More Tales from Jahilia
Flash Fiction
I. Fences
In Jahilia people do things differently. Better? Worse? The reader can decide.
There were two neighbours living in a village, each in their own houses, separated by a fence. They did not like each other very much, but acted with cold courtesy to each other.
Once a hurricane struck Jahilia, and the fence was one of the casualties. The two neighbours met to discuss how to tackle this misfortune, but could not reach an agreement. So they went to the satrap.
The satrap said that Ministry of Legal Affairs had clear and unambiguous laws to solve every litigation. He told them to wait while he consulted his massive tomes. After about an hour he smiled and told them that he had found the solution, and proceeded:
Article 233 Section 18 deals with cases like yours. According to it, he pursued, you have to build your own fences side by side.
They did, and they lived happily ever after.
II. Shoot the Plane Down
When a terrorist took the children attending a show hostage, the president ordered sealing the space and gassed everybody, thus killing the terrorist, and at the same time the hundred and eight children. As this was against the law as it was then, and he insisted on never breaking laws, he got the statutes changed. The law now reads: If in apprehending one killer or terrorist, no more than one hundred and eight innocents had to die, no law would be deemed to have been broken. The new law was retrospective, meaning he had therefore broken no law.
More recently, an enemy of the state had escaped from prison, where he was awaiting to be hanged. He had somehow made his way to the airport and managed to get on a flight to Stockholm. When the president heard about this, the plane was about to take off. How many passengers are on board? He enquired, and was told one hundred and thirty-six. By now the aircraft was airborne. Shoot it down, ordered the president, we’ll change the law once more.
