1001 Nights Cast

This is the tale of how Oz came to declare there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet.

…THANK YOU. HELLO…

Bitch.

…CHILDREN, I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE POWER…

Fucking Bitch.

…THANK YOU. HELLO…

‘So even though she’s as secular as—he met her in a gender studies tute for God’s sake—still her family goes, he has to convert to Islam before he can marry her. And he goes, but I don’t believe in one God and all his prophets and all the books sent down to the prophets, and angels and djinn and the day of judgement, life after death, heaven and hell and possibly predestination…I love you all, but I’m sorry I just don’t…I can’t believe in all that. And they look at him as though they’ve just realised he comes from Vaucluse. ‘Believe? What are you talking about believe? We just want you to convert!’.

Fucking leave him standing here for fucking half an hour. And he had to get the train and leave his car in Bankstown. Fuck.

‘So of course all the kids got in trouble for trying to make him say la ilaha il…la la la…, whatever it is, in all these stupid ways. Pretending it was a respectful way of saying thank you to Leb shopkeepers; pretending it was the lyrics to an Egyptian pop song…God knows. Anyway, finally the family had enough of waiting and decided to get serious about making him convert. The younger sister—top 1000 HSC, first year Communications at UTS—okay, she goes first. Given that the the boyfriend is stuck on this whole belief thing, she decides to tackle it head on. She’s Googling for all she’s worth—C.S Lewis, Newman, Plantinga…finally she discovers Aquinas. Finally, knockdown boyfriend arguments. If there’s no God, what caused everything, hey? Nothing can’t come from nothing. Or again, order. Everything is so ideally organised for life—surely this can’t just be chance. Or sheer logic—God’s perfect, it’s perfect to exist, God exists! But no! Even UTS can’t convince him—‘OK, even if I accept all these arguments, which I don’t, but even if…what’s to say this God is Allah? What’s to say there’s not three gods? What’s to say it isn’t even a god at all?’

Does he have to stand here, listening to this? If those fags were in Bankstown…Bitch. He knew when she wouldn’t give her mobile—he hadn’t believed her. But they’d been on MSN all week. He’d texted the Uplate Game Show—‘c u satday’—even got Richard Mercer, the fuck, to play ‘I will always love you’. Fuck Adultmatchmaker! And if it’s not those fags, it’s that…dog…Bitch!

So next the Dad tried.

‘You believe in Christmas?’
‘Well…’
‘What’s the 25th of December?’
‘Well, it’s Christmas…’
‘You believe in Christmas! You believe in Easter?’
‘Well, yes…’
‘Okay. You believe now, see. Now, you just have to believe different holidays’
‘Look, I believe that there are those days but I don’t believe the stories about those days.’
‘I don’t understand.’

Older Brother joined in.

‘Is it pork?’
‘No’.
‘Because we can eat pork. If you are starving, you can eat pork?’
‘No it’s not the pork.’
‘Is it alcohol?’
‘No’.
‘Because we can drink alcohol, if we are dying of thirst’.
‘I don’t care about the alcohol’.
‘You know you don’t need to get circumcised?’

But again, to no avail.

…COMPANION OF THE GREAT QUEEN VICTORIA. BECAUSE OF THE MANY GOOD DEEDS I HAVE DONE FOR DEAF AND BLIND CHILDREN, I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE POWER OF SPEECH. PUT A COIN IN THE FOUNTAIN AND I WILL THANK YOU. WOOF WOOF. THANK YOU. HELLO, MY NAME IS ISLAY. I WAS ONCE COMPANION OF THE GREAT QUEEN VICTORIA. BECAUSE…

Racist fags. Racist dog.

So, finally, Granddad communicates from his chair that he has something to say. Older Brother translates. Granddad speaks from his chair for several minutes, moving his hands back and forth, spitting loudly then softly, smiling and grimacing alternately and then once, rather horrifically, simultaneously. ‘Granddad says he is going to tell a story’, Older Brother translates finally. Then Granddad silently inhales his Camel for a minute—‘It’s about this imam who goes to a party and they say he can’t get in because his clothes are cheap’. Granddad suddenly stands up and shouts, waves his fist in the air—‘The imam goes home silently and changes’. Granddad then starts hobbling around the room, repeating the same thing to every household object that he encounters; chair, telephone, flying wall duck. Finally, Granddad grabs hold of his hand and looks at him squeezing his fingers and repeats the same thing twice—‘Then they let the imam into the party and he puts his sleeve in the soup and everyone is shocked’. Granddad sits back down in his chair, extinguishes the Camel and goes to sleep. For the third time, he is not converted.

He read the plaque—THE LEGEND OF ISLAY. That was it.

ISLAY WAS THE FAVOURITE PET OF QUEEN VICTORIA; WHENEVER HE SAW HIS ROYAL MISTRESS, HE WOULD SIT UP AND BEG FOR A BISCUIT. NOW, OVER A CENTURY LATER, ISLAY IS BEGGING HOPEFULLY FOR A COIN TO HELP THE DEAF AND BLIND CHILDREN OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

Anglos were seriously fucked. He wanted his Mazda. Fuck New South Wales—he wanted Bankstown. And he never wanted to listen to gays or chat online with a dumb blonde ever again.

So what happened in the end?

But Ozan Ozturk, which almost means ‘pure Turkish poet’, abruptly ceased kicking the talking statue of Islay, walked up to the two well-coiffed men and yelled over the top of John Laws’ barking. ‘La la la la la la, Muhammad—I’ll wrestle ya’. And with that, he stomped down to Town Hall station and thence home to Bankstown and his Mazda.

‘What the fuck?’

‘God knows.’

WOOF WOOF.