Nocturn: The Ethiopian Orthodox

By Scott Bessenecker

©2020

Introduction

All empires fall and there's nothing surprising about it. The Roman Empire, the Zhao Dynasty, the Kingdom of Axum, the Aztecs, they were remarkable, glorious and sophisticated societies, but they all disintegrated – every last one of them. But this shouldn't surprise us. What is surprising is that all who lived under them believed them to be permanent – immutable. The people of empire assume that theirs is different, theirs will last forever, or will at least continue throughout their lifetimes, which is all any of us care to think about anyway. No one notices the steady decay, those microscopic grains of sand falling from the foundation of empire. Every tick of the clock takes a little bit more empire with it until the thing collapses under its own weight. And all living in those times are shocked because no one thought that the empire would fall during their lifetime.

The thing about our current empire is that it's global. It may be American in origin, but today's empire isn't represented through a single nationality or a ruling family, like the Windsors or the Khans or the Caesars. And it certainly isn't located in democracies. The 21st century version of the Pharaoh's are a handful of multinational corporations, maybe 70 or 80 in all, along with their CEOs. These rulers control the world's labor and economic resources. They have their fingers in the political parties and trade regulations and the banking practices that run our planet. The collapse of this imperial collective will be like nothing we have yet seen.

But, I am not interested in writing about the downfall of empire. Entropy is irreversible, whether acting on an abandoned shack or a crumbling social order built upon consumption. Besides, others have written about the end of the world with great imagination – a global pandemic, a nuclear holocaust, a zombie apocalypse. No, writing about the inevitable failure of our empire isn't all that interesting to me. It's what comes after the end of this empire, when the world resets herself, that interests me.

When our modern, industrialized, corporatized, digitized, state fails – and I think it will happen suddenly and globally – what will rise from her ashes?

To me, that's an interesting story, and it's the story I have attempted to write here.

Part I

The Mediterranean

Chapter 1

The boy studies the words, and then squeezes "My Dear" in small letters before "English Friend." Paper is precious.

If you cannot read this, I will teach you.

The sentence sounds odd to him, but he continues.

I am Hakim and I am ten, but I think you must know that by now. I want to tell you about my journey to England, since we are such good friends.

If I tell you the year I was born you will become confused because you use a different calendar. Just take whatever year you call it now and subtract ten years, then you will know my birth year. When we meet I might be eleven, so then you will need to subtract eleven years from your calendar to figure out when I was born. In time, I can teach you my calendar. I can also teach you Amharic. This is the other language I speak, and I think you will like it better than English. It will help you to speak with my friends who have come to help you. Some of them don't know English well. I suppose first I will need to teach you to read and write your own language since you probably don't know it. I imagine you can spell your name. This is good. Show me a person who can't spell their name and I'll show you a person who is slave to another. That's what my Ehmyay says. Ehmyay means mother.