The Tears of Things

Theo van Gogh Calls On Mohammed Bouyeri

Theo van Gogh, ca. August 2001.

[I paint an ugly, bloody, true picture here, about Muslims and knives. Be warned.]

by Jerome du Bois

I've killed my Jew. Now I'm ready to go to Paradise. --Adel Boumedienne, murderer of French DJ Sebastian Selam, a half-hour after the crime, covered in blood, still holding the carving knife and fork he used, speaking to his mother, Ramadan, 2003.

The heartless killer not only slit Sylvia [Armanious's] throat, but also sliced a huge gash in her chest and stabbed her in the wrist, where she had a tattoo of a Coptic cross. --News report, below.

Let The Dead Help You. --Rudy Rucker, mathematician and novelist, 1980, White Light.

Here, come look: Near midnight, 30 January 2005. Scheveningen Prison, The Hague.

The ruddy full moon looms like that fat man's face, hovering outside the bars on the window of the hospital cell of Mohammed Bouyeri, 26 years old, murderer of Theo van Gogh, who didn't even make it to 50. There's even a curvy blonde cloud topping the crown of that robust round globe. Bouyeri jerks his head away so quickly he feels a stab of pain from the police-inflicted gunshot wound in his leg. Looking down at the swollen bandage with a scowl, he thinks again, for the thousandth time, that he will never understand the infidels.

He carefully and slowly leans back against the pillow and closes his eyes. He sighs. I wanted to be martyred. Why didn't those stupid cops kill me?

A voice in the middle of the room spoke up. "Because they're good people. I have a better question--"

Bouyeri's eyes flew open. There was nothing there but the geometry of pooling yellow moonlight in the stark white chamber. The voice continued, loud and clear:

"--why didn't you kill yourself before you killed me, you little coward?"

His right hand crushing his beads, Bouyeri's eyes bugged out as the ceiling unzipped with a crimson flare, revealing the evening sky. The black night was split with a golden sword of light that stabbed down to the foot of Bouyeri's hospital cell bed; and the fat moon smiled on the sidelines as an emerald ribbon unwound from the haft of the sword, solidifying into a staircase so glowing deep green it had to be the color of Paradise. It ended at the foot of his hospital cell bed, the emerald staircase fixed over the golden sword. Bouyeri gasped. It was so beautiful, but what about that voice? and what it said? A long pause. Silence. It must have been the moon. The wonderful vision stood there before him as vivid as any dream.

Allah be praised! Could it be --Oh! Oh, no!

For finally, in his own good time, drifting down that green crystal staircase as big as a cloud but as light as a breeze, came Theo van Gogh, his big bare feet just tapping every other step as he descended.

Bouyeri opened his mouth to scream for the guard, but it jammed in his throat. Theo van Gogh settled at the foot of the bed and stood calmly and at ease, breathing visibly, before his petrified Muslim Moroccan murderer.

Clad in white linen trousers, a white t-shirt, and white suspenders, glowing with pink health, looking as clean and pure as the eyelids of morning, Theo van Gogh was consulting what looked like a Blackberry in his left hand. Poking at it with his fat forefinger, he frowned and looked up directly into Bouyeri's face.

"Hey, little man, they just found a goat in France with mad cow disease," he said. "Would that be your mother or your sister?" And he roared with laughter, while Bouyeri could only seethe in silence. After a while van Gogh lifted a placating hand toward Heaven. "Okay, okay, My Friend, I just couldn't resist." Pointing to the handheld computer. "It was on Google News!" And he roared again. "Oh, and hey, you'll love this, B-boy: the Iraqis voted today" --he held up a purple forefinger-- "Sixty-plus percent for democracy! Your crew is toast, little man."

Bouyeri found his voice, and began to pray, his fingers moving on his beads. Theo van Gogh stopping laughing and listened for a moment, his head tilted, then lifted his right hand beside his face, pressed his thumb and forefinger together, and Bouyeri's lips glued shut.

"Umma," he managed to murmur.

"Umma your mamma, you murdering turd. You're here to listen. I'm on a mission. Some down here in this vale of tears want to know: what is it with you Muslims and the ritual slaughter with knives?" He lifted the Blackberry. "So many recent cases. There's no answers, and don't expect to say much tonight, little man, but we need to push the questions: Why do you love the knife so much? Why must you carve them up, just as the psychosexual crazies do? You see --hell, you, you worthless bastard, you ought to know-- using the knife is a crime of passion; it's up close and personal, love turned to hate. But I didn't even know you, and I wouldn't give you a second glance in life, and yet look at what you did!"

Theo van Gogh lifted his t-shirt between the suspenders, and Bouyeri watched as blood blossomed on his swelling, breathing pink chest, two little bullet holes, and then the big knife's haft shot into view on his chest with the sudden shock of its initial stab into it. Finally, the five-page letter stuck to the skin with the little knife. Everything running red. While the tableau held, Theo pointed to the message soaked in blood: "Notice it's in Dutch, because you didn't know much Arabic, didja mujahadeen?" And as he lifted his head to laugh again, the evil red smile of his throat wound appeared, raw crimson ellipse trailing threads of blood. It did not affect his speaking voice.

The blood from the throat wound ran down to join the blood that pulsed up around the hafts of the knives, heartbeat after heartbeat, and spread over the paper, staining the ink into incoherence, and then ran freely down Theo's fat pink torso.

"You shot me," he continued, "but just to put me down --so you could get up close and personal with the knife --for the sacrifice." Theo suddenly started snapping his fingers and rapping:

God said to Abraham, "Kill me your son."
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on."
God say "No," Abe say, "What?"
God say . . .

Theo trailed off. "I get tired of these theological debates, you know? I was nobody's sacrifice! I had a life!"

Calming down, he gently lowered his shirt, his throat wound healed up, and he became pristinely white again. He lifted his Blackberry. Poking away with his lively finger.

"I've been hanging out with Nick Berg, too," he added. "Nick remembers five saws with that big knife; maybe there were more, but what does it matter after the first? You just love to hear us scream, don't you, little impotent man?"

Bouyeri seethed, face red, squirming and moaning and mumbling, trying to talk around his stuck lips, but that was all he could do, and he soon quieted down. Theo van Gogh continued, scrolling, squinting at the liitle screen.

"Yes, here," he said, with a heavy voice. "The sorrowful story of DJ Sebastien Selam in Paris over a year ago. Seems that--"

"Umma," Bouyeri murmured. Theo van Gogh's head snapped up and he pressed his thumb and forefinger together again, twice. Bouyeri felt as if he had no mouth.

"You will respect this man's death, if only with your silence. Too many people have passed over it already in silence. Especially the mutilation. Just like the Egyptian Coptics in New Jersey. We'll get to them, too. No longer, Bouyeri. The knife is no longer in your hand --it's in the hand of Truth-- and the Truth is going to lay you murderers open like a red canoe.

"Now, listen to Nidra Poller in the New York Sun, two days ago:

"The murder of Sebastien Selam, one of the most popular DJs in France, has been widely ignored. Sebastien lived with his widowed mother in a modest but comfortable low-rent apartment building in the 10th arrondissement, a half hour from the Place de la Republique. In November 2003, during the month of Ramadan, Sebastien was murdered by a neighbor, Adel Boumedienne. The Selams are Jewish, of Algerian origin; the Boumediennes are Muslims from Morocco. Relations between Jews and Muslims in the neighborhood, which had been normal or even cordial, radically deteriorated in the fall of 2000.There were incidents, anti-Semitic graffiti, ominous signs of violent hostility. And yet Sebastien let Adel get into his car as he was going into the underground garage to park. There, Adel slashed Sebastien's throat, almost severing his head, and mutilated his face beyond recognition with a carving fork. The coroner states in his report that he had never seen such severe mutilation in all his decades of practice.

Aside from a brief article filled with factual errors in the tabloid Le Parisien and an equally incompetent article in a Jewish weekly paper, there was hardly any press coverage of the Selam murder. When Israeli photographer Avi Rosen, who was in Paris at the time, heard what happened to the DJ, he immediately recognized the hallmarks of ritual murder. He took photos of the crime scene, interviewed the Selam family, and has stood by them ever since in their almost hopeless efforts to bring the murderer to justice and expose the true nature of the crime not only for the honor of Sebastien, but to warn others of the danger that confronts them.

Adel's mother saw her son take the carving knife and fork from the kitchen; he came back a short time later, covered in blood, and told her, "I've killed my Jew, I can go to paradise." He told the police that he had no remorse, no regrets, because Allah told him to kill Sebastien. They transferred him from the police station to a general hospital and from there to a psychiatric hospital. As of this writing, the Selam family lawyer is playing his last card; he has one last chance to convince the court to open an investigation. If the request is denied, the case will be closed. No investigation, no arrest, no trial. The murderer will some day be released from the mental hospital. The Selam family is sentenced to a life of mourning."

Theo van Gogh paused. Bouyeri lay back in his bed, bound by invisible bonds, his mouth sealed, sentenced to listen. Theo van Gogh, glowing with gold and white eternal light, leaned over Bouyeri's bed, holding the Blackberry close to his vast chest, shaking his head slowly in sorrow. Then his eyes flew open.

"Oh, wait!" he cried. "Maybe it was an aberration! Except--" poking with the finger . . . face falling . . . looking up with tears in his eyes: "What is it with you primitive tribal people? Listen, Muslim believer:

"Chantal Piekolek was murdered in her shoe store in the 17th arrondissement of Paris earlier that same November day [which took the life of Sebastian Selam]. [Ah, Ramadan, Holy Ramadan!] The murderer, a hardened criminal recently released from prison, stabbed her 25 times. He was quickly apprehended and jailed, but died of cancer before he could be put on trial. Piekolek, who was Jewish, was murdered by a Muslim. Did he know she was Jewish? If robbery was the motive, why did he stab her 25 times? The mystery died with him. But one day the press, including the Jewish press, may be asked to explain why they transformed a Jewish divorcee --who had recently taken over a store after her father died-- into the Christian widow of a Jewish husband. Why? Were two Jewish murders in one day during the month of Ramadan too much to bear? Or too much to hide?

Fiction is not divorced from reality, it is the art of bringing reality alive. When journalism strays so far from the truth, skittishly skirts the truth, closes its eyes to the obvious, and invents the preposterous, it encourages the very danger it is trying to avoid."

Bouyeri now had his eyes clenched shut, beads rolling through his fingers, nodding, mumbling, trying to pray, to no avail.

Theo van Gogh added: "Bouyeri, you can run, coward, but you cannot hide. Twenty-five times . . ." He looked out the window as the moonlight made his face glow. "The crescent moon you put on your flags; it's a scimitar. You fixed one phase of the moon and turned it into a weapon. But the whole lesson of the moon is its cycle, swelling and shrinking, unstoppable, light shading into dark and back again; you stunted fools ignored the supple wisdom of that rhythm for the sake of a single narrow purpose: conquest by the blade."

After a moment he added, "Damn, this is thirsty work," and a tall lager glass full of foaming dark beer appeared in his right hand. He quaffed deeply, the glass disappeared. Belching generously, Theo van Gogh leaned far forward, his feet leaving the ground, until he loomed like a little blimp, glowing with white light, over the the scrawny Muslim, eyes gliitering, his chest expanding like bellows. His breath smelled like hops as he spoke into the Moroccan's face: "I'm incomplete, unpredictable, unstoppable: Life. But look at you, pinned like an insect to your ideology: Death.

It's over. I can see it. The psychosis of Islam is doomed." He sighed. "Too bad it'll take a generation for the rest to catch up. Already, I know" --holding up the Blackberry-- "tomorrow they'll announce that Submission won't be shown in Rotterdam."

Bouyeri tried to smile. Theo regarded him calmly.

"Yes, so you win one. Yes, it's going to be a messy, extended ending. And it's jumped the Pond now, too. To a completely innocent New Jersey family."

He floated back from the terrified Bouyeri and once again took his firm stance at the foot of his bed. He read the screen for a long time, scrolling, scrolling, as the the tears, too, scrolled down his face. When he looked up, his eyes were blazing fire.

"If this is your religion, you tiny mind, then Allah is Satan. Listen:

He [Hossam Armanious, a headwaiter] "had the reputation for being one of the most outspoken Egyptian Christians," said the source, who had close ties to the family.

The source, who had knowledge of the investigation, refused to specify the anti-Muslim statement. But he said cops told him they were looking into the exchanges as a possible motive.

The married father of two had recently been threatened by Muslim members of the Web site, said a fellow Copt and store clerk who uses the chat room.

"You'd better stop this bull---- or we are going to track you down like a chicken and kill you," was the threat, said the clerk, who was online at the time and saw the exchange.

But Armanious refused to back down, according to two sources who use the Web site.

Theo added, "Listen to this:

'When we saw the pictures, you could tell that they were hurt really, really bad in the face; especially Sylvia,' said Milad Garas, the high-school sophomore's great-uncle.'"

Theo let a moment of silence pass. Bouyeri seemed paralyzed, his eyes bugging out, but he was still breathing, shallowly. He seemed to have bit his lip; blood drooled from his mouth.

". . . really, really bad in the face." Just like DJ Sebastien, and Chantal Piekolek." Rubbing his face, Theo sighed "I suppose I should thank you for leaving my face alone . . . Obliteration. How dare they be themselves!" he roared suddenly.

Bouyeri scooted back in his bed so fast he seemed blown up against the headboard by an invisible wind. He winced and moaned, but didn't dare move to soothe his burning leg. Through his pain, he noticed something else, between his legs, and his face went red.

"What's that smell?" said Theo, and a freshly lighted cigarette appeared between his generous lips. He inhaled hugely, and when he exhaled the smoke pouring over Bouyeri cleansed his undershorts.

"Control yourself, little man," Theo said sternly. "You did pretty good with me, and the cops, though you're a terrible shot. And even when I begged you --for mercy, to stop, we can talk about it, it's not too late --remember?-- you calmly grabbed my hair, jerked my head back, and cut my throat, so you can damn well control yourself now!" he finished in a roar, which pinned Bouyeri like a moth to the bedstead.

"Just one more thing for tonight. When I first read about the poor Armanious family, I didn't realize there was a story within the story. They were not the first. Because the Armanious family lived in the Jersey City --Hamas West, the Feds call it-- and guess what's there? El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City. And guess what that place spawned? I quote:

"The former imam at the El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City, Alaa Al-Sadawi, was convicted in July 2003 of attempting to smuggle more than $650,000 in cash to the terrorist Global Relief Fund in Egypt in April 2002.

So he's a terrorist crook. What's new? But there's more:

One of Al-Sadawi’s former mosque-goers was convicted last March of murdering in the name of Islam. Alim Hassan, then 31, killed his pregnant wife, her mother, and her sister on July 30, 2002. He reportedly stabbed the women more than 20 times each because they refused to convert to Islam. According to reports, Hassan prayed regularly at El-Tawheed."

Theo van Gogh let his big head droop in a few deep breaths of silence. Bouyeri, eyes wide and dry, was stone.

"Sixty times," Theo murmured presently. His eyes flew open. "That's --damn! the devil Ted Bundy didn't even go that crazy!" Leaning forward again fiercely. "What are you people!" Straightening, shaking the shaggy head. He starts to count: "One . . . two . . . three . . ." And Bouyeri's eyes grew heavy as Theo stepped backward to the green crystal staircase, still counting . . . "twelve . . . thirteen . . ." and turned and floated up and away, rolling up the whole awesome scene with him.

Bouyeri was left with the looming yellow moon. And all across the city, and the country, and the world, the law was finally stirring, its lineaments taking form.

See also Seven Statements For Muslims, Theo Makes His Case, and Theo van Gogh Calls On Yasser Arafat.

Posted by Jerome at January 31, 2005 09:51 AM | TrackBack