.so... watcha drinking? lemonade. are you sure? ok ok, "lemonade", or what i like to call vintage apple cider; but it might as well be "lemonade": on this fine, fine English autumn's day, dreary and disgusting like a wet dog - a wet Irish wolfhound.

oh sure, Islam is spreading in Western Europe,
back East, Catholicism is cited to be
one of the major players in bringing down
Communism...
        rumors about how John Paul II and
Ronald Reagen colluded...
                  so... Islam in the east...
   what with the rich history of interacting
with the Ottoman Turks at the siege of Vienna...
a shared past it seems,
on the warring side of things...
     translates as mutual respect in the current
year...
         but i'm not bothered about the current
year,
            i couldn't convert even if i wanted to...
the emergence of the nag hammadi library
is already too problematic for me...
   the new testament, is, for me,
       a pre Byzantine propaganda text...
add to that the history written by
                             Josephus ben Mathias...
the story of the flight to Egypt by
Joe and Marie Sue...
               and the detail about an Egyptian
false prophet attempting to seize Jerusalem
by force... from the Mount of olives...
etc. etc.,
                     but i've had Muslim friends
in the past, one a (Muhammad) Salman Khan...
and i don't know why i've recounted
out friendship from our days at school...
oh... right... dates.
   - but not just any dates....
not the sickly sweet European variety...
Persian dates... fresh dates...
                   i remember breaking fast with
him in the easier, Winter example of Ramadam,
in a post-school extra-curriculum Statistics
class...
                    Muslims tend to break
their fasting by eating dates...
              i can't believe that a reminder of
the taste...
   funny thing is... who would have
thought that in a market town like
Romford, on the river Rom...
                      you can buy a packet
of dates... Persian dates...
that also read: product of IRAN...
                 Tehran, Iran,
                     and...
it's a Mazafati date... so watch it, yeah?
   email: hamid.javaheri@pol.ir
     tel: +98 (21) 77642527-8...
which brings to mind...
    i always thought that Islam was
far more sensible, the further east you
went... or rather, that...
there have been no... ****'ite attacks in Europe,
only the ****** authoritarian Sunnis...
plus... we're talking Persia...
where were the Arabs when the Persians
reigned supreme?
  scuttling along desert routes
of their ****** peninsula looking for
water among them tripping from dehydration
hallucinating fata morganas...
then again... why should i be surprised...
after all... religious doctrine is one thing...
but for the Persians... eh, **** it...
let's settle for something variant,
loose canon... Sufism...
                                  and there you have
your moderate, universal aspect of Islam...
a... shared longing...
  for something none of us can clearly
articulate, other than through bogus poetry
and mysticism.