A Critical Analysis of 'Real Islam'. Its People ... - Bukti dan Saksi

now guzzling up Hyde Park, its trees whooshing into brief candles of flame, the Serpentine quaffed and
vaporized in an instant, the Round Pond licked away in one fiery rub of its tongue.
As the darkness increased and the compensating fire drew nearer, I grasped that the catastrophe
would soon swallow up my house and me, too. This was not an episode, like an earthquake, leaving a
giant print on the earth in a minute of time, but more like a volcano, spreading its lava with all deliberate
speed over a vast area. How many billions of tons of high-explosive equivalent had gone into what I
assumed to be the detonator, at ground level, of an enormous hydrogen device, I could not guess. Yet,
surely, even the largest blast conceivable must be of limited duration, and its immediate physical
consequences reckoned in minutes, not hours or days. But there was no sign yet of an end, or even a
diminuendo.
I suddenly noticed that I was not alone. At my feet, or very near them, was a curious congregation of
creatures. First, there was a fat wood-pigeon, who usually gives me the widest of berths for he knows he
is not a favorite. He was motionless, cowering, his feathers dank and bedraggled as though he was in a
cold sweat. There was a crow I had never seen before, more composed than the pigeon and looking about
him with alert eyes. There was the hen-thrush, who nested in the tree a few feet from my study window
this year and produced a brood: no sign of them — flown off, perhaps, already — and she was clearly
frightened, too. Above all — and I was strangely comforted to see him — was Randolf, or Randy, my
audacious squirrel, not bold now, however, but sitting stock-still in terror, waiting for a doom which he
could not evade by flight. It suddenly struck me that these varied creatures, enemies or competitors as a
rule, were crowding together for comfort, and looked to me for salvation. But how was I, or anyone, to
render help in this Armageddon, or apocalypse?
At that point I became aware that my eyes were open, and focused on family photos near the foot of
my bed, all steady and correct. Behind my head, my beautiful crucifix, carved by a holy monk in the
hardest of woods, hung motionless, not a millimeter out of place. The sun was wintry, but it shone
nevertheless.