THE UHURU

Peter Billig
THE UHURU

Albeit the Uhuru tribe has been known to the ethnographic society for ages, it has not been described otherwise than in useless allusions and generalities. The reason for this is that, before me, no man (or woman) of science could bring himself to settle among them: even though the Uhuru cover their bodies tightly with their tribal garb, they leave the genitalia uncovered and whoever wants to set up house with them or even come near them has to dance to their tune.
Especially, they shield the face from the others’ gaze considering it the most intimate part – to the degree that they put the complete ethnic attire on the newborn: to start with, a hood with slits for eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth, then a jacket provided at the breasts with two pockets open downwards, and long trousers with a “décolletage” spanning the underbelly and the privy parts, and at last soft skin shoes.
They recognise each other by their genitals, and even more: they comprehend each others mood, frame of mind and even character, if it is an unknown tribesperson they meet, as other peoples do from the face.
When two Uhuru meet, they take each other by the reproductive organs and fondle them the more intensively the more sympathy they feel for each other. If they don’t like each other, they settle for a token touch. While greeting the opposite sex, they follow the example but should they wish to express cordiality, they copulate and even put their palms down the aforementioned breast-pockets and rub each other’s breasts: these caresses are the equivalent of kisses and hugs in other cultures.
The children sired as result of such greetings remain in the mother’s custody and inherit her family name, because for the matriarchal Uhuru the identity of the father is immaterial. Nevertheless, this attitude is a kind of gentleman’s agreement since the fathers identify faultlessly their progeny: and not only the sons, which could be understandable, but also the daughters. Siblings of one and the same womb must not have sexual intercourse – it is a very strong taboo, and that is why brothers and sisters confine their greetings to stroking each other’s privy parts, and only in very elated moments, e.g. after a long separation, masturbate each other.
Marriage amongst the Uhuru is based on principles different than elsewhere. To a chosen single, whose gender, age and degree of kinship is of no consequence, they make a proposition to go together to a secluded spot and there, in complete darkness, they take off their hoods and fondle each other’s faces. They do it repeatedly in stronger and stronger light and at last, on the day they distinctly have seen each other’s facial traits, they consider themselves a married couple. Then they move together into one hut – sometimes even into the same room! – and if it is two females they take their children with them, on condition that every child dwells in a room of his/her own.
It is so because the Uhuru take off their clothes, and the hood in particular, exclusively in connection with hygienic procedures, and to be seen without the hood is the most nightmarish experience that can occur to an Uhuru, so they live separately, wash the children in the dark and you never ever enter anybody’s quarters without permission. The most dreadful curse you can put on a fellow Uhuru is: May your hood fall off! Even to see one’s own countenance is not considered decorous, so before they begin their toilet they ruffle the surface of the water. Mirrors are considered the most abominable objects in the world.
Yet, to uncover your face in front of the beloved – and this person only – constitutes the erotic substance of marriage. A revaluation of values takes place and the very thing, which otherwise would be unbearable, becomes rapture much stronger than orgasm. The couple relish it even several times a day – as their libidos take them – and they are unwaveringly faithful to the partner.
Of course, all these eccentric practices, unheard-of among other peoples, are dictated by religion. But whoever should think the Uhuru heathen, would be utterly wrong; on the contrary – they are fiercely monotheistic. According to their beliefs, the Only God, Yu-hu-vu, having created Heaven and Earth, plants and beasts created also a woman and a man: U-vu and U-du-mu. But as He had made them in His image and after His likeness, He commanded them, in order to prevent them from becoming too familiar with Him because of that superficial resemblance, to cover themselves from head to toe with the exception of what made them outwardly different from Him: the genitals – because He, as the Divine Being, is sexless. The insubordinate U-du-mu and U-vu, though, did not obey Yu-hu-vu. On the contrary, just to spite Him they covered their reproductive organs; in retaliation, He took their immortality from them and sentenced them and their progeny to a short life in the sweat of their brow, in diseases, wickedness, fear and insecurity.
Years flew past, centuries were passing and peoples have filled up the Earth; the Uhuru were living as godlessly as the others. All of a sudden, one of the members of the tribe – a man called Yu-su-su – had a revelation: Yu-hu-vu manifested Himself for him and enunciated that His anger has abated and He wishes to offer humanity another chance to repent – and the Uhuru have been chosen as the tool of this recovery. Therefore, let them clothe themselves in seemingly fashion and allow nobody to befoul His face – mirrored in the face of every human being – with gaping eyes. Only the countenance of one other person they are allowed to see – the one most beloved – because in that face they will be venerating – Him! In return, He will bestow upon them more and more favours and, at last, will return to them everything they had lost because of U-vu’s and U-du-mu’s stupidity.
At first, the Uhuru scoffed at Yu-su-su’s words and attire, but as he was sticking zealously to his purpose and since his speeches had an overwhelming effect, first a few then more and more numerous tribesmen and tribeswomen believed that he is the Apostle and followed his example.
And they have never regretted. First, the internecine warfare within the tribe, a scourge of many centuries, has stopped as if by magic. Epidemic diseases disappeared, then normal diseases – first the grave ones, then the not serious – never to return, and everybody lived into a ripe old age. The Uhuru’s hunting grounds were teeming with game as never before, the rivers were full of fish and the fields were yielding crops beyond compare while the neighbours, as I witnessed in person, were tormented by constant epidemics, wars, famine, poverty and squalor.

Consumed by my hunger for knowledge I spent three years amongst the Uhuru. When I deemed my data complete I went back to the civilisation in order to set it in order and publish.
I am sitting in a hotel room behind a locked door, surrounded with provisions, and I write these words, which were meant to be a scientific paper but became a request for forgiveness.
There is just one horrible moment yet to come – a visit at the post office to send this message – and then back to the Uhuru!
Goodbye, Dear Wife! Farewell, Beloved Kids! Be well, Friends! Please, bear no grudge against me!
And, for Yu-hu-vu’s sake, cover those mugs of yours!

© Peter Billig 2007

THE WATER BEARER

Peter Billig
THE WATER BEARER

In the credits of a motion picture I saw once: MUSIC: ARTHUR XXYYZZ, and I thought: What a weird name to have, but the music was simply wonderful. These credits repeated themselves in several more films – I’m a movie-fan – and the music was getting better and better, though I would never thought it possible. Then I read on a poster about Sinfonia Mormorando opus 69 by Arthur Xxyyzz, directed by the Composer, to be performed in the Philharmonic, I broke with a longstanding tradition of not going to concerts (all these nitwits sitting in rows with eyes closed), bought a ticket at an exorbitant price and enjoyed myself tremendously sitting in a row with the twits, but with my eyes wide open, listening and watching the conductor: a handsome young man with a thoroughbred artistic face and haircut. The standing ovation that followed made my hands sore for a week, and the critics, normally so critical, were stumbling over each other in universal praise of his great achievement, comparing him to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
I have hardly had time to come to my senses when HENRIETTA XXYYZZ made me enthusiastic and horny, as I, on TV, was watching her win the title of Miss World over a dozen of only slightly less well-endowed girls. I allowed myself to participate in the jubilation in the streets that followed: only men came out and wild drinking and the shouts Henrietta! Henrietta! soon degenerated into smashing of show windows by the inebriated crowds. I, who have always hated doing anything with the masses – never go to soccer games, demonstrations, festivals and such like – felt like liberated by her and I personally smashed seven shop windows – well, six, as the last one was personal, belonging to an Arab-run local convenience store: he is an insolent git and charges you through the ceiling. I had a deep satisfaction carrying his stock up to my flat before the cops managed to arrive! No, Mr. Copper, it’s not an admission, should you try to charge me, it’s artistic imagination: licentia poetica. The oversexed Henrietta, though, having heard of the riotous male reaction at home, embarked on a model and movie career in Hollywood, so the welcome prepared for her at the airport had to be cancelled.
I was disappointed and angry with her, as so many of my heterosexual male and female lesbian compatriots, but it was only until I espied, in one of the newly replaced shop windows – that of a bookshop, not my work – a novel by CHRISTOPHER XXYYZZ and spent a sleepless night reading, from cover to cover, with flushed cheeks. I did the same with his other four novels, released with three months’ intervals, and claimed him to be the best writer ever. I was jubilant when the news arrived that the Nobel Committee… The reception at the airport was raucous as there were people present who, until CHRISTOPHER XXYYZZ began to write, never touched any literature except the funny papers. How he has managed to write books fit to unite the tastes of all the readers and critics of the country (with a few exceptions), and make every new book more exciting than the previous one, and every third month at that, is an insoluble enigma, all the more so, as he is keeping up both the rate and the quality of his output.
Some time after Christopher’s Nobel Prize, his brother MARTIN XXYYZZ also received one – in physics, and his sister DEBORAH XXYYZZ, M.D. has found a cure for a dreadful and until now incurable disease. A member of the Nobel Committee, interviewed by our journalists, said, with his thick Swedish accent: Why deliberate? It is easier to extend this honour to the remaining members of this family in advance!
Well, he was right even if he was wrong: half a year after Deborah’s prize I spent a very exciting quarter of an hour watching, on TV, ANDREAS “THE BEAST” XXYYZZ, brother of all the afore cited XXYYZZES, punch the current Champion of the World shitless all over the ring – and finish the poor sod off with a spectacular KO. There’s no Nobel Prize for that, is there?
Neither for the sister, NAOMI XXYYZZ, who in six chess games has pulverized the current Grand Master and World Champion (male) and won a purse of a million quid.
Her brother, engineer OLAF XXYYZZ, has, in his backyard shed, constructed an engine so fuel efficient – 30 per cent off the most thrifty so far! – that he had the motor companies – GM, Ford, Citroen, Renault, Toyota, MG, VW, Volvo, Fiat, you name it – all lined up on his threshold to buy his patent.
His younger brother, DAVID XXYYZZ, has soon after founded a political party and in only one year won the general election and the absolute majority in the Legislature; David himself became the youngest Prime Minister ever. I voted for him and have no complaints so far; nor do the 76% of the electorate, according to the polls, as the reforms and initiatives he has commenced once in power are exactly what this country has been panting for!

Well into David’s first period as Prime Minister, a friend took me to a garden party in a hilly countryside – and what an unusual place it was! The huge mansion and vast garden were sitting at the foot of an enormous mountain – and what a garden it was: a lush orgy of plants in bloom, birds chirping, a fishpond with water lilies and even a waterfall zigzagging in picturesque cascades down an enormous rock. The drinks were exquisite, so was the food, and the catering service was first class. I felt at home at once and helped myself liberally.
Then I spotted a bald gnome of a man standing by the falls – and every tuxedoed guest who approached to shake hands did it with a degree of reverence I simply could not understand, while the women were less formal but even more admiring. He, for his part, seemed to assess their femininity, as if he was looking for women to procreate with. This observation may seem bizarre, but believe me: I am very seldom wrong when intoxicated.
“Who’s the hairless dwarf everybody’s so obsequious to?” I asked my friend.
“Don’t you know?” he was scandalized by my ignorance. “It’s our host, ARCHIBALD XXYYZZ, the father of ARTHUR, HENRIETTA, CHRISTOPHER, MARTIN, DEBORAH, THE BEAST, NAOMI, OLAF and, last but not least, your pin-up: DAVID, the PM!”
“This is their Pa?!” I was stunned.
“There is more to him than meets the eye,” and he left me to greet an acquaintance.

“What the heck?” I said to myself having digested the information. “Even if he were the father of Napoleon or Einstein, he would still be human!” I downed more of the midget’s excellent single malt and I felt less intimidated by his breeding prowess. I approached under the pretext of praising his hospitality but actually hoping to find out how such an unremarkable fellow has been able to sire so many remarkable children.
“Thank you, sir, for your exceptional…” I began but our eyes met: there was a good-humoured twinkle in his, so I stopped open-mouthed, fully aware that he was onto me.
“No, sirree,” he said, “you have come to find out how such an uncommonly commonplace bloke has been able to spawn so many top-notch children! A person who is so bad at hiding his true motives cannot be bad, so I’ll tell you, especially as I see that you are quite familiar with astrology…”
“How can you see that?” I managed to utter in spite of my general perplexity and muddleheadedness.
“I’m a good judge of men,” he replied. “But if you want me to tell you, you’ll have to drink from this source,” he pointed at the pond behind his back, raised a glass of clear liquid to his lips and drunk.
I had a vision of germs, larvae, frog-eggs and other filth in the water, but overcame my aversion and started looking around for a glass.
“You know, the founder of Cynicism, Diogenes “The Dog”, had vowed not to own anything superfluous, yet one day he saw a boy drinking water from the hollow of his hand. He was crestfallen and threw away the bowl he had been carrying. Well, it’s a silly story, as every modern and ancient child, Diogenes included, knows this way of drinking…”
“He should have thrown his palm away, as well!” I exclaimed, leaned over the pond and drank directly from the surface trying not to imagine what malignant microorganisms I was exposing my macroorganism to.

“It’s enough!” he said, gave me a moment to swallow the last mouthful and took me to a cosy nook of his fantastic garden where behind some blossoming shrubbery there was a picnic table. We sat down facing each other and he opened with:
“Well, Mr. Astrologer, I have one of the traditional planets in each of my natal horoscope’s watery signs. What other classic planet is necessary to keep them in check and good order?”
It was a real assignment as he did not say which of the planets – Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn – were involved. I wanted a drink – it normally helps me think – but there was nothing on the table. Then something peculiar happened: a surge of inspiration seized me and I knew the answer: Moon in Cancer, Mars in Scorpio and Jupiter in Pisces and in an exact aspect – respectively quincunx, square and semi-sextile – to the planet holding them in check: Sun in Aquarius in close conjunction with Uranus. Actually, I saw the whole of his birth chart, including the positions of the inner planets and of Neptune, Pluto cum Charon, Chiron, Ceres, Juno, Pallas, Vesta, Vulcan and Transpluto, the last two being entirely hypothetical, but I saw them all – hypothetical and real, miraculously – together with their internal aspects!
“Here you see what good energized water gives people!” he exclaimed nodding his head that I was right about his horoscope. “I was born in this house and have been drinking only the water of this spring until I was eight, when I went with my parents to the capital and got sick immediately upon arrival. They took me to the best doctors but I was only getting worse and none of the stars of the medical profession knew what the matter was with me. I was told later that one day I had started hallucinating and, in this state, I was repeating: Take me to the Old Gush – it’s this source,” he pointed at the water gushing down the cliff. “They did and, as soon as I drank from it, I recovered. A miracle! It must have changed something in me because from this day I got interested in water-science: I wanted to know what was it in the Old Gush that has beaten our luminaries of the art of healing, and I did even if it took me eight more years. Well, you see…”

He paused, composing a lecture in his mind, and I got scared he was going to hold forth, but something like the astrological illumination told me not to flee, and the tiny bald Aquarius, as if having read my fears, said:
“I could talk about my research for days but suffice it to say that we, the living things of the Earth, are totally dependent on WATER – we humans are over seventy percent WATER (and most of the rest is calcium: the skeleton designed to keep the jelly, which is our soft matter, in place) – and we know dick about it! I’ll bet you anything that your illumination did not come from some minerals in the Old Gush. No, it’s the way WATER is treated that makes the difference: WATER has a memory and a mind! It hates being made to flow through miles of pumps and metal pipes – only to flush shit in a lavatory, wash a car or dissolve chemicals in a plant. The Old Gush, on the other hand, takes his origin from the rain falling on the ridge above us. Clouds and filtering through soil purify WATER: it likes it and when it comes down the rock, it meets happy human minds and a happy garden full of pleased plants, insects, birds and beasts. The garden is watered by the Old Gush and I never use fertilizers, fungus killers or pesticides. Once, when swarms of aphids descended upon nearly every plant, it was enough with a mantra – luckily, I had done plenty of research by that time – to strengthen the WATER – and the bastards just died out! When WATER from the Old Gush reaches the pond – whence there is a direct non-pipe aqueduct to the house: to the kitchen, the bathrooms and other outlets – it is extremely happy: it’s fully energized, you would say. Imbibe it, and every watery part of you gets revived and it utilizes one hundred percent of its know-how and capacity: hence your sudden astrological genius! As you normally drink adulterated WATER from the waterworks’ pipes, the Old Gush must feel like champagne (WATER hates metal and 90 degrees turns!), LSD or another conscience expanding – psychedelic – drug. Everybody is at least 70 percent water, many eat only ecologic food and abstain from meat – but still they drink from the tap or bottles claiming to be source WATER – and it well may be so, but it is tapped, for the producer’s convenience, through pipes! Up yours with such WATER: never drink it, unless you energize it before!”

“How?” I inquired.
“Even the worst treated WATER can be reenergized by a sincere mantra, a prayer or good will. Take holy WATER: in the Orthodox faith the priest blesses gallons upon gallons and the faithful take it home by the bucket, drink it celebrating Easter and give it to their sick and wobbly – often with marvellous results: Lourdes can kiss its arse! I was there by Bernadette’s fount but the WATER was delivered through pipes and faucets. I got sick there and I lived only by energizing the rest of what I had tapped with my “mumbo jumbo”. What a pity – the source WATER is excellent, even better than the Old Gush’s, but why don’t they allow people to wet their snouts in the fountain? Otherwise with Asclepius’ fountainhead outside Bergamo (Pergamon) in what is now Turkey. By the way, there is a military base close by but the well is still undefiled and going strong, as is the one in Epidaurus, the god Asclepius’ birthplace. And the WATER in the Ganges is not as bad as you would expect in view of how many millions pollute it daily, but it’s certainly overrated, especially as you go downstream from Varanasi. The Jordan’s WATER, however, is excellent from the very springs to the Dead Sea. As you hear, thanks to my watery know-how I can now travel all over the world and improve on any WATER before I down it. I am not the first one to do so: there is a story from some centuries ago about an abbot jailed by the Inquisition. For a month, he was given only a slice of bread and a cup of filthy WATER a day – it should improve on his will to confess his heresies – but when he was finally standing before the inquisitors, he had gained a stone. Asked how it was possible, he said he had been purifying the WATER with a sincere prayer before drinking it!”
“And what happened?” I enquired. “Was he released?”
“On the contrary: the Board considered it evidence of sorcery and the poor devil was burned at the stake!”

“Well,” he said and made a round movement with his arm, encompassing the paradise of the garden and the enormity of the house. “I am a very well-endowed man and I assure you that I am that also in the other sense of the word. But first things first: I was the only child and my parents left me, apart from the whole lot here, a very large portfolio, which I was able to enrich, particularly lately. The general public does not know him, but I have another child, ALOYSIUS, who is a financial wizard and very prominent within the banking society: he is my adviser. Being so dependent upon the quality of this liquid,” he pointed at the cascade, “made a scientist out of me: I have a very advanced lab in the house and employ a handful of collaborators. We go on field trips, testing the WATERS, so to speak, all over the world, both in Nature and in man-made systems; my last was to an oasis in the Sahara. But the most interesting thing is experimenting: WATER under influence. If you, for example, play nice music to it – Mozart, Telemann or Bach – and then freeze it and look at it through a microscope, you can see beautiful regular crystals, but should you choose heavy metal, the crystals are all broken up and pitifully shapeless. A tip: if you want to purify and energize WATER and know no mantra, prayer or incantation, play Bach’s passacaglia from BWV 582; and if you listen along, all the WATER in your organism will be likewise greatly improved. WATER is very partial to organ music and also responds to our human feelings: it gets crushed and shattered if we display hatred, anger, malice or even indifference in its presence. When, in his old days, the great Russian geneticist Ivan Michurin began to talk gently to his plants, his disciples thought him a senile dotard. Assholes! He was improving the quality of the WATER in his plants! I, on the other hand, made an experiment, since replicated on different plants, where three begonias were watered from the same source, but with WATER, which respectively had been abused verbally, praised or left unattended. Guess, which begonia grew and blossomed, which wilted and which barely survived!”

“I can imagine and it doesn’t surprise me that you, Mr. WATER Bearer, with that horoscope of yours, are researching WATER in all its forms: liquid, solid and gas – Uranus plus Sun in Aquarius in control of Moon in Cancer (water), Mars in Scorpio (ice) and Jupiter in Pisces (steam), even though you have not been mentioning the last one. However, I don’t see what bearing it has on your astounding fatherhood.”
“You don’t?! Well, as to steam, evaporating is the way WATER gets rid of the substances it is joined to or contaminated with: it gets purified, forgets all about its previous impurity and changes into a new state – rain. As to paternity, I would remind you that WATER is the most important building block of all life and above all – of our DNA! What can stop a person with so considerable expertise in WATER as mine from devising a way of influencing my, begging your pardon, sperms, towards one result or another? I’m going to explain all this in great detail in my forthcoming book. To give you the gist of it: every time I was impregnating a woman I knew precisely what effect I wanted to achieve – and I always pulled it off. A great achievement, isn’t it? I never could be sure in what way the partner’s genetic code would throw a monkey wrench into my works – all my children are offspring of different mothers. The only thing I never was able to achieve is the sexing of the progeny: CHRISTOPHER was to be a girl in order to write deep sensitive books – but the boy did it anyway! DEBORAH was to be a boy, but thanks to Women Lib it did not impede her career. I was afraid that the same mix-up would happen with “THE BEAST” but I was lucky – not that it would have mattered much: nowadays, there is an international Women’s Boxing League! I got it wrong with NAOMI, but again the position of women has changed from the time of her conception.”

I bowed to him and said with an ironic smile:
“Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?”
“You might say so but remember that a pioneer has to cut corners and take risks. Another drawback was that having enriched some traits I have depleted some others: to name but a few, the gorgeous HENRIETTA has absolutely no ear for music and OLAF is dyslectic. With Chiron on the Ascendant in Virgo and Mercury in conjunction with Venus in Capricorn, it’s no wonder that I strive for perfection. Having fathered DAVID, I have decided to take a break and get my act together. And I did, twenty nine an a half years later! I’m happy to announce that my command of WATER is now so complete that I can sire a child of a chosen sex and with all the talents well above average. This child will be able to choose any career he or she fancies and, whatever is chosen, still accomplish the absolute best, which is there to attain.”

“And what woman would like you to cover her?” I thought, and a pleasant female voice exclaimed:
“So here you are, daddy-o!”
I turned and saw a pretty young woman in loose attire entering our cosy corner. She nodded to me, went over to Xxyyzz, patted his naked head and planted herself firmly on his lap.
“Speaking of the devil,” he pointed at her bulging belly, “behold the Masterpiece: REGINALD XXYYZZ, the universal baby!”

Copyright © Peter Billig 2007