-The Inquisition- -CND-

In repose in the wadi, he sat lotus in the shadow of a shale mountain. He focused his optics on Orion, adjusting the lenses until the astigmatized starlight pinpricked. Voices schemed and plotted into his ears . . . He watched men tinted green silently cataloging bodies . . . they communicated with lasers and whispers on radios . . . collecting evidence and DNA to bring back to the base within the base . . . Quartered Cronenberg abstractions littered the creek-bed . . . The smell of decomposition pervaded his senses, each inhalation a maranasati . . . He muttered into the radio: ‘This body of mine, too, is of the same nature as that body, is going to be like that body, and has not got past the condition of becoming like that body.’

The soldiers listened without reaction and continued to collect evidence; fingerprints were uploaded to the database, DNA samples were taken and preserved in plastic, mouths were cotton swabbed, fingers were dactylectomized, heads were scalped . . .

The war was ending; Duke’s inquisitions, in the base within the base, were ending. He didn’t always leave Bagram with the soldiers, but this was the last mission before his compound would be decommissioned, so he indulged in the spectacle of the accused’s acquisition; he preferred to wait in his compound, patiently, for them to bring him back a man for an interrogation . . . a man barefooted and bearded, with a martyr’s arrogance . . . sick with pride and vanity that Duke would test against an onslaught of increasingly desperate avenues towards The Truth . . . a truth he hasn’t yet solidified . . . After twenty years he still needed more time. Bagram was being stripped for parts, ravaged . . . but the razor-wire on the high fences surrounding his secret compound still gleamed in the sun . . . He had dreams of dragging himself naked up a wall of razor-wire, in pursuit of something opaque and magnetic . . .

. . . .

Among the dismembered and bloated bodies squatted a frail and furtive old man. They had watched him on the ISR feeds for three days and two nights following the bombing runs in the valley. He hadn’t moved . . . He had survived the onslaught of chain-guns and Hellfires, and waited prostrate amongst the rotting corpses in meditation. The soldiers had zip-tied his wrists together behind his back, and tied a blindfold over his eyes.
Duke rose and approached him. The air was heavy with the rank odor of decay . . . Duke felt as if he were moving through a fog . . . He squatted before the old man while raising his NODs, and let his eyes slowly adjust to the dim moonlight.

‘Salam day wee par ta.’

‘Ao salam day wee par ta.’

‘Staso num saa di?’

‘Muhammad Mahmad’

‘Dir kha. Mula Muhammad, aya mog Englesi khbri wakro?’

‘As you wish.’

‘We are going to have a conversation, Mullah Muhammad, privately. I’ve found that true understanding requires total privacy, somewhere where we can speak and act without inhibition . . . where we can be unrestrained in our search for the truth. I am going to take you to a place without restraints . . .’

. . . .

Duke took Muhammad by the arm and led him to the extraction point two kilometers up the wadi. They followed the distant blinking infrared strobe of the point-man as it disappeared and re-emerged on the valley’s winding path.

They came to a clearing and soon heard the engines of the Chinooks rolling and echoing off the mountains. They created a Doppler effect that moved inward from all directions, converging and filling the silence . . . Duke placed his hand on Muhammad’s back and felt his heart beating slowly and out of sync with the increasingly rapid thumping of the approaching rotors . . . Soon they were enveloped in a cloud of dust and stinging rocks. They hurried into the open maws of the machines . . .

. . . .

The birds touched down at Bagram and rolled along the tarmac. The Malinois across from Duke stared at Muhammad and panted, his titanium canines glinted behind his muzzle.

Duke left the bird with Muhammad, and placed him in a black van that was waiting for them at the air-strip. He watched through tinted windows as the soldiers walked by with unbuckled helmets and loosely held weapons, past cargo planes being loaded with the vestiges of a twenty-year war . . . and he understood this was how it was ending . . . without anything resolved or concluded . . . and he turned in his seat to face the still blindfolded Muhammad . . . The wheels of the van began to roll and crunch on the asphalt, towards the high fences of Duke’s secret compound.

. . . .

Muhammad’s zip-ties were cut, and his blindfold was removed. He brushed away the sand at the corners of his eyes and averted his gaze from the bright fluorescent lights. He blinked at the ground and saw Duke’s dusty boots. He was standing very close to Muhammad, who began to sense the violence that he was capable of . . . Muhammad exhaled, and again wiped at his eyes to clear the dust.

‘Let me help you with that, Mullah Muhammad,’ said Duke before he knocked the old man to the floor with a vicious slap. He straddled him and pulled a rag from his back pocket and placed it over Muhammad’s face and pinned his head to the floor by the throat.

‘Twenty years and I still don’t have a clear answer . . . I am out of time and losing hope, Muhammad. I am leaving soon; I need you to be honest with me . . . help me to understand.’ He grabbed a gallon of water off the floor and uncapped it. ‘Tell me what the Qur’an says about suffering. Why have you endured so much? Do you find pleasure in martyrdom? Is it vanity?’

He began pouring the water onto Muhammad’s face and felt him writhing under his hips. Ten years ago, this would have still aroused him . . . he’s grown callus . . . He stopped pouring the water. Muhammad coughed and prayed. As Duke lifted the rag from Muhammad’s face, he gently wiped it to remove the traces of dust from his eyes and lips . . . He leaned in until his nose touched Muhammad’s, and closed his eyes . . . he caressed Muhammad’s face and asked him again about suffering . . .

‘Suffering,’ said Muhammad, ‘is a mirror that reveals what we are. Suffering punctures our illusions and makes space for God. There is no intimacy without suffering . . . love and pain are inseparable . . . Ishq sets your heart ablaze and removes all darkness . . . Myself must annihilate to merge with my Beloved . . . I have lived in a perpetual absence from the presence of The Lord . . . A total separation . . . I see signs of Him everywhere, but have never fully grasped His face . . . Ishq is a sacred dissatisfaction. Suffering is a demonstration of love and fear of God . . .’

Duke began to apply pressure to Muhammad’s head. He pressed his thumbs into Muhammad’s eyes and began to squeeze . . . They both began murmuring in Pashto as Duke pressed harder into his eyes and felt his thumbs sinking deeper . . . Blood began to pour down Muhammad’s cheeks as Duke pressed his thumbs up to his palms into Muhammad’s eye-sockets . . . He removed his hands slowly, stood up, and drank some water from the plastic jug. Duke sat down in his metal chair and watched Muhammad clutching his face and rolling on the ground screaming. He savored each moment . . . inhaling and exhaling and focusing on the movement of his breath . . . This was his last inquisition. He watched him for two hours without speaking or moving from his chair.

‘Suffering,’ said Duke, ‘is our fundamental existential condition, it is saṃsāra. Suffering is endless because our desire is endless; it is a craving that leads to renewed existence . . . We are trapped in the same fire, Muhammad . . . I’ve done this thousands of times, and this is the last . . . Your delusions are inexhaustible. Dharma gates are limitless . . . My path is of the maranasati . . . If death could come in an instant, like lightning, to Supreme Buddhas, what could be said of me? I have contemplated impermanence for decades . . . with every breath . . . I’ve seen bodies bloated, devoured, reduced to bones and dust . . . I am disenchanted. I know the body is not the Self. Of all contemplations, mindfulness of death is supreme. If this was your last breath, would you die awake?’

‘If this was my last breath, I would die with a sigh of reunion,’ said Muhammad. ‘Death is the long-awaited return into the embrace of my Beloved. I am already dead in life. Nothing can be more painful. I’ve crossed life like a bridge, and built nothing . . .’ Muhammad got to his knees before Duke, and clutched at his legs. ‘Kill me and lift the veil . . .’

Duke began pouring gasoline onto Muhammad’s head and onto his own lap. They inhaled it . . . The gasoline filled the room up to their ankles . . . Muhammad held tightly to Duke's legs and began raving in ecstatic bursts of Sufi poetry. Duke picked up a butane torch and sat like a lotus in the pool of gasoline. Muhammad had gone quiet and pale from the fumes . . .

Duke focused on his breath. He imagined flowers blossoming and decaying with each inhalation . . . He had never felt closer to The Truth.

-The End-

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Pub: 03 May 2025 06:53 UTC

Edit: 06 May 2025 04:26 UTC

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