The Road from Damascus
Created | Updated Jun 18, 2003
If you would know the Richness of Death, then know that this was Spain.
Here in your distant past is a place where steel is born. The bright blood of the foundry, the shrill ringing of the forge. These crafts were the spawn and spoils of ruinous war.
A dozen generations knew nothing beyond the flash of this keening blade, until its secret was wrested from the infidel. Gang-hammered in its pool of blistering radiance, plaited and pounded seven times seven, quenched in balm of rose-water and hawk's blood. Pain and persistence yielded a sword beyond belief. Christendom faltered in its awesome wake.
In the memory beyond your consciousness it is Anno Domini 1064 in your home city of Toledo, and nothing here is so sacred as Death. In your time to come, the wounds of this beautiful city will seem as the facets of diamond. These streams of gore will be as the veins of glorious blossoms.
But in this time that you know and yet cannot remember, there is only misery and perfect hatred. Christian souls are everywhere bowed and broken beneath the yoke of Islam. Brave men resist and are swiftly cut down. In your mudajar churches, under the symbols and sigils of your oppressor, you secretly praise and pray for your fallen brothers. Most revered of all are those who walked among the enemy, and who suddenly and valiantly slayed all those within their reach.
Their time is almost come. Glory and Honour in the Name of Christ. For the martyrs, Salvation in Death and in the Life Hereafter. The Evil Usurper utterly destroyed without Mercy, thrown down by the Holy Will of God.
Unremembered Time ploughs on, through the generations that infuse your being. You observe, but may never recall, the youth of your own great-grandfather. Europe and a whole world at its margins are poised on the brink of nightfall. Your family are here on this same hill-top, this Calvary of Hope. They watch the thunderheads pile to the zenith, and they watch in dismay and in cold fear. A terrible fortress glowers down upon them, darker almost than the cloud, and its ramparts resound to the chime of bullets. History will despise the Alcazar's defenders, but even Fascists may acquire valour in the face of dreadful adversity. This time the heroes are outside the walls, their siege resisted. Those inside are tenacious and yet impotent, fighting for their mere lives, and incidentally for their cause and for this mountain of stone and iron. This symbol. The brave Republicans, your forbears among them, resort to the ostentatious killing of their enemies' brethren. The fingers that squeeze the trigger are the same fingers that will come to squeeze your infant hand. In times such as these, right and wrong become sloughed in the same bloodshot mire. In times such as these, fools will believe that wanton cruelty may yet break the spirit of the enemy.
In a street far away, and in this time that you call the present, a young infantryman from Toledo, Ohio nervously caresses the stock of his rifle. He is your ally, young Hero of Spain. You are Crusaders together, partners in this enterprise to destroy the infidel, and to liberate and educate those who cowered in his shadow.
Reflected in the mirror of centuries, the parts are reversed. The resentful gaze that sears your back issues from Muslim eyes. Nerve and patience are disintegrating once more, and arbitrary Gods are whispering Man's creed of loathing.
These deeds were done in your name because it was right, and so it seemed and yet seems no longer. Your silent memory knows that it was ever thus, and perhaps it will always be like this. You were lead here by fine rhetoric and high ideals, as high and fine as those of the suicide bomber who plagues your imagination. There can be no victor when no-one holds the right to prevail. War does not end when the firing dies down, only when the last thoughts of revenge recede. You were a fool to follow. You should have remembered. Powerful men with no history of their own duped you, when you already knew better.
Look upon the sheer beauty of this blade, pattern-forged, iridescent in its writhing black swirls of deadly shadow. Your frisson of fear is an echo of the despair of your forefathers. This is Damascus steel, the consummate flowering of retribution that thwarted the Crusaders and that subjugated Mediterranean Europe.
Might is right, child, but right is not eternal. The perfect weapon, balanced and glinting and attuned to its Master's ruthlessness, will surely rise again. Be assured that when it does, your present valour will be weighed and judged as Sin.
