Bashar al-Assad sat in the ornate wood chair that was flecked with small semi-precious gems in the parlor of one of his palace suites in Damascus. Bashar was wearing casual beige slacks and a white shirt that was not tucked in. It appeared like he had stopped mid-stream while dressing to sit by the large blue land-line telephone that sat on the oak table in front of him. The table was a perfect square, and had identical chairs one each side, all empty but for Bashar’s.
Bashar was young and fit but had a lot on his plate. He often felt like he was living in the shadow of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who was President of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. Bashar was born in 1965, and so was young in 2000 when he became President of Syria after the death of his father. Bashar did not want to be President. This privilege was meant for his older brother, Basil al-Assad. But Basil died in an automobile accident in 1994. Upon the death of his father, the Syrian Parliament quicky lowered the minimum age for the Office of Syrian President to 34 to accommodate the election of Bashar, who ran unopposed.
Bashar thought about his education. He was a doctor, having completed his medical degree at the University of Damascus, and his specialty in ophthalmology in London hospitals. Bashar spoke fluent French, English, Arabic and Farsi. Farsi was the language of Iran. And at the moment he was waiting for a call from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. Bashar knew why Mahmoud was calling him. Mahmoud believed that the tide was shifting in the favor of Iran and Syria in world affairs, and wanted to make certain that Syria remained firmly on the Iranian mission of destroying Israel and preserving Hezbollah. Bashar hated the conversations with Mahmoud. Mahmoud never listened. Mahmoud preferred to speak and hear himself speak, like he was on some juggernaut that could not and should not be stopped. Mahmoud made Bashar nervous.
The telephone rang.
To Be Continued.
A recording was made of Barbara and Jenna Bush having a conversation in one of the private dining rooms of the White House. The recording was made by the United States Secret Service to gather information about the intentions of the President’s two daughters. These recordings are typically listened to, a transcript made, and then the recording is destroyed. This one, though, has ended up in the hands of Parodical. Click the link below to listen to Barbara and Jenna Bush talking about their summer vacation.
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The Iranian who called himself Hassa was wearing a grey business suit with a white shirt. He had a black belt and black leather shoes and carried a brown leather zippered portfolio. Hassa was leaning on the door jamb that was the main entrance to the manufacturing floor of the weapons plant on the outskirts of Grozny in Chechnya, a Russian Republic. Greigor was wearing dark brown canvas overalls with a tool belt attached to his waist. Greigor was the floor manager, but the floor at this moment was quiet given the 6:00 AM time that Hassa had requested for the meeting.
“The difficulty is the ball bearings,” said Griegor.
“The ball bearings are essential. Without them, I am not interested in your Kaytushas,” said Hassa.
“My Kaytushas? My Kaytushas? These are the only Kaytushas. This is where we made them for the war against the Germans,” said Greigor, taking offense to the Iranian who spoke perfect Russian.
“Yes,” said Hassa.
“Kaytusha comes from an old Russian wartime song with the same name. It is about a girl named Kaytusha who longs for her lover who is away at war,” said Greigor.
“It has romantic origins,” said Hassa.
“We are the only real supplier of Kaytushas. We have a history with them,” said Griegor.
“They are simple rockets. I can get them from the North Koreans. I can even make them ourselves. But quite frankly, it would be easiest for all concerned to have you do it,” said Hassa.
“Well, the ball bearings are a problem. The Kaytusha with ball bearings is not how it was intended. I don’t like it,” said Greigor.
“We are not about to discuss the ethics of warfare now are we? You are in the business of making Kaytushas and other things for war and I hardly think we should discuss the ethics of ball bearings,” said Hassa with a smile.
“Yes, well, can you get the ball bearings?” asked Greigor.
“Oddly, there is a ball bearing manufacturing plant in Israel. I have a German company that has purchased several containers of bearings which has already been shipped. Then we would have to get it from Germany to here,” said Hassa.
“Why don’t we make the Kaytushas and deliver them to you with a removable nose so that you can simply stock them with the ball bearings?” asked Greigor.
“Because I do not wish to have my fingerprints on the operation. I want them shipped from here to Syria where they will then be exported to various places. So start making them and expect the ball bearings to arrive within a few weeks,” said Hassa.
“I was told you want one hundred thousand rockets. That is a big order,” said Greigor.
“They have already been paid for,” said Hassa.
“That will take time,” said Greigor.
“That is OK. Move quickly, but do not compromise the integrity of the Kaytushas. I want a child to be able to fire them without trouble. I need the Kaytushas to be, how do Americans say it, ‘idiot-proof.’ They should be able to be mishandled and dropped and rolled without requiring repair or without setting them off,” said Hassa.
“Yes. OK,” said Greigor.
“And when delivered to Syria, I shall make certain you personally are well compensated. I will take care of you with money to make certain you keep your eyes on this order,” said Hassa.
“Thank you. I will,” said Greigor.
Hassa smiled, turned and walked out the door. Greigor did not like the Iranian. He was smart, confident and clearly had his hands on several powerful buttons. Greigor tried not to think of his brother-in-law, Ben, who lived in Tel Aviv. His brother-in-law had married Greigor’s sister, Mona, who was killed in one of several bombing raids in Grozny. Ben was half Jewish, and after the death of Mona, he moved to Israel. Greigor had not seen or spoken to Ben in six years.
Greigor looked at his watch. It was 6:32 AM. He yawned and decided to go to his office and lie down for a nap until the floor workers arrived at 9:00 AM. It was going to be a big day to gear up for the manufacture of one hundred thousand Kaytusha rockets.
Amrak Heesan sat at a wood table eating oats soaked in goat’s milk. His son, Mokar, ten years old, sat with him eating a banana. The house was made of stone and had three rooms, the living area which contained all the kitchen equipment and a television set, as well as a bedroom and a bathroom. The house was on a hill in the Lebanese town of Khiam near the Lebanese border with the Golan Heights. Amrak’s wife, Seffe, had left Khiam two days before with Mokar’s sister, Juha. Juha was only four, so Seffe did not wish to wait for the Israelis to come. She was scared and wanted to find a safe haven for her daughter and herself, and she felt bad to leave Mokar behind. But Amrak was insistent. “Mokar was ten years old. He was old enough to hold a rocket. He must stay and fight,” said Amrak to his wife Seffe. So Seffe departed only with Juha in their green 1988 Toyota Celica. Seffee did not know where they were going to go. She did not wish to go to Syria. She had heard that those who went to Syria never came back. She wanted to stay in Lebanon, maybe close to the sea. Seffe told Amrak before she left that she would drive with Juha toward Tyre or Sidon and try to find one of her sisters. Amrak suggested further north; but further north was unfriendly to Shia, so she preferred to stay in the south.
Mokar looked at the battery-operated clock on the wall. It was four minutes to nine in the morning.
“It is almost time,” said Mokar.
“There is no reason to rush. There is plenty of time,” said Amrak to his son as he played with his oats, not really hungry.
Amrak had been suffering from stomach pains for the past few days, and they had become worse this morning. The departure of his wife and beautiful four-year old daughter, Juha, with jet black hair and light brown eyes, was like an ending to him. He did not think it would ever come to this. This war that was now raging. Of course, the whole town of Khiam had become a storage facility for weapons, including the nearly thousand Kaytusha rockets that came in weekly over the last five years by truck on roads from Syria.
Kaytushas were old Soviet rockets, and though they were tested every now and then, no one really knew if they were reliable. If you walked down the dirt and stone roads of Khiam on any day, you would not see one rocket except for maybe a pickup truck now and then with a pile of them in the back. But walk into anyone’s home in Khiam, and the entire living space was piled with Kaytushas. Everyone had a quota. Amrak’s house was big enough to hold fifty Kaytushas, and what was left of that fifty was lying behind where Mokar sat at the table eating his banana.
So with all the rockets piling up in the house, Amrak found it amusing that he never thought it would come to this. How could he think otherwise. The Kaytushas had become so much apart of everyone’s home, that they were used for all sorts of purposes. Lying five of them next to each other was a popular support for mattresses. Some had rigged them with electrical cords, placing a light bulb at the top and then a shade hanging on the bulb. This had become a popular lamp, so much so that a local electrician had made a sizeable business at retro-fitting the Kaytushas as standing lamps. Though this was frowned upon by the local authorities, even they had to laugh at the ingenuity of the Khiam residents.
This had all changed in the last two weeks. All the lamped Kaytushas had been reclaimed as rockets. And to the surprise of everyone, the Kaytushas were not only reliable, they all seemed to work as described by the Syrian engineers who came to instruct locals in how to fire them.
“I want to do it, Papa. Can we go now?” asked Mokar.
“I am not finished with my oats,” said Amrak.
This was to be Mokar’s first time firing a Kaytusha. In fact, two weeks ago was Amrak’s first time firing a Kaytusha. It was frightening how much noise the rocket made when it took off from the tripod stand. The air rumbled, hurting the ears. And one looked at the fire blast with caution as it got very bright, sending off sparks in all directions. But the rockets worked. They went up in into the air, heading for Israel like a javelin. It was a sight to see. At first, it had made all the Khiam men proud to se the rockets head up into the clouds. But the pride had been replaced with fear. The excitement was being passed down to the next generation.
Mokar was anxious and excited. He got up from the table and went over to the pile of Kaytushas behind him, which were piled up against the stone wall and held in place by four cinder blocks lying on the floor.
“Can I at least take one outside and get it ready?” asked Mokar.
“Yes. Yes. OK,” said Amrak.
Mokar picked up one of the Kaytushas. It was heavy for a ten-year old. He had to drag it, which is what he did, out the front wood door into the bright morning Lebanese sun.
Amrak’s stomach pain grew worse. He held his stomach. It disturbed Amrak that his son so easily could live with these rockets. Mokar picked them up and moved them around like a large toy. Amrak had always touched them with caution, never fully trusting them, never feeling comfortable. But Mokar had spent half his life with these rockets. The Kaytushas were part of his life; they had become part of his son’s culture.
The pain got worse. Amrak stood and walked to the window where he watched his son set up the Kaytusha outside the front of his house. He saw other sons setting up other rockets at other houses in the town of Khiam. All the sons were moving with excitement. And all the fathers watched from their living room windows.
Wi-fi, wi-max, bluetooth, cell transmissions, satellite transmissions, ham radio packets, sonar, radar, cosmic rays, gamma rays and of course brainwaves all converged in one brief moment, intersecting with a few seconds of brilliant energy on the computer server that hosts the perezhilton.com website. And for that brief moment, the mind auras of Suri Cruise and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt drifted through each other like two passing clouds. The moment, that precious ephemeral moment that characterizes lovers glancing at each other from two passing trains going in opposite directions, two lovers that never meet but know that they, if circumstance permitted, would be lovers – that moment, that brief moment occurred oddly in the microprocessers of the Dell server that hosts perezhilton.com.
Perez Hilton himself was sharp enough to catch it, and he was good enough to provide us with an exclusive transcript of the conversation that transpired between Suri Cruise and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. Though difficult to fathom that infants can communicate with the articulation relected in the following transcript, it is the opinion of Perez Hilton, a recognized authority on the gene pools of celebrities, that Suri and Shiloh are lovers to be, but not yet realized, if ever. The conversation was not in English, the language foreign to us, but Perez was able to translate it into something intelligible. Perez Hilton is familiar with the chaotic and encrypted linguistics of the Tom-Katie Cruise AND Brad-Angelina Jolie-Pitt brain-stream, and so was able to convert what others would consider infant gibberish into a readable conversation. Here is the translated transcript:
Suri: Lost.
Shiloh: Are you?
Suri: Yes.
Shiloh: Where would you be if not lost?
Suri: Safe. I would be safe.
Shiloh: You feel danger?
Suri: What is danger?
Shiloh: I don’t know.
Suri: You feel safe?
Shiloh: A man takes care of me. Occasionally a woman. The big soft things I suck on don’t work.
Suri: Many women come and go. Never the same one. No big soft things for me to suck on.
Shiloh: This is why you do not feel safe?
Suri: I don’t know.
Shiloh: Come with me.
Suri: I feel like … I feel like I want to.
Shiloh: The woman. The woman who cares for me. The one with the big soft things. She has plenty of others she cares for too. I hear them. They make noise. She could care for you.
Suri: Yes. Would that make me safe?
Shiloh: I don’t know.
Suri: Fear. Do you feel it?
Shiloh: Not sure. I think so. What is fear?
Suri: There is a man. He seems to be in control. He comes sometimes. He tells everyone what to do. He yells at all the women. He sticks a rubber thing in my mouth. He smiles at me and sticks that rubber thing in my mouth.
Shiloh: The woman with the big soft things, the one who cares for the others. She is in control. She is in control of things. She tells the man what to do. The man does what the woman with the big soft things tells him what to do.
Suri: I am confused.
Shiloh: Yes. So am I.
Suri: I am feeling it is about to end.
Shiloh: What?
Suri: You. You are growing fainter.
Shiloh: Yes. I see that.
Suri: Will it continue?
Shiloh: I don’t know.
Suri: I want you to stop. Stop growing faint.
Shiloh: I can’t stop it. I do not know why it is.
Suri: Will we ever? Again?
Shiloh: I’m scared. I think I know what this fear is.
Suri: I feel it too. I don’t want to be alone.
Shiloh: Until…
Suri: Until…
The conversation ended at that point. In the opinion of Perez Hilton, Suri and Shiloh will become lovers in this life or in some other life. May it be so.
Parodical thanks Perez Hilton for translating the infant gibberish and for providing us with an exclusive transcript of the conversation between Suri Cruise and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.
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