The Cash That Rules the World — in the Laboured Breath of a Weary Old Man!

Dr Al-Khidr Haroun
He told his story:
My friend said to me, wishing to understand what was wrong with me:
“I see you keeping to yourself, deliberately avoiding the political quagmire with your pen, even though the political marketplace is bustling these days. The clamour of those haggling over deals in its arenas has become deafening, rising above every other voice and barely subsiding by night or day. The din pierces the heavens with uproar and shouting.
“These are precisely the conditions that have been seized upon by dwarfs whom the eye had never noticed before, so slight are their bodies and so light their weight. Giants, too, have bowed their heads before the raging storm and accepted humiliation, content to become part of the spectacle, the decoration and the procession, whether what they say is commendable or blameworthy.
“Some people have long made a living from the scraps that fall from such tables. So what has happened to you, when you are a son of the trade, a veteran of its arena, and one who knows its reins and understands how to take hold of them?”
I replied:
“Is it not enough that you have described it as a quagmire? Is that not the ugliest description of all?
“And men who, like me, have grown old beyond measure and whose weakness has reached its limit — if their feeble strength no longer allows them to wade into the mire, they have also been restrained by sorrow and despair from any hope of repairing what time has corrupted, and from reversing the degeneration and miserable fate to which politics has descended.
“Politics now has its own marketplaces, like the markets for commodities that flourish during harvest seasons — onions, mangoes and dates — drawing money from people’s pockets, particularly the bulging pockets of those who can afford to pay generously. And I, my friend, am not one of them.
“Politics has become a commodity governed by money. Yes, by cash — and perhaps even by cubes of pure gold.
“John Mearsheimer, one of the foremost scholars of international relations among the fair-minded Westerners, has said as much, describing money as the only route to legislative chambers and the highest seats of power in his country, which governs the entire world. Former President Jimmy Carter said much the same, adding that remaining in positions of power requires caution and vigilance over slips of the tongue that might exceed what the holder of the cash has paid; at that point, there would be no way back to those positions.
“These are not merely accusations. They are a reality that has travelled far and wide, laid bare on the screens of phones and computers, in both image and sound.
“And do not concern yourself with where the cash comes from. That does not matter. What matters is that it arrives. Whether it comes from some tiny island cast adrift in the labyrinth of the Pacific Ocean, or from a ‘state’ barely visible to the naked eye yet swollen with cash, the result is the same.
“And you, my friend, can see with your own two eyes how people — all people — have gone to whoever possesses the gold, caring for nothing else.
“Do you not see how the great powers across the globe have been stripped of their humanity by gold? They no longer see the heinous assaults on defenceless women and children. They no longer hear the cries of children watching their mothers being killed before their innocent eyes, amid the crude, hysterical laughter issuing from the mouths of the Tatars and Mongols.
“They hear neither the cries of bereaved women pleading for help beneath the brutality of rape, accompanied by torrents of vile language, obscenity and abuse, nor the groans of old men and women beneath a hail of lashes, their failing eyes fixed upon homes, schools, museums and hospitals burning, while the sick among their relatives and neighbours have oxygen and feeding tubes torn from their noses and mouths, leaving them unable even to moan.
“This has happened in our own country and in every land inhabited by the poor and the oppressed. The whole world has watched towering buildings blown apart over the heads of unarmed civilians, leaving them to die beneath the rubble, powerless to do anything and unable to find a way out.
“And worse still, platforms, pulpits, newspapers and electronic media have been established to conceal and justify this criminality with excuses built upon falsehoods, claiming that the villains are merely seeking some supposedly ‘more enlightened form of governance’!
“Yet, despite all this, and because of the sheer enormity of its horror, the crime has proved impossible to disguise. It has stood naked, as God created it. Those who can see clearly behold it with their naked eyes; even the blind and those without sight can perceive it with the eye of conscience.
“It seems to me that the villains and tyrants of this world are no longer troubled by any of this, nor deterred by it. This is a world that has lost even the instinct for the preservation of the species — an instinct possessed by animals, birds and insects.
“Their human sensibilities have grown numb. So what is the point of writing in a world that has begun to recover its ancient illiteracy? People no longer read. And when they do read, they do not understand.
“Everything we once regarded as the values of civilisation has vanished — values that prevailed through human experience and through revelation sent down from the heavens.
“Yes, this ugly collusion in injustice by international institutions, regional organisations, research centres, renowned universities, and newspapers that pride themselves on their claims and their noise has reduced them all to hollow structures devoid of substance, or to scarecrows erected merely to frighten the weak and powerless away from seeking justice and redress.
“There is no point in any of it in the presence of His Excellency, the Most Honoured Cash, which sweeps aside every obstacle in its path.
“The great names that were once strongholds in which the weak could seek refuge — international law, the international community, the United Nations — now appear to be nothing more than signs that evoke sorrow and pity.
“My friend, this ageing old man you see before you no longer lives in this world, a world that has rejected all of God’s blessings. All that remains to him is a residue of grief, enough to draw torrents of blood and tears from his eyes, along with a violent cough whenever night falls.
“As Al-Jawahiri once said:
‘The only things I need from desolation are sorrow and old age.’
“So I have no strength left to add anything more to them.”
My friend replied, sorrowful at the disappointment I had become to him:
“Did you not always tell me that goodness still exists in this world, though it is scarce, sustained by the struggles of a small number of people who have sacrificed their lives and their very souls for its sake? And that those who survived were not spared slander, the denial of their rights or attacks upon their honour?
“Why, then, can you not be one of them?”
I replied:
“I still say so. But that is a distinction that seeks you; it is not something you attain merely by pursuing it.
“Throughout history, only a handful of people have become renowned among the generous, the brave and the trustworthy — fewer than the fingers of one hand: Hatim al-Ta’i among the generous; Antarah ibn Shaddad among the brave; and al-Samaw’al ibn ‘Adiya among the trustworthy. History has largely forgotten the rest.
“True and enduring glory is created when intentions are joined to action, not by deeds alone. Some people are more capable than I am of such things.
“As for me, I no longer have the strength for anything.
So let me sleep!

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