It came to me last night

in a cloud of smoke as we were having some shisha on the hood of the Caddy. It was a magic thing that rose like a genie from the grey paste that Aisha had coiled atop the coals, her black-draped outline silhouetted against this town’s single streetlight like a gamousa beneath the moon.

“Nation of Pearls.” That beautiful notion couched there on the bed of Rushde’s limpid prose like a lobster on a bed of lettuce. It’s us: The Nation of Pearls. We are a nation, and we need a homeland. This was the genie: this was the magic idea.

And as I watched the slow swirl of the sewage in the irrigation ditch drifting northwards to the sea, I realized that this was a Holy Truth.

And so I call on you, you denizens of this far flung national brotherhood. This Lost Tribe of Babylon. To come together and: BUY SEALAND.

Each of us shall tithe as we are able, and more. And each of us shall have a passport and it shall be purple in color and our emblem shall be the pearl, glistening white. Shimmering there. We shall reside resplendent on our platform atop the waves and from her, our immobile Ship of Unstate, we shall engage in periodic acts of international lawlessness.

And we shall be a necklace of pearls, hung about the neck of the world.