Mo as a Shepherd
by Albert Russo
Even though he no longer
wore princely fineries and blinding jewels, as he
used to when he lived at pharaoh’s court, Mo
found a nice girl, named Zipporah - she must have
shut her nostrils when they first kissed on
account of his manimalistic odor -,
married her, and they had two sons.
So Moshe (in Hebrew), aka
Moses, aka Moussa (in Arabic), tended his father-in-law’s
flocks for forty years - make that four years in
our era, coz, as you should know by now, the
people of yore over- and über-exaggerated sfars
the counting of time was concerned.
One evening, in a Goddess-forlorn
spot of the Sinai desert, while his flocks were
sheepishly trying to sleep, after having been
shaven and milked to the last drop - all that is
very tiring for them sweet and foul-smelling lil
beasts - sitting against a rock, Moses felt
drowsy. He started thinking about the thousands
of Hebrew slaves who were still living and
working their ass off in Egypt, while they kept
being flogged for the slightest reason, like
turning around for a few seconds on account that
they had to do their thing or to wipe their sweat
- hey, stop it, I didn’t say what you’re
thinking, yeah I’m a mind reader, that’s
on top of being a writer.
All of a sudden a bush just
above him began to burn, it got brighter and
brighter as he approached it.
“Mowowowses!”
hollered a voice; it was so ear-splitting, that
it sent multiphonic waves of echos all around the
surrounding dunes and mountains - and you thought
that your home cinema produced the ultimate sound
ever invented!
Poor Moshe got the fright
of his life and he started stuttering …
thutt thutt thutt, so much so that all you could
hear at first was someone spluttering on account
that he can’t unglue his tongue from the
palate - by the way, I looove boiled tongue
drizzled with yummy béchamel sauce, accompanied
by chestnut purée mmm … mmm, it’s
finger lickin’ wow woosh. Moses walked all
crooked and hump-backed towards the burning bush
to make sure that he really heard that baritone
voice.
“Not a step further!”
the voice hollered even louder, “take off
your dirty sandals, you are standing on holy
ground.” Scared to death, Moses was now bent
in four, looking like a friggin’ ninja
turtle that has slipped out of its shell and
suddenly resembles them Egyptian hairless
pussycats, which were held in awe, like the
monkey and the crocodile gods.
“I am the Goddess of
your father and of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob!” the voice exploded in the
atmosphere, bouncing against the mountains and
the rocks like in a giant pinball machine. Moses
was so flabbyghosted and bimboboozled
that he suddenly remembered how ostriches acted
in a dangerous situation and he hid his face in
the sand.
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