
Dr. Ali Al-Zaak
I published the first of my three books on the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The book came full of war horrors and sadness. Three friends told me that they were tearful with many pages of the book, but a fourth reader alerted me to the fact that there are hopes too through the persistence of little stories in the book.
Cucaracha is the second book following “Are you brown name in a blacklist?” Cucaracha is fantasy book contains 22 short stories. It is about loneliness to the extent of imagining communication with bacteria and other microbes. The book blends facts with lots of fantasies to create amusing tales that suit readers gifted with fertile imagination. The tales are about creatures living among us in real yet fantasy fashion.
Beside the “Outbreak,” “Pandora’s box” and other stories, there is the “Cucaracha” (Cockroach) biography. The nick-named Cuca used to live in a septic tank, but when the lid was taken off by foreign invasion, he was freed, underwent Metamorphosis and transformed into a rat.
Ratting enabled him later to further transform into a semi-man who ruled the country with all kinds of horror. Eventually, there was an uprising of the sufferers. He fled his fortified zone and underwent reverse Metamorphosis to be a “Cucaracha” again.
While he was speeding back to his Septic tank, a child spotted and chased him. The child’s slippers crushed him. The hope/the child finished off Cuca era. The unlamented Cuca believed in Absurdism which refers to the conflict between the man tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the man inability to find any. In such situation, absurd does not mean impossible, but rather “humanly impossible.” After all, Cuca could only manage to be a semi-human.
The whole sensible world considered that the invasion was based on fabricated accusations. However, the invaders knew the accusations were not real, but they needed the traitors to rat their fellow citizens to justify the war. It was a trans-game that involved semi-men and monkeys. In the end, President monkey Macaque took the recluse decision to invade.
Why the Macaque in particular? Because this species lives with humans and have become an invasive species in some human-inhabited lands. Macaques are a threat to human through carrying fatal diseases. They are invasive species need to be controlled. In any case, what do I know? And what did I do? I only dedicated this Satire poem to the monkeys.
President monkey Macaque
All his genome on the stalk
All his sequence were just lies
With his actions reckless ties
Twinkle heart swims in dreams
Thrown human in lode streams
From the cracks of the alien rock
Flower and roses were a shock
Both had jumped to salty dock
And misery spits its ugly joke
You the truce of a mind jam
And the fervor of uncle SAM
awful heart of monkey macaque
The wretched cursed your track
You are marked on your chest
Done with life and stamping set
Look to the end you are a fool
A semi man with no console
Can you move what was calm?
And contain the burning palm?
Mesopotamia is asking why?
Hit me hard and made me dry
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