The Conquest of Dough, By Roger G Lewis
ConquestofDough
Draft Chapter 5 The Sky is Falling In. Reading.
4/25/2018 0 Comments
The Conquest Of Dough, Epilogue and Chapter 1.
The wise king said, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in vessels of silver" (Prov. xxv. 11). Hear the explanation of what he said:--The word maskiyoth, the Hebrew equivalent for "vessels," denotes "filigree network"--i.e., things in which there are very small apertures, such as are frequently wrought by silversmiths. They are called in Hebrew maskiyyoth (lit. "transpicuous," from the verb sakah, "he saw," a root which occurs also in the Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xxvi. 8), because the eye penetrates through them. Thus Solomon meant to say, "just as apples of gold in silver filigree with small apertures, so is a word fitly spoken."
Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed.
Epilogue.
As the Low Hanging Fruit rots, the true believers and credulous continued to grasp at the unseen upper branches of the tree of myth and ideology: clutching further, and stretching longer, extending their reach by any means, even means unimaginable to anyone but the desperate and deluded. They knew that the Golden Apple, no one had ever seen , or , produced evidence of its existence, was there, just beyond their furthest reach, Just out of sight of their keenest glance. So as the Low-Hung Fruit still rotted, having ripened and yet not nourished those for whom only the Perfection of the Golden Fruit of pure ideological reified hubris would ever be enough. The obvious went ignored its goodness rejected in the pursuit of the impossible promises of soothsayers, priests, mountebanks, politicians and Fifth Avenue suits and City Bankers, so many lies clothed in so many promises taking hope and optimism and producing a pathetic belief in the bounties of the Noble Lie.
And here we see the Autumn of a civil war where men women and children have perished, their death caused by what some in years to come will say was due to the Mythical invasion of the sea peoples. Which Historical Turning of a 21st-century Ideologue would find its analogue in Aleppo Syria, to the Firestorms and Privations of the Bronze Age collapse in 1150 BC. And what do these two disparate events and the Low Hanging Fruit and the Apple of Gold wrapped in Filigree of silver have to do with our business here in our thoughts and investigations in these coming pages.
Search on and we will surely find out and discover together as we look at the scenes that play out before us. Together we will in our minds eye trace the steps of Ahmed Abdul Hittite, the Bakers son of Aleppo. He who was sent abroad again to seek refuge for the secret of his Guild to be perpetuated in a Bond millennia Old and passed down from Father to Son. His story, along with the Secrets of the precious alchemy from which his family had sustained Egyptian Pharaohs through to the Palace in Damascus of President Assad. A lineage that had served ; Sultans, Pashas and great Kings and Queens of yore in the Cradle of civilisation.
We travel through Damascus even before Abraham had Spoken of Gods word, Already ancient when Jesus Christ Was a Boy and Older Still when the prophet Mohammed Received the Holy Quran. For Abdul's mission and secret recipe was the secret of Dough , the Sacred Dough of Aleppo from which all Leavened Bread had been exported as an Idea and a Method , yet only the Hittite Sour Dough of the Hittite Bakery of Aleppo was the true source and substance of the Greatest most sacred and honored Starter, the eminence and fountain head of The Bakers Craft, tied to antiquity and bound to the most Trusted and to a Brotherhood of world Wide civilisation.
Where there was Trade, there was Counting to be done and accounts to be settled. Where farmers toiled and there were offers to treat, where merchants would Seal their Bargains with the breaking of Bread and the Dipping of Bread in Salt and where the secrets of the alchemies of Commerce were held deepest and closest the Hittite bread would serve to mark, The Conquest of Dough.Where all could bake and break bread hewn from the earth of Mother nature's bounty, the true source of the wealth of man in nature.
Chapter 2.
The Last Bakery in Aleppo.
Abdul looks at the space where his father's head once sat upon his broad shoulders, the words his father had just spoke rung in his ears and he held in his hands a Jar Covered in Silver Filigree through which glistened the golden sheath. Concealed and protected within,be an ancient Glass vessel held, beneath a Lid of fine ornamented be- jeweled blue lapis lazuli blue glass that shimmered as the Mediterranean sea off the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea. Within this sacred Vessel was the most sacred of ceremonial Doughs, the most secretly and jealously guarded of all Aleppo's secrets. More jealously protected down generations of his family more so than the Codex of Aleppo's Central Synagogue the Site of the Cave of Elijah. This was history and the key to the sustenance of generations a direct line back to before history began, a starter dough born of the first undomesticated grains and the Yeast from the air breathed by the first civilisations of sedentary populations. These were the grains which formed the metrics for measurements from which the noble science of metrology sprang. The grains which defined the weights and measures of rations for the slaves of Pharaohs and the origins of all measurements from which all science and mathematics became codified. The Grains that made this dough produced the sugars and the carbohydrates that nourished the bodies and fueled the thoughts of the mothers of all invention. In his hands, Abdul's held a link back to the beginning of all that we know, and all that we take for granted. And now it fell for him to take the Holy Sour Dough to a safe place, far away, over many seas and lands to make good and redeem promises made long ago between contracting parties whose promises were sealed in blood and sacrifice and whose code had spread to the four corners of the world. Secrets now bleeding from the severed head of his Father yet locked still in the mind of His son who stood momentarily shocked.
He heard voices, The White Helmets, the mercenary army of the Black orders of usury, the challengers of the nobility of the dough.
An interrogation, a blast of machine gun fire, screams, more interrogations,
Abdul knew he must move fast through the route known to his elite class of baker; to flee again the tumult that Aleppo had become. Fleeing a war about Monetary Hegemony and a war about Vested interests in the monopoly supply of necessities. They were looking for what he held in his hands the truth of Mans wealth and debt to agriculture and the universal access to and the production of Bread. The White helmets were closing in he knew he must say his goodbyes and hold on to his grieving for later and hold onto the Vessel in his hands even tighter the freedom of Good and the freedom of all Men of all the holy books depended on his reaching the place of safety. Abdul Knew he must retrace the route of civilisation and trade and ensure that the Dough of Life be spread again to the four corners of Humanity. For as the Middle East burned and as the Powers of Finance Capital and Usury sought to extinguish the knowledge of Dough , the Brotherhood of bakers knew that as long as the idea of self-sufficiency and the Breaking of freshly baked bread lived, the Global domination of the means of sustenance and trade would always evade that Blackhearted breed of Man who would see orphans starve rather than yield control of the destinies of Nations and reliquish their grip over and offence to the nobility of populations.
He turned and ran.
As the White Helmut Leader rounded the Corner to the courtyard of the last Bakery in Aleppo, so Abdul had vanished, as elusive as the fresh odour of newly baked bread invisibly seduces the senses, so Abdul had evaporated
the white Helmut cried out.
"Damn, there's the old guy, where's the son? Damn it!"
He lifted the radio transmitter to his Mouth.
"White leader to Carrier Group One, Target on the run, Mission failed, advise telling Langley to alert Drone strike force to seek and destroy. Repeat Target at large, Advise arm Drones and seek and destroy, civilians expendable The Target is at large."
In a fit of Rage the White helmet turned and pointed his M17 at the corpse of Abdul's father, emptied the magazine into the Still warm and not yet stiff corpse,
"damn you, Fucking Rag headed animal."
A picture of democracy early one morning in the last bakery in Aleppo,
this is where our story and Abdul's Journey Begins.
ConquestofDough
Draft of Chapter 3. The Road to Damascus
4/23/2018 0 Comments
The Road to Damascus.
Abdul, breathless and sweating emerges from his escape route into Elijah’s Cave. A well learned and never forgotten routine has started to play out. Told in Songs and Poems of the elders and forefathers and now their sons of sons of brothers, uncles and mothers and sisters play out The rhythms and timbres of those ancient bonds informing the protectors of the sacred dough what they must do and where they must go. Each link in that sacred chain knows the melody of this saddest and most solemn of songs, a song of flight, a song of Terror and a song of deeply bonded and grounded faith in the mutual respect of trades crafts and guilds honouring credit and trust with mutual respect and protection. Elijah, son of Abraham and grandson of Ezikhil, kisses the Lapis Lazuli lid of the Sacred vessel and embraces his brother in truth.
Brother, your father,
He is dead, The White Helmets Came,
You must hasten to Damascus brother. This embrace will not be our last. I will take you to a guide. You must put on these clothes and here are your papers. At Damascus, the Guide will take you to our safe house from where you will Go on to Cairo.
Thank you, Elijah, how much time do we have.
Oh, time enough brother Abdul,
The two men had often played as boys a Hasidic Jew and a Moslem, along with Christian children and all faiths living in peace in this most ancient of playgrounds, now reduced to ruins.
Hey Abdul, is Fatima and the children safe,
yes they are safe Brother
and Ruth and your boys, yes they are safe.
And so the journey starts on the road to Damascus Elijah, and Abdul dressed in Black Orthodox garb Embark on the road to Damascus in a Red Cross Jeep over rubble and through ruined streets and along that ancient road. Both lost in memories and both reciting poems and humming those old songs which bind them to a common tradition, feared by these modern Caesars who now pursue them.
Drone Control. Jake Brown looks at his remote monitoring screen which relays a picture from a drone 2000 metres above the Streets of Aleppo. He radios the white helmets,
“Red Cross Jeep headed West Two Men on board
Red Cross markings are they clear for evacuation”
.
“Affirmative Red Cross jeep Elijah Mordecai Rabi of East Aleppo cleared to travel with Assistant Rabbi; Fugitive must still have gone to ground.”
And so our two fugitives follow the route of Samaritan fame, to Damascus Perhaps some history for this leg of the journey.
These Ceasers that laid claim to the the mother earth from which his family had grown out from and were a part of, Bonds to Stone Henge, Scapa Flow ,Cairo , Alexandria through to North Africa, Ethiopia, Libya, Through The Greek Islands and the Balkans Through Ukraine and the Urals Routes through which Agriculture and commerce and trade had spread with no wars of conquest until Ideology and Hubris had caused the Striving for the true believers, Zealots and Credulous to Reach into unseen branches for mythological Golden Apples which had never been produced and nor would they.
This Road to Damascus was a time machine of memories and it those memories which bind all mankind in a brotherhood of common genesis where the Sense of Self can be found if only one learns to look and see that common bond beyond the Jealous ego of the Jealous priesthood of Conquests down the ages.
Conversation between the two which had naturally been limited until out in the Countryside and headed away from the conflict area around Aleppo but familiar place names reminded Abdul of old family stories of the curious visitor to Aleppo in the year 1812 by Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah a Swiss Traveler versed in Arabic and Mohammadian customs who would later become famous as the first westerner to see the Fabled City of Petra in Jordan. This was an interesting and Nostalgic time in many respects the region then largely under Ottoman Rule in their inimitable delegating style with local Pashas and sheikhs and various Protectorates of Colonial powers up and down the route all providing a tapestry of the cultural, Religious and ethnic geography up and down that famous route at that time. Dog-eared copies of the Writings of the Sheik, whose real identity was Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean-Louis)Burckhardt (24 November 1784 – 15 October 1817)
Although the atmosphere was heavy with the Greif of recent loss the two were accustomed to death and loss and felt a close kinship to their long and distant histories spanning Cultures, Ethnicities and other egotistical constructs that men fabricate to gain imagined status. That breed of men who justify unimaginable claims against Territory and land they have not and can not ever know and feel as intimately as the indigenous peoples who mould and blend into their surroundings. Abdul and Elijah knew a piece of Heaven on earth, an affinity of shared horizons felt by all aboriginals in intimate rhythm with and harmony to the Geography of their being.
What a Guy the sheikh was Elijah here is a sign post to Hamah, we are almost Half Way now.
The sheikh was fascinated by the tales of those Motherfucking Ismaylys and the Anzeyrs, who have colonies in the East Indies
He said you know that he, " knew there were some Anzeyrys
in the East Indies; they were greatly amazed at this, and
enquired how I had obtained my information: and their
countenances seemed to indicate that there was some
Truth in my assertion. They are divided into different
sects, of which nothing is known except the names, viz.
Kelbye, Shamsye, and Mokladjye. Some are said to adore
the sun and the stars, and others the pudendum muliebre.
The Mokledjye wear in their girdle a small iron hook,
which they use when making water; it is also said that
they prostrate themselves every morning before their
naked mothers, saying (
ﻭﻫﻧﺎ
ﻧﻌﺑﺩﻭﺍ
ﻣﺯﻫﻭﻥ
asserted that they have a promiscuous intercourse with
their females in a dark apartment every Friday night; but
these are mere reports. It is a fact, however, that they
entertain the curious belief that the soul ought to quit the
dying person’s body by the mouth. And they are
extremely cautious against any accident which they
imagine may prevent it from taking that road. For this
reason, whenever the government of Ladakie or Tripoli
condemns an Anzeyry to death, his relations offer
considerable sums, that he may be empaled instead of
hanged. I can vouch for the truth of this belief, which
proves at least that they have some idea of a future state.
It appears that there are Anzeyrys in Anatolia and at
Constantinople. Some years since a great man of this sect
died in the mountain of Antioch, and the water with
which his corpse had been washed was carefully put into
bottles and sent to Constantinople and Asia Minor.
We crossed the Wady at the foot of the mountain, and continued
along its right bank, on the slope of the mountain, through orchards
and fields, till we arrived at the foot of the mountain upon which
Kalaat el Hossn is built. Our horses being rather fatigued, we sent
them on to Deir Djordjos, (the convent of St. George), where we
intended to sleep, and walked up to the castle, which is distant six
hours and a half from Shennyn. It is built upon the top of an
insulated hill, which communicates on its western side only, with
the chain of mountains we had passed. Below the walls of the castle,”
Abdul had the passage by heart as did Ishmael, both had the stories handed down by oral tradition and in songs and such feats of apparent super memory lost to those in the west with short attention spans and even shorter Tempers can now but look on in awe at those painted as backward in the media of Soundbites and distractions of the most inane trivia.
The two Fugitives with their precious artefact of living breathing memory back to the mists of time would lay over for the night at the same Castle which offered hospitality to the Swiss Traveller who adopted Arab Dress in his homeland and later when Studying at Cambridge, he had been one of the later indoctrinate to the Honorary Fellowship of Tradecraft Bakers who stood for a connection of peoples to their lands and referenced wealth to the Bounties of Nature and not the hard food of Midas currently rending asunder the lives of Millions of Syrians,
The Journey back in time would continue to Damascus in the morning and from there to Cairo and Alexandria at the castle we will look at the grains that make the measure and the Cattle that form the wholes´ that make the measure of a man’s and communities support for its society.
The story of the Grains that still lend their name to the smaller weight measure of the Gold those old and these new invaders seek to appropriate.
ConquestofDough
ConquestofDough
Draft of CHapter 4.Grains of Truth
4/23/2018 0 Comments
On these Fertile mountain plains fed by the springs and water wheels.
The Descendants of Abdul’s forebears would have spread out from their Abu Hureyra, original settlement. Where for 400 years ahead of the Cultivation of Crops they became based for their Hunter Gatherer society. Drought and Climate changes in the middle Euphrates. Forced the hunter-gatherers to start cultivating. These early agricultural enterprises are found by the evidence of fat cultivated Seeds Which are carbon radio dated to A 1000 year dry spell known as the Younger Dryas, a period of cooling interrupting the gradual Warming which had begun already at the end of the last Ice age this was 11,000 to 10,000 BC. Much of Northern Europe was still beneath retreating Glaciers. The Cereals from this era led to developments of the secrets of Agriculture and Metallurgy and invented the very first alphabet. Religions, Philosophies, the language of trade, systems of urban development, of diplomatic and cultural exchange; all these germinated in geographical Syria. And Lead to the Development of the Dough which Abdul´s Family had been custodians of since time in memorial. Out of those first sedentary Farming communities arose the Units of measurement and Value which remain familiar although not understood in context, in the commerce of the 21st century. Between 3000 and 2000 BC, we find the first written records of what Society had evolved to From that distant Steppe, now submerged beneath Lake Assad and In the form of Cuneiform Tablets we have the code of Al Hurrambi and the tablets of Ebla and Mari
The Patron St of Translators, St Jerome advised, ‘Non-Verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sens’ (The sense of the sense), with Latin, Irony? In which he meant, take from a text in one language the context of the writing in how culturally and socially it would have been meant and heard by the Writer and intended reader.
This advice was quite possibly borrowed by Jerome form
Cicero in De Oratore (“On the Orator”), when he said that in translating from Greek to Latin “I did not think I ought to count them out to the reader like coins, but to pay them by weight, as it were.”[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense-for-
And he is certainly not even coining the term “word-for-word,” but borrowing it from Cicero as well, or possibly from Horace, who warned the writer interested in retelling ancient tales in an original way “Nec verbo verbum curabit reddere / fidus interpretes“: “not to try to render them word for word [like some] faithful translator.”[3]
Abdulla and Elijah had a common sense of meaning; they sensed in each other the bonds that the two had formed as boys. Also, they had inherited from generations before, a bond to each other, through the land. Theirs was a shared context, with their conventional traditions and memories predating even the Faiths they both now nominally carried and which were designed to bind them to separate groups, their bonds predated these religious categories, by 11,000 years. They Could never negate each other by such crude categorisation.
The Area from which they were hewn, was characterised by a rich mixture of Farming opportunity from the Cereals to the Buffalo, goats and the Dates. The surrounding areas had produced an abundance which in turn led to the foundation and growth of the great Ancient City of Aleppo, from where the two had just fled. There had been partings and disruptions before. Until the Written Cuneiform records were rediscovered in the latter part of the 19th Century and through to the present day, an oral tradition had carried the memories of their ancestors, the first farmers, even to the present day in Folk Songs, Poems and Dance and Artistic artefacts and body decoration. Each, preserving the legends of previous wars, invasions, injustices and Accountings for, and righting of, wrongs. Where they would stay for the night, Looking across the valley towards the sea across valleys towards Beirut across Lebanon. These place names and peoples, whose histories stemmed back to the period of the foundings of Ebla and Mari, between 3000 BC and 2000 BC and their subsumption into the Akkadian empire from Mesopotamia. The Akkadians were the source of the Semitic Languages which both spoke and Out of which grew those languages of the Phoenicians, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic. Where they looked down into the valley to Lebanon leading down into Israel, they Knew there were seven Species now known as the Seven Species of the Land of Israel (Shivat’at HaMinim) The Two Grains and Five Fruits, Wheat, Barley, Grape, Fig, Pomegranates, Olive and Date. Across the Landscapes where they now travelled it had become written in the Landscape and the concentrations of population, what the land would support regarding Population and the degree of sophistication and of Luxury which had resulted in the lives of the people there. Along the rivers lay Fertile stretches, on The Tigris and its tributaries and along the Euphrates. There, where river banks formed. Agriculture by Irrigation, generated bountiful harvests, between Parallel Chains of Hills Flatlands and Narrow Valleys and higher ranges from the Piedmont Plains along the Tigris to the Alpine Tops of the Zagros Mountains, Sufficient rainfall assured Annual Cereal Crops and also produced an abundance of fruit trees. In the plains between those two great rivers by the grace of weather and Natures whim again there are areas where Cereal Crops of varying yields are nurtured by farmers to produce crops of varying degrees. Large Tracts of Land between sewn fields and the barren desserts Offer Grazing Grounds for flocks of sheep and goats even for some cattle. Date Palm Plantations and horticulture utilising the Inundations similar to those famous on the Nile are also harnessed. Gardens for Vegetables and summer crops sustained by man-made irrigation Such as the water wheels Our Two Fugitives could hear stoically turning their watery Nourishment which mixed with sun and soil as generations for millennia before had turned into food and wealth.
Around Areas of bounded kinship and cultural traditions formed natural and human topographies of localised and regionalised, polities. Societies. Civilisations and Cultures, emerging from the potentials of the Combinations of Natures Gifts, harnessed by humankind. What the soils, rains, sunshine, Winds and industry of farmers could coax from the land determined the development of Livelihoods and community focal points from where structures of Family, community, society, Hierarchy and Faith developed. This is the Grain of truth , From where Abdul and Elijah came, what made them and from which all are made. All wealth flowed from these agricultural Species, those five. All this stemmed from Abdul and Elijah’s Ancestors in Abu-Hureyra 11,000 years ago.
Abdul shouted into the Valley, Brothers I will return to retrace our forbears
journey of truth and peace.
ConquestofDough
ConquestofDough
Draft Chapter 5 The Sky is Falling In. Reading.
Register on the web site for updates on the Book, I have completed two years of research and hope to finish the novel over the next three months.
This My Second Novel is Called the Conquest of Dough which is a metaphoric parable about sour dough bread and a legendary syrian Sour dough that is smuggled to the UK. Here the syrian refugee meets with challenges , helpers and enemies who seek to restore the Dough to its homeland, various actors wish the Dough to be supressed. Dough is the metaphor for Money which examines another of my areas of work, Monetary reform activism. The Finale of Conquest of dough is an hilarious Romp through the Glastonbury Music festival examining the social aspects of that festival parodying itself whilst pretending it remains what it once was.
I have a series of epic poems which I wish to pursue after the conquest of Dough around the theme of democracy. What is it ?and how is it done? there are various political episodes in my lifetime I wish to satarise in poetry. Epic Poetry is my preferred medium for satirising matters of Political Economy.