Foreign Policy

The Bedlam family consists of myself, my eight brothers, and my six sisters. And my dad. My mother died years ago of overwork.

With so many of us in one house, politics and diplomacy were a way of life. The younger often deferred to the elders, except when things got out of hand, at which point group alliances and personal vendettas would result in anything from “the sugar in your tea was confused with the salt,” to “you awaken to find yourself tied to the bed in the middle of the night being beaten to a pulp with pillowcases full of Hot Wheels cars, amidst an eerie, searing silence.”

Alliances and conflicts were constantly shifting, often in regard to my elder brother, Bludtharst. Y’see, Bludtharst was an all right guy, aside from the fact that he was generally mean to people, was all.

My brother Shaitan could be a dick on occasion, sister Lilith had a sharp tongue, little Dionysus could be a tad psychotic when the mood struck him, and ghod help ALL of us if Lucrezia was menstruating, but Bludtharst was one of those people who just seems to need regular reminding that if you kick the dog, the dog can and will bite your leg off.

Other families have something like this, but usually on a lesser scale. You know, pranks involving spring snakes in little cans of mixed nuts, whoopee cushions, things like that. In the Bedlam household, however, this sort of thing was considered a warning. The endgame usually involved a trip to the emergency room or a quick hand with a fire extinguisher. This may sound extreme, but for a couple months afterwards, at least Bludtharst would keep a civil tongue in his head and pass the damn salt when you asked him to, along with “not tripping you down the stairs and laughing at your clumsiness while you’re on your knees, collecting your bloody teeth.”

From the outside, it looked like a barbaric armed camp. To us, hey, it was home. Business as usual.

Until that time the Shipp kids started up with Bludtharst.

They claimed that Bludtharst had straightarmed one of the younger Shipps facefirst into a locker at school, with a cheery “Whoa, watch it there, pal, looks like ya slipped!” At least that’s what I heard. It certainly SEEMED like something Bludtharst would do. And the eldest Shipp kid promptly coldcocked Bludtharst, the next day, right in front of the school building.

And as one, we descended on the Shipp kids with a righteous wrath not seen since the Israelites wiped out the Amalekites. Every one of us. Started with little Boadecia, still in diapers, biting the hell out of Mrs. Shipp at the day care, and ended when I walled up one of them in a construction project, an unfinished brick wall facing away from the street.

Still remember him, twisting futilely, trying to escape his chains, as I carefully mortared and placed each brick. And finally, as the last few bricks were ready to go into place, he locked his gimlet gaze on me and shouted, “Why are you DOING this? You hate him worse than WE do!”

“Beg pardon?” I said, laying down the last layer of mortar.

“Dude, your brother is a MONSTER! And YOU of all people KNOW that! What, you think the rest of us don’t SEE? One of your sisters has NO TEETH because of him, and your eldest brother walks on a peg leg because Bludtharst played a joke involving M-80s! And you’re all over US because ONE OF US decided WE weren’t going to put up with his SHIT? Why the hell aren’t you on OUR side?”

I stopped and thought about it. He did have a point. We durn near crippled Bludtharst after the trick with the M-80s, and this had been going on for years and years. And sure enough, after the LAST time we stuck it to him, Bludtharst would behave for about two or three months, and then he’d just perform some new atrocity, was all. He never learned.

But the mortar was drying.

“Well, he may be an asshole,” I remarked briskly, “but he’s OUR asshole. And if we let outsiders interfere in our business, where would we be?” And the last brick went into place.

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This is all bullshit, of course. I have one sister, no brothers, and all of my fingers. But I think this is as good a metaphor for Middle East politics as I can craft today...