It amuses me to reprise the tale, the one of how I came to fail... but, time runs on, and perhaps it is not too late to make some modicum of difference here...
In this pale and putrid place.
Nevertheless, I commit this account unto words, for there must be an account.
There must be...
Accountability.
I allowed myself to be drawn into the conflict...
Into the war.
I took these pale, elongated fingers, and I placed them around stock and barrel of the rifle...
With intent in heart and mind...
To kill.
And so the Nazis came unto the shores of Morocco by means of my... Vichy... control, in 1940, but when the Allies came in 1942...
It was then that I felt compelled to return unto my native place...
To defend what amounts to nothing more than ideal, really.
I am not the Vichy Pétain.
I am the other one...
The centre on a tangent between hero, and anti-hero.
Verdun, or capitulation and collaboration to and with the Nazis?
Which will it be?
What has it ever been...
In the heart...
Or the head...
The acts undertaken and advocated upon this absurd plane of human affront?
I do not know whether this account of this next portion of this biliously extended life of mine shall ever reach you, but as e'er I write these words unto you, Élyse, and perhaps...
Unto the one that I understand to be your newborn daughter...
In these torturous times...
Anna.
I moved as if in trance across the desert to oppose enemy force.
At some point, my violin fell away from me and I bled.
I fired and hacked my way through the Nazi rank and file...
All those that foolishly deigned to stand against me.
I felt nothing in the taking of those lives.
But the violin...
My texture.
I looked back unto Ouarzazate...
Unto the citadel at which this pestilent tale began.
I breathed in devil's chorus on the winds...
For they know neither borders, nor perceived lines drawn on maps by men...
And I silently realign myself with everything that set me out upon my path in the first place...
Opposition to sick and misjudged prejudice and rule.
I am not your hero...
You're just tired of experiencing in real life, or reading upon the page the divergence between fact and ideal.
Look at us.
Look at this.
A procession of Jews, behind which I allowed myself to be moved as part of a line, lurches unto a dance hall in Casablanca that has been repurposed as a holding cell for suspected religious or otherwise ideological dissidents.
Sultan Mohammed V has at least spared them the necessity to bear the yellow Star of David on their non-existent rags to mark them for exclusion...
Or worse.
Propagandist leaflets flutter the city.
The Germans invite Muslims to side with them against the Jew.
The British do everything they can to subvert German influence in North Africa.
Slavery and subjugation exist all around, and yet, as I read the gazette, it interests me to witness people who understand humanity, in the moment...
Following the landings of the Allies in Morocco, President Roosevelt wrote to Mohammad V and expressed that the Allies were to be benevolent subjugators in Morocco.[23] In his letter, he wrote:
"The arrival of the American forces in your country in collaboration with forces of the protecting power is merely a token of American intention to assist in defending your sovereignty and in protecting your country and mine against a common enemy whose power will be destroyed."[23]
Mohammad V replied:
"The first contacts between people who do not know each other well enough are always marked by hesitation and reticence, but progressively a reciprocal understanding is established between them, they are followed by esteem and friendship which creates a cooperative effort profitable to all."
How true this latter missive is of all meetings and relations.
So, I sat among the military, political, and religious prisoners in that repurposed dance hall at the heart of Casablanca wondering what insipid disease it would be that dictates someone's next act...
Like the Book of Acts...
These things define us, though we are not heroes.
The cream-coloured walls...
Cheap paint and plaster...
Leaned in against the herded mass and horde it now contained.
The stench of sweat, piss, and shit was pervasive.
At some point, one of the guards asked me whether or not I am Jewish.
"I look like one, don't I? The way a Jew is supposed to look, eh? Well, sorry to disappoint Der Führer. I am nothing... neither here, nor there, neither this, nor that...
And certainly not Jew.
But perhaps that rather broad minded notion will suffice for your myopic heads to clamber unto some explanation for why and how you want to kill me...
Well, come then.
I will be waiting."
The guard raged and struck me three times about the face.
"This means nothing to me, you paltry, little person."
The guard struck him again.
When he went out, the fixing and bolting of the great iron door resounded.
All was silent for a spell.
At some point, a little Jewish girl came unto me and asked me why, if I am not a Jew, was I there a captive among them.
"I would just as contentedly sit in captivity among any other persecuted people... or person. I am tired of this strain of oppression."
I had some bread from morning's rising within my cloak.
I gave the girl my bread.
After a spell, the lights in the hall were put out abruptly.
There was a collective gasp among us.
Torches where hurled through the second tier, narrow windows, and they fell upon the wooden beams of the hall.
I watched as the flames grew, and the will and heart of the people shrank.
I watched as hope fled from the fight, like it always does...
Just when people need it most.
I obscured myself within my long dark cloak, and I went unto the door.
The screams of parents and children behind me were deafening.
The flames gathered and rose with horrific voracity.
When I came unto the door and observed the iron lock, I knew at once there was a way.
The flames rose higher and higher, amid the escalation of panic and fear.
I closed my eyes.
I thought of the Abbott at the Cloister in Madrid.
I winced with soulful spleen for what I did not do then.
And then, I opened my eyes.
I extended my sickeningly elongated finger, and I forced it into the lock.
It hurt, but soon I found the form I could bear and sustain.
I turned the lock.
When it did, I withdrew my finger and pushed the doors forth, and with that gesture the multitudes at my side too sprung forth...
And out...
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