What mama calls you,........ "bolti".
Ahhhh......'bolti'.That bastard Darren! I had disliked it the day he foisted it on me .When young, on the way to school ,I had to cross a railway yard .An homosexual,a dirty old railway kalashee in flapping khaki shorts ,stood guard to a gravel yard and lured young boys with promises of sweets and small change to behind a stack of tar barrels and had them jack him off. One day, at a corner sweet shop, he sidled up to me and thrust a few sweets in my hand and invited me over.
"Come..Bolti......I'll show you a rare bird".I ignored him and ran away.A few days later ,as I was crossing over the rail tracks , the old man came up from behind and draped his arms around my shoulder.I tried to shrug him off,but he held me close and whispered,
Boltiboy.....he said,his eyes gleaming and brought out a big bar of chocolate. "Here,a beeeg chocolate, take it". I brushed him off.
"What,don't want to see the bird.??..........come..."
I squirmed and tried to free myself,but he tightened his grip and dragged me along. I was getting desperate but couldn't shout for help for fear of bringing shame on myself .Just then I felt him loosen grip and didn't wait to hear him out and ran a few feet and I turned back to see Darren facing up to the bastard.Even at that age,Darren was hard to scare and stood with both fists up, ready to throw a punch.The old man too raised an open palm and there was a standoff for a few minutes between them .Then ,what was happening there, surprised me. Darren started negotiating.
"How much did you tell him ...." Darren asked, pointing to me.."50paise?...NO..No...I want more... I want five rupees.".The old man raised a clubbed hand and asked him to fuck off and walked away.
Darren ran after him."How much do you have in hand now" ?,I heard him ask and then after a few words.
"Okay..okey.."
The man dipped into his trouser pocket and fished out a handful of coins and dropped it in Darren's palms.Darren came over, gave me the coins and asked me to go ahead and wait beyond the yard and went along with the impatient man and disappeared behind behind the stack of tar barrels.A minute or two later, I heard a triumphant whoop and saw Darren heading down my way full blast with the old man's khaki shorts clutched to the chest.
"Run man run,we'll teach that sonofabitch a lesson"... he said and ran ahead,waving the dirty trousers over his head as a victory flag and as we crested an embankment,I looked back and caught the old fucker emerge from behind the tar barrels, bare-assed,desperately yelling to get his trousers back.
We ran and Daren threw it down the slope. It was a thirty feet drop and a gang stood on the other side and booed the old bastard as he got down to retrieve his trousers.Two things happened then, one, he was blown to the world and it cured the oldman of his sickness and two, I was forever stuck with that name..Bolti.
Darren had heard him call me that and had gone to town with the story and pretty soon the whole school was calling me by that name. I was forever fighting those who called me that but as we grew and over the next few years ,it was forgotten and except for a few ,nobody remembered that name. Not Darren. He always told a different story and called me Bolti,not always ,but once in a while when he needed to get my goat. He had told the story to Radha, and I had to tell her the real one, but she had her cunning fun ,calling me Bolti. But I had liked it, she had a way of saying it, especially when we attained climax together. "Bolti..ummm .I can feel you coming like a tiger".
It was all so long ago.How does she know me now...Bolti? .That bolti? I wondered
]]>After a half eaten dinner,he didn't like the food and I didn't want the thread to fade,so I had followed him to his room and hoped to get him talking.I was curious to know if Radha had shown any particular interest and asked him about me or whether I was mentioned in a passing conversation.Any specific references to me would be a pointer.It was I who had concluded that I was her daughter's biological father though Radha had not even shown a fleeting moment of recognition when we had crossed each other on the road.
My son was the clue to the answer, I could subtly probe deeper and find out whether after all these years she really remembered me, but my son wouldn't even look at me.
"mr rockkkk,.......want to wrestle on the terrace".I asked as if I was in a great mood for monkey business, like prancing .
He was busy...."go away,I'm busy".he said ,looking intently at the computer screen and furiously toggling the joy stick.At his age he had to be busy,pushing buttons on his play station and killing his own dad.I was getting a little too nervous and angry,but I held.
"Well,if you don't feel like wrestling, why don't we go upstairs and catch up on the stars." I wanted him to be an astronaut and thought a gentle introduction to the mysteries of the universe would kindle in him a desire for larger missions and had a telescope installed on the roof.It had remained largely untouched..
He didn't care and twisted his ears by reaching it from behind his back."What stars..........the sky is full of clouds" and screwed his face.I tried again while he adeptly sidestepped a six pointed atomic weapon and launched his vajraastra."boom..boom " "look dad,I've been waiting for three days to get this bastard".
I cuffed him.."what kind of language is that" ...I yanked off the controls and hauled him to the terrace.
"First....never use that kind of language in my presence....and two, if you want to play again, you better explain yourself."
"Dad, everybody says that....if they miss" I cut him off .
"I said ....what you meant about that lady knowing my name."
I had no inkling Radha had recognized me when she saw me.Today when my son said she knew my name,it set me thinking. If she did,she should have some reason to remember,because our relationship was so brief to so remember unless she had a reason to do so or so I thought.Now, did she ever reveal to her daughter the truth? Did she tell her child that I was her father?I was in deep thought when my son interrupted me ...
"She knows your other name.........
"I don't have any other name."
"What mama calls you somtimes"...... that dropped like a bombshell and I cringed,if Radha could recollect that, I should have been in her mind all along.Why?
]]>So,at the table when my younger son said that Radha knew my name, I tried to play it down , but Su's roving invisible sensors had picked it up and said sweetly,
"Yes muchi,muchi and how did she know that...did you tell her? When she addressed Markus,she used endearments that grated on one's ears..."muchi muchi"... I hissed under my breath
"No mama"...."shaedoesamuasu".. He always answered in monosyllables and mumbles, something which his mother instantly deciphered and understood and relaxed.
I cut in .."anybody will know my name by the way you mama yells it and besides that,it's plastered as a banner on the front wall." When I had ordered for a copper plate ,I asked for proper font size and the agent had arrived at the hour of death with a copper plate and my name the size of a hoarding and installed it with promises to replace that as soon as the smaller one was ready. He took his money and had disappeared while the board stood and announced my presence from a mile out.
My son ate in silence , but I knew something was unsaid and I had to move with trepidation. Suchita would blow her top if she found out that I had fathered a child , albeit long ,long ago,in the heat of an unstoppable moment of sheer sexual pleasure, where consequences of such actions were least contemplated.My wife would most probably walk out on me were she to learn the truth.
But I was way in too deep with my date with destiny. Radha had come back into my life, not so lightly so as to shrug it off, but with a daughter in tow ,mine, and mine only and her umblical connection extended to me that I wouldn't be able to severe it in any manner, nor could I ignore the fact any more or live without holding my daugher in my arms at least once........no a million times. Yes ,be her father in the truest sense and bond and bond until my yearning soul rested content at her acceptance of me as her father .
After the initial encounter, weeks passed before I saw her again and then on, most of my time was spend at places where she appeared at different times of the day, and now I wasn't too bothered about whether she noticed me or not and after about two weeks of tagging her, I hoped to god that she would have a divine revelation and recognise me as the father of her girl. I hoped and hoped.
Meanwhile I had also set a detective, a sleazy bastard, on their trail and learnt Radha was the mistress of a wealthy businessman and he owned the supermarket where I now had to compulsively shop; my daughter helped out there in the evenings after college. Radha had a son by this fat , swarthy pit-of-the-world and they lived there separately,in a house owned by this tycoon . Any other women would have barfed at the mass of flesh in human form but Radha was rumoured to have him by his balls, holding that and part of his wealth as a
proxy , managing the business at his supermarket and also standing in for some of his not so legal businesses. The man was generous to her and it helped her maintain a fairly good lifestyle, going by the house and the way she carried herself.Like she didn't need one more mister to look after her.
James bond briefly sketched these details ,skirting most of the big story to tell me with a knowing gleam in his eyes her daughter's name was Samhita .Samhita? I had to look up it's sanskrit meaning. On his undercover mission,he had caught me tagging her and inferred that my true interests lay in the young girl. He had even proposed that he could set her up for me and whispered to me with great conspiracy....
"...see ...just like her mother, one day she will go that way. You know that's how these things end, after the mother , you know.... the daughter...yes,yes these kind of things happen ... it's easy ,you buy a small apartment, he winked and said that with his help and with some expensive presents ... "set her up as,...".you know, wink, ...".I knew that sly wink and I could feel my blood boil and stopped him short...
" What did you say?.". He was taken aback by my change of tone and explained that kids her age were vulnerable and usually ended up in the same rut as their mothers.I didn't want to listen further as that thought had crossed my mind and it disturbed me to the extent of going on and owning up and taking charge of her life.I couldn't come to terms that a similar fate to her mother awaited her in life ,when I could easily buy her any kind of life she desired. My concern for her had almost made me go across and own up.
One day, I saw the mother and daughter at their supermarket,at the far end of the line, among a row of hanging undergarments and had hurried down in great haste,determined to confront Radha ,when they had turned and vanished into the sheer wall adjacent the the shelves. I looked around. No trace of them. I peeked over the door of a small enclosure to be spat on by hissing cat with mamaries half stuffed into a lacy bra. I withdrew and hurried down the aisle and in the meantime, regained my senses and decided to be discreet until that time I had a plan .
Later I also learnt Radha's son and my younger son, Markus, went went to the same school and rode the same bus and were friends, being from thereabouts the same block and boarded the bus for school at the corner on the main road. My son told me he had been to his house and that his mother was a very funny and nice person.Yes, Radha the laughing miracle, every moment seemed to tickle her.
So, and what does your friend's mother do during the day ? I asked
]]>I was possessed by her to the exclusion of all others and I would get disturbed and angry. Now, who was this bastard stand-in dad?. Son-of-a bitch. I could have wrung his neck,...... bastard ....., probably a two bit cheapo, wife beater ,preying on the kid and mother , manipulating them, using their helplessness to tie them down and enslave them in his wicked world.Questions niggled me from deep recesses of my mind on how she would have coped in this heartless world , scorned and spitefully teased when I didn't appear at her side after school for her to joyfully take my hand and go home. I am certain she would have cried and pined for me. Did she wake up and cry in the dark for me to make those frightful demons lurking in the dark go away? Wouldn't I have leapt at the slightest moan of discomfort and hugged her , held her close to my chest and reassured her, gently patting her fears to rest and watched as her breath evened out, her contentment when she fell into a deep slumber, safe within my arms and the warmth .? Now ,who the fuck are you.........Bastard , I am going to kill you, I'll wring your throat and squeeze the blood from your heart if you so much as go near my kid.... lecherous faggot.... I will kill you.
When I woke up, Su sat beside me on the bed wrestling with my arm . She was in a grey uniform, a name badge on her chest and unfamiliar square black spectacles framed her eyes. Madness!!.. I flexed my knee , sending her tumbling to the floor, the clamour of crashing vessel and shrieks opened the door and I saw another Su run in , horror and fear showing on her face as the nurse picked herself up and glared at me.
I was in bed and from my younger son I understood that I had temporarily lost it ,crying and shouting nonsense and was in a hospital for seven days now . Seems Su's mother in desperation had sent her personal witch to try exorcism and when it didn't work , they had me almost committed to the mental asylum, but Su had prevailed and, according to the resident doctor, my son , the psychiatrist had ordered medication for temporary madness.
The shrink had diagnosed my condition as probably related to shock ,consequent to loss of stardom and attention , the trauma of a sudden and absolute lack of an identity and occupation had severely impaired my ability to think normally and was about to hypnotize me and give me positive suggestions to get real when I had woken up and kneed the nurse in her broad seat
I gradually felt better.I found her again and I would hang around and hide behind pillars and bushes and watch her , her face, her smile, her not so innocent charm,yes... she had plenty of boy friends, it angered me, she had taken to her mother's loose ways. I would itch to go a cross and tell her some and give her a small hiding, if need be, to behave proper and not venture beyond rectitude and lady like conduct I expected . Then I would imagine her refrain, her entreaties to let her be,
"Oh papa. you are so old and unfashioned, all the girls have five boyfriends"
Truth . I had never felt the urge nor the immense need to be a father even when my first son was born and I had felt down right silly and bashful and did not rush home when the news reached me, preferring to put as many days between me and the prospect of facing my parents and shriveled old ladies inquiring how I felt being a father and going through uneasy moments during the naming ceremony, awkwardly posing for photographs with a forced smile, bawling kid and wife on side and siblings and cousins sensing my unease, mercilessly poking fun and throwing knowing looks and making me extremely uncomfortable with innuendos. I had felt naked and as if I had been caught in the act. Looking back, I wasn't particularly gung ho about such a trivial act of mating and making babies and didn't feel the onrush of manhood that many studs claimed to have experienced at the news of their first born. But here and now, so many years after the event, I felt an exultation of being one to a beautiful girl , whose smile stretched a wee bit more and flashed, forever ingraining that magic moment deep within my heart. I yearned to see it again and again that I would carry my racking soul to that super market to catch a glimpse of her. Until one day.
]]>"Get the hell off my couch, run away ....go..go...go now", I thundered and they hastened off the couch to the dining table where Darren lay his head enacting his final minute on earth .
Ammanie had taken control, she was a nurse and round in shape being fat both side to side and front to back, her huge mammaries dropping heavily down and countered by an mighty behind and if she had sharpened teeth,she could have been straightaway cast in jurrasic park .But the resemblance ended there, she was an extremely likeable person and was in complete command when she was around and stood by cradling his bleeding head against her huge chest and ordered her kids to get her emergency kit. Radha stood on his other side ,visibly flustered, the incident had taken out the joy of reunion and he moaned his make believe trauma and flopped his head between her exquisite bosom as well, a little too deeply for the miserly cut he had received. The slight gash had pulled the tight scalp apart and blood spurted in disproportion to the wound, making it look bloodier than it was. My son's eyes welled up, Captain Brainless, his hero, sat between two gorgons, mortally beaten to pulp and he whispered with little hiccups to me..
"Uncle Darren might not survive the hemorrhaging , we have to find the right blood type for a massive infusion , or he'll slip into a coma from which he may never wake up....Ever". .. so I pointed to wilkie at the foot of the door and asked whether the dog's blood would do.
"Papa , be serious... he is not used to our conditions and he could catch tetanus". That was a welcome thought, nobody survived tetanus for more than twentyfour hours, a relatively manageable interval, surely the hospital should be able to take care of that.
"Cruel.....Why did she have to do that, I think she over-reacted ...Look at her now , as if she cared!" she whispered in rage.Suchita was on my side, she couldn't comprehend the viciousness of the women who seemed to complement her in several aspects.
Overreacted! Ha ha .. who cared? whoo haahah!!.. I would have given half a hand if she could have as much penetrated an inch into the skull, deleting his floppy memory and wiped out ancient images and instances stored in his useless brain for at least the time they spent with us in India. What harm could he do from France, he couldn't even email and he had two families to look after when he found the time from transmitting aids with his fucking lifestyle.
Being the man of the situation he was taking advantage, playing up his injury,writhing and accidentally brushing Radha's rump as Ammanie isolated the cut on his head with a surgical blade and deftly sewed the skin together to stanch the slight ooze and wrapped a bandage around his head and contended with her work, she gave him a pat on his back, peck on his face, bit her lower lip , released it slowly while nodding her head and complemented Radha for her sharp aim. Hearing that ,Darren said
"What do you know, either she marries me or I'm claiming damages... tulips, ask your husband to sell your house" and Radha giggled bringing back memories in a flood. How long ago was it, twenty years since then ? In the loo, on the throne and locked in silence, my thoughts regressed to those carefree bachelor days and the subsequent truth I had come to know a few months ago. On the day of our house warming, after we returned to India , my brother- in -law came in after some emergency shopping and said he had seen a young girl in the neighbourhood who was a spitting image of my sister,his wife. We joked about my dad's trysts and concluded that he would have been too old to father a girl so young and speculated I could have been the one who had sown the wild oats.
Much later I was to see the young girl and my heart skipped several beats and I palpitated like a running dog shedding heat. I was at the grocery store and she was there with a women whom I had known briefly and had sex when I was a bachelor. I do not know whether the woman, Radha, tulips to us, recalled me from the drug induced haze of those days, if she did , she passed by without any hint of recognition. But I did and gasped , stunned by the realisation Radha was probably the girl's mother and the pretty young girl was my daughter and a feeling of uncontainable longing hit me. Then on,it was a search.
]]>Darren and Su stood on the terrace outside,among the rose bushes and dahlias, their shadowy figures silhouetted against the light and it added to the gloom I felt .He leaned on the baluster with his back to me observing life as it unfolded on the street and Su sat sideways on the railing with a coffee cup in hand,looking up at him . It was a vantage point where Darren stood, two floors above ground and with an eagle eye one could peer and get a deeper look between the crevices in bobbing T shirts.
The two should have been there quite sometime, the coffee cups probably empty and her lilting laugh carried across the hall to the couch where I sat trying to read the morning paper .Obviously Darren said something corny. For the present ,I would have been glad if it stopped there ,my mind was in turmoil and eyes would not focus and I sensed a subterranean rumble, a surreal notion of things about to explode, a feeling compounded every minute they stood there. I wanted then off the terrace
I poured myself a coffee and prepared to hail him .I cleared my throat for a rehearsal and communicate a joy I didn’t feel.
"Hey , come here Darren, did you see this, a goddamm Frenchman was caught ….. I croaked,....my voice cracked and trailed, my gut stalling in tension, which he heard and he said,
"Shut up, asshole, get a tooth brush and a salt gargle, I can smell you here,"…. horse laugh…ha hah hha ….ngi ngi ngi … and clamped two crooked fingers around my wife’s nose .I was angry at Su, I know their friendship was deep and platonic, oh yes, there was this one time when they had discovered each other; two long lost brother-and-sister souls had met and the scene turned treacly, sugar syrup pouring out of their eyes that I had to quietly tiptoe out of the room to avoid being caught in a mushy three way embrace. The loving sibling relationship had held and I trust my wife, but the least she could have done at that moment was to bring him inside and not play side kick to the idiot.
The clock inched towards seven fifteen, about time Radha and her mother would turn the corner, head our way and then go round the bend on the left before disappearing from view, a short interval, but big enough to ruin my life. I hoped and deeply prayed for the murky morning and drizzle to keep them them home. I also wished she had also changed and not retained the poise, exuding the same sexual appeal and allure as she did many years ago . Darren would scent it from a mile and I had to somehow get him off the terrace. Bastard, he had a way of being there when you least needed him and then it would turn around and you’ll need him then. Like that day in March in Kuwait.
My wife came in from the terrace, a fresh rose in her hand and placed it in a crystal vase on the coffee table and said…
“My god, Darren will never change, ask him what he did on the flight.” As if I didn’t know,
“That bastard would have flashed in the aisle, what else?" and feigned total disinterest.
And then it happened, exactly as I had foreseen.
“Radhaaaa”……he shouted and he flew past me giving me a quizzical look and ran down the stairs and through the hall and on to the street. I ran to the terrace in time to see him catch up and clamp his big hands around Radha's eyes
“Guess who” he hollered, guess wh..... tulips…mon cherry….The sudden attack and the noise frightened her mother that she tottered to the middle of the street . Radha shrieked and twisted and desperately tried to claw herself free, while he put his face to close her ear and nibbled and crooned...
“Guess who, my love" ,nuzzling her and then he turned to see the old women tilting over and falling down in the middle of the road .He let go and ran to help the old lady, who cowered as he approached. Radha saw the opening ,picked up a fist size stone , sneaked from the rear and cracked it on his head as he bent down to help the old lady up .I could hear the stone echoing off his empty skull, the shot could have debrained an elephant and I let go a whoop in sheer exhilaration of a goal eventually driven in to even the scores.I hoped he was dead but Darren survived,got up and faced her. She was always gutsy and kneed plenty of men who had tried to impose unwanted attention on her, and socked him in his balls ,the excruciating pain contorted his features and she recognized him. Her hands flew to her mouth,
Darren, you? Same ….Darren Darren? she cocked her head in inquiry while unknown to her he was bleeding to death or so I wished. Su had heard the clamor and was beside me and saw Darren's shirt turn red .I stood there unable to move a muscle and hoped that radha would walk away,but before that Su gave me a searing look for my inappropriate response, and ran down to help. And they came in with the bleeding bastard propped between them and the act brought together two women who should have never ever met and lived their separate lives oblivious to a blood bond that tied them in a fatal embrace that could see one of us dead .I cursed all.
]]>“Look at me, dirty shit, look what they did to me”……… and spread his fingers to reveal wounded ends and imprecise, scarred blackened nails growing awkwardly and tears welled in his eyes
My immediate reaction was absurd, I snorted trying to stifle my amusement and he saw my reaction and said bitterly
“Go on , laugh …….soon I’ll these bastards tear off your nails and you’ll never able to laugh there after” which really tickled me, setting off another paroxysm of laughter and doubled up. He came across and slapped me. The policeman at the desk intervened and pushed him away and I had to practically hide myself from him to stop my hysterical reaction to his anguished visage.
Fact, the man was tortured and had spent his time in jail. After being spotted by a palestine, whom he had to take into confidence ,he had retuned with him for the money to find it gone. He was reported and the Iraqis had tortured him and had held him captive and endured for some months and later , after the war, instead of being released, he was held by the police for further questioning and deportation along with other Palestinians . The brothers had just returned in time and had rehabilitated him, but ravages of detention was yet to wear off . I was caught around that time .
About afternoon, the next day a few expatriate labourers hauled the garbage and the man-hole was open for inspection. A torch was shown in and light reflected from still pool of dark greenish black water and nothing else and then one man put his his head down and peered inside and shook his head. I clearly remember the bags floating in the tank and then it struck me that it could have sunk and had the water probed with a long iron rod and we hit pay dirt. Water had seeped in through the hastily prepared plastic wraps and canvas bags and the soggy bills had sunk to the bottom of the pool.
It took a few more hours to get the bags out , clean the bills, dry and get them on the table while we sat around being ill at ease with each other. There were happy and unhappy faces, the happiest being the police chief, who came over and hugged me close and praised me for my honesty . The Egyptian was smarting under the agony he felt, neither did he get the money but had to pay physically for not finding it. The old sheik, Abu Daoud sat imperiously, he was happy for us, it augmented the faith he had in the Egyptian and enhanced my stature from a mere counter of notes to a dependable and honest servant. The chief swept two bundles towards us and thanked Allah and left us to sort the rest among us.
Immediately, Eshmel was at the side of Abu Daoud ,the elder of the two brothers who owned the business, took control and slid money towards the old man and spoke in Arabic. Abu Dauod listened , nodded, looked at me , nodded. Eshmel itched to pay me back and I could see it the way he denied himself the hand out. He said that they owed us nothing and the money could be used for better purposes and pointed me to the door.
]]>My detention started almost rough but softened when I showed my US army work permit and a letter to travel .I had written that myself and the paper conveyed an authority and though it was received with an undercurrent of abhorrence , the chief did not pursue it much further, they were too indebted to Americans to do me any harm.
Next day morning, Abu Sameer ,younger brother of my erstwhile employer arrived and looked me over. He had added a few pounds and looked like he had been on a long holiday and after a brief conversation with the police chief , he asked me
“What were you doing here? It took me a minute to collect myself
“Here? In Kuwait?
“Yes and what were you looking for”
“I’m working for an American army contractor and since I was in Kuwait, I thought I could collect my books I’d left behind .The front door was locked and nobody answered, so I went around to see whether any one was inside”.
“So why didn’t you contact me”………
“I tried the office numbers and there was no response and went behind to look whether anybody was about so I could contact Abu Daoud.
He asked me a few more routine questions ,listened gravely and shook his head and lifted his chin and signaled . Eshmel was brought in, gaunt and wasted and his eyes burned with wild fury, and…,well that’s a brief description. On seeing me his satisfaction showed visibly on his face and drew on his scraggy beard and jiggled a bit. I could not fathom the source of his pleasure and it became evident soon . Phoo… was he in a haste to tear me.
“We had three million in currency at that time and I had moved the money with your assistance to a safer place. It is missing and you were the only other person who knew where the money was hidden"…..he screwed his lip and nervous ticks turned facets on his face.
“You have your figures wrong ,Mr. Eshmel, we had close to five hundred thousand and we had packed them in ten bags and had left the dinars behind if you remember that”…. I had acquired a slight American accent and stressed it to intimidate him.
“Yes, Yes, Yes, what happened to the money and the dinars” asked the police chief.
“I’m not sure, the money should be safe, I’ll not know until we search the place. The dinars,……… Iraqis might have pissed on that” …..I said with vengeance and the interrogators winced, I had hit a raw nerve without knowing that was exactly true.
]]>“Stop kicking your legs about, you’re ruining my sleep”. When stressed, I had a habit of flexing my legs back and forth along the smooth surface of the bed .
Kuwait. My mind went back to the days of war trying to smother my predilection for the present which surfaced despite the fear of being unmasked and made to mortally answer for it.
I had gone back to the office after fidgeting for two days over that decision . I had called Darren once again and he said that the outcome was there to see, one person was already dead and I would be the next one. His basic philosophy was-‘do not take what is not yours,’ much to the contrary of his own ways, where he took everything including his neighbour’s wife and lived a life of debauchery and cunning that should have worn out his soul, pole, hole and sole by then, still he would hold forth on the virtues of prudence and good behavior as a cure for trouble- free and uncomplicated life for others.
It was mid March and the desert temperature had shot up and I could feel the sweat snaking and trickling behind the ears. It was about seven in the evening and very dark, the place looked a ghost town, not many people were to be seen and except for an occasional army vehicle, the roads were empty and the atmosphere had a very sombre feel, you could sense a creep from behind. Reaching the office, I tried the front door, which was locked. I didn’t know what it meant, the Iraqis had used the place as a base and wouldn’t have closed it behind them , so I went over the side where a narrow gap separated our building from the adjacent one, at the end stood an iron gate which led to the block at the rear.I clambered over the gate and walked along the back wall towards the middle where a small courtyard met our back wall. Nobody was around so I tried to clamber up but with no proper foot hold I slipped, bruising myself and after another attempt when I had one leg over, I was caught.
]]>My eyes adjusted to the light and just in time to catch a robe cascading down my wife's naked ass.
“Darren”! ……… Su said wide eyed ,giggled and ran out.
“Trohokada mainmon”……. tway mon christe’……..I’ll kick this door down, fucking ass hole. Merde". Oh! Darren, the serial fucker.
I was totally concious now .It was three ,a cold ,cold early morning, and the announcement of his arrival at my door had woken up the neighbourhood and lights streamed out through window curtains, some parting to investigate the unearthly intrusion at the dead of the night and had set off a recurring dream from a childhood trauma.. As a small boy ,with a bat I had beaten a sparrow trapped in a small dark room next to the bath to death and mamma heard the noise and banged the door open to see me pulling it’s wings apart. She was looking in from behind the door , her wet naked top half dripping water and saw me and cursed me for my unkindness and said someday her hands would be pulled apart in a similar act of cruelty and she would die like the bird. I had cried sitting at the bathroom door and begged her not to die, mamma wouldn’t listen and said god treated us the way we treated his other creations and each one of us will have to pay for our misdeeds.
The dream recurred, only the setting changed and I would be unable to warn my mother though I could sense the imminent attack, my words would not carry and had to wait to get over it by waking up in a sweat.
By the time I reached the door, they were on the floor, and on seeing us running towards him, he shrugged my younger son off his back, leapt up and held my wife in a bear hug. I could see her ample bust flattening against his chest and he kissed her all over the face , making satisfied uuumms as if she was his wife. He kissed women without invitation, even a dog ,as long as it was a female.
My younger son had sensed him earlier and opened the door for him and was going through their WWF routine ,wrestling on the floor when we arrived to disturb their romp and Darren stood up to concentrate on his mission of trying to own my wife. He had come with heavy baggage, three of which were his immediate family, coat racks with painted lips. The biggest lip twirled and made apologetic shapes trying to atone for her husband’s animal behaviour and came over and planted a kiss on my cheek. I put an arm round her waist, waiting for Darren to finish with Su and run through the dogs, which he did and got up, put his nose close to mine, said fuck off and headed for the first bedroom, which was mine and crashed for eternity. Ammanie tried to explain, but Su put her at ease, had their luggage hauled and her kids sent up to the guest bedrooms.
Ammanie sat with us and we talked for a few minutes and broke for the night and I waited for the real life nightmare to begin.
]]>Darren , unnaturalised frenchman, fornicator exrtaordinaire, cuntlicker in air plane toilets, a ugly man who attracted women like a bare light bulb drew flies in monsoon rain and kissed them, positive juices flowing through veins instead of blood, , guaranteed to make anybody he met happier by at least 33 degrees,a worker of miracles, laughing at death when gnawing cancer ate him from inside.He gave me my first break
Eshmel Jumouke Benabe, the Egyptian, polygamist, polyeverything, greedy for money, women , men, food ,drink and pornography ,but ready to wait and ferret .Calculating ,intuitive opportunist , a compulsive note downist - he even transcribed telephone conversations with his wives.My mentor ,until a bitter power struggle pitted us against each other.
Jamail Asheri,Iraqi scion, heterosexual ,ambitious, thoroughly convinced about the rights of man ,volunteered for a dictator's army because he believed one day he would change his world from within .Refusing to stand down, he fought to make real that dream and died reaching for that .He let me discover my inner strength. .
Adrian Nash, Irish, homosexual, youngest in his famliy , difficult to describe, lived with his mother because he could not bear to let her live alone. Warm, kind, just missed being a catholic priest,tried to live like one and repented for not being able to do so, a forerunner of modern day gay bishops and held sodomy was okay but gommorah was uh-hoe. One of the few civilian casualities of the war. He died for me.
Charles, American ,black,millionaire,self confident to the point of disdain, who had bought a house in the most exclusive part of the town because somebody at the golf course had asked him "and, where do you live?" and had his chauffer stay there,educated at MIT, intelligent , typical American know how enthusiast and powerpoint presenter.Remorseless, even when he sold out on me.
And along with three women, were part of my life ,affecting unforeseen turns in my life to this day as I pen the final and most poignant time of my life and I discover I had another life unlived from the day I set out on that journey from college to man to father.
]]>Adrian was a complex man given to manic moods and sought companionship from another human being and I liked him and spent much of our free time together leading to some speculation that we had a sexual relationship, which was not true, just that we could mentally reach each other in an easy friendship where you do not feel intimidated or compelled to please.
Thoughts flooded my mind, the few months spent with him had left a longing , a need to see and hear him. I felt a pain. Once he had read us Keats' ode to a nightingale, infusing the rendition with images of longing and death, that now I heard that in my mind and could see him fade away while only painful memories of him remained.
"Mr. Charles Lambert...... says it's important".he handed me the set. I tried to tell him the sadness I felt, but he cut me off and said
"I know .....Sergeant Graham says there are twelve intact trucks, I want those trucks moved to Al Sagayah
in eight hours. Do what you have to do".
A small speck appeared on the horizon and steadily became larger,a chopper, the swish of it's rotors cutting the air and it descended and hung an inch above the road. A soldier in the battle dress with patches of light green and brown hopped down and ran in a low arc towards me while within seconds the injured and the dead were lifted onto the chopper and it swung away and up.
"You have twelve trailers intact, I want them moved . Call your nearest emergency station , organize and get the two damaged vehicles off the road .I need the metal gratings , move it on to another trailer and I want them at Al Sagayay eight hours from now." The soldier spoke like a machine
Two trucks and trailers lay immobilized on the narrow road, it would take roughly eight to nine hours to organize and mobilize the heavy equipment to move them,so we cut the stays on the flat bed truck and pushed the pallets of gratings of the edge on to the concrete , hacked the straps and lined the gratings on the sand and moved the convoy around the wreckage. It took some time,the effort and toil took my mind off Adrian and we were in Al Sagayay much ahead of the time. Later on I send back a team to bring back the rest of the stuff lying on the desert road.
Much later, in a passing conversation, I realized Charles had put me in charge of the operation to get me out of the shock.Any of the men in uniform with our convoy would have done it easily.
I was tired and mentally exhausted and took me some time to realise I was back in Kuwait.
]]>I've seen red rain ,when I was a child ,at the onset of a monsoon ,the droplets were orangish red and believers in my home town said that high above a celestial war raged between the forces of good and evil and the rain was the blood of the defeated ‘cheguthans’,…sathan …., satan…, and those who were caught in the rain were made to go through elaborate rituals to be cleansed of the evil transfusion. I liked the red rain , I ran in my white shirt and it turned orange and my mother wept for bringing misfortune on myself and had thrashed me within an inch of my life. This black rain nearly killed us all
We were almost an hour on the road and it was turning to be one trip from hell. Adrian had caught up with us a Qaysumah and had briefly indicated to me he had a plan. He was playing cagey, refusing eye contact and the mystery of the plan heightened the excitement and set me on the edge. The effects of the lethal cocktail of the previous nights were yet to shake off and left a grouchy feeling and bad taste in my mouth, adding to that, a pervasive aroma of petrol hung in the air and it gradually turned nauseating I wanted to retch, which I did until my stomach cramped. . Then came the downpour, lashing liquid goo and the tires of the trucks churned it into an emulsion making the concrete road slippery and the heavy trailers slid sideways and when the drivers applied the brakes ,it snaked, the lateral movement nearly forcing the heavy vehicles off the road into the sand. Adrian called for a halt and raced through the side to the front and as he got there, the jeep sunk ,nose first, into the sand. He got down, threw down his cap and spat. And then the unimaginable happened.
One trailer had slid into the sand , the trucker pushed the pedal and the engines groaned under the low gears as he tried to impart enough power to pull the trailer on to the road but the tires spun free, slipping on the oil and then abruptly the treads bit into the concrete and the vehicle lurched forward . The driver jammed the brakes in reflex , skewing the monster trailer and it slid across to the other edge , the tires on one side sunk into sand toppling the trailer in slow motion but what followed was spectacular, the force of the overturning 60 tonne trailer flicked the engine cabin over in the air and threw it down judo style and continued it’s forward momentum ramming into the trailer in front, deflecting and crashing into stalled jeep nearby ,instantly killing five men and injuring another three. Adrian who was standing with his back to the truck, inspecting his stalled vehicle ,was crushed to pulp.
Being from the world of life predestined , where every moment of one’s life is clearly defined and trajectory set in motion from the moment of birth ,I had plodded on in the belief that Adrian would have a plan when we caught up at AlSagayah, though my senses and mind had rebelled and urged me to signal Adrian to call off the ill fated adventure and go back home. I was traumatised by Adrian's death for which I felt responsible .He had no reason to travel anywhere if I hadn’t set him on the road and the grief and guilt would forever accompany me, the fumes of petrol at pumping stations triggering the olfactory senses and acutely replaying and recreating the events of that day , a memory I would carry until my death and a debt I would carry until his mother’s.
]]>The opportunity came by when least expected ,mid March. The UN forces were digging in after Saddam Hussein withdrew what was left of his army but there was no let up in the coalition preparedness for battle .Bush had called for a cessation of fire but nobody at that time knew whether Saddam had dangerous weapons or hidden resources to unleash terror and mayhem in a counter offensive and the army was bracing itself for that eventuality.
Unlike Normandy or Iwo Jima where overwhelming numbers were thrown into battle and lives sacrificed for a tactical toe hold , there was a strategic shift in the gulf war. Though firepower to destruct and snuff out lives had increased manifold, the primary offensive strategy was maximum gain with minimum loss of lives , and planning was more precise to keep causalities down, which was evident from the outcome, very few lives were lost on the coalition side.
Charles and his engineering corps were at the forefront of being prepared and ordered construction materials he had stashed at junctures east to west from Az Zifli to Dhammam on the Saudi coast, to be moved up and relocated along two main arteries heading north into Kuwait.Adrian got me the authorization to move to AzZifli and organize the reserve teams and move the containers and set them further upfield, , where advance teams from Charles’ unit had established desert stations with wireless radios and beacons.
The army was everywhere and I had no link to the outside world except a grand communion with the vast expanse of sand that got under my eyes ,nose and mouth and all I could do was stop and relieve myself without being constantly watched. I was tense and disoriented and really didn’t have a clue of what I was doing . Much as I liked to make myself believe that Adrian wanted the money more , I was as keen and had my own plans of how I would use it but enduring the three days of an uncomfortable drive in the cabin of an army van ,heightened with barking orders, I cursed my greed and questioned my blind dash into the unknown with no plan whatsoever for money which I believed would be there.
I remember reaching Kayusmah, drinking whiskey lazed with valium and crashing for two straight days. I was shaken awake and the next leg was across the Suadi border into Al Sagayah in Kuwait where the road to Jahra began, at the end of which my destiny was shaped.
]]>One should understand the milieu, this was war, security was tight and all were suspect and everyone a dangerous double agent and once the intelligence got a whiff, they made your life miserable shaking you down for the ‘real truth’. I had seen Jordanians caught snooping, being led away for interrogation by army intelligence and handed over to Saudi secret police, disappearing forever.Even innocuous acts were reported.
An amateur astrologer from India, , working as an office assistant for another contractor, was caught scribbling on a paper notations and figures that nobody could understand .He was reported and grilled for hours by the secret agents, twisting his mind so incontrovertibly that he had to be put on the next flight home. This fool was casting a horoscope by calculating exactly what stood in future for the next two hundred years for some nut , when nobody would even dare to carry a piece of paper with a telephone number on it.This was going the way of the quasi-astrologer, exactly as Darren warned me when I had called him.
I was exasperated, Adrian was going over every aspect of my act, beseeching me: how is that..., why is that, and when, where, how.....are you sure….??????, his doubts were the same and his Irish brain couldn't fathom that somebody would flush half a million dollars ,whatever may the circumstances be and his questions were phrased and rephrased to the point that I gnashed my teeth and hissed,
“Yes , you irish idiot……I’m not sure at all, ….really I’m so unsure that’s the fuck I want to go back an’ look for myself . As for the second part, you’re a better judge of volumes, I’ll give you the dimension, factor in the average load of shit per person and you’ll be able to arrive at a decent figure. My guess is that the shit will be deep, just about lip level..now tell me, what’s wriggling past your arsehole?
He didn’t speak about it for the next two days but I could sense something remained unsaid. Then the dam broke, he was in regress, a devolution into the juvenile world of treasure and fantasy, a jason hunting for golden shit. Adrian wanted the money more than I did and over the two days had dreamt simultaneous dreams of what he would do with ‘his money’, like he would travel the world and render poems in secluded parks to those unfortunates whom poetry had passed by, making them less appreciative of human nature. Yea I said , try Bangladesh , they are dying to listen to your moping Gaelic poems.
]]>Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
He was reading the poem again at my insistence and was to read another when I interrupted him ,surprising him and he slammed the book shut and glared at me.
What?.....what,what, what?.
]]>Lambertin was now firing , salaries were headed south and the adrenalin rush when I saw the first cheque of the four thousand and more,was pissed when it was slashed by half. The situation was becoming so untenable that one had to worry when Lambertin would start charging us to stay employed. Once the job permit was cancelled, only a madman would stay behind in Suadi Arabia ,to be caught and thrashed by their police, whose ass we were trying to protect from the manniaakk.
Men stood in line for the severence package, "four weeks pay....some frigging package, mafucking paper" somebody said,and the plane fare home .Adrian handled the HR and I sat in the same room and had no reason to stand in line but I had to symbolically convey, after all my genius, I was just another expendable cog in his opportunist machine. When I reached his table he pushed me away , I hassled him further and thrust my papers in his face and said
"Why ,here's your your new slogan 'NOW FIRING'"
He brushed it off and asked me to fuck off.In Amman, when I had applied for the job with Lambertin, Adrian was the one of the three men at the recruiting centre.We had to fill in a questionaire and tick little boxes and one question asked was, why we wanted to work for an army contractor. I found the responses not worthy of reply, no infiltrator was going to publish his intentions, so I wrote that I loved firewoks.Adrian said he liked that and had passed on my paper after stamping his approval. Now he had further plans for me , so it seemed, for a measly three hundred a week, maybe licking his behind. All jobs had been taken over by the army and civilians were being run out for security reasons , so that left us with little else to do.
'Operation Desert shield had morphed into Desert Storm" and mid January , it was all over. I had always likened the war to a boxing match, where I stood at a corner throwing brave punches in the air, leading with the left, one to the head, an uppercut to chin followed by fast jabs to the body and then a mighty hook to the temple, while a ten armed tyson stood at the other corner, two arms dropped loosely on his sides, other sledgehammer like fists lay hidden behind , waiting for for the referree to blow the whistle. The rest is history, August to Feb, and I was hanging by a thread.
]]>Dhamman was different. It was 'MAHA KUMBH' in military gear ,with added tanks and battle cars. In Dhamman, there was no respite , compounded by recalcitrant Saudi suppliers who they had their own ideas of how to run a war which was comic book class, but still great semblance of order was achieved and men and materaial still moved . The operation were run with ultra- hi tech equipments and satellite imagery by head honchos from Centar Logistical Command ,Army Command Support and Army Corps of Engineers .
Contract staff were hardly noticed and it was work and work all the time. Charles had his job well cut out , rapid engineering and consctruction being his specialisation ,and was in charge of that division. He was well ahead of his task, stocks of fast setting cement ,premixed slurry,welded steel formwork required for laying landing pads and strengthening roads were already moved into the many strategic points in a semicircle , many miles south of the kuwait-saudi border. These depots in the desert were " ready to run", laoded trucks that could be deployed at great speed in emergency . And that's how I lost my job.
Towards the end of October, Charles and his team had moved to Dhamman and Lambertin had moved staff and a thousand heavy load haulers to the east, some of which were sitting loaded in the desert and some of which was running free. Lambertin did not own the trucks, it was hired from as far as from Sweden to Pakistan and drivers from even further,who spoke in tongues from excellent English to broken French which were all the same , nobody understood a thing the other said.Confusion is the general word that can be used mildly to describe the situation .
Mobilisation had been stepped up several fold , requests poured in every second, and goofups flashed like lightening, exposing the perpetrators for all to see. Every order had to be cheched ,rechecked and validated before action, which had to happen in seconds.
One day , a massive pipe burst and the crude pumped in high pressure , ripped the pipe that many million gallons of thick oil slick had turned the part of the desert into a quagmire. Three hundred abhrams were being rolled across the desert towards the Kuwait border and "shit,shit,shit" blasted from the wirless.
Charles swung into action, identified the nearest "ready to run" depot and asked me to move it to the site of the accident,Al Nijab , an oil installation, one hundred and fifty kilometers to the southeast from the dump. Al Nijab somehow became Al Nijaf and sixteen heavy loaders moved as I directed them on the radio. The lead driver was from my home town and we spoke the same language, so I was in constant touch, and they were moving south and responses matched the land marks.
Although on the same route up to a point,the convoy took the wrong turn and reached Al Nijaf,more than three hundred kilometers away from AL Nijab. These desert oil installations had almost similar names , land marks and the terrain looked the same and though we could have tracked their position , nobody did as nothing seemed wrong. Everything was an emergency and only very, very top priority sitautions got the attention from the communications command centre.The communication centre did.
It was mayhem after three hours,the projected time for the convoy to report. Any way , three hundred miles away, the convoy was hit by a blinding sandstorm which lasted several hours and by the time crawlers cleared the raod ,a good ten hours had passed and when the tanks crossed the oil slick,it was a 24.00 hrs. It raised the tank comandant's hackles.
The papers were fetched and validation had not been done! The first entry, Al nijab looked like Al nijaf , the second entry was al nijaf and third confirmation entry was al nijaf, which was mine. The rule was that the second person had to connect it to the earth's grid coordinates before confirmation .
Sometimes,in emergency sitautions, these were done after the things arrived at the place as nobody had time to go through these processes and goof ups were celebrated if it didn't cause to much disruption. But here, the officer in charge came back by copter and kicked out all Lambertin staff involved. Adrian escaped, but two Englishmen above me and I were cermoniously demoted to 'mess haul', driving food to bases.
Whenever Charles crossed my path he would draw imaginary grid lines in air and mark a point in air.....
" I am gonna sit there.. and don't send mafood to my mama in albertsville."
Charles sometimes talked like a black man, in jest, but I have never ever been with a person who spoke with such precision and diction. You could see what he was saying, so lucid and clear ,bereft of any slang,but for the American accent and he used his communication skills to such effect that it left hardly any scope for misinterpretation. He was aware that this was one of my rare mistakes and that too not solely mine. Anyhow we were to catch up soon, in Kuwait,after the war.
]]>We were a loose gang and some soldiers were our friends . I have to have a word about them especially the black Americans among us. .They were so different from the stereotypes projected to us that they surprised me to the point of adulation .High school grads mostly, with an easy presence and fine manners, but without the cloying show that got under the skin. , sensitive enough to appreciate others, easy to touch and without any hesitation would hug a poor grubby mechanic for a successful repair job done. Parties and late night bashes were enlivened by their vibrant talents. Dancing and singing came to them without practice, musical instruments were handled as if they were born with it and liked practical jokes that could make you laugh again and again in retrospect.
Lambertin hired trucks from local transporters. We had leased some heavy haulers from a Saudi gentleman and they broke down under the extra tonnage we loaded on them and repairs were his business and would sometimes take his own time getting about it. When we paged and killed him, he would sent one of his underlings with preposterous excuses or bribes to let him off without a penalty. One day we set him up. We sent word that the commander was so pleased that he wanted to honor him with a badge for exemplary services.
He came in fully decked and an orderly received him and bought him to Charles , behind whom five heavily armed men in uniform and war paint on their face stood to ramrod attention. . He came in to receive the honor, his head tilted upwards ,chin out, arching eyebrows with eyes looking sideways and fiddling his balls through his robe. That was a custom in this land, checking whether his male appendage had loosened itself from it’s moorings or was in free fall.
There was a single chair opposite ‘Charles Commander’, a title that existed nowhere, and he motioned the Saudi gentleman to sit. No words were spoken. I was called in and demurely gave him a file from which the ‘commander’ drew out enlarged pictures of the broken down trucks and clipped it on a board. At the same time, somebody lowered a noose in front of his face from the roof truss. First the man’s face shot a crimson red and then retracted and flit like a harried cock , gurgling sounds like “bluock..… goluck… aloaraghhhh escaped from his throat and made his first mistake,he didn’t wait for the question but ran for the door,which drew the men in war paint and two more soldiers stood with lethal weapons to shoot him down. Saudis are mortally scared of Americans and always believed they could shoot and kill anybody. What followed was straight slapstick.
First he hiked his robe so high,exposing his bare behind and dangling balls and tried to jump through , failing which he dived and tried to crawl between the soldiers’ legs and when he got to the end, one sat on him. The next sound was a croak followed by a bray of absolute terror ,a cow led to slaughter, that brought in the real security guards. They yanked him up , hooked him by his armpits and they hung him the air between them , his eyes now shone like a rat caught in a trap. He desperately tried to explain, cringed , entreating them by furiously moving his face left and right but they hauled him away..
For a moment we were caught unawares,Charles was slightly concerned as the security guys were not brought into the ambit, so we ran after them. . Fear shot from his eyes when he saw us running towards him ,he twisted and somersaulted a full circle in air to face us again. terror seeped from every pore in his body and he cried bubbubooo, we couldn’t stop laughing and my stomach ached and I bent double.
The security guards let him go. I don’t know whether he ever complained, but once, his assistant asked me what we had done to him.
“Why, what happened” I asked
“No Sir, from that day onwards he is behind the curtain and peeping out through the window”. He thought he had genuinely escaped execution.
]]>"Passport and papers" the first man asked and scanned it .
"Can you read and write English" asked the second man, a Jordanian,I think.
I said yes, and my papers and passport were passed on to the third man, an American.
He looked at the passport and looked me up and down. He zoomed his chair to the far end and put my papers in a bin marked hired. From the second 'he retrieved a mass of papers and entered my name flipping through the passport "Mr. Pokyratsrat,you are hired, you'll have to go back to India and come back.Fill in the rest,get a police report from your local police station and you have 10 days" and marked the date across the top of the first page.
I had a job and the letter heads proclaimed "Lambertin Logistics" and just below it said ,"defence contractors", followed by several blank spaces and then the fine print.
During the build up and in the aftermath of the war, I worked for Lambertin at dumps in some of the several huge prefabricted sheet metal buiding that dotted the desert roads.Huge containers arrived at the dumps with army supplies marked with symbols, class, sub class and Lambertin managed the logistics.
The lynchpins of the operations were officers of US army 'support command' and headed operations at highest level from where instructions streamed down to an army of civil contractors who coordinated work and organised the redistribution . I was a supervisor for Lambertin working with a sub contractor to whom we off loaded 2 classes of supplies in containers into bays inside the prefabricted buildings in predetermined ramps where sub contractors broke bulk and repacked them as smaller units and then we moved the repacked rations,clothig and personal demand items in containers to marked forward destinations . Within two week , my operations were so slick , that I started having visitors. Adrian, to whom I reported ,liked the egyptian board business, and it worked almost flawlessly both for Lambertin and for the subcontactor,that I was moved up to the main station.
The central logistic station bristled with activity and the huge tower lights made day and night indistinguihable.This was no small operation , Lambertin had two thousand ,sixteen wheeled trucks ,hauling in and out supplies that could have fed and clothed India for a year.I became an expert at the business of redistribution of material to their destinations.The markings ran from one to ten with clear symbols for classes of goods and within that, each class had subclasses, denoted in alphabets. The walls of my station had cement boards behind every table with assignments ,clear intructions ,reminders and daily routine marked on these boards.I was a natural at it more so because I had a manual which was like a text book of army supply corps and was using a computer for planning .Though mix ups happened ,with baluchi drivers understanding instuctions backwards and grenades arrived at food stations and were almost were packed as pineapples, but there were few complaints and turn arounds became more streamlined.
This was the turning point of my life.
One day, a group arrived at my station, led by a well built young and tall army office, neither too black neither white. It was a rare easy afternoon and I was sitting with my leg up on the table, with my back to the door, reading Ayn Rand. The manager, Adrian,to whom I reported , tapped me and I whirled around to see concerned faces at other tables. I wasn't sure myself,hardly anybody came around except Adrian. Generally high level visits where when large screwups happened throwing schedules out of gear. Not that it didn't happen, it was almost the order of the day, but not within our compound.
"So How do you manage this" asked the officer. And I explained that I was using a computer programme on which I worked out assigments and how I disseminated the info and explained the boards. He listened carefully and then he asked me whether I could do something similar for him and explained the job to me. I said yes.
Double break. I had a college degree in geography( "jografy,my dad had asked) and after college, I had worked as a supervisor in a construction company and though I didn't know much, I was technically adequate and could handle plans and could easily draw up quantities of materails for construction.I landed in Kuwait expecting a job in that field , but ended up counting notes. my new assignment was to identify construction material and sent them to planned locations in the desert.
This black officer was no ordinary jerk. Mr.Charles Lambert McNair was a master warrant officer, CWO,level 5, an engineer and later I was to learn that he was one of the first master warrant officers to gain that rank ,coming out from Fort Ruckus and was highly regarded for his management capabilities
Two days later I was coordinating the movement of cement, steel and prefabricated structures ,sitting in his station, though still attached to Lambertin.I have to mention Adrian, when the CWO had asked for a person to handle the job he had in mind,Adrian had brought him me, so that he could see what was being done.I moved up and the salary was close to a four thosand five hundred tax free dollars a month. Sadly,one of the few civilian casualities, Adrian died in a mishap towards the end of desert storm.
Suadi Arabia was sand, the army a shame and except for a grand shack at the entrance of the king's palace, their army facilities were laughable. Men in full regalia with ribbons and medals acted important and did nothing , but hid behind the first American when somebody cried "saddaaaam". So Americans had to build everthing from the scratch, especially for 'operation desert shield' which they were planning to put in place
We struck a friendship both personal and professional that until that brat put his rudder into my spokes, was one ride to heights that I had never imagined I would scale.
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]]>The queue may be uniquely brit, but we’ve taken it further and added dimensions to the ‘Q’, like it could start with four abreast and run back and fan out into a pyramid with a base bigger than the one at Giza, or wherever and was inversely proportional to the size of the hole at the counter and once you got your hand in , you had to be a Houdini to get it out and there were plenty of times you had pulled your hand out with something stuffed in it, to realize it was somebody else’s. The second was the token,elaborate punched coins to hastily made cardboard squares, which didn’t promise you anything other than a right to meander about and come back and join the ‘Q” when you got more bored than standing in the queue . When the tokens ran out, you had to come back the next day and stand in line for the token that gave you the right to join the real queue and that’s where fights broke out.
The token was not so sacrosanct that you couldn’t try your luck to get ahead. First you cased the line for somebody who looked malleable and sidled up to him, who would instantly emit angry signals and you had had to use your eyes and face to convey your urgency and if it the facial messaging got through, you slid your palm in between , then inched your shoulder in until your whole body was tightly wedged between two extremely uncomfortable men, but having got so far ,you were in no mood to acknowledge or show gratitude, but stood motionless like thief behind a cupboard. The maneuver worked, but sometimes the counter slammed shut just after you ,leaving the guy behind no option other than grapple you, the interloper, for what was rightfully his. Losing the fight was not bad as you didn’t deserve your gain , but what tore you apart was your wife,her observations about your manhood for giving up the prize and then for losing the fight.This was one such.
Fights were common and occurred often.By now, after more than a month of occupation, the people who thronged the Indian consulate at Amman were poor labourers who had jobs which fetched them money and food and had fled Kuwait when rumors of imminent attack by the fearsome Americans whittled down their resolve to stay and now were running scared. It was going to be world war three, ‘russia and china’ were friends of Iraq and therefore on his side and the final war of worlds was to take place on the sands of Arabia .kurushektra,They ran.
That epic battle took place two months from then,'Umm -al- marik',the promiised mother of all battles,where friends and enemies had joined together and turned around in operation overdo and soundly thrashed the mother, so much so the promised umm-al -marik had turned into Umm- al -fickered, the worst offender being Syria, , saddam’s brother- in -socialist arms reaching for the great pan arabian Islamic- socialist alternative to the sultanates, who had literally ficked him from behind.
Jordan was a thieves’ haven, and my money had almost run out by the time I reached Amman from Tebril . There was one single flight out everyday and I had a coupon for travel a week from that day. One person whom I had been in constant touch during the war was Darren in France and he was link to my home in India. Earlier, once when I called him from Kuwait,I had told him about the stash of cash and I suggested that I would take Ibrahem into confidence and retrieve the money, that he should somehow come to Kuwait and deposit the money in a swiss bank. He had immediately told me to keep away.
“Bastard , shithead ,crazy,fuck off”.. Being a dickhead, his vocabulary was very very limited….“there is always some body else watching and you’re dead meat….. Besides your mother’s been calling me and making my life hell , leave that fucking place now.”
He was a prick and would carry tales from home to me as if my parents and sisters were dying of broken heart. He had badgered me into leaving Kuwait and when I called him from Amman to send me some money , he laughed his huge laugh and mocked me in my native language ….
‘
“hhahahahahah…”Thoti’ poi kakkoosinnu thondra”( scavenger, go fetch your money from that shithouse.)” alluding to the money I had dumped in the septic tank. I had kicked his butt several times before with real vengeance , but the next one was going to be more than that.
The money arrived at the Indian embassy and the bastard had sent me such a measly sum that if I weren’t careful, it could be spent on a cup of coffee.
On the fifth day of my wait, while browsing a local English broadsheet, I saw an ad. “NOW HIRING.American defence contractor, must know English”, with an address and dates for an interview. I found a taxi and got there in time.It was the longest interview of my life, eight and a half hours of waiting and two minutes of interview.
Jamail Asheri Ibrahem had genuine regard for Indians and India and found us fascinating people for the way we approached life despite all, having found a democracy in it's truest sense, the freedom we enjoyed , the tolerence and acceptance of other religions ,the courage and power to build a nation where poverty stared in it's most visible form. He was no sentimental fool like me, but a volunteer,a battle hardened soldier ,a leader of men who had fought in some of the fiercest battles of the century .When Iraq launched a brutal attack on Iran in late eighties, towards the end of the war to recapture some of the territories they had lost in the initial stages of that war, he had led from the front and some times , when time permitted, over a glass,he recounted some of his heroics and would grab me by my collar and shake me to death and say "you are my friend".
For him,Kuwait was a cinch. He was a commandant in RGFC,the elite republican gaurds, and his motorised infantry division , The Al Faw ,was the first to stream in and establish control over the northern part of Kuwait.Besides war, he loved to listen to Hindi film
music- the soulful pining of lovers seeking solace with unforgetable haunting lines of poetry set to lilting melodies that tugged at his heart strings,he said.
" Ah wah,wah" marne tho, aisa he marna " in hindi,.....he wanted to die listening to them.
I told him that I wanted to go.But he would brush me away
I insisted and one day he said that I could go. Proir to that ,I had one more job to complete, take the money out. I lied to him that I had left my passport at my place on Jahra roard. He put me on an army jeep and Jahra road simply didn't exist. Not in the real sense, the entire area was taken over by the Iraqi army as the highway was strategically positioned. Most of the residents had been driven away and houses converted into army barracks. The gaurd at the entrance to the street , questioned the driver and asked us to fuck off.
Well, I did that and this time I travelled in the comfort of a military vehicle to Baghdad, and then to Amman. I had very little money with me, a few thousand dollars that I had taken on the day we moved it from from the safe for the great trip home with our bags of money. It didn't happen, and I was careful to keep the amount in the belt lining of my jeans. The funniest part of the whole war was the kuwaiti dinar.One of the world's most stable currencies was now worthless and you could use a pile of big notes to wipe your ass and still feel not contented. Good thing was ,it could be exchanged for Iraqi money, which was useless elsewhere, but good enough to pay a taxi driver a ransom to take me to the Jordan border. I reached Amman, but the war had got into my veins and in Amman I found a job as a civilian help at a temporary base in SaudiArabia near Jeddah. The money was four times my previous salary and the assigment was at a army dump, where the Americans were setting up a logistics base for troop supplies coming through Red Sea.
On a January day, at the end of UN mandate to Saddam to disappear, the American forces started their offensive and bombed Iraq to rubble, strafing strategic targets with such precision that somebody joked the last big blast was actually saddam's mighty fart. Then a month later,in February,the combined UN forces moved in from south and routed the Iraqis in the ground war, slaughtering them on Jahra road, 'the highway of death' as it became famously to be known, while the defeated army tried to flee with their loot. Iraq was humbled and made to pay in many ways. Even now ,as I am writing this.
I remember a moment which seems poignant now. When I told Ibrahem to let me go, he asked me.."
"What for,why? this is Iraq, your land, we need you all to run this place and how will we do that if you run away"....."We will make this place just like Bombay with lots of fun and pretty girls" and gave me a sly wink. Kuwait was theirs,forever.
You will be surprised when I say this, the republican gaurds respected women and trangressions weren't tolerated unlike the regular army, who were mainly conscripts and for them civilians were just slick holes to whet their sexual appetites.These guys were different and seasoned fighters and could have taken the battle to the Americans, if only the hadn't hesistated in taking Saudi Arabia. This strategic lapse gave the American and UN forces the time to set up bases in Saudi and that spelt the end of Saddam's Kuwait campaign.The Iraqis were thouroghly routed in the ensuing onslaught,but I am conviced that man to man , these republican gaurds could have put up an even fight, but for the massive fire power of UN forces from air that destroyed their ability to react.I felt sorry for Ibrahem, a warrior, a man and a friend whose duty was to fight and die fighting.
]]>In fact , nobody was allowed to leave. A permit had to be acquired from the local commandant to get out of Kuwait and he was in no mood to immediately oblige. He had plenty of other things to do. Three days went by and hope was ebbing and food was running short. A few thousand countrymen of mine had found refuge in a school nearby and were desperately trying to get the permit and as usual they tried to bribe the soldiers,which brought on unreasonable demands that most gave up and returned defeated.
The commandant's office was just of the corner where four roads met and the area was cleared off all traffic, the Iraqi army patrolled the main streets and all major arteries were free and clear and military vehicles
traversed the expanse at great speed taking soldiers and supplies towards southern border where the Iraqi army was poised to reach. We didn't have a chance in hell to go anywhere.
After waiting for two days,in the morning,clad in shorts, I knelt down at one corner of the intersection, opposite the commandant's office, holding a banner. I wrote
"PRAISE BE TO ALLAH"
"WE are Indians and we want your permission to leave".
I knelt the whole of first day,the sun mercilessily beating on me,I persevered despite the extreme discomfort and pain. The blistering heat of the day and the cold nights cut into my flesh that next day I looked like a lump of spoilt meat. Violet blisters covered my back and itched , the the sweat crept in between the blisters to burn my raw flesh.The day drew to a close and the second and third day , I was still there. Now and the I would be passed a bottle of water but I refused to eat. A few others , similarly clad, joined me the third day day and late in the evening ,a soldier approached and took me to the commandant.
"You think you are gandhi?" and lifted my chin with a small poiter he was holding and said plainly.. "you are lucky that I didn't kill you"
I was so emotionally drained that I fell and sobbed at his feet. I felt two hands lifting me and sitting me in a chair. An hour passed , somebody brought in a glass of juice which clogged my throught as it tried to slip by the dry lining of my gullet. It send me into a spasm of coughing but I recovered to face him
"What do you want"he asked in English.
'A passage out with your permission"
"You cannot afford my permission" he said
"I'll try"
"Tax.It's two thousand dollars for every permit"
"Will you allow me to ask my people whether they have that kind of money with them now"
He shrugged and let me go. Dismay and pain lined the expectant faces when I went back and announced the deal,as not many had that kind of money and those who had weren't ready to reveal it.I clapped once and stood up .Here was the turning point in my life, people listened to me. I calmly explained to them that we could make a collective offer of money, gold and anything of immediate value which should be sizeable to tempt the commander and I would organise their permit to leave this goddam hell.
I went back and carefullly and clearly explained the circumstances, that most people barely had much , but could offer some cash,gold and jewellry in return for the permit.
He pursed his lips, looked around and put his face close to mine and said "I love Indians". The statement frightened me as it came without a prologue and I thought that he liked to kill Indians.It was not so,we were fortunate as he had spent considerable time in India , as a officer trainee for advanced training in our military academy after passing out from one of the elite military academy in Iraq.
Over the next few days I arranged the evacuation of a thousand relieved countrymen, drawing up teams and planning every detail of the trip across the desert through Irag to Tebril in Jordan and from there to Amman.We had plenty of shopkeepers among us, teams were send to search for food, especially dry fruits and canned water and for cars with enough petrol for the thousand mile journey to Jordan. Children were enlisted to write down tags, phone numbers and names and addresses of relatives in India and the convoys left with clear instructions to run together and not to over speed or try things that were not necessary. The lead car carried an Indian flag ,with banners clearly stating our mission in Arabic.I was to later learn that it was no easy task and the trip took anywhere between four to five days, stopping at refugee camps and sometimes falling victims to armed thieves, but except for two small children, the journey though arduous , all reached India.
Those two weeks I would walk, or ride any where as if some omnipresent power was hovering over me ,guiding me, allowing me to accomplish a mission that I had taken upon myself .It was getting easier and in time, I had my own men writing the permits, another man collecting the "tax", and I had running conversation with the commandant about silly hindi movies , which he loved. Those two weeks flew by and then after a month of less frenetic activity, and I was getting used to the war ,or rather ,the occupation, I left.
]]>We ran a niche business ,where our clietiele were uneducated expatriate labourers and service guys, mostly from Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan and Bangla desh besides many Indians,handling and running their money both legally and illegally back to their homes.
Most of these people lived in hovels ,10 to 15 in a single room ,and had no real place to keep money and valuables safely. As a part of our business we had established slew of safes,nondescript rooms with safe lockers, from Jahra to Alhamadi, where lockers could be hired for a small sum. Our business was a circle. We found customers by tapping construction sites, oil establishments, sea ports and domestic helps and we sold them air plane tickets , foriegn exchange,and insurance, and represented them at police stations, typed letters for petitions and offered other small services and also rented out lockers to them .Money transfers were on percentage and never exceeded 3percent, which was our main business.
Most of the lockers elsewhere had suffered the same fate, but here, they were smashed and their innards scoured for anything of value, leaving behind papers, letters and trampled photographs of wives and children, their already emaciated bodies suffering further mutilation and indignation as thieves who arrived late pissed on them to avenge their loss. I remmember one picture, taken somewhere in Pakistan, just before the man set out for the journey to Kuwait.
A striding photograph of scrawny man in huge construction boots and an oversize suit in the background of a bus station, surrounded by a gaggle of happy little faces, while an extremely pregnant women,probably his wife, carrying a child, strode just behind him, her face covered and open enough for a peep , but more than that, the picture was clicked just as she was reaching out for his shoulder, her long fingers blurred in action as if it was a desperate lunge to keep the man home. I always wondered whether he made it back.
I made it back to our place and until night there was no sign of the egyptian. By midnight , on that day the worse of our fears started to unravel,as men and women were hauled over to police stations, storm troopers blasted their way into souks and banks, rich homes were raided and women brutally raped and horrible cries emanted from deep recesses of private residences . I had to leave, go far away from my place before I could be identified and taken to the police station for interrogation. I ran to the basement, retrieved the bags of money behind the generator and dumped them in the septic tank behind our building andsecured it by dumping waste, odd bits and ends on top of the man hole and ran and ran and ran.
]]>'Palestinian shits are busy, playing with Iraqi dicks,
so let's get this out somewhere else."
We were situtated between jahra road and airport road on a street first off the main road which gave us access to both the port and the airport corridor , where people stopped by for exchanging money or for the other financial services . The area was predominantely palestenian with an equal number of north africans as the Jahra road connected as far as Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Amman in Jordan. The palestenians were crooks,clever thieves and were involved in skullduggery and the road provided them an easy route to escape after pulling off their scams. The egyptian hated and always warned me not to trust them , even if they offered their mother. So, he looked around for palesteians, under the roof, below the window cill and between wall plaster, and when he was sure that we weren't being watched , we started packing the cash.
Five hundred thousand in bills easily fit in ten small yellow canvas bags that we used to ferry cash. We bundled it in plasic wrappers and moved it to the basement, and hid it inside and behind an enclosed power generator.
The deal was I would get four bags , while he would take six as he was entitled to a larger share because he was more greedier than me. I didn't care, Iwas thinking of getting out before saddam ordered for poison gas.
The third day, we went into the streets and surprisingly the Iraqi army seemed to be gentle, waving away people from main thouroughfares, while commandants whisked by in jeeps on important missions.
"Let me see if I can arrange a car, we could go south and then cross into saudi arabia." Little did he know that all exit routes were sealed and the only way out was through Iraq. Any way, he dressed down to his shorts and went to find a contact somewhere in jaber al ali. He said he would be back by night fall and advised me to hang around but not to venture inside the building.
Kuwait is a maze of back streets, and though I was not familiar with them, I knew by moving eastward and a liile south, I could reach Sabah, where my cousins and many other Indians lived. I couldn't trace my cousin as they had left a day earlier to some undisclosed destination. But there were plenty of other faces, faces of resignation waiting for someone, something, that would somehow show them a way out of the terror
and apprehension they felt, being in a land where no one would defend them, in a land where they had no rights other than earn money, a land forsaken by their own people, a hopeless land in the hands of tyrants whose mood swings could easily finish the lives of a few thousand with no questions asked.
I knew I had to do something and I knew I could. Most people just wanted to get out, but nobody knew how. I did.
,
Before all that happened ,on the second night, we decided to take the money out. Problem was ,vultures had already arrived and were poised to pounce on any body with so much as a hand bag with them. This was just a preliminary to the real loot that happened later as the Iraqis dug in. Aided by palestenian informers, and with a pair of clippers to wrench finger nails from it's soft flesh, they had set about their task in earnest, leaving behind memories of hell on whom the pains were inflicted.
However, they were yet to reach us and we planned our heist. First we had to prize the locker open.The locker was actually a room made of brick and cement with a heavy grill gate, something like you would find in a prison . A row of metal cupborads lined the walls, in which we kept the cash , airplane travel tickets , insurance papers and other documents that were important. Fortuntely ,breaking in was easy as we knocked down the toilet wall adjacent to the locker and tried to creep in by pushing away one of the cupboards. That took a huge effort as we were faced with one with a heavy load of papers. The greatest effort the egyptian had ever put in was getting up from his bed and cursed and farted while we held our shouders against the heavy coupboard and applied our might to move it just enough to crawl in between.No way it did not give an inch Meanwhile , every two seconds,the egyptian would crawl upstairs to look out, leaving me to get the fucking cupboard out of the way. I was about to give up ,then I had a brilliant idea. I hauled in a high stool and bracing myself against the toilet wall in a jacknife position , pressed with my legs against the cupboard and dealt a heavy thrust with my two legs. The metal cupborad toppled over with the noise of a thousand bombs, scaring the egyptian so much that he vanished.
]]>Then as the army spread it's vicious tentacles ,it's vice like grip over Kuwait complete, the expatriates and local families with their children were gathering all they could and were fleeing to nowhere,each street a dead end,each road a road to hell. I walked into the street to see desperate men selling their souls to get out while thieves and opportunists rancaked the city.
The real sheiks, especially those who ruled had escaped in comfort, others drove through in fifth gear towards south for refuge in Saudi Arabia. Those who escaped ,escaped the terror of witnessing the invading army's might and as their menacing footfall revebrated when it crunched into the tarmac,it was a
portend of things to come.
Kuwait was subdued , then the phalanx moved to the saudi border, where they rattled their sabre at the house of sauds who quavered and hollered for American help, which was graciously extended. I have my own theory about the whole war and the strategic intentions of Americans ,and had argued about that with allcomers, which at this point of time looks to have borne true. I had always maintained that oil was not what America was trying to control or take. The powerful transnational oil cartel , led by American oil interests ,were laying the foundation for raising the price of oil as the economics of production and supply was negatively impacting on the margins of processors, while the producers were not in the least affected . Using the army as the enforcers, I knew the extortion would gradually begin and the price of oil would eventually reach the bench mark the oil cartel had set.
I can seriously argue my contention with facts and figures, the subtle fascism of modern day governmemts and the power of cartels, who seemingly respond to market forces , but in reality set the terms where the consumer does not have the final word.
That is digressing from the main story.So.......
]]>"What if we......."and held back . He seemed in two minds and was constantly fidgeting, often his hands would dig deep into the pockets of his robe as if ensuring his dick was in the right place.The ennui , keeping watch , the constricted place with no one else around to make a real conversation and an erotic genius by my side,thinking deep and profound thoughts by stimulating his balls ,was making the situation unbearable. I was wary of the egyptian as his close proximity to me and the confinement between the narrow walkways and lack of peering eyes would further encourage him , the war being there, and with no arabs around as it were, the basement would serve him as a good place to launch his own assault for my nether regions.
He had something to say"look....." I ummm"....see"
"Look and see what"...... your fucking dick?" I was getting progressively angry and watching him made me even more so. Bastard , here was a real war happening and threatening to blow us to bits and this dickhead was getting sexed. I lost the respect I had for him and hissed,
"Look here asshole, I not ready neither will I ever be, and if you ever show that to me, I'll twist your balls until it comes out of your nose' .
The verbal lashing had the desired effect and he let me in peace for some time. When he started again , he seemed to be in a pensive mood.
".Those saddami shits will bugger us"...."take it from me they'll rape and rob, bastards.... I have seen those republicans, fucking shit in gutters of Iran,shitcuntsbastards..they'll fuck everybody"
I was so tensed by his earlier malicious intent and couldn't hide my sarcasm .
"..I thought you enjoyed that ,so why complain ,spread your coptic arse and they'll make you very happy, imagine the joy of a thousand dicks up your......"
"You have misunderstood my intentions, and I'm sorry "
"Oh shut up"...I said and turned to read by a small light that burned behind a row of control panels and drifted into a fitful sleep where I felt the war, it's sounds piercing through my mind and setting of wild nightmares from which I could not wake up,dreams from which I could not find release even though I knew I was dreaming .I woke up feeling eyes staring at me . The egyptian stood at the head and had the look of a famished beggar who had suddenly seen food.
"Please , you judged me wrong....I'm sorry if I've made a wrong impression,but I've something very important.... which I hope ....." he looked around, searching with his eyes for somebody who wasn't there.Then he went to the head of the stairs, disappeared for a while and came back with his cheeks flushed.
"The bastards are all over the place" he said and sat down on the ledge and sat with his head lolling against the wall.He would slip into his thoughts, while sometimes he would turn and give me a long look and look away if I caught him doing that.The war had extinguished the carnal fires in his groin and he seemed to be contemplating and it looked as if he wanted to confide but felt diffident and hesistant. I was scared, but at the end of two days I asked him what was biting his ass.-
'there is a lot of money in the safe' he said,
"So what? it is not your fucking money to be so bothered, if they want it, they will come and get it"......."Let's try to get out of this place without being killed."
The egyptian gave me an increduluous look and shook his head as if I had something incomprehensible.
"I... I... never seen somebody so naive...... believe me we have two choices, one, we can get out of here in our underwears and hope we will not be shot, or remain here and get tortured by the Iraqi bastards..... They'll soon come around looking for guys like you who are sitting in a pile of cash, take whatever you have and then pull your nails off for more which is not there."
Now it dawned on me.I had always imagined that the skeiks would take their money away but he knew better as had seen war in Iran and knew what war was, the marauding army looked for treasure ,money ,and women and they ransacked and raped their way through conquered territory.
There was almost five hundred thousand in the safe , mostly dollars and pounds, and now it was anybody's money.Who ever got to it first,got to keep it.
]]>AUGUST 2 , 1990, before mid night .I do not have the ability ,nor the language or the prose to describe how I felt in those moments. Dosteovhisky could have, but whatever ,it was beyond any emotion I had ever experienced. It was not just fear, it was a giving up on life,a kind of submission coupled with selfpity and sadness of unfathomable depth. I didn't know whether I was crying , but my throat gripped as images of sorrow of my mother and sisters on my death flashed in the deep reccesses of the mind. Suddenly my mind shut and blackness spread.
I felt something cold on my face and water dripped into my eyes . I looked around and saw the egyptian crawling away from me. He looked back and motioned me like wise. Glass splinters lay strewn on the floor and I cut myself badly as I crawled rapidly towards the back of the room.There we slouched and descended the stairs to the basement at the rear of the builing where the air conditioning plant and power lines lay and hid ourselves.The egyptian smelt of raw shit.
The war took us by surprise though the war itself was not. Saddam had been massing troops on the border and he had serious issues with Kuwait,
especially regarding it's soveriegnity, debts, cross drilling,price of oil and a host of other grievances which Saddam felt was legitimate. Though the reigning Sheik of Kuwait was wary of Iraq, he had counted that American influence in the region would avert war.
"Do this ........ moshshibhi" as he pointed to my mouth,"and then "....... he indicated that I should remove my pants.
That was the moment I dreaded.I had been through this in my adolescence and didn't feel offended, but that he was gay made me a little uncertain.If I went along, I could be rewarded now which could lead to punishment later on , so my long term prospects didn't look too good at that point of time. While I was mulling over this, I felt his finger probe the centre of my trouser seat and the sheer ridiculousness made me laugh out, which made him think I enjoyed what he was doing to me.
"Look, this is more fun, what do you say? and started disrobing when the peep hole opened and two sharp peered through the gap. In a frenzy he twisted his penis between his thighs and hastily pulled on his robe and ambled to the toilet and his penis squished between his locked thighs..Someone banged the door accompanied by hoarse and desperate curses in arabic .It was one of the sheiks.
"ibilis "ibilis " saddakanith......ibin elmetmakaaa " they roared,along with some long dirty epithets a man could call another. The egyptian emerged back ,ashen faced, as sodomy was not really encouraged in islam and he ran to the door pleading mercy and forgiveness and wrenched the door open to see the two wizened old sheiks quaking in their robes ,who spat........"sad..dhammaniak....kulkhara....'
They pushed him aside and barged in and then hell broke loose as they ran around the room patting and searching their robes and then dishdashas and ogals flew in air as they serached each other ,while the egyptian cried...
"Oh my god" these bastards are going to kill us"...stab us to death... "run man run" and he ran through the door while I was unable to move. The sheiks ran after him locking the door behind them. I was so petrified and couldn't think properly and saw my life ending on the edge of curved daggers ,thrust deep between my heart. Then the door opened with a crash and two sheiks fell on the floor and rolled, begging forgiveness and protection from the mighty Allah.
I ducked below the table at the other end and thought the satanic act of their most trusted servant had made them insane, when the egyptian ran back in ,sweating through his robe. Fear and disappointment had twisted his long face sideways, and when he saw his bosses rolling on the floor , he laughed hysterically and then pranced around,rummaging his desk. I thought he was searching for a knife to kill the sheiks before they got us. But no, he ran out again,clutching a bag to his chest, and then came back in a dead heat, as an ear shattering whine and an accompanying crash of a thousand thunderbolts followed him through the door.
Saddam had attacked. Bombs rained and his tanks were blazing across the desert and the kuwaitis,sheiks ,both real and unreal ,ran for their lives.They were in a state of absolute panic and really didn't care what their loyal servant was trying to do and their curses were mainly aimed at Saddam and his mother for his wickedness and greed.
I had never heard so much gibberish in my life as the two frightened men tried to get their money from the safe at the rear end of the room. We dealt in foreign exchange and on any day , we had plenty of dollars and other foreign currency ,counted and bagged in the saferoom with an old heavy iron grill gate with dead bolts of which we held one key and they held the other and they carried it home after work.
All they wanted was their money, but they had forgotten to bring their key along, which had led to the second round of cursing and frantic run around,but it was too late as saddam's planes were whizzing overhead , raining bombs, as his army raced menacingly towards the heart of the kingdom .
]]>