Invitation to a Beheading

A bullet for a doodle?

Image: The New Yorker

‘We must retaliate,’ said the chief.

The armed, masked men around him, raised their Kalashnikovs in the air, taking their god’s name in greatness.

‘Drop your guns, you fools,’ he said, ‘it does not stop them. They multiply.’

‘What do you mean?’ said one scowling rebel, ‘we will kill them all.’

‘That is exactly what they want, don’t you see?’ the chief bowed his head in despair.

‘An eye for an eye balances the world, but a bullet for a doodle, that’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?’

‘So you mean we should sketch on paper now, instead of waging a war?’ asked a follower of the great faith.

‘What do you suggest my friend?’ said the chief. ‘Which is easier done? Guns or cartoons?’

‘Guns,’ said one, ‘we don’t know how to make cartoons.’

‘That is what is missing,’ said the chief. ‘Humour, you people are too blinded by faith.’

The men looked puzzled, trying to understand what the chief meant by insulting them.

Silence followed to the count of three.

They riddled the chief’s body with bullets.

‘Idiot,’ a rebel laughed, severing the chief’s bloodied head with a knife. ‘Those cartoons look quite funny, poor man, could never explain what is written in it.’

The rebel kicked the chief’s head. It rolled and rolled and rolled. Like a ball of fire in a cartoon.