Iran’s Supreme Leader was acting oddly.
It had been weeks since he last called for the demises of the Great Satan and Little Satan (the Middle one too); and when adoring crowds, as they had long been encouraged to do, enthusiastically chanted “Death to America!” he only looked on, and even seemed to frown disapprovingly.
It was a strange dream, to say the least. Might have been the pastrami sandwich and spicy pickles. I really must stop eating earlier in the evening.
But what a dream it was! The crowd of Iranians who had been under the Supreme Leader’s thrall for years were puzzled. And then, when the infallible imam announced the cancellation of the country’s nuclear program, utter confusion reigned among the citizens of the Islamic Republic.
They knew, though, that to challenge the Supreme Leader was to court a good flogging at best and, at worst, a funeral. And so, the populace swallowed their bile and went about their daily lives, just without the regular rallies and burnings of American and Israeli flags they had come to so enjoy.
Then, as dreams are wont to do, mine cut to an earlier happening, this one outside a small store in Williamsburg.
A tall man with slicked-down dark hair and sunglasses stood stoically in front of an establishment called “Rubenstein’s Heimisheh Habiliments and Fine Fabrics.” The man glanced to the right and to the left and, convinced that no one of concern had been watching him, slipped into the empty store. Mr. Rubenstein, its proprietor, welcomed him with a smile and a quiet “Hi, Avner.”
“Shalom, Mendel,” the sunglassed visitor replied with a heavy Israeli accent.
“Is ready?” he asked.
“Avahdeh,” Mendel answered. “Your techies made a siyum on the job last night.”
“It’s been tested?”
“Tested,” came the reply. “And ready to go.”
And with that, Mr. Rubenstein produced a bolt of soft black fabric from under the counter. Avner gave it a long look, rubbed its edge with his fingers and grinned broadly.
“You’d never know,” he said, his smile growing even broader. “Never,” the proprietor agreed.
The dream scene then suddenly shifted again, farther back in time, showing me what had apparently led up to Avner’s visit. In the basement of Rubenstein’s, amid an assortment of bekeshes, silk scarves, vayseh zokken and shvartzeh zokken, five young men looking through loupes were carefully weaving metallic microthreads deep into shiny black fabric.
You know how dreams are. Sometimes, you just know things. What I suddenly knew was that a partnership between Mossad and the Brooklyn haberdashery had developed a special high-end fabric whose embedded micro-threads were actually receivers of electronic signals. Signals that, if the fabric were near a brain, could affect the thoughts of the wearer, forcing him to recognize, and speak, only truths. The sender of the signal could turn on the receiver-material from anywhere in the world. All he needed was a kosher cell phone and a special code.
Suddenly I understood. And then I saw subsequent events. The high-end fabric had been sold at a steep discount to a Sri Lankan shell company that specializes in turbans. And that company then made a deal with the Iranian “Ministry for Attaining Garments And other good stuff” (MAGA). Thus did a beautiful black turban find its way onto an Iranian head—and not just any head, but that of the Supreme Leader.
Whisked back to the future, I saw how the Iranian populace, still reeling from the nuclear program cessation announcement, gathered in Tehran to hear a new major speech to be made by the Supreme Leader.
The moment arrived and the Leader, addressing the largest gathering the Islamic Republic of Iran had ever seen, explained the course of Jewish history to his countrymen and then announced the equivalent of Pharaoh’s admission: “Hashem hatzaddik, va’ani v’ami harsha’im.”
And then, my alarm clock rudely buzzed me awake. And just as I had been anticipating the imminent arrival of Moshiach.
May the zechus of our simchas Purim hasten it.
To read more, subscribe to Ami
