he despised all of them

------------- [excerpt, You Belong To Me, by Colin Harrison] ---------------





6
North Vine Avenue, Palm Springs, California


His pills were waiting for him, thirteen in all, seven for his heart and blood pressure, the rest vitamins, and he drank the orange juice first, swallowed the pills, ate the breakfast when it was brought to him, then walked out to the pool to do the watering. 


He could hold the green hose with one hand while keeping the other on the cane, braced against his hip. 


The gardener came twice a week, but he liked to do some of it, just to keep his body moving, to remember the old stone house in Tehran forty years back. 




The family was so dispersed now, some of his cousins and their wives and children still in Iran, the grandchildren of his cousins drinking too much in the secret clubs, he'd heard, caught inside the corrupt theocratic regime.  And his own family, spreading inexorably, thinning out.  His brother dead, leaving him as the oldest male.  What was called Iran had gone by many names and had taken many shapes over the centuries, but there had always been a village and a tribe.








Even these were lost now.  Now it was just the family.




He turned off the hose and went to sit in the shade near the bougainvillea, the palms high in the sky over the pool, the house bone-white in the sun, mountains rising in the distance. 


Most beautiful place on earth, so far as he was concerned. 


Rosie had put out the papers for him.  He didn't want to read, though.  He despised all of them: 


the so-called leaders of Iran,


the so-called leaders of Iraq,


the so-called leaders of Israel,


the conniving, triple-faced Saudis protected by America,


the extremist terrorists,


the factions,


the militias,


the illiterate thugs in Toyota trucks with machine guns. 


Sunni, Shiite, Muslims slaughtering Muslims for territory or religion.  Americans bombing Muslims.  Jews and Palestinians murdering each other.  Syrians killing Syrians, Iraqis killing Iraqis. 





Egyptians killing Egyptians.  Iranians killing Iraqis.  Russians bombing Muslims.  Saudis killing Yemenis.  Turks killing Kurds.  Kurds killing Iraqis and Turks and Syrians. 


First al-Qaeda, now ISIS. 


Monsters, but smart monsters. 


Meanwhile the fat Chinese businessmen lurked in the shadows, taking a percentage on all sides. 





The problems of the Middle East were economic, not religious.  But no one was interested in the opinions of an old man...sitting next to a pool in California.





-30-