The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  Zara asks, “Do you really think coming back to her with your gun and new muscles will win her back? Is there something I am missing?”

  Unable to say anything through his tears, Peter shakes his head.

  To his surprise, she puts her hand on his shoulder and strokes him. “Not that I am an expert in affairs of the heart, but some advice. You should focus on your superpowers and not some else’s. Maybe your Sarah’s muscular gun man’s superpower is killing and maiming. Do not let your jealously overwhelm you and draw you down a path that is not for you. You will win if you focus on what make you special. Your superpower.”

  She strokes him more and says, “Thank you, Peter. I know this discussion was hard. But you needed to get your emotions out in the open. We cannot take the chance of these unresolved feelings stopping you from what needs to happen.”

  Jean-Paul is amazed at Zara. She is what Alexander said she was.

  Another five minutes in silence as they pull into her mother’s village and up in front of her mother’s house. She turns to Peter, puts her hand under his chin, and says, “Peter, we are going to have dinner with my family. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, they are all respectful women. You will behave accordingly, with dignity. None of your nonsense. Especially no aliens. Say the first half of that word, and I will—I will do something distasteful to you. Do we have a clear understanding?” With eyes wide open, Peter shakes his head in agreement.

  Zara says to them to leave the weapons in the truck, as her family does not know the full extent of what she once did with and for Alexander, and she drives the truck back to its concrete-and-steel shelter and packs her backup supplies. She asks the two men to go into the house first and freshen up in their rooms. She will get them for dinner.

  Emotionally exhausted from reliving all things Sarah in the truck, Peter turns on the MoxWorld News on his MoxWrap, wondering when, if ever, will he go back to being a simple, safe, and secure editor. Maybe an editor for this news program.

  Sahir is describing the drama last night as US and Russian advanced fighters squared off for the first time in history over the new Anatolian Kurdish State. Rhonda, in a green dress with blue accessories and bluish eye shadow, provides the latest updates on the Arabic Confederation battles with Turkey around Sanliurfa. The AC has taken the town of Suruc, forty kilometers southwest of the city, and the surrounding plains. Turkish forces have withdrawn to a new line of defense in the mountains surrounding Sanliurfa. A map showing these positions comes on screen, and a third AC attack force is shown coming around the southern flank of these mountains, attempting to bypass the Turkish defenses.

  Peter’s anxieties rise again as he frets that Jean-Paul is going to drag him into the middle of a full-scale war zone as he continues to watch Sahir describe the latest naval movements in the Black Sea. The US and Britain have deployed a fleet of fifteen destroyers and frigates through the Bosporus to counter a possible sea invasion of Turkey by Russia. The Russian president is shown protesting this movement as a violation of the Montreux Agreement, which limits the number of warships from non-Black Sea countries that can pass through the strait. In response, the Russians have deployed more ships into the Mediterranean to counter the incoming US Sixth Fleet. Peter turns off the news with the sinking feeling he is sitting at the epicenter of World War Three.

  Zara knocks on the door and says they are getting ready for dinner. He pops his head out, expecting to see her in green. But evidently, she is not one of “Alexander’s girls” as she said, dressed in a long aqua gown, with gold and yellow accents and a matching headscarf. And there on her lips is the hint of some slight color of a gloss. Zara catches him staring and snaps, “What are you looking at, Little Boy? My grandmothers insisted I dress up for our guests.”

  Holding up a freshly pressed cotton shirt and trousers, Zara says, “Please honor us and dress in these. The trousers will be baggy in the Kurdish style. You can hop over rocks, mules, and enemy soldiers alike in these. I have pressed a couple more shirts and trousers, which you may get in my bedroom if these do not fit well.” She smiles and closes the door.

  Peter is mystified as this is the nicest, most civil, even polite conversation she has had yet with him. Maybe the fact he let her win at wrestling won her over, or at least he wishes he could have won at all. He tries on the shirt, and it is tight. In this home, too-tight clothing is probably not good, so he goes into Zara’s bedroom to try on the other sizes.

  Knocks sound on the front door. Hard knocks. In their past, this could be soldiers coming to take someone away, and so out of habit, Zara gets her spare pistol from under the couch and takes a position to the side of the door. She does not load a round so as not to give away her gun just yet. She asks in a deep, firm voice, “Who is there?”

  “Rohat Khatum, here to see my cousin Zara Khatum.”

  Chapter 26

  Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.

  —Saint Thomas Aquinas

  Fall 2005

  Philippines

  Brother Jean-Paul’s students have played the first half of the football game valiantly against the top-ranked local public school team. The aspiring Jesuit is starting the last year of his Regency, the third phase of a Jesuit priest’s formation, during which he is a teacher of theology, ancient world history, French, Latin, Greek, and astronomy at a Jesuit high school in the Philippines. He also co-coaches the school’s football team. Having loved playing football during his lycée militaire days in France, he is a natural to coach here.

  His second-stringers, Manuel and Fermin, artfully move the ball from left to center, down thirty meters towards the goal, with a perfect series of flicks and short passes. With a clear line to the goal, Manuel readies to take the winning shot when a huge center back slides into the ball, taking out Manuel’s leg. And Jean-Paul comes running onto the field as Manuel screams in terrifying agony.

  As Jean-Paul tries to triage the extent of damage to this boy’s ankle, he laments how he has had to put in his second-stringers due to a rash of absences from his starters. Manuel is an aspiring freshman, but certainly is no match for seasoned seniors, especially as aggressive as the ones from this public school. And so, the good Brother carries poor Manuel to the school nurse’s office.

  There awaits Sister Magali, dressed in a white short-sleeved blouse covered by a blue vest with matching skirt covering to midcalf. Atop her head is a simple blue veil, and on her feet simple black sandals. But most noticeable to Brother Jean-Paul are the wisps of her red hair that have escaped the sides of her blue veil. She caught his attention in their church choir with her wisps of red hair and angelic voice. Although he has seen her at church and in the school, this is the first time the two of them have ever interacted.

  As Sister Magali splints the boy’s ankle, she asks in French where Brother Jean-Paul is from, for she is French as well. She says she is working in the local Catholic hospital as a nurse and living in a nearby convent while she is in her First Profession, a three-year period where a prospective Catholic Sister makes temporary vows before taking her final Solemn Profession. With such a high need for nurses, her Order has allowed her to serve in the Philippines instead of staying in her convent in France.

  After dinner, Brother Jean-Paul meets with Brother Petrus, his co-coach, who is in his first year of his Regency. Both he and Jean-Paul graduated from the same lycée militaire in France. The coincidence of both being assigned to this school for their Regencies, they find quite profound. The Lord works in mysterious ways, is how Brother Jean-Paul sums it up. They discuss the increasing absences on the football team as well the similar phenomenon randomly happening with their nonathletic students. They have found no pattern, other than an increase in tardiness as well. Brother Petrus suspects their boys are getting into altercations with boys from the community, having observe
d suspicious bruises. Perhaps the boys who are late are taking the long way to get to school to avoid being assaulted.

  The next week, Sister Magali revels in delight that her Brother Jean-Paul has dropped by to see her, and not because of some medical emergency, as she had been thinking of him over the last week, and she asks if he knows Sister Marie-Claire, the Sister-in-Charge at Sister Magali’s convent in France. Very surprised, Brother Jean-Paul says she is his older sister. Any brother of Sister Marie-Claire would be regarded with the utmost respect by Sister Magali. And as the good Sister coquettishly glances aside, Jean-Paul inquires if she has been seeing any out-of-the-ordinary injuries or bruises among the boys, to which she replies affirmatively. She asks if the physical education program has changed to be more vigorous, more challenging, to which Jean-Paul says no.

  Another week passes, and Brother Petrus tells Jean-Paul he has followed their boys after football practice. Many take long routes home. The others suffer encounters with local boys, ranging from hazing to outright shakedowns for anything of value.

  Jean-Paul reflects on the recent lessons given to their students, teaching Matthew 5:39: “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” They have taught their team this to avoid fights during the football games. Brother Petrus jests that their students studied that part of Matthew too vigorously, as they clearly practice Matthew 5:40. “If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” He proposes that something needs to be done before these boys lose their cheeks and their clothes as well.

  That night, Jean-Paul tosses and turns as this dilemma has brought him back to one of the core reasons why he left the French Army seven years ago. He had followed the path of his grandfather, who fought in the French resistance during the Second World War, then went to the prestigious École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr to become an officer in the French Army. He fought in the French Algerian war and in French Indochina. Jean-Paul’s father also went to the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr and served in the special ops unit of the French Republican Guard.

  When Jean-Paul was sixteen and attending a lycée militaire, his parents were killed in the 1989 terrorist bombing of UTA Flight 772, flying from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Paris. With deep grief and hatred, the young Jean-Paul swore he would fight terrorists worldwide to prevent other children from experiencing the pain he felt at the undue deaths of his parents. Two years later after his graduation, he joined the army in time to be deployed as part of Opération Daguet, the French invasion force to liberate Kuwait.

  Following in his patriarchal footsteps, he enrolled at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr three years later, matriculating as an officer in NATO’s Stabilization Force mission to the war-torn Bosnia. Assigned to a special group hunting down war criminals, he employed his special talents at research and at finding people. Although he was not Italian, Jean-Paul was exceptionally Machiavellian, which did not escape the notice of his superiors. At whatever cost, he would get the job done. The army needed officers like this.

  As a hunter of war criminals, he truly learned the atrocities of war as he was assigned to find the leaders of the Bosnian Serbian rape camps. He learned of the use of rape as a systematic weapon of genocide and terror. Experts estimated up to fifty thousand women had been raped during the three-and-a-half-year conflict. He interviewed women who had been gang-raped in front of their families, fellow villagers, and neighbors. He listened to accounts of the brutalization of girls as young as twelve. Houses, halls, gymnasiums housed several dozen women suffering continuous rapes over several months, often done publicly, where women would be forced to watch other women being brutalized. The psychological horror and despair of these women took its toll on Jean-Paul as he descended into an even deeper level of hatred than he had felt after the death of his parents.

  His team had caught a Serbian officer who had led one of these rape camps and turned him over to the war crimes tribunals. He cringed during the trial of this monster, as the victimized women had to testify and relive the atrocities. This pain weighed heavily on him as he led the search for the senior officer in charge of all the rape camps in that city. He employed the military intelligence techniques taught to him by his father and found this Bosnian Serb colonel, who he had cornered in a house.

  Alone while the rest of his team searched other houses, Jean-Paul aimed his rifle at the terrified colonel, who put down his gun, saying he would surrender peacefully. The hatred within Jean-Paul could not accept his offer, and he picked up the colonel’s pistol, firing it behind himself. With the darkest of moments tarnishing his soul, he emptied the full magazine of his rifle, riddling the colonel’s body with bullets. As his team came to his aid, he explained this colonel was not going to surrender without a fight. So, justice was served.

  That night, Jean-Paul dreamed his deeply Catholic mother recited to him Matthew 18:17–21. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Carefully consider what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written: ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ On the contrary, ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

  He tossed and turned all night, wrestling with his actions and the atrocities committed by the predominantly Christian Serbs and Croats against a mostly Muslim female population. As bad as those atrocities were, he had clearly crossed a line. Without a blink, he had crossed that line. How much farther across the next line would it be before he became no better than those monsters? He remembered his grandfather’s counsel to him. After seeing the futility of the conflicts in Algeria and French Indochina, his grandfather had wished he had gone back to his Jesuit studies and become a priest instead of carrying on the hatred he had learned during his time in the French resistance.

  And tonight, in the Philippines, Jean-Paul turns in his sleep, thinking about his commitment to “turn the other cheek,” his resignation of his commission in the French Army, and his joining the Jesuit Order. How can he and Petrus teach these boys to defend themselves? Their boys are simply following the words of Matthew to the letter. Violence leads to more violence. Peace comes from good ethical foundations. Peace comes from showing the other party what it looks like.

  The next week, a typhoon leads to the cancellation of the weekly football game and the local Catholic ministries organize missions to the most heavily damaged villages. Once the winds subside, Jean-Paul joins a group of volunteers destined for a coastal village with significant community infrastructure devastation.

  The former Lieutenant Sobiros is particularly adept at setting up bivouacs and ad hoc kitchens in his military missions, perfect for his Catholic mission, as he was assigned to set up the communal kitchen and food depot. From a distance, he sees full locks of red hair waving in the wind as the stormy air sweeps the good Sister’s veil off her head. Being the good gentleman and good Brother he is, Jean-Paul helps Magali chase down her veil, which blows three to five meters up in the blustery sky.

  It is the first time he has seen her laugh, as well as her full face and hair, and it feels good. It’s the first time she’s had a knight in cassock armor come to her rescue, and it feels good. She has come, of course, with the medical team from her hospital. They will be sleeping and working in the same place for the next week, for which the good Sister thanks the Lord. A week working with Sister Marie-Claire’s little brother, serving the needs of the desperate and poor. What more could a good Sister ever ask for?

  At dinner, Jean-Paul coordinates the ad hoc chefs and food service personnel serving meals for a couple hundred villagers. The good Sister comes by. Seeing he is busy, she helps with the food service. It is nearly midnight by the time the kitchen closes and
Magali walks the good Brother back to his tent. She teases him as she looks inside his one-bed tent, as the big chief is able to get a single, while the little nurses are stacked six to a tent. But she observes he did not get a pillow and uses his towel as a poor substitute. She bids him, “Bonne nuit. Belles rêves,” or “good night, sweet dreams” in English.

  The next morning, Jean-Paul awakes, and he feels it. A bad night’s sleep. He is groggy and achy and not so coherent. He goes to help the early-morning breakfast crew, and there is Sister Magali, holding a mug of steaming hot coffee and waiting for him. She has two-day-old croissants she brought with her to share with her French compatriot. She does not want to tell him she baked these herself, for she is sure that he would think that too forward and personal. As Jean-Paul begins to retrieve his humanity with the coffee and rediscovers his Frenchness with these croissants just like Mama made, she confesses she came by his tent last night. She brought over a spare pillow and witnessed his sleep, which was physically violent and restless with cries, as if he were yelling at someone. The good Brother does not know what to say, as he dreamt again of his execution of that Bosnian Serb monster, a story he does not want to share with her.

  Sister Magali explains that her father had the exact same issues she saw Jean-Paul have last night. She recognized the symptoms clearly. The good Brother’s eyes pop wide open when the good Sister’s hand reaches under her blouse, atop her ample chest. She pulls out a medallion, a replica of one her grandfather gave to her, as the original rests in a safety deposit box in their local bank. He also suffered from the same agonizing dreams at night and said the affliction went back as many generations in their male lineage as anyone could recall. From generation to generation, the medallion has been handed down to the next generation’s most afflicted male with the instructions to do the same until someone can answer the question of the medallion’s meaning. She hands the replica to her new good Brother.