Part One   |   Part Two   |  Part Three


I don’t know if anyone will read this. I suppose that I must trust that my words will be read. I might be writing to myself, or to my captors, should they find this. Perhaps I write to you, who read this now. If you are reading it, then I have reached someone. Someone will read my story, know I lived. Or, perhaps you will think that I am a phantom imagined by some author, not real, not worth considering. In either case, if you are reading this, then the story lives. I hope you read it carefully.

I know that you will not see as I see, no matter how carefully I write, describe, explain. It is pointless to fill up the page with what I see, touch, feel, taste or hear while expecting you to see, touch, feel, taste and hear as I have. You will only understand my words through your own knowledge of language, your own experience of the world, and your own beliefs. How can I reach  you from this place I call “I” and have you see something other than “you”?  I can’t. This may be why so many popular books and movies used to be all action, car chase, and explosion.

Of course, since the Federation of Fools, as I call them to myself, have taken over, such films are banished to memory. Only those films that present the fundamentalist religious view may be shown, if any films at all. Many of the Federation of Fools’ ban film, books other than approved Holy Books, and  art altogether as idolatry and sinful. So likely the fate of these pages, should they fall into the hands of the Federation of Fools or its operatives. If you are reading this and not one of the Soldiers of G-d, then I trust that somehow this time has passed and my story continues.

What story, you might ask. For I have only written so far about writing and told no story. I have not shown, but told you my thoughts. What sort of story teller am I, you could wonder. One who worries that stories can’t be told, I would answer. That I can’t tell them because what I tell would not be understood as I intend. Yet, no matter, I must try.
 
Yesterday, I worked for a high tech company in my small corner of the world. For such a small corner, though, my country receives the gaze of the world. That is not my story, though. I went to work where, as I tell my family and friends, I try to break things. Well, not things. Software. I test software, trying to see how, where when and why it doesn’t work. I try to do with it things that it is supposed to do, but also try to imagine what others might do with it that is not intended, and test what happens then. Like, what happens if someone types the letter “q” when the instructions in the window on the screen direct the user to type a “y” for yes or an “n” for no. Does the software ask for a yes or no answer again, black and white binary logic, or does it decide to quit in response to “q”? Perhaps it does nothing, but stalls, not able to process “q” when it expects “y” or “n.” This is what I did, yesterday. I tried to stop the software before we sent it to the user, so we could fix all of the unintended stops. Of course, we don’t fix all of the bugs. We fix most of them. We just can’t anticipate every thing any one person, or all of the single users added together, might do with the software. In this way, software is very much like words, stories, and language itself.

At any rate, this was my job. I went to the building where I work yesterday morning, entered the office where my cubicle rests, and began testing software. About an hour later my supervisor entered the room and asked me to go to an emergency meeting of all women employees in the cafeteria. Now. Of course, I went.

There, I heard all about how our small country now joined the Federation of Fools, surrendering its authority to make laws, develop policies, enforce law, or ensure freedoms. Its role from now on was to provide infrastructure approved by and according to the policies of the Federation only. We were told that we no longer had jobs (except for a few women whose jobs were approved by the overall Federation of Fools or their particular religious federation member). There would be no severance pay. If we failed to return to our homes immediately, change our clothes to meet federation laws of modesty, and serve our husbands according to the fundamentalist interpretations of our respective religions, we faced humiliating, horrible and public punishments. Federation morality police handed out identification cards to each of us according to our religion. Clearly, they had this well planned and knew all about us.

Some, like myself, did not meet Federation guidelines for a religion. I was given a writ confining me to my house until my husband agreed to divorce me and otherwise free me to meet certain guidelines of my parents’ religion. He would be banished, a non-citizen, non-person in the Fools’ Paradise.

On my way out of the building, disheartened and weary, I started to take out my cell phone to text him. However,  phone no longer worked. Company security women and Federation Foils greeted us at the door and demanded that we turn in our company identification, keys, phones, car keys for our leased vehicles, and anything else deemed the company’s. We were shepherded into tents, where the women ordered us to remove our outer garments to our underwear, and then they searched us. The Federation Foils derided those wearing improper outer and under clothing, reminding us that from now on only morally accepted clothing would be allowed. Any woman found on search to be wearing such clothes as most of us wore, private underwear that might please our husbands or lovers, would be flogged. Of course, any woman caught with another woman in any loving or erotic act would be flogged to death, they exhorted us. Only modest clothing suitable for religious women of high, heterosexual moral values would do from the moment we returned home until G-d took us home.

As they had taken our car keys, the company provided vans to drive us home. Federation Foils rode in the van with us, checking that each person got out and her address and watching that she entered her building. They made the van driver wait for five minutes at each place, too. I guess they wanted to make sure whoever went in did not leave again. This way, it took more than an hour to get to my house, usually only a ten or fifteen minute drive. As I left the car, the foil reminded me that I must convince my husband to divorce me, so that I could join my religious group. Otherwise, he said, I would have nothing: no home, no income, no place to go. Only one fate awaited a woman in such a position in the Federation, I knew. Whore. They might be fundamentalists, but the men still want to have their sex. And, what sin would it be, if they screwed a non-person woman?

I trudged up the flights of stairs to our flat, wondering what I would tell my husband. He is a teacher, and was at home today I knew, as he had no classes at the university but would be reading papers from his students, instead. I heard the voices above me before I saw the officials. My husband had left the door open and not invited them in. They stood on the landing. He looked at me, and I shrugged my shoulders. I think he did, too. We had wondered when this would come. The rest of the world, the Americas except Canada, the European Union, and large parts of Asia except for China had all fallen to the internal and external pressures of the Federation.

My husband could not restrain his anger, although  he did not speak loudly or in a rage. He told the official Federation Foils that we belonged to our own religion, and that he worshipped only G-d and only listened to me, as His Prophetess. We looked in each other’s eyes with a smile of love. What else could we do? Neither of us wanted to live without the other. My strong, handsome husband challenged the foils, knowing that we would lose.

They heard me coming up the stairs and turned toward me.

“If you denounce this blaspheming man, the Federation will grant you an annulment and free you from the chains of his sins,” one of them pronounced. He stood upright, his chin in the air, as though he owned G-d’s Creation.

I shook my head, then answered, “I follow my husband’s religion and traditions.” It was a smart ass answer to these hubris-filled idiots, one designed to allow me to follow my husband’s fate.

One grabbed my husband and strapped plastic around his wrists, his arms behind his back. Another grabbed me and rudely shoved me against the wall. He took my arms, managing to grab my breasts in the process, and twisted them behind me. He pushed his body against me, and then he also strapped my wrists. Before stepping back, he whispered in my ear that he looked forward to finding me in  a whorehouse. I felt so relieved to know that our country’s moral legislation rested in the hands of such holy men.

The haughty-chinned man told my husband, in my hearing, that the guards would go to their religious leaders to see about his request, but I heard mockery in his voice, or perhaps I saw it glinting in his eyes, or just imagined it. Still, I have sat in this dark room with other women, many of them weeping openly, for an afternoon, a night, and now a morning. I judge the passing of time by when I arrived, a meager watery soup served for supper, and a few pieces of burnt bread passed out for what I took to be breakfast. That was many hours ago.

How do I write this, you ask, in such a jail were no doubt I was searched? Yes, I was strip searched, a holy woman putting her gloved fingers where only my husband had touched and where not even my husband had touched. I did not sneak paper or writing implement in with me. I write this in my mind, memorizing every word. When I find paper, pencil or pen, or perhaps even find a computer, I will write this. You ask how it is possible that I am actually writing what I thought, how could I remember every word? It is a good question. I cannot answer it. Yet, we trust the ephemeral electronic memory of machines, so why not the organic and evolved, if equally ephemeral (and perhaps electrical and chemical) memory of a person? Am I a person?

Part One   |   Part Two   |  Part Three