The Weekly Screed (#710)

Overheard at an ISIS barbecue
by David Benjamin

SOMEWHERE IN SYRIA — A trio of Islamists — Ahmed, Mohammed and Kurlijo — gathered round a campfire, a Christian baby roasting on a spit.

One says, “Ah, I love the smell of barbecued infidel in the morning.”

“It’s night time, Mo,” replies Ahmed.

“Hey, look,” says Kurli. “It says on my iPad that America is spoiling for a big-ass ground war against us, right here. They’re ready for a whole new quagmire.”

Mo: “That would be great. Think of it. We get to kill Americans, break the hearts of their moms, break up American marriages, orphan American kids and  devastate their families. And the beauty part: We don’t have to go anywhere or spend any money. No air fares, no phony passports, no huge MasterCard bills for explosives and blasting caps at Home Depot. We just squat here, pick off redneck kids from Oklahoma and Utah, behead the occasional reporter and then, like Geronimo and the Apaches, we melt into the desert. Allahu Akbar, baby!”

Ahmed: “I don’t get it. They’re safe, across a whole ocean, thousands of miles away. All their own Muslims are Westernized, petty bourgeois, tamer than hamsters and under surveillance by Neighborhood Watch. Why in Allah’s name would they want to ship their children over here to get killed, maimed and screwed-up for life with PTSD. Haven’t they seen American Sniper?”

Mo: “Americans? Man, they’re all crazy. But the craziest of ‘em all belong to this big political party. Old white men who get some sort of sick thrill rounding up teenagers from small towns and urban ghettos, duding them up in camouflage costumes and shipping them off to die pointlessly in Third World hellholes like this miserable slab of barren ground right here. Yo, Ahmed! Keep the spit turning.”

Kurli: “So, you’re saying there’s a permanent war party in America?”

Mo: “Yeah, they call themselves lots of things. Conservatives. Patriots. Republicans. Chicken hawks. But it all comes down to flag-waving, saber-rattling and sacrificing the young for the sake of getting a few Golden Agers re-elected.”

Ahmed and Kurlijo shake their heads in wonder at the absurdity of American militarism. Mo points at Kurli and says, “Hey, what’s that you’re sitting on.”

Kurli: “What? Oh, that’s my Koran.”

Mo: “Our most sacred book? The reason we’re out here, freezing our tuchises, slaughtering Yazidis and Shiites and harmless Jews? We massacre whole villages for looking cross-eyed at the Koran. And you’re using it as a sit-upon?”

Kurli: “Hey, lighten up, Mo. The ground is cold.”

Mo: “You should be reading the Koran, not using it to keep your ass warm.”

Kurli: “So, Mr. holier-than-thou. You’re saying you can read?”

Mo: “Well, not exactly. My imam says education is against Allah.”

Ahmed: “The imam’s right. Who reads? We live — happily ignorant — in a tribal, oral, virulently anti-intellectual culture that has devolved tragically from the scientific progressivism of our Ottoman forbears.”

Kurli: “You’re making us sound like Southern Baptists.”

Ahmed: “Hey, if the sandal fits, man. We’re functionally illiterate, unemployed, politically reactionary, chronically pissed off and we love guns. And all we really know from sacred scripture is what we hear out of wild-eyed preachers who think the Great Satan is on the march and the world is coming to an end. We could all close our eyes and imagine we’re in Mississippi.”

Kurli: “What’s Mississippi?”

Mo: “Hey, please, man. Do me a favor. Get off your Koran already.”

Kurli finally relents. Sitting on the cold ground, he fans the Koran and says, “I can stare at this book for a year and not understand a word. But maybe that’s the secret of jihad. Maybe what keeps us fighting is what not what we know, but what we don’t know about Islam. Let’s face it. When you’re talkin’ scripture, most of us couldn’t tell the difference between Mohammed and, say, Matt Damon.”

Ahmed: “Hey, Matt Damon I know. I love that guy. Even if he is an infidel. I mean. He’s macho but he’s also sensitive, y’know?”

Kurli: “Yeah, those ‘Bourne’ movies were great.

Mo: “Except for the last one. But that wasn’t Matt Damon.”

Ahmed: “No, it was that Chris Pine guy. The one from the Star Trek remake.”

Mo: “Hey, now there’s something I could do all day — watch Star Trek flicks. Spock. Uhura. Captain Kirk! Wouldn’t it be a gas, killing Americans with phaser guns? Zap! Zip! Bwee! Or better yet, just stun ‘em. And then slice off their heads!”

Ahmed: “I’d just as soon kill ‘em outright. I know too many guys got tennis elbow from sawing off the heads of missionaries. The pain is excruciating.”

Kurli: “That’s the thing I can’t figure out. They know we like to behead outsiders, right? They know we’re penniless sadists with nothing to lose. They know this whole place is just rocks, camels, the occasional sandstorm, and homely ignorant women cloaked in tent-canvas from head to toe. Why do they keep coming? Why do they fight an enemy who runs away and hides until they give up and leave, even if it takes a hundred years? Why do they send these nice young kids for us to frustrate them, blow them up, cut them to ribbons, screw with their minds and turn them into homeless drunks and cripples living out of garbage cans?”

Ahmed: “ Funny, isn’t it? Now and then, we do a suicide bombing in the neighborhood. Or we mimic some white-guy hero from Western history, like Henry VIII or Robespierre, and we hack off a few heads. Meanwhile, for the sake of political gamesmanship, they sacrifice thousands of their own children in an unnecessary war on the wrong side of the world. And it’s us they call barbarians?”

Kurli: “Go figure.”

Mo: “Hey, the Christian is medium-rare. You want me to carve?”