Snippets
Snippets
*Short pieces prompted by a single word or phrase
*Short pieces prompted by a single word or phrase
I maintain a writing routine to set myself up for the day and expand my active vocabulary. I list the words that I highlight while reading and then spend some time every day, writing short pieces of fiction prompted by these words. I call these 'snippets'.
Raptly
The kid sitting at the opposite end of the salon had his attention raptly fixed onto the TV showing stuff I wouldn’t watch a year into solitary. The urge to somehow divert his attention and save his highly malleable brain from paving some of its foundational neural roads with even the slightest inspiration from that horrid show was itching me to madness. Kids can’t tell. There might be a Tarantino in him somewhere I thought. I did not want to witness his execution.
Having nothing else to do as I waited for Jesus to call me up, I couldn't help but sink deeper into my concern for this kid. Demure as I usually am in such settings, I nonetheless considered starting a conversation with his dad in which I would aptly involve the kid, diverting his attention away from the TV and exorcising him of the evil of tacky drama. While contemplating this approach, my ambition died in its infancy as I quickly stole my head away when his dad caught my stare and turned to meet it.
Usually when this sort of thing happens, I spend the next minute or so frantically looking around, pretending to have an interest in the cracks on the walls. The trouble with this barbershop is that you can hardly get any signal and listening to music is kind of rude too because you’re effectively telling Jesus and co that I am not interested in what you might have to say about politics, sports, philosophy, general relativity or women. And they don’t have magazines or crossword puzzles around which is a good thing. Given their choice of drama for the TV, one couldn't be too hopeful about their choice of literature. This left me with no respite from having to witness Tarantino’s death by hanging. I wished somebody would fart. My money was on the old man in Bazzoli’s care who kept shifting in his seat, driving Old Bazzoli crazy.
As the disappointment of realizing that grandpa wasn't a winning horse began to dawn on me, my morale received another backbreaking blow. Seeing that Jesus was almost done with his client, I was getting ready to go and take my seat where I would drown myself in conversation and forget about the kid. But here came bursting through the door the client who Jesus had assured me wouldn’t show up. The bastard had dodged passed all the cars that could have run him over and here he was about to smear his sweaty ass all over my seat. He had a pretty good head of hair too the bastard. Seeing the glint of the TV’s reflection in the kid’s eyes, I threw a defeated glance at Bremer. With demand for his services stunted as usual, he was clutching at yellowing papers, catching up with last years’ news. I had the better half of an hour to go. Bremer it was.
Mauve
The man in the white coat made me realize how depressingly we all dress in this country. Having spent a few hours in the Grand Bazaar, possibly the most crowded, demographically diverse and heterogeneous part of my country’s capital, I think I got a pretty representative sample of the Iranian populace and all in all, among the reams of heads and legs that rushed and hushed past us, I saw but one man fitting himself with attire that can be described as colorful. In fact he would have caught an eye almost anywhere in the world. I mentioned his white coat, worn in a city engulfed in dust and grime. Some guts. Under that, his shirt was shiny mauve, tucked in light blue pants harnessed with a thin, coffee-brown leather belt with chrome hinges. I couldn't get a sight of his shoes but something tells me he walked around in white loafers with pink stitching. There he bubbled out of the still and grey surface of this dead swamp of souls and lasted for moments only as he quickly burst out of sight and into the turbulent waves of traffic, devoured by the grey.
Itinerant
I am obsessed with firsts. I still have my first ever phone, my first swimming goggles, I have almost every little memorabilia from my first relationship, I know the first man who went to space, the first to both poles, I have in my possession the very first pair of soccer boots I owned, my first tooth that fell sits securely in the trunk of a die cast car on my shelf and when I hit the ground wailing after a guy had totaled my knee in soccer, I stopped yelling somewhat abruptly as I realized that the injury was happening to me for the first time. It is no surprise then that when I spotted Colm a few feet away by the bar counter, I saw common ground between the two of us as far as the eye could see. He was instructing Blaise on the perfect recipe for barbecued meat, as per the customs held sacred in Kentucky. Their conversation had begun when Blaise asked about the rings. Colm had on the fingers of both hands, the most conspicuous array of massive rings rattling against each other with every movement. That every article of clothing upon him had the potential to be a museum piece was further testament to the sheer ostentatiousness of his rings whose collective glint had stood out against a backdrop of such tapestry. As if he had worn them for the very purpose of bating strangers into conversation, Colm calmly took another sip at his glass when Blaise opened dialogue. With an animation rehearsed bar after bar into second nature, he began. Soon, for every alien prop dangling from his person came forth a description, explaining its significance. His ornate glasses he had gotten from the island of Morano upon his first trip to Venice, the rings were from all over the place, predisposed as the digits are for becoming the bodily trophy showcase of an itinerant man, with origins ranging wildly from Saskatoon up in the Canadian no-mans land all the way to Aleppo of Syria which he was yet to visit. He wore a buckskin jacket of the sort that have leather wicks dangling from their shoulders. It was a souvenir of his latest visit to Indiana, where he bought it from a town where according to him they were first made. His had a map of the states on the back with beads sewn onto every state, indicating the number of times he had been there. On Montana there were none.
Obverse
I will not be surprised to hear that this whole world is some sort of a simulation. Whether by design or through rapid iteration and evolution, the world appears to be balanced in the way games are. For every advantage there is a flip side. The obverse of speed is low health, the cost of a really powerful ability is an agonizingly long wait for its meter to fill up and so on. Take the mechanics of aging for example. You enjoy your physical peak when your mind is one malleable mush of Tabula rasa. When later on in life that tableau of yours is adorned with strokes of knowledge, that often arrives at the cost of losing the piercing simplicity and buoyant curiosity of a young mind. This balancing act ensures a perpetual motivation for cooperation, as well as for specialization.
Chauvinism
What’ll they do to us Harry?
You tell me who’ll see us and how he slept last night and I’ll tell you the rest.
Not your first time is it?
Not really. But it’s all the same anyways. There’s a pattern to it. Give it time. You’ll figure it out.
Bernie Hasn’t. He’s been here 16 months and it’s not like he’s figured it out at all.
I suppose there’s no lesson in the second kick of the mule. Good example for you he is. Just think of ending up like him every time you feel like chickening out.
Not me. Somebody’s got to speak up to these pricks.
Not so fast kid. You’re a long way from home and you sleep here every night. They’ve got you by the balls. Lemme deal with it. You’ll have your day.
They can suspend your leave.
And I can buy them a beer.
Caleb did not follow.
This is make believe, make believe. You see these guys here walking stiff like they’ve shoved a lamppost up their ass, yapping about discipline and how everything’s a big deal? The moment they step out of these walls, poof! It’s gone. They’ll change out of their mascot suit, shove it in a crumpled Asda bag along with the lamppost and scuttle away to their beat up old buses. All this pomp and seething military chauvinism, and a window side seat on the way home will make their day. You’re stuck inside these walls Caleb. I’m not.
Jauntily
The smell of fresh grass and burning wood had slid half the crowd down nostalgia slope, affixing heads, zoning out eyes. Those still in the present where the ones closest to the grill where the smell of charred meat and its sizzling were too overwhelming to let you slip into a trance. These were bathing in barbecue smoke in return for war booty and the experience of gnawing at it while it was still too hot, laughing and making fun of their distorted faces as their cheeks played volleyball with the scalding morsel. The German lady with an apron opened the door to the courtyard and made way for the grill with just as much care as a panzer as the people in her way scuttled out of her path in hurry like cars giving way to an ambulance. With hands occupied with paper plates, the panzer lady had tried to slide the door shut with a combination of her feet and ass, leaving an opening just wide enough for a golden retriever to squeeze through and gallop jauntily towards the grill with mischief in mind. At first sight of the dog, some ladies in the aisle drew their feet closer and snatched their plastic bags from the floor. A young lady somewhere behind where I was sitting was scared of dogs and was looking for refuge causing a bit of a scene. The panzer lady stopped in her tracks with a recoil and as she was turning her turret to face the clamor, the dog shot past her with its tongue trailing down the side of its cheek. “YETZ STOPPEN MAX!” rippled through the courtyard like shockwave from the shell she never fired and Max, vibrating in his place as dogs do when scared, faced back towards his master and sat down in submission.
Trunk (as a dress)
Fuck it, might as well wear it now, Payam thought to himself, holding a shiny fabric that flowed form his hands like molten emerald. Raindrops were banging on the roof of his van and droplets trickling down the windshield dotted Payam’s hands with dancing shadows. The duct tape sealing the hatch above his head had bulged around the inner edges, pregnant with little bulbs of water. How much longer before it broke? Ever since the hatch got screwed, He had to roll the windows down to get some air and for some reason, opening a hatch and rolling down windows were not the same to him. You can have a window in your house that opens like hatches do but rolling down a window reminds you of being a thin aluminum sheet away from homelessness at every turn. Plus he didn't like going back and forth between the front end and the loading bay to roll them up and down. He had gone through great pains to make the loading bay self-sufficient and had celebrated the event by visually separating the van in two with a curtain fashioned out of two blankets and some velcro, the sound of which marked his every window winding journey. The raindrops banged and caustics from the droplets danced on his shiny velvet trunk as he began to form droplets of his own around the corners of his eyes. What better place for a man to cry than in the altar of his mother’s embrace? Life had long desecrated that holy shrine of his, burying it in an embrace of its own. But here was this trunk, every warp of which was sewn with his mother’s love and every weft woven with her blessing. It was the last thing she made before her hands went hanging from the ropes and her thoughts went all blurry with droplets of sadness that had accumulated throughout the years to burst eventually into a flooding depression to knock her out. He buried his face in its folds and ran his nose along the crevices, searching for where her scent lingered the strongest. He scoured the folds like he scoured every corner when he lost his mom’s hand in the grand bazaar and just like then when he finally found her he froze, and then broke into tears.
Promenade
Outside the library, clearly lost, constantly shifting his gaze to avoid making eye contact with anyone, promenading along the boulevard to and fro. That’s how I found him for the first time. His fisted hands could be seen bulging out of his pockets. Pacing back and forth, he was rocking his nerves to sleep. I remember him startling as if hit by a jolt when I said hi. Imagine, you get nervous by being approached by a stranger, then as you try to calm yourself down, you realize that the first impression you imparted on that stranger was a nervous stagger and there goes any chance you had of easing down into normalcy. I don't know what goes on inside the human brain in moments like this that suddenly throws even automatic functions of the body into disarray. Your saliva swallowing operation goes manual on you, your breathing interrupts your speech and your speech returns the courtesy as your hands grow a mind of their own. Boy. It’s like when the lights go off. You have to light candles, where the hell where they? Water, you’d thank your doomsday theorist of a dad for the stowed away bottles. The lights went out in his brain when I said hi. To this day he never admits, but the truth is, he was just scared of entering the library on his own. Life is not easy when you see all eyes as cameras, all of them focused on you.
The protestors weren't the violent type and decided to do a sit in right in front of the guards who had cordoned off the Lubyanka which was probably running its many eyes loose on the young crowd, picking those it wanted to have for breakfast.
The place seemed half-abandoned and the main saloon looked as if it was being cannibalized for parts. The shutters mournfully sang as they swung and no life met the eye but a scrawny horse tethered loosely by the entrance, drinking from the trough like nothing else mattered.
Every day can be your last when you’re fat past a certain mark. And he sure had passed that mark with flying colors. It was awful to watch. He ran for a few seconds before his body remembered it had forgotten how to run, and that brief sprint gave him more momentum than he could handle. Poor guy first stumbled, the way you would when you climb down a step that isn't there. That just sped him up even more as he paddled his feet desperately to keep his massive torso afloat, sinking an inch deeper with every step. Then he actually tripped on something and went headlong towards the cobblestoned ground, with his body following suit with a slight delay like an eighteen wheeler rear-ending a car that had just hit a wall, squeezing his face further into the grooves, and of course, snapping his neck.
The case files were squeezing free from under his armpits, the papers inside slipping out of the envelopes. A shuffling noise came from the cubicle where the intern at the teleprinter took refuge. He too was trying to get away, clenching his coffee mug as an alibi. Soon, there was a sudden need for coffee felt by every hand on deck. Everything and everyone was running for cover. Even Benini’s own glasses were drooping, as if deserting the service of his incredulous, weary eyes as he stood there hard-jawed, asking chief Barkley without uttering a word, this simple question: Why NOW?
The way they raised their kids, you couldn't help thinking that if they were teased and mocked at school, they would come home to their duke and duchess parents announcing that they had been “victims of most shameless persiflage by the philistine peasantry” at the public school. In a time that was falling behind itself, these erudite aristocrats were falling behind time.
Her ham-handed performance on the massage table matched the first impression she gave off. She was a broad-shouldered beast of over 6.3 and could easily have passed as an Indian male to an overworked officer at airport passport control. As such, she emitted her first impression like a lighthouse sends out its beacon. Her hands were like logs and landed on you with just as much grace as logs do when they’re thrown in a river. Her fingers on the other hand, matched in dexterity, a frenzied water hose flying and twisting in the air like a deflating balloon.
The bastard forced us all into the classroom like sheep into a paddock. He spoke with the fiery passion of Churchill in the British parliament, only he was talking about which types of stone were followers of Ali and which ones were not. He vigilantly poked away with jabbing warnings, the slightest sign of drowsiness wherever he found it. And he found that a’plenty. Behind him in his blind spot though, his acolyte, our Oberkapo was rocking his head like a madman as he struggled to stay afloat amidst the turbulent waters of slumber.
You had to duck and walk around like an old crone otherwise you would hit your head against one of the many battens that held the roof together. The worst part about getting caught by one of these was all the little splinters of wood that got lodged deep under your skin causing a condition to which at times in that sweltering heat, death was favorable.
I was new to the place and my upbringing was carried out by people who never envisioned their offspring being caught in such circumstances and had thus provided me with no training of the sort. As such I politely nodded in submission and ascended upon a ladder that wobbled in the most heart wrenchingly precarious way possible. If I were to die at the end of that ordeal, my last moments would've been spent up there hating myself for not having the guts to tell that bastard in my most fervid tone to put his sodding feet on the first step and stop it from going all Bachacha on my ass.
The merriment that washed over Emma wasn't washed off by the rain. To the contrary a further giddiness bloomed in her as she blithely cantered along the slippery side-walk, precaution blown to the wind and in its place the percussion of her high-heels on the shiny pavement.
I could imagine her nerve cells firing like they were in Somme. Even in its collective sense, the human brain had hardly ever registered as bizarre a combination as what she had put together during the past few hours. Cans of Red-bull, Heineken and iced coffee were scattered around the room, the hollow shells left from her artillery barrage on her mind. The emptied bottles of Whiskey whose contents were like sentries whisking away the foot-soldiers of her consciousness under the constant zap of their machine-gun fire, laid around like used drums of ammo. Leaning against the wall, she had a pipe in one hand and the other hung from her body like an anchor lodged in the seabed, surrounded by coral reef of piles of nondescript pills, rolled joints and bags of weed. With her head tilted upwards, she looked like an oneiromancer drowned in her divination. In her voyage she saw creatures that even an additional billion years of evolution wouldn't bring about. She saw herself riding them. She saw all these mini me’s, these tiny versions of herself riding the creatures as they raced each-other. Leading the race was this quadruped amphibian with eyes on the side of its head and a rostrum on it, behind which sat Charlie with stark determination in her face while they pierced the heart of the jagged earth underneath as if it were liquid, swimming through it like a torpedo while other Charlies and their steads galloped hopelessly behind, feeding each-other dust. Suddenly she began gasping for air. A choking sensation had dived in like a life guard to fish her out of the abyss.
It never gets old. The bafflement strikes you with just as much punch as the first time. These people had hardly anything to eat. They could see their children’s futures looking more like their depressing present by the day, all because they couldn't lose a single hand on the field even though it took away a mouth with it. Looking at the younger ones I thought, they were sentenced the day they were conceived, these poor wretches. The table was moving like an entranced washing machine as the crowd heaved back and forth in their haste to throw away the little money they had in exchange for literally “god” knows what. The most ironic picture that still endures in my mind was that most of these donors were accompanied by their kids who were there to watch the little chance they might have had to go and find a job in the capital or fund their studies or whatever, being used to buy some opium for the aching souls of the masses of which their blithely generous parents were members. They were in an inexplicable rush to reach the clerk at the desk where they would offer their savings to this group oblation and the future of their house to oblivion. I never got over it. I still hear the clinking of their gold bracelets rattling against each other, as if ringing the bell on their knocked out life. At least warm food was being handed out to the donors, with leftovers finding their way to even more miserable souls who often entertained the thought of becoming donors themselves, on account of the spare kidney they were born with. As evening spread out its dark veil, I saw three kids in rags, stuffing their pale cheeks with leftovers under the beaming light that lit the massive banner by the tent’s entrance. They were laughing and I was about to cry, trying to count how many meals’ worth of dough that massive colored banner had glutted up to be there.
Abe had zoned out, leaving his body arching limply in the chair and his head propped precariously on his right hand. He looked like a rag doll forced to sit through an afternoon tea in a child’s role-play. Poor Abe was all severed from the outside world since that haggardly crook Aref had nicked his phone. As such his entire attention was devoted to what happened within the barracks walls and the smallest things would captivate and consume him in such disproportion that was readily apparent to me who still hadn't lost touch with the real world outside. He had switched shifts with a fellow soldier on no more than a verbal agreement corroborated by a half-sane witness, trusting that this comrade of ours would stay true to his word and show up for the shift. But it seemed that this soon to be groomed private was too busy with his nuptial arrangements to uphold his other ones. As the minutes rushed away with no sign of the much expected private, Abe lost his cool and slipped into one of his self loathing tirades whereby he denounced his ways of trusting people and being generous with the benefit of the doubt. I let him get on with it undisturbed as I knew full well that after this emotional discharge came a brief silence, followed by a deliberate retracting of many of his denunciations. A man’s nature has him by the scruff after all. You may bark all you want but it will leash you in at the end.
The ghost they called him. And he sure looked like one, with his flesh mortgaged off to save the vitals, he was but an emaciated phantom, an apparition of his former self. I had no clue what gave him the nickname before, but it sure suited him just as well if not better now. Either way, ghost was what we called him, mostly behind his back. For his person we rarely met, and his talk we could hardly avoid in that cold jug.
While us men are blessed with the convenience of a wrinkled stick of smoke you’d find in your car’s cupholder or something, girls are like those cigarettes you have to roll from scratch. They require an unimaginable amount of maintenance. While a good old stick of Marlboros could be lit and plucked into the corner of your lips in a few brisk movements, those rolls demand a prepping ritual that is an experience to which I suspect the inhalation of the smoke itself comes second for those who are into it. You have to spread out the paper which you’ve chosen from amongst an endless variety of slightly different fabrics, onto which you will sprinkle the particular mix of tobacco that your discerning taste doth satisfy. You have to keep that tobacco in a certain way too otherwise it will be spoiled by either too much or too little moisture. Speaking of moisture, those who deal in this peculiar school of smoking claim that there is a subtle art to licking the paper shut and another in sealing the seam as you slide the stick between your thumb and index. In all its pretentious ceremoniousness this business of fine smoking reminds me of coffee and all the bullshit that its shrouded in. You know, how these baristas ask you whether you want your coffee Columbian or from Ethiopia, allowing you to choose which child labor you’d wish to endorse, or how they boast about their house-exclusive heating sequence that results in just the right blend of creaminess and grainy coarseness and on and on as you plead with them to shut up, one nod at a time. Yeah, so women are like rolled smokes and coffee. They must be geniuses. How else could you possibly hold a job, raise a kid, cook for the household and go through the endless list of feminine chores such as manicuring your nails, ten of them, and tending to your womanly challenges while leaving enough time and presence of mind to go and crimp your hair also? I tip my hat to those of them who do it all and extend my understanding to those who fail at this marathon.
Back where I used to live you weren't supposed to make mistakes. There was no safety net only a lake-full of piranhas. This was made worse by the illusion that grabbed hold of you by peering into the lives of people in the better off parts of the world, mostly through films that showed folks going through a decade of drug abuse and unreined fornication only to come out of the other end with a wealth of experience, having forged out of the fire of their youth a sceptre of maturity on which they would lean as they went on to command their success. With such false hopes my fellows took to the swiveling mountain pass of life, care free and with their hands in their pockets. Having their hands about them and at ready at all times would be the first lesson to be learned as they land on their faces, nose first. Here every miscalculation leaves its mark on you forever and sends you rolling down the deep where you might think you’re at the wheel but whichever way you turn, you’re still going downwards. Here every misstep, every wrong decision, every run of bad luck crimps your potential, shrinks your choices, ravages your future and rapes your soul.
It was as if darkness had fought a gruesome battle with light and had won, reigning supreme over the room, leaving of light, only its red blood covering the battlefield. I walked slowly through the blurry bulks of shadow, fighting my instincts not to grope around to make sense of my surroundings, ruining valuable evidence in the process. Under my feet, little shards of glass became even smaller with a shriek like wounded soldiers moaning over their crushing bones. A cold line caught me above the eyes and threw me out of my trance. Being caught in the face like that in the dark, I felt the way you would if you were swimming in the ocean and suddenly felt something grabbing hold of your ankle. I clawed my holster with hysteria and almost undid the hinge before I realized what it was as I saw more of it ahead of me, zigzagging across the room. Line after line of wire was stretched from wall to wall, slumping under the weight of the many pegs that sat on them like ominous crows holding on to pictures dripping water that had turned blood under the red light. I approached the first line as naively and ignorantly as a young solider walking in an unmarked minefield. I craned my head forwards once I had reached the limit of my eyes’ zooming ability. Then the first mine went off. Like a crane operator pulling back at his stick after hitting an elevator tower or something, with just as much horror and panic as he would be in, trying to pull back the lever as if pulling back time, while enduring the burning pain that branched out in his groin as the coffee from his lopsided Starbucks cup claimed his pants unperturbed, I snapped my entire body backwards, dislodging myself from my footing like a bridge collapsing when its bearing cables go snap. I almost fell on my back on the shards but managed to stay airborne as my sweeping hands finally latched onto something. Trying to collect myself, I almost fell again as my hands slipped on the metal surface of whatever it was I was leaning on. They felt wet and sticky. Shellshocked by what I had just witnessed, I examined my palms under a blurry gaze. A dark liquid was smeared all over my hands. I squinted my eyes looking for a cut and gathered my senses about to feel one, but none was there to find. A thought I wished to dismiss, came to my mind. I looked back at the pictures hanging form the pegs. I moved forwards, slowly, turning my head sideways as to avoid the evil that jumped at you from that picture. Touching the glossy sheet, I felt the liquid flowing over it. It was fresh, it was sticky. I looked down, fighting back the images that were flashing in my head. Here I saw blood flowing out of his asphyxiated little figure. Shake the head, flash, go away! Down there on the table I saw pictures resting in pools of it. There I heard the splash of blood being poured out of a bucket into the proving trays. Grit the teeth, shut up, make those teeth screech, drown that sound, splash, shut up! Nausea had me by the throat. “The throat… shit” I muttered to myself. Blood, is far less dramatic under the microscope and a throat-slit kid hanged by his innards is far less haunting in text. “This is the training” I remembered Crowley telling me as I looked at my vomit on all fours. My respect for him was now at an all time high.
Manny and Morty were their names. I usually judge people. And often I do it before I even meet them. When I’m in a bad mood, you can count on that judgement being quite unsavory. My mood wasn’t great that night, so naturally my judgement followed suit. I spent the time it took me and Natalie to walk the length of the room through phony marketing specialists and various proud holders of other meaningless occupations, doing Manny and Morty’s job for them by providing myself with a first impression of the pair. It was a bad impression. For a while at least, until we were actually close enough for my eyes to register their persons in high fidelity. Instantly, my loathing bloated into impassioned hatred. They exceeded my expectations of their disagreeableness, thanks to their ostentatious show of wine tasting. True connoisseurs of wine they were, displaying the whole package of swirling the glass once per blink of the eye, sinking their nose into the meticulously engraved crystal goblet so as to leave marks on the bridge of their noses and of course, that whole phony chit chat accompanied by weird flexing motions of the jaw as they talked about the wine. People who talk about the wine, you see me standing trial for murder one day, you can bet it was someone who talked about the wine that I had killed. I mean you can talk about the ironic disadvantages of capitalism and the downside to the social mobility that it entails, but you turn that down and opt for an in-depth analysis of the merits of Bordelaise Sauvignon over Burgundian Chardonnay. What kind of numb-minded philistine does that? Manny and Morty as it turned out. Of course, you can use wine related analogies to drive a point home, you can go an chase god in the details all you want with wine if there is some higher level message to come out of it, but to indulge in an esoteric, exhaustive marathon of verbosity on wine for wine’s sake, that’s one line of mine that’s as red as your reddest damn Sauvignon after a good swirling. Such were my preconceptions of the couple as I went for a handshake.
I was just over and done with the deputy chief’s haunted computer when this bloated first lieutenant with a belly the size of a gym-ball walked in, clutching at a power-strip from its wire like it was the nuclear codes. I could tell what he wanted. Didn't take a genius to see that far. What can go wrong with a power-strip? It either works or it doesn't and in the case of the latter, whatever it is you can do, can only be done by fiddling with the wires inside. The strip needed open surgery and I was a nurse qualified in the haste of war. With a computer, you can always throw a few incomprehensible words, aka English to these imbeciles and blame it on some insidiously sinister malfunction brought about by aging and under-ventilated parts. But if you don't know how to fix a simple contraption like a power-strip, there is no such camouflage to veil your inaptitude. I was so naive back in those days that I was genuinely worried that failing to fix this power strip would expose me as some sort of fraud who had lobbied his way to this coveted position. I usually make things far worse for myself in these situations. Instead of telling the moron that I was no electrician and he couldn't just grab hold of every other piece of junk with a plug attached to it and expect us to resurrect it in a few seconds like a repairman in some video-game, I said: “sure, hand it over and I’ll see what I can do”. I could no more see what I could do than he could’ve seen his own balls. With a put-on confidence that is always obvious due to its excess, I walked to the workbench and grabbed a fat spool of solder. I eyed him in a way to suggest he leave as I rummaged through the toolbox feeling for the solder gun but he was standing there as still as the barrel that he was. I unscrewed the strip and looked at its innards with this guy’s bulb-like shadow weighing over me as I kept the eye-work steady. Then I turned and looked at him full gaze, all focused, with intent, wishing I could just ask him to sod off, but then I felt sorry for him. I mean we were on the third floor and back when they built this place they went generous with the headroom so it was more like six floors to be honest and that’s a solid ten floors for a fat bloke. And here’s this guy, who had just found it worth his time and effort to travel this far and long, panting as he climbed the stairs, almost having a heart attack, all for the off chance of maybe having this worthless, murky, cracked and filthy power-strip fixed by the clueless conscript that I was. I was almost moved to tears by this imagery. “What’s the problem? Is it beyond you?” He said right when my pity for him had reached a tipping point, causing it to lash violently back into loathing like regurgitated food going back where it came from leaving an acid burn behind. I was lucky I gutted up a shrewd response before I breathed fire onto him. “Listen, this is gone big time. I can fix it, but I need one of those ohmmeters to find the failing spots.” I said to him, while looking at the disemboweled power-strip poofing away in dismay like a surgeon looking at an abdominal cavity where cancerous cells had had themselves ten years of happy-hour. “Don't you have an ohmmeter?” He asked and “no” he heard almost before he had even finished. That’s the trick, the way you say no. You have to say it like Michael Corleone said it to Kay, without the slightest hesitation. Then you have to put on this poker face for the few ensuing seconds while the guy stares at you looking for the cracks to open. I kept the cracks tight, but had a harder time reining in my laughter as I stared him out of the room, holding the ohmmeter visibly in my hands.
The place had an elevator boy like they have in a hotel. A hispanic boy of about 60 years of age he was. The cabin was adorned with engraved golden metal-work that framed mirrors with edges cut like fine diamonds. I was enamored by the many reflections of myself and the old boy in the mirror edges, contemplating how the two of us moved in unison in all our reflected versions like a duet choreographed to absolute perfection. The harmony melted into chaos like a film strip crumpling before catching fire as the frenzy of reflections unified into a massive canvas of burgundy. The door had opened and my brain just registered the bell ring that was issued moments before. I gave the boy a thanks that doubled as a goodbye, to which he nodded with a wholesome smile as he instructed me on how to find the Dobrovskis’ flat with the slow and tender animation that is exclusive to old hispanic people who take it easy. There were paintings hanging on the corridor walls who’s frames alone cost more than my organs. The burgundy wallpaper, I could have afforded to frame up and hang somewhere in my house provided it was cut way clear of the gold embroidered edges. This was one of those voluptuary New York apartments you never see and only hear about. Having overcome my nerves which were excited after I had truly grasped just how far on every quantifiable spectrum me and the Dobrovskis stood or maybe they sat, I rang the bell and stood there staring at the golden plaque on the piano lacquered door, engraved with the letter D.
She was like a candle, you got butterflies when she was close. Her brown eyes hooked on to a bucket in your stomach, swaying it to and fro. Her silky chestnut hair was made into a skein with intersecting twists and knots that only girls are equipped with the faculty to produce. She walked with a grace she seemed to have been born with. Moving around with the serving tray held above her shoulder, she smacked in that last nail in my coffin by resting a hand on her left hip and plucking it out like a sweet out of its wrapper. Melting, my eyes trickled down her chiseled legs, leaving a puddle at her fragile feet, so clear that she could’ve seen her reflection there if only she looked. Like a traveller discovering a new land, I was restless to put a name on her. I couldn't untangle myself from her brown locks. I named her “my brown eyed girl”.
Five phantoms, flying in a skein, were responsible for the Armageddon down in our little world. I remember clearly how they paraded over our dismantled life, not even for a moment straying from their pristine skein. I found it beautiful and my admiration puzzled me. How can men responsible for such a mess, still care for the beauty of their formation? How can one afflicted with such vulgar destruction, gaze at its very perpetrators and marvel at the tantalizing harmony of their war machines?
The G-3 had Germany written all over it. If IKEA were to make a gun, you can bet it would’ve been very much like the G-3. This coarse and lifeless instrument of taking life, was artistically designed to be dismantled and reassembled intuitively with satisfying grace. The abutting parts were held together by metal dowel pins that slotted in their little hole as sweet as a bubble pops on a bubble wrap. You mustn't forget that the gun in my hands had over 50 years of age and all this time, it had been used primarily in training corps by clueless conscripts who plucked out its dowel pins countless many times. Yet, they weren't worn down in the slightest. Makes you wonder how the Germans lost the war. Twice.
Chomsky stood still behind the massive wooden batten that once held together the missing part of the roof. He gauged its strength with his leg. It didn't budge. Inspecting it methodically, he spotted an opening among the criss-crossing planks and beams, just big enough for his skinny jewish ass to pass through. With unsoldierly elegance, he dropped his shoulder, letting his rifle slide off and catching it mid air, he propped sweet Vanya leaning against the riddled wall. Having on his leather gloves, he briskly put his hands on the splintery batten, lifted the closer of his lanky legs to the obstacle and threw it over to the other side like you throw a rucksack over a wall. Dropping his head he swiveled on his other foot and squeezed through like a cat. Old Chomsky then dusted off his uniform and clapped to do the same to his hands. The sound echoed, filling you with dread, as if in its short trip bouncing off the stone walls, the wave had picked up every morsel of grief scattered around the shelled cathedral and brought them back to me, sitting there watching the particles dancing in the light as they flew away from Chomsky’s palms. With an intent that seemed to have been conceived long ago, he made his way to the confessional. Shrapnels had already beat him to that carved box. They had many sins to confess, among them that of desecrating that very confession chamber. As such, you could clearly see Chomsky as he offered his contrition. Noticing that he had taken his boots off and was totally into it, I decided to light a smoke to pass the time. I had sort of pivoted to face the colored light peering through what was left of the stained glass, when I saw Jesus and his friends up there looking at me. Cautious not to make more enemies when I already had millions of them trying to kill me, I pushed my pack of lucky strikes back in my breast pocket and decided instead to keep myself busy with some bread and sausage while watching my comrade be absolutely silly. It’s fascinating how delicious, scarcity and hunger can make your food taste. If war breaks out again, I wouldn't be happy but I will console myself by looking forward to the divine taste of stale bread, wartime sausage and ration cheese.
“Do you know what happened the last time a jew walked into a church?” I asked Vanya. “They lurked up on him and shouted: who the hell are you, you son of a bitch? This jew turns around terrified, saying: Jesus Christ!” The usual ambience of diluted gunshots and vague explosions went unbroken.
“Tough crowd” I said, idly throwing breadcrumbs at an unamused Vanya. Chomsky finally came back, squeezing through the same hole as before. I tore a piece of bread and touted it to him.
“Corpus Christi?”
“With some sausage please” he said, grinning.
“Confessing now huh? Was it about that Polish skank?”
“She had no complaints.”
I broke a piece of sausage and handed it over, staring him out with inquisitive eyes.
“I thought maybe god had some confessions to lift off his chest”
Old Chomsky I thought, smiling. “Did he?”
He grabbed Vanya and stood facing the altar, looking around the place, chewing the lamb.
“Not a word”
Throwing one last look at the ruined cathedral while distant explosions shook the earth beneath us, he said: “he’s fast asleep”
The father was so busy with his ministerial duties, it was only natural for him, with all the time he spent in the office, to start mistaking his secretary for his wife. The secretary on the other hand had no objections with her upcoming tuition fees shriveling by the minute. It was an operation with no loose ends, just as airtight as the busy boss’s room. All the pieces fitted with perfect ease. Of course he must have an acoustic room with all the top secret conversations that are held there every day. Of course he has to work late hours and of course he couldn't do it without his secretary could he? It’s only natural for her to spend quite a while in his room too, he has to catch up with his appointment dates right?
The mother, she wasn't exactly living a life of celibacy either. As a realtor, she had no shortage of empty houses and taking men into such houses was her job. The pair had made an unwritten but so far very robust armistice with their parents. Those old clergymen had to take ministerial precautions of their own and wouldn’t object to not having their long names featuring frequently in ecclesiastical gossip. Excommunicated they were but for the bank wire, that essential transactional route as their sole form of communication and a very important one at that, since it was the constant stream flowing through this very wire that upheld the whole armistice.
Men of god are good at finding reasons to kill people with an easy conscience. In the case of these two fat slobs, it wasn't conscience but the consequences, that stood in the way of filicide.
Gutierrez sighed gruffly before reluctantly pulling himself off the bed. The flurry of humid air whizzing his way every time the old soviet fan swung at him couldn't ruffle his sweat-soaked hair. Stark black locks of it were stuck to his forehead as if they had grown out of his creased brow. Making his way towards his desk, he jugged at a profusely perspiring pitcher of water before reaching for the drawers, one hand fixed on the tabletop and his eyes on me as the water that had missed his gob spread steadily across his hairy chest, painting his tank top a shade darker.
The bloated, sun-tanned body of the skimpy old Corolla had sunk under the weight of a fleeing family of eight, heavy with hope. Behind the wheel sat a boy barely tall enough to see out clearly, who drove slowly enough to allow the aged Toyota to digest its cratered path of gravel and fast enough to escape the zooming gaze of the ever-suspecting locals of a town whose residents were too bored not to stare at outsiders. The boy’s years were barley enough to be a lifetime yet he had seen the end of many lives. They were heavy years. He had learned to sense death before it arrived but he was too young to know how to stop it. Most of the people he knew never grew that old. Laboring to rein-in his playful steering wheel, he felt death in the air, not visible but present, like humidity. Ready to squeeze the gas all the way through, he scanned his surroundings diligently, trying to spot death before it spotted them. He looked for death in a slanting Isuzu pickup truck coming the other way and only made sure it wasn't there after the Isuzu had gone past them and he was still alive. When an SUV surrounded by armed men unloading crates of ammo slowly came into sight as they stooped down with the road he thought he had seen death, only to realize moments later that the men were not armed and the crates were filled with vegetables. Making a turn, they went round a tea-house with seats upfront where old men with long beards and murky turbans never smoked hookah at the same table as young men wearing shirts inscribed with English sentences they didn't understand. Peering through the cloud of smoke around them, the boy looked for death and realized he couldn't see it if it were looking him in the eye. For a moment he envied his brother, a toddler who saw the exact same things, but viewed them differently, marveling in particular at how smoke coming from the hookahs dissipated and became one with the dust flying around their car. The boy wished he was as oblivious to it all as the little critter.
And oblivious he was. For no, death was not crawling around him, it was flying above. And yes, he couldn’t see it even if it was staring at him, which it was. A life of a hundred years would not have taught the boy how to escape this death. This was a death that would truly follow them all the way to Baghdad, framing them at all times inside its white square of doom. This death whizzed but too faintly to be heard amidst the Corolla’s constant complaining of the road. No one ever saw it coming, few heard it homing but there were always those who saw it going. They saw it in a strangely saturated monochrome, tucked away in a strange box, men of expedience, men of consciences eased by distance and lack of color, lack of screams, who made expedient little clicks on the red buttons beneath their thumbs and felt very much like the contraption they were strapped to, the screens that had hooked them. They felt like tools, a welcomed feeling, for when it came, it sent guilt out of the same door. That’s how a young girl from Idaho thumbs down her red button, and then goes thumbs up to her comrade, a young boy from Texas. And it is like this that a young boy from Herat and his family die, oblivious to it all, their ashes dissipating and becoming one with the dust.
The old man in rags had skin like parched ground, wrinkles crisscrossing it, fragmenting his face into innumerable rough-edged patches, leaving his forehead in particular an archipelago of dry islands hydrated by the rivers of sweat that flooded the deep seams in between every time he worked his spindly arms to earn a buck. He had loose skin that shifted around like a honey-badger’s, accentuating the tone of his small but stout muscles. The old man mainly lived on barnacles that he scrapped off the cliffs on the coast where unforgiving waves had yet to take him. People around here don't fancy barnacles and those who have chanced upon them have been told by the town clergy that barnacles are indeed haraam. One such adventurous coast stroller was overheard in a teahouse raising some suspicions about the merits of the clergy’s opinion on barnacles given that what he himself was touting to his local imam as a Barnacle while making his inquiry was actually a fruit called lichee. His mate who was being thrifty with the hookah pipe duly added with a smokey chortle that making things haraam is the mullah’s way of stamping their authority on something new. Another surmised that maybe they’ve made it haraam so they could sell it all to the Russians. “Since when do Russians pay?” The old man in ragged clothes, chewing away at grilled corn made himself heard, spewing roughage as he did.
The man in charge of our security looked like the very person who would be out to kill us. If I were to identify the murderer from a line of suspects and this man was third in line, I wouldn't even bother with the fourth. His silence was suspicious, like that of somebody who pretends not to know a language he knows perfectly well. He was dressed for utility, making you wonder whether or not disposing of your body was part of the utility he was dressed for and he had the craggy face of someone who might have had a Neanderthal as a great grandfather. As we were busy finding ways to minimize the possible damage to our luggage by propping them against each-other within the tight space available in the back of the war-weary SUV in such ingenious ways that left little if any leeway in between for them to waggle about along the way, our silent sentinel spied us from the corners of his eyes with a contemptuous smirk on his face, like an old soldier in worn-down uniform amused at the sight of a bunch of new recruits panting under the weight of their unnecessary rucksacks.
He had a god given gift for getting rooked out of his money, exacerbated by the fact that whatever money he came to own, was sort of just given to him without him having to shed a drop of sweat. His father had sweated for him. We were once trying to get to the roots of his problem as he lied on the couch like a sack of dirty laundry, tickling my Freud complex by suddenly opening up about his financial failures without any apparent reason. He said he got robbed a lot because he was desperate. “The richer I get the worse I feel; the more ashamed.” He confessed, adding “I want to have something going for myself, have my name on something. I wanna drive my son to school and point to a building on our way telling him I made this, you know what I mean? I mean, I am even called junior; I am William jr. for chrissakes.”
The thing about desperation is that it always makes a scene. Like a fed up child making a scene in public, who will wail, whimper and flail even more when you try to quiet her down, desperation too stomps its foot on the ground and makes its presence known with a shrill, piercing scream that even the deaf can feel tingling away at their skin. Con-men are many things, but deaf to the tone of insecurity and desperation is one thing they’re not and even if they were, a few sniffs were all they needed to catch the scent of fair game wafting off little William’s drooping shoulders.
He said, that with every time he got rooked clean, his knees grew weaker and his appetite for gambling stronger. “The alternative is worse. I’m a goner if I let it get through to me. I’ll end up shutting myself in the house, scared of getting outside… I’d be a hoarder; I’ll bury myself in junk.” He thought that the alternative to his freewheeling, wishful investments was but a defensive life with clenched fists, no risks and hardly any business as he lackadaisically cruised towards the grave. It’s interesting to hear what a man has to say at two past midnight who in the more sober hours of the day goes envied by passersby mesmerized by the glint of his red Ferrari.
Fritz shifted himself around a little bit in his old leather upholstered armchair, making it groan and squeak. He had done away with candles in favor of a less arcane contraption for illumination in the form of one those oblong-headed green desk lamps prevalent in US government offices back in the 60’s. The sort that you operate by pulling at a string. His had a touch of fancy to it and was ornamented on the top with swirling golden arabesques, an effective extra measure employed to seduce him away from the candles. That day, like the ones before, his hapless hustling-on-the-side Cambridge freshman for the season had supplied him with the morning papers. Reading them was his first stab at keeping abreast of the world he had walled himself out of, to be complemented later on with his daily visit to the Pequod where he would withdraw from Molly’s wealth of news, deposited to her one short chat with a customer at a time, and where he talked to Sam who was graced with the sort of wisdom that can only be accrued in the absence of books. From Sam he got news of the brothels and the gallows. Then at last there was milk-tea with ambience which gave him a general sense of his surroundings, a vibe as the young like to say. Never once had this eavesdropping produced the conversation that would have him lose his Schopenhauer’s bet of a single gold ingot. Finally, at the end of every week he rounded up his inquiry into the state of affairs, by surrendering himself to the unerring blade of Wayne, the local barber.
In the afternoons, having napped on his meal of words, he went for a walk and it was in the evening that he finally allowed himself to touch paper, loading it into his typing machine. With his rules of engagement fulfilled, he’d sit behind his desk, pull the string of his green FBI lamp, Cock his Remington and open fire.
Oh of course he wouldn't show up. You know Nick right? Freddy is everything Nick isn't Pam. He’s in the renovation business, and boy is he bad at it. If there is a wall on site with a “Danger! Wall may collapse” sign on it, Freddy is leaning against it holding a can of beer with a cigarette dancing on his lips as he shouts at the phone. It isn't a rumor that Freddy doesn't wash his pants. He just throws them away when they’re rotting and wears the next. This guy, he emits sloppiness let me tell you; like you can give him Caravaggio and the next day you’d find Caravaggio slouched like a stoned hippie, daubing watery paint over some window’s frame while exchanging jokes with Rembrandt, daubing paint on the other side. What really drives Nick crazy is that it never seems to get him into trouble either. Like, not once has he been sued or anything for his clumsy work. He used to be a mechanic and there he had fixed a certain front bumper by tying it to the chassis with boot laces and dampening the play with bubblegum. ‘The constrictor knot’ he had apparently said with glee later when the car came had come back in after a knock but the front bumper was still in place. Freddy bites the spoon on the way out, eats with his mouth open and he doesn't wash his pants. Now do you understand why Nick isn't so madly in love with your family reunion idea? Jesus Christ Pam you could call people you know? Ask their opinions. You told Diego to go grocery shopping. Did you tell him why? I bet even he would have stopped you if he had known.
In the only bedroom of this dilapidated house, sat a powerhouse of a PC, incongruous with its bleak surroundings. Here was all the savings of a young man who had lost both his parents not long ago, vested in a cold wire-clad contraption humming -like a Burmese monk- a constant hum that bounced freely from one empty wall to another. The only obstacle these sound-waves ever found themselves hitting was a foldable bed of the most humble design, its fence of a base made sufferable only by the intervention of a synthetic fiber mattress that was compressed under the weight of continuous use. The only bedding more worn out than that was the seat of his chair. Resting next to the monk was a massive pair of headphones to which he owed the fact that he had not yet committed double homicide. The slightest sound emanating from any of the many neighbors, rippled through this barren house like a burp in a vacant mess-hall.
Of the innumerable windows overlooking Sutton street, there were few that remained lit until late. One, if you paid enough attention, often pulled all-nighters. At the adjacent bus station, a certain man in his late twenties who frequently bent over to pick the various belongings he kept dropping on the floor was a regular. He always seemed to have more to carry than he had hands for and fewer clothes than he needed; almost always donning a depressingly grey coat that he wore regardless of the season, cream colored pants and always a pair of dark glasses. Hugging his bloated leather bag, himself hugged by that massive coat, he sat there waiting for his bus. Curiously, he was never present at the bus stop while the window was lit.
The coated man of Sutton street spent his daytime hours oversleeping, followed by purportedly spurious streaks of political ranting manifested either in writing or in sound captured with an old cassette recorder as he paced around in his office . In the dim hours, as light burned behind his window he usually fed the shredder his day’s work. Sometimes he would throw in a cassette too. Normally he followed that up by feeding himself the now cold and greasy pizza he had ordered hours before, using the shredder’s excrement to wipe his hands. Whenever done, even when dazed by the deafening toll of that heavy bell of sleep swinging back and forth in his head, he grabbed his things and went stumbling towards the bus stop where he sat waiting for his ride home and there the same shredded thoughts began re-pulping in his throbbing head.
A full grown beard that differed with that of Santa in color only, a long trench coat making a set of already broad shoulders look massive, a pipe dangling from the side of the mouth and a pair of round glasses were the usual sell-yourself-as-an-intellectual starter gear of the run of the mill apparatchik. Like all con-men, they feed you what you enjoy grazing on and slay you when you’re fat enough. I don't know who I should credit for the relative success of their propaganda. Is it down to the orator’s superior powers of persuasion, intensified by the thick ball of smoke emanating from his pipe? Or is due to the sheer feeblemindedness of the audience?
“You have to clean the windows every day otherwise the spores will show. Plus, I think you either do it every day or don't do it at all. Take old Georgie for instance. You could lobotomize him and he’ll still take a cloth and scrub his stained glass first thing every morning.”
He was referring to the local tailor who had relinquished his seat behind the old Singer to a niece, reserving for himself the upkeep rituals of his little shop and the task of taking orders from customers, for which he rewarded himself occasionally by flirting with the old ladies.
“The old rascal. It’s funny init? I saw him have a good old banter with an old lady once, they had a good time, both of-’em. When the lady left waving her sinewy hands at Georgie as she opened the door, he turned to me and said when she was a girl, that same woman had hit him with the pointy end of her high-heels before chasing him down the street barefoot. ‘I had cheated on her in her own bed’.”
He revealed one such snippet of local lore every time we walked the quaint streets and alleys of Brighton, stringently sticking to his policy of one story per walk. Where in the world has anyone even thought of such an occupation as his? A regular at the town’s only cafe with a terrace overlooking the beach who would share some of every newcomer’s daily commute and exchange stories with them, one at a time? What would you call this man? Whether they had named the cafe in his honor or was it the other way around, ‘the pedestrian’ was the soul of that terraced joint.
He rarely snored but this time he was. It was to be in his deepest of slumbers that the truly eye opening news I was tasked with delivering could ever creep up on him. Mr. Basim had enough seniority to place his feet on the table, close the door to his room and go to sleep during working hours with the phone unplugged. The knocks on the door and unsuccessful swings at the handle didn't disturb him as he had evolved to ignore them and so slept pretty much as heavily as an anchor rusting on the seabed. Mr. Salamollah, Salami for short, who sat behind his computer at the other end of the room like a propped up rag-doll catching dust behind a shop’s window, was a quiet man by nature who never used words when a nod would do. The only time he made a noise with enough punch to resurrect Basim was when he laughed. He had this high pitched, progressively intensifying laughter that came in machine gun bursts, soaring in volume before dipping to a fade as if someone had found the ring dangling from his back and pulled it. Salami laughed quite a lot since he had nothing better to do but scrolling aimlessly at his phone, killing himself one random post at a time and often what he saw, amused him. Neither Basim nor Salami had ever touched the grimy books in that room in their 20 plus years of service. Above the bookshelf stood an assortment of sporting trophies made out of the cheapest tin you could find testimony to Baism’s unbelievable claims of having been as thin as Salami once. You could have seen that room in black and white and you wouldn't have missed a thing. Years ago, in a bid of haste and at the peak of their youthful naiveté Basim and Salami had both sold their souls to the stultifying bleakness of military bureaucracy in exchange for enough income to pay for the gas they spent driving to their second job, some monthly freebies of the lowest possible quality, lots of gossip and most notably, a humble apartment in one of the army’s many washed out, depressing housing blocks that cost adjacent homeowners about 10 percent of their property value for as far as those monstrosities were in sight. Nevertheless, that roof above the head was the only solace Basim and his lot could console themselves with as they pondered over their wasted life, almost every day. It was this very solace that the letter in my hands was about to take away.
The phone possessed her at once. Her tone changed from hackney bar to Oxford union in a heartbeat. With the legs of her sports pants shredding and lint pills dotting the shoulders of her roomy shirt Emma sat on the couch, portentously addressing whoever she was addressing while in the background, the sliding door that drowned the sounds that would betray her true identity was square under the crosshairs of little Sammy, running with a dubious article in his grasp while being chased by a horde of neighboring kids. ‘Much obliged’ Emma kept saying as my eyes bounced back and forth between her and the impending toddler.
Revolutions tend to have a taste. Only it works in reverse, what they find to their taste, they devour. The French Revolution for instance thirsted over heads while its Russian counterpart had an insatiable appetite for freedom. Then there is the revolution of 1979 that was hungry for all things beautiful. It was the uprising of the philistine, the demise of the brilliant and rise of the abhorrent, a renaissance in reverse. Like a bloodhound with a stomach the size of an ocean, these revolutionaries have since prowled my land in search of pretty little cafes with tables outside or adobe arcades sprawled over with blossoming flowers, in search of theaters, cinemas, of color, they go looking for cute little girls wearing yellow skirts with embroidered edges braiding their friend’s hair, they ransack homes in search of Nietzsche, Voltaire, Hedayat, Camus, Kasravi, they listen out for music, for a girl singing, for girls doing anything really and if they pass you by they would scour your eyes trying to spot life, hope, joy. These conquistadors have spread their inquisition far and wide and wherever they claim a prey, some morsel of beauty, they rip it to shreds, burn it to the ground, tear it apart, level it, close it, muffle it, bury it, break it, freeze it, paint it over with devout Shia green, leftist grey or marxist madhouse blue and in the case of your eyes, if they find any hint of joy wriggling away beneath the misty surface, they would harpoon it from the very depths of your soul and drag it to its slaughter.
In the theatre on the hill as we called it, they were having themselves a feast. A drove of donkeys could not have desecrated that place any further. Of the seats that once embraced drama aficionados, art connoisseurs, couples on a date and teenagers in love with the star of the show, the front five rows had been uprooted to make room for the stencil stations where they’d spray paint all over the carpet and for tables stacked with fliers denouncing the great Satan among other great things. They could have used the stage and left the seats intact, but after all, stages are for performing shows and so they had covered it with confiscated carpets and used it to perform their daily prayers in commune. The galleries were repurposed to serve as offices for the heavy bearded ring leaders who watched over their herd of sheep in the paddock of the auditorium. When these senior members had visitors, they would have them seated on spoils from the front row massacre propped against the wall for balance, marking the guest’s every move with a deep groove through the wallpaper.
Whenever there was a religious ceremony, which was pretty often, these raised platforms got to serve a watered down version of their intended purpose of housing the more distinguished attendees. While in such gatherings the auditorium was plunged into a cacophony of moaning, shouting, crying and hands beating against bare chests, far from the youthful frenzy, in the galleries old men barely caressed their bosoms and pretended to cry. If it wasn't for the overwhelming bang of the loud-speakers that drowned every other sound, you’d be marveling at the spectacle of mute-crying where the shoulders shake in inconsolable sorrow and hands wipe invisible tears in complete silence.
The residents of the galleries had Reza to thank for the sound that veiled their hypocrisy. Reza was the only survivor from the theatre’s original crew who had escaped the fate of the seats and the men’s restrooms which were decimated by fervent revolutionaries believing that the toilet bowls were intentionally built in the direction of the holy city of Mecca. The guy in charge of the theatre had scolded them for their rashness as the toilets were in fact not facing Mecca. He stopped them before they could destroy the women’s restroom and had them change the sign on the door to men’s. “As an added bonus”, he had said “the new men’s room doesn’t have that shameful western device they call a urinal”. It was Reza who told me this once when we were having tea in his den in the minstrel gallery. That little alcove was perhaps the only corner yet untouched by the vileness of the new tenants. Reza had received clemency out of desperation. The revolutionaries who not only spared him but offered him a job as a mixing engineer and janitor did so in desperation as not a single one of them could figure out how to work a mixing table and the one time one of them had tried had resulted in a debacle that upset the old men at the gallery. Likewise, Reza too had accepted to work for his captors out of desperation as he had 6 kids to feed and not a roof above his head. Reza’s half dozen nieces and nephews lived with their grandma and one of Reza’s sister in laws in a big house where every room housed a family. His two brothers had gone off to the frontlines and one would never come back no matter how much their mother didn't know. When he took me to me to a secret attic where he had stashed all the dresses and the props from the good old days, he asked me if it would be stealing if he took the small cinderella dress and gave it to Soraya, the five year old daughter of his dead brother. “I’ve put some of the stuff in here” he told me later, pointing to an old heavyset chest he put his samovar on, “if they ever find out about the attic, I’ll give all of this to my kids” he called them his, “if something happens to me, I want you to do it. God’s gotta be a real asshole to put that on a dead man’s tab”.
While appearing to be complete opposites at first glance, Rima and Cole were in fact fundamentally similar. They were similar the way a Biedermeier cabinet is from the same school as a Biedermeier chair, despite every hard edge one has for each curve on the other.
At my prearranged signal, Robert slid behind the door and hushed the couturier to come inside. Mother was busy time-traveling through one wormhole of a picture after another as she stood entranced in front of the frame-studded southern wall. She had tilted her head sideways with her mouth assuming the formation it does when she is having a conversation with herself and nodded occasionally whenever she agreed. Mandy’s presence remained unnoticed by her until she turned around to face me with a finger already pointing to a picture, the pose usually preceding a fond nostalgic remark and in doing so found a courteous Mandy standing at her 7 o’clock, clinging to her tailor’s bag as if to an anchor to tether down her restless feet.
“Please,” I said, motioning her to begin making her measurements.
“She works magic with threads” mother heard me saying as she kept looking back and forth at me and a blushing Mandy.
I grabbed mom’s chubby arms like she used to grab mine when I was smaller than her and in need of reassurance. “Jane said yes mama.” I reassured her quizzical eyes, making them turn away in recollection and dart back widened in surprise before blooming into a joy that threw her in my embrace. Mandy’s bag couldn't hold her down as she started dancing on her feet not knowing what to do, being the stranger sharing an intimate moment between a mother and a son whose halo of stardust still had her blinded with glitters.
A bunch of spaniards who looked like they came with the place, sat on top of the dimly lit stage in the middle of the place and played. They weren't exactly lighting the place up with their music. It sounded like jazz fallen asleep next to some abuela in a cuban bus. Nonetheless, somewhere in the chorus there was talk of bailar. Good thing they had put their invitation to dancing in the chorus where it repeats because if you could see the faces around you through the thick clouds of smoke, you’d realize they took some convincing. Bailar. I felt more like bailing to be honest as I grew an interest in the pattern of ridges ringing the salt shaker in front of me, having exhausted all the fidgeting potential of my watch which moved slower the more you looked at it, throwing up a minute for every sixty seconds it swallowed reluctantly. The musicians had moved on to a more upbeat tune right when the poison of restlessness had come all the way from my tapping foot and made it to my hand as I stabbed the table cloth with a toothpick. I looked at my watch again. 30 minutes late. Maybe he wanted me gassed into submission by the time he arrived. “Libertango” uttered the old man at the table by my side, assuming I was brought to “bailar” by the music. Stroking the sweaty hair sticking to his age-spot-infested scalp courtesy of the fedora resting on his table, he met my quizzical eyes with “el nombre de la cancion. Es Libertango” uttered with such speed as if it were a single word. In total ignorance of what he had just said, I turned my pleading glance towards the fat, sullen man sitting in front of him. They were playing cards and el gordo’s functional part of the head had been resting for quite a while on the vast cushion of fat at the foothill of his bulbous head. Awakened to my gaze by the suggestive look of his companion he was clearly annoyed by having to abort his hibernation and started scanning me from head to toe. “Yankee?” Suggested the owner of the fedora as his friend was about to reach my toes. Taking one last look at my face, el gordo sank back into his seat, tucked his first chin under the second and looking at his cards, with a voice shaped as much by his larynx as by the distorted aperture of his cheeks and lips declared: “Ingles.”
Do you know how many people I lost holding this place?
We will lose more if you have your way.
What we?
We die too you know. Or maybe you don't.
How dare you? Who are you even? Show me the invitation letter I sent you. You show me. I didn't ask for your help did I? Bame yourself for the men you lost.
I’m not blaming you sir. You haven't done any harm, yet.
You have some nerves young man. Look around you. Stand up, come on stand up and look around you. Does it look like home?
- Roolah can you just tell us how it ends and save us the palaver?
Dragan, please.
-Fine. Carry on. We’ll know when they bomb us I guess.
You’re far from home, both of you. All of you. You see those mountains? This is our world. We are their only friends, and we have no friends but the mountains. Surely not you. The blood of your comrades is still fresh upon the ground and there is not a sign of rage in you. How dare you even suggest a surrender?
It is anything but.
If not rage at least have some shame. Do you even remember their names? Because I remember mine. Zowran, Afran, Destan, Ali, Mazar, Yazdan, and it goes on! You are telling me to spit on their graves; on their faces, those same faces their mothers pressed against their bosoms, looking at me with every plea for vengeance and you cowards ask me to surrender? You…
Take a breath for fuck’s sake! You drooling old man.
Dragan!
Just take a breath and hear him the fuck out will ya?
Some younger Kurds went for their holsters.
Great! kill the pilot.
My friend is more spirited than me. I’m sure you relate. But sir. Listen to me for a moment. You can call me whatever you want in the heat of your passion but don't you confuse my calm with indifference. No one here is a stranger to loss. Only some of us have stopped bragging about it. This is no surrender. You’re a hunter. You must have used baits. We have to give them reason to think we are weak, that they are winning, that they are winning easily. If you let us, we want to tell them a lie they love to believe. We’ll get them to do what we want, and in time, we shall bring upon them what we desire. Yes, men will die. But not for nothing. You suggest we hold this position at all costs and get buried in these mountains of yours so that the blood you lost wouldn't go to waste? To sacrifice the living to honor the dead? Soon there wont be anyone left to sacrifice.
And yet you say you’re not cowards. Why are you so sure that we’ll lose? We can hold them back you know? Like we have for all these years, before you were here, before you were born.
Yes. You’ve resisted for a long time. Yet all this time wasn't enough for you to understand that you’re not holding them back. They are the ones holding you back. You’re right, you can hold the fort. But all you’d achieve is to withstand one more attack only to face the next which will have every young Kurd in this room reduced to a name in an old man’s memory. Then comes the one after and your list of names will grow and so comes the next and the next and the next until all your names are forgotten, like echoes fading in the mountains.
Nothing is free Abdullah, nothing is free. You want to catch a lion? You must first tether the goat.
Even though his gaze was fixed upon the chief, it was the boys in the background who were the main audience. Eagle undid his scarf. “There is nothing romantic about dying” he said unbuttoning his collar. Then, he pulled the sides of his shirt away for them to see the names branded onto him with ink behind the dancing tags, “believe me, I know”.
Upon entry, you were welcomed by an invisible cloud of eu de socks and aqua de intestines fused into one incendiary odor that made you recoil like a cal.50 rifle fired from the hip. The floor was carpeted with grime, the topmost layer of which had most probably served more time than the longest serving conscript, enjoying the privileges of seniority as he slept at the far end, back against the wall, where he’d have one less neighbor to suffer from and fewer cockroaches to worry about. This bed enjoyed relative safety from insects thanks to its proximity to the fridge where there were cockroaches a galore. The food in the fridge attracted the little vermin and the disintegrated insulation tape now arching limply out from between the door and the frame was a bowing maitre D inviting them to a feast. The chosen bugs who would go on to bask in the plentiful bliss of the fridge were the ones that persevered through the long pilgrimage from one end of this squalid room to the other, all the while resisting the urge to satisfy their gluttony or indulge their curiosity by pouncing on some soldier with fragrant feet who had surrendered himself to sleep.
At the attendant’s signal I promptly made for the doctor’s office before some old woman came forth for my place armed with desperate exhortations and the ever formidable age card. In my paranoid haste, I almost shoved the previous patient back into the room as I squeezed past him through the door frame. Turning back to wipe the glower off his face by offering him an expression of apology garnished with a pinch of a plea for sympathy, an old lady caught my glance at the far end of the waiting room. She had risen to her feet and hearing the missile lock warnings loud and clear as her eyes began to latch onto mine, I pulled my head away and spilt the apology I had dished out to the limp old man all over the linen as I ignored his nodding response and shut the door in his face. The doctor, holding his head in one hand, had a glower of his own. He held a cup of lukewarm coffee in his other hand and was gazing upon it philosophically. In my judgement the man was deep in the throes of deciding if it was best to ask his lackey for a fresh brew at the cost of abstaining a while longer from his much needed dose of caffeine, or to calm his nerves by gulping down that tepid concoction at once. A compulsion to offer him a drop of whiskey touched me on the shoulder which I brushed off as he finally swallowed the coffee.