Palmyra 2015 ~ Let Us Beware (Revised Edition in Prose)
Faith
2015
In 2015, Daesh overran Palmyra. The Curator of that Ancient Site was imprisoned. He withstood them. The world watched, then the destruction started. Millennia, trashed by smelly baggy-panted maniacs, so cowardly, they cover their faces and then convince themselves it is so their non-existent god cannot see their ugliness.
The curator was then beheaded. A gentle person, of great humility, intellect, and understanding.
You have scored a victory. A great victory.
Who are you to question us?!
No one in particular …
Then shut your gob! Where are you from?
It is good to see that you follow Our principles. That you ask questions, rather than making statements.
What are you talking about? You dare to question US? I’ll have you decapitated merely for even daring to speak.
Yes, I know. You do that often. It displeases Us.
The knife is wielded. Grubbed hands full of excreted faeces and nose snot force the Man down, but an even greater force strikes through every sinew, fibre, and blood vessel. The brain seems about to boil.
The knife falls to the ground. Molten metal sizzles in the desert sun, curiously not out of place in the ruined colonnade.
Palmyra is alive. Myriad souls of past lives. A very present unseen Life. Eyes shrouded behind the black. Not the black of Daesh, not the stench of Taliban.
The indescribable brilliance and beauty are reverent, untouchable, unimagineable.
Jihadists slither away like snakes across sand and rock too hot to walk or even stand upon, away nursing their wounds, cursing the ground, cursing each other, slinking without dignity, a mess from their holes dribbling hot and stinking down their unwashed legs, staining the white sand in full view of their victims.
You have gone quiet. Why so?
Don’t speak to me. To any of us. A silent thought, the ability to speak has long departed.
Oh? Why so?
I will speak with whomever I choose.
That is the Sovereign Prerogative of Us,
The Triune Being,
Three in One.
22 August 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
Written 10 June 2015
The image of Palmyra is Courtesy of Google Images
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
