[Once, I attributed the sinking and tearing of the Middle East to the "Saudi Spring" that began in 2011. However, the dictator was hanged, and after the regime change, the world in the Middle East did not change for the better, and I wondered about the absurd paradox that unfolded before my eyes.

Now, as I dig deeper into the region, I realize that the reason may have come from the earlier World War I, when the British and French Empires drew the map of the modern Middle East with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. (During World War I, a secret agreement between Britain and France to divide the Asian part of the Ottoman Empire.) ）

These "artificially constructed" Arab states lack the most fundamental national identity, and the intricate internal contradictions of tribes, clans, and sects create a lot of centrifugal forces in each country.

For example, Irak, Syria, and Libia are all on this list.

While the Anglo-Saxon powers, who sought to dominate the world, were busy with infighting, domestic contradictions were able to hide them under the maintenance of strong rulers. Tragedy begins when an empire finally reaches the top of the pyramid.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the lighthouse shines on the oil-rich Middle East. For the lighthouse, oil is a necessary tool for maintaining their financial hegemony, and in order to achieve long-term control of the Middle East, they must keep the land permanently divided and hostile.

So in the first war, the line drawn by the previous generation became a spark that ignited at once.

To do such a thing, the hypocritical Anglo-Saxons have long been perfected.

In 1992, with the support of the lighthouse, the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Northern Irak was formed, which was the beginning of the lighthouse's breakup of Yirak and the beginning of the fragmentation of the Middle East world.

This is the critical time node, much earlier than the "Saudi Spring".

Then, in 2003, the Irak War, the process of disintegration of the Middle East world began to fall out of control. The lighthouse, wielding the gun of freedom and the stick of democracy snatched from the Soviet Union, brought down one political strongman after another in the Middle East, so that the centrifugal forces of clans and sects intensified, the bitter war intensified the antipathy of the Middle Eastern world towards the West, and the extremist religious organizations burned the prairie like wildfires.

They look crazy, aggressive, and fearless of death.

aroused the disgust of the whole world.

But

For young people who have no future to speak of, there is no choice but to take up arms and die.

They don't have a choice.

No.

As this sentiment continued to pile up, in 2011 a fire from Tunisian hawkers finally burned through the Middle East.

The world is broken, and we all have a small piece of our eyes in our eyes.

In South America, people produce drugs, and the underworld coerces the people at the bottom to fight against the warlords and the government, and uses that little bit of Weibo drugs to supply the upper class and live a drunken life; in Asia, people produce cheap shoes, toys, furniture, and assemble electronic products to meet the needs of the upper world; in Europe, some places have become wombs, and some places have degenerated into tourist resorts.

And the Middle East, there is an invisible wall with the world, and people outside the wall look here like flowers in the fog. The portraits of the people living in this land are stripped of the white dots or symbols of the story and ignored.

As a result, only people mourn 9/11, and no one cares about the countless 9/11 incidents in the Middle East every day.

Against the backdrop of the Lighthouse Age, the people alive in this most fertile land are white dots and do not deserve a story.

Oil is both a treasure and a curse.

A hundred years ago, a butterfly dropped at random by the empire caused a bloody storm in the Middle Eastern world that lasted for decades.

Millions of people have died and nearly 100 million have been displaced.

However, all this, falling on the head of the Reich, was only one plane. - Cheng Mo]

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Latakia, the fifth largest city in Syria and the largest port in Syria, was a strategic point of contention between various powers during the war, and after the signing of an armistice by the great powers, it was controlled by Ennoth and some order was restored to some extent.

At least in Cheng Mo's eyes, the rusty fixed cranes are still operating, and the tattered trucks are also moving in and out in an orderly manner, and ant-like workers are shuttling between them.

It's just that the port is not only hung with the Syria flag, but also the Ennoth flag, and the import and export are actually controlled by the Ennoth army.

Even though he and Athena have changed into human skin masks, their status as white people is still very conspicuous, and it will definitely attract interrogation from Ennoth's army, which is not a big trouble.

After observing the surrounding situation, the port was completely undefended, so Cheng Mo gave up entering the port through the regular way, asked Captain Omelo for four pistols and some bullets, and then went down the ramp with Athena and swam to the shore.

On the shore, Cheng Mo found a hidden place, changed clothes with Athena, and climbed from the rocky beach to the coastal road. It stands to reason that the coastal highway always makes people feel pleasant scenery and suitable for self-driving, but in fact this road is just a potholed two-lane asphalt road, the road surface is not good and too narrow, not to mention, there is no relaxing landscape on both sides, one side is full of yellow weeds, and the sea on the other side is gray on a sunny day, and it is really difficult to feel good when you look at the past.

Cheng Mo looked left and right, the left was the direction of the harbor, and the right was the direction of the town. As far as the eye can see, wisps of black exhaust left by the battered truck can be seen on the left.

And to the right, a car, not a single person can see, let alone a taxi.

Even if Cheng Mo was prepared in his heart, he never thought that the situation would be so bad. But at the moment there is no other way but to go to the city of Latakia first and find a way to Damascus.

Obviously, you can walk to the town along this road, so Cheng Mo turned his head and said to Athena who was standing behind him: "It seems that you can only walk through." ”

Athena didn't answer a word, just looked at him with a blank face. In fact, when she came out of the room, Cheng Mo talked to her, and she didn't respond, but she would do what he said,

Cheng Mo sighed in his heart, he didn't know when he would understand the meaning of "responsibility", maybe it was the changes that Xie Minyun brought to him, maybe he really respected and liked Athena in his heart. So he planned to keep that little bit of the bottom line.

Seeing that Athena was waiting for him to leave first, Cheng Mo felt that this was not a way, at least the two of them had to communicate normally. So he whispered: "I'm really sorry for trying to take advantage of you, I heard that my wife's death was related to Napoleon VII, and I couldn't care so much for a while......."

This was the first time he had tried to reconcile with Athena since he fainted due to fever and exhaustion, but Athena still looked at him wordlessly, without any intention of speaking. He didn't know if Athena was collecting his own brain waves, but he didn't dare to back down, and sincerely looked at Athena without distractions, allowing himself to try not to think about anything, so that she could peek into his true thoughts.

For the first time, Cheng Mo felt that lying was also such a difficult thing, knowing what the other party cared about and what he wanted to hear, but he had to say it insincerely.

"You want to take advantage of me?"

Seeing Athena speak, Cheng Mo realized that Athena didn't really want to be angry with him, so he ignored him, more like he planned to deal with the relationship between the two indifferently, and didn't talk to him if there was no need. Originally, Cheng Mo should have expected such a result, but there was always some indescribable loss in his heart. He reluctantly laughed at himself, "At that time, I wanted to use you to deliberately provoke Napoleon VII to be angry, as long as people are angry, they will show flaws, and he can't guess that I can get energy with my body, as long as you are willing to help me, I will definitely have a chance to kill him......."

"There's nothing to apologize for, it's a relationship between partners who take advantage of each other. Athena said indifferently.

Cheng Mo was a little sour in his heart, but on the surface, he said casually: "No, I don't think it should be like this between partners, so I apologize to you, not to mention that I don't have any value for you to use." ”

"Hydra's stupid sea dragon is of little use, as long as it kills boredom once in a while. ”

"You killed that sea dragon because ......." Cheng Mo paused for a moment, said "forget it" and turned to walk forward, he knew that Athena killed the sea dragon named "Hydra", not because it didn't bite herself, but because she couldn't take it and didn't want to leave it.

Athena didn't mean to ask, and silently followed Cheng Mo forward.

The road was eerily quiet, save for the sea breeze and the sound of their footsteps. Although it was only early spring, the midday sun was very transparent, and there were no greenery along the road, only withered yellow weeds. There is no trace of human activity, only some abandoned outdoor works and dilapidated houses lurking in the weeds in the distance. As he approached the city, in addition to some burned cars, Cheng Mo also saw a half-decomposed camel carcass on which huge flies fed themselves.

The sand-yellow earth and the silent and barren ruins of the city not far away form a wasteland scene after the fall of civilization.

At this time, the life in the harbor was completely like a false appearance, and the wounds caused by the war in the city were far from healing.

Cheng Mo looked down at Athena's shadow, she was not wearing a fat suit that could change her shape, and the sunlight drew her body line very windingly. He recalled the scattered lines she had drawn on the chair, and at this time, he tasted a simple and vague meaning, like a three-line poem.

This made Cheng Mo feel that if he could survive with Athena in the apocalypse, it would not be an unacceptable thing.

The city is built along the sea, along the oil road, there are also houses gradually rising by the sea, and there are more sidewalks on the roadside. Probably because of the sparse population, the feeling of suffocation and panic did not get better, when viewed from a distance Latakia still looks like a city, but when you walk in, it is even more miserable, full of devastation, not a single building is intact, some buildings are full of bullet holes, some are collapsed by bombs, and even Katyusha rockets can be seen, half of which have been destroyed into the walls, and very little glass is seen, and the windows are either empty or with plastic bags attached.

The whole city is filled with an earthy gray of ruins, and a sense of despair hangs over the city.

Cheng Mo stopped and looked forward, there should have been many shops on the side of the road, but now only one or two have opened the door, and the inside of the shop is black, and even the electric lights are not turned on. Cheng Mo saw an expressionless shopkeeper sitting at the door of a shop, basking in the sun idly. After hesitating for a moment, he walked over with Athena and greeted each other in Saudi.

Lying on the wooden chair was an old man, his skin was as dark as a zombie, his hair was gray, his facial wrinkles were as deep as a knife, and his right hand holding the chair handle had two fingers broken, giving people a sense of lifelessness. In the face of Cheng Mo's deliberate enthusiasm, he didn't react, just rolled his eyes and stared coldly at Cheng Mo who was covering his sunshine.

Cheng Mo didn't know if the reason why the other party ignored it was because of his accent, or because the Saudi language was too different from the official language of Saudi. In short, at this moment, his ability to read expressions was completely ineffective, just like facing a dead person. He thought he should buy something, and maybe the other party would be willing to talk.

Immediately, Cheng Mo stared at the store, it was unusually clean, so clean that it was very embarrassing, except for a black wooden shelf, and a few stacks of silk scarves placed inside, it didn't look like a store at all. The style of the silk scarves is also the same, and the color is not gaudy, mainly plain, and Cheng Mo guessed that it was probably the hijab used by Saint Laurent women.

Cheng Mo couldn't think of anyone who would patronize such a store, but he didn't really want to buy anything at the moment, he took out a ten-yuan euro from his pocket, and even gestured to buy a headscarf.

However, the other party only got up slightly and looked up at the euro in Cheng Mo's hand, so he shook his head directly and muttered something like Saudi. Cheng Mo didn't understand what it was, but he also knew that the euro seemed to be difficult to use here.

Cheng Mo had no choice but to say to Athena: "Let's go to the city center to have a look, at least find someone who can communicate." Athena chose not to answer such a question.

Cheng Mo planned to get used to this, so he continued to move forward. The city of Latakia is not large, with a total of more than 100,000 or 200,000 people, and it is a county at most in China, so the two of them quickly walked to the center of the city. Although the surrounding buildings are still in the dilapidated shape after being bombed, the number of people is gradually increasing.

However, the large number of people did not bring a good feeling to Cheng Mo, he could clearly feel that when they passed, everyone's movements slowed down, and they were all watching them, like onlookers who were not kind to the intruder, with a kind of indifferent hatred in their eyes.

This look made Cheng Mo, who had never known what he was afraid of, feel his scalp tingle. He quickened his pace, and found several shops along the road, from soap to camel milk, but none of them accepted euros, and none of them understood the Saudiic language he spoke, and no one even wanted to communicate with him more. Cheng Mo thought that maybe he would be much better off not wearing a human skin mask and not pretending to be white, but at this time there was no other way but to continue asking.

When he and Athena walked to a place that sold roast lamb chops, the smell of barbecue smoke filled the entire street, Athena looked at a few lambs bolted to the door, and then looked at the oily lamb chops on the long stove, grabbed Cheng Mo's arm, and whispered, "I'm hungry." ”

Cheng Mo felt that his IQ had been greatly challenged, and it was even more difficult than doing "mathematical conjecture", but how could he not even satisfy Athena's small wish, so he walked up, took out the euro again and waved it twice at the wary shopkeeper, and asked if he could use it in Saudi.

The other party didn't take it and looked at it, and immediately shook his head.

Cheng Mo looked back at Athena, only to see her staring at the lamb chops, where could he bear to disappoint her, so he wondered if there was anything on his body that could be taken out in exchange, the gun must not work, maybe he would be misunderstood if he took it out, and he would be beaten into a sieve by others first. Two powerful Chosen One who can fight the gods will be killed for a few strings of lamb chops, which is too funny.

As for Athena's black shielding box, only "Uloporos" is worth it, and she can't exchange billions worth of dollars for lamb chops, right? Cheng meditated and thought about it, and the Gucci jacket on his body was still worth a little money, and he once passed by a small vendor selling second-hand clothes just now, all of whom were torn clothes, and he felt that his coat should be changed for a few thousand Syrian Alila.

"Let's go get some money first. Cheng Mo pulled Athena back.

"I don't think I saw the bank. Athena said.

Cheng Mo shook his head, "Not to mention whether there is a bank or not, isn't robbing money here looking for death?"

"What then?" asked Athena, after a pause, "Can Uroboros exchange money?"

"There's no need. Trust me, I have a way to ......"

“oh。 ”

This time Athena didn't let the conversation stop abruptly, Cheng Mo's mood was happy again, he resisted the urge to move his hand from Athena's wrist to his hand, and let go of Athena's hand. The two of them walked through the deserted streets of the dilapidated city to the second-hand clothing store they had just passed, and most of them were cheap T-shirts and women's clothes.

It is said to be a second-hand store, but it is actually a stall on the side of the road. Cheng Mo glanced at it, the card on the T-shirt said "50" lira, and the Hun Yi wrote "150" lira, and the lamb chops just now were "250" lira. He didn't remember much about the exchange rate between the Syrian lira and the euro or the Chinese dollar, but he could roughly estimate that a hundred lira was equivalent to one Chinese dollar at most, and his coat of one or two thousand euros would be worth hundreds of thousands of lira, no matter how he said it.

Cheng Mo was not embarrassed, he took off his coat directly, handed it to the old man behind the stall, and gestured to ask if he would accept it.

The old man with his broken glasses took his clothes, examined them carefully, and gestured out a finger.

Cheng Mo thought to himself: "10,000 is 10,000! I will buy the clothes back when I find a place to change money." So he nodded.

The old man carefully put the clothes in the cabinet behind him, took out a thousand lira from his pocket with shaking hands and handed it to Cheng Mo.

Cheng Mo was a little confused, and hurriedly waved his hand, pointing at a thousand Syria and comparing ten fingers to the old man.

The old man didn't say anything, just shook his head vigorously.

Athena didn't know anything about the exchange rate, so she didn't know what was going on, and stared blankly.

A piece of clothing worth a few thousand euros is sold for a euro, that's what a fool would do. Cheng Mo didn't want to be this fool, so he pushed Yiqianla back, and motioned to the old man to return his clothes, but the old man didn't do it, with a face that Cheng Mo was forced to sell and buy.

Cheng Mo didn't get angry, but he couldn't cry or laugh a little. As the argument continued, the Syrians gathered around them, with the children peeking curiously at him and Athena, and the adults staring at them with malicious intent. Cheng Mo had no choice but to give up, put away a thousand miles, and pulled Athena to turn away.

Returning to the lamb chop shop, Cheng Mo bought four strings of lamb chops for Athena with a thousand miles of pull, and watched her eat them on the street. Soon Athena ate the lamb chops cleanly, Cheng Mo didn't mind Athena didn't ask if she ate or not, she gently raised her hand to wipe her mouth, and finally forced down the impulse, just handed the tissue to Athena.

"Wait until I change the money, I'll give you enough to eat. Cheng Mo looked at Athena who was still unfinished and whispered.

Athena nodded.

Although the sun was abundant in Latakia in February, the temperature was not particularly high, and there was only a sweatshirt left on his body, and it was still a little cold when the cold wind hit, Cheng Mo couldn't help but shiver, and his whole body was excited.

Cheng Mo clasped his hands to his chest, took a breath and said, "It's a pity that I haven't bought a low-level heat skill ....."

Athena hesitated for a moment and said, "I ran out of energy, I used up all my energy when I came back that day, and I haven't been able to replenish my ...... later."

Cheng Mo hurriedly said: "I didn't mean to ask you to hug me. ”

"Oh. ”

"Let's go first, we have to find a place to exchange money, or we'll have to sleep on the streets tonight." ”

Two people walk forward side by side, no longer one in front of the other.

"How can you not intercept energy?" Cheng Mo asked in a low voice.

"I don't have any adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin secretion in my body, and I don't know why. ”

Cheng Mo pondered for a while and asked, "Have you tried direct injection of drugs there?"

"I've tried direct epinephrine injections, but it has almost no effect. I thought maybe I could try antidepressant drugs, but there weren't any. ”

Just when Cheng Mo said, "I bought the medicine and tried it", a panting English shout came from behind him.

"Sir, sir....."

Cheng Mo turned around and saw a thin little boy riding a bicycle and chasing them along the road. Cheng Mo stopped and looked back at the little boy, he was about thirteen or fourteen years old, less than one meter seven tall, much shorter than Cheng Mo, but he was quite handsome, with thick brown curly hair, a straight nose, and the color of his eyes was also very beautiful, it was a very bright light brown, and the most important thing was that his eyes were not only big but also very smart, unlike the people Cheng Mo saw on the street just now, who were all lifeless. The clothes he wore were also clean and tidy, except for the thick patches on the knees of his clothes and pants.

The little boy jumped off the bike, ran a few steps to Cheng Mo and Athena, and hurriedly said to Cheng Mo: "I think you need my help, sir....." After speaking, he gasped for a long time before his breathing gradually stabilized. He wasn't fluent in English, and he had some bumps, but he could understand it.

Cheng Mo lowered his eyes and asked, "How are you going to help me?"

"It depends on what kind of help you need, to be honest, it's very difficult for you white people to get help here, few of you know English, and those who know English are all gone, and those Ennoth people never come to town. ”

Cheng Mo had been paying attention to the little boy's expression and judged that he was not lying, so he asked: "I want to exchange euros for some Syrian Alira, and I want to go to Damascus from here....."

"You have to go to the black market to change the euro, and as for going to Damascus, at least the day after tomorrow, we only have one bus to Damascus in two days......"

"Is there a chartered car?" Cheng Mo asked, "I want to leave as soon as possible." ”

"There are not many chartered buses in town. The little boy scratched his hair, "But ask my grandfather, maybe there is a way to ......."

Cheng Mo nodded, "What's your name?"

"My name is Khalid. ”

"How much do you need to be paid?"

Hearing Cheng Mo ask him how much he wanted, the little boy named Khalid had a twinkle in his eyes, and he rolled his throat and said, "I want three thousand dollars......."