The Anvil of the Craftsman (Jon's Trilogy)

by Dale Amidei

  “I make no such argument, father,” he said gently. He turned to sweep his eyes across the rows of chairs. “You each, in the treasure of your house, must have a jewel. You have seen the light dance through it. You’ve seen each facet that the jeweler has cut. So you see the facets, each an entity. But the whole is still the jewel, as the Craftsman is a totality. We may see the Craftsman, or his Right Hand, or feel his Eye on us. However, if we can let go of the urge to assign to Him the limits we ourselves have, we realize that He can be more than one person, one place, or even one time. Then realize that He is the totality that the Muslim sees, and the Trinity that the Christian perceives, and at that point the conflict between us will disappear.”

  Silence fell after Kameldorn caught up. The men of the assembly were staring at Anthony now and only sometimes at one other. No one else spoke. He began the slow, deliberative walk that he used when lecturing, looking for those who would and would not pay attention.

  “And what does He do, this Craftsman, and why? Look around you, Men of Anbar! See your children with their mothers, and the ewe with her lamb, and the trees that grow your dates. His work is life, founded in love. Love we define as the appreciation of the beauty in, and the wish and hope for the abundance of, what lives and grows and goes on. We can have a fondness for material things and appreciation of the aesthetics that we find beautiful, and enthusiasm for any pursuit, but we can love only what lives. Love is a choice, as is the hate that God’s enemy feels, as is indifference, where the inattentive hide.

  “You have a choice, as does every man, and the path you choose will define you. To embrace the motive of the Craftsman in creating us; to reflect His love freely. Make the choice to love Him in return. Make the choice to share that love with your neighbors. Exercise the appreciation of the beauty in and the wish and hope for the abundance of life. The choice hears the voice of God in our heart.

  “Another choice is to hate, and to seek death instead of life, and work to put to the sword those who you will. The third path is indifference—but this one cannot last. The designs of God forbid it, and everyone must choose love or hate. Indifference is a place for a person to hide until forced to choose one or the other, finally in death if not before.

  “So how do we pass the judgment of God? Can we by any work that a man can do? Any man, or any woman, who perceives the reality of God also perceives the vast difference between what He is and what we are. Then we feel small, because He suddenly has revealed Himself to us. Who will make up the difference between what He is and what we are? He does, for His own sake it says in my Scripture, if we ask Him out of love. This is what you call Islam, and what we call conviction. It is the first chapter of our new history with Him. It is a relational history, a one-on-one connection with our Craftsman, He who works slowly and well in the world and in us to bring about His designs.”

  Another man, not angry or loud, spoke up behind him. Anthony turned to listen and heard Kameldorn translate.

  “You claim that you understand the mind of God?”

  Anthony looked the man in the eye. “I understand what He has shown me, and I understand that very well. I understand what my life, my parents, and my teachers have shown me. I understand what Iraq has shown me since I have been here. I see Him working, everywhere, in every one of us. Some do not. I do, and do not turn away. Who is it that has put the tools of logic in my mind for me to use? Who designed premise and extension? Whose work is my ability to see things that are real, and to relate them to other things that I can perceive, and to build the framework of what I know to be there? God has. They are the signs that let me follow a path across the desert and find my way to an eternal home.”

  The old man at the front spoke again, but the tone of his voice was now inquisitive rather than accusatory. “Your rationality, your science … we see where it takes the men of the West. They use their science to convince themselves that God is nowhere, and nothing. You would embrace this mind that explains away the work of God?”

  Anthony shook his head. “The arguments of faithless scientists do not convince me. Some men of God count the days listed in Scripture and tell us that there has been nothing prior to the last few millennia. Some use the sciences to say the earth is the work of thousands of millions of years. I do not know either of these things; I was not there. But men of science who try do not convince me that we are an accident, or that God is unnecessary. They cannot convince me that in the beginning substance appeared out of nothingness without being introduced from outside. If Earth is billions of years in the making, if the lower creatures transformed into those higher, if humanity rose in a long work of evolution, then I see in faith the work of a Craftsman, one who works slowly and well until He is finished.

  “What I can see and what we are told, what can be determined historically rather than through science is that at a point God revealed Himself to mankind. He then began a relational history with us all. It is the most important change that has happened to us, as a species, and it is the most important event that takes place in each of our lives today. I say to you that the love of God is not dependent on a man calling himself a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Jew. It is not absent if he is a man in China that holds to the Tao, or a Native American singing to the Great Spirit. A man loves, or he does not. His heart opens and changes, or it does not. A man perceives the ‘God That Is’ if it is His will, or a man does not. A man is alive inside, or dead, or wandering.”

  The old man spoke again, his voice full of warning this time. “I would be careful, talking against Islam, saying these things in Iraq. Men here will kill you for speaking these things that you say you believe.”

  “I do not speak against any faith, father, but against God’s enemy who hates the life that is the work of the Craftsman. Men have died for what they believe in Iraq since men have been in Iraq. They have written the stories of killing each other here since writing began. Yesterday I watched my friend die. Someone killed him because of what he believed. Since 2003, my people have been here dying, because of what we believe. We believe that God has elevated our nation as a light to other nations, and that our preeminence in the world is the result.

  “My nation, and yours, and all else that exists, travel a great circle that begins and ends under the Right Hand and Eye of the Craftsman. They judge all He has made, and so it will be with me, in the time that He sets and no other. He has compensated for the difference between what I am and what He is already, through the blood of Jesus, and I am not afraid.

  “You men of Anbar have the same choices in regard to your nation as you do with all else. One is love: participation in the governing of Iraq with your neighbors, agreeing on what you will and working out the solutions to whatever you do not. Another is hate: to pick up your rifles, your blades, and your bombs, and ask yourself who you are serving, God or His enemy whose work is death. Your third choice is to hide here in Anbar, refusing one or the other, until the tide of history forces your hand. You have love, hate, or indifference. Choose.”

  He fell silent, turned and walked back to the table. No other questions came. Al-Fatla stood after a moment, looking at Anthony. The Sheik spoke in English and again in Arabic, but his message was the same. “You are no Muslim, Jon Anthony, but no man will again say that you are an infidel. You have spoken well, and we have heard you. We must talk among ourselves until the noon meal. You are our guests, so please excuse and await us, until we can speak again.”

  Schuster and Kameldorn rose, nodding to their host. Kameldorn clicked off his recorder, whispering behind Anthony. “That was a home run, Doc.”

  Anthony felt exhilarated, as if he were floating, while the standing-room-only throng parted for them. They left the hall. He realized it then: he had finally defended his dissertation.

  Chapter 20: My First Immortals

  Servants escorted them to a sitting room in the back of the Sheik’s house and served tea and small rolls of lightly sweet bread. Schuster was quiet, and Kameldorn seemed …
contemplative, Anthony thought.

  He looked back to Schuster. “So what just happened, Bernie?”

  “They came to see us and hear us out. We gave it a shot. Tom would have done a better job.”

  Kameldorn grunted. “You can’t say that, Bernie. The points we wanted to make, you made. Those are people with control issues across the way. They need to decide how they will deal with one another before they settle on how to engage the rest of the country. They will either start to play ball or not. This is their country, not ours. Governing in some way is their responsibility, and that’s what it will all come down to in the end. They wanted to see us, and they looked. They wanted to hear us, and we spoke. Now they’re deciding what they heard and saw.”

  Anthony sighed. “What did you hear and see, Matt?”

  “Things I liked. I saw men working to give the world a better conversation than it has now. Speaking to why we should instead of just how we can. I saw men I can learn from.”

  Cocking his head, Anthony asked, “What did you learn?”

  “I thought what I did was hard. You have a tougher job, Doc. Men are relatively easy to kill, way too easy if you ask me, but changing their hearts—that’s where the heavy lifting comes in.”

  “It’s hard enough.” Anthony frowned. “So hard that I think sometimes it’s something only God can do.”

  Schuster nodded, his eyes falling. “Or it’s Him all along, that we’re just the implement. Kind of takes the pressure off when you think about it.”

  “I hope they are thinking about it,” Anthony agreed. “Maybe they will come to the same conclusion that we did before Tom brought us out here. That the effort is worth it.”

  Schuster looked up at him. “I wonder if he thinks it was worth it. Tom’s dead and thousands more like him, all without the rest of what they thought they would be. Were they ready? Did they serve some higher purpose? What is happening here?”

  “We don’t really know, Bernie.” Anthony paused, thinking, and shrugged. “The most we can do is live the day that’s put out in front of us. Try to steer our lives according to what we know. Pay attention to cause and effect so we can make the best decisions. Someone, Norman Cousins I think, once wrote that ‘wisdom is the ability to anticipate consequences.’ Of all the things that Tom could have done with his life, God brought him here, then He used us in a place that we shouldn’t have been, speaking to men that we should never have met. It’s a basic article of faith that we’re always where we’re supposed to be, doing what we’re supposed to be doing. The rest of it, the parts that we don’t see yet, is all part of the fabric of Creation.”

  “I hope the Assistant Secretary sees things the same way you do, Jon.”

  Within a couple of hours, the trio started to see men drift out of the meeting hall, and the smells of food began to waft over the compound. They saw the Sheiks al-Fatla and al-Dulaimi, walking together and talking as they exited. The two came straight to the sitting room.

  Schuster was eager for news, and strode forward to open the doors for them. The sheiks nodded and entered as Anthony and Kameldorn rose, al-Dulaimi shutting the doors behind him.

  “Ah, my friends, it is a good day in the sight of God!” al-Dulaimi exclaimed. “The majority have held to your points, although some cannot be convinced. Anbar will be represented in parliament now much better than if this day had not come about.”

  Schuster could barely speak; his voice was on the edge of breaking. “Thank you, thank you, Excellencies, for your news and for your help. I am overjoyed to hear this.”

  Kameldorn grinned, and Anthony felt as if a heavy weight had left him. Schuster looked as if he could weep. Al-Fatla and al-Dulaimi could not have appeared more pleased.

  “Come now. There is food for all. Men’s brains do harder work than their backs some days,” al-Fatla beckoned them, leading the way back outside.

  Behind the hall, a pavilion offered shade from the sun. Tables stood, each with a roasted sheep set atop a pile of white rice. Vegetables from the Sheik’s gardens and pitas to scoop it all up completed the fare. It was no use looking for chairs or silverware. Men stood at the laving basins, washing their hands and arms to the elbow as they would again after the meal. Schuster and Anthony washed and dried their hands. Stripping off his jacket, Kameldorn rolled up his sleeves and washed like a native. Anthony could see his shirt again covered his pistol, and a careful eye could see the belt clips fore and aft indicating there was a holster tucked under his clothing.

  “Ever eaten Bedouin-style before, Doc?” Kameldorn asked, grinning.

  Anthony shook his head. “Never.”

  “Well then follow my lead, kid. This is the good stuff.”

  The delegation stood at the table with al-Fatla and al-Dulaimi, the place of honor. Roasted truffles, coated with huge grains of salt were scattered over the rice. Spiced tea, coffee and bottles of water were available. Al-Fatla invoked the grace in Arabic and again for their benefit.

  “We thank You, oh God, for feeding us this day, and placing us among Your believers. For food and life come from You, and we do not forget.”

  Anthony responded without thinking about it. “Amen,” he said. His self-consciousness made al-Fatla and al-Dulaimi break out in laughter.

  “Eat, eat, my friends,” al-Fatla said, still chuckling.

  They tore the meat from the roasted animal and stuffed it into a pita with whatever else they wished. Everything was delicious. Kameldorn looked even happier than he did in McAllen’s mess hall, Anthony thought.

  As the meal progressed and the carcass diminished, al-Fatla turned to Schuster. “To honor your effort, Mr. Schuster, and all the good things that will follow.”

  The Sheik plucked out an eye of the sheep and placed it on the table before Schuster. Anthony thought he looked a bit green. Schuster stared helplessly at a smiling Kameldorn.

  “For God and country, Bernie. It’s an honor.”

  Bernie nodded and thanked the Sheik then popped the orb into his mouth, squinting as he chewed. This too the sheiks found hilarious.

  “It’s really not bad,” Schuster said, raising his coffee cup.

  “You wish the other?” al-Fatla offered.

  “It would be rude to be so selfish, Excellency. Major Kameldorn appreciates your traditions; it should go to him.”

  Kameldorn grinned, accepting the eyeball from al-Fatla, and munched on it without hesitation. Anthony meanwhile said a silent prayer of thanks that a sheep had only two eyes.

  “It is a time to celebrate, my friends. You are my guests here, with as many others as I can persuade to stay. We will talk again until the evening meal, although some are leaving us. The ones who remain will work with us along the line of what we have done already, and more support will build. They will listen to your suggestions, and they will follow through on them. Al Anbar is coming alive for the central government. I hope that they can deal with us!”

  Schuster smiled a broad and genuine smile. “That is our hope as well, Excellencies. I will do whatever I can to help you.”

  The remainder of the day was all Schuster’s; sheiks involved him in small discussions on the ways and means of beginning participation in parliamentary government. He needed no translator. Al-Fatla and al-Dulaimi both proved able to relate the concerns of the other tribal leadership. Kameldorn and Anthony had to themselves what was left of their Saturday.

  Kameldorn retrieved his carbine from the Land Rover and left his jacket. The weapon hung on his shoulder as if it were an accessory. Most of the men not in the leadership meetings carried weapons, largely fixed-stock or underfolder AKs. Another belt-fed machine gun and an RPG were near the gate, kept discreetly at the ready should a need arise.

  The Major mingled easily with the men, laughing with them, greeting those he recognized from the al-Dulaimi compound. Anthony found himself mostly nodding and smiling and watching—things he liked to do the most anyway.

  Pacing on, Kameldorn led Anthony around the perimeter. “So
lid people here. You guys did some good today, Doc.”

  Anthony liked the tone in his voice. “What comes next?”

  “Another great meal—that was just lunch by the way—an overnight, and an escort back to Ramadi with the Sheik’s convoy. We spend another night with al-Dulaimi—more celebrating guaranteed—and then through to Baghdad. You go back to the State Department, and I guess I go back to work.”

  “Doing what?” Anthony asked.

  “Looking for someone.”

  Anthony was silent for a few steps. “Can I ask you something?”

  Kameldorn looked at him. “You can ask. There may or may not be an answer, depending on the question.”

  “Fair enough. When you went back to the trucks by yourself last night, did you find anything?”

  “I found bad things.” Kameldorn turned his head.

  “Anyone, I meant?”

  “None of ours made it very long, Jon.”

  “How about theirs?”

  “None of theirs made it much longer either, except one. And that’s who I’m going to be looking for.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I can’t tell you, Doc. It won’t help me find him. I’m sorry I can’t tell you about the man who tried to kill you three times, and did kill Tom, but that’s the way that hunting men is. You can’t spook your game.”

  “You think he’s gone?”

  “If I were him I’d be gone. With the number of men who will be heading back to al-Dulaimi’s with us, he’d be stupid or insane to try anything.”

  “Is he stupid or insane?”

  It was Kameldorn’s turn to take a couple of steps in silence. “Good point, Doc.”

  “It’s OK, Matt. I feel strange—protected—like nothing can get near me again. Maybe it’s you and all these guys around. They look like nothing could get past them. An ancient Greek historian named Herodotus wrote about the bodyguard of the Persian Emperor: his ‘Immortals.’ Now I have some. It’s pretty cool.”