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      Combat Tours Unlimited

      by

      Shawn Smith

      Copyright by A Sense of Place Publishing 2013.

      All rights reserved.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1966-4

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

      “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain my own ways before him.

      “He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite will not come before him.”

      Job 13, 15-16

      “What could art and virtue mean to him now, when he might reap the advantages of chaos?”

      Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

      PREFACE

      November, 2016. Southern Thailand. The city of Narathiwat.

      The longest running Muslim insurrection in South East Asia led to an amalgamation of Thailand’s most southern provinces and the creation of the Islamic Republic of Patani. The new Republic includes Kelantan, which seceded from Malaysia.

      For a weakened Thailand, the creation of an Islamic state on its southern borders represented a worst-case scenario. In the world at large another worst case scenario had already presented itself, with riots fuelled by ethnic and religious divides spreading across the globe.

      Buddhist priests and sectarian teachers had been unsafe in the southern provinces for decades. No Christians were known to have survived.

      “Christians?! I loathe Christians.”

      “Things have been going downhill lately.”

      “Yes, ever since the Emperor Vespesian died.”

      IN DREAMS

      A candy-colored clown they call the Sand Man,

      Tiptoes to my room every night,

      Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper:

      Go to sleep, everything is all right.

      Roy Orbison, “In Dreams”

      Abdulpamel stood awash in the burning glow of God’s morning light, oblivious to the palms gently swaying across the Babg Nara River, oblivious to the multitudinous flowers and plants festooning the nearer bank, just beyond To Ku We Mosque. Oblivious to the blazing sun, to the flowing water, to the firm earth on which he stood, oblivious to the waning breeze.

      Oblivious even to the veiled charms of the swarm of girls hovering nearby, like himself all of twelve, they allowed thus far and no farther along the processional route, unlike him denied the final spectacle. However they were not so oblivious as he, and tittered one to another of his beautiful, fine features, of his mop of wavy hair, of the slender, agile arms emerging from his sleeveless tee-shirt, incongruously emblazoned with a Pittsburgh Steelers logo.

      Abdulpamel was oblivious to all but the passing procession, making its way along Ra Ngae Makkha Road toward the cleared ground where once, before God had seen fit to grant independence to the Patanni Melayu people, had stood the Chinese Association of Narathiwat. There, it was to happen again, as it had a week before. Could this shuddering sack in the cart really be of Satan? Could she really be capable of all that his friends had whispered, striving to outdo one another in horrifying titillation?

      Obviously it must be so, as so it had been decreed. Abdulpamel trotted along, joining the throng of men and boys trailing behind the cart, the unnoticed girls left behind, casting last longing glances after his svelte, mobile form. The other boys, indeed many of the more stupid men, bartered coarse and raucous jests, but Abdulpamel had fallen into the somber state that characterized the thoughtful and righteous amongst his elders.

      Abdulpamel shouldered his way into the packed clearing, past the Bosnians, and finally wedged himself adjacent to the platform itself. They had taken her out of the sack, and stripped off the veil which she had defiled along with her body. Her face, only meters from his, was twisted in fear and agony, but Abdulpamel could not tear his eyes from it, from its lurid and filthy beauty. From the crowd the young and the stupid howled, “whore! blasphemous whore!”

      Observing the proper rites, the necessary words were said and the sword prepared. Even the most obdurate in the crowd were finally awed into quiescence by the weight of the moment, and a dead silence obtained as the sword was raised, glistening like a jewel. One swift blow and Abdulpamel was splattered by a jet of crimson blood, shimmering like the sword that had unleashed it in the burning glow of God’s bright morning light.

      WELCOME TO TIJUANA

      Welcome to Tijuana –

      ¿Tequila, sex, o Marijuana?

      Welcome to Tijuana,

      com’ el Coyote naia duana.

      Manu Chao, “Welcome to Tijuana”

      I was in Mexico City. I was poor and unemployed, one of a loose network of American Outsiders who'd left the country over the last ten years as the political divide between the US and everywhere else had opened into a chasm.

      We were hundreds of thousands, just scrapping by in the previously-developing world. A group of us were more or less encamped in a poor, swampy area to the northeast of the Downtown of Mexico City. There were spectacular mountain ranges to the east. Although I had something that I needed to do in the encampment that evening, I decided to take an exploratory trip on the subway line that passed through our neighborhood and that ran westward to the ridge upon which, further to the south, Downtown rested.

      As always during those days, it was a little weird being out and about as an identifiable American. People were usually tolerant, seeing that I was an Outsider, but there was always the possibility that frustrations would boil over into some sort of verbal abuse or assault. Outsider or no, I was still an American.

      There were very few people on the newly-opened subway , which was pricey by Mexican standards. I arrived at the station on the ridge, in a much more densely populated area. Here the savory smells of cooking wafted across the noisy, dirty, bustling life of Mexico City.

      Immediately upon getting out of the subway station I encountered a Mexican acquaintance who insisted that I head toward Downtown with her by bus. Actually, it was something in between a bus and an elevated train. Soon she disappeared, as people were wont to do. I was getting some curious looks from among the multitudinous people on the bus/train, and someone started speaking to me in Spanish. I replied in Italian, the two languages being somewhat interchangeable, and this went over very well. Everyone enjoyed the tableau of a gringo Outsider and some Mexicans conversing in a mélange of Spanish and Italian.

      Soon an even better acquaintance of mine appeared, and she invited me to come along to visit a friend's apartment, which was on the southward-facing bluff that defined the very center of Downtown Mexico City. She assured me that the amalgam of modern architecture and Aztec temple was not to be missed. I was nervous over getting lost in the middle of an enormous, potentially hostile city, of not having a clear sense of how to get back "home," if I could glorify our ramshackle encampment with that name. I asked her if she knew the route numbers of the various bus/trams which would lead back to the subway station, and she replied flippantly, "oh, there have been so many changes, I don't really know."

      But she was right; there had been far too many transfers for one to keep a clear accounting. I began to ponder the possibility of a cab ride home, but would I have the money? In any event, the invitation couldn't be passed up; beggars can't be choosers.

      We arrived at the friend's apartment, and it was more spectacular

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