Lance Olsen: Head in Flames

Theo was submerged in a patchouli bubble bath, cigarette in one hand, glass of single malt scotch in the other, warm washcloth over his closed eyes.

Sores boiling water peeling skin burning flesh dissolving bowels.

Perhaps this is all I have to say.

He splashed to cognition like a roiled seal breaching.

A fire that licks you forever because even as your flesh chars and your juices spit you form a new skin which then ignites in turn.

An artist spends his entire life trying to create thought instead of children.

I see this barefooted woman standing alone in the center of a room, Ayaan told him.

The Sheik everyone started calling him he knew so much.

It is July. It is 1869. There is a man who looks very much not unlike me sitting for the first time in Amsterdam’s old art museum in a gallery restless with Rembrandts.

She’s veiled, this woman, but her veil is fashioned from diaphanous black material, thereby challenging Allah to examine what he has created.

Thinking about how you invited Khaled to your flat in Amsterdam began introducing him to your friends.

Dark landscapes perturbed by uprooted trees below ominous skies.

On her body is written the Sura Fatiha, the opening verse of the Quran, which she starts reciting obediently.

The Sheik they said is so wise he knew five times more than even you Mohammed Bouyeri.

Rembrandt’s increasingly brash brushstrokes, pointing both to the painting of the painting and the paining of his hope.

In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful: Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Universe, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment. You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.. .

Before long Jason and Jaime had established connections with jihadists in Spain and had plans in place to blow up the houses of parliament.

Theatrical chiaroscuro.

Her head lowers, eyes fix upon the prayer mat before her.

Purple bondage rope.

But it was the faces in his self-portraits that clung to the sitting man’s attention, how they hemorrhaged across a life from smirked youth with amok hair to backbroke age with bulbous nose and blasted brown eyes.

When she finishes the recitation, though, she does something extraordinary.

They appointed you the group’s intellectual you posted tracts under the name Abu Zabair.

A man on fire.

She raises her head to confront the camera’s lens with a strong steady gaze.

Weekends your friends and the Sheik himself gathering at your flat eating Pringles drinking black coffee cross-legged on the rug in front of your laptop watching the DVDs you made.

Here: how?

What should we call it? asked Theo, aslosh amid disintegrating bubble islands.

Compilations of mpegs you downloaded from ji-hadist websites public executions holy warriors wrapped in scarves and balaclavas beheading foreign unbelievers in orange jumpsuits.

Look: it is late afternoon, the sky ashing. I am lying on my back on a dirt path. I am trying to sit up, trying to rise, and then the world is whirlpooling.

Submission , Ayaan said: the meaning of the Arabic word Islam.

Is that him?

It is September. It is 1897. I—

Islam does not adapt to anything, you see. You must adapt to Islam.

Daniel Pearl Nicholas Berg Kim Sun-il.

Life being what it is, Gauguin noting, one dreams of revenge.

Oh baby, baby .

The women stoned strangled their throats cut.

It is January. It is 1882. On a prowl through The Hague’s brothels and back alleys, the man who could on a good day pass as my slightly healthier brother finds Sien on a lamp-lit corner, waiting for business.

On A Nice Chat , Theo always wore suspenders, chainsmoked, and, as a parting gift, presented his guests with little cactus plants.

The holy warriors wearing gloves so as not to defile their hands with the infidels’ blood.

It is October. It is 1876. There is a young man who doesn’t look completely unfamiliar preaching his first sermon at Reverend Mr. Slade-Jones’s mangy school in Isleworth.

Little cactus plants.

How you and your friends laughed at the kneeling faggots as they sometimes pled for their lives.

The title being Sorrow is Better than Joy .

I’m deeply religious, Theo explaining to one of his devout guests. I worship a pig. His name is Allah. Do you know him?

How sometimes they sat silently unaware of whether they were to be spared or dispatched until they flinched under the blade’s first slice.

The sermon turning out to be somewhat less than what might be referred to as a crowd-pleaser.

When I’m not with you I lose my mind Give me a—

Theo whispersinging as he fishes along.

Quranic recitations soundtracking on the videos as the infidels’ heads were sawn off.

The not completely unfamiliar young man nevertheless remaining undeterred.

Hit me baby one more time .

Although you were always taken aback by how relatively little blood was involved in the cleansings you would have expected more.

Dear Theo: Destroy all your books save for your Bible. — With a handshake in thought, Vincent

Thumbing idly through the newspaper over breakfast, Arcade Fire playing on the sound system, Theo happened across a piece about a new survey on religion in the United States, and his interest snagged.

A falcon hanging over desert scr—

When Monsieur Vincent was with Sien, he wasn’t himself. He decided that’s why he was so happy.

Ninety-two percent of Americans were confident of God’s existence, the survey reported.

The video quality never the best all smeary perhaps you were missing something it was difficult to tell.

Look at us turning our backs on the difficult moments, Doctor Gachet once commenting to me from behind his easel in his garden, apropos of nothing.

Pinkying free a ragged thread of morning ham from between two back teeth, Theo leaned forward.

The gargling-whistling noises suddenly abbreviated tended however to make up for the lack.

Groggy with piety is how the young man’s increasingly concerned sister Elisabeth described her brother during his visit home over the Christmas holidays.

Six out of ten prayed daily.

Afterward the holy warrior ritually wiping his gory knife twice on the shirt of his victim just as the Saudi executioners do.

The green fairy being another name for absinthe.

More believed in heaven than hell, conveniently.

How Nouredine spent his wedding night with his veiled bride on a mattress in your flat eating lightly buttered microwave popcorn and watching American contractors being slaughtered.

A sip of flaming licorice.

Eight out of ten in miracles.

The Shariah you wrote is a sacred independent sovereign system for life that cannot be under the authority of false human systems because it exists to wipe such systems from the face of the earth .

Gray is soft as surrender.

Six out of ten that God is quote a person with whom people can enter a relationship unquote.

To withdraw from the infidels means hating them, being their enemy, being revolted by them, loathing them, fighting against them with every f&er of your body .

The young man felt like an old man, refused to eat meat, got by only on bread and boiled vegetables, secretly flagellating his chafed back with a fat rope, sleeping on the floor of a cold shed behind his family’s house without a blanket.