The tragedy of Syria [a parable]

Storytime.

Once upon a time, a lion (“أسد”) inherited governance over a kingdom known for its massive and majestically prized cookie jar. That jar of cookies was undoubtedly legendary for its bright prestige, so bright it was where the sun arose from in the sky at the left angle of the north. A diverse array of herbivore animals resided in his kingdom, the resounding majority having long signed a contract to live in peaceful harmony and protected by the lion’s clan provided they stoke no agitation against the kingdom. The lion made sure consistently to dispense the jar’s cookies for the replenished strengthening of his kingdom’s inhabitants, in addition to protecting them from the frightening menace of jackal mob incursions.

This lion’s reign was off to a shaky start. A towering palm tree in the east, known as Nebuchadnezzar III, was a longtime bitter enemy of his [the lion’s] father. As did the lion, the palm tree also functioned as the caretaker of a cookie jar of its own right. Between the two kingdoms, reconciliation was finally brokered in full when the lion and palm tree, respectively panicked and grievously stricken, agreed to assist one another against a pack of wolves from the west who blocked their kingdoms’ borders intending to starve both the kings and their constituencies into obliteration. The borders of the tree’s kingdom were most intensely walled from communication to the outside world while a sliver of diplomatic mediation was retained for the lion, allowing the palm tree to send his cookies through an old tunnel the lion sold to the animal kingdoms without to rake in an enormous pile of stamped leaves split between himself and the palm tree.

However, the wolves from the west one day invaded the palm tree’s kingdom and uprooted the palm tree to be carried into captivity where it was cut down in the sight of the kingdoms of animals. The wolves—led by a fifty-headed wolverine hydra draped in a white mantle and wielding a white shield emblazoned with a familiar-looking red cross—appointed themselves dispensers of the palm tree’s cookie jar and cut off its hitherto-autonomous dispensation to the animals under the palm tree. The wolves savaged the bison, buffalo, and antelopes once protected by the palm tree, rousing the majority bison against minority buffalo and vice versa; yea, the wolves invited all the jackals and hyenas to hunt down the last bison, buffalo, and antelope remnants who wished to survive together, driving all three groups into forced separation. After plundering the dead palm tree’s cookie jar, half of the wolves retreated to their home tribal territories for a season.

The lion lost his only kingdom-at-large ally forever, and it came to pass shortly afterwards that when the brief season of allayed fulmination concluded, the wolves declared war on the lion’s own kingdom. Jackals and hyenas sprang back under the patronage of the wolves in addition to the wolves’ chief regional ally bordering the lion, a six-clawed, six-winged, six-headed vulture of purely bright blue plumage. The cookie jar was increasingly stolen from at all sides—the wolves, triple-six blue vulture, jackals, and hyenas (narrator’s note: the hyenas were previously suppressed into oblivion by the palm tree, only flourishing once that tree was uprooted and cut down) all united to plunder the cookie jar. The lion and his kingdom’s inhabitants were robbed of their cookies, and marked from that point onward for enslavement and slaughter. The wolves furnished assistance to the hyenas to rob from the right; one pack of hyenas from the top left and another from the right; the vulture from beneath.

It appeared the lion was about to lose all control over his cookie jar until—behold!—a bear from the north came in to his rescue, slapped a cookie out of reach from the vulture, chased off a few jackals, and recovered many stolen cookies returned to the lion in exchange for an agreed provision of cookies and mutual custodianship over the cookie jar granted to it. The lion, grateful towards his new ally, acquiesced eagerly.

Yet the bear simultaneously signed a contract with the blue vulture and one tribe of jackals! After that mysterious contract’s agreement, vulture acts of relentless theft against the lion’s cookie jar was an unabated practice the bear never intervened to stop—for all that the lion and his kingdom’s constituents would observe after some time, the bear only protected the centrality of the cookie jar and recovering selective portions while allowing other cookies to continue being stolen in large piles.

(the jackals, by the way, claim to oppose the blue vulture but in every major clash are standing on the same side as the vulture and fifty-headed hydra, all attacking the lion’s kingdom)

Eventually, even some of the wolves wondered if wasting all that effort to steal from the cookie jar was impractically costly, and that it was better to trade with the lion for cookies instead. Many wolves were ready to retreat, but the fifty-headed wolverine hydra remained unconvinced, warning his compatriots that the lion was prepared to mass-murder his own kingdom’s residents in a flatulence gas attack. Right after a few wolves were ready to pack their bags and depart, behold! it appears that prediction proved true, but before anyone could verify the actual culprit, all the wolves instantly blamed the lion and unleashed a renewed wave of jackals savaging his kingdom while the cookie jar was stolen from yet again. The dirty war continues.

It came to pass, that the bear alongside a levitating four-armed machete brokered a truce confining the jackals’ theft of the cookie jar to only the top left corner. The lion would only be permitted to retain supervision over his section of the cookie jar dictated by the bear’s unilateral authorization, and could not recover the top left corner to kick out the jackal intrusion. So the truce lasted its appointed duration.

…

The lion was warned that jackals were intruding to steal the entire remaining sector of the cookie jar he retained control over. But the bear and four-armed machete remained stiffnecked and quiet, refusing to help him fend off the new incursion. The bear pretended to recover cookies from the jackals for the lion, but only snatched at empty space and ordered the lion’s frontline defensive units to stand down. The jackals took over the remainder of the cookie jar the lion held control over, forcing the lion to flee at the last possible moment on a flying carpet to the bear’s kingdom, never to be seen again. The cookie jar was plundered by the jackals as the spoils were distributed with the wolves, bear, blue vulture, four-armed machete, and hyenas, and as the inhabitants of the lion’s kingdom were slaughtered and none of the inhabitants of the kingdoms pretended to notice their ghastly subjugation unto eradication.

[THE END.]