Good Morning America

I woke up and rolled over to look at the clock. Oh, great. Almost time to get up. And I didn't really feel like it. I had a bit too much to drink the night before, and I had that washed out kind of feeling. Not a hangover really, but in that general direction. Well, I'd better get going. I couldn't let my supervisor catch on. I'd be punished severely, if I was caught drinking... now that alcohol was illegal. They'd want to know where I got it, and then they'd come search my house looking for it. The minimum penalty would probably be flogging with 40 lashes. I could end up dead.

I did my Fajr prayers at 4:54 AM and then started to get cleaned-up and ready for work. It was Sunday. A day I would have ordinarily been able to sleep in, or maybe go to church if I had been more religious. But it didn't matter now. All non-Islamic worship services had been banned. I couldn't go to church if I wanted to. I wasn't much of a Christian then, and I guess I wasn't much of a Moslem now.

But I went through the motions. I did what I had to do to survive. I mean, isn't that what life's all about anyway? Survival? I was lucky. I had made it through the Great Purge. They killed everyone who wouldn't convert to Islam. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Gaians, Atheists... it was a blood bath. I lost a few people in my own family. My cousin Joey and his wife... they were downright evangelists. No surprise there. But my brother Billy? Now that was a shocker. Never saw him standing up for anything until this. He said he'd had enough and refused to live in a world under Islam. Maybe he was right, and I was wrong. This was no picnic.

I had some breakfast and did my sunrise prayers at 6:13 AM. I got in the car and headed off to work. I turned the radio on to one of the English-speaking stations. Arabic-speaking stations seemed to spring up out of nowhere after the Great Liberation. Or maybe I should call it the Great Capitulation. Those jerks in Washington! They saw what happened in Iraq after we pulled out. They saw what happened in France and Germany and Britain. Did they think it would be any different here? Gutless wonders! They wanted peace... so they got the "religion of peace".

I got to work at 7:20 AM, just in time for my 7:30 Arabic lessons. I hated this stuff. I was never very good at languages. I had picked up a smattering of German back when I occasionally traveled to Germany on business. But my German was not very good... "nicht sehr gut", as they say. I could ask a question, but couldn't understand the answer. They spoke too fast (which was normal speed for them). I would say, "Sprechen Sie langsame, Bitte"... "Speak slowly, please". I couldn't translate in my head fast enough. And the same thing was happening with Arabic. It was like a rerun.

At 8:00 AM it was time for religious training. We got a half-hour of teaching from the Koran everyday. It wasn't too bad. Sometimes it even made sense. But my analytical side kept telling me there was something wrong with this stuff. Where was the peace? Where was the love? If it was there, I couldn't find it. And some of it was downright contradictory. Oh well. The times they are a changin'. Go with the flow. And so begins another day in Islamic America.

UPDATE: Apparently Dan Simmons had the same idea I did. He wrote an interesting Sci-Fi piece Here, not unlike my own... but better.