Paranoia ✓

X: Rashad - Diaspora (Part 2)

Jaheim and Rashad continued their tour of the small village and stopped at a run-down building with many open windows. Inside the windows, many young children and teenagers sat down on wooly rugs staring up at a man in the center of the room who was speaking and holding a book for the class to see. It looked like the teacher, a male, was reading a story to the class. Yet as Jaheim opened the door and led Rashad into the classroom, he realized that if it was a story the man was telling—then it was a horror story to say the least.

The man spoke multiple passages, almost as if from memory, and showed the leather bound book to the class. The book however was falling apart from such repeated usage. The book contained pictures, many in black and white, of what seemed to be awkward images from afar. One image showed many families in a mass exodus in a desert. Rashad almost believed it to be the story of Moses his mother used to tell him about. He had reheard the story told in school as well by Ms. Reyes back in his now battered home village. Moses was a child of Israel who led his people from the Egyptian Pharaoh's enslavement, with the help of Allah and his angels.

Yet pictures of Moses do not exist and the images had to be pictures—not paintings or drawings. The people in the images were too real to have been filtered through someone's imagination.

The teacher continued in the midst of his lesson. "These were your ancestors, driven away from your home into the wilderness to make room for the displaced Jews after World War Two."

Random bleating emanated from a short distance behind the entrance. It disrupted the rest of what the teacher was saying. Rashad looked back and peered out the door to see a fence in the distance imprisoning multiple sheep and goats inside a pen.

"Behind the pens are farms where we harvest a wild wheat engineered through selective breeding techniques conducted in the factory," Jaheim noted.

Rashad and Jaheim were outside the classroom now, staring at the imprinted animals and Rashad turned to Jaheim to ask, "What was the teacher talking about in there?"

"Our history of displacement," Jaheim sighed as if it was a painful subject. "Many of the Kabish had ancestors who resided in what is now the state of Israel. After World War Two, many of the Jews were displaced out of Europe. There were so many of them, and no Western country was willing to take in a bulk of them. With nowhere left to turn, Jews pressured nations for an area of land so that they could live without the threat of another genocide. Many nations turned to the British Empire, which owned a large amount of land across the globe—including Israel. The nations pushed the British to carve out a country for the Jewish people. Hence they made Israel a country for the displaced Jews. The British however, seemed to forget that people already lived in the nation they were willing to give up to a displaced people. They in turn displaced us and uprooted us from our homes. They threatened us with force and we had no choice but to scatter from our homes."

Jaheim's face twitched at the unpleasant memories running through his head. Then his face soured. "The Westerners have taken our homeland because they were too stubborn to take in a couple of Jews or give up a piece of their Western land to them. Our war is not with the Jewish people, although sometimes they stand in our way. If we must push through them to get to the Westerners then we must do what is called for. It is not their fault a Westerner attempted to kill off their race. Yet the Jews can cause us great difficulties. We try to ignore them the best we can."

Rashad couldn't help but start keeping a list of things these Westerners have done to deserve some retribution. First they killed his mother and sister. Then they allow unborn babies to be ruthlessly killed because they don't want to take care of them. Now they took away our homeland in order to feed it to the displaced Jews, and they kicked us out in the process instead of attempting to share the land. These Westerners are really starting to seem like Satan incarnate—at least according to Jaheim's version of events. Rashad couldn't help countering the information fed to him today with a hope that not all Westerners were that evil. Yet their actions surely did not support his hope.

Jaheim led Rashad around the back of the school and continued up North to find an oddly shaped rectangular building towering above in the distance. The building, however, was not a flat rectangle, but more of a chubby skyscraper. The building was no more than a couple of stories tall, but it was the single man made object that towered above the rest of the village.

As Jaheim led Rashad to the building Jaheim said, "Here are the praying grounds. It's not really a formal mosque, we don't need such luxury to pray to Allah, but many people like to call it so. I prefer to simply call it, the praying grounds. Here the people of the village journey to the farthest part of the village to pray to Allah five times a day, as you may already be accustomed to. Our name, the Kabish, is taken from the holy shrine in Mecca to which millions of Muslims journey each year to worship and pray to Allah. The hajj is part of the five pillars, and something every Muslim should do once in their lives if they are able to do so. With the times we live in, many of our brothers and sisters die before accomplishing this last pillar. Hence we have erected a makeshift Kaaba to allow people the residual experience of journeying to Mecca. We especially made it a point to place the building in the northernmost part of the village."

Jaheim paused to stress his next point. "This building is not to replace the hajj. Nothing can ever replace the significance of Allah's appearance to our forefather Abraham, instructing him to build such a site. Yet it still serves a purpose besides simple prayer. It shows our soldiers what we are dying for. Not for this building, but the entity it signifies. Some other Muslim soldiers from different groups find this blasphemous. Yet they keep their opinions hidden because they know that what we do is crucial to serving Allah."

Rashad noticed some people praying outside the structure and some entered inside. Jaheim explained, "Some of the soldiers refuse to enter inside the Prayer Grounds until the day before they are to embark into battle."

With that Jaheim led Rashad away from the tall structure. The structure seemed to shimmer in the sunlight. It looked to be made of dark obsidian and Rashad couldn't help but marvel at the thing. Sure the structure was simple, but it did resemble the image of the Kaaba he was told growing up. If this was barely a replica of it, then the real Kaaba must be way more enlightening. It made Rashad realize that these soldiers were willing to die for a place they hadn't visited and a God they hadn't seen. Their faith was like a nuclear core powering their service to Allah.

[...]