Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself. — Walter Anderson
Alex battled for his life in the public health care center. He's three months old. The doctors had gone home for the night and the nurses, who had to give an injection to the infant body, hadn't been able to proceed with the task.
Alex's health deteriorated beyond all hopes.
His mother gave up on him while his father persisted and knocked on the door of a doctor's house. The doctor, a pagan, woke up in the middle of the night for the infant of a desperate Christian at the door. The doctor had given the injection at the sole of a foot of the infant, giving the infant a second chance at life.
Alex would grow up to be the mother's favorite punch bag, the eternal scapegoat under the roof, where the home is the reality-distortion field of the dominant mother, a nonliterate, malignant narcissist.
Alex grew up in Razoonland where people have to take a boat across a river to go to the market. From Razoonland to the market, that's the direction of the journey of the women who carry and sell vegetables for a living. But, one day, an old and wrinkled woman took the boat across the river from the opposite direction, carrying a bundle of vegetable mustard for someone in Razoonland. She's a pagan woman in ripe age who lived on the other side of the river bank. Her vegetable mustard was a gift for Alex's mother, a much younger woman.
Alex's mother hadn't spoken a word of appreciation for the gift, an act of love, from the other woman. She shot a sharp question at the gift-bearer instead, asking for an explanation, "Why would you take the trouble of carrying this vegetable mustard across the river? I have enough of it growing in my own garden".
A child of ten years of age and silent observer, Alex would remember long after the death of the old woman what she'd said in her reply. "I know you have the same vegetable growing in your garden. However, I'd brought you a produce of my own garden because I want you to taste it and tell me if it has any difference in the taste".
Alex thought the old woman's phraseology was profound, relationship-based, and, a new outlook altogether from that of his own mother's. "It's not about needs — it's about relationships," Alex had observed and learned something new.
There were two pagan men, from a different ethnic group, in Razoonland. One of them was Mr. Bach, who, along with his wife, would offer his vegetable produce to Deuces, the self-styled brigadier, as if Deuces were a god and he were a devotee. The pagan man's rationale behind the gifting of his vegetable produce and fish to Deuces was different altogether from that of the pagan woman who brought her vegetable produce to Alex's mother. One person wanted something in return while the other person wanted nothing in return.
Although retired from active service, Deuces could still bestow power and privileges to his supporters in Razoonland, and Mr. Bach wanted a piece of that pie. Mr. Bach, along with Joshua, the president of Razoonland youth club, would work for Deuces, and they'd bring their people around Alex's home for criminal intimidation.
At some point, Alex's father sold his fishery, a property that Deuces coveted, in Razoonland and left for New Eden once and for all. Mr. Bach, an outsider, too, would leave Razoonland for a different reason. It's possible that the armed cadres, who're in active service, had asked Deuces for the rationale behind "expelling" Alex's father from Razoonland while promoting Mr. Bach, a member of a different ethnic group, and Deuces couldn't come up with a logical explanation anymore.
Mr. Bach belonged to the same ethnic group as the old pagan woman and friend of Alex's mother. Their ethnic group lived on the other side of the river bank where Mr. Bach would later relocate his house back to. This pagan man acted on his own accord in cozying up to Deuces whose political ideology is in conflict with that of the pagan community. This opens the door for Alex to approach the apex leadership of the pagan community to extract information from Mr. Bach about the hidden-game transcript.
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