JADED ROSE

Christian bashing had been part and parcel of Egyptian life since the forceful takeover by the Prophet's earliest followers. Shortly after the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula by the rampaging armies of the holy man in the 7th century A.D., Christian Egypt, then under the Pope of Rome, was violently snatched from the Carpenter from Nazareth. Before the century ended, most Christians in Egypt and throughout Northern Africa had either fled the country or converted to Islam. By the mid 800's, few Christians were left. Within one century, the Christian Church was dealt a blow from which it was yet to recover. In the streets of Cairo that day, was an additional Muslim reminder of the power of the Cross when confronted with the Sword.

"Allah Akbar!" shouted the inflamed mob as they dragged the aged priest from his church and hurled him, holy icons, and whatever else they could rip from the tiny church, into the streets. The priest, his wife, and a son were beaten to bloody pulps. Any attempts made by a disapproving government to stop the riot were blocked by angry throngs of religious looters. The followers of the ultra-fundamentalist Sword of the True Islamic Faith had planned the program down to the letter.

To save the Embattled Christians from the Faith, they ran a gauntlet of broken bottles, trash, rocks, bricks, and bags filled with human and animal feces. Kept busy by the shock troops of the True Faith, the Christian neighborhood was doomed. Most Muslims in areas surrounding the church sympathized with the Christians, but they knew that any involvement on their parts could and often did result in a burned down business, a raped wife, a stolen child, or at times, outright murder. The government outlawed the fanatics, but ranks of police and army could do little to stop the flow of violence against Christians and other enemies opposed to a more literal interpretation of the holy book.

The muezzin's chants assumed a new meaning as the bearded, old, priest lay dying, his guts exposed to footfalls, and aley vermin. As police gunfire grew nearer, the mob worked earnestly to hasten the destruction of the dangerous infidels. The door of a Christian religious bookstore owner was kicked in and shelf after shelf of books on various subjects were tossed into a huge bonfire.

"Let him go!" shouted the bookstore owner's wife, but they threw him into a fire. Within minutes, his body was ablaze. The police sirens grew louder as his wife, hoping against all expectation, leapt into the flames to die with her man. Thinking quickly, the Akbar clan, devout Muslims; and friends of the Husein family, risked their lives and pulled the man's wife from the flames. Angered by the horrible display of human cruelty, members of the Akbar families, armed Christians, began to turn the tide of battle. They waded into members of the Sword and tossed several of them to the flickering flames. Consumed by the very books they burned, their howls tuned out the muezzin's prayer call. The police, at long last, burst through the maze of barriers that had been set up to delay rescue of the embattled Christians.

Within minutes rioters were thrown into police vans, and bodies were gathered up. Ambulances ferried the wounded and dying to nearby hospitals.

Mary Egypta Husein (her English pen pal called her Mary for short) gazed half-way through the dark night at her father's picture. She remembered how he used to take her for long walks through the city explaining Cairo's colorful history to her as she looked upon him with eager, young, bright eyes. They would buy spices at the ancient spice market. As a treat, the elder Husein would buy her candy from the market. On days with nothing to do, he would take her to the Suez Canal to watch ships from the many countries that she had read about in school, pass through the locks. How she used to fantasize that she was aboard one of those ships going to some far off distant shore.

Her eyes grew sad as she listened to her family in the room below trying to patch up what remained of their lives. Her mother cried throughout the night. Her beloved father's burned ashes laid in a jar on the mantelpiece directly under the gold-colored icon of The Holy Redeemer. He had told her many times about the life of the Man in the picture. She used to want to meet Him and thank Him for giving her such a loving, warmhearted family.

But her brother Mustafa was hospitalized, her mother was roughly treated by the mob, and her father had died before her young eyes. One night, as her family lay sleeping, she removed the picture of the Man dressed in gold and tossed it into the fire. Her love for God had turned to hate. If He was loving, caring, and loyal as her father had said, then why did He let people who believed in Him, do such terrible things to her and her family? Hadn't her father sold His books? Painted and framed pictures of His Mother? Hadn't they gone to His house every Sunday to thank Him and talk sweet things about His Name?

Why had He abandoned her family? this eager child 8 years of age wanted to know as she ripped up and spit on the big family Bible. From now on, she would love no one, serve no one, and be beholding to no one. The potential beauty vowed to serve no man. From that night, two weeks after the fateful riot, Mary's world would revolve around her and her alone. She would make herself the object of attention.

* * *

"Mary, what happened to your uncle's magazine? You were the only one who stayed up last night," Mary's mother, a converted Christian wanted to know as she yanked the child by the arm forcing her to spill soup on the freshly mopped floor.

The child violently yanked her arm away.

Aguza Husein, once the prominent daughter of a well-known professor at Cairo's main Muslim university, had done the unmentionable. She had no only married a Christian, but converted, fully knowing the death sentence for any Muslim to convert to another faith, to the religion of the infidel. The pretty, well-to-do woman was promptly chucked out of the family mansion and onto the mean streets of the city of Cairo.

Aguza's daughter had inherited her mother's brown beauty, her long, black, curly hair, and her stubborn streak of fierce individuality. Fearing a permanent breach, Aguza wisely backed off. Aguza also feared that given the time and proper circumstances, her budding beauty would inherit another asset--her love for men. Her desires velled during her Muslim years, as a Christian, the woman gave free reign to carnal desires with her husband. With him gone, she would devote all her energies to what remained of her faith in God, rebuilding the family business and her family.

"Aguza, leave her. She'll come out of it. Just give her time," the middle-aged, balding, heavy, sagging-from-too-much-beer drinking with tourists uncle said as he crept closer to the girl.