[no date; entry mostly ruined due to sand/water --ed. Chronolectus]
... does not even, I can see now, tell his own story straight... I am bending over the Captain as he sleeps. It has now been days since we've been penned here in Klem, fighting the Glad-Glads, who murmur, "Bil mikal ubil mištia ulh bilmirmia riha," their chant to the Crimson (Daily) Tyrant, before they take to the arena, arms flailing swords, flails, rice-threshers (but they grow no rice!), camel-thwackers, and other oddities of combat, including the Bandicoot (illustrated) [original illustration missing; substitute provided courtesy ed.s private collection --ed. Pictolectus], the Angry Lemon (an almond-shaped yellow hand-shield with a single, needle-like dagger at either end), the Billy-Knows-Bad-Things (an upside-down Quran lashed to a live wolverine-o-th-sands), and the Vague Jennie (what is it?, who can say?, has she doomed us with her sweet smile?, by telling the Klemi crowds that we came to pillage?, which, knowing "Cap'n," we probably did?), &c.
...must be glad for small victories. But he tells them badly, too! Let me say it: We arrived in Klem with high hopes... Not of finding the djinn-blasted Gyrosphyrinx (which Mullah Shaj now conceives, in his black-bearded wisdom, to be a bird-coloured ball of rolling Hate, fueled by cactus/man-love/the songs of other birds, or, as the "Cap'n" now often calls them, "byrds"), but of finding a real city, with real women, real lentils, real cream, real spices, water, books, et al.
Instead, we found a veritable fortress of Women: The women here are not only "liberated" more than ours, in Istanbul, Damascus, Bucha-Resti, Baghdad, Qom, Torshiz, &c., but also are more... evil. They hunt men from other nation-states of the Land Of The White Apple, which they call "GREATER KLEM," and force them to do menial sand-work, construction, and bean-and-mushroom-farming ("and child-farming!" adds Fariz, who I know is trying to "suck the mental dugs" of both myself and "Cap'n" Tariq, which only annoys us both, except perhaps not Tariq, who does not realise...), &c.
Also, the Women here are fickle: Only two hours after inviting us to pass peacably through their territory, they arrested us and put us on "trial," which mostly consisted of ignoring us more than they already were--which was completely, perfectly. Thus, this new level of ignorance should not have affected us at all. Instead, we were wracked. The "Cap'n" began raving about his childhood, while several of the Shamzes took to hair-pulling and tooth-grinding, resulting in a bunch of tall, strong, toothless sailors--one of them now dead at the hand of that terrible Lemon...
...thrown in a dark pit after the long "trial" of ignorance, during which, at one point, thanks to Fariz's lusting after what might have been a very beautiful woman (or very well-dressed donkey--we didn't get a good look), we stumbled into the Empty Square and realised that, far from being ignored, we were being carefully watched...
...hauled up onto the Grayish/Dull Dais (just below the Dais Of Crazy Beautiful Marble) and asked to speak for the group, because Tariq was fuming/frothing, and unable to carry his Captainly duties and parley with the Tyrant's Radiant-Mouth, who spake:
"ADMIT YOUR GUILT:
NONE;
ALL;
SOME;
UNKNOWN;
or NONE OF THESE..."
I thought upon these options for a long time, finally choosing, "NONE OF THESE," though I did not shout as she the Radiant-Mouth did.
The Tyrant smiled (I think) under her red feathered Masque, and motioned to the Mouth, who asked if I knew of the Blue-Tooth'd Wyzard (she said it with a Y!). I said I had heard tales only... She said the Wyzard was the sole determinant of Guilt, but that she knew she would find me Guilty, especially so. We were all guilty--
everyone was and is guilty--so it made no sense to choose any option but "GUILTY."
Silence dominated the Empty Square. Fariz picked his generous left nostril with a bit of mountain-Burdock he'd stolen from the White Sheep Huns we'd found on the coast of Quoz when we'd first arrived.
"What," I tried to bravely inquire, my voice faltering, sounding older and more bird-like (sphynx-like??) by the moment, "is the punishment, for the GUILTY ones such as we are...?"
The Tyrant Herself stood. She gestured to something in the distance, being hoisted by manlings up to the top of the Tower Of Penance. I have reproduced, to the best of my however meagre ability, the Dread Thing here:
Notice its Teeth! It is the VORTEX, I am sure, of which we were lately so afraid...
...same that left Hot-Swabbing-Peter so shaken he can no long control his rectal function.
The Cap'n & the Mullah, of course, do not believe the Reaping Machine and the Teething Vortex are one in the same, but they are fools for not seeing what Al--h has placed just before their Eyes, and what our Natural Science and Philosophising has allowed us to grasp in our Hands.
(I remember, when I was at the Seljuk College Of Rayed-Configurations Of Natural Celestial Bodies Whose Mechanical Movements We Have Topographed, studying Astronomy, Bird-Watching, & War-Machines, one such fool who did not believe that the Bird was the most potently small Flyer, superior even to the Chiropterans, Vespertines, and Billowing Squirrels. To prove that fool wrong, my fellows and I conducted numerous flight-tests. The Bird, no matter the sort, was faster and/or more graceful than other animals, balls, and spears--though not, strangely enough--than a curious Flying Disc brought lately from Hellas by my nephew Afeef Of The East...)
But in my despair, my song loses its melody... We chose the other option presented to us, after we quaked for a sufficiently long time. Fearing the Reaping Machine and its dog-chomping Teeth, we would face deadly combat with the Glad-Glads. We would not, we were told, win. We would merely be brutalised in a more entertaining fashion. (Though the Radiant-Mouth seemed disappointed that we did not choose the Machine; she declared us, "Sissy-Pups" and bid us eat our own vomit rather than speak to her ever again, which last insult earned her a hilarious chiding from a superior member of the Klemizonian diplomatic corps.)
...to the cell for a moment, I must report that several of us of have died in the daily Gladiatorial Games, and that none of us, save Savage Robbert, have much of a stomach for Fighting any more.
Robbert, though, is particularly dreadful: Not only does he still fight; he wins. And not only does he win, he is going mad. He has what we call "Roman Glibness," or a continuous gabbering of the mouth and metaphorical gland. Only sometimes does his stream of curses, onomatopoeical ZANG!s & ZOTT!s, and Oaths to extinct deities (including Eostre, Queen Al-Lat, &
Vague Jennie) abate or ease into real recitation. Only yesterday, he quoted:
"Never did he sing Camel Songs behind a Scabby Beast,
nor pierce the bitter Colocynth out of sheer hunger
nor dig a Lyzard out of the ground and eat it..."
Then he detoured into a pre-fight verbal essay on the
Opusculum paedagogum, a pear Tariq has banned us from eating for "conservation" reasons, meaning that, if we come across one in this cell, we must conserve it... by letting him eat it.
...plan indeed. The escape could commence as early as tonight, if all is readied in time by... Shamz cannot, of course, make it himself, so...
[long rip in the page, followed by, in a different handwriting and ink, another snatch of poetry:]
"Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love."
Goodbye, Dear Friend ****; we knew you only too well!
BUT AT LEAST WE HAVE ESCAP--[Here the MS devolves into ant-shit. Twas lamentably eaten, it seems, before it washed up on the shores of Boston, to be carried by crabs southward. We have reconstructed some pieces, of course, with liberality. One hopes, with never undo liberality! --ed. Histographix]
[blot of ink in the shape of the oblate, super-dense galaxy
Al-Nahda]
