Near East the Stars Begin

as Does Betrayal

CHAPTER ONE


Every morning is the same. The moon gracefully retires. Dawn waits in silence until muezzin then flings open her windows and gazes out upon a spotless sky and the world of men below. Serene and bright, the day glazes the lands with a sheen that makes them irresistible.
Yet sometimes I long for the sounds of Wenlock, the susurration of the grass; the rustling hedges the lamentation of the wind in those majestic trees, which sway and dance, in time with one another. And above them a glorious ever changing English heaven, where clouds of alabaster walk the skies, like ladies decked in grey and white, and I, hardly breathing for joy, re-enter Paradise.
Yet here every dawn delights me. God, in Islam, is the Lord of Dawn.

My first job was in PR. I didn’t like it. Confused and frustrated, I ran away to India. We pretend humanity is one. But India is a myriad in which extraordinary differences are revealed. It has a precious integrity more than the sum of its parts. This integrity prevents disintegration.

In those early days we stole into Shamalaji and saw a thousand tribes gather and were honoured to learn of Bhrahma who created the world, after he was brought into being by the one who, every moment, creates thousands of universes, and destroys thousands. I mean of course Lord Vishnu. In the last days holy Narsimh Mehta wrote prayers in honour of Shri Krishna, and from them came Mahatma’s prayer.
So, I discovered Gandhi, a lawyer who freed India without shooting my dad in the back. He gave birth to a new humanity. He inspired me. India is the home of spiritualism. Spirits reside there. They survive invasions, tyrannies, famines.
Mother Nature, neglected across the world, is failed by religion, which serves men at her expense, save for Ambaji who serves her.
In India those who work the earth know the story of Ambaji. Her body dismembered, her heart fell like a meteor to the ground. In Bhadra Purnima they come to her shrine under a full moon. They hear readings of her verses, and worship her, and learn how her hand in marriage was accepted by Lord Shiva.
A great fair is organised in her honour.
Her heart, the meteor, fell to earth. A triangular Vishwa Yantra, inscribed with figures and the syllable ‘Shree’ in the centre, represent her deity. There is no idol, which testifies antiquity. The full moon of Bhadrapad is one of the most holy days. Farmers come to a place that takes its name from the Goddess. The fair, held on full moon days, holds drama in the evenings. Bhavai, and Garba are organised. The devout attend readings of the Saptashati, the seven hundred verses in praise of the goddess, and worship her temple. Her hand is accepted in holy marriage by Lord Shiva and celebrated by all who flock there. Men once danced the Garbi after victory. They danced to couplets and amorous songs sung by the Charanswar, and through worship they dance for those who work the land and who swear by love and family.
They honour Saptapadi, the seven steps brides and grooms take round the fire. The groom sings, “With God as our guide, let us nourish each other grow together; preserve wealth; share joys and sorrows, have and care for children, be together forever remain lifelong friends and as two halves make a perfect whole!” The prayer is indissoluble.
Alas I never married, but I took my thrice beloved there in hope that she and I might be joined. Often India is in my thoughts. My work involves the three Abrahamic religions. But in my heart a goddess created the world: the female creatrix. My life in a sense has been a failure. Power and influence escape me and I have no relationship with a lady.



CHAPTER TWO


My secretary, known as One Star, rang me. He sounded worried.
‘What is it One Star?’
‘The boss is up in arms. I have a problem,’ he added. ‘The Wing Commander and his new wife have been held up. I fetched their daughters from school. The girls are upset and want to know when daddy will get home. It could be hours.’
‘What can I do to help?’
‘Perhaps come down here? Calm things down? Tell them a story while I get a handle on the parents’ whereabouts.’
‘Give me half an hour,’ I said. ‘The Ruler won’t keep me for more than twenty minutes. Trust me.’

The Ruler was doing his “I am the Ruler” thing.
‘I want to see more arrests,’ he said, putting on his reading glasses. He looked at me over the top of them.
‘These people with temporary visas are eating me out of house and home. That includes your secretary. I want him weeded out.’
‘He is my PA.’
‘You PA him too much. These people should only get the peanuts they make back home, no more.’
I can’t disagree with him. The Ruler and I are old school.
‘Your job is to bag the malcontents,’ he went on. ‘Parasites and conspirators. Throw them out.’
‘You are lucky to have someone incorruptible like me.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that. You think you were hired to be my master? Your kind of probity is too expensive. There was a boy at my prep school, a Russian, I think. He made the other boys his slaves. His favourite was one called Ego, if I remember. I learned a lot from him.’
‘I did not know you were at prep school.’
‘My boys prefer America. I tell them how the British treated me. Anyway, arrest some miscreants immediately or I will replace you with an American.’
‘These are unusual times,’ he said, which as it happens is One Star’s favourite dictum.

Ten minutes later I met two tear-stained girls, one about twelve the other maybe eight.
‘Hang on,’ said One Star. ‘I’ve asked this gentleman to hold the fort while I fetch your parents. He’s a good egg.’
This was greeted with nervous smiles.
‘OK. Here’s the play. I’m going to tell a story. Later I want you to think of a story of your own and tell it him. Off your own bat.’
Giggles met this idea. We were sitting on a large sofa which One Star had bought on offer at a store next to the mosque. The store had enormous windows through which you can see endless furniture. Such a nice idea. Bedu fitting out their tents with execrable Western designs. No style.
Their feet dangling above the linoleum floor, the girls looked at us expectantly. I have no idea what children want to hear about. In my narrow sphere, betrayal and revenge are favourite.
One Star kicked off. ‘I’m going to tell you a tale,’ he said, ‘then one of you will follow.’
‘Will we be killed?’
‘Perhaps.’
The younger girl sighs and raises her eyebrows, then starts to cry.
‘We run out of tales, and die, like?’ said the twelve year old.
‘Why is your sister crying?’
‘She doesn’t want to die. When will mummy and daddy be back?
Shortly. Alright. I’ll tell you a tale of betrayal.’
‘Oh good,’ they said.
‘My tale is about a Vizier. A king has a Vizier. You know? Vizier?’
‘A motorcyclist?’ said the youngest one.
‘A Vizier is like the head of the Civil Service, like,’ said the older one.
‘OK, Sacha. The Vizier offers to spend the night with the king and tell a story. This is the Vizier’s story.
‘There is a Queen. Her house is gold, her gravel chrysolite, rubies, pearls. The porch is made of jasper. They had money. Big time. She divorces the king. She dresses her daughter in beautiful tweeds, and silks, and pearls, and at parties brings her forth like the full moon on a starlit night.
‘Like a sort of young Barbara Cartland?’ I suggested.
‘Who?’ said the girls.
‘They live together in a palace,’ continued One Star, ‘but the daughter decides to marry. She interviews men. She chooses the youngest.
‘There is a fly in the ointment. The Queen is a narcissist and does not like her daughter’s choice. The Princess arranges for him to be vetted by old men; she makes him accompany her ma to Wimbledon; you’ve heard of Wimbledon? He drinks scotch at 10.30 am. Stupid, really.’
At this stage it occurred to me that One Star was recounting a potted history gleaned from my personal confessions.
One Star decided to gee things up by pretending to play the young man. ‘I was banished to Scotland,’ he exclaimed histrionically. The one time I get down south for a weekend, I ask to see you. Oh no. It’s Mummy and I have an engagement. So you don’t love me after all?
‘Calm down,’ squeaks One Star in a girl’s voice. Deranged is so unattractive.
‘So it’s all over between us?’
‘No point in continuing,’ squeaks One Star indignantly.
‘You’re testing love to death.’
‘No more Mr Nice Guy then!’
‘Right then!’
‘He put the phone down,’ said One Star, ‘and never saw her again.’
The younger girl starts to cry again. The older one winks.
‘Later the Princess married a rich man who was an ifrit and a ghoul with lips like the kidneys of a camel,’ said One Star. ‘The lesson, girls, is avoid men seeking domination. I’m off to fetch your parents now. This gentleman is taking over.’
So I took over, saddened by One Star’s tale. I sometimes wonder about him and why he is fascinated by conspiracy. The lesson, I told the girls, is that true love is selfless. ‘What’s the matter Sacha?’
She was crying now.
‘The story was so sad,’ she said. But the younger girl was beaming.
Well at least one of them got the message, I thought. Materialism, although a cliché, is a pathway to romance.

One Star can be impertinent.
‘The Ruler thinks we’re fiddling our expenses,’ he said.
‘Such prejudice is not uncommon,’ I replied.
‘I’ve been reading your private papers, sir,’ he says. ‘You spend too much time promoting America.’
‘They are on our side, One Star, the side of freedom.’
‘Tell that to the Shias, sir. Americans make a hash of the Middle East. They use Saudis as bait for Israel, and a counterweight to Iran. But the Chinese will bring Saudi and Iran together. Anyway Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq prove there are two sides to every freedom.
‘Biden,’ I replied, ‘means both in German, that is to say, both English and Irish, slaver and enslaved, colonised and colonialist, sage and senile. That’s diplomacy.’
‘You mean that’s America. A house that is divided cannot stand, sir.’
‘America is not simple, One Star.’
‘They want to foist their brand of democracy upon the world.’
‘The Yanks won the Cold War. They keep the beacon shining.’
‘Communism is not dead, sir. It is new and improved. I did a briefing note. Remember? Latin America has commies in their unions, and Judiciary. The Silk Road helps the Chinese to open another front. Russia and China are beavering together in the Arctic and Africa.’
‘At the heart of China is the excellent Chinese Communist Party,’ I said.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘The CCP are the only real democracy going, providing everyone is communist.’
‘Well, the Chinese are doing great, building 50 ports in Africa and dams. They’re spending a fortune, much of it borrowed.’
‘What is remarkable is Chinese long-term thinking, sir. I just question the Pax Americana. I have heard men say the Americans are congenitally divided and short term. By having one Party the Chinese are unified, long term, and, in their way, the natural champions of Peace, providing their sphere of influence is properly negotiated. Americans have war written in their DNA. Their war of independence was a Civil War between you Britons.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘The Americans were treasonable, siding with the French. They refused to pay for an army, which defended them. Greed was at the heart of it. Trump mixes up greed and great. He harks back to when Americans dispensed with loyalty, mobbing and killing those who defended them. That’s betrayal.’
‘There’s all kinds of democracy, One Star. America’s is best.’
‘Americans and Frenchies mistrust Government. Both revolutions killed a lot of people, sir. Both invented poor constitutions. Both have incoherent demographics.’
‘How do you mean?’ ‘It’s about power. Who has it? And what for? In America it was a beanfeast for the ruling classes. Poverty, expropriation of land and huge capital projects, all very profitable. Democracy and its demos are about unity. That’s why it was invented. In America there is little democracy. To enter the Second World War the Japanese and the Germans had to declare war on America to get them to join in. The President facing an election did not want to squander German votes.’
‘How does that work?’
‘Their constitution, party politics, and above all ethnic divisions defy purpose. Chaotic immigration defies togetherness. There are multiple cultures in America. Many remain half asleep because their passions fall outside the system. The USA is so big, its politics is to do scale. Why did they invent Presidents? To have a bigger, better George III? No, they have cynical old men, stooges, and enormous funds. Corruption is inevitable. And only two parties, which hate each other. Debates about trivia like identity are displacement activities.’
‘It is a well-oiled system that serves them well.’
‘Communism is their bugaboo to the point of hatred. We Indians permit communism. Look at Kerala. We’re grown up.’
‘I don’t understand you. Hate is passionate confrontation and should be encouraged. A bit more hate could have stopped Hitler.’
‘If you have two parties that do not talk to one another, let alone agree, bureaucracy takes over, sir, a deep bureaucratic state within the state. We Indians know all about that.’
‘How so, One Star?’
‘Civil servants working out of sight to an undemocratic agenda.’
‘Democracy works,’ I replied. ‘It took the American revolution to blow off the doors of history. America dragged us all into the light of day.’
‘American democracy is anarchy. Do you not see, sir? Two parties knocking ten bells off each other, for short term gain. They are paid to disagree and lie professionally, their politics based on cannon fodder, sweated labour, refugees, no socialism. That says it all.’
‘America is our paymaster.’
‘America is plutocratic. Britain is plutocratic without the wealth. Both are racist, sir.’
‘No, we’re not.’
‘Indians reinvented cricket and made it profitable. The Brits think cricketers hate immigrants. That is racism. In India we saved cricket. We rescued your car industry too.’
‘Much as I love India, you exaggerate,’ I said.
‘All I’m saying sir is that your Americans are imperialists and bloody. They don’t need you to spy for them.’
‘You Indians are late arrivals at the party.’
‘We have hope, we have purpose; we breed. America, Germany do not breed. They import people. In the Middle East, in Yugoslavia, in Southeast Asia, and now Ukraine, America imagines they are sorting out lesser men, undemocratic men, barbarians. They dismantle empires but do nothing for the survivors. Remember Mobutu? And now Islamists are taking over West Africa. To promote their so-called democracy, America prevents reconciliation, which is the absolute precondition to saving the planet.’
‘Oh that! What has that to do with anything?’ I said crossly.
‘Their elite are always on the make. Guns, exploiting immigrants, sexism, corruption, political violence, are their way of life. Equality was a lie. Americans capitalism is based on inequality. If you cannot treat your own people equally you will never treat other countries as equal. The consequences are enormous.’
‘They are the paymasters.’
‘You’ve spent your life trying to get Arabs interested in democracy. But some don’t like it. Religion, sexism and obedience get in the way. The joke is on America, which is not a democracy at all. It is an ethnocracy. It imported cheap labour without principle. Scale and profit were everything. In its DNA is exploitation, slavery, and the pork barrel. From what I’ve read violence was a way of life for British immigrants, from the borders, from the Highlands, and from Ireland. These traits were exploited by succeeding waves of capitalists. The results are stunning if you get rich. But the British industrial revolution taught squalor, misery, injury, death. The Americans went further. From the outset their greed was sharper. They went fishing in Ireland, Russia, Italy, South America, even China. Capital like a wolf greedily followed the weak and needy immigrant.’
‘It’s called the modern world,’ I said.
‘The Jewish lobby promotes its interests as the interests of America. Israel behaves as an American colony. Both America and Israel are founded on the settler mentality. Annexation of land, creeping, unremitting annexation, illegal, immoral, inhumane. America’s so called democracy was similarly shaped by swarms of settlers seizing land, and monetising greed. A capitalism emerged stripped of humanity. Israel learned from its master. It is funded unconditionally, as an American weapon of choice. When Israel oversteps the mark, the American Government pretends innocence. That is what I call the ethnocratic system.’
‘Whatever you call it, it works.’
‘Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed revealed, in extreme form the hatred of US policies which favour Israel. Moderates in the region hid their rage. American narcissism allowed continuous settlements by a defiant Israel.’
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ I said.
‘America thinks Saudi and Israel will serve America’s purpose. But Saudi, which is no friend to the West, demands equality with Israel in military technology, while collaborating with Russia in OPEC and decoupling oil sales from petrodollars.’
‘Ethnic lobbying, deal making and violence undermine American democracy in other ways, One Star continued. Noraid funded terror in Ireland while America pretended otherwise. That was not democratic. No it was ethnocracy at work.’
‘How many Mexicans are there in the USA, sir? Forty million? What is changing America? Death by Fentanyl. By the time China and India declare war on each other, the US will have imported enough Chinese and enough Indians to re-enact their war in prime time in America. Look at American genocide and massacres in the past: not least of Puerto Ricans, of indigenous people and of blacks. The original Homestead Act made violence American, democratic, inadmissible, ineradicable.
...