May 31, 2010
It was twenty-seven months after that terrible day, and I was standing in Mecca, even though I had not converted to Islam. No one was questioning me as to my faith, asking for papers, or demanding that I explain my purpose for being there.
In fact, hardly anyone was around at all -- just a few armed military types, but they didn't seem to pay me any special attention.
In Mecca, all was quiet. From the "Great Mosque," the Masjid al-Haram, came no sounds, no noise. No calls to prayer, no voices, no hustle & bustle. A young American serviceman approached and informed me that the Zamzam well had run dry this morning, and that I couldn't get any water if I was thirsty? Weird. Then, he kind of blushed and asked if I could I believe that we were actually here, in this place?
"It's amazing" I told him. He asked if I wanted to go in and visit the Kaaba?
Yes, I said, that's what I really came here for. I let him know that I was a bit apprehensive about going in alone, but he smiled and said "let's go together, I'll protect you, it's right in the middle of my sector anyway!"
He seemed like a nice guy, the All-American boy -- one of America's heroes. I thought about how he vaguely reminded me of my youngest brother, Michael, actually.
Next thing I knew we were standing in front of the big black "cube."
Or, should I say, what was left of it. The large, rough, gray-black meteorite (that we all figured was inside the cube) was now very much exposed to view.
There were no "pilgrims" circumambulating round and round the thing now, but even if there had been, the huge gash in the earth on one side of it (from a "fragment") would have probably swallowed them up.
"Do you think it was God who caused it?" the young soldier asked. I said that I doubted it, I'm an anti-theist. I told him I thought it was just a freak of nature and that this kind of thing had happened before, but not for a long time.
"I think God did it intentionally" he mumbled. I could think of no deep, philosophical gem to come back with, but said I thought that if there really was a loving God, he probably wouldn't work in a way that resulted in the vaporization of so many millions of people.
The Arabian sun, much cooler than usual behind a sickly, yellowish haze, was just beginning to set as we took in the (relatively light) destruction all around us ("light," as compared to Medina and Jedda, which were utterly erased). I couldn't help but wonder about his remark, though, about "aimed intentionally."
After all, what are the chances of a quarter-mile wide asteroid striking at the exact midway-point between Medina and Mecca? A rather mind-boggling question that I'll just have to leave for the astronomers, astro-physicists and NASA scientists to answer, I guess.
"The oil" he said. "What will they do without the oil revenue?"
"What's more important is what they won't do," I blurted, almost without thinking. "But right now we have to help the survivors get back on their feet somehow."
He said "do you think they still hate us, even though they know we didn't do this, and that we even tried to stop it?"
But, before I could answer, my alarm clock went off and I woke up.
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(I really did have a dream very similar to this awhile ago, and it wasn't exactly a pleasant one. It was the kind of dream that can leave one with a really "strange" feeling all day long, and this one did. I admit adding a little more "story" to it so that it would "flow" more like a "story" instead of a weird, disjointed dream (you know how they are), but by and large, all the details of Mecca and the Kaaba were really in the dream. I don't know what caused it, but I can say that I had been reading a lot about the "two holy places" before the dream, and, that I had seen "Armageddon" again not long before it, so...?)
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