The Sick and the Sickle

By Hasan Shikoh

Using his sickle, the impostor harvests mines, not tomatoes; perhaps tomatoes too for the added cinematic effect of bloodiness when the cultivable mines might explode.

A few yards away, another insurgent, also posing as a farmer, harvests bullets for the hungry mouths of his seven AK-47s, and stacks his truck high with the produce. ‘Swish-zing’ goes his sickle as it cuts the depleted-uranium laced bullets off the Bullet Wheat; a rich variety of outgrowth developed by the agricultural labs of some Gazan Frankensteins.

In the Gaza strip, they eat bullets.

Literally.

Men, women, children. All.

So does that old man on the dialysis machine, and that pregnant alien – yep, that one-bullet-two-kills type – and that terrorist born between life and death at seven months into his mother's pregnancy.

Well, of course, in these times, and in this land, innocents do not exist. Even the word itself does not exist; at least not on this side of the fence.

But on the other side of it – the fence that these sickle-armed farmers planted on this ancient land they claim is theirs – sit the innocent indeed. Poor young souls who merely react to intimidatory actions – such as the swiping of sickles at vegetation; and of course, the poor lads in army green and air-conditioned Armoured Personnel Carriers, when they witness such brazen, wicked behaviour, such death-wish, are left with no choice but to reluctantly pull the triggers of their machine guns, which they set to semi-automatic mode before use, because they are very kind.

Ping … zing … ping!

The sweetened gifts sing past the ears of the farmers.

Momentarily, they look up, boggled; then they become alert like meerkats. But they are too foolish to understand. Also because they are ingrates. They can’t appreciate the uranium-flavoured lollies that are despatched their way. These people are suspicious of everything. Even their armpits smell of conspiracy theories.

Ah, they must be from the caves!

Now they duck and run.

Whee, snap, ping!!

Now the green clad lads are merely singing. Despatching whistles of love.

Still, the heartless beasts – those cattle – duck into the vegetation or bolt for cover behind their truck, sickles still in hand. They won’t let go off them. That’s because they believe that their sickles are a good match for the machine guns.

What in the wide world is wrong with them!

Then, some conspiracy-theory high-visibility jacket clad creep cries into a handheld microphone: “Please stop shooting; we are unarmed civilians …”

Demented!

Shooting? Shooting?

Who’s shooting?

Let’s consider the scenario again: Bandits posing as farmers are cultivating ammunition off a land that’s not theirs; some things whizz around them – bees, perhaps? – and there’s this white woman demanding invisible green clad lads, to stop shooting at ‘we’.

Look, white woman: First of all, who is shooting at you? Second, did your camera actually capture anyone shooting? Third, did you actually catch any bullets zinging past anyone’s head? Four, how do we know that those sounds aren’t studio-based effects? Five, how can those men be ‘we’ for you? You are human, did you forget? How can they and you together be called ‘we’?

And six, don’t you have anything better to do?

Get a life.

Ping! Zing! Whee, snap!

That sounds like getting at a life.

Ah, bees. Must be bees.

But one guy is already down, hurt, wailing - gosh, bee stings must hurt real bad.

Oh, yet the guy might be over-acting; who knows!

Stupid, suspicious Palestinian sickle-armed farmers!

Click: Actor Farmers [3-minute clip]

A witness of this brutal, ruthless scenario is still in defiant defence of the invisible snipers: “What if those poor lads are bogged by the rigours of duty and they are merely reacting to their mental state by shooting?”

Jeez! For some, even seeing isn’t believing!

Sick.

Some people are truly sick.

Deaf, dumb and blind, they'll return not …