50 I CHRONICLESnpanionship? Several others stood up,nbut most of us didn’t. The ones whonremained seated raised their palms tonHeaven. Lou, sensing the dilemma,nmade haste to say that we were to praynfor Anna, to let the spirit of the Lordnfill us. Stan, hands to forehead: “I’mnnot sure what this means, but the Lordnhas said to me that you should changenyour name from ‘Anna,’ which meansn’bitter,’ to ‘Mora,’ which means ‘Inpraise God.'”nLou moved closer to Anna and putnhis hands on her stomach: “Oh, Lord,nwe just pray that you’ll heal our sister.nSatan, I bind you and cast you outnfrom Anna’s stomach. I bind you andncast you out from her liver. Lord, wenjust ask you to heal Anna’s cancer, andnto make her—what are they called?—nwhite corpuscles healthier. Lord, wenjust pray that you’ll restore our sister tonperfect health.” Their sister was in hern70’s. Some people spoke in tongues,nand the group prayed over Anna for 15nminutes.nThen the man with the sore leg gotnup and sat on a chair in the front of thenroom, and they put their hands onnhim and prayed in tongues, and thenwomen whom the Lord had told aboutnhis pain measured his legs and feltnthem and prayed over him. Stan helpednto jog God’s memory of how Man isnmade: “Ask the Lord to make the jointnhealthy,” he reminded Lou. And,n”Remember to ask the Lord to heal thensurrounding tissue.” Lou thanked himnand obliged.nWhen they were done, Lou satndown in the chair, and the man withnthe sore leg (I wasn’t aware of anynmiracles that night), along with Stannand a fashionable, vivacious youngnmother who’d brought her five-yearoldnson, prayed over his sore foot.nSeveral others, including an intensenteenage boy who spoke in the mostnelegant tongue imaginable (some peoples’nsounded to me like maracas orncats moaning after a fight), prayed overna 50-year-old man who had had ancrippling disease for much of his life.n”O Lord, we just ask that you heal ournbrother, let him walk upright, withoutncrutches.” The man looked unexpectantnbut grateful for whatever mightncome his way.nJane Greer edits Plains Poetry Journal.nLetter From thenLower Rightnby John Shelton ReednFacing the Untoward in a MemphisnMen’s RoomnI guess I should have known it wouldnbe an odd trip when the pilot told us asnwe were approaching Memphis thatnwe could expect “a little choppiness,nbut nothing untoward.” Untoward?nI was going to Oxford, Mississippi,nlast spring to lecture at the UniversitynREVISIONSnEastern Approachesn”Bow down to the Khan, or bendestroyed.”n—Mongol message to theirnneighborsn”How did the Mongols,” asksnThomas T. Allsen in his booknMongol Imperialism (Berkeley, CA:nUniversity of California Press;n$35.00), “acquire the needed manpowernand materiel … to implementnthe mandate of Chinggis Qann’that the Tatars should conquernevery country in the world’?” AsnAllsen points out in his Introduction,nthe 13th-century obscure, unpopulousnCentral Asian hordenreached the borders of Austria andnJapan, Egypt, and Indonesia withinna single generation and carved outn”the largest contiguous land-basednempire in human history.”nAllsen’s answer raises many parallelsnwith the present Soviet Empire:n”[The Mongols],” he says,n”[were] able to mobilize effectivelynthe human and material resourcesnin areas under their control.” Butnwhat Allsen doesn’t explicitly mentionnis the price of this mobilization:nWhen the soldiers of MongkenQan stormed Baghdad in 1257,nthey drove in front of them herds ofncaptured Tajiks (Persians), usingnthem as a human shield. This practicen(in the 8th century, Avars droventheir Slav subjects similarly againstnthe walls of Constantinople), combinednwith other, time-tested formsnnnof Mississippi’s Center for the Study ofnSouthern Culture. I did that and madenthe usual calls. I pigged out on biscuitsnand gravy at Smitty’s and catfish innTaylor. I stopped by Square Books,nwhere the owner, Richard Howorth,nwill shoot the breeze with you, if younwant to do that, or leave you in peacento drink coffee, smoke your pipe, andnread Fred Chappell’s poems, if you’dnrather do that. {Chronicles is on thenmagazine rack—that’s how good anbookstore Howorth runs.) At a truckstopnin Senatobia, I picked up a couplenof cans of Sun-dried Mississippi Pos-nof Asiatic mob control, did reducenBaghdad, and its entire populationnwas put to the sword.nIn their battles against the Germansnin World War II, the Sovietsnexhibited the same athtude. Accordingnto Guderian and othernGerman generals, in the 1941-1942nfighting before Moscow, Soviets advancednin dense masses, with rear,nunarmed ranks picking up thenweapons of those who were mowedndown in front. (It took Lend-Leasento supply the Soviet war machinenwith the hardware for the 1945nvictory.) In Yugoslavia, Tito’s partisansnwere surprised to discover thatnSoviets did not bother clearingnminefields before an advance —nthey went straight on, usuallyndrunk, and calculated their losses asnif against stiff enemy resistance.nIt is doubtful whether manyncourtiers of Bela IV knew wherenMongolia was or who the “Tartars”nwere; they had trouble enoughnkeeping track of their immediatenenemies, a few miles down thendusty roads of medieval Hungary.nYet, the Mongols did not lack informahon:nTheir spies, often Khazars,nLevantines, or even renegade Europeans,nmeticulously collected datanon their potential prey. This, too,nshould sound familiar to Americansnwho don’t think of the USSR, Iran,nor China as being somewhere onnthe moon. In the opinion of manynwriters, it was only the death ofnGreat Khan Ogadai, GenghisnKhan’s successor, that saved largen