Abdul, Elijah and the Great White Hunter

Professing deep belief in a Jewish seer who had become known as the Prince of Peace, the Great White Hunter was elected as President of the United States.

Each day, more evidence proves, and more people can clearly see, that the Great White Hunter is either dishonest or stupid, or both.







By Jean Gerard





In a perfect frenzy, God had been busy for centuries, blowing streams of bubbles out into empty space where they took on a life of their own and spun off into the night. On this earth, some years later, the brothers, Abdul and Elijah, were born from parents living in the Garden of Eden, in the Tigris Euphrates Valley not far from Baghdad.
Like the first brothers, Cain and Abel, Abdul and Elijah disagreed about almost everything, and each longed to dominate the surrounding territories. Sometimes they managed to live together peaceably, but frequently they fell to fighting over land, camels, wives and daughters—and above all, religion.
After years of struggle, Elijah’s family was forced to travel abroad, and by exposure to people in other areas of the world they engaged in commerce and industry for profit, dodging prejudice and envy and building banks and skyscrapers and symphony orchestras. Abdul’s people remained in the Valley, farming and herding sheep and camels, and living in tents. At one point, the two brothers practically lost track of each other until near the end of World War I, when several of the most powerful nations in the world decided that it would be in their interest to separate Abdul and his close relatives permanently by creating a homeland for Elijah and his entire extended family right in the middle among Abdul’s often quarrelsome relatives.
Elijah’s people were happy to receive this free land. Immediately some of them saw the possibility of creating a modern state in defiance of the ancient agricultural mores still prevalent in what had been known for centuries as Palestine. Pieces of land right next door to Israel, smaller, less unified, were given to the Palestinians. It was assumed that fair agreements would later be worked out as to water rights, ownership, sharing the capital city, and so on.
Soon thousands of Elijah’s relatives, the world-wandering remnants of Hebrew tribes, returned to Israel to take up residence and escape from centuries of vicious persecution culminating in Hitler’s Holocaust. The energy and devotion they put into building the new homeland were not surprising considering the circumstances, and within a few years they had created a prosperous, highly educated way of life, taking full advantage of their knowledge and experience.
Abdul’s people looked on with apprehension, being particularly disturbed by the support the new nation received from rich nations like Britain, France and the United States. At the same time they supported Israel, these benefactors betrayed promises they had made to Abdul’s people, who over the years became more disunited, with huge differences in economic status developing between them due to the fact that some of them possessed huge oil fields.
Professing deep belief in a Jewish seer who had become known as the Prince of Peace, the Great White Hunter was elected as President of the United States, which had become the richest, most powerful nation in the world. The Great White Hunter was a man of prodigious ambition. Others may have preceded him in floating the idea of world domination, but he excelled in this peculiar madness, claiming he had access to supernatural advisors. Conveniently, a horrific disaster in New York brought down two skyscrapers in less than ten seconds, which gave the Hunter an excuse for conquest. He saw the disaster as a heaven-sent opportunity to extend war in the Holy Land and obtain control over oil, much of which was owned by Abdul’s rich relatives.
Having fuelled the Industrial Revolution for one hundred years, the oil supply was beginning to run out and the Hunter thought it expedient to get what was left. Therefore, using the New York disaster—said to have been caused by a handful of Abdul’s radical relatives—he decided to go to war, first in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq. Of course he did not say the war was for oil. No. The war was for “freedom” in the Middle East, dominated by tribal chieftains, kings, princes, dictators and religious authorities of one kind or another.
The Hunter then proceeded to spend trillions of dollars on the manufacture of expensive weaponry, thinking to create a prosperous “permanent wartime economy.” This drove his country into deep debt and caused a radical shift in the people’s civil liberties due to hysterical fear of Abdul and his relatives.
The Hunter’s war continues until this day, and is not going well, and he has found that it was much easier to get in than to get out. It is anybody’s guess what will happen next. The Hunter still insists that he can “turn things around” if only we give him and his generals more money and send more of our inner-city youth to fight.
But each day, more evidence proves, and more people can clearly see, that he is either dishonest or stupid, or both. So many resources are spent on the war that there is nothing left for education or health care. The price of oil goes up instead of down, housing and interest rates are out of sight, and the sainted stock market has the willies. Even Mother Nature seems to be on a rampage, having suffered years of domestic abuse. It would appear that, short of Divine Intervention, the plans of the Great White Hunter are doomed.
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Sic transit gloria…as someone has said for the umpteenth time. Abdul and Elujah are still at each other’s throats, fighting their hundred years’ war even as one more “peace conference” is being held under the Hunter’s dubious aegis. The writer of this sad tale is only one of millions who wish the two brothers would sit down quietly together, blow a few bubbles, and find it in their beleaguered souls to kiss and make up. §

Jean Gerard is a writer and poet who lives in Los Osos, Calif.