This article is being posted without attribution because the author fears for his safety.
We got the news yesterday and had to act quickly. I would never have thought someone would die so quickly, as they usually last longer, even once the security services decide to kill them. I should explain. There was a man from the north of our country that I met about two years ago. I’ve never quite heard of or seen anyone like him. It’s hard to explain. There were times he seemed so lucid, a great cultural critic, like he was able to see the world better than I could. But there were other times when he seemed to take these incredibly “out there” spiritual positions. I couldn’t figure him out. Was he trying to overthrow our government? Was he trying to lead a rebellion against our occupiers? Or was he a lunatic spiritualist? I’d heard of him for a while, and eventually just decided I needed to talk to him myself.
I believe in checking things out, not just believing what you hear. Some of my coworkers call me “the ministry of meeting with spiritualists and nuts.” We’ve got a lot of them, given the state of our country and its religious past. And, I should say, I’m religious, not just religious, but a religious leader, though I think I represent a more mainstream, traditionalist religion.
People on his side don’t give me credit for the risk I took in meeting him. I’m part of my country’s government, though we are, to be honest, a pretty neutered government, as we’re an occupied nation. We have some limited control over our local affairs, but we all know not to poke the bear. We could be out—and dead—in no time, and we know they’re watching us, and all our communication channels. Yet, my conscience has me feeling that people need to know.
And there have been different reactions in our society ever since the invasion decades ago. For a number of years, we have had our own government, as I said, but we keep our power because we keep order, because we keep them happy. It’s tricky, because the economy is a wreck. They take most of our natural resources, and we have to pay them for all sorts of “services.” It’s gotten so bad that a lot of people just drink. Alcohol as a means of forgetting our trouble. Others are finding a way to make a living, but I’m concerned about the immorality of how they’re doing so. People are just trying to get by, and the smut—and worse—industry is flourishing in one set of people that seems to just not care anymore. As they say, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
Of course, there’s a different approach out there, and these guys really scare me. They’re basically a militia-type group running around doing guerrilla warfare. These people know they can’t win in a true battle, so they stay out of the cities and urban areas, but they are attacking folks in the rural areas of the country, ambushing patrols, and funding themselves by banditry. We are all worried they’re going to provoke a response and get us all killed. I mean, we’d love to be free, but this way is probably going to make things worse, not better.
And then, there are those of us in government. There are really two political parties in our country. Most of the people in the congress are from the other party. They want to give in to the imperialists. After all, these folks have their jobs because they’ve pleased them. They don’t care that we aren’t free. They are, honestly, making a pretty good living, in control of the capital city, the schools, the cultural institutions. And, of course, some of them collect those terrible taxes. Let’s name them what they are, taxes, not services. Taxes by the imperialists who really control us, whatever they say about our free elections.
I’m from the minority party in the government. I’m not sure why we’re allowed to keep our seats in the legislature at all, but I think it’s because having a few of us here lets them act like the elections aren’t rigged. But we’re way outnumbered when it comes to any votes. We can’t really influence policy that much. That said, when it comes to the population, we’re the real voice of the people. We may be a fraction of the legislature, but if it were a free and fair election, we’d have a strong majority. We do want to be free. We don’t like this fiction that is our current government. And we want to hold out for the traditions of our people. Honestly, we’re just trying to keep our heads down and live out our religion as best we can, and if we don’t make waves, maybe they’ll let us. We just want to be normal, God-fearing people. That’s all. I hope you understand.
And that’s why it was a risk for me to go meet this man. You see, he’s made such waves that a number of people think he’s setting himself up to lead a revolution. He’s built quite a following. But he’s mainly been out in the bush. If he gets to the cities, though, especially the capital, and if he sets off the powder keg of some of our slums, it could get really ugly, really quickly. If they knew I had met with him, I could lose my job in the government, lose any chance I have to do any good.
Now, when we talked, I’ve got to tell you, he was just confusing. I don’t think he was trying to lead a rebellion. I think they’ve got him all wrong. He’s more a mystic or some kind of spiritualist, not a revolutionary. He’s talking about atmospheres and visions and seeing the invisible. I left thinking, “Okay, he’s mostly harmless, as long as people don’t misinterpret what he’s saying.”
Things really came to a head about six months ago, during the holidays. He showed up in the capital. I think his country following had gotten to his head, and he was testing out things here. But I don’t really know his mind, or course, as I’ve only seen him that one time. But I’ve tracked him from afar since that night we talked a couple of years ago. As he grew in popularity, though, he’s gotten more and more attention from the government, especially the leaders here in the capital. I still think they’ve got him wrong, but I’ve got to say that he doesn’t have many fans left. They think he’s trying to upend it all, not even just for freedom, but by creating some type of a communal life that just wouldn’t work. It’s gotten to be a real problem. People want so badly to be free that they’re starting to run off after all sorts of other kooks. If he just becomes another one, then it’s one more step towards another invasion and us losing any freedom we do have.
And, honestly, a lot of people hear what he says and think he doesn’t care about our traditions and our laws. He seems to love being with those drunkards and, well, the others who do things they shouldn’t. Morality seems to be in the balance here. Society could soon disintegrate if we don’t keep good morals here to keep all this in check. People who follow him are now regularly kicked out of their social and religious networks, because they say he doesn’t care about living rightly.
So, as I said, it really got going six months ago when he showed up at a holiday celebration and really caused a stir. He was creating such a disturbance and teaching so baldly against our customs that, finally, they decided to arrest him. They came back empty-handed, though. The policemen who went came back almost like he’d bewitched them. They said they’d never heard anyone talk like that. Of course, I think the bigger thing was that they were afraid of the people. And that’s fair. It was going to be pretty hard for them to get him out of a crowd that was that entranced by him. They might have caused a worse riot by arresting him than by leaving him, so they came back without him.
That, as you can imagine, created quite a stir the next day inside our council chambers. I’m pretty sure a couple of people lost their jobs over that one. There were different opinions, but most people believed we just needed to make this problem go away by picking him up at night. If we catch him when the crowd isn’t there, we can jail him, and they’ll forget about him soon. I pushed back—I promise, I really did—and reminded them that we do still have due process in this land. If we say we believe in the law, then we can’t just ignore it, even if everyone else does. We’ve got to be better than that. I think I bought him some time.
After all that, I really started thinking about that conversation he and I had. I’ve met with a lot of spiritualists and others over the years, even a lot of mystics. But I’ve never been able to get out of my head that this man was different. I even chatted about it with my most trusted friend in my party. It’s not only that his following kept growing – we’ve seen that before. It’s more what he said.
When we talked, there was all that mystical stuff, sure. He was talking about birth and the wind and water. But he wasn’t some pagan pantheist. It was such a disorienting conversation that I didn’t really even understand what he meant. I guess that was obvious, because at one point he got a bit direct, left me a bit piqued. He even asked me, “You’re a teacher of the nation, but you can’t understand what I’m saying?”
I was tired. And it was late. And I was quite conscious of the risk I was taking. So maybe the stress of it all meant I wasn’t listening as well as I could have. But it seemed he was discussing some cult of a birth, as if our birth enables us to see God. He was short with me, but in hindsight, I was also a little short with him, maybe even a little sarcastic once he had started talking about things that are physically impossible.
But that line, “You’re a teacher of the nation, and you don’t understand these things?” It has just gnawed at me. He seemed to know what he was talking about, as if I were playing checkers and he was playing chess. And I reflected more and realized that he was simply talking in the realm of metaphor, about understanding spiritual realities. And that’s what we need first. Yes, we need to be free. But even more, we need to get back to being right with God. If you look around at our nation, we’ve got a lot to fix.
I got there on that part. But I was really confused by the last part. He started talking about history, about grumbling and complaining, about when plagues had hit our people in the past. He started talking about overcoming the devil, but doing it by losing. I’m still confused. But I can’t get him out of my head. Even in spite of myself, I’ve been thinking more and more that he has a point, though I still don’t understand how his point works – winning by losing.
But now, just today I’ve gotten the news that he’s dead. It blew up quickly last night. There wasn’t time to do much about it. One of the factions in our government sent out a bunch of mercenaries and thugs to arrest him. Apparently one of his own people told someone where he’d be, and without a big crowd around him. They brought him in and brought him before us.
I’d say that the vote against him was 68-2, except there wasn’t really a vote. It was more a mob, a shameful moment for what we are supposed to be as a government. They were shouting and yelling and there was no way to stop it as the whole group condemned him. I’m not sure if I should have been louder, but I couldn’t even have been heard if I had tried. It was shameful to see him condemned without any of the process that guards us against becoming like heathen animals.
And now I’ve gotten news that he’s been executed. They tortured him all day, starting this morning, and he finally died in the afternoon. This was evil. We should not be this. Even more, he hadn’t done wrong. As I’ve rethought this all yet again, I think he was right. He was no criminal, and he was not going to lead a rebellion. He was the only one who actually saw things sanely, who really had an answer for what is wrong in our world and culture, and we’ve gone and killed him. He wasn’t going to lead a rebellion, but he would have been the leader we should have had.
So, I took a risk. As you can tell, that’s not so much my M.O. But my friend went to the governor, not our council, but the guy who actually matters. He asked if we could give him a proper burial, one fitting for someone who hadn’t done wrong. We got permission, which I wasn’t sure was going to happen. I think they’re still concerned we would make the funeral a big march. But we just wanted to bury him with some dignity, and the governor let us do that.
My friend has a family plot in the cemetery, so we used his family tomb. And I’ve done pretty well in life, so I went and bought what we needed to bury him with honor. And we did it. In the daylight. I’m pretty sure when I get to work tomorrow, I’ll be out. There’s no way they are going to tolerate me supporting him, even just giving him a proper burial. But finally, I’m not sure I care. We had to get it done quickly, because it was almost Friday night, and no one works on Saturday in our country.
He’s buried now, and at least buried with dignity. I can at least give an innocent man that.
