Yellow Cider

Yellow Cider is my friend but I would advise you never to make his acquaintance.
I know that Yellow Cider has killed people.  There isn't anything special about the alcohol
he contains.  It is the same as the alcohol that is found in any other drink.  It is simply
that there is so much of it.  3 litres of 6% cider is 18 units of alcohol.  That's as much as
half a bottle of whisky and that's enough to kill someone.  He also treats me unkindly.
Yellow Cider has pushed me over in the street at one o' clock in the morning so hard that
I bang my head on the ground.  I have to sit on a wall for several hours to stop him doing
it again.  Some well meaning member of the public will call the police who will show their
concern about my violent partner by locking me in a cell and giving me an £80 fine.
Why are we still friends?  I've tried skunk cannabis and I've tried legal highs but nothing
gives me the same level of intoxication for the same amount of time.  I'd love to know how
many bottles I used to drink a day but I have no idea, only that when I left England the
house was full of empty cider bottles.

One drunken dozey day I wandered past a mosque.  The sound of singing came from
inside.  I went in to have a look.  I met the man who was standing there saying and singing
his Friday prayers in his black suit and black cap.  He looked at me.  We made eye contact.
"I want to be a muslim," I said.  The man looked shocked and surprised.  I gathered that
English people wanting to be muslims wasn't something that happened here every day.
"Do you live around here?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "I live just round the corner.  I see the things that go on here.  They're
fascinating.  I want to be part of this.  How do I become a muslim?"  If this man had had any
personal experience of alcohol he might have been able to smell the cider or see the
concussed look on my face.  But he had never had a drop in his life.  He thought I was
deadly serious.  At that moment, under heavy sedation due to mankind's oldest
tranquilliser, I was deadly serious.
"If you want to be a muslim you need to say this prayer.  I'll teach you it."  He picked up a
pen and a piece of paper.  "I'll write it down for you.  It's in Arabic.  It means, there is no God
but Allah and Mohammed is the prophet."  He wrote the prayer and handed it to me.  I read
it in my best Arabic, which probably wasn't very good.
"Am I a Muslim now?" I asked.
"Yes, you are," he said.  "You can come along to Friday prayers.  Come along to classes on
Wednesday night so you can learn more about the Muslim life."

Wednesday was a similar drunken dozey day.  In the evening we sat together in a house
that belonged to an ageing imam with a beard, black cloak and black hat.  He was talking
about fasting in Ramadan, the importance of a pilgrimage to Mecca which was why one of
the women with us had dyed her hair red and why you give money to the poor.  For over
an hour this talk went on.  Then the imam asked,
"Any questions?"  There was just one question that had been burning on my mind.
"What's a holy war?  What's jihad all about?"  A young man in his twenties answered.
He had a kind face.
"It's a war of ideas.  We try to influence society to embrace the moral standards of Islam."
The old imam looked angry.
"You young people have no idea.  If you try to influence society you will fail.  Jihad is the
creation of an Islamic nation.  There is certain behaviour that one does not tolerate in an
Islamic nation.  We are not simply vinidictive.  It is not that we hate people.  It is simply that
if we stone one person to death for committing adultery, another million people won't do it."
The young man looked shocked.
"With respect, those verses are interpreted in a completely different way nowadays.  And in
the Jewish Scriptures they stone the man and the woman who committed adultery together,
why doesn't anyone ever do that?  I don't believe in the creation of an Islamic nation.  There
should be no compulsion in religion."  The old imam leapt off his chair.
"The creation of any nation is brought about by war."  He looked at me.  "Your nation was
brought about by war."  Somehow we found ourselves sitting with the old imam in a tiny office
with an ancient PC that was running so slowly and making so many strange noises that I
thought it would stop working altogether.  We were buying plane tickets.  Lots of things seem
exciting when you're drunk.  Isis seemed exciting.  

Six o'clock in the morning three days later.  A big metallic grey estate car pulls up outside
my flat.  It is full or Arab people.  I want to run out and tell them, "I'm a Christian.  I go to the
cathedral in the city centre a few times a year.  Look at this beautiful Bible I bought from a
second hand book shop.  I only became an Islamic warrior because I had so much alcohol
in my body that the blood transfusion service could have taken a pint of my blood, put it in
a bottle and sold it in an off licence."  But if I did those men would be more than just angry.
They would break every bone in my face.  I also paid for the plane ticket with my credit
card.  If I owe the credit card company that amount of money I'll have no food and no
electricity for a whole year.  I've already packed my suitcase.

Six months later I find myself in a foreign country with no way back home, fighting a war that
no one wants, wondering how an American soldier usually feels.