O JERUSALEM

R. P. Hanna

Description

O Jerusalem offers adventure, travel, and mystery. This modern fiction depicts its characters’ minds. It expresses the anger that most people feel with extremism.

The story begins soon after the 9/11 bombings. Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists and anarchists all risk destroying themselves and each other. Fanatics almost cause an apocalypse. Fake news deludes everyone. In London, Jack is a fanatical atheist seen through the eyes of his moderate girlfriend Emma, whose uncle is the Archbishop of Canterbury. In New York, Chaim is a Jewish extremist observed by graduate student Helen and her Professor. In Istanbul, Sheikh Abu, who directs Islamic terrorists, is studied by Ersan, a Turkish philosopher. In Wichita, Kansas, young Betsey is inspired by the radio preacher Rev. Jones to undertake a Christian mission to Kabul; a cub reporter follows her misadventure. In Jerusalem, a magical Indian child appears and is killed delivering his message, "Make peace or die." The Lollypop minister is a nut-case Israeli populist willing to risk nuclear war. Edward, a sane Israeli, is trying to reconcile Jews and Muslims. The darkroom anarchists, funded by an unknown billionaire, have great technical resources and considerable imagination to cause much trouble.

Sujets

• Religión
• Atheism
• Religion
• Athéisme
• Adventure
• Fiction
• Action
• Imagination

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse UK
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9798823082495
• Langue: English

Extrait

O JERUSALEM
R. P. HANNA


AuthorHouse™ UK
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403 USA
www.authorhouse.co.uk
Phone: UK TFN: 0800 0148641 (Toll Free inside the UK) UK Local: (02) 0369 56322 ([phone] from outside the UK)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2023 R. P. Hanna. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  07/18/2023
 
ISBN: 979-8-8230-8250-1 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-8251-8 (hc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-8249-5 (e)
 
 
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
I Meetings
II Istanbul: Night Journey
III Wichita: Buckle On The Bible Belt
IV Nyc-Jerusalem: Scientist-Prophet
V A Sacred Child
VI Canterbury: Atheist And Archbishop
VII Trial Of The Gods
VIII Poor Uncle Richard
IX Things Blow Apart
X Jerusalem In The New Millenium
XI End Of Days In The Darkroom
XII After Nothing Happened

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This proto-cinema is a theological melodrama, an anti-historical unromantic, techno-magical realistic science fiction satire set in an alternative reality where extremist mentalities prevail.
Expect nothing simple.
Christina helped me find a balance.
RPH
I
MEETINGS
The First Meeting: London
“I have great sorrow in my too-small heart.” 1
T He Archbishop’s niece stared—with some slight astonishment—at the young atheist sitting opposite her.
“Let’s get serious and just finally admit something,” he insisted with an intense glint in his eye, “this God thing is an illusion. A delusion. A lie. And for that they go around killing each other and the rest of us too?”
Emma said nothing and felt embarrassed. She had learned to condemn the sin but forgive the sinner. She was able to apply this principle to the present green-eyed, black-haired man. However, she found herself in various difficulties: one problem was that to be honest with him she should now identify herself as a modest believer in much Church of England doctrine. She made certain exceptions, of course; but in the main she found sufficient intellectual humility to accept the wisdom of the centuries as transmitted by her elders. This included a secular principle of moderation in most—if not perhaps all—things. This militant atheist called Jack was moderate in nothing so far as she could tell. Still further, she’d somewhere learned tolerance of other systems of belief; she was exercising her tolerance just now. She was tolerating Jack’s intolerance. Had she made the right moral choice? It was unclear.
In any case she could certainly understand how, in these weeks just after the bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that non-believers should be just as unhappy about the state of the world as believers must in all good conscience find themselves.
“Those of us who don’t believe any of this nonsense are going to get killed in the cross-fire between nut cases who do believe. It’s already happened. Why should we not stand up against deadly delusion?”
She felt like looking over her shoulder to see if anyone else was listening to Mr. Jack Foote’s tirade. She allowed herself a quick glance around; so far as she could tell, without staring too obviously, no one in the coffee house was paying them any attention. She stirred her raspberry and vanilla tea, and chuckled to herself. She was being a little paranoid. Furthermore she really did understand that kind of theological scepticism that freed her companion to reach his extreme conclusions. She’d just let such doubt quietly languish in some grey area at the back of her brain. God was too complicated to fathom intellectually, but viscerally she knew he/she/it—the ‘Great Whatever’—existed. Human ideas come and go. Useless notions vanish, but substantial truths abide—even when they are unprovable. God arrived with man, and as long as we survive, god will, she thought . . . in some form or other. And anyway, God isn’t an absolute anything. God evolves and abides, as all existence does. That was probably some kind of heresy; but she really didn’t want to get into the whole god-thing right now. Dishes clashed and a pot clanged in the kitchen behind the swinging door—accidental cymbals announcing nothing. But the man sitting opposite her obviously had God right in the front of his brain.
“This God guy is an invention . People made him up. It’s just so obvious that it spits right in your eye.”
Then came an obnoxious interruption to his obnoxious tirade: “ I am an Antichrist-a! I am an Anarchist-a! I am . . . “ It stopped when he pushed a button on his phone.
“What on earth was that?” said Emma. “It frightened the life out of me!” This was not quite true, of course: she’d been more amused than scared by the ringtone. But the caution in her soul about this handsome young man bred an ability to practice a very slight, polite, wilful deception.
“Sex Pistols. ‘Anarchy in London’. I downloaded it just for today. Are you into ringtones?”
“Not really,” said Emma. “I prefer discrete vibrations. And why Anarchy?”
As if to suggest that her question was somehow inappropriate, Jack raised a black eyebrow over a green eye. Emma felt herself blush. She suppressed her anger with herself.
“So,” Jack continued. “The real question is why people don’t say it to each other a little more often. God is a Big Lie. The biggest lie ever.”
She allowed herself a long pause while she looked around again. While she was looking elsewhere, she could feel his eyes traveling over her face, inspecting her. Was he looking at her as a woman? Or as a political friend? He was waiting for some response, but she couldn’t think of one.
“Ah. But you suspect that a lot of people think it, don’t you? They just don’t have the courage to say it; or they’re too polite. That’s the damnedest thing. We atheists have always been so polite to the poor, deluded believers.”
“Well of course.” She didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him that his great original insight was perhaps a little more obvious than he knew. She didn’t want to offend him. He interested her, despite—or perhaps because of—his intensity. He had energy and enthusiasm. He was very alive and free. That made him attractive. And his eyes, the windows to his soul, were green. She wasn’t really alarmed by his radicalism, although she thought fleetingly about telling her uncle about him. Church of England people needed to know—and she knew they were willing to hear—about the existence of people like this young man, with his black hair falling across his forehead.
Emma had met Jack at an anti-WTO rally in Trafalgar Square several days before. He’d been standing off to one side of the crowd, watching the protestors—not participating himself. For some reason, she found herself watching him. She was sitting on the stone railing beside the National Portrait Gallery, and he came to sit next to her. When she tried to stand on the curved surface of the stone wall she had tottered and nearly fallen, so he had reached out to steady her—without even looking up, as if just assuming that she’d accept his courtesy. So she’d taken his hand and found this stranger’s palm unusually warm. It was just a sense she’d had of temperature. Nothing more.
Somewhat bemused, she’d watched the demonstration in protest against the exploitation of the world’s underclasses. Or in protest against something. It wasn’t quite clear what. And for just a moment, she’d held the stranger’s warm hand.
“What do you think about all this?” he’d asked when she stepped back down to his level and pulled her hand free. The way he asked the question made her think that he had formed his own sceptical opinion of the protests.
She hadn’t been sure what to think. They’d wandered away from the noise of demonstrations and found an elegant restaurant, tucked safely away from the street. His phone rang repeatedly . . . I am an . . . I am an . . . and he seemed to be talking to half a dozen different people in a cryptic way, mostly saying only “yes” and “no.” Listening too closely to his end of the conversations seemed rude, so she’d tried not to. But she had the odd impression—an almost subliminal sense—that he was talking to someone, or to several people, who had some knowledge of the demonstrations that they’d both just avoided. In between blasts of the Sex Pistols, they’d talked about the dire state of the world. They also agreed to meet again in a few days.
N ow, a few days later, in a comfortable café in north London, she studied him. He didn’t seem to be at all interested in her as a woman, which made Emma feel both relieved and a bit miffed. He appeared to be focused only on his ideas, on his one idea. But the fact that he stayed so focused on his idée fixe made him all the more challenging. She wondered if she couldn’t distract him.
“If everything they do is done in what they call ‘God’s name,’ then everything is done in the name of nothing real at all, in the name of some confused cloud of images invented by primitives to explain the inexplicable.” On and on he droned. He said that people today followed the primitive ideas, even after th