I SAW A MAN FROM THE 7th CENTURY YESTERDAY

I SAW A MAN FROM THE 7^TH CENTURY YESTERDAY

So time travel is possible after all.  He was on the Drudge site on the internet, white teeth flashing, fist in the air, hoping to rip my throat out and see blood fly.  I don’t think we realize what we’ve done.  Say you want to experience unspeakable cruelties – eye gougings, torn limbs, lingering tortures and so on – well, history books had to suffice until the motion picture industry gave us Technicolor, Surround Sound and 3-D.  But even with the extravagances of the modern cinema houses, you still knew it wasn’t real.  You could have Spanish inquisitors pulling out tongues and frying skulls with branding irons, and depraved Kings could rape little girls, but it was just a story.  Historical drama, they call it at the awards ceremonies. 

This serf from the 7^th century was only on a website, but he was real in a way no movie could ever depict him.  He wanted me and my kind dead because I would not, could not, did not bow to his prophet, dead since 632 but eternally alive in the memories of the faithful.  And my time traveler from the early Middle Ages wasn’t alone.  Large populations of his fellows swarm our world these days.  I see them nightly on the news, burning flags, dragging our diplomats naked through the streets of their towns. 

I was warned of this some three decades ago by my learned and urbane Iranian brother-in-law, himself a ‘modern’ Muslim.  “The Shaw must move slowly,” he told me.  “He has no other choice.  If he moves too swiftly, he will anger the people.  And yet, your government officials are very impatient.”  He tried to explain to me how nearly impossible it was to view a 7^th century person in terms of modern perception, trying to make real for me the many blunt and unyielding obstacles that stand in the way of simply showing older-culture people the light of modern ways.  I didn’t give as much weight to his ideas as I should have, and that is unforgivable, considering I had the lessons of Vietnam at my personal beck and call.  But then, our U.S. Presidents from JFK and LBJ through Carter, Clinton, the Bush bunch and Obama – well meaning individuals, all – didn’t really get it either.  You can move the man from the 7^th century, but you can’t move the 7^th century from the man.