“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.”
Arabelle asked Markus how that quote was pertinent to her and how could there be any possible significance of it being applicable to her and her situation. He explained that human beings were either full of light or were in great darkness, and to know the difference between an eye full of light and an eye full of darkness, one had to understand light and to know where the darkness came from. For Arabelle, as he told her, she was in darkness just now and needed to be brought forth from her tenebrosity and back into the light. She asked him where the light came from and he told her through Jesus Christ and then used another biblical quote as an example. This time it was John 9:5:
“As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” and Markus explained that when Jesus Christ returned to heaven, He would send another light, and that would be God, the Holy Spirit, also known as the Comforter, and that Arabelle was in need of comfort. Markus continued with his biblical quotes and used John 15:26 for reference:
“But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Holy Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Holy Father, he shall testify of me.”
By now, Arabelle had become ensorcelled with the words of this Markus Bruscante, and she told him she felt that a great weight was being lifted from within by her just simply talking to him. It was as if his words were like some form of palliative treatment that provided her with temporary relief from her innermost pain without actually effecting a cure. And she was grateful for his words. Although the horror of what she had experienced would always be a part of her, the pain and torment that she felt was being alleviated. She asked Markus if he was a priest or a lay-preacher and he had declared to her that he was neither. He was a Perfecti, a spiritually attuned follower of The Path of Belibasta and that he had found, through inner purification, he was in possession of the Holy Spirit and was fully prepared for encountering ‘oneness with God’.
Following these original meetings with Markus, the therapists tasked with monitoring Arabelle’s mental health and wellbeing, had recorded that there had been a remarkable improvement in her general condition. She now appeared to have discovered, to have found, a new meaning and purpose to her life again and she was recovering, or moving on, from the unpleasant emotions, the feelings of guilt, the setbacks and the hardships she had experienced for such a long time. In the professional opinion of the various doctors and psychiatrists who oversaw her curative care, her physical and mental health had drastically improved, and more importantly, she appeared to be a far more hopeful, energetic and balanced person than ever before.
The sanatorium’s associated medical staff and health-care professionals had all congratulated themselves on their success in achieving to turn Arabelle Auguste around from the dark depths of despair, but the truth of the matter was that Arabelle had found new hope, fresh faith and a bright light that showed her a new direction in the form of Markus Bruscante, a Perfecti, and The Path of Belibasta. She had become a convert to the cause, a Credente, a believer in an ancient faith that somehow had managed to remove her psychological burdens from within and cleared a way for her to return to the Holy Father.
But four years had passed by for Arabelle since those initial meetings and the palliative effects of this belief in the doctrines of The Path of Belibasta were wearing off. Now utterly convinced that she had been deceived and manipulated into adopting a belief system that was not of her choice or asking, she was adamant that she had been mentally violated and coerced to reveal her innermost fears, concerns and feelings to a man who she now believed had misled her from the start.
Markus Bruscante had made her question herself and also challenge her own faith, or lack of it. He had effectively given her a spiritual placebo and then used it to cleverly manipulate her mentally, especially when it was perfectly clear to him at the time that she was an emotionally vulnerable and susceptible person who was wallowing in the depths of despair, alone in the world, and at the lowest and darkest places of her life. He had convinced her to believe that faith was a force within her, and that she should embrace it with open arms to embark on a journey following a path of destiny. But Arabelle now realised that faith isn’t a force, it’s a personal attitude of trust of someone, or something, achieving for you what you cannot do for yourself.
This man Markus Bruscante, this ‘Perfecti’, had fooled her into stimulating her own faith system into believing that his religion, his faith and the following of The Path of Belibasta would cure her of her spiritual ills. She now saw the light, and it was shining on the truth that lay before her - she no longer trusted him, or his faith, to help her with her pain.
With the continued improvement of her mental health to the current point where she could see everything in her life with a newly found clarity and purpose, Arabelle had begun to question the many changes that had been made to her life since her first contact with Markus Bruscante. While she genuinely appreciated that Markus and The Path of Belibasta had rescued her from herself and harm’s way while restoring her ability to value her existence following such tragic circumstances, a growing curiosity from within was now driving her to question, challenge and doubt the honesty and integrity of this sect that she had become a part of. Many aspects of a number of its operations did not seem to be dedicated or consecrated to a religious purpose and she felt that she had been inducted into becoming an integral functioning part of Markus’s enterprise because of her vulnerability and distress following the trauma of losing her family.
He had manipulated her to become malleable to his wishes in his sole pursuit of power, influence and control over the beliefs and practices of other religious faiths.
He was using her administrational skills, as well as the accrued and considerable resources and wealth of The Path of Belibasta, to fuel the engines of his own megalomania while fortifying his prepotent position as Perfecti. Arabelle was angry because she had allowed herself to be beguiled with his promises of faith and spirituality. All she ever wanted was to be at peace and with her family again.
As she walked away from the window and returned to sit at her desk, she muttered to herself.
“If he wants to have ‘oneness with God’, Markus Bruscante can faithfully trust that one day I will happily go and show him the path to it, permanently.”
11.18am – 8th April, present day.
Mirpur - Pakistani administered Kashmir (Azad Kashmir)
Rifat and Daniel meandered their way around the ruins of old Mirpur city. The remains weren’t what you would normally call ruins in the classical sense, as you would expect to see at Herculaneum or Persepolis, they were more akin to mounds of rubble as remnants of where the original brick buildings had been before being bulldozed prior to the flooding, and what buildings that had been left standing had simply collapsed in on themselves under the pressure and passage of water over the last 50 odd years or so.
But not everything was just a mound of rubble. The basic layout of the city could still be seen with roads bisecting the numerous artificial tumuli of former buildings, marked with the occasional remains of a lamp-post or telegraph pole standing erect beside them like randomly-placed gravestone markers to what had once been. The real ruins of Mirpur, or what you would normally envisualise, or expect to be called a ruin, were the more substantive buildings that had been made of stone. An entrance doorway and its surrounding walls here and a toppled pillar and support block there, were interspersed in and around the remnants of the city. But the stone buildings, the ones that had survived the flood, all seemed relatively unaffected by over a half-century of being under water.
The city’s mosques still had their minarets intact and Daniel did think to himself that he wouldn
’t be at all surprised to hear the Adhan, the call to prayer, being called out by a muezzin from one of these minarets. Elsewhere, a Sikh gurdwara could be observed and a Hindu mandir stood all alone by itself. Daniel climbed atop an arched entrance way just in front of the mandir and waved over at Rifat who was standing on a mound of bricks about 50 metres away. Rifat beckoned on him to come over and join him and Daniel jumped off the archway and headed towards him.
He slipped on some wettish earth, tripped over some rocks and disturbed the ground beneath him as he attempted to keep his balance and remain upright. He gathered his composure and corrected himself as Rifat asked if he was alright. Daniel started to walk over in the direction of his companion, when something white, in amongst the ground he had just unsettled, caught his eye. Bending down, he lifted the white object from the ground and determined that it was a smallish, smooth surfaced ovaloid stone, no larger than say a flattened golf ball. He briskly rubbed the stone in the palms of his hands to remove some of the dirt that clung to it, and as he did so, he observed that there were markings of some sort on opposing sides.
He wetted the tips of his fingers with his tongue and then applied them to the stone’s surface before rubbing the now-moistened item furiously on his sleeve to try and clean away more of the ingrained dirt. He continued to repeat the process as he walked over in the direction of Rifat, still standing atop of his mound of rubble.
“What have you got there?” Rifat asked.
“I don’t really know. It’s a funny shaped stone with some markings on the sides. Do you recognise them?” and he tossed the stone towards Rifat for him to have a look at.
Rifat caught the stone with both hands and studied it intently. He brushed and rolled the stone along the thigh of his jeans in an attempt to clean it some more.
“Haven’t a clue. I’ve never seen those markings before. Could it be something off that building behind you?” and pointed at the mandir that Daniel had just walked away from.
Daniel looked back at the mandir and shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s from that. That’s made from a completely different type of stone and I don’t see anything around here that matches it. Do you think it could be from some type of game or was a marker for something?”
Rifat just shook his head.
“I’ve not seen that before, but I don’t think it’s from a toy or anything round here that a child would have been playing with. I should know, because this was my house and where we lived.” and pointed downwards to the rounded pile of bricks and rubble he was standing upon.
Daniel took the stone back from him and placed it in the side pocket of his trousers.
“I’ll give it a proper clean back at the hotel. Maybe there will be something on it that’ll give us a clue like ‘Made in Hong Kong’ or something.”
Rifat just laughed at Daniel’s remark.
“Welcome to my humble and former ancestral home, or what’s left of it” and stretched out his arms as he pirouetted and danced on top of the pile of debris that he was standing upon.
“It must be quite strange for you to be standing here just now?” asked Daniel.
“I can close my eyes and I can remember all of what was here. In my mind, I can hear the noise and bustle of the old city with the cars going by in the street, the overloaded bicycles, the shops and houses, the chatter of the people walking about. They were happy times and it feels like only yesterday but it was a lifetime ago for me, unfortunately.”
“But they are good memories to have and you mustn’t forget them Rifat. They are a part of you.”
“I was just thinking that. I look around me and I have a glimpse of pre-independence times when there were many faiths co-existing with each other in the Kashmir region as a whole, but after partition in 1947, most of the Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists fled over the new border into India. But even after that, before the old city became part of the dam project, I clearly remember Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all living here together in relative harmony with each other. My childhood friend, Rama Shresth, lived just there.” as he pointed at a nearby mound of rubble.
“His birthday was about this time of year and it always coincided with a Hindu festival, Rama Navami, a celebration for one of their gods. People were going in and out of that mandir temple for days and Rama’s birthday was always in the middle of this festival, hence his name. But it was a close community back then and non-Hindus were always invited to these amazing feasts that were happening. I remember my parents doing the same with all of our non-Muslim neighbours when we celebrated Eid-al-Fitr at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.”
The two men continued on with their exploration of the rubbled ruins, and as they did so, the earlier conflict and animosity that had previously existed between them had disappeared. Daniel liked how Rifat explained the layout of the old city and what he remembered of it. It seemed to Daniel that Rifat was enjoying this welcome catharsis of being able to remember back to the days of his childhood again and then sharing all of his memories with a complete stranger. Daniel, in turn, had shared some stories of his growing up while also explaining why he had ended up working in the Kashmir. He wasn’t telling anything that was secret or confidential, and he felt that Rifat would understand, even appreciate, why he might have been so defensive with him earlier in the day.
Rifat asked Daniel if he wanted to return to his hotel, or did he want to come back with him to his house and have something to eat and use his computer to research the markings on the stone. They agreed on going back to Rifat’s house. Daniel was greatly relieved that the earlier confrontation seemed to have been dismissed.
4.23pm – 8th April, present day.
Mirpur - Pakistani administered Kashmir (Azad Kashmir)
Rifat had driven back along the way they had come earlier and took the landrover up onto the Bhutto Park Road. After a short distance, he turned the vehicle along the Allama Road and then left along Akabr Road. Straight ahead at the end of the road, a towering minaret loomed large over the surrounding buildings, shining white in the lowering sun.
“My house is just beside the Jamia Mosque Palloht there in the distance. That’s the minaret you can see.”
As they approached the mosque, Daniel marveled at the scale of the solitary minaret, square at the base and also where it attached itself to the main place of worship. It was a five storey tall construction with differing adorations on the façades of each level. The ground floor was square and resembled a castle piece from a game of chess. It had crenellations on all four sides and the entrance was a tall, turquoise-coloured door. Above this square base, it rose in a series of circular or octagonal stages, each marked with a projecting balcony. The first floor was an octagonal shaped affair with each side fitted with a long and narrow, arabesque-style, stained glass window. The second floor was completely round with a turquoise exterior, the middle of which was tiled with a red and white zig-zag pattern. The third floor was also rounded but had eight thin, non-windowed archways running from the top to the bottom. The final floor was the tiered roof of the minaret itself, topped with a bulbous dome.
Rifat drove the landrover past the mosque and turned down a narrow lane that ended as a cul-de-sac. He drove up to a set of imposing iron and steel gates that hung from posts protruding from a 15 foot high perimeter wall. The metal gates were topped with ornamental curved railings with rows of gold painted spikes, as were the tops of the wall on either side of the gate-posts. The railing walls seemed to run along the perimeter of the building behind the gates and Daniel couldn’t help but notice that the gate-post pillars themselves were at least 10 feet thick. Rifat reached into his glove box and pulled out a small remote control unit that he pointed at the gates and pressed a button. The gates opened slowly and revealed an imposing looking house lying behind them. He parked the car underneath the building and aimed the remote control back at the gates and slowly watched them clos
e over shut again.
“Welcome to my house, office, workshop, garage, warehouse and car pool.”
Daniel looked around himself and the various vehicles that occupied the space underneath the house. The cars were mainly all high-end specification business vehicles that Rifat probably used for his business ventures, as well as a saloon car and a battered pickup truck, but what caught his eye were the two HONDA CBR1000RR Fireblade motor cycles that were against the far wall, one black and one blue. Daniel blew out a whistle of appreciation as he walked over to admire the two motorbikes. He patted the black one in the same way you would a Labrador dog. Rifat walked over and joined him.
“Do you like my bikes then? They can seriously shift but I’ve got too old to use them, none of my customers are motorcyclists, it is illegal to use them on public roads in Pakistan due to their engine specifications and there is absolutely no chance of either of my sons ever being allowed to ride them.” quipped Rifat.
“They are really nice bikes to drive, but you are right, they are exceptionally fast beasts.” replied Daniel and Rifat laughed.
“Beasts! That’s what they are. They are beasts!”
Rifat guided Daniel around to a doorway and led him up a flight of stairs into a spacious hallway on the ground floor of his house. A female voice called out from somewhere and there then followed a brief exchange of conversation with Rifat. They went through into a room that Daniel automatically recognised as also serving as an office. Desks had computers on top of them with telephones, printers and ring binder document folders placed throughout the well lit room that even had the obligatory photocopier in the corner beside the water cooler. There was an ante-room at the back and Rifat unlocked the door and asked Daniel to take a seat at the desk. Rifat went around to the other side and sat down, unlocked a small filing cabinet beside him and lifted out a folder and laid it on the desk. Daniel recognised the ISI logo on the front of it and ascertained from the cover legend ‘Daniel Lauridsen’, that this must be the dossier of information that the best security service in the world had on him. Curiosity got the better of Daniel and he opened the cover to have a look at the contents.
Thor's Haven Page 4
