The Lion of Babylon
PART 1- March 2003
CHAPTER 1 – The Vision
The Lion spoke to the boy in visions and words that he did not understand but on this winter afternoon the message was clear: they were coming.
Even though the sunset called him home, the boy moved nimbly with bare feet over the ancient rocks. He traversed a well-worn path between the new wall and the ruins, passing from the fading light to the growing shadow cast by the Palace atop the enormous hill. The boy was drawn, as always, to the Lion. A gray shirt and pants, handed down to him by his older cousin, hung loosely on his thin frame. His face was long and thin, with short, black hair that fell in curls on his forehead. His intense, wary eyes gazed at the ground before him but his mind was focused on his destination.
At the crest of a hill the boy saw the dark shape of the Lion in the distance, still and silent on a pedestal. Beyond the Lion was an array of date palms, their crowns painted a golden hue by the fading light. The limbs of the trees awaited the yellow fruit that would turn brown and sweet with the passing of summer. Beyond the Palace on the hill a canal that his grandfather had helped dig flowed south, carrying water from the Euphrates River to the date palms, to the cattle that came down steep paths to drink, to the fishermen that cast nets from wooden boats, and to the women in black, flowing robes who knelt among the reeds to wash clothes.
Everywhere and everything not touched by the water was desert.
The boy moved down from the crest until he was surrounded by silent spires of faded brick, a crumbling canyon formed from the ruins of ancient buildings. His father and others who respected what lay hidden below had excavated this ground. The treasures that they extricated were taken by strange men for display in museums in Baghdad. Other strange men took the boy’s father and mother when he was a baby and he never saw his parents again.
The aunt and uncle who raised him and loved him could not understand him. He was twelve years old and had long known that he was different then the other boys in the town. Yet, he did not let their stares shake the stubbornness of his beliefs. The Lion was always there to shore up his confidence. The boy saw the future, and carried with him the past of centuries, the past of the ruins that now lay underneath his feet. The boy learned long ago that his friends and family had no interest in the future, and considered the past a tide that would rise about them and then recede without a trace. They were swallowed by the present, and would not listen to his visions of the future or his explanations of the past, even if he could have expressed them.
The revelation that seized him had come many times before, but never with such clarity and emotion. This vision gained focus and depth with each step, and he knew that he must reach the Lion before he was consumed by what he would see. They were coming, and in that multitude would be one man who would set the stage for the dream that had consumed his life. The boy hoped that this vision, unlike the others, would finally reveal the man’s face. He had to see the face. How else would the boy know that the one man had arrived?
As he drew closer to the Lion, the boy felt a tremendous urge to stop and close his eyes. He silently called on Allah to help him resist, knowing that he must wait until he touched the Lion’s feet. When he touched the Lion, the images were always stronger and clearer. These visions came to him unasked and unexpected since his earliest memories of childhood, and he learned not to reveal what he had seen. Though these apparitions appeared to him before he even mastered the words to express them, when the words did come, they remained trapped inside him for want of a listener who held the key to their release.
When he arrived at the base of the statue, the boy reached up with a brown hand, gripped the warm stone, and closed his eyes. The apparition surged into his brain, full and powerful. The soldiers were there, strange and foreign, with big machines crawling through the desert and flying through the air. As the soldiers passed by, one of them broke away from the rest and began to walk toward the Lion. He cradled a rifle in one arm and strode with an easy, confident step. The boy pointed and called to the one who would listen and understand. This man would make his dreams come true. The boy tried to see his face, but the image faded and was gone.