by Young
Suddenly, I spotted the silhouette of a dazzling white horse grazing in a thicket. This equidae had a spiral horn on its forehead. I rubbed my eyes to make sure they weren’t playing tricks before the beast sensed my presence. It did not bolt but stared at me with cognizance.
I approached the steed to pat the beast’s sparkling mane. A sudden sound frightened the animal. His forelegs rose in perturbation, and I noticed the inscription on the underside of his thorax before he sped away at lightning speed. The words on its torso were - Dominum Nomine Booz.
It took a while for me to regain my composure before I returned home to decode the markings. This is an English translation of the Latin words - Dominum Nomine Booz is Boaz (Swiftness). I named that unicorn, Boaz.
Sadly, I never saw Boaz again.
Guys, what do you make of Albert’s encounter with Boaz?
Andy
The Game Of Kings (Chapter Forty-Six)
“Whether it’s his beloved ‘Game of Kings’ or his magical success in business and self-promotions, Tad Abdul Hafiz does not know how to lose.”
Curt Erick Eberhardt
December 1968
Campo Argentino del Polo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“The King of Games” – Let other people play at different things but The King of Games is still the Game of Kings. This verse, inscribed on a stone tablet from China to the West, sums up the ancient history of what is believed to be the oldest organized sport in the world. For most of its two thousand five hundred years of existence, Polo was indeed a game of Kings. Even though the precise origin of polo is obscure and undocumented, there is ample evidence of the game’s regal place in Asian history. Although no one knows where or when stick first met ball after the tribes of Central Asia domesticated the horse; it was likely that the use of light cavalry throughout Asia Minor, China and the Indian sub-continent popularized this rugged horseback game. As conquering and re-conquering armies swept back and forth across the world, polo became the noblest sport of Kings, Emperors, Shahs, Sultans, Khans, and Caliphs from both the ancient and the contemporary world. Throughout the centuries, real and fabled monarchs together with their legendary horsemen were portrayed as heroic warriors, dexterous hunters, and exceptional polo players of masterful prowess.
The King of Games was introduced to South America by British cattlemen, and Argentina rapidly became the mecca for polo aficionados. In this land of the gaucho, boys who grew up on estancias (estates) play polo as soon as they learn to ride. Consequently, many top-ranking players are Argentines. It came as no surprise that Tad Abdul Hafiz’s opposing team consisted of the Heguy brothers, Alberto and Horacio, and Juan Carlos and Alfredo, the Harriott brothers. This handsome quartet of sport’s tabloid superstars were polo protégés of the Coronel Suarez Club, an adjunct of a market town at the southwestern extremity of the Pampas; some 300 miles from Buenos Aires. Every December, as many as thirty thousand polo fans gather to witness the Argentine Open, the world’s most prestigious polo tournament at Campo Argentino del Polo.
Who Is That Woman?
This was the question Kalf raised while we mingled at the fancy pre-tournament soiree, a few hours before the contest. As I followed the Moroccan’s gaze, I spotted a beautiful female in a red hat that tilted at a calculated angle to match her Valentino carmine colored ensemble. An outfit I had seen in the latest edition of Harper’s Bazaar. Even though she looks like a fashion model, her poise gave her métier away. I recognized her instantly. She was the same woman whom I saw at Confitería Ideal who danced cheek-to-cheek with my Master. She held on to Tad as if he was her beau while she hobnobbed with the who’s who in the international polo league and the athlete made no effort to deter that perception.
It was little wonder that Kalf was seething with jealousy while I tried to calm his nerves. As much as I tried to talk the lad out of a confrontation with the female, he did the opposite. The Moroccan swaggered to Katherina’s party when my back was turned. He seized a glass of bubbling champagne from a passing waiter and splashed the drink on the unsuspecting bailarin. Time stood still as we looked on in horror. Silence fell over the crowd before the carmine clad lady screamed in agitation. Her attacker bellowed profanities at the baffled socialite. Impulsive anger clutched my Master. He punched his boyfriend in the face and hurled him to the ground before the athlete kicked his paramour’s belly. With Tad’s sensibleness relegated to the rear, he shouted, “You worthless bastard! I should never have taken you in.”
The throng was horrified by this unexpected pandemonium. My gallant Valet rushed to assist the mangled Kalf, while Herr Eberhardt helped the disarrayed Katherina to rejigger out of her soaking garb. Tad’s team members heaved the athlete to the locker room to recuperate before the championship. Andy and I carted the injured Kalf back to the hotel and left the rest of our delegation to witness the tournament.
Maybe it was my Master’s emotional, and psychological perturbation or his team efficaciousness; Tad’s delegation loss the trophy to Coronel Suarez. This rattled the Arab’s consternation further. The following day he returned to his suite drunk and tossed the Tunisian out of the chamber they shared. A series of livid profanities followed, whereby the athlete ruled that he was done with Kalf. In bitter resentment, Kalf swore revenge at this injustice before he disappeared hastily. That was the last Andy, and I saw the Moroccan.
Not only did our Buenos Aires sojourn ended in shambles, but I also acquired the role of a sympathizer when Tad summoned Andy and me privately to his suite. Even though Herr Eberhardt had cautioned us that Tad Abdul Hafiz does not know how to lose, we were unprepared for the circumstance that follow.
When we entered, the athlete was in a state of dishevelment. With his palms on his face, he sobbed like an egocentric child and cursed his polo opponents for their nonpareil win.
“The game is rigged!” he vociferated sourly.
Andy and I looked at one another in silence. We did not know how to respond.
My Master continued, “The Asociación Argentina de Polo (Argentine Polo Association) made sure that the Coronel Suarez had an advantage over us.”
“What makes you infer that?” my guardian enquired.
“My gut feeling,” he paused to drink from a bottle of whiskey.
He resumed, “My team is the best, and yet the Heguy and the Harriott brothers took the cup. There’s no justification except that the organizers wanted their country to win,” the Arab instigated wryly.
“I’m sure it’s a fair and honorable competition,” I blurted absurdly.
“Bollocks! Before the game began, the press was already making claims that Coronel Suarez was a sure win,” my Master exclaimed.
He slammed down a sports paper on our side. The headlines read: Coronel Suarez set to win. The article went on to document the accomplishments of the Argentinian team. It said: “During the captaincy of Coronel Suarez; the Harriott brothers – Alfredo and Juancarlitos won the Argentine Open twenty times and with countless other trophies at home and abroad. The Argentine team took the United States Cup of the Americas in four successive bouts. And for five consecutive years, the Coronel Suarez lineup which comprises of the Harriott and the Heguy brothers, Horacio, and Alberto Pedro; boasted a 40-goal handicap; the only one in the world.”
Andy remarked judiciously, “This looks to me like a candid sport’s news report.”
“Bunco! It’s bullshitting hogwash to convince the populace that Coronel Suarez is the best team in the world,” the Arab deplored.
When I observed the distraught man clearheadedly, a realization washed over my person. His devastating polo loss was a pretext for a more profound underachievement. His inability to maintain a stable and amorous relationship. As much as Tad basks in his playboy image; deep within, he pined for a loving intimacy like Andy and I shared. But his station, religion, and upbringing would not permit the man to be his real self. His sporting accomplishments were façades to camouflage his inner discontentment. When he fails in an athleti
c contest, he saw his defeat as a personal weakness. This realization provided me the empathy to soothe my Master. What Tad needed was a loving consolation and not a systematic analysis of a Game of Kings from my Valet.
The Art of Loving
While Andy was busy analyzing the accuracy of the newspaper article, I began to massage my Master’s shoulders to relax his weary joints. His tautness unknotted to my loving touch, and his tenseness eased to my every move. My guardian soon discerns that the athlete’s disgruntlement was pent-up emotions. When my nimble fingers caressed my Master’s lumbar region, Andy followed my lead and orchestrated a series of head massages to ease the man’s inner turmoil.
Without uttering another word, our loving touch had alleviated his animosity. In the process, our raiments had also slipped away to bare ourselves from the illusionary masquerade society demanded of us. We felt at one with the cosmos as creation had intended. With our resplendence revealed, so did our vehement copulation. We intertwined like coruscated serpents shedding our skins to impart the new and to rediscover our liberty. The freedom that mankind had so cleverly concealed throughout the dawn of civilization.
Through the universal language of intercourse, our entwined souls rendered a thousand words as we journeyed unhurriedly through the aleph of time. We shifted our alphas and omegas in synchronicity; to heave, and sigh as we pleased and to gratify one another to our points of no return.
We surrendered to the sensual delights of our raison d’etre. Our sexual rigidity gyrated between abutted tenderness and erotic firmness. As we transitioned from rugged masculinity to feminine silkiness, our surreptitious emotions vaporized before we careened towards our impending release with transcendent mastery.
While the athlete delivered his repressions back Boreas’ way, I unleashed my honesty into my Master’s unbridled freedom as Andy sounded his call to the wild. Drained from societal restraints, we laid unruffled in each other’s embrace before Tad drifted into a restful slumber.
Only then did my lover declared soulfully, “It’s incredible how sex can heal dis-ease.”
Upon his words, we crept out of my Master’s chamber and returned to our soothing boudoir for a peaceful night’s rest before we departed for London, the following day.
Feud (Chapter Forty-Seven)
“Some of the hardest people to cut off are family members. But sometimes they are the ones that need to go.”
Andy Finckenstein
Early October 1968
Aldhdhib Dann الذئب دن (Wolf Den), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
While Henry and I listened attentively to Professor Eberhardt’s lecture on “The Rationale of Reasonable Disagreements,” a pandemonium was brewing down the corridor near the Aldhdhib Dann’s library. Our teacher continued his lesson uninterrupted, unaware that an explosive family discord would soon detonate.
Eberhardt counseled, “Societies are rife with disagreement about matters of ultimate importance, such as religious, moral, economic, and political significance. These are consequences of human reasoning which are limited by cognitive and environmental factors. If we are to remain free, we must learn to accommodate these disagreements.
“For us to do so, we must figure out if our disagreements are reasonable or otherwise. A free society should tolerate and extricate the beneficial qualities from equitable disputes and dismiss the unreasonable arguments.”
We paid no attention to the strained voices that resonated some distance from the study. We stayed focus on our teacher.
He resumed, “People on both sides of a disagreement are often sufficiently informed, reflective, sincere, and bear one another no animosities. Yet their reasonable dispute would persist.”
Henry’s Valet, Louis, who was browsing a periodical nearby, chimed, “John Rawls, the liberal egalitarian philosopher, held that reasonable disagreements exist due to six features of human psychology, reason, and institutions.”
Before Curt could respond, Andy interrupted, “Rawls termed the features as the ‘burdens of judgment.’”
My professor posted, “Since the both of you are versed with the ‘burdens of judgment,’ can you tell us what they are?”
Louis commented before my Valet could reply. “First and foremost, the evidence on the disagreement is both conflicting and complex.
Secondly; even when we agree on the relevant considerations, we may disagree about their weight.
Third: our concepts are merely moral and political theories. They are often vague and vulnerable to being undermined by hard cases.
Fourth: the way we assess evidence and weight values are shaped by the unique, total experience that each of us brings to the table.
Fifth: we often find different kinds of normative considerations on both sides of an issue, thereby making an overall assessment difficult.
Sixth and by no means last: any system of social institutions is limited in the values that it can attempt to defend or further. And many hard decisions have no easy answer.”
“Well explicated, Louis. You should be my teaching assistant,” our tutor quipped.
The rumpus outside was more pronounced, so our teacher halted the lecture to evaluate the commotion. He was in a quandary upon his return and advised us to remain in the library. Though he was thwarted by the ruckus, he recommenced his address.
“It is inherent that religious, moral, and political disagreements involve complex reasoning and evidence. People can examine the same evidence and come to different conclusions. The same holds true when weighing different arguments and other considerations. Anyone who has taken an introductory ethics course knows that our moral concepts are vague and subject to hard cases. Likewise, is our political ideas. When pressed many people will admit that their beliefs are based on their unique life experiences. Reflecting on this fact could help them substantiate that the diverse other might have a good reason for believing and acting as they do,” Curt conjugated.
My guardian interposed, “F.A. Hayek also offers an account of the sources of disagreement that is similar to Rawls’ but is richer. Hayek stated that dispute about the relative weight of moral values will lead to evaluative pluralism; even if the ‘scales of value’ of rational, ethical people are inevitably different and often inconsistent with one another. He further developed an original account of the ‘burdens of judgment.’ He inferred the mind as a system of rules that organize subjective perceptions in cognitively unique ways. The brain itself is an order of a set of events taking place in some organism and in some manner related to, but not identical with, the physical order of events in the environment. The result is that different minds will map the world differently; for their knowledge of the world is inevitably subjective, limited, and distinct from the understanding of others.”
“Andy, for Hayek, each person only possesses a tiny, distinct piece of knowledge about how to create functioning social order. I think we can conclude from this that our reasons to accept the rules that comprise that order will, consequently, be radically situated and subjective,” the professor declared as the external outburst got more robust.
Our teacher pressed on, “The Rawlsian and Hayekian ‘burdens of judgment’ suggest that disagreements about matters of ultimate import are frequently non-culpable. People who reason well concerning their evidence can come to dramatically different conclusions about not merely political and policy issues, but about which forms of life have ultimate value. Given their unique life histories, people are rationally entitled to affirm entirely different views about complex issues. We can reasonably disagree about many matters, including a vast number of political problems and their underlying normative and empirical suppositions.
“The ‘burdens of judgment’ also imply that we’re going to have trouble recognizing a reasonable disagreement even when there is one. Since our perspectives are so limited and different, we will have difficulty understanding how others can disagree with us. The same contestable, ambiguous facts that should lead us to recognize reasonable disagre
ements can prevent us from seeing that they are consistent in the first place.”
The library door burst open as Professor Eberhardt wrapped up his statement. Tad and his eldest brother, Ali, tore into the room to retrieve texts from the Quran, religious and political books to support their tempestuous feud.
The brother’s indignations against each other baffled us. No one dared to intercede especially our professor who stood dumbfounded by their rage. Like lightning bolts, they came and went in a flurry, and left us dazzled in the wake of their wrathful rivalry.
I was confident that a duel would be forthcoming if Tad had remained in Wolf Den. Luckily, the athlete’s duties called. Three days later we found ourselves in London at my Master’s townhouse with Miss Yasmin in our midst.
My teacher terminated our lesson as soon as the squabbling duo departed.
The educator evinced perplexingly before we were dismissed, “Given what had transpired, we should return to our respective chambers to regain our equipoise. Tutorials will resume tomorrow.
“The topic for tomorrow’s lesson will be ‘Reasonable and Unreasonable Disagreements.’”
November 2014
My Message to David and Andy (Part Four)
Hi guys,
This is the final segment of my Helius and Petronius enumeration.
When I probed my charge further to his experience with the flying horse, he put his fingers to his mouth to indicate for me to be quiet before he let out a series of whistling sounds that resembled bird calls. Low and behold, the ephemeral horse I had seen in Helius’ pupils materialized into form. The animal observed us from across the pond. I stood bewildered before I clenched the enormity of this encounter.