BOXING DAY: I missed the Queen’s Christmas speech from Buckingham Palace, so I thought I might try and summarise some mysteries of my own that have crossed my path this year.
Living in Egypt, the Middle East, I feel more and more as if I am watching a fuse sizzle and smoke as it races across the sand to where six sticks of dynamite sit beneath a railway track.
The train it is a comin’.
Sounds as if it is a gospel song from America’s South. The sultry region where Baptists battle with evangelical Christians for the souls of men. Or was that Gandalf the Grey from The Lord of the Rings?
The big story for me this week was how the US supremos running the war on terror did not know the difference between the Shiite and Sunni branches of Islam. Too bad, I told you the fuse was lit and that train, she is a comin’.
Christmas is over, and with it, the usual peace and goodwill to all men. In fact if you want a project for 2007 and more questions to muddy the religious waters try and decipher Christmas’s origins. Start with the birth of the ancient sun-god Attis in Phrygia, the Persian sun-god, Mithras, and the Roman celebration of Saturnalia – www.christmas-time.com
When all the “truth is gathered about Christmas, you can then ask a much more contemporary question, “Is Santa Claus an invention of the Coca-Cola Company?
“Truth is at the heart of faith. Nostradamus seemed to have a knack at getting things right. He predicted Napoleon and Hitler and the third anti-Christ who is yet to be revealed. Or has he been?
Out of the country of Greater Arabia Shall be born a strong master of Mohammed … He will enter Europe wearing a blue turban. He will be the terror of mankind. Never more horror.
All sounds a little Euro-centric to me? You want anti-Christ’s try Pol Pot and Pinochet and that is only the Ps. But check for yourself and Google Robert Guentte, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow.
With a new man at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, maybe Nostradamus has pulled off the trifecta. From reading recent news reports it would seem that a few thousand more US Marines will be missing by Christmas in 2007.
Which brings me to one of the great mysterious of 2006, and I don’t mean the refereeing during the great month that was the African Nations Cup! But what the hell is that 60 storey, unoccupied round tower along the Gezira Club road in Zamalek?I was told it was built without a car park, thus the apartments went unsold and the building unfinished.
A grand plan that was ill conceived and poorly executed.
So that brings me around to the Iraq war and to the Shiite and Sunnis which I was discussing with an old friend living in Santa Barbara, California. Chris Giles knew the difference between the two, but unfortunately he is a surfer, not a Pentagon flunky.
And where does that leave Santa Claus? Because religious symbols are like breakfast, culturally specific. In Australia Santa’s sleigh is pulled by kangaroos and in Japan Santa can appear on a crucifix.
This I believe, dear reader, is the great mystery of 2006. That the symbols and religions have all gotten mixed up with images of heroes saving the day and foreign policy sounding more like lines from a good-ol’ fashioned shoot ’em up western.
At this point I don’t know if I have to mention Popes, cartoonists or even those mice that took over the Saudi Arabian Airlines flight, were all out of place causing havoc.
Do we blame globalisation? Is it just too easy for everyone to get involved in everyone else’s family business? Which is a very Christmas tradition.
Or have we forgotten the root cause or is it that no one watches The Beverly Hillbillies anymore, “Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea .
2007 is going to be one hell of a year. So hold on, because the politicians and generals have lost control of the train, the dynamite is being primed and the horses of the apocalypse are marshalling on the horizon. If I have one wish for the New Year it is for that hero to come swaggering into town.
And if not to fix the Middle East crisis, at lease they could explain what is going on with that deserted tower block in Zamalek!
