Land of Promise (22 page)

Meanwhile, the vacant valley with a level floor that been the site of the village of Kaiemothia was resettled by Christian refugees from East Timor, and the village was renamed New Dilli. There, aquaculture became so popular that New Dilli was sometimes jokingly referred to as “East Tilapia.”

The abandoned village of Kamachia also had new residents, predominantly Christians who had fled Jordan and Lebanon. Many of them took up cattle and goat ranching, or meat processing. A cooperative company there prepared and packaged jerky in a wide variety of flavors, packaged it in retort pouches, and exported it worldwide.

Another new cattle-raising town was called Entok -- a shortened version of the name Naitatitok, the original name of the village. This village site was abandoned at the turn of the 21
^st
century. The new residents in and around Entok were mostly from Iraq and Syria. Their cattle was typically driven 23 kilometers, either on the hoof or in trucks, for processing in Kamachia.

A small enclave of Pakistani Christian refugees formed at the southern end of the Notch Valley on the Lotorobu Wadi, five kilometers northwest of where the Kibish Road crossed the southern border of the Ilemi. There they established greenhouse farms on the Israeli model. The greenhouse kits were sourced in Israel and paid for with funds raised worldwide in a campaign organized by Christian Rescue, the successor organization to a group with a similar name formed much earlier in the century. The well bores were funded by a grant from Harry Heston’s foundation.

Harry Heston also personally sponsored the relocation and settlement of dozens of families when he heard of any pressing need or particular plight. These were mostly Kurdish, Syrian, and Iraqi Christians. Their horror stories of degradation, humiliation, forced separation, torture, death, and mayhem were compelling. Many young women told tearful stories of forced marriages and sex slavery in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond. But most of their young women were taken and never seen again, their fate unknown.

One refugee who did providentially escape was Ceylan Hiyat, a 24-year-old Kurdish Christian from Northwestern Iraq, a territory that had changed hands seven times in the past 22 years. She was educated for nine years by Christian missionaries from Indiana, and she spoke a cultured English. In her background interview with the Passport & Immigration Office, Ceylan said, “I was taken by the WIS police when I was 17 years old. One of their matrons put lipstick and eye makeup on me, and then they took me into the
abd
auction. I was paraded around and then surrounded by the leering bidders -- men who ranged from their 20s to their 80s. The bidding was in WIS dinars. I didn’t hear the final price, but they seemed excited and the bidding went on for several minutes. Then there was shouting and commotion, I was handcuffed again, and a bag went over my head.

“I was driven to a house far from the city. The man who bought me was about 50 years old. He lived alone in a rented house. He had many missing teeth and foul breath. He kept calling me his
zawjah
-- his wife. He also called me
kuffar
, which means infidel. He wasted no time dragging me to his bedroom, where he removed one of my handcuffs and shackled me to a four-meter chain that was set in the bedroom floor. This left enough slack for me to reach the toilet and the shower. That is where I spent the next three months -- three months of a hellish torture. I was raped and beaten so many times that I soon lost count. I bided my time, waiting until one night when both his knife and his ring of keys were within reach. I stabbed him in the throat while he was asleep.

“The only things I took with me were his knife, a satchel of food, and two bottles of water. I hadn’t learned how to drive, but I did know how to use a GPS, and I had watched my father and brother drive -- they had explained the gear shift lever, the gas pedal, and the brake pedal. I learned how to drive that night. It was an old Mercedes with an automatic transmission and built like a tank. That was a good thing, since I had two collisions just getting the car onto the road. I drove south for three hours, praying all the way, following the GPS.

“I knew that the roads all had guarded checkpoints at the border, so I chose a place where I thought I could drive down dry wadi. It was a miracle, but I made it three or four kilometers bouncing down this wadi until I could go no farther. The car was what you call ‘high center’ on boulder. I took the GPS out of its holder and started to walk. By dawn, I was at the frontier, and another two hours later, I saw a PKK patrol pickup and waved at them to stop.

“All of my close family was dead, so I joined the
Yekîneyên Parastina Jinê
-- the YPJ, the all-female Women’s Protection Units armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syrian Kurdistan. It is not so communistic or communalistic as the
Partiya Karkerên Kurdistani
-- the PKK Kurdish Worker’s Party -- but there is still a communist flavor to the organization. Not a deep shade of red, just sort of pink. I think that some of the leadership is still living in the 1960s. I left because I disliked their lingering communist outlook, and the fact that I had to hide my Christian faith. But I did get some good firearms and communications training. I also slayed five WIS soldiers, so my time with the YPJ was time well-spent.”

Ceylan Hiyat became an enthusiastic IRDF trainee; she was elected to Corporal within two years and Sergeant just before being selected for the fulltime Cadre. She became one of the Drill Sergeant NCOs for the female trainees, as well a leader for a barracks room Bible study.

Chapter 21: Speaking Sikorsky

“Five and twenty ponies

Trotting through the dark--

Brandy for the Parson, ‘Baccy for the Clerk;

Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!”
-- Rudyard Kipling

Solus Christus, The Ilemi Republic -- July, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

There were just a few helicopters in the country in the first year after independence, but a substantial number began to arrive in the second year. These were mostly Sikorsky UH-60, HH-60, and S-70 variants. Even the “Q Model” UH-60Q was considered obsolete, since most countries had adopted S/H-90 and S/H-100 series helicopters. These later Sikorskys, nicknamed Speedhawks, were “ring tail” models that used a third engine to power a vectored thrust ducted propeller (VTDP), making them capable of achieving 195 knots in level flight at low altitude.

The mothballed Sikorsky helicopters arrived as ship’s cargo in Mombasa with their rotors removed. Most of them came wrapped in the same white shrink plastic that was used for boat storage. The Sikorskys had been sourced in Israel, Korea, and the Philippines. Because of the pending UN arms embargo, all purchase paperwork had to specify “aeromedical evacuation and disaster relief helicopters” although most of them had been originally built as military mission UH-60s and MH-60s. By the end of the second year of independence, there were 17 Sikorskys in the country, but only three qualified pilots for them. So 15 of the helicopters sat cocooned in white plastic in a row at one end of the cavernous Isher Trading Company warehouse. Harry Heston considered these helicopters better than money in his bank.

At Colonel Kamwi’s request, Rick and Meital Akins did a special recruiting tour in the United States and the Philippines. Their journey began with a pleasant jaunt to Juba on a chartered flight with a local private pilot, who was chit-chatting about his son’s experiences in IRDF Basic Combat Training. From there, they had stops in London, New York, Memphis, Tennessee, and finally Mobile, Alabama. In all, their journey took 43 hours, including a one-night layover at a noisy airport hotel in New York. Coming back to the United States was a series of culture shocks for Rick. He kept muttering, “What happened to my America?”

Clearing customs in the international terminal at JFK Airport was agonizingly slow. Unlike European airports, where anyone with a diplomatic passport breezed through, at JFK there were multiple “gatekeepers” that had to be appeased. The Akinses got in the marked
Diplomatic & Differently-Abled
line. The smell of marijuana smoke was wafting through the air, as the airport’s smoking ban made an exception for “licensed medical marijuana.” Ahead of them in line was an Afghan woman in a head-to-toe blue
burqa
with her male escort. With the aid of an Arabic interpreter, they spent 15 minutes arguing with the Customs clerk that the woman was Differently-Abled by virtue of her religion and hence would be exempt from any searches. After this couple was finally shuttled off to a Diversity Arbitration Office, Rick and Meital reached the head of the queue.

The clerk looked at their diplomatic passports and began shaking her head, muttering, “Not on our Diplomatic List.”

Preemptively, Rick pulled out the notarized letter that he had received from the U.S. State Department for Ilemi Ambassadors authorizing diplomatic entry visits of up to 180 days in the United States and Territories even through the new nation did not have full recognition by the United States. He handed her the letter, saying, “Here is an authorization letter from the State Department.”

The clerk spent two full minutes reading and re-reading the letter, squinting at times. Then she looked up and said, “I’m gonna have to get this approved by my supervisor.”

She returned with her supervisor a few minutes later. After holding up the letter to a black light to see its State Department watermark, he put on a smarmy smile and intoned, “Sir, this letter is what we need, but we can’t accept it unless it has a JFKA stamp. All variances to standard procedure need to be documented and get the JFKA stamp. You’ll need to go get in Line 3, and get this stamped.”

This sounded odd to Rick, so he asked, “I’m sorry, but I’m a bit confused. Do the clerks at the Line 3 desk work for a different department?”

“Oh no, they work in my department, and they report to me.”

“Can’t you stamp it?”

“That’s not our procedure. Line 3, please.”

The supervisor dismissively looked over Rick’s shoulder and shouted, “Next!”

They then spent 23 minutes waiting in Line 3. Rick handed the clerk their passports and the letter and said, “I was told that this letter needed a ‘JFKA’ stamp.”

The clerk shrugged and said, “Oh, sure. It’s on State Department letterhead.” The clerk fished through his drawer, pulled out a self-inking stamp, and quickly stamped the top of the letter. He said, “Sorry, but you’ll need to get back in the Diplomatic line.”

The Akinses wheeled their bags back to the other queue to find there were now seven arriving passengers ahead of them. This time their wait was only five minutes, and they were thankful that the same clerk was there. She again examined their passports, re-read the letter, and then said, “You’ll have to wait a minute while I get this letter scanned into our system.”

Three minutes later, they had their passports stamped and they were on their way. As holders of diplomatic passports they were spared the indignity of having their luggage searched. Meital said, “At least we have a layover here. If we’d had scheduled a connecting flight, we probably would have missed it.”

They checked into the airport Hilton forty minutes later. Once they were in their room, Meital turned on the television while Rick retrieved their HK pistols from their locking hardcases. He loaded them, and handed Meital hers in its paddle holster. She laughed and said, “This must be a rarity, in
this
hotel.”

“Thank God for diplomatic privilege and immunity.”

Meital surfed through the channels. The Fairness Doctrine had obviously taken stronger hold since the last time either of them had been in the States. The cable channels seemed crowded with shows produced by Wiccans, Druids, Moslems, and even the Church of Satan. There was also lots of pornography -- and it was just after 5 p.m. Meital complained, “I feel like we’ve walked through the Gates of Hell. I just want to find
The Weather Channel
.”

As Meital scanned through the more than 200 channels, she also saw a lot of commercials. It seemed that the majority of these were from law firms, and these fell into three main categories: Seeking plaintiffs for personal injury cases; seeking plaintiffs for pharmacological, medical device, or medical malpractice cases; and seeking clients for immigration law cases. Most of the latter commercials were in Spanish and Chinese. After skipping past several Reality Television shows (one on polygamists, one about polyamorous “threeples,” and one featuring bestialists who bemoaned their lack of marriage rights “to the animal persons we love”), Meital finally found the weather forecast: It would be hot and humid but not rainy in Alabama for at least the next five days.

Their connecting flights down to Mobile were uneventful and remarkably uncrowded. The recent hike in airfares in response to higher oil prices were clearly taking a bite out of the regional airline traffic. The Diplomatic tags on their bags drew some interest from the ground crew. One of the clerks at the luggage counter acted as if he had never seen or handled Diplomatic luggage.

Stepping out of the terminal was like walking into a sauna. The heat and humidity of Alabama in July was unbearable to many, but it did not bother the Akinses, who had become acclimated to the severe Ilemi climate. But Rick and Meital both felt naked until they got to their rental car and again retrieved their pistols, loaded them, and checked their rail-mounted laser/lights. As ambassadors, technically they
could
travel armed aboard commercial aircraft in many countries, but not in the United States, unless they were on a chartered flight.

It was a three-hour drive from Mobile to Dothan, Alabama. They also could have flown into Tallahassee, Florida, but they wanted to see more of Alabama. Their drive into the Wiregrass region was pleasant. There were still lots of large farms (mostly peanuts) and stately plantation houses that could be seen from the road. They drove to a Holiday Inn hotel near Dothan. This was just a few miles from Fort Rucker, the home of the U.S. Army Aviation Corps headquarters and pilot training school. Officially dubbed “The U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker,” it had a fixed-wing airfield and five heliports. A large number of military retirees and contractors lived in the surrounding communities. The standard joke was, “Everyone returns to Mother Rucker,” and that applied not just to pilots returning to the Fort for refresher courses and new qualifications, but also for many retirees -- many of whom were “double dippers” who had served their 20 years but come back to work as Department of the Army Civilians (DACs) or as military contractors to earn a second retirement.

Because of post-9/11/2031 enhanced security restrictions, the Akinses would not be able to enter the Fort’s perimeter fence. But they still had access to the many contractor offices that lined the streets outside of the post’s gates. These contractors included a wide variety of avionics companies, technical recruiting and temporary employee firms, as well as field offices for companies like Sikorsky, Boeing, Hughes, Kaman, and Bell Helicopter-Textron.

They timed their arrival in Dothan for a Thursday, because they wanted to have a couple of preliminary meetings with contractor service and spare parts (“boneyard”) firms the next day and then attend a Messianic congregation meeting in Dothan on Friday evening. That would be followed by a visit to a Methodist church in the town of Enterprise on Sunday.

They arrived at Congregation Hope of Israel, Shalom Dothan on Friday at just after 6 p.m. They were impressed to see a sizable grouping of very sturdy brick buildings for the congregation chapel, multipurpose meeting hall, classrooms, and parsonage. The campus once belonged to Bethany Divinity College and Seminary, but once they outgrew the facilities in the late 2020s, the college moved to a new, larger campus farther out of Dothan. The elders of Congregation of Hope bought the old campus on very agreeable interest-free terms with a 20-year payment plan.

The Friday evening service was scheduled to start at 6:30. They first met the congregation’s Cantor. They introduced themselves as Ilemi ambassadors, and Rick briefly described growing up in Texas and his time in the Air Force. Meital also introduced herself, identifying herself as both an Israeli émigré and a Messianic. Her Israeli Jewish background provided a special cachet with American Messianics. The Cantor immediately offered Rick and Meital the opportunity to address the congregation right after the regular Friday evening service.

News of the Akinses’ visit quickly spread to the arriving congregants. Rick and Meital were amazed at the size of the congregation, which was larger than any of the local meetings that Meital had attended in Israel. It seemed the members already knew about the Ilemi Republic, and many of them were closely following news of the fledgling nation. Even in the U.S., some of the Republic’s strongest supporters were Messianics. Rick and Meital received enthusiastic handshakes and excited questions before the service began. One teenager asked to see what an Ilemi passport looked like, and Rick and Meital obliged him by showing their diplomatic passports. This elicited a number of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from the growing cluster of people around them.

The service was a typical Erev Shabbat service that began with Messianic praise choruses and then a recitation of the Kabbalat Shabbat from the Messianic Prayer book,
The Messianic Shabbat
Siddur
. There was a traditional candlelighting ceremony and three other readings. Following the closing Aaronic Benediction, the chubby Congregational Leader said, “You may have heard that we have some special guests tonight who have a few words for you. It is my pleasure to introduce Ambassador Atkins and his wife.”

Rick and Meital stood up nervously and walked to the pulpit. Rick began, “
Shabbat Shalom
! First, one point of clarification: My name is Akins, not Atkins. I have Scottish blood, not English. Back when I attended the U.S. Air Force Direct Commissionee’s School, when I signed in I was handed an envelope full of name tags and name tapes that all read ‘Atkins,’ so I spent the next three weeks straightening all of that out. Rest assured, this is not the first time I’ve been called Atkins.”

After some laughter, Rick continued, “I would like to first ask this congregation for prayers for persecuted Christians and Messianic Jews, all around the world. Please also pray for our new nation of refuge dedicated to Protestants and Messianics, the Ilemi Republic.”

The Congregational Leader interrupted Rick to immediately lead an impassioned prayer. Then he turned to Rick, who resumed, “We make no secret of why we’ve come to Fort Rucker. We are here to look for new Ilemi citizens with some well-seasoned
expertise
. Here in the communities surrounding Fort Rucker, there are a very large number of people who ‘Speak Sikorsky.’ We are looking for pilots, crew chiefs, mechanics, and avionics technicians, and perhaps an AVUM or AVIM clerk, who have at least four years of experience with UH-60 Blackhawks or similar Sikorsky helicopters and who are willing to immigrate to the Ilemi Republic, with at least a three-year commitment to become citizens and members of our full-time Aviation Corps Cadre. These are paid full-time technician, instructor, and pilot positions. Instead of Ilemi citizenship costing half a million NEuros, as it usually does, the Cadre members and their immediate family members will all receive lifetime Ilemi citizenship,
free of charge
.”