Zakes Mda: Cion

I buy a slice of pizza and a can of soda from a bloody girl at the window of a trailer and walk back to Court Street to watch and be watched.

And there is the sciolist strutting about in a brown hooded robe. He looks like a friar. If it were not for his complexion, which is decidedly brown like the earth, he could easily pass for one of the Durham saints. His belly hangs out like an apron. Like the belly of a saint. He resembles the holy men who gloried in rich food cooked by aging cloistered virgins and in the good wine that the monks produced from their own vineyards.

At this point I am not keen to have anything to do with the sciolist, so I stand against the wall next to the door of a noisy bar until he has melted into the crowds. I may be avoiding him now, but I know that one of these days I will need him. Sooner or later I’ll be grappling with the problems of shaping my life in a meaningful way in this strange culture. He brought me here; he will have to provide the answers.

I do not have the time to think about the sciolist for long since my eyes are drawn to a number of devils with red tails, red horns and red forks. The rest of their bodies are of different colors, all of which are glowing as if fires of hell are raging in the fiends’ bowels. They are nevertheless not menacing at all. They manage to maintain the cuteness of Hot Stuff, the Harvey Comics lovable devil, though they obviously are not patterned on him. I follow them back to Court Street, negotiating my way among nurses in white miniskirts, fishnet stockings and heels; yodeling cowboys galloping alongside “Indian” chiefs with feather headdresses; a giant SpongeBob SquarePants looming above superheroes Superman, Spiderman, Batman and Robin; more devils and witches; more Supermen and Spidermen; penitentiary inmates in orange coveralls or in black and white horizontal stripes; a number of bleached Paris Hiltons (if you are reading this five years from now you may not know who I am talking about here, but at this moment she is America’s intriguing cultural icon) in all shapes and sizes; sizzling Playboy Bunnies and fairies with purple hair; a doctor and a patient in a bloody nightshirt; Hasidic Jews in black suits and black hats and hair braided into long ropes that hang on each side of the face; more glowing ghouls and ghosts; and another Dick Cheney with an oversize plastic face — a creation of a vengeful god. This one wears a gray suit. His heart is hanging out of his chest and is furiously pumping green fluorescent blood. Unlike the first Mr. Cheney, this one cuts a lonely figure without an entourage.

There are other politicians too. There is the Jimmy Carter of old with a self-satisfied Plains, Georgia, peanut farmer grin. He holds a placard that reads: Without an independent electoral commission elections wouldn’t pass as free and fair anywhere else in the world. No one pays much attention to him though. The board he is holding is not easy to read since it is not big enough and the letters are all crowded together. And there is President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Bloody plastic dolls of different sizes hang all over his body in all sorts of grotesque positions, so that only his oversize black boots can be seen. Some of the dolls are limbless while others are without heads. He is flanked by two men in Hawaiian shirts and hula skirts holding a banner with bold letters in front: Stuff Happens, and at the back: Collateral Damage . Mr. Rumsfeld walks lifelessly under the banner despite the many admirers who crowd around him with breathless exclamations of “Ooooh!” and “Aaaah!”

One can’t see every creature in this parade, and I have tried very hard to look for President George W. Bush, to no avail. Even John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, don’t seem to be here and I wonder why. After all, it is October 30, 2004, only three days before the presidential election. One would have expected the three gentlemen to be all over the place canvasing for votes or just playing the fool as presidential candidates are wont to do. Instead, Mr. Bush has sent his surrogates in the form of the two Cheneys and one Rumsfeld, and Mr. Kerry is seen only on the Kerry/Edwards: A Stronger America buttons that some of the pagans are wearing. Not even Bill Clinton, an immediate past president, can be seen. Has he lost currency so soon?

The respectable citizens of Athens do not show any signs of missing these politicians. A few of them are sitting on the courthouse steps watching the creatures and their performances on the street below and on the sidewalks. They are stone-faced and do not seem to enjoy the spectacle, which makes me wonder why they came here in the first place. They do not seem amused even when a group of heavily bejeweled women wearing fur coats and elaborate hats stand in front of them and, inviting them to participate by looking directly into their eyes, chant in unison: “Stimulate the economy, start a new war! Stimulate the economy, bomb a third world country!” Those respectable citizens who are with their young children reach for them, giving them reassuring hugs. The children are all eyes agog, obviously envying the freedom of the creatures and hoping that one day when they are able to make decisions about their own lives they will initiate themselves into this cult and will prance about in all sorts of glorious identities.

I notice that the woman who leads the chants wears a sash with Billionaires for Bush embroidered on it. The respectable citizens are obviously scandalized by this group and look quite relieved when it moves on to torment other innocent souls. It leaves a stench in its wake, perhaps from a stink bomb. It smells like death.

I find it quite fascinating that death hangs so heavily in the air. Remember that as a professional mourner I am an angel of death — or at least that’s what I have been called by others. But I must admit I have never seen death glorified to the heights that I see here. This is definitely a celebration of a culture of death among the young: those who must die so that old men and women should live. Yet one does not see women celebrate the belligerent culture in this parade of creatures. Yes, some of them — quite a small number of them compared to the male of the species — are bloody, but none of these display any militaristic arrogance in their attire, performance and demeanor. They limp, one may surmise, from car accidents rather than from acts of war.

Even I who exult in death find the abundance of blood and bloody situations overwhelming. A bloody Yoko Ono passionately kissing a bloody John Lennon under mistletoe gingerly held by a bloody kaftan-robed Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The only throwback to another era that I have seen this evening. Well, besides Mr. Carter — although one can’t really call Mr. Carter a character of the past since his placard carries a contemporary message. A bloody marine in camouflage dragging with a rope around his neck a bloody boxer in the Rocky boxing shorts of stars and stripes. His boxing gloves are huge and heavy and on his head he wears an Arafatesque kaffiyeh. At the back of his off-white silk robe Enemy Combatant is printed in bold red letters.

Blood once more. This time it flows from the wounds of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. A group of men and women who are obviously in their own everyday identities are crowding around a tall thin wooden cross and singing hymns. A bulky preacherman — wearing a T-shirt with the words Live your life so that the Preacher won’t have to lie at your funeral —holds the cross with one hand and waves a Bible with the other. He is hollering something about the fires of hell that are waiting for those who observe pagan rites. His assistants are handing out business-card-size cards to passers-by. I reach for one. There is power in the blood, it declares in bold red letters. And then in tiny blue letters: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:14 . Some of the creatures boo the preacherman and mock him and his group, which responds with a loud hymn. The preacherman says, “They mocked Jesus Christ too. They went further than that and crucified him.”