The Light of Our Yesterdays

by Ken Hansen

  Huxley shot back, “But you cannot deny that differences in religion cause people to hate. It was hatred of the Jews among the German population that allowed Hitler to use them and then dispose of them like so much garbage.”

  “I do not disagree that people can abuse religion, even Catholicism, in that way. But it comes down to the fundamental law of hatred—it is all too easy for people to hate groups of people whom they see as ‘others.’ But that hatred of others is no special province of religion. People spew hatred for others for a variety of reasons, but at bottom it is because they are able to see that group as different from their own. All you have to do is listen to a right wing or left wing radio or television show and feel the hatred oozing from their mouths against those ‘others’ who think differently than them. Yet most of the world’s religions teach love. Jesus taught us to love not just our friends but also our enemies. So how can this wonderful idea be twisted into hatred? Because the belief in God, like anything good, can be twisted and abused by those who choose to hate.”

  “What else has been so abused?” Huxley asked.

  The old priest held out his hands. “Name something that is good and you can probably find a time or event where it was abused for evil purposes. Take fire. Without learning to control fire, where would humans be? Yet it is the harnessing of fire that has allowed us to create weapons that kill innocents, whether by exploding or shooting or creating a conflagration. Yet would you take away fire from humans as well? Or consider weapons themselves. Without them, how would civilized society defend itself from those marauders who would take away their freedoms? Yet put the same weapon in the hands of a murderer or someone we call a terrorist and how do we view the outcome? Do you agree that most things can be used for good or for ill?”

  “Yes, I see your point,” said Huxley.

  “Then do not be surprised that the belief in God can be abused in this way, even if its very principles command against hatred. But neither should we allow some abuses to cause us to jettison our belief in God. As I said, we humans have much to lose by losing our faith in God.”

  “Okay,” Huxley said, “we are back to where you started, so this time I’ll bite—what do we have to lose?”

  “The answers are infinite, but if I had to give you three, they would be Love, Hope and Contentment.”

  Huxley scoffed at this. “Really? I love, I hope, and I am content. You said hatred is not the special province of religion, but do you believe love, hope and contentment are?”

  The old priest nodded. “Not in all of their aspects, but in their most important qualities.”

  “Like what?”

  The old priest said, “Take Love. I have no doubt you love or have loved. You loved your mother. You have probably loved a woman. You may love one at this time. But do you love your enemies? Yet this is what Jesus teaches us. I admit it seems nearly impossible for humans to truly achieve in any universal way, yet there it is for us to remember. How much worse would the world be if we Christians did not remember this mandate from time to time?”

  “But these words are purely aspirational,” Huxley said.

  The old priest grinned. “Ah, but this aspiration is the needle of God’s compass for the world: without it we can accomplish little real good, for we will never know our proper heading; with it we may never reach the ultimate good, but we can come closer to God and do his work on Earth.”

  “I get this, but how many will ignore the needle regardless of their beliefs?”

  “No doubt many will ignore this direction, and many of them will scoff at the few who do seek its guidance, just as many scoffed at Columbus when he set out for India. Of course, his goal turned out to be merely aspirational, yet he changed the world.”

  Huxley smiled and nodded a few times. “You have a way with analogies, Father.”

  “Thank you. You said that you hope. What is the nature of this hope?”

  “I hope for many things.” Right now I hope to catch a terrorist. “I have hope for mankind. I hope we will find a way to get along, to stop killing each other. And I hope we will reach the stars.”

  “These are beautiful things,” replied the priest, “but do you believe in your heart they will happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The priest opened both of his arms toward Huxley. “How would you? And that makes all the difference. Will you live and will you die with the kind of hope that believes you will never truly die? Because of my faith in Christ, my hope is my belief: I believe that the world and my own soul will not end in death or nothingness. That is the strength of my faith. It gives me the confidence to know there is a God, a loving God, and in the end He will save us, not just collectively, but individually. God made us that promise when he sent us his only Son. Jesus will return to us. And along the way, we have to accept that God granted us free will for a reason. He would not lightly take that away from us. But I do believe that without God’s guiding hand we may well have already destroyed this planet and ourselves a few times over. We speak of the evil deeds that people have unleashed on their fellow man, but how much worse it might have been without God and our belief in him to guide us through those terrible times.”

  Huxley flicked a nod to the side and stared out the window at the ground rolling by. He took a deep breath and looked back at the old priest. “I wish I could believe because death seems so much less frightening when it does not mean the end of all of us. I do not fear death for myself, but for humankind. I do not even know how to imagine that. You say God has saved us from this end. Well, what happens under your beliefs if God grows weary of our impertinence and gives up on us?”

  The old priest looked at Huxley in total disbelief, “Then God help us all.”

  Huxley snorted at this intentional irony. “You also mentioned contentment, yet I am perfectly content.”

  “Are you? Could I ask you something personal?”

  “Sure.”

  The old priest leaned forward and spoke softly, “Do you ever find yourself searching? I don’t mean for anything tangible. No, I mean searching for meaning. Do you ever feel like something important to you is not quite there even though you cannot identify it? Perhaps you have felt like true happiness is just around the corner, just out of your grasp. You need only accomplish that one additional achievement that will bring you success, you need only acquire that one additional precious item that will make things complete, or you need only meet that one special lady who will bring you true love? It is a feeling that proves omnipresent yet elusive. You only realize it when you are alone or quiet and have too much time to think—too much time to feel. Normally, there is just a little emptiness in the pit of your stomach and you don’t quite know why. Have you ever felt that way? I believe humans were meant to love God, and when we substitute for Him with other goals, we are never truly content.”

  Huxley stared at the old priest without saying anything for a long time. The man had been kind, thoughtful and considerate, yet somehow his words cut Huxley at his core. Huxley could not explain it, even to himself. He had to ask the question that was gnawing at him. “You admit you cannot prove the existence of God and it is a matter of faith. Okay, so what if you are wrong? Then you have wasted so much of your life and acted like a chump, haven’t you?”

  The old priest smiled softly. “I know you don’t really believe that. Look, if I am wrong then I will still have followed the right path. Sure, we still make mistakes, and people still do bad things in the name of my religion. But I challenge you to look at the words and actions of Jesus and ask yourself if there is any moral path that could truly be more beneficial to mankind as a whole. If we all truly followed his guidance, we would be perfect. No matter how far short we may fall from time to time, I do not consider any such effort to be wasted, not by anyone.” The old priest paused, staring deep into Huxley’s eyes. “Have you ever asked yourself the reverse—what happens if you are wrong?”

  Huxley looked down and said nothing. He pulled out his
cell and looked again at his text from Kadir and smiled. Well that was his contentment for you. His friends always seemed to help him out at his lowest points—both in his life and in his career. He would look at the clues with Kadir’s new angle in mind. The whistle blew as the train slowed and pulled into Stazione Santa Maria Novella near the historic district of Florence. Huxley returned his gaze to the old priest and his nephew. “Thank you for an engaging discussion, Father. I fear faith is far too personal to submit easily to debate even though the practice does help clear one’s mind on occasion. I hope you two enjoy your visit to Florence. You will find it full of history and beauty.”

  Nodding gently, the old priest touched Huxley’s shoulder. “I thank you, kindly, sir. I can tell you are a good and thoughtful man. While you may not wish it, I will pray your mind finds what you seek long before your soul discovers the truth.”

  Chapter 32

  Anwari looked around the empty café and said quietly, “Yes, Imam, everything is set. I await him now. I used a little less of the C4 than was recommended, but it should still work for our purposes. We don’t want any collateral damage.”

  The deep, resonant voice of Pardus responded over Anwari’s phone, “Very good, Abdul. You perform Allah’s will. You concern yourself with unnecessary deaths even when you avenge an act of the Americans, who had no concern for the innocent lives of your brother and his family. But you understand, do you not, that such options will not always be available to you in the struggle against Allah’s enemies?”

  “Yes, Imam. I will follow your guidance as always, even to the point of my own death.”

  “There is no call for that as yet. But it is good to know if Allah calls, you will come.”

  “Thank you, Imam.”

  Anwari flipped his cell phone shut and stared at the table. Pardus wasn’t an imam, not really, and Anwari knew that. But Pardus spoke with the authority of Allah’s representative, and he certainly did his bidding against those opposed to Islam, so Anwari gave the man the respect he deserved. Pardus had never complained about it.

  Anwari looked out the café window, where the sun had begun shining on the train station. No passengers yet though the train was due any minute now. Pardus was right, wasn’t he? His brother’s death must be avenged, and they would be careful not to kill any innocents. But Americans are not innocents—at least not their dirty agents.

  No, the innocents were always the nameless individuals who suffered and died in obscurity whenever the plots of the powerful went awry. Sure, there would be apologies from American generals, but that didn’t save them. No, to many arrogant Americans, these people were just statistics—a quantifiable number of men, women and children who unfortunately died in the latest attempt to kill the bad guys in Afghanistan, who they thought of as terrorists. But to many Afghans, the suffering and dead were those innocents who mattered most: their brothers and sisters, their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters. And they suffered and died not because they were bad guys, but because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like his brother Karim. Why had Karim chosen that night to take his family on a visit to see his injured friend?

  Everything had gone as planned right up to the point the assault force was a couple hundred meters from the house. Then they had heard the report from the command post through their headsets, “UAS thermal camera has gone offline. Hold until we can recover.” They had established a hasty defensive position, but someone might spot them and blow the mission. Then the news went from bad to worse. “All we have on UAS is visible light imagery. Can’t see anything near the objective.”

  “Can you get a backup?” Granger asked.

  “Not within the next 30 minutes. We’ve asked joint command ops to reallocate, but the nearest is assisting a TIC.”

  Anwari shook his head. They wouldn’t move the UAS from troops in contact, not for this op. It looked like they might be blind.

  The command post added, “Razor 6, without the UAS, will you abort?”

  Razor 6, aka Captain Granger, looked at Anwari. “What do you think?”

  “They could be gone by tomorrow, but without the UAS, we lose overhead observation on the objective. Could stumble into something or miss someone trying to envelop us.”

  “Agreed. So what do you do now?” asked Granger.

  “Need to reassess the risk and our mission,” Anwari said.

  “That’s right. What’s your assessment?”

  A new, deep voice came over the intercom, “Critical objective. We know about the recent bombing by these four, but it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. We don’t want to lose the chance to bag these guys. No reports of mission compromise before the thermal went out.”

  Anwari gritted his teeth. Damn OGA bastard—just shut up Half-Moon Mole. Your ass isn’t out here facing an armed enemy. He chose not to say those words and instead looked at Granger, who nodded back at him. Anwari asked, “Any other assets available to reestablish observation? 58 Delta? Apache? Any chance the thermal will come back up?”

  “Apache could launch in ten minutes, but its another twenty minutes out,” the command post reported. Last time we lost a thermal, it was down hard for a day. Unlikely the bird will come back up.”

  Anwari and Granger nodded at each other through the darkness, hearing only the intermittent barking of a few dogs in the distance. “Okay,” Anwari said. “Should be only four of them. Worth the risk. Let’s execute.”

  Anwari had established an inner cordon within 100 yards of the building. He looked through his night vision goggles, seeing three of the targets sitting in a few chairs on the lower level of the house. Anwari’s men began moving quietly and quickly from covered position to covered position toward the target. A few seconds later, Anwari heard the slight explosion of a rocket propelled grenade launcher being fired. He turned instinctively and saw the bright trace of its path as the rocket motor ignited ten feet from the launcher. Shrapnel from a parked car ripped through two of his men. Then a hail of automatic gunfire rained down on his position from the roofs of several nearby houses. An ambush.

  Captain Granger was issuing terse fire commands through his earpiece while all the soldiers sought cover, a few firing back trying to suppress the lead barrage. A few were caught in the open and tried to shield themselves in the small ditch across the street. Then a grenade launcher sounded off from behind them on the hill and rapid fire followed from the same direction. They were being engaged from two directions.

  Granger asked, “Anwari, what is your plan?”

  Anwari wondered why the captain had asked him for direction, but the answer came to him quickly: because Granger wanted Anwari to learn, even under fire. Anwari tried to mimic Granger’s calm, assertive tone: “Let’s try to outflank them. We’ll concentrate on suppressing the automatic weapons to our front and move to a position that’s covered from both sets of fire. Down this street to the east will work. We may be able to flank the position to our rear.” He called for two of his old friends, Shafaq and Rahmati. “Focus all of your fire on the shooters on the roof at two o-clock. When you’ve suppressed them, we’ll move up that street about two hundred meters. You withdraw when we reach the position. From there, we’ll try to flank those guys on the hill to our six o’clock.” Anwari turned to Granger. “Captain, can you guys lay down suppressing fire on the hill behind us? We’ll take care of the rooftops ahead.”

  “OK, if that is your call, but don’t forget about our other assets. Should we call the fast movers?”

  Anwari regarded Granger. The captain had been disappointed he hadn’t thought of the supporting assets, but there had been a slight note of pride in his voice, an acknowledgment his Afghan trainee was thinking his way through a tough situation tactically and without panic…

  Anwari looked out the window at the station and then at his watch. Focus on the task at hand, Abdul. A few minutes later, he spied his target emerging from the train station.

  He had visited Florence b
efore, but a couple of architectural masterpieces seemed to be calling him by name to Duomo Plaza, so Huxley walked a few blocks out of his way to once again see the beauty of the Duomo and the Baptistery that faced it. He marveled at the replicas of the set of bronze sculpted-relief doors by Ghiberti that were so stunning the great Michelangelo dubbed them the “Gates of Paradise.” The replicas were placed on the East side of the Baptistery, where the originals (now in a Duomo museum) had stood for five centuries, guarding the octagonal building in which many of the Medicis and other famous Florentines, like Dante Alighieri, had been baptized. He turned to look again at the Duomo and thought for a second he might have glimpsed his old friend Anwari, but the man turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  Huxley made his way south to the Arno River and over Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge filled with gold and jewelry shops that also held a private passageway built by Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici so he could walk secretly between his private residence and the government palace. Huxley wondered at the sheer arrogance of the Renaissance power broker, but then shook his head as he thought about similarities to the many wealthy elites who today wield power behind the scenes of American politics. Huxley stopped at the window of a gold shop in the middle of the bridge for a few seconds and casually looked behind him to see if Anwari might appear, but to no avail. Maybe the man he had glimpsed was just another tourist. Either way, when he returned to Rome he needed to track his Afghan friend down and begin squeezing out some information. For now he needed to focus on Dante Tocelli’s family. He pulled out his iPhone to guide him the final steps through an old, charming neighborhood filled with narrow streets, three-story apartment buildings and bicycle racks. When the delicate mixture of fragrances wafted down from the flower boxes hanging from windows above, he smiled and raised his nose and arms to the sky, rejoicing. Such a beautiful city! And for those few moments, he forgot that the boundless distraction of beauty often conceals the subtlest of all treachery.