The Fire Inside

Chapter 1.

Falling into the sunset.

He was sitting there, enraptured. Enraptured, his soul in vision. Sitting there, his eyes contemplated the future.  Enchanted by the smells he saw tomorrow. Enthralled by the music, he was in vision. The drums played again and again on the present, and captured his mind into tomorrow. The drum captured his mind like a beautiful woman captures the mind of a young hopeful man. Hopelessly in love and oblivious to the world, he stared wide-eyed. He sat there, looking up at the smoke that covered the dish of water, distantly as if seeing everything through the haze. From far away in the apocalyptic distance, his body shook, in fright. He was enchanted, like an animal mesmerized by a hungry python. Enraptured by death and destruction, his features shook in revolt. Surprised by the violence of the drums, he began to raise his voice. Hopelessly, like an animal caught in a snare.

The sun outside was raining drops of liquid heat. Incessant, the clouds themselves caught fire and became porous to the drops of heat, like a basket made of river reeds. The hailstones were plunged towards us and hit the thatch of the hut with an angry silence. But then, that was not the end at all. The streams of heat overflowed into the hut, soaking all of us and threatening to drown us all. You could clearly touch the heat and let it drip from your hads. But I longed for a different type of liquid out there in the city. Brewed from grains it awaited to soak my throat with a quenching respite. My mind refused to stay in the hut and watch the chattering soot-covered old woman pronounce some cock-and-bull -eyed vision. I wanted to be out of here.

Yet here I was, sitting respectfully, visualizing a man in vision. A man staring intently at a dish of water through smoked filled eyelids. The air was pregnant with the smell of burnt herbs and, maybe, whispering spirits. The old woman, urged him on to confront all of it.

“Confront the whirlwind!” she screamed insistently.

“Its not a whirlwind, it is a raging river!” said the commander again, stubbornly.

“How long shall you continue to deny? It’s the water in the dish that makes it look like a river. It’s a whirlwind!”

“A whirlwind of blood? A river of blood yes, but a whirlwind! Blood flows in yes, but the whirlwind never looks like blood.”

“You do not listen! If you did not want to listen why did you come? Anyway, believe what you want. In any case confront it. It gathers strength the more you run away from it. You must confront it like a man. Do not be afraid.”

The commander grimaced, then a look of determination came over his face.

“It’s soaking all of us in blood. Everybody.”

“Yes, it’s a destructive one. Only you will be able to control it.”

The commander wept. Well, at least tears trickled down his battle hardened cheeks. I did not see a river or a whirlwind. Only a dish of water with a mirror at the bottom.  

Yet, I had never seen him weep. Warriors do not weep. They get enraged. But there he sat, weeping. Weeping at the vision, or whatever it was on the mirror in the water. The commander wept. I had never seen him weep. And right now, even right now, the old woman’s assistant was playing the drums louder. My mind screamed to say, “Will you please stop beating those drums!” but I looked at everybody and realized the futility of it all, no, and even the danger of such brash action. Yes, the shrieking drums were bursting my eardrums and I was going to do nothing about it.