The days are long and hot and one has plenty of time to read and reflect. Out of sheer malice, I thought I would try and explain to myself what makes someone who is young, healthy, and has successfully escaped his third world status, want to blow himself and others up? Come to think of it, this is really quite a mystifying proposition.
Be that as it may, we ought to be methodical and reasonable about approaching this dilemma. So we shall start with Darwin’s ape. Why? Because that should make it easier for us to eliminate from a broader base.
Perhaps there is a tick or a termite prevalent these days that enters the ape’s nostrils and crawls undetected into the beast’s brain. When there, it probably starts clawing and scratching till the balance of the electric current is disturbed. All of a sudden your respectable ape who was munching peacefully on his banana a while ago, throws caution to the wind and starts banging his head on the next tree trunk. Another ape passes by. The termite, miffed by the sight of a healthy ape, produces a fume into the brain that makes the first ape want to kill. And so it goes.
To test my theory, I consulted the living nephew of Madam Bollingeur-filletome. If you don’t know her, don’t fret. She was a woman of great learning and what she knew was not to be found in books but passed on to younger members of the family. He told me that my theory lacks precision and quite unlikely given that ticks are dead from Ebola anyway.
Back to the drawing board and up a peg. Beastly humans, like other humans, must fear death — if only out of ignorance at what lay next. Is it possible that they take a potion to fog the demarcation lines between life and death? This potion, if it exists, must be quite potent since it seems to last for a long time. If life is so bad, why not patent it and sell the potion to the victims instead of killing them? I don’t think that is feasible; it seems my “imperialist/capitalist” education is nudging in on the logic of this thesis.
Soldiers go willingly to the battlefield. Might our walking explosives be of the same ilk? They don’t look like soldiers though, and they certainly do not behave like them. They tend to live in subsidized flats paid for by the victims and milk the stupid system till they have had their fill. Soldiers, to my knowledge, will take unarmed opponents prisoners. Police and suicide bombers, on the other hand, don’t.
As you can see, we soon run out of options. There is one thing left though. It is called the word. This four letter thing that is full of promise and payment on credit has no known vaccine and no cure. It literally gives you the world and takes it away from you. It lifts you from bestiality and can sink you into uncharted darkness. It is the sublime and the ridiculous in one shape. The irony is that we are always very careful in handling ticks and termites, but throw caution to the wind with the word.
