Diabolic Digest
Episode I –
The
dawn of Haflatoun
Date: 8th June 2000
Time: 9:42 am
Place: Zone of rest, relief and reflective
refreshment
As told to Khaled Diab
I sit on my toilet seat, striking that ageless
pose familiar to generations of thinkers and stinkers alike. This is my
operation centre, thinking den and rapid relief unit all rolled into one.
Although rapid relief is perhaps not the most accurate description of my
current condition. My stomach growls in frustrated uproar, the strain on my
brain delaying, due to signal failure, the sublime train of thought that had
been speeding along an uncharted track to Revelation Central.
Should I now resume my reading, look at my mail
or reach for the toilet paper first? My hand hovers hesitantly in
consideration. My mind, as is its forte, does some deft (the poorly informed
would say daft) lateral thinking and comes up with the compelling notion of
using the mail as a toilet paper substitute.
I am about to execute my devilish plan, when…
something prods away at the peripheries of my conscious awareness. A prick of
foreboding tickles my mind’s eye. Concluding that this is more substantial than
a mere allergic reaction, I stay my hand before I do irreparable damage to the
envelope.
On the envelope is a mysterious emblem that
reads Insight. Below is the legend “The only insight that lasts all
month”. What have I stumbled on? What has fallen, unbeckoned and unannounced,
on to my bare lap-top? I turn the envelope over in my hand with a cautious
reverence. I inspect it with a barely concealed curiosity and a child-like
intensity from several angles. What explosive revelation could there be under that
thin paper veil?
Long aware that a key to the universe could be
gleaned from something as mundane as a supermarket barcode, I am eager to get
to the bottom of this enigma wrapped in an envelope. Unable to restrain myself
any longer, I replace academic pondering with proactive action. I tear open the
seal to get at the insight inside. I find a neatly folded sheet of paper of a
blinding white that is otherwise unnoteworthy. I unfold it, ready to be
dazzled.
While not containing any earth-shattering truths,
the letter was certainly perceptive. The power of my philosophy and genius was
to be, at last, recognised. However, the news was a mixed blessing. It
unsettled me because only a few days ago I had reconciled myself (rather
bravely and tragically, I thought) to the prospect that the world would learn
of my reality post-humously. And I had it on good authority, too. None other,
in fact, than my palm-reader, Umm Uref, had told me. Ah well, the incense smoke
must have got into her eyes and blurred the lines for her.
The letter, laced with only a modest amount of
respect and reverence so as not to appear vulgar to my down-to-earth eyes,
invited me to contribute my philosophically profound pontifications, and was
signed at the bottom by one Nahed G. Yowakim. Could it be? I feel truly
humbled. Is this the Japanese patron princess that visited me once in a vision
and told me that on her wing she would present me to the world? At least,
that’s what I think the gesture she made with her arms meant (although it struck
me – metaphorically, that is – as a slightly peculiar flapping motion), as I
couldn’t make much sense of the Japanese she spoke.
So, the Guru of Shababia is to have a patron
that appears to be a strange Egyptian-Japanese hybrid. My personal lineage is
highly esteemed, although no less confusing. According to Herreditoz, my
personal chronicler and old college-mate, I am descended from an Ancient
Egyptian scribe and traveller (and early tour operator) who penned the famous,
but now lost, Book of the Led (a commentary on tourism in the Ancient World).
He met the daughter of the great Aflatoun (Plato to you). They had seven kids
who scattered to the seven corners of the globe.
A few generations down the line, there was to
be a grand family reunion on the banks of the life-inducing Nile. By this
stage, the family gene pool had become a veritable ocean with contributions
from a Scandinavian boat builder, a long-haired Druid from Glastonbury, a
hairless Indian from the Himalayas and an Inca cleric. A few more generations
of inter-marriage, for inheritance reasons, produced me: pure and sublime
haflata (drivel) as Herreditoz would have it. I don’t know if the family tree
he has drawn up for me is the genuine article or a product of envy devised to
defile me of my true essence. Regardless of my lineage, my voice of true reason
will be heard.
Speaking of which, how did they hear of me?
I’ve never heard of them (their circulation must be as bad as a chain-smoker’s
with a diet high in cholesterol). Well, it must be better than my current
readership of 12.5 (an average, in case you were wondering). Could it have been
that journo lad, Kaydee, who came along to one of my awareness-raising sessions
that alerted them to my presence? Whatever, this is cause for celebration. I
jump up off the toilet seat and strut around joyously. I gyrate my hips and hop
around in a primitive but evocative parody of the dance guilds that I had
encountered on my travels in the outer reaches of So-Ho, where they were still
only in the third intermediate club period of the Stoned Age.
Two wiry appendages poke the air in my
periphery vision vying to grab my attention. It stops half-way up the mirror
and turns it gaze towards me, its antennae poking the air inquisitively. It is
trying to communicate something to me, but I can’t figure out what. Frustrated
at its inability, it takes flight and hurls itself at me. I engage my
split-second reflexes and deftly dodge the offensive in the nick of time. The
roach goes flying past my head and lands heavily on the floor, winding itself.
I grab the spray canister off the shelf, ready for a counter-offensive… But it
doesn’t come.
The roach lies incapacitated on its back,
kicking its limbs uselessly. I pull back the safety cap and, at arm’s length, I
aim the nozzle at it fearing an ambush. Still not letting my guard down, I
realise that cockroaches may be the only creatures on Earth that can withstand
a nuclear war but they are bloody inept at righting themselves. Kneeling over
this paradox, I consider spraying it to roachdom come…
An image of Kahka, my local existential baker,
stays my hand. “Who are you?” I ask more reasonably, as I flip it onto its legs
with a slide rule. Without so much as a thank-you, it scurries off towards the
drain hole. “Not so fast!” and I turn it back on its back. Could Kahka be
right? Was this a real cockroach? I try to look beyond the outward function and
penetrate the essence. Kahka once told me that she had suffered no end at the
hands of a humanity that insisted on judging by form. She then related to me
the touching tale of two of her previous metamorphoses, which gave her her
current rather flattened appearance as well as her profession – all in one
night.
Once, while sleeping, she found herself, for
some inexplicable reason, standing on a cool marble wall. She looked around her
to find an enormous room with a bath filled with what looked like goat’s milk.
A beautiful woman attended by an entourage of pretty slave girls was bathing.
Intoxicated by the beautiful singing of the slave girls, she didn’t notice one
of them approach her with a swatter in hand until she was crushed into the tile.
Next thing she knew, she was looking into the
conspiratorial face of an old woman who was ranting deliriously to herself as
she stirred poison into the bowl of Umm Ali that Kahka had become. Kahka woke
up the following morning thinner and taller with a nose that looked like it was
pressed against a window. Naturally the trauma of her experience had a profound
impact on her and she wanted to make people appreciative of the hardship of
formative change.
She had also somehow developed a passion for
baking and cooking that led her to open up her popular deconstructionist bakery
in which you had to bear witness to the pains, trials and tribulations of the
dough as it was roller-pinned and beaten into submission and then gassed in the
oven. At Kahka’s, you are expected to get in tune with dough’s travels and
travails through its existential cycle to be at one with the dough’s suffering
and subsequent rebirth as bread. I tell you, I have not looked at a slice of
bread in quite the same way since. Breakfast time for me has become a time of
unparalleled astonishment.
Then it hits me in one dizzying swipe. “Luna!” I
howl at a vanished moon. I turn back to the cockroach. “Are you my Luna?” I ask
in thrilled anticipation. A quizzical kicking of the legs is all I get in
response.
It has been about three months since she
disappeared without a trace. Could this be the end she came to? A nerve deep
inside me is touched. Was this her way of showing solidarity? Just before she
vanished, I went in for reconstructive (actually, deconstructive) surgery. I
had had enough of being appreciated only for my outward appearance. I had looks
that belonged on a catwalk and a body that belonged to an anthology of Greek
mythology. I wanted to be wanted for the quality of my mind. So, I went to my
friendly local plastic surgeon (a profession I normally hold in low regard, but
needs necessitate) and had a nose and waist-line enlargement and a hair-line
reduction.
When I got home, Luna hardly recognised me –
she even threatened to call the police if I didn’t leave that instant. When
recognition dawned on her, she became hysterical. I was having difficulty
grasping the cause of her indignation, but the nervous twitching of her head
made me realise that she had a tic, the stress of which, I had long since
learnt, transformed her into a veritable lunatic. I waited.
She soon stopped twitching and calmed down. She
fell into a reverential silence and murmured almost to herself, “You’re
impossible.” That was possibly the kindest, sweetest compliment she had ever
paid me since we had first met while I was working on her Icelandic father’s
caviar farm, near her Italian mother’s vineyard that bordered her uncle’s
cheese dairy in Tuscany. She had finally articulated her faith in my superior
intellect. I modestly replied, “No, I’m just highly improbable.” To which she
screamed at the top of her lungs. Was she moved to euphoria by my modesty?
You can imagine my shock when I found the next
morning she was nowhere to be found, along with all her clothes. Her prized
collection of effigies was still there, except, mysteriously, the doll of me.
In my ethnographic gallery (junkyard, she called it), I found a post-it stuck
to the breast of my Michellin Man which read, “I have gone and I will take you
to the cleaners.” I waited all night for her to return and take me on this
bizarre cultural excursion. I soon became concerned. For a week, I called round
all the cleaners in town to see if they had seen my Luna but to no avail. The
emotional strain quickly showed on me. In the mornings, I was washed up. By the
afternoon, I would feel drained. In the evenings, I would hang out to dry for
the night after passing through the mangle of my wounded and doubting
conscience. I took to howling at the moon because of the word association and
growling at the pillow because of the scent association. I didn’t change the
bedclothes for weeks because her aroma was encoded upon them (until they turned
rather spicy).
I decide not to repeat the errors of my
predecessors. I pick the roach up and place her gently into my cupped palm. I
am filled with pride that my Luna has decided to go that one step further than
me in her selflessness. I look deep into her eyes and try to penetrate her
essence. I overcome my revulsion. But there is something awry. I see none of
the playfulness and smouldering mystique of my Luna behind that face. ESP tells
me that it is not she. Deflated, I flush the roach down the toilet, where it
drops, along with my dreams into the sewer gushing deep below the city. A
worrying thought casts its shadow over my mind for a moment. I hope my
contemplations are not misread by a sensationalist journalist who calls for my
banning before my career even gets off the ground.
I look into the swirling waters whirling about
the bowl. Time winds on and I still haven’t come up with any ideas for my
column. It’s time for a drainstorming session. I wait for the flooding to
subside and let the calming effects of the still pool travel through me. My
Dictaphone running, I meditate and become as one with my ideas. Occidentalism;
flower rights; romance: brutality by proxy; the true seat of intelligence; the
unbearable triteness of being; artificial intelligence in a synthetic world;
man is dog’s best friend; the global village:
today’s serfdom; the cultural relativity of time; smokers and oppression.
Now I must focus. Pick an idea, prune it and
add a suitable garnish and dressing to make it palatable to the layreader.
Reader, welcome to my world but, be warned, you have entered uncharted
territory. You are strongly advised to take the appropriate safety precautions:
suspend disbelief, savour the exotic ideas with a liberal serving of absurdist
amusement, washed down with a pinch of salt.
This piece appeared in the June 2000 issue of
Egypt’s Insight magazine.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.