Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
– William Shakespeare (A Midsummer’s Night Dream).
On July 27, 1990, former policeman, Lennox Phillip, now Imam Yaseen Abu Bakr, took control of the national television station while some of his men held the prime minister and members of parliament prisoner in the Red House.
Abu Bakr and his men surrendered on August 1, 1990. On that day, I published three articles, one of Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson (A Crisis Of Conscience), another on Lennox Phillip (The Abu Bakr Phantasma) and the third, an alternate history of Trinidad and Tobago after a year of Abu Bakr’s rule.
This is the third article. It is in honour of A.N.R. Robinson, for whom I worked as chief information officer after the coup.
As I wake to the insistent howl of loudspeakers with the call to morning prayer, it suddenly hits me that today is Saturday, July 27, the long awaited first anniversary of our glorious revolution.
All during the past month there has been talk of nothing else. In his nightly broadcast following the evening prayer, his Holiness the Hajji, Lord of Light and of the Universe, Lion of the Caribbean, his Royal Highness Colonel Yaseen Abu Bakr, has stressed the importance of the occasion.
During this year His Lordship has grown in strength. From that fateful night when he staged his coup and got the army and police to lay down their arms, and a grateful nation gave him their freedom in exchange for their liberation from hateful democracy, he has cemented his hold on the state.
We are now a fundamentalist Muslim state. The Ayatollahs are everywhere denouncing transgressions wherever they occur. Immediately following the glorious revolution, all looters, anyone with identifiably stolen goods, had their hands cut off. The police and ministers on drug charges were publicly executed. Many people no longer miss the television soap operas as the public beatings of wanton women, and the execution of all who oppose the rule of His Glorious Majesty give us great pleasure and excitement.
The months following the glorious revolution were difficult for us all. The closure of the churches and the execution of the Christian leaders were initially difficult to accept. The women also found it difficult to refrain from displaying themselves publicly and from having to share their husbands with other women.
In the end, however, good sense prevailed. As members of OPEC and the Arab League, we are now part of the struggle against the Jews and their protectors, the hated Americans under the reviled Bush. It is whispered that we will soon have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons and we will aim them at the pig dog enemy across the Caribbean.
Our glorious leader took his tenth wife in a wedding attended by many international leaders and broadcast via satellite on Cable News Network. It was a proud moment for us all. We are now very safe indeed.
The police force and army, long since executed or sent to the labour camps, are no longer around to terrify us. The Legions of His Holiness are everywhere around us, armed with the most modern weapons in order to guarantee our survival. It is whispered that there are some infidels in the hills who seek to harry our beloved leader and to take us back to the slavery of the past, but that will not be allowed to happen.
Already our great allies, the Libyan and Cuban military advisers, have started training many of our youths in the finer arts of warfare. Daily, the armed helicopter gunships hover over the hills and coastal plains, seeking those who would destroy all we have gained from the revolution.
Our children now attend schools supervised by the Ayatollahs. His Glorious Highness has himself taken the responsibility for education and our children can already recite all the Holy Words, and are skilled in guns and other armaments.
There is talk, too, of an invasion of Guyana. Our Glorious Leader has spoken oft about a “jihad” to liberate that poor, unfortunate land. It is said that His Highness, Major Bilal Abdullah, will lead his special squad, the Dervishes, into that battle.
There was talk, immediately following the Glorious 27th of July, of elections and of a gathering of leaders, to be called a summit. His Lordship, in his wisdom, has decreed against that and the Revolutionary Council is now paramount.
It is indeed a great day that I have lived to see. Later today there will be feasting, speeches and a public execution of one of the old politicians, who instead of being glad to be allowed to labour in the sugar cane fields, sought to foment discord. Most important of all, the greatest leader of all time, before whom even our Glorious Leader bows, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, is here and will address this humble nation. About freedom.
• Tony Deyal was last seen asking people in the region to think about what life would have been like had Abu Bakr taken over Trinidad and Tobago.
