Losing My Religion

A blinding white light shone upon me, burning my eyes, but I was unable to close them. I stood there, in a pillar of illumination, surrounded by all consuming, crushing darkness. Silence was everywhere, I felt utterly alone, like all hope was lost, like there was nobody who cared for me anymore. I don’t know how long I stood there for, but my sadness and depression increased with each movement of the clock hands of my mind. Just when I got to the point where I felt I at my most alone, my most desperate, a booming voice, was a human clarity sounded around me. Though the voice was loud and clear, as though inside my head, I could not understand the words, it didn’t matter much, I felt as though nothing was wrong anymore, like everything was right in the world, well, mine own little world at least. At first I didn’t understand where the voice was coming from, but then I realized….

I awake slowly, peacefully. I assumed it was because of the dream I had just had, but after sitting up I realize it was probably from the booze I had had earlier, not that I can remember it. I eventually sit up, not without difficulty, and look around my room, or I would have, had this been my room. I try to reconstruct the night before, but to no avail. I get out of bed slowly, then stumble towards the door, stubbing my toe several times along the way. The door creaks open to reveal a scene of disorder and mayhem. I assume that I never left the party, and I can tell the party hasn’t left me, yet. I rushed around the house, trying to find a bathroom, I finally do, only after checking at least 10 rooms, full of unconscious partygoers. The party pad seems to be some sort of mansion; it would be a nice mansion, too, if it weren’t for the bodies laying everywhere. I guess I’m the only one awake yet, but just as I finish creating this theory, a woman walks out of one of the rooms, uniquely beautiful, maybe 20. If she isn’t a model, she defiantly should be. Her jet black hair stands out against her vibrantly white dress, which somehow stayed white even after the party, it’s cut short, but not so short that it’s tasteless. Our eyes lock for no longer than a fraction of a second, it is the most blissful and amazing fractions of a second of my life, and I’ve had quite a few. I open my mouth to speak, only to find that I’ve been robbed of that ability. She giggles at my dorky fish impression, then turns and glides away, leaving me to fight with the cat that has a grip on my tongue. My mind flashes back, to a year before…

I had just received my degree from university, one of the best that money could buy. I felt ready to take on the world now, and I did, for a little while, but I felt a void in my life. I went back to school and majored in Philosophy, and while my unenlightened classmates grumbled about how it was a waste of time, I was soaking in all the course’s wisdom. My teacher was a native of Cuba, where I had decided to go after my unfulfilling education in the States. I enjoyed the beautiful landscape while I dwelled on what I had learned from my classes. After I reluctantly getting ready to leave Cuba, I stood in the airport, and realized that I didn’t know where to go. I had a fairly healthy bank account, thanks to some cushy jobs I had received in the US, so cost wasn’t a big issue. I decided to learn more about my newfound inner profoundness I learned from my courses. I traveled, France, Rome, England, Australia, China, I had even spent a few months in Afghanistan, getting a job with a construction company, helping to rebuild what war had destroyed. I had finally, after so many years, felt completely. I flew back to New York and found a nice apartment, I settled in, I even met a few people and started attending some great New York parties.

I follow her into the room she entered, I look inside to see a particularly beautiful bedroom, the master bedroom, I guess. The mystery girl is just lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I decide to join her, but I don’t lay so close to her so that it seems I’m hitting on her, it’s bizarre, we’ve never even talked and I already know that I love her and I’d never do anything to ruin it. We stare at the ceiling, on it is just a painting, no, a mural. Carious words, drawing, scribbles, doodles, all arranged into a spiraling circle, like a hypnotist’s pendant. The mural is so attracting that I lose track of time, no that it matters, time seems at a standstill when I’m with…whoever she is. Eventually, after three hours, or so the clock says, she stands up and leaves the room, without so much as a word. I follow, unable to resist, outside the room, people have yet to being to awake, I suppose that they drank more than we did. On this room’s wall I see something that I didn’t before, a painting, so simple, yet so complicated. So profound, my body feels thrown into the magnificent work of art. In this painting there is nothing but a word, yet there is also hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of images, each one of them making up this one word. Each image depicts a problem, a conflict, sadness, despair, war, poverty, famine, and hatred. While looking at these images, I feel hopeless, alone, depression, for the second time since I passed out. I focus my eyes on the big picture, the word, and at this moment, I feel as though all is right with the world. “Peace.” That’s all the painting says, “Peace.” I stand there, love knows how long. I just stand there, my eyes unfocused; all I can see is a blurry image of “Peace.” I refocus and start to walk our of the room, stepping over motionless bodies, remains of the party, I walk into the next room, expecting to see my mystery woman, but she doesn’t present herself to me. The room I stepped into strikes me once I look closely, it’s white, all white, from the walls to the furniture, ceiling to carpet. All white, except for one line of red, splashed down one side of the room. The room is hard to adjust to, but once I do, I continue on to the next room in search of la femme mystereuse. The next room is almost the opposite of the one before, everything is completely black. But instead of the red splash, there is one sloppy steak of white running down the southern most wall. The white paint looks fresh, just like the red did. I find what, or rather who, I’m looking for in the next room. The woman in white is laying, curled up in a ball, laying on one of the mansion’s many luxurious beds. Upon further inspection I see that she’s reading a book, crying. I walk over to her and sit down beside her. Her big wide blue eyes look so sad, making me feel so hopeless, so…dead. I can’t take it, I have to get away, I get up and start to hurry out of room, hitting a few guests on the way, I start to run through the house, those eyes burnt into my mind. I keep running until I find myself in a room I don’t remember being in, so I slow down. It looks disrupted, furniture overturned, broken glass strewn everywhere, and there are more guests here than anywhere else. I continue to the adjoining room, it looks just as bad but there’s one major difference.

After awhile, New York bored me, I decided that I needed a change of scenery; a poster at my law firm (I had taken some law classes awhile back) inspired me. It was a poster that was for a company that was helping rebuild Iraq, I knew right away that’s where I wanted to go. I packed my bags and left, I told no one, all I did was leave a note that said “goodbye.” I had spent a few months in Iraq when I found an underground…community; I suppose you would call it. It was full of intellectual people who kept their organization secret for fear of backlash because of their very liberal ideas. They held classes, organized book clubs, protests and parties. حركة سرية, قطار اّنفاق, the underground.

A giant hole in the wall, menacing, threatening, staring at me. I don’t know what could have caused it, but whatever it was big enough to take out the better part of a wall. After shaking off the initial shock, I turn and take off back towards the door. I figure whatever it was might come back. I run through the rooms once more, the rooms I once took the time to admire. I ran through rooms I had never seen before, through rooms that pulled me in, daring me to investigate further, but I refused. I resist until I come o a room, or rather the room. It is obviously the room the owner spent the most time on and in. I can tell from the amount of worn pillows everywhere (there were no chairs, just cushions) and the amount of money this room must have cost to make. I’m paralyzed in a minute of awe.

One day, it was during one of the more intense US bombing campaigns; there was a loud knock on our secret little bunker-turned-underground-university. We waited for the tell tale second and third knocks, but they never came, however, a battering ram did. A battalion of men came in, Iraqi, I assumed. Guns drawn, they rounded us up, putting all 30 of us into trucks. They took us to a detention camp that we had only heard stories of before. خوف, خشية, خطر, fear.

This room, it contains every religion I can think of. One part of the wall is dedicated to Judaism, next to it, Islam. There’s a section for Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and more Pagan religions than I knew existed. Each area contained a holy book, some paper, a pen and some clipping from various newspaper (some from the other side of the world, places I’ve never heard of) magazines and other printed articles. I looked at the scrapes of paper, each one contained notes about how the religion inspires people, how it confines people, how it helps, how it hurts. I walk around the massive circular room until I finally collapse on a cushion.

I was deported back to America a week later, when I arrived there I was detained again and while they said that it was a mere formality, I knew better. Even after being realized I could feel them watching me, when I went to a church, a mosque, a temple. No place was holy to them, I felt my paranoia increase, eventually I stopped leaving the house, stopped taking calls, I stepped out to get food one day, which I did seldom, and when I returned, I found a man looking through my apartment, he ran past me and escaped, but they kept watching. After a year or so of crushing loneliness, and constant surveillance, I finally got a call, out of the blue, from an old friend, who used to be a member of حركة سرية, قطار اّنفاق. They weren’t in the bunker when were captured, but eventually they felt the risk was too great and they came home. My old friend caught me up on their life since then, and then invited me to a party, a reunion of the Underground.

The room mocks me; all these hypocritical symbols of religion, making me feel claustrophobic in my own body. The symbols that inspire hate, that turns good to bad, that inspires murder in the name of god. I feel the paranoia slip back into me, I become panicked, I get up and start to run towards the door, then I see her, I stumble and fall. She giggles again and it cures my anxiety, I feel relieved and relaxed. I see her walk around the room to each of the religions, and then she turns back to me, smiles, and starts developing a white glow around her. I lift my hands to my eyes and rub them, because I do not trust what I am seeing, that’s when I discovered I’m doing the same, I have the same white glow. All around my hands, my body. I feel the familiar unconsciousness creep up and start to play at me.

I arrived at the part, relived to finally get out of the house and to finally catch up with old friends. I arrived, talked, drank, and enjoyed myself until I saw the one thing that I had been dreading all night, a black van, outside the window, across the street. I saw a squadron of men jump out and come towards the house the house where the party was taking place, but before I had time to react, there was an explosion, and then the shooting started, then…nothing. My last sight was of my old friend, in her beautiful white dress, having her life stolen from her, and then the pain took me.

As my memory comes back, and the unconscious feeling receding, I realize what is happening, I look at my friend, she smiles and looks above, a brilliant white spotlight illuminates her, enveloping her sparkling white dress. Another light envelopes me, taking away all my thoughts, my worries, my concerns, everything. I know now that me and the woman in white will be together, forever.