The Dallas Health and Science Museum, not unlike the bunkers of my youth.
And on 11/22/63 Crytin’s men drove the the pilot car that led King Arthur’s motorcade.
And Crytin provided Dallas Police with a Russian translator for Ozzy’s wife immediately after King Arthur’s very public skull chipping.
Her statements didn’t implicate Ozzy, but the translator’s sure did.
All our luxuries, The Barbarians do get comforts we’ll never have: Lone Wolf Theories, external triggers for internal censors, boundaries of permissible thought.
I envy The Barbarians: their struggles must feel so real.
What depth of meaning, two people that both already feel real on their own, believing in their struggles, fucking with The Act of Love together.
Lying awake nights, I imagined: what if I had to wake up?
What if I had to wake up and go to that same place I hated 1,000,000 days in a row sans end in sight?
What if I had calloused hands, and my coarse friends and me all had bad nicknames for the boss that we’d whisper and laugh so hard?
However much you may wish, you really can only be you.
CHAPTER 22 The Most Beautiful Zoo in The Middle East
The Garden of Eden sat between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Sumer, which was later named Mesopotamia and now Iraq.
According to The Sumerians, their civilization existed for 500,000 years, fallen from a previous Golden Age.
Sumerian culture blossomed all at once out of nowhere.
Its influence reached as far east as The Indus River and all the way to The Nile.
Their citizens traveled frequently and widely.
Their queen, stylish by contemporary standards, wore modern wigs, large earrings, necklaces, and makeup.
She died in a ritual suicide 2,150 years before the founding of Rome, 2,000 years before Moses started writing.
Around 2,000 B.C the first Codes of Justice were written in the halls of Sumer’s metropolis, Babylon.
The Sumerians also invented: the first writing system, the wheel, schools, medical science, written proverbs, the idea of history, the bicameral congress, taxation, the concept of social reform, cosmogony, cosmology, coins, the 360-degree circle, spherical astronomy, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour.
Their accurate knowledge of the movements of the sun and moon led to the inventions of the first calendar and the Zodiac, whose horoscopes The Barbarians still sweat each morning.
Diana means moon.
Sumerians described and diagrammed Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, none of which are visible sans telescope and weren’t rediscovered until 1781, 1846, and 1930, respectively.
Sumerian civilization lasted 2,000 years, 100 times longer than The Homelan has currently existed.
And then it disappeared all at once.
And though their culture lasted 2,000 years, they observed and recorded a cosmic cycle that takes 25,920 years to complete.
Sumerians described beings that came from the sky to enlighten them and establish civilization, but they didn’t use the word “gods.”
“Gods” was a later translation by The Romans and The Greeks, like how Lot’s Wife “vaporized,” and The Family teaches that Jesus wasn’t a Red.
These beings are very similar to The Nephilim in The Book of Genesis.
When Genesis says: “Let us make man in our image,” that’s a heavily redacted version of The Sumerian creation story.
Those first Barbarians Adam and Eve needed to remain ignorant, lest ye shall become gods, you know?
One Nephilim was named Nazi.
The British took Baghdad from The Ottomans in WWI and made it the capital of The British Mandate of Mesopotamia.
WWI ended The Ottoman Empire after 600-something years.
Six hundred years is ten times longer ago than the end of WWI until now.
Six hundred years is three times longer than The Homelan has officially existed.
In The ’20s, 40% of Baghdad’s population was Jewish; it was the city’s largest single community, with a 2,600-year history there.
In ’32 The British granted Iraq formal independence.
And in ’41 a pro-German and pro-Italian “Government” replaced the pro-British “Government.”
They surrendered power back to British forces less than eight weeks later, but in the chaos, there was an organized massacre of Iraqi Jews: 175 killed, 1,000 injured, 900 homes destroyed.
Over 80% of Iraqi Jews emigrated in the next decade, mostly to Israel.
Throughout The ’50s The UK promoted Baghdad as The Crossroads between East and West.
It moved at a modern clip with the bustle of young people, its cafes crowded with ambitious men pontificating big ideas.
Late in his career, Frank Lloyd Wright developed his grandiose Plan for Greater Baghdad, which included a cultural center, a university, an opera house, and museums on an island in the middle of The Tigris.
But due to yet another political fluctuation—Qasim dethroning The Hashemite monarchy—the project never got realized.
In Feb ’63 a CIA-authorized, six-man squad assassinated Qasim in a Ba'ath Party coup.
The CIA also provided The Ba'ath Party with a list of suspected Reds to round up and kill.
One young thug, Saddam, made especially frequent visits to our embassies.
The CIA supported and trained him in Beirut in ’59.
He was our man, appointed leader, overseeing the construction of The Baghdad Zoo in ’71, the largest and most beautiful zoo in The Middle East.
CHAPTER 23 The Cinema and Me
Back when I first arrived, still struggling to fit in, I tried to be a Realist with The Barbarians, but doing so was Idealistic.
“Duh, unga-bunga!”
The Barbarians so deeply believe the easy dreams of their programmings:
Nerd wins beautiful girl’s heart!
The bully is defeated!
