A gift from god

Kuwait was almost a dead city. Apart from soldiers in gas masks patrolling the streets, the occasional blue-clad paramedic passing by in an ambulance was barely visible. Huangfulin drove as fast as he could to the Prime Minister's residence. Inside the palace it was the same scene, with soldiers and blue-clad personnel busy, not a single member of the prime minister's family or even his servants in sight. Suddenly Fahmy came out of the room, much thinner and tired. Huanglin was delighted and threw himself at him.

"Fahmy!

Fahmy was surprised, but he pushed his friend away:

"Why don't you wear a mask? It's contagious!"

Huanglin did not answer the question. He asked quickly:

"Haven't you caught smallpox?"

"No," fahmy said, puzzled. "It's strange. Even Dr. Moher has fallen ill. I'm afraid I'm the only lucky one."

Huanglin was overjoyed. "I'm relieved. I'm even more relieved." He explained to Fahmy, "If you don't get sick, my medicine activates the immune system and is still effective against this mutated smallpox virus. Treat the patient quickly."

The Prime Minister was in a coma, his body was covered with sores, some of them fused together, he kept talking gibberish, and sometimes he had convulsions. Huanglin looked at him sympathetically and asked softly:

"How many days?"

"It's been three days since the rash started, and all this nonsense has been going on: Operation New Moon, conspiracy, etc."

Huanglin did not ask any more questions. He gave him a spinal injection, a gluteal injection, and said, "I'm afraid it's too late for treatment. After that, there will be a high fever. That's a normal reaction, so don't worry about it."

After several male patients were cured, he asked, "Where are your mother and sister?"

Fahmy led him to another room, where the Prime Minister's wife and Amina slept side by side. Amina, who was a little less ill, opened her eyes and looked blankly at Huanglin, wondering if she recognized him. Her once beautiful face was now covered with ugly red blisters. Huangvrin turned her over to examine her back and inject her. Fahmy hesitated a little:

"Emperor Fu, according to Muslim custom, a woman's body is not to be shown to a man other than her husband."

"The doctor sees only patients, not men and women!" huanglin said sharply. Involuntarily he rolled over Amina's body and pulled back her clothes. Her back, too, was covered with herpes. Ovlin removed drug No. 5647, which ran down her spine to her coccyx, gave intramuscular or subcutaneous injections to both shoulder plexus and sciatic nerve roots, injected a new drug no. 7 into her hip muscles, and carefully applied ointment all over her body. He called softly:

"Amina, believe me, I have cured your brother, and I will cure you, too. Do you believe me?"

Amina moved the corners of her mouth with difficulty and forced a smile.

"I believe it."

Huanglin patted her cheek. He did the same with the prime minister's wife, Sarah, Moher, etc., and stood up and said to Fahmy:

"Go to the palace and heal the Emir. I know the medical authorities don't have a panacea for this emergent virus, so maybe my quackery is of some use."

Esha correspondent Murik spent the night in a bar, a method he often uses under Iraq's tight press restrictions to pick up scraps of information and, most importantly, to gauge the mentality of all sections of society.

Even in this small bar there is the same sickly fervor, with tributes to "Noble Salami" and "Messenger of Allah" often heard, as well as hatred of "Muslim traitors", mostly of the great powers threatening to protect the Border between Iran and Kuwait. Over the past two days, after Salami's televised address, the war fever has apparently subsided into a prayer for Salami's health.

As Murik sipped, he felt a prickly sensation in his back, as if eyes were on his back. He did not know, raised his hand to the waiter, tongue straight said:

"Another bottle of Cognac."

At the moment of turning around, he looked back quickly. Sure enough, on a table not far away, a middle-aged man was staring at him. The man, too, had a bottle of Cognac, Iraq's favorite drink, in front of him. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but Murik's professional gaze revealed a military presence.

Murik's heart tightened as he quickly reviewed his travels in recent days, unable to think of anything that had aroused the suspicions of the Iraqi military. He could not help glancing behind him again, and the man did not retreat after meeting his eyes, as if raising his eyebrows. Murik took the hint, grabbed the brandy, and staggered out the door. And drunkenly greeting strangers on the sidewalk. The man followed, keeping twenty paces from Him, strolling casually along, stopping now and then to check behind him by the reflection in the window.

In one corner, Mullik looked behind him and stopped. The man hurried over and said in a low voice:

"You're a reporter from Esha?" Mullick nodded. "Would you like to know the truth about this smallpox epidemic?"

Murik hesitated, wondering if this was a trap. "If it's not against Iraqi law..."

The man sneered, "Not against Iraqi and Islamic law. But against salami law, say, do you want the news or not?"

Mukeri was determined to take the risk: "How much do I have to pay you?"

The man pushed a piece of paper into his hand and laughed. "I mainly wanted to give Salami a little trouble, the false saint! You can have as much money as you like."

Murik took all the cash out of his pocket, thirty dollars, seventy-eight pounds, and over a hundred yuan, and thrust it at him. The man looked around shrewdly and quickly disappeared.

Esha News Agency, October 18.

Question: The gift of Allah?

The smallpox outbreak, which began on October 14th in Iraq (mostly confined to Baghdad and Kurdish areas) and Kuwait, has been growing rapidly and is now showing signs of spreading to neighbouring countries, where Saudi Arabia and Syria have closed their borders. At present, the smallpox epidemic has become the focus of worldwide attention.

The link between the smallpox outbreak and the giant comet has been noted by astute medical scientists. As we all know, viruses are a kind of lower living things, even a transitional agent between living and non-living things. Viruses are extremely simple, under 250 nanometers in size. They cannot reproduce on their own and must rely on host cells to do so. Viruses can be distilled into 'dead' crystals, stripped of any signs of life. But given the right conditions, it can come back to life. This feature allows them to hibernate in meteorite ice and recover once they enter the life environment on Earth. Some scientists believe that many kinds of viruses on Earth are the source of life from comets.

The impromptu President Salami called a piece of ice that landed near the heads of State of Iran and Kuwait on October 12th a "gift from Allah" and a blessing that comes once in a thousand years. But, ironically, smallpox began to spread, following Salami's trail into Kuwait, the Kurdish mountains and the Baghdad area. It was rumored that highly skilled Iraqi medical experts had secretly examined the ice and confirmed that it contained smallpox virus, but kept it secret to avoid Salami's embarrassment.

In 1977, the last case of smallpox was cured, and in 2000, after several delays, the last genetic copy of the virus in the United States was publicly destroyed to prevent an accidental resurgence. How childish and ridiculous it now seems. Can people live in a sterile environment forever? You eliminate smallpox, you get a similar kind of white pox; You wipe out the virus on Earth, the space visitors will send new ones. So the disappearance of one virus only clears the stage for others. It's a balance of life and death that never ends.

Historically, smallpox has a mortality rate of up to 25 percent. In The case of Kuwait, however, the death rate is feared to be much higher. For no other reason, medical progress caused a 50-year vacuum of smallpox virus, so that the original human smallpox immunity gradually faded. In this sense, it is a sad irony that the scientific forefathers who worked tirelessly to eradicate smallpox became the faithful accomplices of the goddess.