The earliest phase of the Libyan upheaval, you may recall, was just an uprising, inspired by the apparent successes in Egypt and Tunisia. Libyan military officers defected and opened their ammunition dumps to their fellow rebels. At the same time, Colonel Qaddafi, wishing to spare his relatively tiny defense forces, hired mercenaries from Mali, Chad, Niger – black Africans all, and especially loathed by Arabs and Berbers of the Maghreb north. The Chadian mercenaries, particularly, have been led on by Qaddafi for years as a way to perpetuate his ongoing secret war against the Chadian government, also known as the most corrupt government in the world.
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| Photo by Anja Niedringhaus / AP |
- Everything But the Girl, "Trouble and Strife"
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Translated from the Chadian French
Each man’s steps were routine, sometimes assertive, from the hips, but more or less cohesive to the unit. Each one was quiet. This wasn’t their city. Their boot falls popped and smeared with tiny crunches of glass and stone. To anyone hiding in the buildings, the crunching sound turned the neighborhood over to the African men, who were stepping through on behalf of the unseen but fantastically self-televised Colonel Dictator.
Most of the men didn’t give a crap about the neighborhood or anyone in the buildings. Anyone peeking was just cowering. The people likely to do anything to them were out with the crowds, the poncy Arab shits gone berserk. They, by not being here in the neighborhood, were the ones who held the black men’s attention. The men listened ahead of themselves, making their way down the tight Maghrebi street. The nearby uproar was rippling off the buildings, from somewhere.
Just a block ago the uproar was thin, speckley and distant. But they were heading towards each other and, leaving his body for a second, he thought: if the sound weren’t invisible it would be rising overhead like a khamsin dustcloud, looming, then shrouding his head and the street behind him.
Captain spoke from behind, in the middle, cursing and yelling sex talk back at the invisible crowd, trying like a football fan to make his men relaxed. Behind the captain, the tight-lipped, sunglassed overseers in their jeep kept pace, but tenuously, obligations teetering.
This was not like last night, in the pickup with the machine gun. That was almost like a night on the town, careening wherever they liked, pulling the trigger, yapping bullets into the air. They were having so much fun that when someone suggested they find some local pussy, that free, wild idea marked the height of possibly everything.
Today was different, the distant crowds. And the new orders: keep the terrorist crowds away from the plaza, shoot if you have to. He accepted the grim security detail trailing them: it was their country, their heads. Of course they’d want to see the job get done, done right. It was fortifying having experienced military watching.
He’d drawn the far right flank and chose to keep his eyes peeled that way. A heavy gun was a safe gun and he was glad his grip was tight, a man’s. His small gun, a pistol – ok, that was still his sidekick – but it was tucked like a secret down his back. The heavy gun, held in front, was business.
Treading forward, his leg kicked at a small cafe table and it fell out of the way. He stepped onto a box of small fruit, then got annoyed by it. Who puts food on the ground? And also: it was almost clumsy. So he looked away from Captain and the minders on the chance they were looking at him, evaluating his stumble through boxes and tables. He put his attention into the vacated cafe on his right. The television was still on and it showed the upheavals and battles throughout the country in small pieces, Arabic flying out of the speaker. Best part was knowing he was ahead of the tv. It didn’t know what they were going to do.
Huh – Tewwe thought, humorously, with his safe gun. The drinks in the glasses were still shaking from the people who beat it. Funny. Except that another, smarter part of him said: No, wait. A shiverous no. And then his mind caught up – the ground was vibrating. It made him turn forward.
The tank ahead peeked out from the intersecting street. He felt his line, the men, bend backwards with disbelief. Its gun waggled, like an arm putting on a coat.
Captain saw it too and, irate with the sudden switch in power, yelled “God damn donkeyfuckers – “ and to his men, “Wait, let them come ...!” And then yelled at the tank, “My dick! In your mother’s camelcunt!”
Then the uproar arrived, whooshing down from the far side. The loose spray of the crowd poured into the street, consolidating, curling and gathering in front of where the black soldiers were walking. It buckled the line, sending the men toward Captain, making him angry with panic.
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| Mahmud Turkia / AFP / Getty Images |
Then the bullets flecked and picked all around him. He pointed his safe gun at the crowd and then straight ahead at the dumb tank and then back again at the crowd. But rivulets of the crowd were spreading and collecting in front of him, sealing off his advance. Not all of them were armed, but all of them were angry, yelling infuriated variations of “Get out! African niggers: get out! Libya for Libyans!”
He didn’t want to fire at them, shouting banner-wavers in jackets. You fire at men who have guns and can take it. He shook his safe gun at them instead and yelled something like, “Get out of here! No one wants to get hurt, you assholes!” just as angry and outraged as they were. “Give it to your wives!”
But the bullets kept flicking in from the other side, so he turned to fire in that direction and saw Captain snap backwards, spin like a dancer flinging blood and fall on his face. A yellow flash in the corner of his other eye and a frightening chunk of building erupted nearby.
The men, his men, his friends even though they weren’t really but now they were – they crumpled, or fell, or ran backwards firing away. Only one man stood still, raking the crowd until he was struck from the side and left his feet. The crowd pounced on his spot.
The wheeling drunken tank took another swipe at the corner of the building. He felt the shocked air press him back against the cafe wall. The instinct to give room led his feet backwards and nearly tripped him over the upset cafe table. Still facing the crowd he sent a long step over the square tabletop dodging the metal column and spiking legs, hopped, and then dove to his knee. The rifle rested on the table edge and he pulled the trigger with a jolt. Some people’s shirts and chests ripped open, but then the tank announced itself again, cutting into the building nearest him with an ear dulling boom.
Some of the crowd on his end turned to the tank. “Tell that idiot to stop! There’re people here!” and yes! he agreed, that’s right. Shit with the tank! He wanted to get up and join them, waving his rifle. Get this back to something we can handle.
He glanced to his left and realized he was the most forward soldier. The rest of them were heading backwards, firing away or running. The swelling, impending moment of disaster grabbed hold: now was the time to leave.
So he about-faced, with his gun, and right away grasped how far they were separating from him. The sinuous membrane of coterie snapped and then he was just a black pebble left behind. The tank erupted again, giddily, and he felt exposed, available to be pricked by countless bullets or blown away by explosion. He crouched low, like in the movies, keeping his head down. He ran like that along the walls of the street until the fear was so much he fell into an empty space on his left. The doorway of a shop. The floor made his shoes slip and though he sensed the dangerous chaos diminish behind him, he wanted to run, get the hell out, go far away, get to safety, get away, go back.
He picked through the boxes in the hallway. Shoved away chairs. It was dark and there was something like a branch or a stick on the floor, a mop. It snagged itself between his legs but he crashed through or over it, tumbling at a wall in the blackness that gave way and whoosh: there he was in daylight. An alley, long. So he ran.
His hands were empty. Where was his gun? He felt it bang against his ribs, strapped without memory across his back. The alley had wires and tangles and boxes. A cat stopped, petrified for the newcomer. Behind him the crowd noise erupted into the empty shop as hundreds upon hundreds, regaining their street, marched over bodies and streamed ahead, thrilled with themselves.
The end of the alley came quickly and opened into another cross-street. When he got to the edge, the crowd noise blustered around the corner, unseen. He crouched against a wall and knew that if he peeked around, he’d be shot at. But he had to.
No one was there. Only the bodiless clamor of the crowd. Where were they going?
The rat survives, he thought, and ran across the street, then against its walls in the direction he guessed was opposite from the crowd’s and turned again into the first opening he found: another street. Also empty of people. Where were they? They were in the crowd, all around him. He ran down this street, too. And then chose another alley. Only to find that alley had an end.
It stood passively at the far end. Friendly. Like a door. He ran all the way up to it and it said, climb me. He found a way up, clutching with his fingers and digging with the cusp of his shoed toes and with a heave, over he went. He landed like a boy, on his feet, with a clack from the rifle butt, running before he found his balance, pumped, because when he was a boy, he got away hundreds of times and now he was doing it again, getting away and running, even here.
As if the wall was the perfect barrier, the angry din of the hundreds who wanted him dead disappeared. Then, not entirely. But enough to tell him he was ok, and with his gun, even safer. These were residences. Or rather, he was in the backs of residences. With fences, garbage, a couple trees, a ruined car, and a football rocking in a puddle.
Clothes flapped. He took a minute and settled into his breathing. Then his eyes started to see. He was in the middle of a city he wouldn’t give a finger for, in other peoples’ country, supposedly trying to help them save it from the riotous shitheads, the terrorists, who were trying to take over. He flashed on that cruel indomitability he sometimes tried to show off. But it wasn’t there now. He was still catching his breath.
Am I shot? Tewwe wondered. He patted himself, looked for blood on the ground. Clean, he thought, and laughed. They went through me. Ha!
The joke about magic dissipated. He was alone, among other people’s houses. This city sat on garbage.
It’s not going to be these Libyan fucks, even with all their money and a savage delusional Colonel who flounced like a sheik, happy to kill his own people. That embarrassed Tewwe. Because up towards the sea, the Colonel’s men were folding like clothes in a basket, against a crowd of pussy Arabs who didn’t know how to shoot the rifles they found.
Embarrassment then bitterness: now he had to give up on seeing any reward, the leather wrapped money rolls, the money which the uniformed Libyan greaser said would do everyone good: first to help kill terrorists here, then punish and overthrow the fat criminal scumbags back home. You know who he would have started with? He would have started, first day, first hour, with Mustafeh Kep, le patron des fucking connards, the shithead who puts his foot on your throat, on the floor of your own home.
No, maybe, I don’t know. His breath caught, he was realized he was staring at the ground, making squiggles in the mix of sand and pavement with a stick. He stood up, intending to walk. But he was still swimming in his own thoughts. Maybe coming here was a mistake. A good guess, sure. But not any longer. Just have to find others to operate with.
The wind pushed his cheek. Clothes – that’s right. Hide these soldier clothes.
Clothes were nearby, in a yard to his right so he headed there. A blue shirt with white dots snapped on the line, black trousers bounced. He noticed a frayed lengthwise tear on the side of the shirt and a faint brownish tea stain around it. Still, very smart. A puffy sleeveless jacket sunned itself on the back of a chair. White stuffing pursed itself from a gash there, too.
Do it.
Soldier fatigues dropped to the ground and tangled around what his aunt called duck feet. The long sleeves of the rough-like-canvas army top wouldn’t let go and he angrily yanked one inside out around his fist. Relax he thought and the other sleeve slipped away effortlessly. On went the shirt. A wet spot on the shirt pinched his side, just where the tea stained hole was.
Oh, it dawned on him. A bullet. He connected the jacket with the shirt. and when he slipped into the jacket, he lined up the hole and gash like evidence. He jiggled his finger through the connection.
Soldier clothes stay with me – in a bag – from somewhere – he decided, looking around. He grabbed a torn white plastic sack caught on a weed and shoved his troubles inside, the soldier’s clothes.
The change of clothes brightened him, like a Saturday night.
He swung his safe gun behind him, slid his sidekick into the small cave of his lower back and walked. Within the first couple of strides, he was just a visitor here. Shades, like those worn by bodyguards at a nightclub, would be perfect. But the pants began to rebel: we’re too tight. They cleaved up his crotch, trying to divide his balls and nearly splitting the seam inside his thighs. Then the pistol chafed the top of his ass. He felt foolish.
Further down, another yard. He dropped his troubles onto the ground and stepped in. He unswung his safe gun from his shoulders onto a rickety table. Gray pants, with stripes. Hell no – faggots. Ok, fine. Just by looking at them, they were big. Maybe with a rope or belt....
“Get away!” someone yelled in Arabic. It startled him. He looked around at several black faces. “What are you doing?” He turned to grab the rifle but another man held it in his thick paws. A fat man, with small white eyes, purple cheeks and little lips pursed with menace.
Tewwe answered with his first impulse. “Journalist,” he said and played the trick of believing it himself.
They didn’t believe him. Someone said, “Mercenary fuck.”
“No,” he corrected, countering with deeper belief, “A journalist.” He wrapped his conviction with an accent and some protective indignation. “Egypt. BBC.” He remembered that journalists were oily cowards and so raised his hands defenselessly, decorating his face with a toothy grin.
Even though they glared at him, a thoughtful pool of plausibility and consideration spread among the men. They were black like him and secluded like him in a country of Arabs and Berbers chanting and shooting in the streets beyond.
“What are you doing here?” the man most directly in front asked. He tilted his head menacingly when he spoke, but he wore his clothes peacefully. The man of the house.
“The crowd!” It was beyond obvious. He kept his jaws tight and happy teeth showing, knowing to limit the words expressed to keep any accent buried down his throat.
Finally one of the men looked sideways at the master of the house. “There are black journalists.”
“What’s this?” the big man with his automatic yelled. It looked small against a body like that.
“Safety,” he answered, with a shrug.
His answers, his scared reasonableness, his hiding, his digging through people’s backyards like a dog cast a persuading glint onto what the men saw before them: journalists get into people’s business, his accent is from somewhere strange, he was afraid like they were of their neighbors and the used to be Arab friends who were now shooting at and rounding up blacks, no matter whether they lived here or not. Weren’t they all Africans, putting years and their families into living and working in a country just because it was only marginally better than where they came from? Isn’t a fragment of mercy like that enough among people? And all this because poor luckless Africans were chosen by the greasy thug in Tripoli as his defenders and some of those used to be friends secretly agreed, the maniac has to go?
Well, turmoil always washed misfortune up to anyone’s doorstep, like this journalist weasel.
Someone jumped hastily, believing the stranger. “We want to be free!”
“Stop,” the master of the house said, clearing the political air with a vague, harmless slogan. “Libya is for Libyans.” For godsakes, the stranger could be a spy, too.
Tewwe leapt into a final, lunatic gambit, summoning the Siwi-Arabic voice of his Egyptian mother and every radio program he’d overheard. “This is the BBC. Rebel mans ... journey today, with courage for bread, like Egyptian persons .... toppling the monkeyface. Old Arab Qaddafi in sheets with camel today.”
To the men, it was a bewildering array of words, smeared with foreign sounding accents and the blithe imbecility of the British. Enough to obscure a threat in their backyard.
“What news do you have?” someone else asked, but the man of the house stopped it there.
“Get out – whatever the hell you are.” He waved him away like smoke. “You have no right walking among our homes.”
Tewwe relaxed his grin. He nodded, apologetically. He used his eyes only to look at each man with a sturdy grace. Respect. The fat man kept his rifle and used it to move Tewwe along.
He retreated, one step at a time, steadying his gaze on each man, even when he bent down and grabbed his bag. Then he turned and walked, his mind swerving between bravery and prayer that a guileless retreat would prevent them from shooting him in the back.
/Continued
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Next: Into the desert at night, home by morning
"The Mercenary Comes Home" © CMMartin, 2011
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