"I'll finish with some lines of poetry in memory of those heroes from the land of Hijaz, the land of faith, from Ghamid and Zahran, from Bani Shahr, from Harb, from Najd, and we pray to God to accept them all, and in memory of those who came from Holy Mecca, Salem and Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khaled al-Mihdhar, or those who came from Medina, the radiant, who left life and its comforts for the sake of 'There is no god but God'.
I testify that these men, as sharp as a sword,
Have persevered through all trials
How special they are who sold their souls to God
Who smiled at Death when his sword gazed ominously at them
Who willingly bared their chests as shields.
Though the clothes of darkness enveloped us and the poisoned tooth bit us,
Though our homes overflowed with blood and the assailant desecrated our land,
Though from the squares the shining of swords and horses vanished,
And sound of drums was growing
The fighters' winds blew, striking their towers and telling them:
We will not cease our raids until you will leave our fields.
Peace be with you and all God's mercy and blessings.
From Messages to the World
The Statements of Osama bin Laden.
This is, by any standards, an astonishing age; when so much is available, at the touch of a keyboard, on television, from the corner shop; when even this week for instance, I can watch some of the world's best tennis players at the Australian Open; the astonishing Roger Federer versus Janko Tipsarevic match which went to five sets and a tie break in the fifth and was probably the best tennis match I've ever seen; from that to American Gangster, a wonderful movie I absolutely loved; to last night, watching the reformed Triffids Concert, A Secret at the Heart of a Song. How haunting was that, how wonderful, many of the most famous names and talents in Australian music at the rundown Metro Theatre in George Street.
I had free tickets after a story I wrote; initially for last Friday. Stuck in the Hunter after an explosion in one of the vineyards in the Hunter which killed two men and left another with 80% burns in a serious condition in hospital; and had to after some fuss get them changed to Sunday. I rang Polly, the woman who was in the bomb blast at UN headquarters in Iraq and lives on a now very comfortable UN pension in New York but has acquired an apartment in Sydney, in the morning, waking her up, and with some sense of achievement told her I had managed to change the complimentary tickets for that night. $60 a ticket, definitely worth getting. Not to mention that this was a piece of history, one of the country's most magnificent bands reformed after the death of their lead singer David McComb; the series of concerts the first time they had played in Australia in 18 years.
But Polly, taking me back, wasn't that enthusiastic and decided in the end she didn't want to go out. You don't want to see The Triffids? That made no sense. And then Virginia Fay; someone I had first met 30 years ago; the saint in our crowd of amateur disasters, popped in to my head and suddenly everything clicked into place and it was all meant to be. She'd been playing their albums and wishing she could get a ticket and wishing she could go, lighting a candle in their memory; and when I rang out of the blue after not having spoken for two or three years; it was too good to be true. And it was such a great night, just absolutely wonderful. Started at eight and it was heading on to twelve when we left; the bar open and the 80s fans and people our age, who remembered and had loved them for real; we were all mixed up in the crumby, rotten Metro.
And here was genius.
I couldn't help remembering those days when I had loved them the most, when their masterwork, the album Born Sandy Devotional, was stuck permanently in the tape deck. When the ramshackle old maroon Triumph I loved so much, after I "borrowed" $30,000 cash in circumstances I once wrote a book about that no one seemed to find very interesting; and I clattered across the inland, through floods and across the gibber desert, with The Triffids blaring in a perfect echo of the Australian landscape. And love and life and adventure were all ours; and I was on the run, yet again, nine lives already up; but this was our time, our destiny, our music, ourselves; all in perfect sync with the wide wide world.
THE BIGGER STORY:
www.thetriffids.com
Well the drums rolled off in my forehead
And the guns went off in my chest
Remember carrying the baby just for you
Crying in the wilderness
I lost track of my friends, I lost my kin
I cut them off as limbs
I drove out over the flatlands
Hunting down you and him
The sky was big and empty
My chest filled to explode
I yelled my insides out at the sun
At the wide open road
It's a wide open road, it's a wide open road.....
How do you think it feels
Sleeping by yourself?
When the one you love, the one you love
Is with someone else
Then it's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
And now you can go any place
That you ever wanted to go
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