Losing the magic ring(A.Zaak) ((On the 20th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom))
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The grey-haired scientist with fading brown eyes sat on the bed edge with forced loneliness in the cell, watching the smoke of his first cigarette that winter morning.
The white-blue smoke was visible through the slot of the iron door, bringing slow sprays of January Sun.
It was like a silent marathon of smoke and rays.
They put him under lock and key, imprisoned in a bubble of solitary despair.
Every puff of smoke blows his mind into one of the many stations in his life.
Even though Walter Raleigh popularized tobacco globally, the ration was only six cigarettes daily, and the first one vanished.

He was a university professor sensing his sovereign science slipping away in that sunup.
The professor is also an intellectual immersed in dreams, poetry, and legends. His face indicates a sensational struggle with less of an inwardly directed consciousness.
He is fully conversant with normality, not unrefined, trying to shape hurdles in his mind.
He interrogated the fact that we are what they made. Every moment in the past contains the seeds of the future. His mind has constantly explored this thought and revealed the continuities of his character.

He was born near Babylonia's legendary tower, one of the oldest lands with no Confusion of Tongues. That is why he sometimes wonders whether there is a linguistic link between the word "Babel" and "Bible."
During the Assyrian supremacy, the city that was founded by the Amorite king Hammurabi in the 18th century BC was destroyed by King Sennacherib, and its land became part of that empire.
After the downfall of Assyria, Babel became Nebuchadnezzar's capital during his reign (605–562 BC). He rebuilt a prominent city with unified tongues.

Being speechless at his detention, the professor was falling into Robert Warren's concept of the "Great Twitch" as a brand of Nihilism; "all the words we speak meant nothing, and there was only the pulse in the blood and the twitch of the nerve."
In any case, he escaped extreme pessimism and the radical scepticism that condemns existence.
As choices could only push back and forth, he appreciates moving the world a little; and things may straighten up.
He read in the book of Proverbs, part of the Bible's wisdom literature, that "the plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All man's ways are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit.

He remembered discussing the issue, and one of his best friends, ended the debate by reciting verses from the Holy Quran, Surat Al-Balad (The City) 90:8-10]"; "Have we not made for him two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways?"
However, the professor's education path led him to the detention camp without a choice, plan, discussion, or saying.

Maybe he was hopeful when he recalled the story of Aladdin from the thousand-and-one nights.
After the sorcerer attempted to deceive him, Aladdin was trapped in the fairylike cave. Fortunately, he retained Solomon's magic ring. When he rubbed his hands in despair, a genie appeared who took him home to his mother.
However, what happened a thousand-year later was slightly different. The captive scientist realized that the female army officer who double-crossed him was a wizard, but the detention cell wasn't a magical cave.


*Image from: pixabay.com/photos/ring-straw-dust-namibia-sahara-7358464/

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