Sojourn In Palestine (Welcome To Palestine!) by Alfred N.Muggins : Part 2

Featuring the Three Wise Men!

(Written June 2024)

Melchior was taken to a cell nearby to be questioned further, while the other two wise men were treated with far less suspicion due to their races and origins. Nonetheless neither Caspar nor Balthasar had the correct papers or cards either and were not allowed into Palestine. They worried what would become of their quest to find a chosen one who could save the world, or at least this Holy Land. Would they have to break into Palestine to follow the shining Star to wherever they were meant to find the chosen savior?

2/12/24 / 5/1/25

    Brave Melchior was obliged by threat of immediate violence to take off all of his robes, which were once again thoroughly searched. They splashed water upon him, making him fear drowning and treated him roughly in ways he, as a King in Persia, despite the usual military training he had endured as a younger and important man, was not used to. The tough interrogators asked him questions about his homeland and origins. At first he was reluctant to admit much of his own homeland, particularly if they did not believe him, which he knew they would not. He was kept in a dirty cell behind strong metal bars with many other prisoners, naked and humiliated. By the look of many of his fellow male detainees they had not been given much food to eat and were being kept in a weakened state. He was going to talk to them and find out more, but they seemed a frightened and uncommunicative bunch. Of course he could not know what treatments these poor wretches had been subjected to by the bullying guards who obviously believed themselves to be far superior to the people they called Palestinians or Arabs. He did not get much chance because his interrogators soon brought him out for further questioning. He had never been so frightened, but his God told him to be patient, that all would be well. He should be brave and not fear these cruel abusers.

   “I do not know what you want from me?” He appealed.

    “We want the truth, only that! We want to know all about you!” These violent men threatened to beat him if he did not tell the truth. Still Melchior was reluctant to reveal that he was a King in Persia from a time many years before this time. He just imagined that would make his position worse, if they did not believe him. Naked he was forced to stand for a long time, without food or drink. The interrogators reappeared periodically and asked him difficult questions about his homeland and his contacts. He felt very weak and did actually collapse more than once.

    They even asked him about his possible knowledge of Iran’s nuclear programme. Perhaps they judged him an intelligent and important figure after all and sought to question him about the threats they most feared about the land he came from, even though he knew nothing about its current state and character, and had no understanding of what a nuclear programme could be!

    Finally he did decide to give the real amazing true story of his journey in the hope that they would begin to understand him and would let him free to follow the star which guided their way. He would show these suspicious and paranoid questioners that he, and without doubt many of their unfortunate prisoners, did not fit into the simple categories and descriptions they expected.

    Melchior told the truth, about where he came from, of his privileged upbringing and social position in a Persia obviously many years before it was called Iran, but they did not believe him. One soldier did tell him that it was soon after the supposed visit of the ‘three wise men’ that the Romans finally evicted many of the Jews from their land, sending them on a long diaspora until the ‘twentieth century’ when they returned in larger numbers to regain their homeland. Melchior felt he had learned something at least from his unjust incarceration, and had caused a soldier to think and to communicate with him. It did seem to think that his own story so far had brought up such a memory of three wise men who had travelled from the East in his own time. Melchior knew that he and his most wise and generous friends fitted that very description, but if they were the same, what were they doing here in the distant future, and not in the past? Surely they could not be in both times at once?

    Melchior thought deeply about what the soldier revealed. “But you have pushed a lot of the other people of Palestine out of their homes in order to return to your own historic roots? The people on the other side of the River said that many of them lived in the lands taken by the Israelis a few decades before, but had been made to flee at those times, and were now not even able to visit their relatives in the West Bank area of Palestine, because the Israeli soldiers controlled it! That does not seem very fair!”

    “It is our land again now,” was all that guard would reveal further on the subject. Nonetheless Melchior did have the impression that his revelation of the truth had impressed upon his interrogators or some of them that he did not seem to be a typical resistance threat to them. Probably they took his story with a pinch of salt, but so far they were not trying to get him to change it. He suspected they did not know how to take his revelations, and perhaps thought he was either a fool or strange. He wondered if they would return his robes and jewels, his crown and possessions, including his beloved camel, to him, and let him return to his friends. For now they pushed him back into the communal cell with the many sad and bitter men detained here.