Luggalor's Lenses Read online

  LUGGALOR'S

  LENSES

  W. S. FULLER

  CCB Publishing

  British Columbia, Canada

  Luggalor’s Lenses: A Novel of Insight

  Copyright ©2010 by W. S. Fuller

  ISBN-13 978-1-926918-11-2

  First Edition

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fuller, W. S.

  Luggalor’s lenses [electronic resource ] : a novel of insight /

  written by W. S. Fuller.

  ISBN 978-1-926918-11-2

  Also available in print format.

  I. Title.

  PS3606.U5537L84 2009 813'.6 C2009-906862-1

  Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  Cover Art: Anna McBrayer

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Extreme care has been taken to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Publisher: CCB Publishing

  British Columbia, Canada

  www.ccbpublishing.com

  For Parker and Finley…and Their Futures

  “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for They Shall be Called

  Children of God” Matthew 5:1-9

  Contents

  Preface

  1995 Northwest Territories

  1995 The Mediterranean

  1995 Detroit, Michigan

  1995 Northwest Territories

  1995 The Caribbean

  2000 Charleston, South Carolina

  2000 Huallaga Valley, Peru

  2000 Paris, France

  2000 Charleston, South Carolina

  2000 Rondonia, Brazil

  2000 Charleston, South Carolina

  2000 Rondonia, Brazil

  2000 Charleston, South Carolina

  2000 Northern Pacific

  2012 Iran

  2012 Tel Aviv, Israel

  2012 Washington, D.C.

  2012 Haifa, Israel

  2012 Washington, D.C.

  2012 Charleston, South Carolina

  2012 Aspen, Colorado

  2012 Las Vegas, Nevada

  2012 Judean Desert, Israel

  2012 Tel Aviv, Israel

  2012 Iran

  2012 Dhaka, Bangladesh

  2012 Jerusalem

  2012 Judean Desert, Israel

  2012 Dhaka, Bangladesh

  2012 Washington, D.C.

  2012 Judean Desert, Israel

  2012 Nepal

  2015 Long Island, New York

  Preface

  I first wrote about Luggalor years ago, for a literary contest sponsored by Ted Turner, one of the world’s great philanthropists. The challenge was to write a work of fiction which “illuminates the problems that face the planet and its inhabitants, and offers positive, creative solutions.” The story continues…

  The only man ever to walk the earth with the power to live forever lies encased in the sterile somber of this damned hospital room, tubes jutting from his body cavities, needles from his limbs, the eerie silence broken only by the steady beeping of the monitors. Larry Luggalor is going to die. And soon. And by his own choosing.

  As I sit, and watch, and listen, everything so still that my breathing sounds like collapsing bellows, the remarkable story I heard over two long evenings many years ago comes flooding back. Will it die with him? Am I the only one with the strength, or weakness, to know? Could I ever summon the courage to be the messenger?

  He was in one sense only one man, relatively insignificant and unaccomplished in the eyes of the world, one of those who never get their fifteen minutes of fame. But he had, of course, been everyman, and the first with no need for the qualifier ‘in essence’. Then he decided he wouldn’t be any longer.

  He told me he had a sense he could trust me, that I just might believe him, on that evening long ago, with the hot embers of the camp fire warming us against autumn’s first frost. I took it as a compliment until the weight of it began to descend. I looked at the shadows of the flames playing across his face and thought he was mad, and would have to consider me so, to entrust me with such a tale. But he was right, as always. It didn’t take long. Believe him I did.

  Many of the details of his stories I remember vividly. Better than the details of my own life. By design? To enable me to do what? The three slender, battered leather journals he had entrusted to me lie on the footstool beside my chair. Reaching down, I pick up the first one, and with the steady pulse of the soft beeps setting a rhythm for the verses of his story, I start. If I should ever want to reveal the content, or need to, if this is entwined in my destiny, I should rehearse. To know how it would flow. To feel my passion. To guess my chances.

  As I think back to that first night, watching as he poked and stirred the fire with the long stick he constantly twirled in his hands, I remember how furrowed his brow had become. There was an intensity in his voice as he hunched his shoulders forward. A stress seemed to radiate through his body. How remarkable his memory was. Every detail - of word, and deed, and thought. Every single thought. That was where the weight was. Including his own, a window into every thought of each and every one of the players of his saga. The world’s saga.

  He started that night by the fire by giving me a place and a year. It was the same with the first page of the first journal.

  1995

  NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

  The sharp explosion of the rifle shattered the still, frigid air, the mother collapsed in a heap and her babies instantly panicked, their eyes going wide and wild. Clubs at their sides, the Camuit started toward the brood. Wading into the middle of the eight or so small pups, they raised their crude weapons, and the slaughter began. What a strange, incongruous scene...the stunning beauty of the brilliant white landscape set against an endless depth of cobalt blue sky and what had been the stark quietness of the Arctic wilderness...violated by the sights and sounds of violence and death. The tiny Harp seals screamed as they were pummeled. A dreadful red crept into the snow around them.

  “Jesus, only a few small ones. This must be only the beginning if it is to be a good day. We will be behind if this is the best we can do on the first day.” Hinte was the leader and shouted to the others his feelings on the hunt, their prospects for the next kill, the weather, the plight of the tribe, and where they would all spend eternity if they could not provide for the village in the same fashion as their ancestors did. He continued to swing his club as he shouted. Suddenly there were no more screams. Silence again, except for the crunch of boots on the snow. It had taken only a few minutes, yet it seemed to last forever. Four small, beautiful creatures, lovable in their white coats, with their round, streamlined bodies and large, sad eyes…silenced forever. And their mother, also dead. Li felt a tear freeze on his cheek as he covered the lens of the camera.

  What was surely one of the most elegant families on this planet, destroyed in one brutal span of mere moments for the purpose of feeding and clothing the same species that have sent their own to the moon. I could feel the passion…see it in their thoughts and actions. The same event…viewed so di
fferently. For the hunters…pride and joy. For the photographer…sorrow and frustration. I, Luggalor.

  1995

  THE MEDITERRANEAN

  The temperature remained close to one hundred degrees at 1 a.m. As Kabril lifted the rubber boat by the handholds on the side and began the descent down the steep bank, he felt cooler air rise to meet them from the sea. Moving quickly, he fought to keep his feet under him, leaning back so his body would not get ahead of his legs and pitch him forward. The boat slipped quietly into the surf and the three black-clad men were in it in an instant. Out past the small breakers the water was flat, and within seconds they were into their routine pulls on the oars. Aided by the rip tide they knew would assist them, the small craft moved south. Rather than tension, Kabril felt the familiar calm and peace he had grown accustomed to at the start of a mission. Many years ago, the first time, his heart had pounded furiously. Now it will only pound at the end.

  “0108,” whispered Simon, “we should arrive at 0430”

  A long time to row, and think, mused Kabril. He liked this time of calm, of being in total control. It came from experience, of course, but he knew it also came from the endless sorrow and pain over the years. Immune to the fears of most men, having suffered so much and seen so many others suffer...there was no threat, no danger, no matter how grave, that could touch him. A shell of a man, he had few emotions left. There simply wasn’t anything to hurt, or lose. He sensed the faint stirrings of an inward smile, perhaps a hint of the old cockiness. It didn’t happen often. It felt good.

  Rowing steadily, his mind clear, his oar slicing silently through the rippled surface, pulling with raw power through the dark sea, Kabril remembered the stories his father told and the lessons he wanted his sons to learn. His grandfather was a shop owner and merchant in Jerusalem, in the old city , and his father and uncle helped with the shop and traveled to buy the silk and fine linens. They would inherit the business and carry on in the tradition of fortunate families such as his own. Not that they were wealthy. Far from it, but the business was strong and growing, and his grandfather was well-liked and respected in the community, and that was all that a man could ask for other than health and sons. Then they lost everything during the occupation and war, and were forced to flee the city.

  “How can the world sit by and let such a thing happen,” Father would say. “Good, law-abiding, devout people who have been on land that is rightfully theirs for centuries. People who pay their taxes, help others...people who have not raised a hand against their aggressors... how can this happen? How can countries that are free, so-called democracies, with laws based on high ethical standards and human rights...how can they watch, even condone those who seize our property, defile our sacred shrines, ruin our lives?”

  Grandfather was a broken man when he arrived in Lebanon. He quickly became a hateful man as his family was forced to endure the camps. One of the first to join al-Fatah when it was formed, he was discouraged from taking part in operations because of his age. But when the war started he was gone in a matter of hours, and like many others, never came back.

  Father had resisted being other than a vocal supporter because of the pleadings of our mother. Their arguments became more heated and numerous after Grandfather was killed, but mother’s tearful references to the endless slaughter with no change, only more orphans, usually ended the discussion.

  By my twenty-fifth birthday we had established a small grocery shop. My brother Nabul and I worked alongside our father and it was at this time he began to leave in the evenings, would sometimes be away for days at a time. Mother begged him to give up whatever he was doing, and of course she knew what that was. She made Nabul and I swear we would never become involved. We questioned our father but he made it clear he would explain nothing to us. We were to mind the shop and our families. He told us our time would come. Keeping us in the dark brought him some relief from mother’s tirades, and he needed that.

  Nabul and I also knew what was going on. We knew where the bunkers were, where the meetings took place and where the training exercises were held.

  The invasion did not affect the village that much for the first few days. Many of the fighters were gone, and the shops were busy with people stocking up, but the pace was still measured, almost serene. And then the air and artillery strikes began. From the first days the injuries and suffering were horrific, the mourning of the dead heart-rending. I have never been able to recall exactly, but it was in the second week when the house was hit. Father was there - he had only been home for a few hours, and died along with Galena and my two daughters. The two most beautiful daughters in the world. I’ll always see their small, broken bodies, with the perfect faces that I knew would never smile or speak to me again. I knew it, but I also knew I could not comprehend it. Remembering the total, paralyzing horror still causes me to feel a suffocating grip of panic, a sense that my body, mind and soul is coming apart, changing form, that my life is draining from me as it did that day.

  I was afraid when I went to tell Mother I was leaving for training. Her blank stare, her silence...I’ll never forget. But as I turned to leave I saw what I thought might be a trace of understanding on her face.

  “Something in the water at 33.03 north 35.06 east, moving south, slowly, no light, no sound”, crackled the voice over Major Mark Engen’s phone. Engen knew the coordinates by heart.”Gate AA, row 1, seat 1” he said to his driver. The jeep accelerated, the personnel carrier behind them following in close pursuit.

  Engen was on patrol that night to observe. This wasn’t a major’s normal duty, but he liked to keep up with what was happening in the field, and an occasional, unannounced ride was a good way to accomplish this and boost morale. Soldiers like to have commanders who are not above spending time in the trenches.

  “Looks like you might get lucky tonight, sir,” said private Rosen.” It’s about time we had some action. It’s been really quiet.”

  “That’s when it comes, private, when it’s quiet.”

  Mark Engen thought about when he last looked forward to a fight. The change started a number of years ago during the invasion of Lebanon. Before that he hated all Palestinians and, he guessed, all Arabs. That was the company line, at least in the military. In many families you grew up learning to hate, and then you joined the army and they made sure you didn’t let up. The early actions hadn’t really changed any of this. Seeing death and suffering, even killing, could be handled as long as the enemy was scum...as long as they were trying to kill you, take your land. But when the casualties were civilians... women and children and old people, it was different. Sure, they had done the same in many raids, but it no longer seemed to make sense, this eye-for-an-eye of innocents. He began to think a lot…in ways he never had before. He decided he didn’t hate these people after all. Maybe their leaders, but not the people, not even the average fighter. Surely most were like him - trained to hate, maybe now tired of the killing, praying for peace, but having little hope. This part of the world had such a horrific, stifling tradition. Tribes hating other tribes, religions hating other religions, sects within the same religion hating each other, nations hating nations. A homeland for the Palestinians even came to make sense to him, although he kept his own counsel on that explosive issue.

  Though his views changed, he also realized the change would have no effect on his life or his job, or on anything that would matter. It was nothing but an intellectual exercise. Whether you fight because you hate or because it’s necessary, you still fight. Whether they deserve a homeland or not, you fight to keep it from them because you know that the hatred and the leaders will never let it stop there. You fight because if you don’t they will overrun you, and you can never let that happen, for no people have ever suffered so long, lost so much and struggled so hard for their land and their nation as yours have.

  “I’ll stop a little short here, Major, so you can go have a look”. The driver’s voice startled Engen from his ruminations. Grabbing the field glasses,
he stepped out of the jeep.

  “Five minutes to go”, came the whisper from the front of the raft. Kabril checked his gear. Grenades, Uzi, knife, the bag of plastic explosives that can level a house or small building. His senses came quickly to full speed, as they always did when the time was near. Every sight, sound, smell and movement registered, and he assessed them all, instantaneously, with a fierce intensity. Every fiber in his body, every synapse in his brain was at full alert. He never felt more alive than at these times. Now his heart pounded in his chest.

  They were out of the boat into knee-deep water, then running low, carrying the raft as they headed for the shadowy dark of the rocks across fifty meters of sand at what was low tide. The darkness was pitch black with no moon, but Kabril’s eyes had adjusted and he scanned the ridge above them as they moved. He caught a glimpse of motion a millisecond before the world exploded in white light and deafening noise. The boat was ripped from his hand and he dove as far as he ever had toward the rocks.

  Conflict, violence, pain, suffering…all from a difference of perspective on the same issue. But it’s not different, or even similar creatures harming other creatures. It’s the same species harming their own. So little doubt on either side, almost never a nod to what should obviously be the logical position, or conclusion. I, Luggalor.

  1995

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  With winter just ahead, and a few days of days of clear, pleasant, crisp weather, it seemed all of the city was intent on being outside. A sharp, fresh light the planet offers in early morning shone on people strolling through the park on their way to work. Steam rose from the cups of those with enough time to sit on a bench and read the morning paper, while others rubbed their hands together and tilted their faces to the sun to ease the chill from a long night outside. Runners circled the lake while cyclists flashed by, accompanied by the distant sounds of streets and buildings coming to life.