The sun opens over the ruins of Tell Nasri like an opera star flinging aside the burgundy curtain, striding center stage and bracing for a thunderstorm of applause, only to discover the show has been canceled and the one remaining audience member is a disheveled crazyperson muttering herself to sleep in the second balcony.
The Ottoman-era church has been blasted to hell and its two bell towers lie toppled over onto the road like a pair of cracked cement skulls.
The Aramaic speakers who’ve lived here since the time of the Assyrian empire have fled. Many of their children have been kidnapped and shipped to the slave markets of Raqqa. Now there are only a few surly teenagers with machine guns, bored and debating theology from the flatbeds of their trucks, plus two guys trying to operate a broken crane.
One of them is squat and heavy, the other long and lithe, with a woolen scarf that flaps behind him in the wind. They’ve got a cheap digital camera attached to the crane arm. The squat one is out there like Sisyphus trying to physically push the stuck arm, while the lithe one pulls pointlessly at a joystick from the control box. There is the loud grinding of a broken crankshaft and a nasty kerosene stink. The rusty brontosaur wobbles jaggedly back and forth. Then something snaps. The crane arm goes flying into the squat one and hurls him against a nearby tree. Then it collapses and pins him to the ground. His partner leaps out of the control booth with a moan, runs past him and checks to see if the camera is broken.
“Bloody, bleeding, bloody fuck! I cannot work under these bollocks conditions. In this Barmy. Fucking. Shithole.”
He emphasizes each of the last three words by kicking the fallen crane arm as hard as he can. Then cries out in pain and hops around on one leg while his companion extricates himself from under the wreckage.
“Listen Mo, I don’t think we’re going to be able to emulate that hero of yours, whatsis, Lenny Reefer-Snog, out here.”
“Not Reifenstahl, you donkey. Orson Welles. We were paying homage to the opening shot from Touch of Evil. This crane was supposed to start with a close-up on the protagonist, then rise unexpectedly and track him as he’s force-marched with a bag over his head through the ruins of this hideous backwater. Meanwhile we pass holy warriors going about their daily business. Then we do the money shot.”
“Yes, well. Perhaps something more simple.”
“More simple. More simple. Bloody hell. I get nothing but obstruction and roadblocks from you lot whilst I single-handedly attempt to pull the Daesh equivalent to Triumph of the Will almost literally out of my arsehole.”
“Come on, akhi, I’m your cousin. We came here together, mostly to support you after you were rejected admission by the London Film School. To help you find new purpose.”
“Film school had nothing to do with it. They can fuck right off at that film school as far as I’m concerned. My film school rejection was a symptom of the West’s hatred of God and His teachings. Of a society engineered to herd our people into slums and prisons and menial labor as baristas at Caffe Nero. You and I are here to build a new future for the right kind of Muslim people. A new homeland. Though I must say, this place is a right shit-tip.”
“I could certainly do with a good curry.”
“A good curry? We’re here to build a good civilization. Out of nothing. And I will be its great propagandist. I will carve it out of a blank slab of granite with my bare hands. And my museum shall be all of social media. No dimwitted pack of toff kafirs can stop me on social media. bübTube for example is a free speech paradise. It is there that I shall carve out my audience. And once we acquire many millions of followers we will march into the Western capitals and put the leaders of these social media companies to the sword for their godlessness and apostasy. Also the Admissions Committee of the London Film School. So to hell with a good curry. Hm. Perhaps I can emulate Bergman instead. A nice, long close-up of our wanker protagonist, writhing in anticipation of the moment we sod him off for good.”
“That’s the spirit. Bismillah. Let’s go get that protagonist.”
***
The protagonist is stowed away in a cage in a cellar of one of the ruined homes near the church, with a burlap sack over his head. He’s been carted around from shithole to shithole for over a year at this point, and can’t remember much from the time before everything smelled like urine. Expectations are low. He’s trying to meditate. Wrestle some meaning and calm out of this calamity. He focuses on his breath. He’s almost there. Then someone gives him a hard kick to the head.
“Bloody...what are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Not in the face! Are you barmy?”
“Oh, get off it.”
“We’re about to film him, fuckface! He’s bleeding. Don’t touch the head. The camera needs to make love to this head.”
Someone grabs the protagonist by the scruff of his neck and drags him up the stone steps.
“All right, all right. Didn’t know he needed to look pretty,” mutters Fuckface.
“Just watch his face. He was arse-ugly to begin with and you’re not doing him any favors.”
The protagonist has never seen his two tormentors, but he’s familiar with the thick working class British accent of each. He sometimes calls them Ringo and George. But Fuckface also works.
“Up you go, mate.”
Fuckface hoists him to a leaning position and pushes him off his shoulder. The protagonist’s knees buckle, he succeeds in weebling and wobbling for a moment, and then he topples over, flat on his face.
“Bloody hell! You have got to be kidding me! His face, you muppet!”
They hoist him back up, unwrap the burlap and push it off his eyes. The sunlight burns like tabasco. He’s in the middle of a destroyed village and there’s a video camera propped up on a tripod. Jesus Christ what is he doing here.
Ringo and Fuckface peel the burlap off a wet spot on his scalp and inspect him like a piece of meat from the freezer.
“Let’s get started before that swells up any further.”
They grab a fistful of hair and force him on his knees. Fuckface retreats behind the camera and fumbles with a stack of cue cards. Ringo pulls out a long knife.
“Want you looking pretty for your funeral.”
The protagonist tries to swallow but can’t manage to get past the pasty snot that clogs his sinuses. The knife makes its way along his neck without piercing skin.
“God it must hurt to have your neck sliced. Like a slaughtered cow, can you imagine it? When this blade cuts through the skin, through the bone. Unimaginable pain. I’ll bet you’ll bleat like a goat. You look like a bleater.”
The protagonist could think about something else and drift off, if only he could push past the dry muck in his throat and breathe.
“If you shit your pants you’ll sit in it for a week. You understand? Now read.”
Fuckface stands helpfully beside the camera, nodding encouragingly and pointing to the first line of text like he’s teaching a child.
Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. I am a spy. America sucks for four or five reasons. To my family, goodbye.
Ringo launches into camera view and starts pointing and shouting like a homicidal used car salesman.
“Hey Obama, you dog, this is your goodbye present. Get off our land or your cabinet is next. Today blood is spilled in the caliphate, tomorrow in the streets of Washington and London.”
Then Ringo jerks the victim’s neck back and slashes his throat wide open. Blood sprays out in a great fan, and the body spasms several times as he finishes the butcher’s work, working his way around until he scrapes surgically at a joint in the neck and the head is severed. Then he lets the body drop, raises the head by the hair, shoulder-high in triumph, and shouts:
“Cut!”
Fuckface mic-drops the last cue card with a bit of “Mission Accomplished” bravado and strides triumphant toward the camera, index finger extended, but then lurches back and gasps.
“Uh oh.”
“What.”
“Oh shit.”
“What’s wrong.”
“It’s the camera. We didn’t press the Record button.”
Blood squirts rhythmically from the torso’s neck, seven or eight times. Then Ringo chucks the head at his companion and screams.
“You...tosser! You bloody tosser!”
“Mo, not the face! What about his face?!”
“A...are you kidding me? Is that some sort of joke?”
“Maybe we can salvage something out of this, like a picture of the head. Or we can play football with the head, right? That would be horrifying. Or we can just do it again with someone else.”
“Someone else? Someone else? Where the hell do you think we’re going to find another American around here?”
Checkmate. Fuckface thinks for a moment and then flies off into full-blown panic.
“This is not my fault! I pressed Record! I swear it! I pressed Record! It’s this bloody camera!”
And with that he gives the camera a hard kick and launches it up a high and herky-jerky parabola toward a distant, lethal rock-landing. The sound of crunching glass and a big black piece of it skidding away.
“AHHHH! AHHHHH! You wallad! Where are we going to find another camera?”
Ringo runs to the camera, falls to his knees and starts trying to piece the lens together.
The head rolls to a stop a few meters away, now little more than an interesting rock.
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