My Lord Onions!

Was published in Arabic in November 16, 2015

Translated by Ahmed Fathy

1- This is a true story that we have witnessed during our youth:

 A colleague of ours during the Azharite University education years in Cairo who came from a village like us was very naïve. We called him a 'villager dazzled by city lights'. He came from Upper-Egypt with much purity, gullibility, and romance inside his mind. His family members were wealthy farmers. He was a dreamy poet as well who was dazzled and astounded by everything novel to him in Cairo. This colleague used to inhabit an apartment along with other university colleagues in the (middle-class) Abbaseya District in Cairo. He used to spend some time daily at night in the balcony of this apartment. His eyes were struck by an appealing scene; in an upper balcony in the opposite building appeared a head of a sitting girl with flaxen, golden hair. She used to sit in the balcony for hours. He felt that she was dreamy like him. Whenever he entered the balcony, he found her, immobile in the same position in her balcony. He waved to her, but someone entered her balcony and our friend left his balcony at once. He returned shortly to the balcony to espy on her once more, only to find her in her usual place. Our friend fell in love with the girl with golden locks. He wrote poems in her honor. All his friends and colleagues talked about this love story and the beautiful love poems. Some told him that this was unrequited love, and that he knew virtually nothing about the girl in question. She might be married or betrothed. He defended his love vehemently, and decided to propose to her. He held talks with the proprietor of the building where the girl's balcony was situated. The proprietor, an elderly female, volunteered to investigate the matter and to gather all possible information about the girl and her family. She told him later on that the girl was a single student in the last year of her university education. Her father is the headmaster of a high school, who might not approve to give his only daughter to a rich first-year Azharite student. Upon his insistence, the elderly lady agreed to accompany him to visit this headmaster. Our friend dressed to impress before the awaited visit, where he longed to see his beloved face to face for the very first time. The headmaster welcomed them warmly. The girl came with a tray of refreshments, wearing a smile. Our friend was shocked to find her a brunette! She was not a blonde! He whispered to the elderly lady to ask whether this girl had a blonde sister. To his surprise and dismay, she told him she was the only daughter of the headmaster's family. She had four married male siblings who no longer live here! He whispered to her again that he was quite sure of seeing a blonde girl at their balcony for days. He was quite sure that the balcony corresponded to the floor they were in at the moment. There was no error in the location of the apartment of the blonde girl. He excused himself to enter into their balcony for some fresh air. To his surprise, he found along with the elderly lady that the blonde girl sitting in the balcony was nothing but a huge bunch of dried onions with flaxen stalks hanging in the wall! Seen from afar, one might think it a head of a blonde girl!

2- Our friend wrote love poems and lived in long reveries, thinking himself in love, until he eventually woke up to find an illusion! His rosy dreams ended in onions! We mocked him with a new epithet: "Beloved Onions"!

3- The disaster of our dreamy friend was temporary and simple; he lived in an illusion that was dispelled with little harm done to him. He later on graduated, got married, and had offspring. When we used to remind him of his "Beloved Onions" story, he used to burst out laughing.

 The problem does not lie in "Beloved Onions", but rather in "Master Onions"! We mean to say that the problem is those who create deities and gods that are the figment of their imagination: they give these gods offerings and oblations, invoking them in times of disasters and catastrophes. Those people who belong to the party of "Master Onions" are the herd who loses this life – a temporary loss of this transient life – and the Next Life: the Afterlife: an immortal greater loss.

4- Imagine that someone who offers oblations to a 'holy' tomb or mausoleum, and all delusions and holy myths drive this someone to the wrong belief that the cadaver inside this or that tomb will be pleased by such offerings! How come that God gives someone money and livelihood, but this someone would give some of that money to an unknown, dead, interred deity of people's invention! This someone might think they are doing a religious ritual that will be rewarded by God! God says in the Quran: "And they allocate, to something they do not know, a share of what We have provided for them. By God, you will be questioned about what you have been inventing." (16:56).

 The same goes for those who stand reverently in veneration and worship of the mausoleum of Al-Hussein in Cairo, thinking that Al-Hussein's severed head is inside this tomb. They never know that Al-Hussein's head never came to Cairo. When he was killed in the city of Karbalaa in Iraq, Cairo was to be built in Egypt three centuries later. No one could ever be able to distinguish among the skulls of Al-Hussein and Yazeed and other dead men from one another. No one knows anything about this tomb allegedly attributed to Al-Hussein in Cairo and other cities. The same applies to those who worship the tomb of Al-Hussein's sister, Zeinab, in Cairo. People offer to her tomb/mausoleum a lot of money and oblations. Those people know nothing of the fact that she never came to Egypt. Nine centuries separate her death and the building of the mausoleum attributed to her in Cairo. The same applies to those who worship the tomb of Al-Sayed Al-Badawi in the Delta city of Tanta, Egypt. No one of those worshippers knows that this historical character is a Shiite spy who came to Egypt with the political aim to restore Egypt to the Shiite rule and creed as it had been in the Fatimid Era. The same applies to those who worship tombs made holy by the devils. Those people are giving their offerings to illusionary deities of the type ''Master Onions". They gullibly and naively pay money and give away offerings while they smile and feel piety, submission, veneration, and worship.

5- In the 1970s in Cairo, there once stood a derelict palace in the low-class Matareiya District. Inside this palace lived a male janitor whose job was to guard the place. The room of this janitor was at a corner by the wall surrounded the palace. He used to leave the lights of his room switched on, with an open window. He was surprised to see money thrown at him via the open window. Later on, he knew that a human herd believes that his room was a 'holy' tomb of a saint, to whom they offer their money as offerings to make their wishes come true. The janitor moved to another room inside the palace, with daily nightly visits to his former room to collect money thrown by the gullible polytheists! His room was turned into an illusionary holy deity to be worshipped by money offerings. This type of deities we call ''Master Onions". People of this district gullibly and naively used to pay money to such a deity while they smile and feel piety, submission, veneration, and worship.

6- The herd of the type of ''Master Onions" is not confined to be among the Sufis and the Shiites; it is found a lot among the Sunnites as well. We used to see formerly in Cairo of the 1980s and 1990s the typical bearded men with Pakistani white gowns and a loud speaker, blaring: "Donate for the building of a mosque, O Muslims!" They used to gather a lot of money on a daily basis, though people never ask them about their name and the location of the assumed mosque to be built! This has been fraudulent swindling to get the money of the naïve believers. Followers of ''Master Onions" go on paying their hard-earned money while smiling and feeling they have done pious acts of worship!

7- The same applies to churches in every country. Churches are managed and owned by clergy that claim they have renounced the world. But they adore the transient world more than they would admit. They gather millions of money annually without being watched by governments. Followers of ''Master Onions" pay them while while smiling and feeling they have done pious acts of worship to please God! Once we were told by an Egyptian former Christian plastic artist that he never is to forget a horrible scene he witnessed in his childhood in the local church in Cairo. He opened the door of a room, and he saw a clergyman eating and gulping in a disgusting manner all delicious food offerings given to the church to be given to the poor and the hungry. He was so shocked by those human deities of the church that he never entered a church ever since. Later on, he became an atheist. We ourselves was once invited to attend a wedding in a church, and when we opened a door by accident, in search for the host who invited us, I saw a young clergyman counting alone huge amounts of money on a wooden table. We closed the door quickly. This scene reminded us of those inside mosques who count money donated to mosques and charity. The only difference is that those in the mosque were a group working in a charity institution. One never knew if the poor were given any of such sums one sees in a mosque or a church. The young clergyman was alone with such huge sums. Theft was quite possible in such a case, we suppose. Money was donated by followers of "Master Onions", while they were smiling in veneration and worship!

8- It is surprising that the followers of "Master Onions" would readily haggle and negotiate discounts in prices of goods and clothes they buy, eager not to let any seller deceive them. Why the same people lose their rational mind and good judgment before a 'holy' tomb? Why they give offerings while feeing pious and venerate tombs as an act of worship?

9- "And they allocate, to something they do not know, a share of what We have provided for them. By God, you will be questioned about what you have been inventing." (16:56). This verse describes the state of the followers of "Master Onions'' in this life and the next in the Day of Judgment. Tis verse affirms the fact that they will be judged by God due to their inventions of deities/gods beside God. Such judgment will send them to Hell, in case they die without repentance. Their crime: worshipping mortals and attributing their wrong deeds to God by making them as act of worship never ordered by God in the Quran. They attribute to God their earthly, human-made, and fabricated creeds that make them worship things and mortal human beings and offer their money and oblations to them. Eventually clergymen eat all such money and offerings. Clergymen in all eras and times and creeds are the worst type of humankind; they make people polytheists for their own interest, i.e., to go on eating ill-gotten money and deviate others from the righteous path of God.

10- Onions bunch in the above-mentioned story of our friend "Beloved Onions'' did not harm anyone, whereas "Master Onions" are fatal, lethal illusions that poison worldly existence of others and make them lose their Afterlife in Paradise. This is a worst type of trade, lucrative only for clergymen of every denomination: Sunnite, Shiite, Sufi, Buddhist, catholic, Orthodox …etc. their ill-gotten money will be tools to torture them in Hell for eternity: " O you who believe! Many of the rabbis and priests consume people's wealth illicitly, and hinder from God's path. Those who hoard gold and silver, and do not spend them in God's cause, inform them of a painful punishment. On the Day when they will be heated in the Fire of Hell, then their foreheads, and their sides, and their backs will be branded with them: "This is what you hoarded for yourselves; so taste what you used to hoard."" (9:34-35). God says nothing but the Truth.