arabian nights

Evening in the Insomnia Cafe near Stephens Green.
The half light flickering.
In a moment of tendresse Miss Arabia gives me a book.
It is Educations Sentimentales by Gustave Flaubert.
Suddenly all my paranoia about Arabs and Muslims evaporates.
What an idiot I've been.
Thinking they were out to get the Free World and, more importantly, me.
Imagining Dublin street gangs could be Islamist enforcers carving up the city streets.
Suggesting that Bewleys waiters were putting bombs in my car.
Lordy, I'm a neuro.
After much fond and gracious thanks, I bring Miss Arabia's book home and open the covers.
I begin reading, first with enthusiasm, and then with growing alarm.
Realisation dawns.
The conclusion is inescapable.
They're still trying to kill me.
I ask you gentle readers.
What need has Al Qaeda of putting a bomb in my car, if they can just bore me to death using the works of Gustave Bloody Flaubert.
Somebody call Amnesty International.
This thing is a direct infringement of the laws of war as laid out in the Geneva Convention.
My God, it's unholy.