16th June 2020 - Holly Springs National Park, Mississippi, United States

“I will destroy my enemies by converting them to friends.” - Moses ben Maimon / Maimonides the Jew circa 1204 AD

“Whom art thou mortal?”

Erick wasn't sure if he’d heard the question, but that was a line straight out of comic book!.

If this is what death is like? he wasn’t expecting this.

He hung in seemingly endless gray mist, there was no sky, or ground, as far as he could tell there was no him either, he couldn't see himself.

He felt no pain, only a deep slumbering somnolence, like the moment you go through just before fully waking from sleep.

“Whom art thou mortal?”

The question repeated. Erick did not hear the question, he felt it.

Who was he? How was he here?

He hesitated, where should he start?

He was a failure, He’d died in a airplane falling out of the fucking sky, and it had all started with Josh.

Erik tried to answer, he wanted to, but without a body or a mouth he wasn't sure how.

“Thrice I asketh and done, Whom art thou mortal? Howebeit doth thou come to mine wodde?”

A strange vibration pushed out into the gray world at the words, the somnolence grew heavier, and he began to dream.

Joshua, was his older brother, by three years, he was alway bigger than Erick, faster, stronger, smarter. Trying to keep up with him, was all he could do from the age he could crawl. But the larger age difference meant that Joshua saw him as someone to look after and take care of, rather than as a rival, Erick didn't fear anything when his big brother was around.

They both had few friends.

Their father was an officer assigned to the State Department, which meant postings in far flung bases, outposts and embassies all over the world. Its hard to keep a friend when you only know them for six months. So Joshua and Erik only had each other.

The security of a military perimeter could not contain them, and they regularly sneaked out. They explored the Bazaars and Souq’s of Cairo, In Dehli they ran with the street kids. They Explored the Woods in Ansbach, Germany, In Manus it was the Jungle and running along the Blue Nile in Addis Ababa, and many other places in the world.

Unknown to them at the time the perimeter guards were aware of the kids escapades, and generally they were ‘caught’ sneaking out, if there was any threat outside the base. Their mother worried for them but their parents were generally made aware of their whereabouts and understood they could not keep them locked inside all day.

The boys were fearless adventurers, and the world was their playground, it was a small compensation for the loss of permanent neighborhood, having a gang of friends, joining a baseball team, or having a school prom for that matter. Erik didn't mind, he had his brother and he’d lost his virginity to a beautiful girl called María from Guantánamo in the stables at her fathers ranch, her eyes dancing with laughter and her soft ruby lips breathing fiery passion in his ear as their bodies intertwined under the stars, that night beat any high school prom he’d ever heard of.

The Dream continued, the memories filling him with exultant joy.

Eventually their father was promoted into senior ranks in the Army reaching the rank of Major and they were stationed permanently in El Paso, Texas.

Erik, never wanted to be in the military, he found the life too structured and limiting, and he’d had enough disciple in his life thus far, so he focused on his academics and was accepted into the University of Dallas, against the Major’s wishes of course, it was a bitter fight and he only relented, because at least Joshua, was Army through and through.

Josh had graduated westpoint and joined the infrantry, by the time he was twenty four he’d made it into the 75th Ranger Regiment a Special Operations warfighting unit organized under the United States Army Special Operations Command. after serving two tours of duty in active combat in the middle east.

Erick was on spring break when he left campus and made it home to visit, he made the effort because he knew Josh wasn't due back from his latest tour of duty, for another two weeks, there was always another war to fight.

‘The Major’ likewise was busy, he was away on military exercises and so his mother was alone and lonely.

It was a beautiful spring day, and his mother was out front pruning her roses when he pulled up in a yellow cab.

She’d always had a green thumb and planted her little gardens everywhere they went, she was never despondent at having to start a new one each time, but the permanent home was a godsend for her garden and it bloomed with life.

Her smile was dazzling when she came over to hug him, peppering him with questions about his most recent semester, and sat him down at the dining table while she carried a tea service towards him, though Erik really preferred his coffee, he would drink tea for her.

He always thought she just loved to use the beautiful tea set, it was made of stunning white porcelain glazed with deep jade green patterns of nature. It had been gifted to her by a family from Uzbekistan when she volunteered to help rescuers search for survivors after an earthquake, and it was rumored to be 84 years old at the time, one of the last bits of trade goods, carried west on the silk road from China. It was not incredibly valuable, but was treasured all the same. She rarely used it and brought it out only for special occasions, she did so now for him.

The Dream paused for a moment as if gathering itself to continue.

A knock on the door, Erick got up from the table, and walked a few steps to open the porch screen door.

Two figures stood, there and when the door swung open, it was revealed to be two officers standing in full dress uniform, one of was the base chaplin.

Porcelain shattered across the floor behind him. His mother, knelt her hands and legs scalded in the hot liquid the steam of it rising all around her as her tears mixed with the pooling black tea circling her, as if she was being pulled into a pit of inky darkness. Erik went to her and held her, and she sobbed against him clutching him with desperate strength and scalded red hands.

The startled, officer and chaplain, helpless to do anything but continue to deliver their speech.

“The Colonel of the 75th Army Rangers, has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son, First Lieutenant Joshua Torsten was killed in action in Afghanistan on the 11th July in an explosion, while leading his men on patrol mission, he will be returned home within a week as soon as the Colonel can arrange it. We are very sorry for your loss.”

The dream faltered, Erik felt the stabbing pain of that loss, as if it had just happened, the raw emotional pain slicing through his very being.

The calming gray warmth surrounding him, closed in a little closer, silent and undemanding.

Time passed, and eventually the dream picked up the threads of where they had been shredded and resumed.

Erik had dropped out of university and enlisted into the Army within a month of the funeral.

When he told his parents he got a gruff nod of assent from ‘The Major’ and a frightening chilling stone cold silence from his mother.

Eventually she pleaded with him to apply to WestPoint at least on the basis that it would make up some of the academic gap.

The Major must have pulled some strings, because after completing his basic training, the next six months were spent on exercises and maneuvers, each day tore into his patience, he wanted combat, he wanted blood, he wanted revenge, maybe he would never find his brother’s killers, but someone should pay.

When he graduated West Point military academy, he requested a transfer to a combat branch, Infantry, Armour, Artillery, Aviation he wanted to be in the front line.

he was ordered into the Engineering Corps, and told to accept it or resign his commission. Apparently despite the world being in turmoil, and the US fighting in no less than three separate countries, there was an urgent need to dig ditches and build bridges. ‘The Fucking Major’ had pulled strings again.

The Dream intensified, and it now seemed as if Erik was explaining himself.

I was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland a bloody battlefield filled with stationary, xerox machines and old coffee filters.

My assignment there was working for CERN in their particle physics laboratory, specifically they needed a manager to manage a team of electricians in their maintenance work on the Large Hadron Collider.

This was a European project, but the US had managed to stick its nose under the door, as the scientific results may be of interest to about 2 or 3 people at most back in the states. As a result the US was obliged to supply some funds and some personnel if they wanted to get their geek on, and the Engineering Corps did not disappoint, hence their new Electrical Maintenance Manager, apparently their previous manager had died of an acute case of boredom.

The Europeans of course hated me at first sight, for start they were all civilians, and they knew this was just a political appointment, so the US could wave the flag and say its involved when in reality they did sweet jack shit, and just wanted access to copies of the scientific papers and experiment results.

So they stonewalled me into this shit job, not a personal insult, but still an insult.

To make it worse, in order to cut costs all the members of my team were ‘Immigrant Labor’ As a result I worked with Khalil Karim, Ali Dawla, José Cruz, Ekon Adebayo and so on, not exactly typical Swiss names.

They were from the Middle East, Africa, the South East Asia, anywhere poverty was endemic, and a eclectic mix of Christians, Muslims, Hindi’s and Buddhists.

I highly doubted those were their actual names though, because in their native countries they’re all variations of really common names like John Smith or the like, probably their work papers and ID documents were faked, I didn’t ask questions.

Lucky for me, the joke backfired on the racist bastards, because I actually preferred my new teams company to theirs. After a short the time the team came to understand their new boss wasn't so bad and they warmed to me, Ekon was friendly and outgoing, and Ali managed to get me actual Turkish coffee from time to time, not the weak piss that was available in the office, and I would crack jokes and reminisce about the back streets of Cairo with Khalil, whom I later discovered had a degree in Electrochemical Engineering, which is pretty damn impressive, and here he was working as an basic electrician.

It was hard at first, working with Muslims and remembering that Josh died at the hands of them, well extremist fundamentalists but Muslims all the same, it was stupid sentiment, but I wasn't ready to let go of my hate, or give up on my anger that easily. Besides I'm not too sure If I like Khalil, he seems too quiet and distant even from the other Muslims guys on the team, he’s hiding something, not sure what a Muslim terrorist can do with a bunch of magnets, so I’ll keep my service pistol in my holstered in my apartment, and just watch him, but the safety's staying off.

The Large Hadron Collider was an engineering marvel, its a underground particle accelerator, that basically fires two high energy particle beams, and along the track of the fired particles are cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets, some of them as large as 35 tons, theres about a 130 of those, and 9000 or so smaller magnets that when all used together create a magnetic field strong enough to bend the path of the accelerated particles.

Bend it enough and you end up with a circle, with a circumference of 27km, and thats when the accelerated particle beams meet, traveling close to the speed of light, and smashing into each other causing a higher energy collision of protons while huge detectors observe the results.

Supposedly the science geeks say that observing the results of the collisions is supposed to give them insight to dark matter and anti-matter and oh theres this theory that theres some kind of weakly interacting massive particle, thats supposed be part of the stuff that binds everything together and it makes up 80% of the universe which supposedly nobody has ever seen, or some such bullshit, Honestly you’d think people would notice if 80% of the universe was missing. Look, I'm a engineer worse, I'm a soldier, I deal with what is right in front of me, so I only care about stuff I can see, taste, touch, smell and shoot. Physicists are a bunch of squealing little girls getting all excited about make-believe playtime, until I see proof I officially don't give a damn.

Anyway the teams job is to look after the electrical circuits for all those magnet's, we go around, replacing, tuning, measuring, running diagnostics on all the equipment that amps, converts, or breaks the electrical currents to those magnets, its tedious and boring, we’re in charge of maintaining the equipment on just a small portion of the ring, theres about 10 other teams that do the same. I’d help my team in their work and while I had the theory of what were doing down, they taught me alot about the practical stuff, they in turn appreciated a boss who bothered to understand their job.

Everything was going fine, except for my depression, trying to figure out how I could get into the actual fight, I was considering joining the Goddamn Navy, but figured ‘The Major’ would still be able have me washing dishes in the bottom of some patrol boat in the antarctic. Khalil must have picked up on my mood because he surprised me by inviting me to his home, to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. I’d known previously that this was a celebration of the Ramadan a month of prayer and fasting.

I gladly accepted, but then spent the next couple of days fretting about it, I eventually decided to go, and to leave my service pistol in my room, besides I'm sure its not exactly legal here in Lyon, but did take a small knife and stuck it in my right boot which yeah, wasn't legal either. So at the appointed hour, I went to go meet Mr so called Karim at his home, a run down apartment in a tenement block, on the outskirts of Lyon. Erik frowned, thinking that Kahlil's salary wasn’t great, but it wasn't bad either, he was sure he could probably afford better, he set the odd thought aside and knocked on the door. Khalil opened it, and I gave him the traditional greeting, “Eid sa’id Khalil”

“Eid Mubarak! to you my friend”, a look of surprised pleasure on his face at being greeted in his home tongue. “Come in, come in, please meet my family.

I met his wife Sadiya, pretty woman with a dazzling welcoming smile, and his eldest child his son Yusuf, a mirror image of a younger looking Khalil.

“Thank you for coming Erik, we have all ready to sit down and eat please join us, I hope your brought an appetite with you.” Said Sadiya.

The table was arrayed in the center of their small apartment, with a plethora of dishes all around.

I thanked Sadiya, and sat down, my stomach singing the Rocky theme song, and doing victory laps of joy at the sight.

There was Biryani, a fragrant rice dish layered with succulent pieces of beef, Sheermal a sweet flat bread made with saffron-enhanced milk, which you use to dip into the Curried Korma, a mutton curry filled with aromatic masalas, cashew nuts and rose water. Desert was ksheer khurma, a milk pudding made with vermicelli, milk and dates and a Crème brûlée a delicious French custard desert. Trust me if you're ever invited to celebrate Eid, shut-up and go, you will thank me later.

Everyone sat at the table complimenting the smells in the air, and waiting to begin eating.

“Hana, we’re waiting for you, come eat” Sadiya shouted.

“Sorry Mama, I was just getting more napkins from Amelia next door, we had run out.” she said apologetically as she struggled into the room on a walker, she couldn't have been older than ten years old, a delicately thin, dark haired girl, with a victorious grin on her face, was clutching a handful of paper napkins as she struggled to move her walker through the front door towards the table. I noticed her lips, and fingertips were a bluish tinge and she was breathless. Her father hurriedly got up, and went to her taking her thin frame into his arms.

“benayyteeh, daughter you were supposed to be resting in your room.” He chided softly.

“I know, but I wanted to help Ammaya, she was too busy cooking to go down the hall” she protested.

She was carried to the table and sat in a chair there, as her parents fussed over her, she politely introduced herself.

“Right, lets eat!” Khalil said, trying force more cheer in his voice than he felt at the moment.

Hours later, fully sated with his belly stretching at his waist belt from the glorious meal, he helped Sadiya, Hana and Yusuf clean the table as a way of thanks.

The girls teasing him that they should not pack away the remaining food, as he hadn’t had enough to eat yet, and Erik protesting that he couldn't take another bite no matter how delicious. Sadiya commented that she should let her find him a good wife, as he clearly couldn’t take care of himself with how scrawny he was.

They finally acceded breaking into gales of laughter, an aggrieved and wounded look on him, when he asked what woman would marry such a fat man, if ate like this everyday. He gratefully accepted two steaming cups of coffee from Sadiya, and walked out onto the balcony, where Khalil has snuck off for a smoke.

“You have a beautiful family” Erik remarked handing a cup to his friend.

“I am truly blessed to have them” he agreed, they sat quietly for a few minutes, a comfortable silence before the question they both knew he would ask.

“Hana, how long has she been sick?”

Kahlil paused taking a deep burning pull on the smoke, breathing it out through his nose and throwing the stub away, as if disgusted by it.

“All her life, its a congenital heart defect, she has a leaky aortic valve, it never developed fully. Its not operable. She needs a new heart.”

“We had a good life in Egypt, I earned a good salary we were well to do, had two houses, cars, savings. We were blessed, but when Hana was born… you see the medical hospitals in Egypt, heart donors they are not as common.”

I nodded my head in understanding, there was still a lot of superstition about donating organs, I mean that part of the world their Kings or Pharaohs, made tens of thousands toil for 40 years to build great big fucking pyramids so they could be entombed in them after death, and then have their organs removed and embalmed to preserve them for the next life. Its stupid, but even after 4000 years, there cant be a lot of voluntary organ donors in Egypt, a terrible dark thought occurred when I amended that to, not legal donors.

“We came to Europe, hoping for a new heart, but as immigrants we receive no state aid, and the operation costs 70,000 Euros. I work at the Collider, because the agency that hires us, does not look at papers and documents, in return we are paid less and do not complain. Even with my qualifications, I cannot get a better paying job without someone looking more closely at those documents, after work I drive a taxi for a few hours in the evening, my wife works at the supermarket once Yusuf gets home from school, and someone can watch over Hana. We’ve sold everything, borrowed from friends and family, but we are still short 14,000 Euros and..” Glancing worriedly back at the apartment. “Time is running out.”

Jesus H Christ, this was why I was suspicous, of him, his nervous behaviour and stressfull pre-occupation, I thought he was up to something, he was just worried, and to think I had come into his home, near his family with a hidden knife in my boot. Guilt and shame clung to me.

I patted him gently on the shoulder, and nodded in understanding.

“Don’t worry Kahlil, I will help. How do you say it in your language, Inshallah - God Willing.”

Kahlil bowed his head in thanks, though looking out over the balcony, his breathing a little hoarse what little dignity and pride he had left wouldn’t let him meet my eyes. I pretended not to notice, looking out at the evening sky.

A proud man Khalil, humbled by life, but I saw through his act, he only carries the pretense of pride, because for his daughter he would beg, he would beg on his knees.