Shavuot

"What if they learn to laugh at God?"-- Umberto Eco

It pierced the blood, the actions of Mevlut Mert, pierced the blood in remembrance of fervor, of devout aspiration which even Roman Catholics are taught to hold at arms' length, the passionate conviction of belief, the struggle of belief, which yet provoked laughter, yes, laughter, at the private gatherings of women in ad hoc prayer groups, speaking in tongues, no descent of the Holy Spirit here, just ridicule, before doing a 180 towards atheism, one which would become a life long dissatisfaction with the explanations of mere biological impetus. Frightening, perhaps, that I do not joke, remain inexorably moved, never having imagined I'd live to see an instantaneous warrior, martyring, out maneuvering, circumventing internal security forces, his fire making the rest, left or right, seem paltry. Most true acts of terror have a yellow streak embedded in them, including Osama's spectacular operatives, despite that it was indeed a historical blow,9/11, one that has an indelible infamy whose repercussions reverberate. The points can be plotted: Al Qaeda strikes, Afghanistan becomes occupied territory; Iraq turns into a casualty of an extended ideological argument, a fruit seller in Tunisia ignites sectarian factionalism which no one outside of policy institutes understands, and in a game of superpower volleyball, Libyan and Syrian territorial integrity ceases to exist, and ISIS too, for all its ruthlessness, has an underbelly of loathsome cowardice. Not this young man, whether or not he followed this Gulen who resides in my state, this unknown figure who is Erdogan's favorite bogey figure, a disruptive element within Turkey's own internal tensions. 
Something inside the breast broke, a floodgate, I believe, ready to take up arms for -- for-- what? Rolling to parish, throwing myself on my knees to light a candle for the soul of a twenty two year old man who was trained to be what he was, fully expecting that the military's attempt to depose the yet again discredited civilian power structure to be successful? I grew up with the military taking over the government in Turkey, never saw anything like Mevlut. Informed as to the after effects of calamity? Certainly, there were the bloody pictures of Sadat, the death of Lord Mountbatten, but never this, a direct strike on the residual Soviet hierarchy. The sheer awe of what zeal can do in striking truth to power restored something to me about the divine, left me shaken with its force, with Orhan's narrative voice superimposed, not that I may ever peruse his work again beyond what Snow offered, since there are limits, within my morbid frame, to my multi-cultural pathways, and I'm not the least interested in writing the typical correspondent analysis of Turkey as the nation of crossroads, a bridge. Why would I care beyond the knowledge of Germany's sizable community of Turkish expatriates?
There are certain levels of empiricism beyond intuitive understanding, despite the ready access to the genealogy of events, to the explanations of the divisions between Muslims over successors. Sides not understood are sides not to be taken, but nonetheless, some actions have the potential for paradigm shifts, to permanently alter perspectives, break the order of things, despite a hastily papering over. Times have changed, and repression of such striking dissent is not as easily accomplished as it once might have been. If I can grieve for such a sacrifice, an alien so many leagues away in a Quakertown backwater overrun by waves of ethnicities subsumed by urban blight, how much more will those closer to these roils in Ankara burn the torch of his memory? Send a prayer for his soul, this Mevlut in black. have mercy on it, as Bashar has had none to spare in his bloody desert.