issue 13

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issue 13 - fear
april 2005
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Copyright Sean D Makin 2005 Copyright for submissions belong to the contributor unless otherwise specified.
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Presidente
by Donald J Makin
An empty chair was all that was left. The place was a wreck. It had
once been perfect, every shelf dusted but now the place was covered
in dust and splinters. Books that had once been pride of place in national libraries and had been bought by an anonymous buyer were now
strewn all over the Axminster red carpet. The carpet had etched in the
modern logo, but now gladly that was trampled with sand and crap.
No one was quite sure whether the crap on their boots was animal or
human because the whole city was like one big cesspit since it all happened. The books lay beside piles of hand typed papers. The word processor had not reached this place because all word processors were
built by evil powers. Instead, papers here were typed on an antiquated
state made machine. This was now shattered to pieces, having been
beaten and shaken to see if there were any hidden compartments. All
over there were books, now all stained by footprints, beside cracked
ornaments. These ornaments were once part of prestigious collections before repatriation had come in. The policy of giving back artefacts even applied to giving back to this place, despite the bad record
and bad relations with the world this nation had.
76
Inexperienced hands had knocked the precious items off their pedestals in the frenzy. These hands were too inexperienced to know that
these things should be saved as they knocked them apart during their
search. Inexperienced hands with no guidance for those in the know,
those that knew what they were looking at on the immaculate shelves
and knew that these were pieces from a place long before this nation.
Those that knew, that could give guidance on what should be kept,
should be saved, were not forthcoming to help as the fees were not
high enough and they did not like “adventure” holidays. They preferred
the company of a warm office and coffee on demand from Starbucks.
Academic papers and the occasional dirty fingernail was a far as they
would go, A war zone was a bit too much even for the most
adventurous of academics.
Everything had been torn by those that hurried away at their
work. The desk was no more. Its drawers had been split by
hammers to check nothing was concealed. Some would say this
was the sign that this was a professional search, as everything
was taken to pieces to check. Others would say it was pure
desperation as they had not yet found anything of significance.
Everything was gone, either none turned to dust or in shards.
All apart from that chair. A throne one could say from the
design and the opulence, . The reason it had stayed was that
no one was quite sure what to do about it. It should stay yelled
certain voices over the noise of radios and orders. It was a sign
someone was no longer there. A photograph of the empty chair
could do more than a million press statements could to reassure the people that it was over. These voices spoke to the
commanders, over the technology wrapped around the young
men recently promoted to that rank. Voices said it should stay
because it was once a throne for evil but had roots in places
long ago. It should be kept as it provided an insight into places
that could no longer be excavated due to continuous war. Then
there were voices louder than others who wanted it taken away
to be destroyed, to be smashed in front of the crowds as a final
act to show that the place had changed. That he was no longer
there, But the voices who wanted it to stay had won, has managed to persuade those from the officer class, The commanders kept it not for complex reasons, just for show, because
everything else had been demolished in the rapid searches. It
was the only thing left complete to show that he had been here
and inflicted pain on the thousands of ethnic groups that were
not legally recognised.
He had sat here for years, in comfort high above the lands,
looking over as people went about their daily business, a people
never daring to question a word or command that he uttered
in his rude abrupt way. He had sat through decades of change
in the world, the end of the Cold War, the start of an ongoing
war against terror, the creation of equal rights for women and
for the classes, franchise for all and legal marriage no matter
your sexuality. A move away from a world of old values to one
of new more liberal, more interesting values. But as the world changed in these decades,
the decades to him were ones of decadence beyond belief, of gold taps and marble baths.
He sat above his lands that had medieval values, nineteenth century in farming methods,
as the world around adopted new methods and where the Church or the Monarchy had
little say, Here the Monarchy, or whatever he called himself these days, still had say on
everything.
A world of new cars for his numerous wives and paid mistresses. Equal rights were not
even a dream here as people were too busy starving to allow him to have his new plasma
screen televisions, televisions through which he watched the world change with a wry
smile knowing he would never have to suffer and that he would have a life of pure luxury
forever more. People queued for bread a few hundred metres from his throne and he
just carried on spending while a few loud leaders tried to convince the world that this was
not right and something had to be done. This was where he had sat, agreeing to policies
that set out practices for mechanisms of mass murder. The Industrial Revolution in this
country, because of him and his discussions and his thinking, had not been about creating
a world leader in industry but a world leader in genocide on an assembly line scale that
no one could ever conceive. In the papers, there were even drafts of forms for civil servants to complete, a form 8 for a certain ethnic group, a form 7 for a radical, 25 different
forms in total.
This chair was now empty, in a nation that was beginning to wake up to its nightmares.
The things that had gone on behind many closed doors and in camps miles from anywhere were now exposed to the world. All the whispers of people’s families going missing
or being taken away had become true since the chair had become empty, as the mass
graces and torture centres were found, filmed, broadcast on 24 hour news. His sins of
killing thousands, of causing a nation that could have been one of the most successful nations to become a killing ground, were now exposed. The killing had not stopped, though,
since he had gone but it was no longer in the six figures a day it once was.
Although the office was a mass of noise, as people moved from place to place taping
down cables or getting photos for the archive, of latex gloves and fingertip searches, the
smells of his existence still lingered. The smell of expensive fountain pen ink, used with a
gold tipped pen that must have cost about the price of sports car or provided one of the
families nearby enough food for a year, was accompanied by the smell of fresh paper and
of sweat from a man rapidly realising his reign had come to the end. The smell of work
along with the smell of the demise of an infamous period of leadership. There was no
smell of salt in here, though, no strong smell of salt from tears as he contemplated his
fate or tears for the victims, for the families he had hurt. Smells from tears of sweat but
no smell of tears of regret. This man had never cried once in his 30 years at this desk, in
this office above the city and the nation. It was no surprise tears had not been shed at the
end for the tragedy that he had caused through
his reign, his reign of terror as the leaders and
the tabloids had taken to calling it, This simply
because he was the type to think he was right
no matter who said what. No matter what the
pictures or the newspapers outside of his reign
said.
The papers, with all the forms, were there to
make it all seem proper. If you wrapped it all
in administration and bureaucracy, then there
was an illusion that it was all proper. There were
procedures that were followed to the letter as
the folders being loaded into boxes shown. Every
procedure was dated, just like a manual for any
other type of work. Even the hardened searchers
could not quite accept that they were loading in
masses of procedures drawn up to extinguish a
race or two.
This was all to keep it proper. He could present
his words to Parliament, the puppet Parliament
he had set up to try to convince the world he
had democracy to prevent an invasion, that it
was all perfect and fine. There were even statistics showing how much everything cost and
where savings could be made. But it had only
been proper to the procedures, It had not been
proper according to the ethics and morals. It
was not proper to a free world of equal rights
where murder was wrong. Like every one before
him, there were all these papers but not one had
his name or signature on. There was nothing
to actually show he had taken the decision, that
he was responsible for this. He may have been
evil but evil usually has intelligence. In a normal
court, there was only circumstantial evidence
to prove that he was involved in the decisions to
exterminate a race, a group in society that was discriminated and deserved to die simply because their DNA was
slightly different from the dictator.
That did not stop young hands packing it all away for the
analyst to spend endless hours working over to get a
case ready. It did not stop every photo of the man being
cracked from the gold frames to be used in the case.
It did not stop the endless packing of boxes into secure
vans protected by soldiers watching every movement
in case supporters tried to stop justice. It also did not
stop The Hague from issuing a warrant for his arrest on
charge that should not exist due to its barbaric nature,
that of crimes against humanity and genocide. That
warrant meant the boxes were still packed ready to be
shipped away from a war zone to safe office, away in
Brussels.
It had taken ten years to get to this point. The screams
were endless, screams of torture and deaths of innocents. For that time, immigration officers had to listen to
stories of asylum seekers with scars inflicted from electricity or whatever was the torture that week. There were
stories of how their families had been lost and they had
had to run to the border, through mines, without food.
Those that had been spared brought the news to the
West. The Hague, after protests and debates in Parliaments, had decided that a warrant needed to be issued.
It was a new idea that an invasion had been undertaken
on the say so of a court, thousands of warrants had been
issued and the forces of the West went in to arrest the
suspects only to be met with force. Governments came
back to say their forces were not to be attacked then
this led to the invasion, A force of two hundred specially
trained soldiers with the purpose to arrest officials had
become an invasion force of a million overnight as leaders
decided that the court’s will had to be undertaken, The
leaders always said every memorial day that they would
be quicker if, God help, it happened again. After every
incident they vowed to step in quicker, move their forces
faster. After Germany, Rwanda, Kosovo, Croatia and all
the other forgotten massacres they stood in front of cameras to say they would get a rapid reaction force in future
on the ground in seventy-two hours. The vows were now
useless and wasted. Yet again they were too late. This
place showed it because it had taken ten years to get this
sorted out, to get action taken, to get reassuring faces
here to help the starving, the battered, the tortured, the
lost souls.
Basements below this office showed yet again the West
had been too slow, that ten years was too long, that they
were too late. The damage on the nation’s minds and
bodies had been done by the time the West has arrived
in force, with their satellite phones and massive armour,
The West’s purpose had become one to liberate, depending on who you spoke to. It was decided that liberation
would not include reconciliation. Liberation could only be
done with conviction said the Hague. Maybe even conviction and execution said some superpowers. That was how
it came to be a team of thirty special operations soldiers
dressed as if they were at murder scene, not a war zone,
were standing in a plush office led by a Commander from
the Her Majesty’s Police and accompanied by members
of one of the most elite police search teams the world
had created.
The media had now marched in. Someone somewhere
had decided the work was nearly over and now was the
time to show the empty chair to the world. It was time
to beam pictures of the latest effort to remove evil from
power. Of course, there was something unspoken between all in that large office, above the skeletons who had
been tortured to death, There was something unspoken
amongst the soldiers, the police, the reporters and those
there to do whatever else needed to be done.
The thing no one spoke about was that the chair was
empty. The regime had been included in rhetoric of
speeches by the superpowers on terrorism and tortures was no more, The regime had finally gone. But the
chair was empty. It was not issue that there was gap in
power that went unspoken. It was that the person who
had occupied this position was gone and could not be
found no matter how many borders were closed, how
many houses were searched, how many people were
threatened. Unless the world could see the evil that had
once resided here in chains, see that evil in court facing
up to what he has done, in front of the world, the regime
would never become a ghost of the past. The nation and
its people would always be looking behind it, to the past,
wondering if the past would become the present and he
would come back to seize power in one huge attack. The
families would always be looking over their shoulder wondering if the secret police would come back to take them
away. The fact that the chair was empty and he could not
be found was unspoken amongst these people.
Why did no one dare say this? The most honest reporters did not include in their reports. It was not because of
hope of capture, of hope of a new future for, that it was
not mentioned, It was because the soldiers were under
orders to carry out the search of an office, which meant
they had to be objective and do their job without any
concern. If they did think he would never be found, they
may stop and miss a piece of evidence that could be vital
if they ever got him to court. The soldiers also had been
warned to keep quiet on their doubts as it would spoil the
false optimism the world leaders had for a conviction and
boasted about.
The police kept quiet as that it what they did, theirs was
not to reason why. There was also the fact that this was
the best publicity any police service could get, Chief Constable himself had called via satellite phone to explain the
service needed as much good publicity as possible what
with accusations of racism. Helping arrest a man in a
Muslim country would banish any accusations of racism.
For a long time.
The reporters did not utter a word about this, as they
needed Access. To start criticising was a bad move as
the governments could stop you getting Access to Places
you needed to Be for your stories. It was not like the old
days where officials could be bribed. The media needed
these pictures of a victory (?) around the globe.
They did not speak it but they all knew without the face
that had once occupied the chair there would be no
peace in this nation, only fear. And what country could
truly enjoy liberation in permanent fear of a return of a
dictator? Not many. But they all carried on their work in
professional silence.
82
Name: Sean Makin
Country: UK
E-mail: seanmakin@twohundredby200.co.uk
Website: www.twohundredby200.co.uk
Page(s): Cover, 21, 48+49, 64+65
Name: Dan Savage
Country: USA
E-mail: dan@savage5.com
Website: www.savage5.com
Page(s): 6+7
Name: Dirk Thaysen
Country: Germany
E-mail: dirk@awa-design.org
Website: www.dat-gl.de
Page(s): 22+23
Name: Mariam Firunts
Country: USA
E-mail: thecinematheque@gmail.com
Website: www.thecinematheque.org
Page(s): 32, 45, 59
Name: Jose.luis Gutierrez Garcia
Country: Spain
E-mail: joluguga@telecable.es
Website: www.xivzone.tk
Page(s): 43, 46+47, 58, 61
Name: Claudio Parentela
Country: Italy
E-mail: c_parentela@libero.it
Website: www.furtherfield.org/cparentela/docs/
Page(s): 28, 52
Name: Beau Williamson
Country: Canada
E-mail: beau.williamson@sympatico.ca
Page(s): 30+31
Name: Jefferson Reuter Quint
Country: Brazil
E-mail: superbonder@hotmail.com
Website: www.superbonder.flogbrasil.terra.com.br
Page(s): 33, 42
Name: Caryn Drexl
Country: USA
E-mail: caryn@caryndrexl.com
Website: www.caryndrexl.com
Page(s): 24+25, 50+51, 62+63, 68+69
Name: Tommy Hjalmarsson
Country: Sweden
E-mail: tommy.h@bredband.net
Website: www.illustratoren.se
Page(s): 8-20 interview and layout, 29, 53
Name: Jinjoo Hwang
Country: USA
E-mail: jinjoohwang@gmail.com
Website: www.jinjoohwang.com
Page(s): 37, 55
Name: Shanidan
Country: Israel
E-mail: idan.shani@gmail.com
Website: www.mantis.co.il
Page(s): 5
Name: Loïc Piedboeuf-Boen aka Monk
Country: Belgium
E-mail: echo_graphics@hotmail.com
Page(s): 34+35
Name: Kaza Razat
Country: USA
E-mail: kaza@4byfour.com
Website: www.kazarazat.com
Page(s): 2+3, 54
Name: Donald Makin
Country: UK
Website: http://zeroannodominicollection.qwe.as
Page(s): 76-81
Name: Edit-Ion
Country: USA/UK
E-mail: grez@edit-ion.com
Website: www.edit-ion.com
Page(s): 38+39
Name: Toby Yeung
Country: Hong Kong
E-mail: toby@cubemen.com
Website: www.cubemen.com
Page(s): 70+71, 82+83
Name: Simone Sbarbati
Country: Italy
E-mail: info@simonesbarbati.com
Website: www.simonesbarbati.com
Page(s): 56+57, 66
Name: Megan Miller
Country: USA
E-mail: thesea-oh@excite.com
Page(s): 26
Name: Andrej
Country: Slovakia
E-mail: ach@zion.sk
Website: www.zionmag.org
Page(s): 60
Name: Alvaro Sánchez
Country: Guatemala
E-mail: stateofshock69@hotmail.com
Page(s): 4, 40+41
Name: Fabio Consoli
Country: Italy
E-mail: info@fbcdesigner.com
Page(s): 72+73
Name: Dan Sherratt
Country: UK
E-mail: resident@shooville.co.uk
Website: www.shooville.co.uk
Page(s): 44
Name: Christy Romanick
Country: USA
E-mail: christy@space30A.com
Website: www.space30a.com
Page(s): 27, 36, 67
Name: Loren Sanjaun Pertusa
Country: Spain/USA
E-mail: loren@fawcs.net
Website: www.fawcs.net
Page(s): 74+75
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