Lindsey D. Linden's Blog

The Ghosts of Ugarit

I turned away from the coast with a hollow feeling in my stomach. I could not walk fast enough to escape the troubling thoughts tugging at my soul. Why I didn't accompany my fellow travelers on their journey across the Mediterranean, I cannot say. But the notion that I acted cowardly haunts me.

When word reached me soon after I left them that a storm had capsized the boat they'd boarded, I was overcome with foreboding. As I turned and headed back toward the water, I sensed a stirring in the ground beneath my feet. Confused and disorientated, I witnessed a horde of ethereal spirits rise up from the stone ruins where a once vibrant city had stood. To the shoreline these phantasms headed, where after gathering at the water's edge, they adopted the form of a swirling mist and swept out over the sea.

"They go to collect your dead."
Anger shot through me at the sound of the old woman's voice, for her words were heavy with reproach, as though she spoke as a messenger of Iblis.
"If Jesus hadn't left them, they'd be alive."
Before I could turn and refute her ignorance, the old woman—black robe swirling about her hunched frame—was a score of meters away.
"What nonsense do you cast?" I muttered to myself as I watched her disappear from view. "What could Jesus have done if he were here?"

But the thought had been planted. And I dwelled upon the notion that Jesus was to blame for the storm and all that would transpire afterward as I waited for word of survivors. Hours later, I knew there were none. The incoming tide washed the bodies of the hundreds that had drowned upon the beach. As I pulled my hair and sobbed at the sight of so many dead, I watched the mist roll back in from the sea and gather upon the land. The ghosts of Ugarit had returned. To my great sorrow, as I beheld the ethereal beings seep back into the ruins from which they came, I recognized the faces of my twelve companions amongst them. With the burden of guilt weighing heavy on my shoulders, I turned and fled.

Sometime near nightfall I found myself at the mouth of a lush valley carved between two mountains. The sound of a violent storm rumbled at my back. A sudden gust of wind brought black clouds rushing past me high above my head. Lightening shot down from these clouds and set fire to the valley. Stricken with fear, I sought refuge under an outcrop of stone. Huddling in the dark with the storm raging all around me, I thought the world was coming to an end.

I awoke the next morning to the sound of a braying ass and the sight of a score of travelers passing by me. Some carried bundles and baskets of what I guessed were their possessions, others held nothing but the hand of those they walked beside. A man at the end of the group clutched the tether of a donkey. Upon the animal's back sat a woman heavy with child.

"Where are you going?" I called out to the man.
"To the coast," he replied. "To Ugarit, to find passage to a new life."
Stunned by his statement, I stood and gestured for him to stop.
"No!" I shouted. "You mustn't go! The ghosts of the dead inhabit that place!"
"We go to find a better life," he responded with little hesitation. "A man named Jesus told us there are men there that will ferry us across the sea."
"No!" I yelled in disbelief. "He sends you to your deaths! The sea will swallow you!"
The man stopped and looked at me as though I were a fool.
"There is little choice for us," he said. And then he looked back towards the mountains and pointed to the sky. "War has leveled my village, killed my kin, destroyed what food we had, and fouled our water." Following his gaze, I saw plumes of swirling smoke and clouds of black ash rising above the mountains. "Ahead, there is hope," he told me. "Behind us, nothing."
Before I could reply, he moved on.
"Damn you, Jesus," I cursed under my breath.
And without a second thought, I went to find him, to tell him what misery he'd caused.

The sun was low in the sky by the time I found Jesus. He was several meters off a well-traveled road kneeling next to a child who looked to be near death.
"What happened?" I asked as I approached.
Jesus's face was haggard, his eyes puffy and red when he replied, "A land mine has taken both her legs. I . . . " He hung his head and brought the child's hand to his lips. "She will be gone by day's end."
I looked toward the sun and then looked at Jesus.
"She has little time then," I told him.
Jesus kissed the girl's hand and then placed it to his heart.
"Blessed are the innocent," he said.
Death came for the girl in the form of a subtle tremble; her eyes opened wide, her body went still, her skin turned the color of a pale moon. I couldn't help but glance behind me to see what ghosts might be coming for her spirit just as Jesus placed his palm over her eyes and gently closed them.
"Will you help me?" I heard him ask.
"Help you do what?" I sharply replied. "Bury another dead body?" Jesus seemed stung by my tone, but said nothing. "That's all I have done since I met you."
Jesus nodded his head and then began digging in the soil with his bare hands.
"Did you know the twelve we helped are dead? Do you know they drowned?"
I heard Jesus whimper but I ignored it.
"And now you send a man and his pregnant wife to meet the same fate?" Incredulous, I asked, "Why do I listen to you? Why do I follow you? You bring nothing but misery!"
I stood there shaking with anger as I waited for Jesus to answer. But it was as though he hadn't heard a word I said. He just kept digging. Frustrated by his silence, I turned my back to him and walked away.

As my anger waned, I felt the chill of the night air upon my skin. Obstinate, I would not look toward Jesus as I gathered wood and built a small fire. Certain he would come to warm himself when he was done burying the girl, I lied down and went to sleep with my back to the flames. I awakened the next morning to the cry of a hawk circling high above me in a sky so blue I blinked several times to make certain that what I was seeing was real. Regretting my thoughtlessness toward Jesus, I rolled over to offer my apology. But Jesus was not where I expected to find him. Alarmed, I rose and walked to where he'd been digging. The grave was finished; mounded and layered with stones so the scavengers could not get at the body. But Jesus was gone. I was alone.

The Road From Aleppo

I don't know how, but Jesus survived Aleppo. Quite by accident, I found him lying face up in a roadside ditch half buried beneath several corpses. At first I thought he was as dead as the rest of the poor souls who had been piled into the trench. But then I saw his eyelids flutter, so I pulled his emaciated frame from the mound of decaying bodies and carried him to a hill where the stench of human rot was not so overwhelming.

"How is it you are alive?" I asked him when his eyes briefly focused on mine.
"By the grace of the father," he weakly replied.

And then I went to find water, for after speaking, Jesus's head listed to one side and he lost consciousness. When I returned sometime later, I had to shoo away a large carrion-eating bird standing next to his head before I could share what little water I had been given by a girl who was offering to clean feet in exchange for food. Although the water I brought back to Jesus was tainted with dirt and sewage, I had no choice but to give it to him if he was to survive. And even though I was certain he could not hear me, I asked his forgiveness before I dripped the foul liquid into his mouth. It took a few minutes for the water to revive him, but when he regained awareness, his eyes were as clear and bright as I ever remembered seeing them before.

"Can you travel?" I asked him.
"Where is it that you go?" he replied.
"To the coast, to find a way across the Mediterranean to a better life."

I wasn't quite sure what to make of his response, for he looked away from me, down toward the ditch where I found him, and said, "Is there a place where you are going where those who have been sacrificed can be reborn?"

Certainly Jesus was suffering from a fever, I thought, for how could he possibly think that those who had experienced death could find life again? While I shook my head in a moment of reflection, I felt a hand touch my shoulder.

"Would you abandon your brothers and sisters in their time of need?"
"But they are all dead," I said to him, though it felt wrong to tell him so.
"You saved me," he told me quite calmly.
"But you were alive."
"Was I?" he asked. "Come," he said, and he took my hand. "Perhaps there are more like me."

And so we spent the next several days searching the death-pits and the many bombed-out buildings for survivors and burying the dead. Twelve we found—equal numbers of men, women, and children—twelve wounded, starving, frail lives that would have suffered a slow and lonely death were it not for the faith of a man I had crossed paths with weeks before when Aleppo was under siege. By begging, and bartering, and through acts of charity, we were able to nurse the twelve back to a state of health where they would be able to travel. It was at this juncture that Jesus informed me that he would be heading back to where he was needed.

"And where are you needed more then where you are right now?" I asked, somewhat perturbed.
"Where they are lost," he replied. And then he looked eastward, back toward Aleppo, back to where war raged. "Where those who kill, and those who are dying in the name of some false ideology are trapped." And then he said something that made me think he was seriously touched. "Forgiveness is hard to offer when you are covered in blood. Perhaps there is a way I can cleanse the stain from their flesh."
"You are mad," I said to him. "There are only lunatics and barbarians there. They do not seek forgiveness."
"As the twelve we found did not seek to be saved." Nodding to to the twelve survivors, he offered me a brief smile. "Yet they live."
"That is different," I argued.
He said nothing in response.

"Will you be happy there, where you go?" Jesus quietly asked me after a few minutes had passed.
My reply was on the tip of my tongue when I suddenly felt at a loss as to what to say.
"Perhaps this will all be over tomorrow," I offered instead. "Perhaps someone with a lot of money will buy this country and end our suffering."
As soon as I said this to him, I knew how stupid I sounded.
"People with money don't spend it on the likes of us, do they?" I sheepishly asked.
Jesus hesitated before he answered.
"The fate of the forgotten has been placed upon the shoulders of the poor," he said. "And I am the road that runs beneath their feet."

The Last Elephant

"When the last elephant is gone, we will be no more."

Kamua watched the shadow of an owl shift from tree to stone without its dark form casting a silhouette through air or upon soil. Emerald eyes—centers flaring yellow—blinked open within solid rock before vanishing in a puff of shiny dust. Wind gusted in bursts, devoid of sound, while the crystalline shape of a massive spirit elephant stood impassively on a stationary cushion of translucent mist. Equating the real to the imagined and the imagined to the real, Kamua struggled to determine whether he had heard an actual woman speak, or if she was part of his delusion.

"You say we are losing the battle."

The despair conveyed in the woman's voice shook Kamua to the marrow of his bones. As though a squall of black thunderheads had formed over his head and unleashed a torrent of wind and hail upon him, he hugged his shoulders into his chest and gripped his arms in an attempt to weather the icy chill shooting through his veins. Stricken by a feeling of crushing grief, he tilted his face toward the sky and wailed with the clamor of a thousand tortured souls screaming inside his head and the sorrow of a broken heart aching in his chest.

"There is more we must do."

There is more we must do; the phrase gnawed at his psyche. There is more we must do!

"What more must I do?" he cried.

His words came back to him in waves, echoing off the peaks and ridge walls around him. The hollow reverberations seemed a mockery of his voice as they faded into insignificance. An arm's length above his head, a glint of vibrant color appeared—a speck of metallic green that flitted in the air as though dangling from the strings of a puppeteer. Weary of visions and hallucinations, Kamua covered his face with his hands and hung his head. But the hum of an insect whirring close to his ear prompted him to lean away and swat at the air above him.

"Get away from me," he hissed.

Two, six, twelve, twenty; he watched in resignation as the glimmer of green zoomed to a spot several paces in front of the vehicle in which he was sitting and multiplied to a number he could not fathom. Like a body of shimmering water flowing over the edge of a cliff, the metallic forms cascaded to the ground and pooled across the soil. There, in a soundless explosion of heatless flame, the green mass ignited and burned to a pile of ash.

Flakes of residue—gray, black, and white—fluttered and settled as though stroked by a fickle breeze. Then the grimy mass gathered, swirled, and congealed to form a mounded shape lying prone upon the soil. The air shook and rumbled with a thundering cry loosed by the gargantuan spirit elephant. As silence returned, the charred mound atop the dirt blossomed upward into the shape of a person.

Adolescent, adult, child, elder—the entity standing before Kamua seemed all of those and more. Each of these feminine aspects imbued the features of the others, a fusion of innocence, wisdom, strength, and compassion that Kamua struggled to comprehend. The creature was at once beautiful and terrifying, provocative and demure, with flowing hair the color of moonlight and fire, skin the tones of sand, earth, mud, and tar, the colors twining about her torso like the coils of a snake. Her eyes held the hues of every form of water Kamua had ever known: sun-kissed raindrops, blue oceans and emerald streams, slate-grey rivers, and moon-bathed pools shrouded within the veil of a midnight downpour. All manner of fauna and flora did Kamua see within the woman's pupils: beasts of land and sky; creatures of ocean and stream; insects of desert and leaf. Wind and rain and sky and sun were the essence of the lady's being—a collage of images, light, and sound that flowed within her torso like the turning pages of a never-ending book.

Overwhelmed by her radiant aura of sheer power and majesty, Kamua slid from the driver's seat and knelt on the ground. But as he lowered his head to pay homage to the godlike creature standing before him, she extended a hand with her palm turned toward the sky.

Images of spirit elephants, their forms encased within a luminous sphere of sea mist framed by a rising sun, appeared on the tips of her fingers. Crystalline in appearance, the ethereal beasts amassed near the base of a snow-capped mountain towering above a field of golden grass. As sunlight shone down upon the animals, the sparkling rays refracted, filling the sapphire sky with fragmented rainbows. Joy and wonder, beauty and awe—such a paradise of feelings swept through Kamua that tears welled in his eyes.

But then black clouds appeared, somber in design, heralding winged, manlike creatures descending from the heavens. Dark angels these beings resembled, hollow-eyed and grim, mouths twisted with malevolence, taloned fingers disfigured from the work of sin. One by one, each spirit elephant was assailed, its body shattered under an onslaught of silver-stained-steel. From the mouths of the dark angels this foul barrage was shot, and with each death of a spirit elephant, the landscape grew paler. And when the last of the crystalline beasts was destroyed, the snow-capped peak trembled and the ground buckled and cracked. The mountain erupted into flame and ash, releasing molten lava that set fire to the grass.

Black and grey, grey and black—Kamua could tell little difference between earth and sky. But as ash settled and some semblance of land reappeared, Kamua began to tremble, for there was nothing left to see—no grass or mountain or beast, or any remnant of what used to be. Without color or life, the landscape that had filled Kamua with such joy was now barren and stark, a dismaying depiction of gloom and desolation that magnified the ache in his heart. And then came the voice of child—one that he had heard before. The boy whispered what the woman had told him: "When the last elephant is gone, we will be no more."

The above is an excerpt from the forthcoming novel, Palm of the Mother.
© 2017 Lindsey D. Linden

Faith

*Faith does not flow from rock or seep from words spoken in haste. Down, down in darkness and doubt, a fragment of light burns. Eternal in nature, the flame weathers what elements it is forced to bear, and does not falter in the breath of angels despair. Crusade or crusader, it does not care which you are. Free it from the depth of misgiving and cup the fire within your palm. Hold it close to your chest so it may melt the sorrow in your heart. Rekindle the beat of the drum and let the timbre of its voice bring hope to those who have none. Woe is not the way of your chosen course. That path only serves the winding maze where wraiths of the tortured lie in wait for broken souls. Awaken, and feel the song of the Mother upon your flesh. Woe is not the way.

*An excerpt from the forthcoming novel, Palm of the Mother.

Words of Bobby Kennedy

I was a freshman in high school when Bobby Kennedy was murdered in 1968. I didn't know much about him at the time. Too caught-up in being a teenager in the sixties, I suppose. But as I flicked through the hundreds of channels on my television last night, I came upon the end of a movie filmed around the day Bobby Kennedy was killed. It struck me as more than coincidental, that here, during a time when our country seems to be at a crossroads of conscience, that my cable box would present me with a treasure that has been hiding in plain sight for nearly fifty years.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

The above sentence is a small part of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy to a group of students in South Africa. It is a speech I never knew existed. How lacking I felt when I read it. Even more, when I listened to Bobby Kennedy speaking at the end of the movie—when the film makers used audio clips of his speeches to tie together all the plot lines of the characters—I realized I had gone some fifty years without hearing the voice of someone I had been waiting to hear most of my life.

I cried listening to Bobby Kennedy talk. I cried as I listened to him speak about poverty and prejudice and humanity and hope, and what the world can accomplish, and what it has been slow to embrace.

"Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world—which yields most painfully to change."

Researching and reading the words of Bobby Kennedy was a revelation. Even more uplifting was to hear him speak of ideals and issues that hold the same weight-of-truth today as they did some fifty years ago. He seemed keenly aware that our country has come a long way in its turbulent march toward equality for all, but he did not shy away from the fact that it still has a long way to go before men and women of all races, nationalities and religious beliefs accept each other as equals.

"We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land."

The above excerpt is part of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy the night Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He offered those words to a crowd of African-Americans from the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of an Indianapolis ghetto after being warned that his safety could not be assured. Perhaps the fabric of moral courage is woven with the threads of compassion, understanding, and plain old-fashioned guts.

"Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

The words of Bobby Kennedy are well worth the time to research, read and listen to. In this time of doubt and uncertainty, they are a welcome bastion of hope and courage.

Jesus is in Aleppo

Jesus is in Aleppo. I last saw him two days ago. We were digging trenches between piles of rubble so the people who don't have water would have a place to relieve themselves and raw sewage wouldn't collect in the streets. We worked shoulder to shoulder, digging with our hands, until a child brought us some pieces of broken metal to use. It was hard work. I tired long before Jesus did. He dug until his fingers and palms were blistered and bloody.

After we finished digging latrines, we sat and rested. We shared a crust of bread a kind woman brought us. As food is scarce in Aleppo, we savored every morsel. Jesus ate far less then I. He is emaciated. He tries to hide his condition beneath the layers of dirty rags he jokingly calls his robe, but I've caught glimpses of his gaunt frame when the barrel bombs fall and we run for cover. And when the whimpers of hungry children arise at sundown and infuse the evening air with a haunting sadness that seeps into your core, I've watched his jaw tremble and his eyes fill with tears. Jesus is strong, but he's not fooling anyone. He's starving. Just as we all are.

At night, Jesus is prone to gaze up at the stars. Sometimes I catch him smiling when one shoots across the sky. And a twinkle will appear in his eye when he follows a streaking trail of light across the infinite darkness above us. But inevitably, his smile fades when the star fizzles out. And his brow wrinkles and he becomes melancholy. I've heard him weeping at times. He tries to muffle his tears by burying his face in the crook of his arm. I guess he doesn't want anyone to know he's crying. I've tried to comfort him when he gets upset, but what words I've spoken, or what gestures I've extended to him to try and console him, don't seem to do much good.

Between the starvation, disease, bombing, mutilations, kidnappings and torture the people of this city have had to endure, it would be easy to lose faith. But Jesus hasn't lost his. He is adamant that a legion will come and break the oppressive siege Aleppo is under.
"What legion?" I asked him the first time he spoke of such an army.
"Those who hold the words of the Father close to their hearts," was his reply—and all he has ever replied each subsequent time I've asked him.
And when I've pressed him on the matter, he silences me with a gentle wave of his hand. In deference to his strong belief and his devotion to the people of this city, I've stopped asking about this legion of his. I don't believe there is such a force. But if he is right, if such a legion does exist, I hope they come soon. For Aleppo is dying.

Two nights ago, Jesus cried out in his sleep. He was violently shaking and seemed to be in the clutches of a fever. His body was soaked with sweat. When I awakened him, I became afraid, for the look he gave me was of a man who has witnessed unspeakable horrors. Torment and despair; I felt these emotions running through his hands when he gripped my shoulders and stared into my eyes.
"It's just a dream," I told him. "You are among friends."
An intense shiver wracked his body when he tried to reply. And he gasped for air as though he was a drowning man breaking the surface of water. I held tight his forearm until he calmed. Finally, with a shuddering sigh, he offered me a brief smile and looked up to the sky. But the night was filled with clouds. There was no spark amongst the heavens to bring a twinkle to his eye.

The next morning, Jesus was gone. He'd risen before sunrise to help the victims of a chemical bombardment in another part of the city I was told. Reports of casualties filtered back to us later in the day; scores of people had been blinded, swaths of their skin melted from their flesh, many unable to breathe without suffering great pain with the effort. A burning agent had been packed inside the bombs. The chemical was released upon detonation. The invisible assailant enveloped three city blocks. No one was spared.

I fear Jesus will be dead soon. Like all of us trapped in Aleppo, I fear he will be buried beneath the rubble, an unnoticed and forgotten casualty of an unmerciful war. I hope the legion he so strongly believes in will arrive before that time and deliver this city from the evil that seems bent upon extracting its very soul. But it's been two days since I last saw Jesus, and I am afraid for him. Aleppo is dying, and he is in its midst.

The Lion of Djibouti

Palm of the Mother

For those of you who have read or are reading The Lion of Djibouti or, book two in the trilogy, March of the Green Beetles, I wanted to let you know that I am hard at work on the third book in the trilogy. The book will be titled, Palm of the Mother. I hope to have it published in late 2017 or early 2018. Palm of the Mother will bring an end to the saga of the Lion of Djibouti. Thanks for your support and your patience.

Sincerely,

Lindsey D. Linden

Fundraiser

I've been collecting all royalties from the sale of The Lion of Djibouti since March 22, 2015. By the end of this effort—Christmas Day—all money will be distributed to The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, African Wildlife Federation and Wildlife Conservation Society. I chose these three organizations for their specific efforts in saving endangered animals and combating illegal poaching.
You can follow me through Twitter @LionDjibouti, on the novel's website http://www.thelionofdjibouti.com or on Facebook.
I am currently finishing the sequel to The Lion of Djibouti and hope to release the work by late spring of 2016. March of the Green Beetles will continue the story of Sister Claire, Teimbaka, John, John Too, the spirit elephants and the hyena men. New exciting characters will also highlight the bond and struggles Africa and America share.
Please, if you are a mind to, support the cause to save African animals by purchasing a copy of The Lion of Djibouti. Reviews are posted on Amazon Books, B&N, Goodreads and Google Play. Ebook and paperback available.