Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

Juan Gomez-Jurado Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

The second book in the Father Anthony Fowler series, 2009

For Matthew Thomas, a greater hero than Father Fowler

How to Create an Enemy

Start with an empty canvas
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men women and children

Dip into the unconsciousness well of your own
disowned darkness
with a wide brush and
strain the strangers with the sinister hue
of the shadow

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
Hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
Your own

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every infinite heart

Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty

Strip flesh from bone until only the
abstract skeleton of death remains

Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphosed into beast, vermin, insect

Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares – devils,
demons, myrmidons of evil

When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame

The thing you destroy will have become
merely an enemy of God, an impediment
to the secret dialectic of history

from Faces of the Enemy

by Sam Keen

The Ten Commandments

I am the Lord thy God.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy
Honour thy father and mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house

Prologue