Saving a Child From God, page 16
He opened the box and pulled out the foot-high, battery-operated model. He put it on the table and flicked the power on using the wired remote control. The creature’s eyes immediately flashed red and it began walking, each footfall accompanied by a booming noise.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Abdullah was doing his best to not look but only lasted a few seconds. The professor smiled as he sat forward on his armchair. “And look what happens,” he said holding his index finger over the controller, “if I press this button.” It threw back its head and roared. “Isn’t that great? Do you want to try, Abdullah?” The dinosaur halted as he proffered the remote across the table. “Come on, you have a go.”
Abdullah took it and began to play, smiling as he made it turn. He chortled when it tottered on the table’s edge and nearly fell off. Professor Jeggert sat back to watch before reaching behind his armchair to pull out another model.
He held up a Triceratops and waggled it. “Look what I’ve got! A great big herbivore with three sharp horns that the T-Rex wants to eat. Shall we play together?”
“OK.”
He put the Triceratops on the table and did his best to charge at the mighty carnivore’s belly. Abdullah sidestepped him and clambered onto the back of the beast, but lost his balance and fell onto his side.
“Now I can get you!” But Abdullah righted the T-Rex with his hand. “Hey! You can’t do that. That’s cheating.”
“I can do whatever I want. It’s my T-Rex. You said so.”
They battled for another ten minutes amid the electronic roars and thudding footfalls before the professor put down his controller.
“I think you win, Abdullah. You’re too strong for me.”
“Yes.” Abdullah punched the air. “Yes!”
“Do you like your present?”
“Yeah, it’s cool.”
He nodded. What a great lead-in to the lesson, what a great example of practical teaching. “Tell me, Abdullah. What do you know about dinosaurs?”
He shrugged while continuing to manipulate the T-Rex. “They’re all dead.”
“Very good. That’s correct. They are all dead. And do you know when they became extinct, when they died out?”
The boy shook his head.
“Well, it was a very long time ago. About sixty-five million years. Isn’t that a long time ago?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you know how long people have been on the planet?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ve been here for about 200,000 years. Not even half a million years. In the history of time, that’s just a heartbeat. So which came first, Abdullah? People or dinosaurs?”
“Dinosaurs.”
“Yes! Very good. You are an excellent student. Now, who made dinosaurs?”
“Allah. Allah makes everything.”
The professor nodded. “God makes everything, eh?” He smiled. “OK, let’s run with that. If God made dinosaurs, why is there no mention of them in the Koran?”
Abdullah stayed silent, preferring to play. The T-Rex took a few booming steps, stopped and roared.
“Abdullah, can you answer the question? The Koran mentions many animals but not dinosaurs. Why aren’t they mentioned?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, I don’t know, teacher.”
Abdullah kept his head down playing with the controller. The professor reached across and gently confiscated it.
“Abdullah, say – ”
“I don’t know, teacher.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. You should always respect your teacher. If you don’t respect your teacher, you can’t learn. And I want you to learn, Abdullah. I really want you to learn. OK?”
“Yes, teacher.”
He smiled. “I want you to listen, Abdullah. This is important. Now I find it very strange there’s no mention of dinosaurs in the Koran. Or any other holy book for that matter. I mean, these spectacular, amazing animals dominated the planet for hundreds of millions of years! Don’t you think they’re worth a mention? At the very least as context? What do you think, Abdullah?”
“I don’t know. I want a drink.”
“And I’ll get you one soon. But let’s keep talking about dinosaurs. I think there’s no mention of them in the Koran because the men who wrote it didn’t know about such things. Dinosaur bones hadn’t been discovered yet, not until the early nineteenth century, in fact. But the Koran, it tells us God created man first, that man was his primary, most important project, that Adam and Eve were the first people. Isn’t that right, Abdullah?”
He didn’t answer. “Can I call my mummy?”
“But life didn’t begin with man, Abdullah. Science tells us this isn’t true. We have evidence – the fossils, the bones of the dinosaurs among other things – to back it up. So how do you explain the dinosaurs then? How do you explain these enormous life forms lumbering around the planet for millions of years before mankind?”
Abdullah did not answer.
“Life in all its forms is very complex. It has developed and evolved over such a long time. We’re talking billions of years. But the Koran tells us that God just got some clay or dust and made a man shape and blew life into it. This is embarrassingly simplistic nonsense, nothing more than an admittedly cute story from days gone by when we couldn’t explain things. Only a child would believe it. If we came from clay, then clay would be in our DNA or there would at least be traces of it in us. But there is no clay in us. None at all. Why? Because we did not come from clay.”
He looked at the child, waiting for some kind of response. Surely he could begin to grasp that he’d been lied to? Perhaps that was too much to hope for so soon. All he had to do was stop the brainwashing process and introduce him to alternative sources of information. Prevent him from growing up intellectually lopsided.
Abdullah, however, seemed more interested in scratching his shoulder and picking at a scab on his scalp.
“Here’s the truth, Abdullah. Life didn’t begin on land. It began in water. You see, water is the key to life. We are seventy percent water. If I don’t give you any water for five or six days, you die. Even now, all these millions of years later, we spend the first nine months of our life developing and becoming recognisably human under water. Water is everything. And so we can’t find life on other planets because we can’t find water, although we can find plenty of dust. But dust has nothing to do with the formation of life. Do you understand, Abdullah?”
The boy was now absorbed with the remote, chewing on one of its corners like a dog with a shoe.
“Abdullah, I want you to repeat after me: Life began in water.”
“Life began in water.”
“Life began in water, teacher.”
“Life began in water, teacher.”
“Now, tell me, Abdullah: Is Adam and Eve true?”
“Yes. Adam is the father of man. Eve is the mother of mankind. Adam was the first prophet and we learned everything from him.”
The professor sat back, frowning at the robotic response.
“Don’t just parrot things, Abdullah. I want you to think about what you’re saying. Do you understand me, Abdullah?” He tapped a temple. “I want you to think.”
****
Abdullah had no way of cleansing himself before he prayed. Neither did he have a prayer mat. He knew praying in such a way was bad but it would be much worse if he didn’t pray at all. He went to the chest of drawers, pulled out a couple of T-shirts and laid them on the damp cellar floor.
He prayed for a long time.
“You alone we worship and from You alone we seek help. Allah akbar.”
He put the T-shirts away and sat on his bed. He thought about the bad man. At least he wasn’t angry anymore. At least he hadn’t hit him again. The dinosaurs were kind of cool, but he wished the bad man didn’t talk so much. He didn’t know what he was saying but it was boring. He was just a stupid old man with a stupid haircut. He wasn’t kind like his daddy and didn’t say interesting things.
The key had failed to open the door again and he’d hidden it back behind the pipe, knowing he would have to spend another night in the disgusting cellar. There were all kinds of bugs and he was afraid to go to sleep in case they crawled into his ears or up his nose and laid eggs that would hatch and...
He glanced at the bare light bulb, knowing if he turned it off even for a second then the bald demon with the rotting, mashed-up face and big fangs would appear in the corner.
His eyes stung with tears and his bottom lip started to tremble.
He wanted to go home but Allah was punishing him because Darren Brentford had made him do something very bad. It was all stupid Darren’s fault and he wished Darren wasn’t at his school and that he’d never met him.
The bad thing happened a week or so ago. After getting bored playing soccer and deciding to explore instead, he’d gone to the big field at the back of the school with Paul, Steve and Darren. They came across a hedgehog that ventured out of a hedgerow. It had a cute black nose and a funny little face but as soon as Steve approached it with a stick it rolled into a ball.
They all wanted to play with it and somehow its withdrawal felt rude.
Paul said they had to hold their breaths and be extra still to fool it into thinking they’d gone away, like that game where you have to sneak up to a boy facing the front and tap his shoulder without him catching you moving.
After a minute or so of staying dead still, Darren got bored and began calling to the hedgehog like it was a dog. Then he made some funny kissing and whistling noises and they all cracked up, but the hedgehog stayed rolled up. Darren pretended it was a football and mock-kicked it before lightly balancing one foot on top of it.
Then they crouched around it, daring each other to touch the spines to see how sharp they were. Abdullah accepted the dare but as he reached toward it he spotted loads of black fleas crawling between its spines. The hedgehog was disgusting. He quickly stood and they all laughed at him and said he was a wussy and a coward and a girl.
He got angry and chased Paul with a stick, even though it was Darren who said most of the bad things. Then Darren found a big flat piece of wood and placed it on top of the animal, covering it completely.
“Stand on it, Abdullah.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I say so.”
He had that mean look, the one with the screwed up eyes which meant he was going to push you over or spit on your shoe or give you a wedgie. Paul and Steve didn’t say anything or even look at him. Darren took a step closer.
“I said, stand on it.”
So he did.
Darren took a photo and said he was going to post it on the internet unless he gave him ten pence. He wanted to step off but Darren insisted he stayed there for a good few minutes. Then he was ordered to get down. He refused to look after Darren kicked the wood aside and shouted: “Oh God, that’s so gross.”
Abdullah ran home, knowing the hedgehog was dead and that he’d done a bad thing. Allah saw everything and knew what he’d done.
And now he was in the bad man’s cellar and maybe the bad man was going to put a plank of wood on top of him and stand on it until he died.
****
Chapter Eleven
Professor Jeggert carefully carried the bag along the university corridor, trying not to make its contents clink too much. He thought about Abdullah, pleased with last night’s promising start on dinosaurs. His plan over the coming weeks was to establish a general undermining of God before getting more specific. Mohammed’s morally dubious character needed exposing, especially the way he was a slave-owning warlord who had no problem ordering beheadings and mass killings. Then there was the whole marrying a child thing.
It would also be worthwhile to put together a few lessons highlighting the sheer violence of Islam’s history. Islam had been spread by the sword, although Christianity (with its Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, witch trials and outrageous land grabs) was clearly no better. Abdullah needed to appreciate the savagery that had erupted after the partitioning of India and during the Bangladesh War of Liberation, not to mention his religion’s dismal state of perpetual conflict between the Sunnis and Shiites, an ancient schism that began because Islam’s main man lacked the foresight to sort out what would happen after he died.
Some prophet.
And things could be rounded off with an overview of modern-day extremism. The Taliban and Islamic State were simply fundamentalist nutcases who absorbed the Koran’s frequently unpleasant rhetoric – Fight in the name of your religion – and took their delusional fantasies to their natural conclusion.
When he thought about it, it really was a mystery how Islam’s devotees and apologists, as well as the politically correct and the lame-brained, still insisted it was a religion of peace. Why, just the other day he’d found a bit in the Koran that said unbelievers like him were the ‘vilest of all animals’ who should be slain. Weren’t their laws in the UK against hate speech and inciting violence? And yet the Koran and the Bible were not only riddled with such shameful passages, but openly on sale and being fed to the young.
The professor sighed. Enough was enough. A stand had to be taken. Yes, it would be a strain, but his mind burned with the overwhelming desire to usher Abdullah onto a more enlightened path.
He turned a corner and picked out Sue Norgate and Hooligan approaching from the far end, getting glimpses of them chatting and laughing amid the passing students. Hooligan was sipping from a big polystyrene cup of coffee, looking relaxed and confident in yet another tasteful shirt. Sue couldn’t take her eyes off him and it was pretty easy to see she was smitten.
God, it would be great to turn Mr Self-Assured into a laughing stock.
The professor’s step slowed.
Maybe he could.
Why not just walk into him and spill his coffee? He could just say he was deep in thought, there were lots of students around and he wasn’t looking where he was going. Profusely apologise. Pull his handkerchief out and dab ineffectively at the awful stain spreading across the man’s light blue shirt and white trousers.
He put his head down, weaved around a student with a sleeve tattoo and strode toward them. As he neared, he heard Hooligan exclaim That was completely unbelievable and then he realised he couldn’t just knock into him. It’d be too obvious. With a few feet to go, he veered left and almost bumped into a large potted shrub.
Hooligan and Sue pulled up alongside.
“Hello, professor,” she said. “Are you trying to do the tango with that plant?”
“Erm... No, I was just...”
“What’s in the bag?”
“Nothing.”
“Sounded like bottles.”
“I have a party to go to after work. An old friend from university. We were in a punk band together. Really... Really knew how to rock the place.”
Sue glanced at Hooligan and raised her eyebrows. Hooligan simply folded his arms and stared at him.
“Sounds nice. And have you pushed any lollipop men over today?”
He wagged a finger at her, increasingly aware of Hooligan’s glare. “Now I never pushed him over. I pushed him out of the way. Just doing my civic duty.” He swallowed. “I take it by your delightful presence in this magnificent university that your syndicate didn’t win that twenty million quid on the lottery.”
Sue pursed her lips. “Not quite. We did get three numbers, though so that was... something.”
He smiled as Hooligan’s glower continued. “Three numbers, eh? Marvellous. Enjoy your ten quid. Perhaps the next time a ladybird lands on you, you should eat it. Maybe that’ll improve your luck.”
“Thank you, professor. Most helpful, as usual. Come on, Mr Hoonagan. Let’s go.”
“I’ll catch up with you,” he said as she half-turned. “I’d just like a quick word with my esteemed colleague.”
The professor tensed, not liking the sound of that. “Sorry, I don’t have time. I’m already a bit late for – ”
Hooligan blocked him. “Don’t think I don’t know it wasn’t you.”
“How many negatives did you just put in that sentence? I’m not even sure of what it means. Don’t think I don’t – ”
“James.” Hooligan took a step nearer, forcing him to look down as he backed off and his heel caught the base of the plant pot. “I know it was you.”
He blandly smiled. “What are you talking about?”
“That review, you puffed-up sad sack. Just admit it. For once in your sorry little life, be a man.”
“I really have no idea what – ”
“It wasn’t hard to recognise the pretentious, self-important, long-winded style.”
“Pretentious...? Moi? Hark who’s talking!”
“So it was you who one-starred my book on Amazon?”
“It most certainly wasn’t!” He tried to go round but Hooligan blocked his way again, causing him to inadvertently switch the bag to his injured hand. He grimaced and ended up looking at the man’s chest. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I – ”
“Tell me, Jeggert,” he hissed, lowering his head and narrowing his eyes. “Why are you such a shit-kicker?”
“I hardly think,” he said, putting the bag down and almost wanting Hooligan to hit him in front of the students, “that language like that is appropriate in a university setting and – ”
“I’ll ask you again. Why are you such a shit-kicker?”
“Oh, you’ve decided to continue with the name calling. Very mature. You’re just living up to your name, Hooligan.”
Hooligan shook his head. “You know what? Forget it. I can’t be bothered with... with you.”
He started walking away.
“And what does it even mean, anyway?”
Hooligan half-turned. “What?”
“Shit-kicker.” A handful of passing students looked round and giggled. “I mean, what does such an elegant phrase mean? Huh?”
He took three rapid paces toward him. “Well, how can I put this? It’s you.”
“No, it’s not. Your term of abuse doesn’t even make sense. You can rest assured I do not ‘kick shit’ and that I’m perfectly certain you lack any evidence pertaining otherwise. And as far as I can deduce, neither does anyone else. I mean, why would they? What would be the point in... in...” He flapped a hand, looking for a synonymic phrase. “Booting excrement around. So how is it even an insult if there’s not an ounce of truth in it? You’re simply saying I kick shit – all the time or occasionally, I don’t know – but either way it’s a patent lie and what’s more – ”
