The clap of thunder and jagged silence hails the sun-flaked swarm riding high in amomentary calm of synthetic awe. To witness emotions drilled in Time and fossilized like the luminous eyes of the loved ones now gone gently into the atrophied hunger of the blackening universe. All is stilled save for the ejaculations of a wounded victim to the sheets of age and lust. but Minerva flaps in startled sheen of exit. Ganesh crows and all the wakings of the lidless Buddha cry ‘enough’ for Mullah Nasruddin still deceiving the clowns. While the hirsute harlot haggles in a spate of syncopated areca and the coleopteral bureaucrat hums of the inanities of movement I bear witness to the charivari of man’s folly in sinking grace and silent head. I asked ‘what is in life?’ the hag cackled, the bureaucrat continued with his humming with bated breath wheezing now Minerva froze in flight. The toothless sycophants chanted in glabrous halitosis in the unison born of discalced despair ‘Fihi Ma Fihi’. The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC