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Heavenly Rewards

Ronald M. Wade

    Max and I watched a TV program about suicide bombers and their motivation and we started talking about the heavenly reward for human bombs. The Islamic clerics make sure their followers are dehumanized and turned into poor, ignorant, horribly sex-deprived clowns then promise them seventy-two virgins of their own in paradise after they have completed their one and only mission.
    When the program was over I wondered out loud, “Why seventy-two?”
    “Must be a mystical number from somewhere in their theology,” Max said. “Religions are usually hung up on mystical numbers of some kind. Remember the million-man march on Washington? Hell of a turn-out! Then Louis Farakhan babbles on for an hour and a half about numerology! All those people wound up standing around asking, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’”
    “And, another thing, the old Jews seem hung up on numerology themselves. Mention ‘666’ and Christians roll their eyes and make the sign of the cross to ward off ol’ Debbil. It probably has nothing to do with facts of any kind.”
    “I don’t think seventy-two wives sounds like all that good a thing,” I ventured. “I have concluded, through years of experience, that one is more than sufficient.”
    “Are you kidding me?” Max exclaimed, sitting up straight. “Seventy-two wives all living in the same place, fighting over who’s going to do this or that, each one bragging about her own kid being smarter than anyone else’s, raising hell about the seventy-two bitches next door. And just imagine seventy-two shrill voices telling you to wipe your feet and take out the trash, and you come in late with a faint aura of perfume and liquor about you and seventy-two wives want to know what in hell you’ve been up to?”
    “You’re right,” I agreed. “The Christian heaven would be a quieter place.”
    “Yeah, quieter and boring, walking around on golden streets, playing harps, no Irish coffee, no dark beer and having to grin in the face of relatives that you thought you had mercifully seen the last of. Not me!”
    “Well then, wise ass, what’s your idea of heaven,” I asked.
    Max leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head and smiled. “If I believed in heaven and all those baloney, I’d pick the Norse version. You fall in honorable battle, a Valkyrie comes and picks you up and carries you off to meet Odin in Valhalla which is set in the grove of Glasir where the trees have shimmering leaves of red gold. The Valkyries take off their armor and change into lovely white gowns and pour mead as long as you can drink it and the cook serves up pork, all you can eat, and you don’t have to worry about cholesterol. After the meal, you sit around, drink more mead, monkey around with the Valkyries and tell war stories. Then in the daytime, you go out and fight more battles and at the end of the day, your wounds are healed and you start the party all over again. Now that’s a place that would be worth hanging out in for eternity.”
    “Sounds exhausting,” I commented.
    “But a lot more fun than going to human-bomb heaven and putting up with seventy-two wives forever. By the way, that sounds more like the other place to me.”
    “I think you’ve got something there,” I said.

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