4.25 Shell Shock

Everything went white.

*

“This Hamarr . . . “ my uncle Sami began.

“He was just a poor boy from the mountains, Rémy,” my aunt cut in.

“He was a stupid manyak,” Sami said, sucking on his narghilè.

“Oh, what a mouth your khalo has!”

“Halass, Michelin!” Sami barked, then, turning back to me, continued: “Like a bat out of hell, Rémy, he was racing up and down our street in this beat-up yellow Toyota Corolla . . . I tell you I will never forget that car . . . Every time he tried to park the piece of shit, someone from one militia or another . . . the area had three controlling different blocks of real estate. There was our El Marada Brigade, a small band of Orthodox Syrian thugs a couple blocks down . . . “

I had asked my uncle what I’d thought was a simple question: why did you move out of Gemmayze in downtown Beirut to Metn.

“Every time this manyak tried to park, someone’d tell him to fuck off. Nobody, but the driver, of course, knew that the trunk of the Corolla was packed with explosives and set to blow up any minute. The thing is, he was supposed to blow up the home of some al-Kataeb big shot in the neighborhood but he couldn’t get near the house, so with the clock ticking he decided to ditch the car before he became a martyr. Ha, ha, ha.”

Gallows humor, Lebanese-style.

My uncle took a long drag on his narghilè, let out a cloud of fragrant smoke, and handed me the hose.

“I was on the balcony at the time,” he said, “watching the Corolla speed up and down the street, then, suddenly the car screeches to a halt right in front of our building, five stories below my very nose, and he got out and started running and just as I was thinking, ‘This is no good,’ everything went white.”

I gave the narghilè hose back to my uncle who took another long drag. With the smoke trailing out of his mouth, he continued, “Luckily, we were living on the fifth floor and not the fourth. I would not be here today otherwise, noshkor’Allah . . .“

“Noshkor’Allah,” my aunt echoed.

“A neighbor found me still on the balcony covered in dust, and glass, and blood. What a sight I must have been! The neighbor was shouting something at me but I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. He got me up to my feet and helped me down the stairs, and out of the back of the building. The lobby was gone, completely demolished, and on fire. I still couldn’t get my head around what had happened. People would coming up to me, look at me with their eyes bulging, their lips moving, gesturing wildly, but everything was dead silent for me . . .

“And then, just like that,” uncle Sami said, snapping his fingers, “everything came screaming back to me, and the first thing I heard, Rémy, and I’ll never forget it, was the sound of a pistol being fired. You see, some soldiers had stopped the driver of the Corolla as he was trying to run away from the car to tell him not to park, but then car bomb went off. So, they dragged the hamarr back, kicking and screaming, back to the burning Corolla, shot him in the back of the head, and tossed his body onto the fire. So, the manyak became a martyr after all. Ha, ha.”

*

It was as if a car bomb had gone off in the interrogation room when Ozawa told me I might be arrested Monday. The narcotics agent’s lips were still moving, but I couldn’t hear a word he was saying.

He gave me a solid pat on the shoulder that jolted me back to life.

“Boncoeur, we’re finished here today,” he said. “Go home, get your things in order. Say whatever you need to say to your girlfriend and family. And, we’ll pick up tomorrow where we left off. Okay?”

I nodded absently.

“And try to get a good night’s rest,” Nakata added.

“Good night’s rest,” I mumbled to myself.

“See you tomorrow,” Ozawa said with another jarring pat on my shoulder. “One o’clock sharp.”

“One o’clock sharp,” I echoed swooningly.

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注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved.

~ by Aonghas Crowe on January 11, 2010.