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Epic - Part III - Chapter 1

The Secret

Dr Ibrahim Moosa Issa was a troubled man. And not just because of his name, which, as many people of faith reminded him, constituted a nomenclature and lineage of biblical proportions -- something he had to Wikipedia himself to discover what they were talking about. He was troubled, you see, because he wasn't a doctor at all, and because of something much more troubling.

Abraham Moses Jesus -- anglicized, latinized or romanized -- depending on how or where he was. Again, he had Googled a million times just to get this straight.

"Your name is sacred, my boy," his father, Professor Yousuf Yaqoub Yahya of the Grand Inter-faith University of Ancient Studies based in downtown Los Angeles, often use to tease the young Ibrahim. Ironically, Prof Yahya was not a real Professor either.

"I know dad, just like yours." Ibrahim always reminded his dad of his own name's profundity.

"Great religious significance, your name, with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, you understand." He could almost lip-sync his dad.

Several Hollywood movie moguls had tried and failed to re-brand his father as Professor Joe Jake Johnny because even the West-Coast-friendly Joseph Jacob John sounded too much like a day-time televangelist forgetting to bring his cue cards.

Yes, they were a very special family.

A family with deep roots and a terrible secret.

"You must guard what I've just told you with your life, my son." Yahya had demanded an oath from young Ibrahim as the frail professor rested on his deathbed.

Ibrahim Moosa Issa, upon hearing it, of course, was stunned beyond his wildest imagination and had to be administered nerve stabilizing substances at regular intervals, for a period of 3 years.

And now, 20 years later, Dr Issa watched with pain and horror at what was unfolding right before his eyes.

I must be dreaming. The future of humanity depended on him and him alone.

The self fulfilling prophecy was, to put it mildly, self-prophesying itself.

This isn't happening. He tried to calm his nerves.

The secret must be kept a secret. Dr Ibrahim Moosa Issa swore.

At any cost.



To be continued...

Labels: epic

Epic - Part II - Chapter 2

The Rescue

"Is that what I think it is?!" Cried Fatima Buritto and jumped out of her hammock. Too bad it was her first time in a hammock and noone had really told her that one cannot actually jump out of a hammock.

She rolled and twisted helplessly. Fine nylon strings stretched and tightened with each attempt of hers to break loose -- like a bratty 8 year-old kindergarten toddler trying to open her cellophane-wrapped, saccharine-infested throatkiller candy.

George Balooney watched with a slightly amused smile as Buritto lay trapped in a nylon cobwebbed contraption that was now beginning to resemble a Merchant Ivory low-budget prop cleverly disguised to mimic a Ridley Scott production refuse.

No, perhaps a Scorcese rehearsal junk, hahaha, Balooney corrected himself and chuckled. But still, Ismail and James were never shy of using family members as cast or crew, either!! Hahaha!!

He laughed at his own little private joke, even when he knew he was the only one who would get it.

"Hey, don't just sit there!" Pleaded Buritto, now a complete mess, dangling like a Keith Floyd maincourse: layers of seasoned, tender-loin parchments stuffed with fresh garden veggies and chef's very own exotic garnishing, tied beautifully with twine and all set to be skewered or baked to perfection.

Yuck! Balooney was never a big fan of English cuisine, the very term he considered an oxymoron anyway, though apparently Buritto's entire family had their privileged sons and daughters hogging on nothing but yorkshire puddings and marmalade soaked muffins.

Buritto decided it was best to try and regain her composure as elegantly as possible. Surely the heiress to a fortune can't possibly ignore the possibility of some desperate Sunset Boulevard or Beverly Hills paparazzi hiding in Haleji Lake bushes trying to get a picture or two? Oh, the press! The press! And what with Balooney being an icon and all.

She struggled nonchalantly. Balooney couldn't watch anymore and finally rescued her by untwisting the hammock, whacking her out of it, letting her land on the recliner he'd placed under the hammock, just in case.

"My hero!", said Buritto. She was going to ask her three maidservants to take down that thing and burn it until not a fibre of nylon saw the light of another day.

Such is the wrath of us Burittos. She resolved, completely satisfied with her vengeance plan. Equally and secretly swooned at how gallantly Balooney had rescued her.

"What made you jump out of the hammock anyway?" asked Balooney, sipping a tall glass of sweet yogurt and milk Lussie cocktail as the maidservants liked to call it. Still, he always spiked it generously with an Absolut straight out of the Burittos' well stocked bar.

"Oh yes, Gosh!" Buritto suddenly remembered, sat upright on the recliner, and pointed her finger towards what she'd seen. "Can you see?"

Balooney, leaning back on his recliner comfortably, groaned and followed his eyes.

Something at a distance, on the Haleji Lake. He squinted to focus.

What the...?

Then like a bolt of lightening, Balooney rose up straight. This can't be...!

The Lussie cocktail glass dropped, crashing on the limestone pavement.

Oh my sweet lord... Balooney felt his heart stop. This is impossible!


To be continued...

Labels: epic

Epic - Part II - Chapter 1

Romantic Republic

"The problem with being an atheist is, my dear," he flicked the cigarette expertly like Eastwood never did, then quickly ducked in vain as the butt boomeranged back towards him along the evening wind's wild, strong gust... "that it is really your own problem." He cursed silently and brushed the smoldering remains off his Armani. Damn, he thought, will have to get it drycleaned yet again this week.

Her hair blew in the wind, as gracefully as a runway model picks herself up after a nasty fall because the oh-so-mighty Bhatti was hellbent on her wearing 6-inch high heels with a dress that was obviously designed by Mullah Omar's tailor. No, bad analogy. It was more like Queen Rania spraining her ankle while stooping out of a Karachi rickshaw.

"Yes, and Rome wasn't built in a day." She replied coldly. He considered the relevance of her statement for a long time, then shrugged it off. Apparently Larkana was.

Fatima Burrito, however, had her mind elsewhere. She remembered how George Balooney was desperately charming her with his wit in Paris, quite literally, by hiring a Sadhu from Calcutta playing a been pipe over a 60-pound cobra -- chanting "wit... wit... wit" four and a half weeks straight. She had to relent.

"To be or not to be, that's not really a question, you know." George quoted a Frenchman's contempt for the Shakespearean onslaught.

"Really? Adnan Sami Khan would be worried about that." Fatima stood up and walked towards the railing that separated them from the vastness of Haleji Lake waters. The patio that her great grand-father had built to entertain British colonial visitors, most of who couldn't even pronounce their surname properly.

What on earth is she babbling about? He pretended to check his mobile for an incoming text and punched in a few keys, only to mess up configuration options which made his phone forward all calls to some goddamned number in Malawi. Jeezus...

He thought about Imran Khan dating Jemima, Princess Diana dating Dr Hasnat Khan, and Britney Spears dating Adnan Ghalib.

Damn these Pakistanis. What's their national slogan, he remembered his doorman shouting as their Cricket team had won. Oh yes, I remember...

"Pakistan say Zinda Bhaag!" He muttered.


To be continued...

Labels: epic

Epic - Part I - Chapter 3

Trapped

How ironic, he thought as he tried to make room for himself over the rusted cast-iron planks on the wildly chugging freight-car of the train: it rocked, rattled and screamed more than a bouncing cat inside an old canister of oil being kicked and hurtled by two 9-year old brats returning home from school after a bad day of getting bullied by Deishu the ugly, rat-faced fat 8th-grader.

Yes, Deishu paid for his sins two decades later when his ugly rat-faced 29-year old body was deposited unceremoniously back inside the bank which he'd tried to rob but failed after the getaway car developed serious transmission problems. While Deishu was scratching his head after opening the bonnet, he discovered painfully that the only transmission problem was between his brains and his body: for inspecting a getaway car for trouble right outside the bank you just robbed was not exactly Gary Kasparov beating Big Blue the-chess-playing-monkey. Oh, and also, one of the trigger-happy bank guards happened to be a boy who was bullied so much in school - by Deishu himself. The rest can be ridiculously obvious to the intelligent reader.

The other bullied boy, however, kept bouncing and stumbling for a comfortable hold inside a circa. 1892 freight car of the Great East Zambian Railroad along the Luangwa river. Then he noticed that he was not alone in the darkened compartment, and realized he was not even in a darkened compartment to begin with.

He had jumped on to a freight-car that was loaded with another container with an accidentally loose little door just ajar enough for one man. And out of some cruel twist of fate, his calculated jump to board the freight train had landed him right inside the container within the freight-car within the freight train and closed the accidentally opened door behind him with a huge metallic clunk that sounded like when that death-deserving-creep living upstairs drops a frying pan on the floor and wakes you up early Sunday morning.

He was trapped, like a razor blade detaches itself during shaving and drops down inside the half open sink drain - leaving one fuming with early-morning swear words and face half white.

And he was not alone in the car.

To be continued...

Labels: epic

Epic - Part I - Chapter 2

Train Across the Ocean

He kept on walking until the land gave way to the ocean, which in fact was a muddy swamp of a river but he had flunked elementary geography in high school. Out of a corner of his eye he could feel the bi-plane now spiralling like a moth on three screwdrivers and eight tequila shots, so he rubbed his eyes violently because the corner of his eye had caught an eyelash and there was no kamikaze bi-plane anywhere.

The bi-plane had indeed disappeared, and along with it, his hopes of rescuing the Queen of Euquay and his desires to encounter surly Delvira again. He sighed remorsefully - only to realize that he sighed because he had treaded on heavily and squelched a pair of mating tarantulas. Ah, at least he had saved some poor farm animal going berserk in the middle of the night after being bitten by them and as a result, helped a farmer's son steal his father's tractor and heading off to the bright lights of the city (the farmer would have woken up to the squealing bitten animal running amok and would have caught his absconding son, he reasoned.)

Sell the tractor and don't spend it all on the first innocent looking damsel in economically attired distress, he wished the boy all the luck.

Looking back at the ocean again, he marvelled at God's great handiwork. What he mistook was the crisscrossing patterns created by the Great East-Zambian Railroad's ancient signalling system to be God's marvellous handiwork across the river bank.

Still, he should've known better. For the wailing train whistle told him his days in Africa were about to be history - or his future, because he often confused the two.

To be continued...

Labels: epic

Epic - Part I - Chapter 1

Great Day for Freedom

It was a dark, stormy night. No, it was a dark, cloudless night with few stars scattered across the sky, like after a pack of cheap instant macaroni splits open with a crackle and a gush of rock-hard broken pasta pallets sprinkle all over the kitchen floor.

"Damn..." he mumbled as he looked up toward the sky and saw a tiny bi-plane spinning out of control, as if a freshly bug-sprayed cockroach dancing wildly on its back before resting forever - waiting to be pinched inside a piece of kitchen towel and thrown into the bin with murder written all over dirty fingernails. He also smelled fear, and noticed there was a half-open bottle of Fear cologne lying on the ground.

The bi-plane took a majestic dive: Her Majesty the Queen of Euquay (pronounced Aooa-yuuk-yuiwa-yiay) was flying and no one else. How that woman could fly - he wondered. He wondered because the woman could not actually fly at all. She was being flown with her hands tied behind her back and her mouth gagged with a fabric shoe-shiner soaked in a putrid blend of shaving-cream and BurgerKing-mustard-sauce. The woman that he wondered about was the real pilot - the devilish almond-eyed surly elvira known to the underground tyre puncture pluggers as simply The Delvira.

Yes, he thought. Today is a great day for freedom.

Then he corrected himself, because it was night time. A dark stormy night. No, a dark, cloudless night with stars scatt...

To be continued...

Labels: epic