He couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t sure if it was insomnia or the evil that he was seeing all around, that was depriving him of his sleep. After the day had its fill of depleting energies, the expected result was sleep. In his case it was not forth coming.
He shrugs it away and the turns on his left side.
He wasn’t home. He was on one of those mercy seeking mission to the God in heaven, some say he dwells inside man, to ask Him to bless him and make his way prosperous. He was way too tired for sleep not to come. Or maybe he was only tired in the body and his mind was still in overdrive?
‘Geez’ he hissed almost loud enough to wake up the elderly couple in the next room. He was squatting with them so that he would have an early start to that place where the God in heaven was promised to come and receive every telegram of prayer. They were nice, this couple. They had encouraged him to wait on the Lord, that’s the nice way they had put depriving yourself of food and water or anything that might nourish the body. And he had tried. He wasn’t hungry now. He was used to the hunger strike. A few days in the recent past he had gone on a no food diet. He chuckled to himself. No one knew about what went on in his house. That was his business and he liked his privacy. But things were going to get better, he somehow believed that. But that’s not even what kept him awake.
What kept him awake was a lot more disturbing than all these put together. He was sure now, and this was his sleep’s undoing, that the boss at the top was going MAD!
The symptoms were obvious – he was celebrating in the midst of sorrow, he rode his bike on a one way street in the opposite direction, he had a penchant for mis-talking, he praised his psychophants and sent to the gallows anyone who dared to rise objections to his arbitrariness, his dogs were lions with which he locked up perceived threats, real or not!
He could go on and on. But what would that help? Everyone who had any sense whatsoever could see, but yet they all waited for someone to take the first ‘fall’. They waited for anyone to break the coconut with the head, for such had become of the state of his place of ‘refuge’.
The aged had lost ability to hold their audience captive, they had lost the power to use their rethorics to build a compelling dream, their philosophy was dying with them and that faraway look in their eyes, like they were already out of their bodies, was a ‘dead’ giveaway.
The elders loved their comfort zone, they wanted to live out their retirement in peace. They take cruises when they can and when they can’t, either visit their ‘old peoples’ club and have a drink or two deliberating on the many issues that plagued his place of ‘refuge’ or they busied themselves turning up at party after party in the latest expensive aso-ebi and skontolo geles.
The middle aged were, well, too busy getting ready for retirement. Stories they heard of those gone before them left little time to do anything else. Some worked themselves to death, literally. The boss was their contemporary, maybe that was why they were too ‘cuddly’ with him rather than engaging him fire for fire. He was like them in many ways, reaching also for diamonds to store up for retirement. Only thing was the rumour he wasn’t going to retire!
The youth? His lips were sealed. Where they really has hopeless, clueless and useless as the others thought? With their frenzied chase for material things? Their lust for sex? Disregard for authority? Well maybe they had point for that last one. Hmmmm! Only they weren’t doing it for the right reasons. Really they were just their fathers children. Apples never fall far from the tree that bears it.
‘Phew!’ He sighed. What a waste of emotions all these turning of brain-wheels. What he needed was sleep. ‘Sleep, were art thou’ he cried through clenched teeth.
He hoped that the children would offer some hope for his place of ‘refuge’. These children that they were offering as sacrifice to their gods. These children that were now the pawns on their chess board. These children, whose angels he heard had the God in heavens ear, seem to be the ones left to bring respite to his place of ‘refuge’
Was the God of heavens aware of what they had done? Or was he away at that time and was only just coming back to the territory later today when he comes to receive the many telegrams of prayer?
‘Hhhaaa’ small breaths of air escaped his mouth in a yawn. His eyes, heavy with sleep now, drop a tear. He was so lost in his drama to care. He turns on his right hand side, and curls up in a foetal state.
It is morning already as he drifts off to a land of torturous rest, hoping that his meeting with this God of heaven was going to be fruitful.
Sheyhun's Ways 