Showing posts with label middle east. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle east. Show all posts
8.31.2007
7.26.2007
Vermont Avenue + Adams Boulevard
by Ike Moses, Los Angeles, CA, USA
"El Poco Grande," she began, carefully, with one hand commanding motorized blades and the other directing a laser. Concentration sweat laminated the faded serial number on her forehead, "It wasn't no earthquake."
"Oh yeah?" Jawan raised an interested eyebrow and urged the punchline, "What was it then?"
"Terrorismo."
Southern California remains a popular tourist destination, even after its incidental secession from the Union. Granted, most who come here really want to be in the States, but for some the Southland is as close and as far as they want to be from Sam. There are less Germans, with fanny packs full of euros, visiting the Walk of Fame; but there are more Sudanese Jihadis, full of American resentment, trying to win back the confidence of other Arabs. They were the CIA's dry-snitches for most of the Arab-American Wars, but Southern Sudan's liberation broke the alliance.
Jawan had to resist shaking his head. He didn't want that nonsense landing anywhere near his shoulders. The slightest neck swivel would fuck up his hairline, though. He ain't disagree that much. Holding very, very still, he screwed disapproval into his lips and said, "You on one, 'Maine."
"Think about it, Juan," Tremaine precisely traced the beginnings of an acute crescent above Jawan's left temple, "An earthquake is caused by friction. The friction is caused by placas going head up. They run into each other, not away from each other, 'stand me? They make mountains, not islands."
"They made this mountain fall into the pienche Pacific," Jawan didn't understand why he was getting so frustrated, "If Poco Grande wasn't an act of Allah; who did it, how, and why?"
"I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I know who," Tremaine paused, not for dramatic effect, but to review her head work, "Same fools who blew up them levies way back when."
Ready for a subject change, Jawan called out to the shop, "Who winning?"
A group of men shielded the wall-screen, only allowing Jawan to see the ball occasionally fly over their unshaped-up heads from his chair. The game was broadcast live from the Coliseum, about a mile south, so Jawan was unsure if the audience roars he heard came from the speakers or the stadium itself. Somebody shouted back, "It's tied. One up."
When Tremaine finished, Jawan surveyed his dome in the mirror, stretched, and brushed phantom hairs from his clothes. He tipped the barber in won and pesetas, grasped her hand, leaned an elbow into her chest, and said, "A'right 'Maine. See you next viernes."
Once outside, he heard the parlor explode with disappointment and celebration. Some asshole held a "Gol!" shout for like 45 seconds. Jawan didn't turn around to see the replay. He hopped on his bike, checked there were no trucks or tanks approaching, and swerved across all four lanes of Vermont Avenue, dodging opposing cyclists as he headed southbound. He didn't mind coming out this way for a cut, no matter how many foreign 'hoods he had to pass through to get here. He needed a Friday ritual: the weekly round-trip to Tremaine's shop and back gave the day some meaning. Besides, it was difficult finding a barber he could trust. Tilt your head back into the wrong sink and you'll sit up without it.
Jawan sprint-cycled until his bike was charged, then sat back to cruise, going easy on the twist grip. He tried, unsuccessfully, to find a pattern in the neglected asphalt's alligator cracks and potholes. At the corner of Exposición Bulevar and Vermont he was forced to yield to the drunken mob of 'stizos and negros that trampled Expo Park, the streets, and the reappropriated Universidad del Sur de California campus. He hated having to stop there, with the emerald dome of la Mezquita de Omar Iban Al-Jattab noticeably absent over his right shoulder.
He remembered the night it happened. Not just him, everyone who wasn't in the masjid that night remembers, because everyone was looking. Angelenos used to give stars jaded regard, but now stars made them anxious. The lights and the smog keep the heavens far away from the City of Angels, so if you see the sky, the sky is falling. That night the star came from the east, just above the palm tree horizon, and grew in intensity for a couple minutes. The star didn't come from heaven, of course, but from a coastal town that used to be Bagdad, California. It was the first American ballistic missile in a brief campaign that caught sleeper cells while they slept.
According to Sura 2:160, Allah is the relenting, the merciful. But Jawan needed a relentless, vengeful god. His faith had collapsed with the dome to his right, and this intersection was where the failed structures of his life stood, or laid, or whatever that mostly demolished building was doing. Instead of sitting there thinking about another missed Jumu'ah, he decided to slice through the crowd of cerveza-fueled football fans. Agitated by Jawan's intrusion, some spectators threw food and drinks at him. He caught a little with his shirt and khakis, but they missed his head, so he didn't really trip.
"El Poco Grande," she began, carefully, with one hand commanding motorized blades and the other directing a laser. Concentration sweat laminated the faded serial number on her forehead, "It wasn't no earthquake."
"Oh yeah?" Jawan raised an interested eyebrow and urged the punchline, "What was it then?"
"Terrorismo."
Southern California remains a popular tourist destination, even after its incidental secession from the Union. Granted, most who come here really want to be in the States, but for some the Southland is as close and as far as they want to be from Sam. There are less Germans, with fanny packs full of euros, visiting the Walk of Fame; but there are more Sudanese Jihadis, full of American resentment, trying to win back the confidence of other Arabs. They were the CIA's dry-snitches for most of the Arab-American Wars, but Southern Sudan's liberation broke the alliance.
Jawan had to resist shaking his head. He didn't want that nonsense landing anywhere near his shoulders. The slightest neck swivel would fuck up his hairline, though. He ain't disagree that much. Holding very, very still, he screwed disapproval into his lips and said, "You on one, 'Maine."
"Think about it, Juan," Tremaine precisely traced the beginnings of an acute crescent above Jawan's left temple, "An earthquake is caused by friction. The friction is caused by placas going head up. They run into each other, not away from each other, 'stand me? They make mountains, not islands."
"They made this mountain fall into the pienche Pacific," Jawan didn't understand why he was getting so frustrated, "If Poco Grande wasn't an act of Allah; who did it, how, and why?"
"I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I know who," Tremaine paused, not for dramatic effect, but to review her head work, "Same fools who blew up them levies way back when."
Ready for a subject change, Jawan called out to the shop, "Who winning?"
A group of men shielded the wall-screen, only allowing Jawan to see the ball occasionally fly over their unshaped-up heads from his chair. The game was broadcast live from the Coliseum, about a mile south, so Jawan was unsure if the audience roars he heard came from the speakers or the stadium itself. Somebody shouted back, "It's tied. One up."
When Tremaine finished, Jawan surveyed his dome in the mirror, stretched, and brushed phantom hairs from his clothes. He tipped the barber in won and pesetas, grasped her hand, leaned an elbow into her chest, and said, "A'right 'Maine. See you next viernes."
Once outside, he heard the parlor explode with disappointment and celebration. Some asshole held a "Gol!" shout for like 45 seconds. Jawan didn't turn around to see the replay. He hopped on his bike, checked there were no trucks or tanks approaching, and swerved across all four lanes of Vermont Avenue, dodging opposing cyclists as he headed southbound. He didn't mind coming out this way for a cut, no matter how many foreign 'hoods he had to pass through to get here. He needed a Friday ritual: the weekly round-trip to Tremaine's shop and back gave the day some meaning. Besides, it was difficult finding a barber he could trust. Tilt your head back into the wrong sink and you'll sit up without it.
Jawan sprint-cycled until his bike was charged, then sat back to cruise, going easy on the twist grip. He tried, unsuccessfully, to find a pattern in the neglected asphalt's alligator cracks and potholes. At the corner of Exposición Bulevar and Vermont he was forced to yield to the drunken mob of 'stizos and negros that trampled Expo Park, the streets, and the reappropriated Universidad del Sur de California campus. He hated having to stop there, with the emerald dome of la Mezquita de Omar Iban Al-Jattab noticeably absent over his right shoulder.
He remembered the night it happened. Not just him, everyone who wasn't in the masjid that night remembers, because everyone was looking. Angelenos used to give stars jaded regard, but now stars made them anxious. The lights and the smog keep the heavens far away from the City of Angels, so if you see the sky, the sky is falling. That night the star came from the east, just above the palm tree horizon, and grew in intensity for a couple minutes. The star didn't come from heaven, of course, but from a coastal town that used to be Bagdad, California. It was the first American ballistic missile in a brief campaign that caught sleeper cells while they slept.
According to Sura 2:160, Allah is the relenting, the merciful. But Jawan needed a relentless, vengeful god. His faith had collapsed with the dome to his right, and this intersection was where the failed structures of his life stood, or laid, or whatever that mostly demolished building was doing. Instead of sitting there thinking about another missed Jumu'ah, he decided to slice through the crowd of cerveza-fueled football fans. Agitated by Jawan's intrusion, some spectators threw food and drinks at him. He caught a little with his shirt and khakis, but they missed his head, so he didn't really trip.
6.26.2007
23rd Street SmokeZone
by Rabbi Ben Newman, the Bronx, NY, USA
I woke up to the buzzing of a skillsaw on Wednesday afternoon. It cut through the soft flesh of my brain just as it cut through the brick that the Iranian workers outside my window were replacing. Shut Up! Another 30- 90 days - my doorman told me. By then my summer of freedom will be gone. I got most of my information from Ron, the doorman who worked between four o'clock and midnight. I made it a habit of trying to sleep during the racket, so I went to bed at sunrise, and usually awoke when Ron's shift began and my somatic impulse had faded enough to let in the skillsaws. I learned on Wednesday night that Ron was a vet of the Arab-American Wars. A news story was finally released about some of the senseless killing that went on there, and I brought it up in casual conversation.
"Did you hear the news about The A-A Wars?" I asked
"No, what news?" He said. Ron's grey hair and austere lifelong New Yorker attitude matched his uniform. We stood on the stone steps outside the building. He lit a Marlboro, I followed suit with a Natural American Spirit. Though smoking cigarettes was, for the most part, illegal, there were specially designated "smoker's areas" on every block. Luckily for Ron and I, the "smoker's area" on 23rd street was directly in front of my apartment building.
I held out my arm and showed him the wireless tattoo on my fore-arm.
He threw my forearm a squinty look and said, "Can't read a thing without my glasses, and they're inside... why don't you just tell me, Simon?"
"Ok," I said, "Some top government official who was in the Middle East had a press conference and said that his unit killed and raped a whole village of innocent Iraqi women and children." I took a drag off of my cigarette.
"Yeah?" He said, "Well, then thats not news to me. Shit like that happened all the time out there. In that hellish sandtrap, you could barely tell the difference between you and your fellow soldiers, let alone between you and the rag-heads."
"You were in Iraq?"
"I did a two year tour," he said. Ron started eyeing a middle aged well-to-do woman walking to the garbage can with a bag. Did he think she looked suspicious?
"Anyways," He continued, "I'd been studying at school non-Matriculated when the draft came, and I didn't have time to matriculate before they pulled my number." The woman Ron was eyeing stuffed the bag into the overflowing street trash can, Ron continued to eye her.
"You can't dump that here!" He yelled.
"What?!" The woman retorted. She marched over to us, bag in hand.
"I said you can't dump that here, lady, it's illegal. You people keep dumping your trash here, because your buildings are too cheap to pick up your trash. Well, you mess up the street, and its illegal anyway!" He spurted raspily. He inhaled on his cigarette, and furious smoke flew from his mouth.
"You wanna see whats in here!" she started to open the bag and shove it in Ron's face. Ron shrank back.
"No thanks, Lady, just find somewhere else to dump it."
She shoved the bag in his face,
"It's SHIT!" She screamed, "I just wanna throw away my goddamn dog shit!" She stormed off down the street, shoving her dog shit bag amid the empty Doritos bags and broken glass. I looked at Ron, my eyes dilated like saucers.
END FRAGMENT. COLLABORATIVE EFFORT. OTHER CREATORS CAN PICK UP HERE.
I woke up to the buzzing of a skillsaw on Wednesday afternoon. It cut through the soft flesh of my brain just as it cut through the brick that the Iranian workers outside my window were replacing. Shut Up! Another 30- 90 days - my doorman told me. By then my summer of freedom will be gone. I got most of my information from Ron, the doorman who worked between four o'clock and midnight. I made it a habit of trying to sleep during the racket, so I went to bed at sunrise, and usually awoke when Ron's shift began and my somatic impulse had faded enough to let in the skillsaws. I learned on Wednesday night that Ron was a vet of the Arab-American Wars. A news story was finally released about some of the senseless killing that went on there, and I brought it up in casual conversation.
"Did you hear the news about The A-A Wars?" I asked
"No, what news?" He said. Ron's grey hair and austere lifelong New Yorker attitude matched his uniform. We stood on the stone steps outside the building. He lit a Marlboro, I followed suit with a Natural American Spirit. Though smoking cigarettes was, for the most part, illegal, there were specially designated "smoker's areas" on every block. Luckily for Ron and I, the "smoker's area" on 23rd street was directly in front of my apartment building.
I held out my arm and showed him the wireless tattoo on my fore-arm.
He threw my forearm a squinty look and said, "Can't read a thing without my glasses, and they're inside... why don't you just tell me, Simon?"
"Ok," I said, "Some top government official who was in the Middle East had a press conference and said that his unit killed and raped a whole village of innocent Iraqi women and children." I took a drag off of my cigarette.
"Yeah?" He said, "Well, then thats not news to me. Shit like that happened all the time out there. In that hellish sandtrap, you could barely tell the difference between you and your fellow soldiers, let alone between you and the rag-heads."
"You were in Iraq?"
"I did a two year tour," he said. Ron started eyeing a middle aged well-to-do woman walking to the garbage can with a bag. Did he think she looked suspicious?
"Anyways," He continued, "I'd been studying at school non-Matriculated when the draft came, and I didn't have time to matriculate before they pulled my number." The woman Ron was eyeing stuffed the bag into the overflowing street trash can, Ron continued to eye her.
"You can't dump that here!" He yelled.
"What?!" The woman retorted. She marched over to us, bag in hand.
"I said you can't dump that here, lady, it's illegal. You people keep dumping your trash here, because your buildings are too cheap to pick up your trash. Well, you mess up the street, and its illegal anyway!" He spurted raspily. He inhaled on his cigarette, and furious smoke flew from his mouth.
"You wanna see whats in here!" she started to open the bag and shove it in Ron's face. Ron shrank back.
"No thanks, Lady, just find somewhere else to dump it."
She shoved the bag in his face,
"It's SHIT!" She screamed, "I just wanna throw away my goddamn dog shit!" She stormed off down the street, shoving her dog shit bag amid the empty Doritos bags and broken glass. I looked at Ron, my eyes dilated like saucers.
END FRAGMENT. COLLABORATIVE EFFORT. OTHER CREATORS CAN PICK UP HERE.
6.25.2007
48th Street + Avenue of the Americas
by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
Some call him the International Man.
About five-foot-three, built like an overgrown badger: most of the mass in the upper third of his body, especially around the neck and shoulders. He's seen a lot of life in his time, and almost as much death. Formative years in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, then when that fell apart, in the Counterrevolutionary Army. When that fell apart, he joined an Azeri ethnic insurgency cell, picking Iran's carcass like the rest of the jackals. When the scavengers grew too thick, he snuck into Azerbaijan and got a cousin to vouch for him. His next five years were spent in the Doorkicker Squad of Baku's police department, breaking up terrorist and slavery rings, before rushing to the front lines in the Nakhchivan Secession. When the Federalists lost and the country split, he found himself in the oil-impoverished half of What-Was-Once-Azerbaijan. On the road again, this time to a cousin's house in Gush Katif, where he got a job as security in an an international shipping company. His legs got blown off in a botched hijack, woke up in Beth Israel Los Angeles. He liked the meat on his Mexican nurse's backside, and decided to stay. One day he just wheeled himself out the front door, and the next, he was staying with her in a one bedroom shack in South Los Angeles, just in time for the Little Big One, which wrenched southern California out of the continent's pelvis and tossed it like a severed penis into the Pacific toilet. Like most refugees, he ended up in Phoenix. Not exactly content with the gelatin quality of the air, he used his last three gold fillings and the sale of his slightly pickled kidney to fly him to Paterson, New Jersey, where he stayed with the brother of his dead Mexican nurse. After the first week, they opted for separate living arrangements, what with the knife he'd buried in his roommate's chest. His time in the overcrowded prison was mercifully short given he wasn't technically a citizen. But, then, there wasn't a whole lot of paperwork confirming his citizenship anywhere, so when the New Jersey State Police delivered him to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Manhattan for formal diplomatic eviction, there wasn't a whole lot the ambassador had to say.
New Jersey didn't want him.
There was no Azerbaijan to ship him back to.
Properly vested in purgatory, the International Man got himself a room in Rego Park, Queens from a Bukharanian woman with terrible scars on her face and neck, but full heavy breasts and thighs you could crush aluminum girders between.
The International Man has seen a lot in his time, but not with his own eyes. Those were blow out back in his Counterrevolutionary days. These were re-grown for him in a lab outside Isfahahan, along with most of his jaw. His ears haven't worked in eighteen years, function replaced by a second-rate cochlear implant implanted by an unexpectedly skilled surgeon in backalley Baku, recently expatriated from Nigeria. Well, loosely Nigeria: most of Africa was desert these days, and the borders were more than a little blurred. All that mattered was the surgeon's steady hand, and the tinny quality to the cochlear implants were better than no quality at all. His right arm is mostly short-string polymer and fiber optic cable, plugged indelicately into a mauled shoulder socket after a rocket attack on the warehouse in Gush Katif. Built somewhere in a Tel Aviv factory, with the same warranty as a Yugoslavian ultracompact car. His legs below the knee are noticeably darker than the rest of him. That's probably because they were salvaged from someone of African-American descent, and transplanted hastily in a West Los Angeles hospital by a Korean-designed surgical robot. His biological arm is something of an art piece: animated tattoos from a carnival of anonymous donors, some in Farsi, some in Arabic, some in Hebrew, some in English, dancing languidly across his skin like a sun-scorched movie screen.
His English is pretty thin, but he's mastered the epithets. I'm a bit of a pussy, by his reckoning, using my cellphone to check my mail, the news, weather. He points to a new glowing tattoo on his forearm that streams news from Al-Jazeera, Ha'aretz, the Daily Wallstreet Post, and a bunch of esoteric feeds I've never heard of. He refers to my phone as a 'woman's purse' and my only argument is that I hate the idea of live tattoos, because of all the GPS crap embedded in them. I ask him if his right arm is the only thing made out of pipestem parts, or if maybe he'd had the optional upgrade done below his waist as well. He flips me the pincer-equivalent of the bird.
Which is polite compared to the nearby street vendors, who call him 'Blackfoot' because of his mismatched limbs. When I see him, it's the same lop-sided ceramic smile, pat on the shoulder from his tri-pincered arm, and offer of high-octane diesel coffee and stale baklava. Sometimes fresh halvah from a store in Kew Gardens, cut into slices from a turd-shaped loaf wrapped in wax paper. Always the same fare: tin carafe burning sugar, coffee, and distilled tap water over a small upright propane burner. Buck-seventy-five for coffee and a pastry.
Some people call him the International Man.
I just call him the coffee cart guy on 48th Street.
Some call him the International Man.
About five-foot-three, built like an overgrown badger: most of the mass in the upper third of his body, especially around the neck and shoulders. He's seen a lot of life in his time, and almost as much death. Formative years in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, then when that fell apart, in the Counterrevolutionary Army. When that fell apart, he joined an Azeri ethnic insurgency cell, picking Iran's carcass like the rest of the jackals. When the scavengers grew too thick, he snuck into Azerbaijan and got a cousin to vouch for him. His next five years were spent in the Doorkicker Squad of Baku's police department, breaking up terrorist and slavery rings, before rushing to the front lines in the Nakhchivan Secession. When the Federalists lost and the country split, he found himself in the oil-impoverished half of What-Was-Once-Azerbaijan. On the road again, this time to a cousin's house in Gush Katif, where he got a job as security in an an international shipping company. His legs got blown off in a botched hijack, woke up in Beth Israel Los Angeles. He liked the meat on his Mexican nurse's backside, and decided to stay. One day he just wheeled himself out the front door, and the next, he was staying with her in a one bedroom shack in South Los Angeles, just in time for the Little Big One, which wrenched southern California out of the continent's pelvis and tossed it like a severed penis into the Pacific toilet. Like most refugees, he ended up in Phoenix. Not exactly content with the gelatin quality of the air, he used his last three gold fillings and the sale of his slightly pickled kidney to fly him to Paterson, New Jersey, where he stayed with the brother of his dead Mexican nurse. After the first week, they opted for separate living arrangements, what with the knife he'd buried in his roommate's chest. His time in the overcrowded prison was mercifully short given he wasn't technically a citizen. But, then, there wasn't a whole lot of paperwork confirming his citizenship anywhere, so when the New Jersey State Police delivered him to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Manhattan for formal diplomatic eviction, there wasn't a whole lot the ambassador had to say.
New Jersey didn't want him.
There was no Azerbaijan to ship him back to.
Properly vested in purgatory, the International Man got himself a room in Rego Park, Queens from a Bukharanian woman with terrible scars on her face and neck, but full heavy breasts and thighs you could crush aluminum girders between.
The International Man has seen a lot in his time, but not with his own eyes. Those were blow out back in his Counterrevolutionary days. These were re-grown for him in a lab outside Isfahahan, along with most of his jaw. His ears haven't worked in eighteen years, function replaced by a second-rate cochlear implant implanted by an unexpectedly skilled surgeon in backalley Baku, recently expatriated from Nigeria. Well, loosely Nigeria: most of Africa was desert these days, and the borders were more than a little blurred. All that mattered was the surgeon's steady hand, and the tinny quality to the cochlear implants were better than no quality at all. His right arm is mostly short-string polymer and fiber optic cable, plugged indelicately into a mauled shoulder socket after a rocket attack on the warehouse in Gush Katif. Built somewhere in a Tel Aviv factory, with the same warranty as a Yugoslavian ultracompact car. His legs below the knee are noticeably darker than the rest of him. That's probably because they were salvaged from someone of African-American descent, and transplanted hastily in a West Los Angeles hospital by a Korean-designed surgical robot. His biological arm is something of an art piece: animated tattoos from a carnival of anonymous donors, some in Farsi, some in Arabic, some in Hebrew, some in English, dancing languidly across his skin like a sun-scorched movie screen.
His English is pretty thin, but he's mastered the epithets. I'm a bit of a pussy, by his reckoning, using my cellphone to check my mail, the news, weather. He points to a new glowing tattoo on his forearm that streams news from Al-Jazeera, Ha'aretz, the Daily Wallstreet Post, and a bunch of esoteric feeds I've never heard of. He refers to my phone as a 'woman's purse' and my only argument is that I hate the idea of live tattoos, because of all the GPS crap embedded in them. I ask him if his right arm is the only thing made out of pipestem parts, or if maybe he'd had the optional upgrade done below his waist as well. He flips me the pincer-equivalent of the bird.
Which is polite compared to the nearby street vendors, who call him 'Blackfoot' because of his mismatched limbs. When I see him, it's the same lop-sided ceramic smile, pat on the shoulder from his tri-pincered arm, and offer of high-octane diesel coffee and stale baklava. Sometimes fresh halvah from a store in Kew Gardens, cut into slices from a turd-shaped loaf wrapped in wax paper. Always the same fare: tin carafe burning sugar, coffee, and distilled tap water over a small upright propane burner. Buck-seventy-five for coffee and a pastry.
Some people call him the International Man.
I just call him the coffee cart guy on 48th Street.
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