Monday was Labor Day, which, since I was in town this year instead of traveling, meant an obligatory cookout at my home in Great Falls, Virginia. At popular request – those of my dear brother Rob Roy and sister Rose, I provided some more plebeian fare to complement the rather exotic sorts of things I generally like to grill. There were bratwursts and smoked pork ribs, for example, although the brats were the best Balducci’s has to offer (as were a selection of other fine grillable sausages, such as milk-fed veal weisswurst) and the pork ribs were from Montana wild boars. The barbecued chicken was strictly organic and free-range, of course. Yes, I dare say that if spending is the key to getting America out of this Depression, I’m definitely doing my part, and not just with Labor Day cookouts, either.
Rose brought her husband Hank, and Hank’s brother and his wife Shannon along, together with their huge gaggles of children, all carted to my place in the usual string of SUVs and minivans. Rob Roy brought his wife, Katje, and their son Jason. The usual suspects among my decidedly affluent but culinarily inept neighbors made their expected appearances, too. The weather cooperated quite magnanimously, and a splendid time was being had by all. Until Hank, holding forth behind several Chimay beers, three shots of Macallan 18 and a Don Julio 1942 añejo tequila and Grand Marnier margarita, decided to tell me, Rob and Jason about his plans for Saturday, September 11, 2010.
“Gonna burn a big honkin’ pile of Korans,” he proudly proclaimed. “Me and a bunch of guys I met at a TEA Party rally downtown.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Hank,” Rob Roy bitterly complained, “it seems like since that yuppie baby supply corporation you worked for went bankrupt and tossed you out on the street, all you can do is act like some John Birch Society moron from the nineteen-fifties!”
“Damn right,” Hank shot back. “And the nineteen-fifties were better times, too, you bet your [expletive]!”
“You have to be aware,” I reminded Hank, “that not only the President…”
“[Expletive] him!” Hank interjected, followed by large and lengthy belch.
“…and the State Department…” I continued.
“A bunch of [expletive] wussies!” Hank yelled. “No brains, no [expletive] and no bullets! [Expletive] diplomats in striped pants! Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, all day, that’s all they [expletive] do! [Expletive] them!”
“… as well as General David Petreaus, our chief of military operations in Afghanistan,” I persisted, “have specifically warned that yahoos like you burning Korans here in the United States will place American troops in additional, unnecessary danger. Not to mention creating powerful propaganda with which Islamic radicals will be able to recruit ignorant, emotionally needy half-wits to become martyrs for their lunatic cause. And, moreover, this year, by an unfortunate coincidence, you and your TEA Party friends are going to be desecrating the Islamic holy book on the Moslem Feast of Eid, which will be like burning crucifixes on Easter Sunday.”
“And moreover,” Hank mocked, “all those rag-headed boogie-woogies can kiss my all-American [expletive]! I swear Tom,” he admonished me as he gulped another swig of my beer, “you are one smart mother [expletive] and all; and a pretty good brother-in-law, too, but damn! You’re a prime example of a completely brainwashed liberal Washington elitist! You’ve like, totally bought Obama’s commie-[expletive], fiat-money, North-American-Union, black-helicopter, jackbooted IRS goon-mongering, gun-confiscating, immigrant-coddling socialist party line, lock, stock and barrel! Listen, guys,” he rambled on, indicating Rob, Jason and myself, “if we don’t stand up to these [expletive] child-molesting camel jockeys and their [expletive] [expletive] crazy [expletive] mullahs and imams and [expletive], they’re gonna come over here and kill us all and then turn our women into sex slaves for their [expletive] harems, okay? That’s what those pieces of [expletive] call the World Caliphate! You want to live under sharia law? Because that’s what they want you to do, you know!”
“Hank,” I casually informed him, “I’ll stack our home-grown, red-white-and-blue nativist wackos up against their suicidal religious fanatic nut jobs, any day. Frankly, there’s no contest.”
“Damn right there isn’t!” Hank proudly responded. “At least we agree on that!”
“Knowing you,” Rob Roy needled, “I definitely think I should ask – do you actually have any Korans?”
“Are you kidding?” Hank roared. “I’ve got a [expletive] [expletive]-load of them!”
“And where,” Jason asked in a particularly snarky tone, “does a married Catholic middle-class guy from Fairfax, Virginia get a ‘[expletive] [expletive]-load’ of Korans?”
“On Craigslist,” Hank shot back. “And mighty cheap, too! I copped an entire gross of Korans for $2.50 apiece – hardback, mind you,” he bragged, “not paperbacks – and what’s more, shipping was included! As a matter of fact…” Hank proudly informed us, reaching underneath his deck chair, withdrawing a book and making a great show of displaying it with exaggerated significance, “I brought one here today and tore out some pages from the front to start the barbecue fires!”
“So that’s why you volunteered to do it!” I exclaimed. “But didn’t I tell you to ignite my Vermont sugar maple barbecue tapers with the butane lighter I gave you, and then use them to start the charcoal? You used pages from a book? You might as well have used yesterday’s newspaper!” I am, after all, a real stickler for pure food flavors, and Hank knows this.
“What are you talking about, Tom?” Hank quickly parried. “These Korans here are printed on really high quality paper, okay? Just look.” With that, Hank took what he was holding – a book printed in Arabic – and handed it to me upside down.
Seeing what Hank had done, Rob Roy grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Hey, genius,” he taunted, “didn’t anybody ever tell you that Arabic is read from right to left? You tore those pages out of the back of the book, not the front! Here,” Rob railed as he snatched the book from Hank’s grasp and made a big show of turning it over right side up, “this is the [expletive] front of the book, okay?” And, to continue the frisson of his minor triumph over Hank, Rob Roy opened the book to display the first page, and, with that, a collective gasp rose from Rob Roy, Jason and myself, for there, on the frontispiece, was the portrait of a man’s face.
“What?” Hank turgidly questioned, completely uncomprehending.
“Well, Hank,” I sighed, “look at this.”
He peered intensely at the picture for several seconds. After detecting nothing unusual, he looked back at me. “So?” Hank shrugged. “Am I supposed to cross my eyes or something?”
“Hank,” Jason began, “it’s a picture. A picture of a person.”
“Yeah, sure,” Hank surmised. “It’s a picture of Mohammed, right? Makes sense. He wrote the [expletive] thing, didn’t he?”
“Does that mean you missed all the media coverage about the worldwide Moslem riots when those Danish newspapers printed pictures of Mohammed?” Jason wondered.
“Ah, no, of course not,” Hank insisted. “But the Moslems were all [expletive] off about the cartoons of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and marrying a nine year old girl and [expletive] like that, right?”
“No,” Rob Roy corrected. “They were [expletive] off about people drawing pictures of Mohammed. Actually, several of the pictures weren’t obscene or controversial at all. One of them depicted him as a shepherd – how nasty is that? The point is, Hank, that Moslems get [expletive] off about pictures of Mohammed, period!”
About then, my gaze darted around my back yard, falling on my neighbor, Mr. Ayoub, a Christian Arab from Lebanon. As soon as I spotted him, I pointed him out to Rob Roy and suggested, “Go ask that gentleman for his… assessment.”
“I’ll do it,” Jason offered, grabbing the book from this father.
So Rob Roy, Hank and I watched as Jason showed Mr. Ayoub the book. After about a minute, Jason was bounding back across the lawn to the deck.
“Guess what, Hank?” Jason snickered as he arrived, barely able to contain himself. “You just spent $360 on one hundred and forty-four authentic Arabic copies of the collected works of Khalil Gibran!”
“I thought that portrait looked mighty familiar,” Rob Roy chortled.
“Who the [expletive] is Khalil Gibran?” Hank helplessly babbled.
“A rather pretentious and shallow Middle Eastern early twentieth century poet traditionally favored by sadly reclusive, pitifully wan, hopelessly romantic, inarticulately prolix and pathetically jejune teenage girls,” I explained.
“And you know what you get when you burn a pile of those?” Jason giggled, pointing at Hank’s book. “A bonfire of the inanities!”
“Huh?” Hank spent a moment verging on becoming crestfallen – his eyes went blank, I could see the wheels turning, and, I must admit, there I witnessed a genuine American – however benighted, however bamboozled, however obtuse, however outrageously, obviously and unforgivably wrong he might be – who nevertheless refused to accept defeat. Suddenly, his eyes cleared and took a definite and certain, if nonetheless completely misguided focus. “Ah, [expletive] it,” he firmly declared. “Come 9/11 this Saturday, nobody’s going to know they’re not burning real Korans! And besides,” he stentoriously announced with another deep swig of beer, “after all is said and done, it’s the thought that counts!”