The square was packed. The crowds came from all tongues and peoples and nations.
There was no room to stand.
The sight is suffocating. The smell of the unwashed bodies, gyrating to the unheard rhythms of adrenaline overflowing it’s banks, filled the air.
It was a festival of a million voices, each armed with the ambition, to our-scream every other voice on this square, on this day. Raw, twisted faces, who left reason at home, to come air their discontent and vote their candidate for amnesty, confronts one in every direction.
It was also a forest of placards. Placards carried in support, more of persons than principles.
The elements wept. Nature has been weeping profusely in our time. One could see why, on this square. The trees of the forest are weeping, as most of them were crucified, that these placards may have life. The ecosystem has been shedding silent tears, ever since. She refused to be consoled. We have been ruthless in our unceasing rape of her, in service to the libidinal voraciousness of our egos.
The placards blared slogans, scribbled in support of one or the other of the men, who are about to die.
Centrally located at the end of this mighty square, towers a tribune. From my position, I could espy the Great judge. He sat regally in the middle. His colonial wig and gown is visible to all. He was the only one authorized to don such royal robes. His acolytes sat in respectable distance, around him. They were clad in black robes. That gave the golden robes of the judge the canvass to sparkle its prominence.
The uproar in the crowd was deafening. The staccatoral inelegance, was controlled. Songs of victory and war dances could be heard clashing with each other and cancelling out each other in this massive square.
On a lower platform, erected on stilts directly below the Tribune, stood the two condemned men.
Their supporters were pinning for their candidates. The placards blared that noisily too.
It is that day of days, on which the rulers of the realm pretend to mercy; while celebrating their predilection to brutalizing savagery.
Every road in the realm, leads to this square on this day. No one is or wants to be left out.
Every estate of the realm is here present. The press. The clergy. The nobles of our realm. All clad in suffocating foppishness, took their reserved places. Each battling to see and be seen. Each battling to outshine the other. Peacocks have nothing on the struts of these guys. The powdered visages, hiding the false faces of smiling executioners, who would commission your decapitation, while singing your praises, were masked by the elegance of their robes. The intrigue and jostle for crumbs of imperial favor, were all present as the nobles with their false smiles sauntered around their reserved area, exchanging staid pleasantries and choreographed affectations, honed by long experience in those grottos of backstabbing and intrigue that has been the imperial court.
Not to be forgotten is that the Masses came too. Surprised?They were too many that nothing could be said individually about them. That has been their place in history. History has been about those individuals, brutal and conniving enough to prominently rape and pillage and enslave the hoi polloi without apologies, and leaving their names tattooed on the asses of the masses, with a megalomanic brazenness, so chilling and devastating, that the masses had nothing to offer than to genuflect in subservient worship of that psychopathology. History has never been about the masses. It has always been about the genocidal Generals we call Great in masochist worship of the devastation their brutalities inflicted on history. It has been about the con-men, who masqueraded as great politicians and statesmen. It has been about the piratical buccaneer, who stole lands and pillaged peoples, under false religious banners masking insatiable greed and bloodthirstiness. It has been about those psychopaths, who told us about their fevered dreams of gods speaking oracles to them, to enslave us to their primitive will to power. It has never been about the unnamed individual, the common men and women of our streets of history. Their plight and pain are lost to history inspite of or hagiographies or anthropologies.
The hoi polloi outnumbered the stones on the pavements, and sands on the seashores on this day. It was their day in the sun. It was a day that they can set down their enslaving yokes, and pretend to be consulted on the affairs of state. And they are not going to let anyone take that pleasure away from them, no matter how fleeting it is. They came in their numbers. They came in truckloads. The square is filled with them. Their imprints is everywhere to be seen; as today one of the scapegoats would be freed to die another day, while the unfortunate one would go to that place of skull. All that was needed was their ayes or nays!
Before I could take all these in, the imperial master of ceremonies, took to the microphone. He called the house to order, and intoned that the people sitting in court, is in session. It was a court of mercy and her prerogatives.
As he stepped down from the ambo, the judge rose. His acolyte rushed to hold up his flowing robe, like one does a bride in her wedding gown. That makes you wonder why men always don female robes, when they are perpetrating official evils.
He sauntered to the pulpit with all the seriousness of a psychopathological undertaker. His face was taut. He surveyed the crowds like the Lord of all that he sees. He stood for a moment to take it all in; like an Olympian god at the height of his glory.
The microphone came on!
As he began to speak, my eyes zoomed to the two condemned men on the lower stage. Each one of them seemed to be a kaleidoscope of faces. The one on the right was all confident, cocky and had an aura of certainty around him. The one on the left seemed reserved but not cowed; with strains of silent stubbornness that does not suffer fools gladly scribbled on his face.
The one of the right had Orange hair on one face and blond hair on the other. He was chubby and looked well fed. Asceticism seemed never to have been around his firmament. Years of crime and helping himself to the public till, ensured that his bulge could challenge the Michelin man to a context of sorts. He looked like a fallen noble. He looked like someone who knows the game as well as the ropes. He oozes a confidence that sends such arrogant signal native to crooks and con-men of the realm.
The one on the left looked lean, like a man, whose diet consisted of locusts and wild honey. Had he been clad in animal skin, I would have mistaken him for John the baptizer; that guy who lost his head to the daughter of an adulteress. His mien is like that of a man, who has no cares in this world. It was like that of man, who could see through the charade. He had this piercing look that pierced through your eyes and gets to your soul in a second, making you scramble to look away. He looked royal in ways that cannot be explained.
The judge began reading the charges.
The bloated Michelin man was accused of being a liar, a cheat, a crook of the first eminence; a venerable ruin, a scoundrel and a moral imbecile, who has never cared about anything in this life, except how to cheat anyone who has the misfortune of coming his way. He has amassed great wealth through crime. Crime paid him. He has merited a place at that Isle of the dead. His name is Badass!
How could someone give his son such a name in the 21st century. I thought to myself? Do such parents not know that names are programmes? Do they not know that names are destinies? Do they not know that if you name your daughter ‘Temptress‘, that you are programming her for a life of unprecedented carnal adventures?
I was still ruminating on this when I heard:
“But he has a chance at amnesty. The choice is yours“ bellowed the judge!
The second guy was called up. I never knew his name until now. The streets know him as “Uncle Jay“
He stands accused of blasphemy. He has been feeding the poor and littering the streets; and teaching the poor to stand against our cherished neo-liberal, neo-feudalism. He is an avowed socialist. He supported those, who don’t want to succumb to our civilizing mission in Palestine. He is palling around with those terrorists. He didn’t start today. He stood for the black people we hated. He stood for the other Semites, whom we used our anti-semitism cudgel to threaten anyone who talks about those “unpeople“, or critiques our stand with the “good Semites“. He has been talking about taking over the government to usher in a Kingdom where Betsy DeVos would be jobless, and school fees free! If fees become free in our schools, who would go to our military? He is destroying the greatest invention of our neoliberalism, which is plaguing our workers with debts before they start their working lives; so that they would spend their entire lives slaving for us. This man wants to set you people free from being our slaves. How can we let him do that?
The choice is yours!
You have two minutes to decide, who among the two criminals we should release, and which one, we should send to the isle of death on that place of skull. Your votes would determine who goes to the oak, or who goes home. You can see that the empire is a citadel of mercy. But we destroy those who seek our destruction.
The people screamed in intoxicating ecstasy at those words, while the judge stepped down!
The Master of ceremonies came to the podium again!
“Which of these men should we release for you on this jubilee in commemoration of the mercifulness of our empire“
“Badass on the right“, a thief‘s thief.
Or
Uncle Jay on the left, the man who wants to do the inglorious job of taking away your privileges as slaves, by asking you to go for your freedom“???
Those for Baaaaaaaarrrrrrrraaaaabbbbaaasssss say “aye“
The thunderous aye that greeted my ears, deafened me. Almost all the placards in the square were swinging in the air, accompanied by a unison of voices screaming aye; before even the MC could finish drawling out that name, like the WBA announcer that MCeed Joshua v Ruiz rematch.
And the MC continued!
Those who want Uncle Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay should say aye…
The whole square seemed to have been commanded to shut up!
It was the silence of the graveyard.
Not even a whimper could be heard!
All of a sudden, a chant started making its way through the crowds!
Give him the oak! Give him the oak! Give him the oak!!
The ripple diffused through the crowd!
The judge called for water to wash his hands.
I realized that I’d just witnessed Pontius Pilate set Barabbass free, as he condemned Jesus to the tree!
I took a look at the Michelin man carried shoulder high by his supporters. That face looked like that of the Orange Buffoon of Washington! But as the crowd came closer, I realized it was Boris Johnson, the pig from Eton!
I wanted to look at the condemned Jesus again, I saw Jeremy Corbyn pulling knives off his back, as the wounds of the backstabbings started bleeding.
That was when I heard the announcement!
“This is the final boarding call, for passengers booked on Lufthansa flight LH 235 to Frankfurt, please proceed to the boarding gate.
I stood up. And marched to the gate. I looked at my watch and realized that I have been sleeping for 20 minutes. I just landed.
