Something there is (that does not love a wall)
Um. I was too skeered to post this, but Nny made me so IT IS HER FAULT. As always.
It's sort of a crossover with a Palestinian film called "Divine Intervention," but if you haven't seen it it won't matter. Just know that Elia and the phrase he writes on the walls belong to Elia Suleiman. Also, I'm not making a political statement.
Anyway. Vaguely C/A, Milliways canon, spoilers for current events.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done/ On earth as it is in heaven...
Crowley watches without emotion as blood drips from his wings and pools in rivers on the ground. The pain is in some other part of him, the part that can scream and tremble and break under the torture while this fragment huddles miserably in the back of his mind, watching. The blood drips. The rivers pool. He imagines he can see letters there, spelled out in his blood upon the ground. He can't imagine what language they would read in, or what they would say. He has no one to pray to. He has no one to beg. There is one person he could speak to and he is gone.
Elia is writing. There are words on the walls of all Jerusalem, long arcs and curves of Arabic, pleading. "I love you. I am crazy." The longest, screaming across the whitewashed bricks where soldiers walk: "I am crazy because I love you." He writes in the dark of night and in the dead of day, when no sun over this scorched land can trouble him as much as his heart; when no moon is as great a magnet as the love that calls the tides of his blood . "I am crazy because I love you. I love you. I love you." It is nowhere in the Qur'an. No quote from God or his prophets. "I am crazy. I love you."
I am crazy because I love you.
Aziraphael thinks about tea, mostly, in the huge lonelinesses of the days when his will has broken and his body is so tired, too tired to fight anymore. Tea. Fragrant and dark, the smoke rising off it, the delicate scent of apples. It's easier to contemplate the exact dissemination of an infusion of tea than to think about (his high cheekbones, his beautiful hands, the way he looked when he'd fallen asleep with his sunglasses on and you'd taken them off and he'd been curiously vulnerable, like a mortal, lost in his small indulgence and you'd wanted to protect him forever). The way the colour spreads in small waves through the water, darkening it, the colour of apples, the colour of (blood).
He clenches his fist.
The memory of apples has started to make him sick.
They argue over whether or not they are Pyramus and Thisbe, lovers with a high wall between them. There is a wall, of course, a literal wall through which they pass from time to time with soldiers. No sound escapes it but now and then Elia has gone to the wall and pressed his face to it and imagined that he can hear, on the other side, the whisper of her captive heart beating. It is an extravagance. The Israelis come, and later she berates him for the risk. He breaks down in that empty parking lot, the demilitarized zone they have created with their hands and mouths and boundless, boundary-less souls. "What kind of God?" he asks. "What kind of God puts up walls? Is it your God, or is it mine?"
She stares out the window at the checkpoint with its faceless ghostly guards, and echoes of guards, and guards, and guards throughout the centuries, only the uniforms changing, and the languages they speak to God. "That's all He does," she says. "He puts up walls. That's the kind of God he is."
Crowley starts to laugh somewhere in the midst of it all, high breathless hysterical laughter that baffles them because they don't understand. They'll never understand. They can break him now, kill him even, if they choose, but they can't erase what's happened and it's worth it. Kill him two, three years ago and it would've hurt. He'd have gone empty, incomplete, still trying to figure out what the fuck it was that he was staying alive for. What the fuck it was he was fighting for. He knows now, and it doesn't make it better: it doesn't make it less painful: but he knows and he is finally, fully, fiercely alive.
One of them will end up with nails in their hands, but not from Roman soldiers or the rapture of God. A bomb will explode in a cafe/on a bus/in a nightclub/on a quiet sidestreet on a Sunday afternoon and the shrapnel will go everywhere. It will go in his hands and her mouth and both their beating hearts and break that cycle of silent rendezvous. She will die and he will hear the news, maybe even hear the sirens; he will go to the wall and press himself against it and imagine that he is holding her fragile body in his arms. He will die and she will hear the helicopters beating dark wings against the wind and know; she will sweep through that checkpoint like a furious angel and she will say My god, my god, I have forsaken you. She will say, My god, I am here to tear down your walls. And no wall ever created will be able to stand against her love.
He is walking into an ocean of life and love is the stone in his pocket that will cause him to drown. He is walking into an ocean of love and life is the stone in his pocket that will cause him to drown. He is walking with strength and purpose. He is walking like Moses, with no one to part the sea. He is praying for some second miracle. He is walking to drown and willing himself to live. He is calling on some spark of creation saying I am your child and I am walking in your name. He does not expect salvation. He is already saved.
It's sort of a crossover with a Palestinian film called "Divine Intervention," but if you haven't seen it it won't matter. Just know that Elia and the phrase he writes on the walls belong to Elia Suleiman. Also, I'm not making a political statement.
Anyway. Vaguely C/A, Milliways canon, spoilers for current events.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done/ On earth as it is in heaven...
Crowley watches without emotion as blood drips from his wings and pools in rivers on the ground. The pain is in some other part of him, the part that can scream and tremble and break under the torture while this fragment huddles miserably in the back of his mind, watching. The blood drips. The rivers pool. He imagines he can see letters there, spelled out in his blood upon the ground. He can't imagine what language they would read in, or what they would say. He has no one to pray to. He has no one to beg. There is one person he could speak to and he is gone.
Elia is writing. There are words on the walls of all Jerusalem, long arcs and curves of Arabic, pleading. "I love you. I am crazy." The longest, screaming across the whitewashed bricks where soldiers walk: "I am crazy because I love you." He writes in the dark of night and in the dead of day, when no sun over this scorched land can trouble him as much as his heart; when no moon is as great a magnet as the love that calls the tides of his blood . "I am crazy because I love you. I love you. I love you." It is nowhere in the Qur'an. No quote from God or his prophets. "I am crazy. I love you."
I am crazy because I love you.
Aziraphael thinks about tea, mostly, in the huge lonelinesses of the days when his will has broken and his body is so tired, too tired to fight anymore. Tea. Fragrant and dark, the smoke rising off it, the delicate scent of apples. It's easier to contemplate the exact dissemination of an infusion of tea than to think about (his high cheekbones, his beautiful hands, the way he looked when he'd fallen asleep with his sunglasses on and you'd taken them off and he'd been curiously vulnerable, like a mortal, lost in his small indulgence and you'd wanted to protect him forever). The way the colour spreads in small waves through the water, darkening it, the colour of apples, the colour of (blood).
He clenches his fist.
The memory of apples has started to make him sick.
They argue over whether or not they are Pyramus and Thisbe, lovers with a high wall between them. There is a wall, of course, a literal wall through which they pass from time to time with soldiers. No sound escapes it but now and then Elia has gone to the wall and pressed his face to it and imagined that he can hear, on the other side, the whisper of her captive heart beating. It is an extravagance. The Israelis come, and later she berates him for the risk. He breaks down in that empty parking lot, the demilitarized zone they have created with their hands and mouths and boundless, boundary-less souls. "What kind of God?" he asks. "What kind of God puts up walls? Is it your God, or is it mine?"
She stares out the window at the checkpoint with its faceless ghostly guards, and echoes of guards, and guards, and guards throughout the centuries, only the uniforms changing, and the languages they speak to God. "That's all He does," she says. "He puts up walls. That's the kind of God he is."
Crowley starts to laugh somewhere in the midst of it all, high breathless hysterical laughter that baffles them because they don't understand. They'll never understand. They can break him now, kill him even, if they choose, but they can't erase what's happened and it's worth it. Kill him two, three years ago and it would've hurt. He'd have gone empty, incomplete, still trying to figure out what the fuck it was that he was staying alive for. What the fuck it was he was fighting for. He knows now, and it doesn't make it better: it doesn't make it less painful: but he knows and he is finally, fully, fiercely alive.
One of them will end up with nails in their hands, but not from Roman soldiers or the rapture of God. A bomb will explode in a cafe/on a bus/in a nightclub/on a quiet sidestreet on a Sunday afternoon and the shrapnel will go everywhere. It will go in his hands and her mouth and both their beating hearts and break that cycle of silent rendezvous. She will die and he will hear the news, maybe even hear the sirens; he will go to the wall and press himself against it and imagine that he is holding her fragile body in his arms. He will die and she will hear the helicopters beating dark wings against the wind and know; she will sweep through that checkpoint like a furious angel and she will say My god, my god, I have forsaken you. She will say, My god, I am here to tear down your walls. And no wall ever created will be able to stand against her love.
He is walking into an ocean of life and love is the stone in his pocket that will cause him to drown. He is walking into an ocean of love and life is the stone in his pocket that will cause him to drown. He is walking with strength and purpose. He is walking like Moses, with no one to part the sea. He is praying for some second miracle. He is walking to drown and willing himself to live. He is calling on some spark of creation saying I am your child and I am walking in your name. He does not expect salvation. He is already saved.