playground with guys with names like “Odin”, “Zeus” and “Ra”, and there you are – Melvin – it’s gotta give a guy an inferiority complex. Damn right you’re going to be a touch anal when you get your own set of believers. Hell, Melvin went as far as to change his name to “YHWH” to pace himself from the remembered heckles of his playmates and give him that oh so desired “gansta” image that he had not had opportunity to express before.

“I pictured you much taller and not so…amply filled around the waistline,” the man told me.

“I take it no one’s ever told you it’s not the length but the girth that matters,” I shot back.

Silence fell once more.

“Wafer?” The man asked as he held the tray that had been sitting on his lap up.

I took a wafer from the alabaster linen covered serving tray that the man held out. I timidly took a nibble out of it – dry yet devoid of any flavour.

“Wine?”

I took the gold chalice from his other hand, taking a long drink – fucking fruit juice! My scowl drew a wry smile from beside me.

“They couldn’t even remain true to the symbolism of the sacraments,” the man said. “Yet another example of why the world has gone to Hell in a hand basket – which I should be holding.” I didn’t respond, just forced myself to take another drink from the chalice.

His lips straightened. “You can’t kill me.”

He wasn’t pleading for his life; he was making a statement of fact. I took another nibble of the wafer to sabotage the lingering flavour of watered down cherry powder.

“I know,” I answered. It wasn’t a moral objection that prevented me from killing him; I had killed before and I saw no particular reason why I would not do so in the future. In this specific case, however, I could put the man through a meat grinder, burn the bones and flesh and scatter the ashes to the four winds only three weeks later he’d be back, looking a little worse for wear but only until he had fully regenerated. The newly re-assembled man wouldn’t remember at first, but slowly the pieces of his soul would fuse with his synaptic nerves over a century or two – placing the man right back at square one of when he was slain in the first place.

The man was Adam; the first man, well, the first European man; others had been created before him but in terms of global creationism standards (aka which religion had the highest body count of those who opposed their views), he was THE MAN. YHWH had created him from the ground of Eden, and though Adam had been ousted from YHWH’s little corner in the sandbox, YHWH could not rescind the properties of the base materials used in Adam’s construction. Just like hope, whatever was created in Eden also springs eternal. In celestial terms, Adam wasn’t much of an issue; he was immortal but other than his perchance to breed daemons, he was restricted to the same rules as other mortals – he had to eat, drink, shit, piss and sleep. He could get colds, STD’s, get depressed, angry, happy, the whole gamut. His strength, agility, mental capacities were that of the average person, dependent on what he did to maintain it. His edge, if you could call it that, was that he had the knowledge of the never-begin and millennium after millennium of experience he could call upon – once he had become fully whole again. Adam had a bit of a temper which had led to his ‘death’ on more than a couple of occasions.

Adam was the quintessential spoilt brat; all his life he had been handed everything on a platter – until that fateful day that he gave into temptation and daddy kicked him out on his ass. Nothing is crueler than children who come from good homes – know why? Children who have been given everything they have ever wanted have an artificial image of entitlement when they grow up. In Adam’s case, thanks to downing the fruit of knowledge, he was fully aware of not only the cosmos but the relationship YHWH had with a certain angel who had dared to stand up the celestial being. Being kicked out of Eden’s lap of luxury was bad enough, but to be placed on Earth where he was just the first of what would become many?

Over the millennia Adam stewed over his ‘crime’ in comparison to Lucifer’s ‘crime’ and had come to the conclusion that “God” had made the wrong choice; it was Adam who should be the Ruler of Hell. Lucifer’s goal to re-enter the Kingdom of Heaven; Adam had no desire to go to Heaven where there was a decidedly lack of free will. Lucifer could not understand the true depth of evil that lies within a human mind; Adam was the living embodiment of what some would consider the bottom of human failure. Adam had made several direct attempts to usurp Lucifer from the throne, all of which had failed, but like a real trooper, he never gave up on his goal as a lost cause. I assumed that this was another attempt to get Melvin’s attention though I could not figure out how this slaughter would attain it.

I handed back the chalice.

“By now there’s probably a special tactics unit setting up a parameter around the church,” I mentioned offhandedly as I finished off the wafer, waving away the offer of another.

Adam munched on another wafer, ignoring my question but nodded towards the stained glass portrait of a crucified Christ that adorned the back wall of the altar platform.

“What’s the fascination you mortals have with him, anyways? He asked without taking his eyes from the multicolored pieces of glass. “It’s not like he did anything that spectacular, really. Religion is full of men who are far more noteworthy….”

“…Such as yourself…”

“That is a given,” Adam snapped tersely, his eyes turning dark and his cheeks went flush. He was silent for a moment but then quickly recovered his composure and continued.

“Moses…Enoch…Muhammad…their stories remained essentially untouched through the centuries. His –“Adam paused again. “His started in mysticism and then was altered to where the mysticism became miraculous; bastardized, for lack of a far better politically correct view of things.” Adam looked at me. “He was like that in life, you know, sort of altering things in order to make them digestible for the masses. Christianity is nothing more than Judaism with Hinduism and Buddhism thrown into a mortar and crushed to the point where nothing identifiable exists.”

“Sorta like half the folks in here,” I observed as I looked at the red carpet in front of us attempting to discern whether it was the piece of the blue eyeball or the brown eyeball that belonged to the woman who’s partially erased face I had slumped over into the lap of the person who had been either a man or a very butch woman in trousers.

“So what’s your plan here, anyways?” I asked.

“The way I look at it, I just killed all these people, right? They’re going to arrest me and put me in jail for a very very long time. Yes, a very long time.” Adam’s eyes glistened as he related his idea, though the glint faded when I told him that I didn’t get.

“A very long time,” he said exasperated, “get it? I don’t age. A loooonnnnngg time…in a prison cell…not growing old….eventually someone’s going to call me some sort of wronged messenger of God – I mean I took out a church full of people who were munching on “Triscuits” and fruit juice for sacrament, for fucks sake. There will be someone who will put the non-aging me and the bastardized sacrament thingie as sort of an avenging angel thing, right? That should get His attention.”

I thought about what Adam had said.

“Or,” offering the man my opinion, “The government will put you in a hole so deep that you’ll never see the light of day where they will continually run experiments on you, killing you, letting you resurrect, then killing you again in hopes of finding the genetic code that will give the civil service unions eternal life.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Adam admitted.

He sighed. Something else occurred to me.

“Besides, have you seen how people remember horrendous random acts of violence? ‘Remember Columbine’ or ‘there’s the danger of another 911’ – the horror of the event is where the focus lays, not particularly the people who committed the event, perhaps as an interesting factoid by some geeky commentator will mention the perpetrators by name, but really, it is the event, not the people. Why? It’s sort of an act of impersonalism – it could have happened anywhere, anytime to anyone. Tomorrow the papers and the news services will scream your name but soon enough it will be summed up as maybe something like the ‘St. Catherine’s Massacre’, not Adam what-ever-you-are-using-as-your-last-name went on a rampage,” I further explained.

Adam didn’t look angry, he looked dejected. His shoulders had lost their squareness, drooping to mere windblown dunes. He hung his head low, overshadowing the front of his neck – I guess he had lost the urge to stick it out. His chin rested between his hands as his elbows stabbed into his legs hard enough to create a faint red circumference around them. Melvin help me, I felt sorry for the guy.

“Well, fuck, now what?” he asked.

Now what indeed. Outside I could hear the shouts of commands, a megaphone being used to attempt to get the attention of the person inside the church, assuring them that nothing would happen if they came out with their hands in the air. It wouldn’t belong until tear gas was thrown through that pretty picture of Christ, I reckoned.

“I think you did this all ass-backwards,” I said.

Adam’s eyes, moved to look at me though he made no attempt to turn his head.

“How so?”

“Well, if I were to be in a situation like this, it would have been my flock,” I told him. He asked me to go on.

“Think about it, when you think of psychopaths, who do you think of – serial killers. There’s a graph of evil that’s used to assign just how psychopathic these killers are. Which serial killers often are assigned the highest grades? Ones with followers, that’s who. Jim Jones, David Koresh…”

“You think Koresh was psychopathic?” Adam interjected, “I thought he was just greatly misunderstood who just happened to be unlucky enough to have a power hungry ninny calling the shots.”

“he was powerful enough to keep those people faithful to him,” I explained, “When after a few days the average person would have looked out at the firepower sitting on their doorstep and said, ‘fuck this, I’m outta here’. Koresh managed to convince those people to believe in him enough to be murdered. Psychopath or sociopath, Koresh, was brilliant at it.” Adam lifted his head from his hands, listening intently.

“What I would have done,” I said continuing, gaining a sort of excitement which probably was mentally unhealthy. “I would have gathered a group of people and over a decade or two convinced them of my connection with ‘God’.”

“So start my own congregation,” Adam muttered. “Then what?”

“Then one day I would lead them into the center of town, rant and rave about the value of sinners being taught a lesson and then executed every single last one,” I finished with a smile.

“What’s the point?” Adam insisted, “So you trick a bunch of people to believe in you then betray them – it’s been done before.”

“And it’s the person first who is remembered.”

Adam fell back into his hands once more, this time though there was alertness to his eyes.

Adam suddenly stood up.

“Thank you Club, you’ve been extremely helpful,” he said as he stuck out his hand, “And might I add that you don’t smell half as bad as I had been led to believe.” I thanked him as I shook his hand, wishing him luck on his new endeavor. Adam picked up his two AUGs and skipped over the bodies of the congregation as he made his way to the front of the church.

Adam put his hands on the church doors. He turned his head and gave me a wink.

“You’re a good fuck, Club. I’ll keep you in mind when I get what I deserve,” he promised.

“Yeah, do that,” I replied.

Adam threw the doors wide open, quickly swinging his arms back, grabbing the two AUGs by their stocks and brought them to bear on the barricade of police vehicles encircling the front of the church.

“The power of Christ compels me! The power of Christ compels me!” He screamed then began spraying the vehicular barrier with his ammunition.

The response was almost instantaneous; small chunks of Adam’s flesh and bone flew into the aisle and the back three pews. His body fell back, his fingers still firmly pressing down upon the twin AUG’s triggers ripping holes into the plaster roof.

I chanted the incantation that would teleport me from the church back to the dumpster that I had been sleeping beside an hour before with a smile on my face; I had completed the job that had been asked. My instructions were simple – stop Adam from continuing on his murder spree now; the instructions hadn’t said stop Adam from killing. It would take a few years for his body to return to pristine shape, perhaps fifty years to a century for his memory to return and for his plan to begin. What did I care? I’d be long dead by then, it wouldn’t be my problem. It’s a shitty thing to do to the future of humanity, if I thought about it beforehand, planting that seed into Adam that I had no intention of ever being to taste its bitter fruit. Then again, when I see how Adam turned out after he tasted the fruit, I can’t be to broken up about it….

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There are many stories to tell in this naked city and I am determined to tell them all.  Here’s one of those stories — about my recent resounding defeat in small claims court.

I was prepared to be the plaintiff in a small claims court trial — at least that was the plan.  But according to a judge who recently spoke before the Berkeley-Albany Bar Association, there was a rather good chance that I might show up for the trial but there might not be a courtroom left to hold it in.

Over a delicious luncheon menu of pan-seared salmon, sauteed asparagus, fruit tarts and Peet’s coffee at La Rose Bistro on Shattuck Avenue, a judge from the Alameda County court system spent an hour and a half laying out a series of hard facts and cold realities with regard to courtroom availability in California in general and in Alameda County in particular.  “Currently,” said the judge, “we are even considering holding trials in broom closets.”  I think she was joking, er, at least I’m hoping that she was.

“The status of Alameda County’s courtrooms is abysmal,” stated the judge.  “The search for courtrooms has become desperate here.  They are currently using the grand jury room, which has posts running down the middle of it.  They’ve also been looking at hallways, a library and the probate examiner’s office since the Broussard building has been mostly shut down.  They are even moving people from Oakland courthouses down to Fremont and Hayward.  There have been 23 moves in all.” Fremont is a long freaking distance away from Oakland.  It’s closer to San Jose than it is Berkeley.

Courtrooms aren’t the only thing now being 86ed in the CA court system.  People are disappearing too.  “As for money, 72 people have been laid off.  Statewide, court personnel funding has just taken a 100 million dollar hit.  There was a 2.6 million dollar budget hit for Alameda County alone.  Courts are now being closed on the third Wednesday of every month.  That’s twelve days a year that we can never make up.”

Then there’s the mandatory furlough days.  “In order to avoid more lay-offs, we’ve had to cut down people’s hours.  And next year’s state and county budgets will be worse that this year’s.  Judges are considering voluntary salary cuts.”

And California’s court security needs are being effected as well.  “We are trying to get enough sheriff’s deputies to cover the courts.  By consolidating courts, we have managed to free up two deputies however.  But the Sheriff’s office has also been financially hit.  And then there was the cost of the Oscar Grant trial.  And that has taken up a lot of sheriff’s deputies as well.”

So far, the number of judges has not been effected by the budget cuts, but who knows how long that will last.  “And we need more self-help centers, not less.  As the economy goes down, there will be a much greater need for self-help centers,” and that need will not be met either.  “California’s unemployment is currently the highest in the nation.”

By this time in the presentation, I had finished my salmon and was starting to hanker for dessert — while the judge continued her sad litany of judicial wants and needs that were not going to get met.  “We need more courtrooms.  We’re not going to get them.  And we’re not going to get any more judges either.  And small claims court commissioners are being reduced for 16 to ten.  Plus filing fees are going to be increased because we can’t increase taxes.”

As I finished up my berry tart and was vaguely considering the etiquette-related pros and cons of licking my plate, the judge continued.  “This county’s judicial system is definitely economy-driven.  We want a courthouse out in the Pleasanton-Dublin area but realistically we don’t have the money.  We need more judges and more support staff.  We are looking at every single dime being spent.  Alameda County saw this coming and prepared for it but we are still running tight.”  Then the waiter served coffee.  Yummers!

“We may be forced to move toward having regional courts instead of county courts,” the judge concluded.  “We’ve already consolidated the municipal courts with the superior courts.  And court administration has already been centralized — even its janitorial services.”

So.  What will be the answer to this immense problem?  I wanted to suggest to the speaker that we might be able to use Judge Judy’s courtroom when her court wasn’t in session, but that probably wouldn’t work out so well for her.

It appears that a goodly amount of taxpayer money that used to fund Alameda County’s court and prison systems is being used to fund cool new court and prison systems in places like Baghdad, Kabul and Tel Aviv instead of here in Berkeley.  Does this mean that the Middle East has all the money they want for their courtrooms — whereas California courtrooms have become neglected and derelict?  Yeah.

You cannot fund a trillion dollars worth of war in the Middle East and expect that money to come out of nowhere.  And as a result of short-sighted congressional decisions to spend our taxes on the luxury of war in the Middle East instead of here in America for the last ten years, we no longer can afford to buy basic necessities here at home — such as courtrooms.

It appears that the criminals of Baghdad, Kabul and Tel Aviv have a pretty good ride — while the criminals of Oakland and Berkeley, due to our sad lack of courtrooms and judiciary personnel, are either having to wait for their trials in overcrowded jails that taxpayers must pay for or else are running around free in the streets.

I’d much rather spend our hard-earned money here at home and have criminals running free in the streets of Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine — instead of having criminals running free in the streets of Oakland and Berkeley.

It just seems such a shame to spend a trillion dollars to tinker around with the Rule of Law in the Middle East — at the risk of losing the Rule of Law here at home.

But enough about lamenting the loss of our courtrooms into the money pit of the Middle East.  Let’s think about other places where all our court-funding money has been drained off to in the last ten years — into the pockets of bankers, Wall Street gamblers, global out-sourcers who have systematically destroyed America’s manufacturing base, and, of course, those ever-present and greedy weapons manufacturers who trick us into paying them to kill strangers by the millions.  Isn’t it time to plug up those money sink-holes as well?

Back to the story.  I loaned someone some money.  She promised to pay me back but then later claimed that she had never made such a promise. So,  I took her to small claims court.

“If you can’t even win a case in small claims court, then you must really be a loser,” a small (but very mean) voice inside my brain keeps repeating.  Hey, that’s me — the one with the big “L” on my forehead.

This once upon a time friend had married a fancy-pants lawyer.  Her new fancy-pants lawyer/husband took over the case.  “Can he DO that?” I asked.  Apparently he can.

Apparently there’s a law that says that a husband can substitute in for a wife — with the judge’s permission.  But later, when I was reading the minutes of my trial, it didn’t say anything about the judge having approved the substitution of the fancy-pants attorney/husband in place of the missing defendant.  It didn’t even mention the fancy-pants husband at all.

By law, the judge has to approve this substitution — and, according to the trial’s minutes, she didn’t.  But where the freak can I go to appeal this, er, oversight?  Nowhere.  From what I have been told, plaintiffs have no right to appeal a small claims court decision.  Ever.  Sorry, no Supreme Court rulings for us.

Meanwhile, back in the courtroom, the dude in the fancy suit wiped the floor with me — by offering his infamous “Judge Judy” defense.  Apparently, according to the fancy-pants lawyer-husband, the main purpose of me filing this claim was to allow me to get on the Judge Judy show!  How can one even begin to fight a charge as bizarre as that one?

But, sadly, our small claims court judge bought the missing defendant’s husband’s whole package — fancy suit, big words, irrelevant exhibits and all.  “Claim of plaintiff denied.”  And now I’m a loser.

I did, however, learn one very important thing from this trial — which I would like to pass on to all the rest of you big-time fancy-pants lawyers out there.  Whenever you are arguing a case and you really really want to win it, just offer up the “Judge Judy” defense.  Apparently it works like a charm.

For instance, if that recent California anti-Proposition 8 decision, the one that now makes gay marriages in California legal, ever gets appealed before the Supreme Court, all that the attorneys speaking against the repeal verdict have to do is to say, “But Your Honors, you can clearly see here that these Californians are only trying to repeal Prop. 8 so that they can get on Judge Judy!”

Then you’ll win your case for sure.

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It’s a very, very common thing expressed by the Great Indian Muddle Class, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is reflexively anti-Muslim; the idea that Muslims want the non-Muslim world, specifically the Hindus, to be converted to Islam at the point of a sword (or at the point of a nuclear warhead, or whatever the weapon of choice may be).

The idea is that the Muslims cannot live alongside Hindus (for the Great Indian Muddle Class, Hindus are always victims) in peace because their religion compels them to convert any and all non-Muslims to Islam by any and all means possible.

By that “any and all means possible”, incidentally, I mean the hilarious notion that personable Muslim guys are going on a “love jihad” (yes, you got that right, “love jihad”; I did not make it up) to seduce innocent Hindu maidens and convert them to Islam. So we’d better add penis-point to the list. But still, sword/equivalent point is the preferred method, and has always been so. The Muslim wants the kaffir to cease to exist, don’t you know.

Is that the truth?

Now, I’m not going to go into what the Koran says on the subject, for two excellent reasons:

First, what a religious book says is open to just about any interpretation anyone cares to put on it, and in a millennium and a half of translation and interpretation and re-interpretation, most of the original meaning is inevitably distorted to the point where you can’t begin to recognize it.

And, secondly, because what a religious book says has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the adherents of that religion, whether those actions are justified by said religious book or not.

No, I’ll go for much more direct evidence.

As the Hindu Muddle Class itself says (in fact, as the Hindu Right makes a great song and dance about), most of the Indian Subcontinent – and all of its most populous northern, western and central parts – were under Muslim rule for getting on for seven hundred years.

The first Muslims arrived within years of the Prophet Muhammad’s starting of the religion, in the shape of Arab traders, but the real Muslim presence in the subcontinent came in the form of the incursions by Afghan warlords in the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially Mahmud of Ghazni, who made repeated raids into Northern India. Did this rapacious warrior and plunderer stay to convert the heathen? No, he took his loot and went back home…again and again and again.

Later on, the Afghans (and Turks) returned in more permanent fashion, setting up a kingdom in North India centred on Delhi, known as the Delhi Sultanate. This kingdom was ruled over by a succession of Afghan and Turkic Muslim dynasties, and eventually fragmented as provincial bosses declared independence when they had the opportunity, and formed their own Muslim kingdoms.

Finally, the Islamicised Mongols under a young khan named Babur came down from Afghanistan in 1526, whipped (with the aid of that hitherto unknown military innovation, artillery) the (Muslim) Lodhi king of Delhi, Ibrahim, at Panipat and, but for a brief (Afghan) Suri Dynasty interregnum from 1540-55, ended the Sultanate once and for all.

That was the beginning of the Mughal (a corruption of Mongol) Empire, which ruled over most of North, West and Central India until its power began to wane in the first half of the eighteenth century, and hung on in titular fashion until the British dissolved it permanently in 1857 by imprisoning the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, and murdering his sons after they had surrendered.

Therefore, for a period of seven hundred years, that part of India which mattered most, population wise, was under Muslim rule. Some of these Muslim rulers were highly tolerant and enlightened; one, the Mughal Emperor Akbar, created his own synthetic religion, called Din-e-Elahi, but found few takers except for his ministers including the (Hindu) court jester, Birbal. Most were rather indifferent to religion, leaving well enough alone. A few were anti-Hindu to the point of psychosis; the Turkic Khilji Dynasty Sultan Ala-ud-din (known among other things for having succeeded to the throne by having his predecessor, his uncle Jalal-ud-din, murdered) promulgated a decree ordering Hindus to open their mouths so Muslims could spit into them.

Good or bad or indifferent, they ruled over most of the subcontinent for centuries, and their rule over the most populous area, the vast North Indian plain around the river Ganges, was absolute. Unlike other parts of the subcontinent where Muslim overlords ruled through Hindu vassal kings, in the North and Centre of the subcontinent they always ruled directly and with absolute power.

Now, don’t you think that if there was any truth to the idea of forceful Muslim conversion, the territories these men (and a couple of women, too), Afghans, Mongols, or others ruled over would have been thoroughly cleansed of Hinduism in all these years? Even if some of them protected the rights of their Hindu subjects, others who were frankly haters of the idolatrous infidels of the land would surely have done their utmost to erase their religion from the face of the earth?

So what happened when the British took over the Mughals?  Did they rule over an overwhelmingly Muslim land?  Did they, hell.  Only a third of the population they controlled was Muslim – the rest was overwhelmingly Hindu.

Those Muslims, by the way, were everywhere: even those parts of the subcontinent which were never under Muslim rule, at any time, whether the far south (the Tamils) or the extreme east (the Manipuris) had many of their people convert to Islam.

Conversion at the point of a sword, was it, now?

The facts speak for themselves: conversion from Hinduism was a voluntary affair, mostly occurring among the vast oppressed masses at the bottom end of the Hindu caste system. They thought of Islam as they had thought, in earlier centuries, of Buddhism, and as they would think later of Christianity: as a means of escape from the terrible inequities of the Hindu caste system. Of course, there were those who converted because they thought that a change of religion to that of the ruling dynasty would bring them closer to the source of patronage, but that’s true of any feudal system, and India has always been feudal to its roots. But the overwhelming mass of the converts away from Hinduism have always been from the lowest castes; right from the time of Siddhartha Gautama and his Buddhism to the Baptist missionaries in the forest villages of Central India today; and it has virtually always been entirely voluntary.

In fact, I’d say that if the Muslim rulers had really been so hell-bent on converting Hindus at sword-point, there wouldn’t have been many Great Indian Hindu Muddle Class members left to castigate Muslims today, and none of them would have been from the home of Indian Hindu fascism: the north and centre of the country.

Put that in your hookah and smoke it.

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Jihad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_of_Ghazni

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Panipat_%281526%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din-i-Ilahi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alauddin_Khilji

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summer dream @2010 Karla Fetrow

Or

The Four Queens

By Karla Fetrow

Authors Note:  These are the tales of Luke Maverick, who accidentally fell into an alternate reality by following a dream.  Although this is the first chapter of his many adventures, “Ambiosis”, presented earlier this month is the prologue and foundation for the stories.

Felons

Something was poking him in the ribs.  At first the words were unintelligible, but the annoying jabs somehow over-rode the throbbing in his head, adding a little more clarity with each punch.  “What are you?”

Not “who are you”, or “what is your name”.  Luke Maverick opened his eyes cautiously, then blinked them closed again.  He could just as well have asked the speaker in front of him, what was it.  It was vaguely human, vaguely female.  It was no more than four feet tall, with a waist line closely resembling a frog’s, with several dropping chins to match.  It poked him again.  “What are you, advocate or felon?”

He tried sitting up, just to get away from the damnable stick.  A blinding stab of pain, like shrieking lightening threatened to explode just behind his ears, then rippled.  The ripple continued throughout his whole body than subsided.  He breathed in deeply, and another, gentler ripple began at his forehead and shifted down into his fingertips and toes.  Luke analyzed his reaction.  The ripples commenced each time he breathed in.  It must be a chemical, he thought, or gas in the air, giving him hallucinations.  If he didn’t die by the toad woman’s molestations, he would certainly die of asphyxiation.  “What do you..” he began, but his question was cut short.  Several fellow frog people leaped to her service when she waved her stick, and surrounded him.

Leap wasn’t the exact word.  Their arms were somewhat longer than the short, stout legs, and they used their knuckles to swing themselves forward, so they hopped rather than leaped.  Although he would have preferred that they didn’t, they planted their long-fingered hands along the pressure points in his neck, wrists and legs, then hummed.  The sensation was as strange as breathing the chemical laden air.  The tips of their fingers seemed to merge with the first layers of skin and tingled like an herbal remedy placed on a rash.

“Primitive digestive system,” announced one.

“Delayed adaptation processing,” said another.

“Only seventeen percent usage of primary storage units,” informed a somewhat elderly looking and deep based toad.

“You are a felon!”  Barked the insufferable frog woman, and brought her stick down sharply across his shoulders.  “Why didn’t you renew your license?”

“What license?”

“That’s what they all say.  Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law.”  She whacked him again.  “Why couldn’t they have sent me an advocate this time?  Dyonedes receives them regularly.  She doesn’t even lift her little finger in effort, yet they rush to her side.  Felons.  All I gets is felons.”  Using her stick to stand upright, and waddled up to him.  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just renew your license when it was time?”

She stared into his eyes and he found himself staring back.  He had expected little frog eyes, eyes with slits and a bale color, but instead they were markedly human.  Their color was glossy, emerald green, and the pupils slightly dilated.  It was uncanny to see such a pair of remarkable eyes in this grotesque, stretched face, its color turning from red, to purple, to a very pale flesh tone, then back through its neon color cycle again.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to renew it.”

The stick crashed down on him again.  “Felon!  Wouldn’t it have been better to just renew your license?”

“Yes,” he said hastily.  “Yes, I suppose it would.”

“I suppose it would,” she mimicked.  “Do you know what I hate about felons?”  She swung her gaze to her henchmen, as though she believed they would answer her, but they were all involved in examining their fingertips for any possible stray particles that might have transferred from his skin to theirs during their contact.  She sighed.  “Felons create jobs.  We aren’t specifically job-like.  We’d rather maraud.”

“Maraud?”  He asked weakly.

“Yes, maraud!”  Her stick rained several vigorous blows across his back, then added one more to his already suffering head.  “You’ll have to admit, marauding is far more entertaining than working a job.”  He clasped his hands to his throbbing temples and groaned.  His distress apparently didn’t concern her in the least.  She paced around him and for a moment he was afraid she was looking for a spot to rain new blows, but she left his body parts in peace.  Meeting his eyes again, she settled back with her multiple chins resting on one end of her stick, and gazed at him mournfully.  “This is why we need an advocate.  Marauding has lost a great deal of popularity among the status quo. They send us felons!  Felons require dietitians, orientation experts, counselors, parameter translators.   I don’t suppose…”  She raised one eyebrow speculatively, and brought her face uncomfortably close to his.  “You could learn marauding advocacy?”

“I never considered marauding.”

“Then you’re useless!”  She gave him a good thump to his buttocks.  “Walk,” she ordered.

He staggered slowly to his feet.  Just as he was standing upright, she thumped him again and he stumbled to his knees.  “Walk,” she insisted.

So he walked in the best manner he could.  As soon as his head raised substantially above theirs, she knocked him down again, so that in a very short while, he walked hunched down, using his palms for balance in a semi-crawl.

He didn’t have much of a chance to take in the scenery, only the soil that remained fixed just a few feet from his vision.  The soil in itself, was remarkable.  It was very loose, very sweet smelling, and seemed to be alive with scurrying, visible bacteria.  The color of the soil shifted and changed much like the flesh tones of his tormentor; from a ruddy, deep red, to shimmering yellow, to long, wavering patches of green.  At one of the green patches, she kicked him by swinging up from her stick and planting both feet into his back.  “Eat,” she commanded.

Luke looked down at the squirming rivulets.  He was hungry, but munching on a patch of green, moving soil seemed a little unappetizing.  One of the assistants whispered in her ear, and she looked at him with astonishment.  “Really?  That’s disgusting.  We’ll have to take it to isolation cell 23590.  That’s the fourth under-developed felon we’ve received this relativity cycle.  There must be something wrong with the space loop.”  She pushed him along, her jabs at his back as rhythmic as a drum beat, her mood growing more foul by the minute, if minutes were to be counted in this strange location.  “This is another job felons make for us.  We must construct habitats for them!  Habitats.”  She fumed.  “What is the meaning of this invasion?”

The elderly assistant shrugged.  “There seems to be some unhappiness among the multitudes.”

“The multitudes?”
“The masses.”

“What do we care about masses?  I thought that field of expertise was left to the mathematicians.”

“The executive Zork, Dhabi Isstruii has determined a substantial statistical increase in disorderly conduct during transgression hearings.  He felt the training of a few felons might improve communications with the primary objectives.”

“Masses.  Primaries.  What does that have to do with us?”  She gave Luke one last boot, then gestured that he was to enter a compound that appeared far more solid than the loosely floating sensual and visual display he’d been given so far.  There were several structures in a variety of shapes; small domes of mud, concrete or sticks, steeply pitched A-frames, a pleasant cottage with garden, even a house that floated on a pond, connected by a crude bridge.  There were no walls, no guards, just an abrupt spot where the landscape changed from its shifting patterns to scuffed, mottled with rocks and grass, thankfully solid, dirt.

Shamelessly, Luke dug his fingers into the inert ground, and laid his head against the cool grass.  He breathed shallowly, waiting for the next blow that never came.  Instead, the frog lady stayed just beyond the confines of his solid earth setting and looked at it disagreeably.  “This will be suitable during your internship.  You’ll find shelter, the proper nutrients for replenishing your energy, and ahem…” she formed the words distastefully, “a waste disposal unit.”

With that, she and her entourage turned on their knuckles and hopped away.

Luke couldn’t find the will power to lift himself from the ground right away.  He wondered if this was how men who had sailed long months at sea felt when they first set down on land again.  You wanted to hug it.  You wanted to give thanks to it for its firm, unmoving consistency.

“Wadda infob?”  The voice was high pitched and mechanical.  It squealed between short bursts of static. “Gummie amomo.”  The owner of the unpleasant voice squatted beside Luke.  He unbuckled a sheath from his waist and pulled out what looked very much like a remote control unit for a television.  “Awkward, very awkward,” he said after a minute in a normal voice.  “Your species hasn’t perfected voice translators yet.  You’ll have to rely on those who have the technology.”

“What do you mean?”  Asked Luke faintly.  The man squatting beside him certainly looked humanoid if not human.  He was somewhat taller than Luke and more slender.  His forehead was extremely high with tufts of hair standing straight up on either side.  With a closer glance, he realized that buried within those tufts were two small, rounded ears.  The rest of his hair was about six inches long, traveled down the sides of his head and neck and tapered into a short mane at the back, between his shoulder blades.  Instead of finger nails, he had tiny, moon edged claws that retracted when he had finished his calculations on his instrument.  Other than that, he really didn’t look much different.

“You aren’t allowed to have any higher technology than what your world has developed.  Don’t worry, though.  There are several who have translators.  Some arrived with the technology already built into their ear canals.  They,” he nodded at the disappearing captives, “don’t need it, though.”

“What is this place?”

“The detention center.  What are you in for?”

Luke sighed with exasperation and sat up.  The ripple effect had stopped.  He let the pure oxygen flow into his lungs before speaking.  “I didn’t renew my license.”

The man’s eyebrows traveled upwards an amazing degree.  “That was rather careless of you.”

“I didn’t know anything about it.  I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

“All first time felons say that.  It doesn’t work.  If you didn’t know it had to be renewed, why did you get a license in the first place?”

“I didn’t!  At least, I don’t think I did.  Everything I thought I remembered is all muddled now.”

“That type of thinking will only put you into rehabilitation.  Now, if you go there, they can keep you as long as they like.  You don’t want to go there.  Just agree you are guilty and you’d like to see a counselor.  That way, they’ll leave you alone.  The counselors really hate to take time, you know.”

“Yes.  They’d rather maraud.”

“Precisely,” agreed his new friend.  “My name is Oliephuses, by the way, but you can call me Ollie.  I’m staying at the garden house.  It has room for one more tenant.  You don’t want to join the hut people.  They are backwards and ill mannered.  I’m not even sure how they found the slip stream.”

The garden house sounded fine.  Luke didn’t feel like he was in any kind of condition to be choosy, anyway.  His head still throbbed.  His back felt the lumps of bruises in every joint, in every muscle.  His legs had grown quite tired of crawling and were happy to be strolling upright.  The hut people did not look all that appealing.  They were extremely hairy for one, which clashed with his aesthetic tastes on degree of acceptable body hair, seemed more interested in building shapes and patterns with rocks than in any other activity, and used very physical means of communicating; gesturing at each other wildly, pushing, tapping, sometimes erasing the pattern that one had created to fill in with one of their own, yet curiously; never really coming to blows although they always seemed to be arguing.

The garden house was well named.  Flourishing shrubbery surrounded it.  There was a neatly fenced in vegetable garden to one side, flowers planted near the entrance and in hanging baskets on the broad, sheltered porch, and more pots and baskets of plants scattered throughout the rooms inside.  He was unfamiliar with most of the thriving greenery, although some of the plants seemed to be very close relatives to ones he remembered.  One large bush looked almost exactly like bamboo, although the leaves had a deep purple hue to the veins of its leaves and in the stems.  An inside plant looked like a giant stock of celery, but with berry sized fruits nestling among its leaves.

On the inside, the house was completely utilitarian.  There were no decorations, no extra dimensions of comfort other than a plain sofa, some plush looking chairs, a table and large counter space in the kitchen, a variety of desks in what only could be called a common room and what appeared to be a work table for all kinds of curious inventions.  There were two other occupants.  One was a woman with rust colored flesh tones, a bald head, extremely long ear lobes and a very long, sinewy neck.  On each ear lobe were three curved  metal bars, arranged in a row, each one directly under the other.  When they made their introductions, she fiddled with the bars a moment, then smiled. “Pleased to meet you, Luke Maverick,” she said in a voice that was clear but not loud and end with a slight musical chime.  “My name is Mirdeesh.”  The musical chime became more prominent with the pronunciation of her name.

“Her translator,” said Ollie as though impressed with her built in technology.  Although Luke found other things about her that were impressive; mainly an upper torso that supported her powerful neck well, and a pair of shapely legs that traveled liberally from a short tunic, he decided that he too, should be impressed with her translator.

The final occupant did not appear very impressive at all.  He was a slightly built man, barely over five feet tall, who had absolutely no distinguishing features to separate him from human.  However, when he moved, there seemed to be no joints to his body, only fluid movement.  His snake-like hands slid into his pocket and he pulled out two disks with the porous quality of coral.  He struck the disks together and a tiny puff of smoke came out, which he inhaled deeply before speaking.  “Now I can hear you,” he said through lips that hardly moved.  “Shedha speaks mind and mind responds.  Luke Maverick is hungry.”

This was very true.  Luke Maverick felt ravenous, as though he hadn’t eaten in days.  How long has it been, really, he wondered to himself, and tried to remember his last meal.  The past wouldn’t resurrect itself, only the memories of what should have been but apparently was no longer, his reality.  He tried to keep from shuddering as Shedha’s elastic body moved about the kitchen, finally producing a square loaf of dark bread, some unidentifiable fruits and what appeared to be a pink cheese.  Luke bit into the bread experimentally.  The flavor was like a cross between rye and wheat, although somewhat sweeter.  The cheese did not taste like cheese at all.  Although it had the texture of cheese, it tasted more like a custard.  Both foods gratified his hunger pains, but he eyed the fruit dubiously.  “Luke Maverick has fear,” said Sedha.

“Your fear is ungrounded,” chimed Mirdeesh.  “The Bronesch may not like having jobs, but they are very careful about building habitats for felons.  We are all compatible species.  What we can eat, so can you.”

“Why did the Bronesch bring us here?”

“They didn’t bring us.  We brought ourselves.”

“You came here voluntarily?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No!”  He said emphatically.  “I was tricked.  I was following a woman who said she had something to show me.”

“Ah,” said Ollie, “you followed her, but she didn’t force you to come?  She didn’t threaten your life or try to bribe you?”

“No, no.  I thought it was a dream; and I was curious is all to see how it would end.”

“And where is this woman now?”

“I – I got rid of her.”  He felt suddenly very uncomfortable.  The others lapsed into silence as well and Sedha puffed at his disks.

“Remarkable!”  Said Ollie finally.  “I never thought of doing that.”

“I broke into three sub-space channels before they gave me my first felon,” said Mirdeesh with awe.  “How do you get rid of someone?”

“Well, you just do.  You beat them over the head with something, run away or push them over an edge,” he finished faintly.

“That gets rid of them?  Aren’t they still there?”

“Maybe their molecules are, but they aren’t alive anymore.”

“Define alive,” asked Sedha.  His eyes had become mere slits and his head was thrown back as though in a trance.

“You’re alive.  I’m alive.  We’re talking to each other.  We get hungry or tired.  But when you’re dead, you’re an inanimate object, like this table.”

“You’ve been dead before?”  Asked Ollie eagerly.  “You know this for a fact?”

“Once you’re dead, you can’t come back and tell everyone about it.  It’s all over.”

Ollie sighed and tapped his claws on the table.  “I’d like to believe you but if you haven’t been dead before, it makes things a little difficult.  Can you make yourself dead so we can find out for sure?”

“No, I’m not going to make myself dead.  If I stabbed one of you in the heart, what would happen?”

“We would suffer greatly from pain and blood loss.”

“Yes.  And once you lost all your blood and your heart stopped, you would be dead.”

“And then what?”

“That’s it.  There is no more what.”

Ollie scratched his head.  “Should we try it to see if it happens?”

“It won’t happen,” said Mirdeesh confidently.  “The Bronesch will just restore our habitat and we will have suffered for nothing.”

“This is true,” nodded Sedha.  “So you see, your argument is pointless.  The Bronesch might not care if we make ourselves dead but they have to obey the Zork.”

“You mean if I die, the Bronesch will bring me back?”

“Worse,” said Ollie.  “They’ll put you in rehabilitation.”

“You don’t want to go to rehabilitation,” said Mirdeesh.  “They can hold you as long as they like.  Sedha has been there and look at him now.  He’s addicted to mind links.”

“What was he like before?”

“More like you.  He didn’t have his own translator and said many things that sounded strange.  He spent a lot of time working on a flight modulator,” Ollie nodded toward the work table.  “But once he came out, all he wanted to do was grow plants and listen to minds.  He changed.”

“Yes,” agreed Mirdeesh.  “He was a splendid felon once.  He used to break,” she dropped her voice to a whisper, “gravity laws.”

“He could fly?”

She brought her fingers to her lips and puckered her lips against them, reminding Luke of the human gesture for keeping a secret.  “It isn’t talked about.  Nobody knows how he did it because he didn’t use an artificial apparatus.  They wiped out that memory.”

“Have you ever tried to leave here?”

“Leave?  Where would we go?”

“You know.  Go back to your home worlds.  Go back to who you were before.”

“You want to go back to amniotic fluids?”  Laughed Ollie.  “Why would you want to do that?”

“No,” murmured Sedha.  “There are no home worlds, Luke Maverick.  We are all being.”

The words drifted into his head gently, as though they were thoughts of his own, and he brushed them aside as easily.  “There are no guards.  What happens if you go beyond the parameters of this compound?”

“Then you are no longer a felon.”

Luke puzzled over the conversation much later, when he was shown his room and allowed his private time.  The room was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house.  It had a bed with a light weight blanket, a dresser filled with essential clothing that fit him quite well, a corner door that lid into a small private bathroom, and a small stand containing grooming tools.  There was absolutely no difference between it and a twentieth century home on Earth.

Earth.  Odd, how quickly it was beginning to recede into the background of his thoughts, almost as if it was a fantasy world he’d once played in.  He went to the single window that overlooked the garden and beyond to the shimmering landscape that bordered their habitat.  In the distance, an enormous, but very pale yellow sun was going down and another was coming up; this one very small and ruddy.  While dark shadows crept over their garden domain, the sky beyond drifted between ochre and brick red.  Their captors had even allowed them the consideration of night, only they weren’t true prisoners.  They could leave any time.  They could explore this strange world that apparently had not one thing in common with the one he’d left.

He laid on the bed experimentally and closed his eyes.  Sedha’s words came back to him.  There are no home worlds.  Just being.  Maybe Earth wasn’t real.  Maybe none of this was real, just a trick of the imagination.  I’m real, he argued with himself.  I get hungry.  It hurts when someone beats on me with a stick.  I was sexually aroused by a well stacked alien.  I feel tired and want to sleep.  I’m alive.  That makes me real. As he drifted off, he thought he heard a familiar voice.  Don’t leave me.

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By: Edward-Yemíl Rosario (Eddie)

The major reason to oppose racial profiling (aside from constitutional and moral grounds) is that it simply doesn’t work. Empirical studies show that when police use race or ethnic appearance as a factor in law enforcement, their effectiveness in apprehending criminals decreases. Even worse, it has often led to “accidental” deaths, such as the fatal shootings of African American and Latino men in New York City and elsewhere. What follows is a look at the fallacies of racial profiling.

“…Police deployment these days is determined almost strictly by rates of relative violence/crime in each police district. The rate of violence is not some subjective quotient created by a racist cop, but is determined by counting citizens reporting that they were shot, stabbed, beat up and otherwise assaulted, this is combined with citizen reports of burglary, robbery, theft, etc. You see, your racist conspiracy theory is illogical when you know that police resources are deployed based on crime as reported by citizens and not some racist plot to destroy minorities. That is logical.”

The above quote was taken from a response to my first post on racial profiling (click here) submitted by someone I chose call “Bubba” — mostly because his is what I perceive as a typical a “Bubba” response. No amount of evidence would disabuse him from his untenable position. I illustrated that the enforcement process is far from “logical” or based purely on statistics. I showed how police deployment is not solely determined by “rates of violence.” I demonstrated where even judges state that the criminal justice process — from arrest to sentencing — is racially tainted. I showed where the individual who first used criminal profiling is on record as saying that using race to target crime is ineffective, but Bubba insisted and still insists that 1) he’s the logical and one, and 2) I have “chip on my shoulder.” Yeah, you know how us Latino(a)s get all too emotional and lose whatever little reasoning we possess.

If his attitude isn’t a sense of entitlement, I don’t know what is… unfortunately; his response is not that different from police authorities and conservative academic scholars.

In my original post, I demonstrated through the use of empirical studies that racial profiling is morally repugnant and racist. Today I will show that it is also ineffective.

Racial conservatives [1] — both black and white — maintain that racial profiling isn’t racist. They argue that racial profiling is justified since we all know that criminogenic people of color commit all of the crime! As Heather MacDonald of the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute puts it, “Judging by arrest rates, minorities are overly represented among drug traffickers”(MacDonald, 2001) . Black conservative, Randall Kennedy agrees. He goes so far as to say that arrest rates present a “sad reality” and justifies racial profiling on those grounds (Kennedy, 1999). Well, if this is true, scientific examinations of racial profiling should yield results that back up the claims of racial conservatives.

The problem is… they don’t…

First let me point out that Bubba’s assertion that “Police deployment these days is determined almost strictly by rates of relative violence/crime in each police district,” is incorrect. That is not how police deployment is arrived at. Furthermore, the idea that “The rate of violence… is determined by counting citizens reporting that they were shot, stabbed, beat up and otherwise assaulted, this is combined with citizen reports of burglary, robbery, theft, etc.,” is unmitigated bullshit. It shows this person is at best ignorant of police procedures across the nation. But I am getting ahead of myself…

Bear with me while I make an important point. Imagine for a moment that a society awakens to the hard reality of child abuse and makes stopping such abuse a national priority. Legislators pass new laws criminalizing child abuse in new ways, increases sentences for the crime dramatically, and limit and even eliminate parole for all child abuse offenses. Prosecutors do their part by vigorously prosecuting all cases and asking for the maximum sentences, and police and other state agencies increase their enforcement efforts against child abuse. If we looked at prisons ten years later, we would surely find a higher percentage of inmates imprisoned for child abuse. But this would not necessarily mean that child abuse itself is more prevalent than it was ten years before. Rather, these numbers would be a reflection of the priorities and actions of the criminal justice system.

The above scenario, of course, is almost exactly what has happened in our society with drugs. Politicians at every level, including at least four presidents, identified drug enforcement at as the top law enforcement priority. The U.S. congress and other legislative bodies increased sentences, sometimes astronomically. New laws eliminated judicial discretion and implemented strict sentencing guidelines. Some of these new laws specifically targeted crack cocaine, a drug more commonly sold in African American neighborhoods. Law enforcement focused almost entirely on the most visible aspect of the drug trade — retail selling and use on the streets — almost exclusively in communities of color. Though drug use and sale is about equal across all ethnicity’s, these enforcement policies resulted in the skewed, heavily minority prison populations’ racial conservatives use as justification for racial profiling.

I once knew someone who liked to say that “math is a cruel bitch” and arrest rates and crime statistics are facts, but the way we interpret these facts and the conclusions we draw from them are not. In moving from fact to interpretation to conclusion, racial conservatives supporting racial profiling miss something critically important.

Objective statistics do confirm that African Americans, Latin Americans, and other minorities are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. In 1990, for example, one in four black men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight were under criminal justice control (Mauer, 1990). By 1995, the number had grown to one in three, with even higher percentages in some cities. In Baltimore, for example, the percentage was 60 (Mauer & Huling, 1995).

The important question here is whether the rate of African American or Latino  arrests or incarceration reflects actual offending behavior. At first glance, this might seem clear or obvious, but note that the vast majority of crimes go unreported. For example, almost three-quarters of all sexual assaults, more than a third of all robberies, and more than 40 percent of all aggravated assaults go unreported (U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999). This makes arrest figures an unreliable indicator of who commits crimes overall. Drugs and weapons possession offenses differ because they are consensual. That means all parties involved in such crimes do not want the authorities to know the crime is taking place. Not the retailer, seller, nor the consumer — they all want the crime to happen. When it comes to enforcement against consensual crimes involving drugs, the police have to actively seek out such crimes (Kitsuse & Cicourel, 1963).

The great bulk of drug activity, including the transport of larger quantities of drugs by couriers, goes unreported, unseen, and undetected. Police officers may have general knowledge of drug activity, its locations, or people involved, but this tells them little concerning any specific patterns of offending behavior. These crimes are least likely to be fully known and reported, so police use other tactics to find them.

Whew! Still with me?

It follows then, that arrest and incarceration rates do not measure crime but the activity of police and other institutions responsible for criminal justice efforts. While this data tell us useful things, it doesn’t support inappropriate conclusions. Arrest statistics tell us that police disproportionately arrest African American males for drug crimes. This reflects decisions made by someone in the police department to concentrate enforcement activities on these individuals (Stuntz, 1998). Drawing any further conclusions based on these statistics, or using them to justify racial profiling, as do racial conservatives, is just plain wrong and, in my estimation, racially motivated.

Now to the meat of my argument…

If, as I have shown, arrest and incarceration rates do not tell us about the effectiveness of catching criminals, there are other statistics that do. And the story these statistics tell is a very different one than racial conservatives would have us believe.

Until very recently, there was no data that gave us any insight into hit rates — the rates at which police actually find contraband or other evidence of crime when they perform stops and searches. Therefore, when confronted with remarks made by the likes of our friend, Bubba, we had little to say in response. In other words, we had to take the word of law enforcement agencies and racial conservatives that racial profiling was justified. However, evidence from a broad range of contexts now allow for a statistical analysis of racial profiling. And the results of this analysis will come as a surprise to many: racial profiling, aside from being immoral, is neither an efficient nor an effective tool for fighting crime — bitches. [2]

Driving While Black

Statistics from stops and searches by Maryland State Police during 1995 and 1996 provided some of the first comprehensive data on hit rates. In terms of stops, the data, which came from the police themselves, showed that the state police stopped and searched African Americans disproportionately.  Although they made only 17 percent of all drivers, blacks made up more than 70 percent of all those searched. The data were compiled from more than eleven hundred searches. Given the official conservative rationale that what they had been doing was merely sound policing — not racism — the hit rates should clearly have borne out the wisdom of the state police approach. Wrong! The hit rates showed something different: the hit rate at which police found drugs, guns, or other evidence of crime in these searches were almost exactly the same for blacks and whites.

Troopers found evidence on African Americans they searched 28.4 percent of the time; they found evidence on whites 28.8 percent of the time (Lamberth, 1998). The researcher found no statistical significance in the difference between the numbers for blacks and whites, given the number of stops and searches included in the data. If, in fact there was any difference between blacks and whites, the data showed clearly that racial profiling was not uncovering it. What the data did show was a flaw in the basic assumption underlying racial profiling.

But I — and many of my darker-skinned brethren — coulda told you that!

Recent statistics from New Jersey provide even more information on hit rates. After a controversial state attorney general report, the New Jersey State Police began to record data for all its traffic stops and searches. Data from 2000 concerning the southern end of the turnpike, the area where complaints on profiling first originated, show that blacks and Latino/as remain 70 percent of those searched. And the hit rates absolutely contradict the idea that racial profiling is just good law enforcement. Troopers found evidence in the searches of whites 25 percent of the time; they found evidence in searches of blacks 13 percent of the time, and in searches of Latino/as just 5 percent of the time (New Jersey State Police, 2001). Whites were almost twice as likely to be found with contraband as blacks and five times as likely as Latino/as — clearly indicating that racial conservatives and people like Bubba are fuckin’ full of shit.

Data from North Carolina tells a similar story. In 1999, North Carolina became the first state to pass legislation making it mandatory for some police agencies to report basic data on all traffic stops and searches. A researcher, conducting an analysis required by law, found that African American male drivers were 68 percent more likely than white male drivers to be searched by the good ole boys (Bubbas) of the North Carolina Highway Patrol. They found contraband on blacks in 26 percent of the searches; for whites, the hit rate was 33 percent (Zingraff, 2000).

Walking While Black

Even more telling were hit rates from the New York Attorney general’s study of stops and frisks in New York City, issued in 1999. The context of this study is somewhat different because the data concern stops and searches of pedestrians. However the practice, using race to focus police suspicion — is the same. In addition, the data here is plentiful: 175,000 recorded encounters between officers and citizens over a period of fifteen months. The study tracked hit rates by analyzing the percentage of stops and frisks that ended in an arrest. The data are even more damning than the numbers from the Maryland and New Jersey studies. The attorney general found that police arrested 12.6 percent of the whites they stopped, only 11.5 percent of the Latino/as, and only 10.5 percent of the blacks (Spitzer, 1999). This is exactly the opposite of what a Bubba would predict. When New York City police officers utilized racial profiling intensively, they found what they wanted less often on blacks and Latino/as than they did on whites.

I have a sneaking suspicion that those who champion racial profiling don’t do so because they think it’s “sound policing” — a practice based on cold hard numbers. I believe they support such practices because they want to justify racist practices. They are comfortable with such practices because, for the most part, it doesn’t affect them. They are not the ones being taken handcuffed from their homes, or being humiliated while driving or even walking down the street. They think it’s okay to commit such acts on certain Americans because they just don’t give a good goddamn — until it happens to them…

There’s a price we all pay for racial profiling, the least of which it makes all of us less safe, as police are more determined to bust low-level black drug dealers in the streets while the big drug game is taking place somewhere in a sleepy suburban enclave or high roller penthouse loft. Racial profiling alienates and criminalizes communities of color – communities that might otherwise provide valuable information to law enforcement; it distracts police from using more reliable methods and it plays right into the hands of some criminals, who specifically choose accomplices that don’t fit the profile. But most importantly, racial profiling serves to reinforce an apartheid-like environment that has resulted in making us the largest incarcerated nation in the world.

Eddie

Note: Much of what I have summarized in this post can be found discussed at greater length here:

Harris, D. A. (2002). Profile in injustice: Why racial profiling cannot work. New Press: New York.

References

Kennedy, R. (1999). Race, crime, and the law. New York: Pantheon Books.

Kitsuse, J., & Cicourel, A. (1963). A note on the use of official statistics. Social Problems, 11, 131-139.

Lamberth, J. (1998, August 16). Driving while black; A statistician proves that prejudice still rules the road Washington Post p. C01.

MacDonald, H. (2001). The myth of racial profiling. City Journal, 11(2).

Mauer, M. (1990). Young black men and the criminal justice system: A growing national problem. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.

Mauer, M., & Huling, T. (1995). Young black Americans and the criminal justice system: Five years later. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.

Moorestown Station consent to search seizures for whites, blacks, and Hispanics, (2001).

Spitzer, E. (1999). The New York City Police Department “stop and frisk” practices: A report to the people of New York. New York: Attorney General of the State of New York.

Stuntz, W. (1998). Race, class, and drugs. Columbia Law Review, 98, 1795, 1803.

U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1999). National Crime Victimization Survey, Criminal victimization in the United States, 1999, statistical tables, table 91. Retrieved. from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/.

Zingraff, M. T. (2000). Evaluating North Carolina State highway patrol data: Citations, warnings, and searches in 1998: North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety.

[1] Racial conservatives is a term I use to describe the demographic (both lay and academic) that presupposes that racism no longer exists. Defining racism solely through the lens of individualism (better understood as prejudice), racial conservatives are blind to the systemic nature of racism. I conceptualize racism in structural and institutional as well as individual terms. My definition of racism describes a centuries-old system of racial domination designed by white Americans that excludes African Americans from full participation in the rights, privileges, and benefits of this society. Racism requires not only a widely accepted racist ideology but also the systematic power to exclude people of color from opportunities and major economic rewards system of oppression of African Americans and other people of color by white Europeans and white Americans. For a more in-depth discussion of these issues please see my post on racism (click here).

[2] I draw heavily here from the research and analysis conducted by David Harris and summarized in his book, Profiles of Injustice

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