Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (15 page)

“Oh yeah,” he replied, opening the lid on top of the center console between the front seats.  He pulled out a folded sheet of personalized stationery.  “Check this out…with this letter; we’re like, totally golden! We’ll be so totally in, man!”  He held it up for Ranya to see, and then put it back into the console.  “Professor Ruskin at Michigan is in tight with Professor Johnson at the University of New Mexico…there I go again!
Nuevo
Mexico.  Hah! I gotta watch that!  Anyway, he’s vouching for us, in this letter.  When we find Professor Johnson, and give him this letter, we’ll be all set.  Land reform, that’s Professor Johnson’s gig.  We’ll probably be able to help him, you know, like researching the old Spanish land grants and deeds and titles, stuff like that.  I mean, the Mexicans were so totally ripped off after 1748! Or maybe it was 1848…  Well, anyway, it’s like, all their land around here, you know?”

Destiny was nodding enthusiastically, gazing up at Derek.  “Professor Ruskin was really the one who gave us the idea for all this.  Joining the revolution, I mean!  At least for the summer.  Who knows, maybe for even longer!  Maybe we’ll be able to transfer into UNM, you know?  But it’s definitely going to be good for a master’s thesis, at least.”

Kalil opened the glove box, found a brass cigarette case and extracted a pre-rolled joint.  He fired it up with a butane lighter, took a prolonged drag and passed it over to Derek.  After holding his breath for an inordinate time, Kalil exhaled most of the smoke through the open passenger side window, and choked out, “Yeah man, the revolution, that’s the real thing. No more talk—talk is bullshit!”

State Road 355 headed in long straight lines toward the mountains, and then began to curve and twist as it followed the contours where the high plains met the foothills.  The junipers and grasslands gradually turned to pines, as the van rolled down into valleys, and struggled back up again. Small and not-so-small ranches were visible on both sides of the two-lane asphalt road.  Some houses were close to the road, some were set far down paved driveways.  Some of the ranches had Western-style arched gates created from iron or timber, often decorated with their particular cattle brands.  There were some rather shabby trailers and private junkyards, but also many comfortably affluent homesteads and a few of what might almost have been called mansions. 

“Look at that, another burned-down house.” announced Derek, slowing the van to gaze to the left at a heap of ashes punctuated by a pair of standing chimneys.  “That’s the third one in just a couple of miles, what’s up with that?”

Destiny was now kneeling behind Derek’s seat, to look out the front windows and take a hit off the joint.  Her clingy green Sierra Club t-shirt was riding up and Ranya couldn’t help but notice the hideous platter-sized sunburst tattoo across the small of her back.  Destiny said, “Oh, I heard all about that on NPR. The rich white ranchers who have to leave, you know, to give back the stolen land…well, sometimes they’re burning down their own places. Just so that nobody else will be able to live in them.  Can you believe that shit? It’s so typical of the greedy white man.  You know, ‘if I can’t have it, then nobody can’.”

“Yeah,” said Kalil, “That’s whitey for you all right.”  Then he turned to her, beaming a glassy-eyed smile.  “But hey, you all, you’re not like that, at least most times!  I mean, for white folks, you is all right.  Now pass that joint back up here, Destiny girl.”

“You remember what Susan Sontag said about the white race?” asked Derek.

Destiny answered him, nodding.  “Sure.  That’s Diversity Studies 101, everybody knows that quote.  ‘The white race is the cancer of human history’…”

“…And treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity,” he finished for her.

“Right on!” exclaimed Destiny.  “I just wish Professor Ruskin could see us now!”

“Oh, hey, look at that sign!” said Kalil, exhaling another cloud of dope smoke out the right side window.  “Check it out:
¡TIERRA O MUERTE!
” What’s that mean?”  He was pointing to a crude homemade red and white billboard, painted on a dilapidated barn along the right side of road.  The former ranch house, which was a few hundred yards away across a pasture, was a pile of ashes, with only some charred timbers and a stone chimney still standing.

“Land or death,” replied Ranya.  “It means land or death.”

“Oh wow!” said Derek excitedly, “We must be getting close to the liberated zone.  No more rednecks!  No more racists!
Viva la raza
!”

“Looks like the party is over for whitey in Nu-e-vo Mex-i-co.” added Kalil. “Oh yeah, this is gonna be so sweet!  Payback time!”

“Derek, stop the van.” said Destiny.  “Let’s get out and take some pictures.  I can send some back to Michigan on my cell phone.  We can show everybody that we’ve actually made it to the revolution! We’ve made it!  I can’t believe it, we’ve actually made it!  This is going to be the best summer ever.”

There was no other traffic in sight on the long straight run of ranch land.  Derek slowly reversed back down the road and pulled off on the dirt shoulder.  The four giddy comrades piled out of the van, with Ranya following the girls out of the sliding side door.  Destiny handed Ranya her cell phone and her Nikon digital camera, both already opened up and ready for use.  The four “Voluntarios” stood in front of the barn, the white and red
¡TIERRA O MUERTE!
sign behind them against the backdrop of the Manzano Mountains.  They were smiling ecstatically, standing side by side with their right fists raised high in the air, as Ranya filmed them for posterity.

7
 

Bob Bullard spent Monday morning
in his corner office in the San Diego Federal Building, prior to taking his helicopter up to Los Angeles. The maroon-colored five-story building spread like a malignancy between the feet of soaring glass and steel office towers in downtown San Diego. Most people hated the grim prison-like appearance of the Federal Building, but Bullard loved it.  Its forbidding appearance instilled a healthy dose of fear into those unfortunates commanded to enter it on official business. 

In front of the main entrance foyer, in the middle of an enclosed quadrangle, was quite possibly the most hideous piece of public sculpture ever commissioned, anywhere or anytime.  This was an angular black steel pinnacle, leaning over precariously, and tapering to a needle sharp point at the end of its fifty-foot length.  Bullard liked to imagine screaming tax delinquents being thrown down and impaled on its brutally cruel tip, to slowly perish like insects stabbed by an entomologist’s pin.  (Of course, he kept these private thoughts
strictly
to himself.)

Today his staff had scheduled a half hour of “community outreach.” This could often be turned into a profitable exercise in public relations, with photo opportunities showing the deeply concerned regional homeland security boss lending his ear to a stream of noteworthy whiners and malcontents.  Artfully staged, these photo ops could perform the miracle of turning Bob Bullard into a kindhearted uncle, with a twinkle in his eye and a ready pat on the head for the kiddies.

This morning it was the turn of the local Muslim Sheiks, Imams and Muftis to moan and complain.  Bullard’s secretary buzzed them into his fifth-floor corner office at nine AM.  He was amused to see the three of them wearing traditional Middle Eastern garb, including colorful dish towels draped over their heads, held in place with what looked like coiled fan belts.  Together the three ran part of the Montclaire section of San Diego (known locally as Little Baghdad) as their personal fiefdom. Montclaire was situated atop a mesa surrounded by cliffs and canyons, a natural redoubt. The enclave, just on the eastern side of I-5, was home to the largest mosque and “Islamic cultural center” in California.  Even years before the walls had gone up, Montclaire had proven to be a comfortable haven for a number of the 9-11 hijackers.

Several major San Diego surface streets ran through Montclaire, but except for these public roads, access into the enclave itself was strictly controlled.  Licensed armed guards with full beards, wearing green military uniforms and checked Arafat-style kefiyah scarves, were stationed at the few unbarricaded streets leading into the “Muslim Quarter.”  These menacing guards were the only visible face that Montclaire showed to the outside world.  Bullard often wondered why some of the thousands of Marines who called San Diego home didn’t shoot them on sight while driving past, simply out of habit.  This thought gave him a minor smile, and propelled him up out of his black leather executive chair as they entered his office.

“Good morning gentlemen, good morning.  What can the Department of Homeland Security do for you today?”  After a prolonged exchange of double-pumping handshakes, flowery greetings and one attempted cheek kissing (Bullard would have bitten off a nose or ear first) the Imams got down to business.

“Director Bullard, we have complained and complained to the mayor about the continuing anti-Muslim harassment, yet our complaints fall on deaf ears. So in desperation, we are coming to you for help.”

“All right—fair enough. That’s what I’m here for. So what’s the problem?”  Bullard returned to his executive chair, sat behind his desk and cracked his knuckles.

“The law clearly states that we may play the call to prayer of the Muezzin five times a day from our minarets.  Yet we continue to have loud ‘rock’ music blasted into Montclaire when we do so!  Even worse, our Muezzin’s loudspeakers are fired upon on a daily basis! This is intolerable!  You must see that the local police take their responsibilities seriously!”  The other Imam’s nodded their heads vigorously.

“I’m sorry about that, I really am.  I’ll do what I can. However, in all frankness, as long as you play that ‘Allah Akbar’ tape with the volume turned way up, folks might choose to send their own message back at you. It’s still a free country, you know.”  

The transformation of Montclaire into “the Muslim Quarter” had been startlingly rapid, once the amplified loudspeaker broadcasting of the “call to prayer” had been approved by the city council.  Non-Muslims began a mass-exodus from within audible range of the muezzin’s cry, and property values plummeted.  Newly arriving Muslim immigrants moved in to snap up the vacant homes at fire-sale prices.  Other Muslims living scattered across Southern California moved to the enclave to avoid “religious persecution,” and the process continued until the Montclaire mesa was virtually 100% Islamic.  In ten years, the Muslim population of San Diego County had tripled to an estimated 300,000—most of whom lived in and around Montclaire.

“But what about the shootings?” asked the leader of the Imams.  “Our minarets look like Swiss cheese!”

“Maybe if you turned down the volume on the call to prayer, maybe that would help? Or what if you turned the loudspeakers around, facing inside?  So you could hear the prayer in Montclaire, but not all over San

Diego?”

“Mr. Bullard, sir!  We have our rights, under the First Amendment.”

“Yes, you do...”

“It is a hate crime to blast idolatrous satanic rock music into Montclaire during the call to prayer.  We insist that the perpetrators be pursued and charged!  It is disgraceful, it is anti-Islamic bigotry, it is…”

“I’m sure it is.  Now, while we’re discussing Montclaire, I’d like to pass along a concern coming up from the mayor’s office.  He says they’ve been seeing a steady stream of folks showing up in San Diego emergency rooms without right hands.  You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Bullard held up his own knobby right hand and wiggled his fingers.

“I don’t see how this is any concern of yours.  You know very well that we have an agreement with the city to observe Sharia Law within Montclaire.  I’d like to point out that within our walls we have the lowest crime rate of any urban area in California.”

“Sure, and you also have the highest rate of one-handed vagrants all around you.”

“Director Bullard, we didn’t come here today to suffer another assault on our faith.  We came here to reach some understanding, not to suffer an attack.”

“Oh Jesus…keep your turban on.  Personally, I don’t care how you take care of business inside of your own walls.  But outside is another matter. Like when the local girls start getting gang-raped…”

“That is a lie!  A slander against all Muslims!  I refuse to listen.  And those harlots should not dress that way near Montclaire!  What are decent Muslim boys to think, when they see those teenage girls half-dressed, like
charmutas
, like whores?”

“Then stop complaining about your minarets getting shot up.  It goes both ways.  That’s all I’m saying.”

“Director Bullard, this is outrageous!  You sound as if you are condoning these unprovoked attacks on Montclaire.  You know what is happening in Detroit, and I’m certain that you would not want to see a similar situation here in San Diego!”

Bullard rose to his full height and leaned forward across his desk, staring hard at the sheik.  “Now listen here Abdul, you’re not in Detroit, and I’m not a liberal pussy like the Mayor and Governor back there.  You throw up barricades and block traffic on the through-streets like they did in Detroit, and I’ll bulldoze right through them.  And while we’re at it, we’ll bulldoze all of your unapproved dead ends and cul-de-sacs, every last one of them!  I’ll run bulldozers through your walls, and leave Montclaire wide open!  I’ll have all of your security guards’ gun permits revoked, and let the gangs back in!  Trust me: you don’t want that!  You have a cozy little situation going on in Montclaire—but you’re not fooling anybody.  We haven’t come down hard on you, but believe me, we can.  So turn down the volume on your Allah Akbar, and stop chopping off hands, all right? And tell your boys to leave the infidel girls alone outside of your walls!”

Bullard paused, looking at each of them in turn, and quieted his tone before continuing.  “That is, if you three want to keep on playing Grand Pooh-bahs with your own little harems…  Oh yeah, I know all about your harems, and how young some of those girls are.  Girls and boys, I should say…  Now if you’ll excuse me gentlemen, I’ve got other appointments.”