by Dima Alzayat
‘Yeah, just taking a break with some friends. Getting something to eat.’
Farid realizes he’s driven to the end of a cul-de-sac, steers the wheel to turn the car around. ‘So you’re doing well? School, everything, good?’
Mazen covers his phone, says something to the others with him. The laughter moves farther from Farid’s ear. ‘I’m great, Baba. I was calling to check on you. I know Mama’s gone. Wanted to make sure you’re okay.’
Farid steers the car closer to the curb and presses down on the brake, keeps the ignition running. ‘Habibi, of course I’m okay. I’m not completely useless alone, you know.’
‘Mama mentioned you’ve just been hanging around the house.’
‘I’m on vacation and Mama is too busy to take a trip right now.’
‘Yeah, I know, but maybe get out a little by yourself, you know? It’ll make you feel good.’ Mazen’s last words come out shaky, uncertain. They make Farid cringe.
‘Habibi, I’m fine. I worry about you, okay? Not the other way around.’
‘But I’m good, Baba. I’m very happy.’ Farid listens to his son’s voice, clear and bright. Feels a quiet calm spread through his body.
‘Well, then I’m happy too, habibi.’
The laughter grows loud once again, fills Farid’s ear. ‘Thanks, Baba. I should go now. Everyone’s waiting on me.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. I’ll see you soon.’ Farid removes the earpiece and looks down the tree-lined street. Great big oaks with thick yellow leaves. He watches a cat leisurely cross the road, its gray tail wagging.
**
You pull your car into a metered spot near Santa Monica and Hayworth. You’ve never been here during the day. Driven through but never stopped. You feel the blood rush to your head as you leave your car, as your shoes touch the sidewalk. You become certain that people are staring. It takes you three blocks to notice you have passed a post office, a bank, a grocery store. Streets not unlike your own. People walk dogs. Bicyclists pass you by. Cars honk. In the sunlight, the multicolored flags seem cheerful, appropriate even.
A row of restaurants with outside seating, mostly empty tables awaiting the lunch rush, beckons you. You choose an Italian place with checkered table covers and cloth napkins. At your request, the hostess seats you beneath one of the larger umbrellas in the corner. Only one other table is filled: two men sit on the opposite end of the patio, holding hands. You make out the slight frame in a denim jacket of one, the broad shoulders and beard of the other.
‘What can I get you?’
You look up at small eyes surrounded by thick lashes, curly hair shaved into a mohawk. Your hands fumble with the menu, your tongue attempts to form words. ‘Yes, I – just an iced tea, please.’
You look back at the couple. The one in the jacket reaches out his arm toward the other, caresses the shoulder, touches the neck. He catches you staring. Your eyes dart down to the menu.
The waiter sets the iced tea on the table. ‘Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?’
‘Yes, okay. How about a hamburger?’
He perks up, smiles. ‘Good choice. That’s my favorite.’
The man in the jacket is now laughing at something the other has said. Slaps him playfully on the arm. The bearded one grabs the hand and pulls it to his mouth. Kisses it once, twice. This time he is the one to meet your gaze. He leans and whispers to the other, the denim jacket who now turns in your direction.
Your hand starts to shake. You shove it beneath your leg, sit on it until it goes numb. Focus your attention on the passersby. Young men in sweat shorts and tank tops. Gelled hair and smooth skin. Your lungs tighten and you start to get up. When the waiter reappears, you pull a bill from your wallet and place it on the table. ‘Sorry, I have to go,’ you say, not looking at him, your eyes tracing the straight lines of the tablecloth. You feel the two men in the corner watch you as you walk.
Back in your car, you sit in complete stillness, concentrating on the aching bulge in your lungs, willing it to subside. A car honks and you pull out to make room for an impatient driver waiting to take your space.
**
You sit in the kitchen with the lights off, watching video after video. Men dressed in thawbs and keffiyehs, suits and ties, khakis and polos, standing before groups large and small, speaking in prayer rooms and halls. One man calls it a ‘postmodern epidemic’, another traces it to ‘Western liberalism.’ Over and over you watch them, excised clips posted then played thousands and thousands of times. By whom? Replayed for signs. Of what?
Yes, I bear it, this burden, sometimes high above my head like the burlap sack of a traveler and at other times low in my lungs like a tumor, but it was born as east as I was. It was born in Hara el-Hamd in Giza. And if the angels disguised as handsome boys – those who led Him to turn the cities of the plain upside down and bury their people in stone and fire – can’t convince me otherwise, you, sheikhs and scholars, crooks and liars, don’t stand a chance.
Astaghfar allah. Repeat and repeat.
**
The sharp beep of his phone jolts Farid awake on the sofa. Like pruned branches his thin limbs jut out from his belly and hang over the cushion’s edge. The moon is high now and sends a single strand of light through the slit between the drapes. His eyes come to focus on the muted television, the silent news.
He reaches into his pocket for his phone, listens to Amina’s voicemail telling him she’s returning on a later flight. He tilts his head back, shuts his eyes and grasps at pictures, images of too-big white jeans and the touch of cold metal. Of hands that reached down and accepted what they found. Wanted it, sought it. His own hand moves down now and unzips, unbuttons. And as his breath grows shallow, his gasps for air coming closer together, he feels the small coarse grains fill his mouth. The taste brackish, the flow relentless.
ALLIGATOR
ADELE (1990)
my mother’s skirt hair on my father’s arms black shoes leather sandals slippered feet across a hardwood floor strawberries pyramid-stacked on trays crates of oranges maybe peach cha-ching cash register louder than my mother’s voice cha-ching I’m up off the floor snatched mid-run rest my head against her shoulder my lips on pale yellow cloth moving across the shop her body me with it voice low sweet sings my name Adele Adele my lucky Adele
White Man Lynched
By Florida Mob
Lake City, Fla., May 17, 1929.— A white man, N. G. Romey, grocer, was lynched near here early today several hours after his wife had been fatally wounded in a gun battle with the chief of police.
A coroner’s jury held an inquest in a ditch two miles from here where Romey’s body was found. Its verdict was that Romey met death at the hands of parties unknown.
The jury also found that Chief of Police John F. Baker had acted in self-defense in shooting the woman five times after she had fired three shots at Baker, breaking his shoulder blade.
Romey’s body, filled with bullet wounds and sitting upright in the ditch, was found this morning. Authorities brought it here. Romey had been jailed last night.
JOSEPH (1964)
Of course we took the children in. We had our own to look after, but they were our kin, George my cousin. He’d left Valdosta after running into some trouble and moved his family down to Lake City. I was doing well there. I had a grocery, not big, but business was steady. He thought he’d do the same, and for a while he did. I didn’t ask him to come but I was glad to have them near. Thought it would be less lonely for me and Mariam, the kids too. If there’s blame in that for me I’ll take it.
For a long time after, I saw their spirits, him and Nancy both. They weren’t angry, nothing like that. Came when I was alone and sat with me and didn’t speak a word. I saw no sense in telling anyone about it. I didn’t want to worry Mariam. Knew it was just my mind seeing things and that with time it would sort itself out. It did then, and I’m sure it will again.
We went to Birmingham after they passed. Not because I was worried
. There was nothing to run from. What’s done is done, I told Mariam, and we’ve nothing to get, carrying on like we’ve been wronged. We’d been in the town nearly ten years. People knew us, shopped in our grocery, said hello on the street. We’re no different from them, I told her, and she agreed. She had a good head, that woman. God rest her.
I moved us on account of the kids. Not because I was worried. Just felt it best they grew up somewhere they wouldn’t be reminded. It would’ve confused them, made it harder to fit in. So I waited until we had Samuel back, sold the shop, and left.
STEVEN ‘BUBBA’ MORELLI (2003)
Dammit. Off he goes. Those pines thick as anything. Is that him there? His tail. Well gone now. That damned wind. Quiet all morning, blowing soon as I spot him, sending my scent through the pines, oaks, every goddamn thing. Should have pulled the trigger sooner. No matter.
He was big. Nine-, ten-pointer maybe. A giant for these parts. Whitetail rack shining and me not a hundred yards away. Can’t get a clearer shot at this level. A wonder he didn’t pick up my scent sooner. Must be running toward the cypress swamp now, startling the others. I could’ve pulled the trigger. Damned hand. There go the songbirds again, laughing.
No matter. The rut’s cranked up. Weather’s cool. More of them on the prowl. Heading toward the swamp, no doubt. Does down there. If I had my stand I would’ve seen him. That damned Diane. That’s fine. I’ll head toward the swamp, set up a blind. Might have had it set up here before I’d seen him if the hand had calmed down. It’s better now. Yes. Already stopped trembling.
FLORIDA GROCER
LYNCHED
(cont.)
Romey’s trouble with the authorities started yesterday when Chief of Police Baker told him that he would have to clean up some rubbish in front of his store. Romey finally agreed to take some of his produce in boxes on the sidewalk inside his store.
Shortly afterward, according to Judge Guy Gillem, Romey telephoned Chief Baker and told him he had placed the produce back on the sidewalk and for the officer to “come back and try to make me move it again.”
Baker returned to the store and another argument ensued. Mrs Romey, who joined in the altercation, is said to have procured a pistol and fired three shots at Baker, one of which broke the officer’s shoulder blade.
Chief Baker then opened fire on the woman, wounding her five times. She died in a hospital about midnight. Romey was arrested and placed in jail.
Sheriff (Babe) Douglas said a mob forced the lock and bars on Romey’s cell. Romey formerly lived at Valdosta, Ga. He went to Florida three years ago after having been flogged by a band of masked men near Valdosta.
June 18, 1929
Dear Governor; —
I am writing you regarding the recent events surrounding the deaths of two citizens under your jurisdiction in Lake City. As you are now well aware, the Romeys met their deaths under reprehensible circumstances last month, and we demand and trust that you will do everything within your power to ensure that justice is served.
Syrian American citizens throughout Florida and elsewhere are outraged, and rightly so, at the brutality with which these lives were unnecessarily taken. Our very trust in the law is shaken, and I have faith that it can be restored only by the dutiful investigation of the men involved in this unforgivable offence.
If an investigation reflects what many Syrian Americans believe, that the policemen involved are at fault, we trust they will be duly held to account. It is only right that we pursue the course of law in this matter, not only to bring some comfort for the relatives of the deceased, but to send a message that no one is above the law.
Most respectfully yours,
WITNESS 1 – NAME WITHHELD (1968)
I’m not saying it’s right what happened to that man and his wife, but it’s nothing that doesn’t happen to us and will again. When that mob came in I kept my head down and told the other fella to do the same. Maybe I saw their faces and maybe I didn’t and what difference would it make? Men like that all look the same to me. Eyes too narrowed to see, mouths dried up and thirsty.
I was relieved enough to hear them walk past our cell and stop in front of his. Wondered if they were gonna break the lock or if the sheriff was gonna open it for them. Whether I heard a metal blow or a key turning, I don’t know, and if I did or didn’t makes no difference now. The other fella in the cell with me kept looking up like he was gonna see something new. He was old enough to know better and I told him so. You want them to take us too? I asked him. You want your mama to see you bruised and swollen and dangling from some damn tree?
They went on for some time hitting that man in his cell and he must’ve been in an awful state by the time they left. When they’d first started laying into him he was screaming loud and by the time they left I couldn’t hear him no more. They had to carry him out and I’d reckon he was all but dead when they did. But I didn’t look up and I didn’t see nothing.
Re: 2013 Kill Thread #43096—11/11/13 11:06 PM
bama_Bubba
10 point
Registered: 02/13/11
Posts: 261
Loc: Birmingham, AL Buck or Doe: 6 pt buck
Date: 11/11
Time: 4pm
Location: Osceola WMA, FL
Stand location details: sitting on the ground in hardwoods bordering a pine thicket
Shot distance: 125yd
Distance to recovery: 50yd
Weather conditions: cool and breezy
Equipment used: Mossberg patriot .243 with 95 gr. Federal Fusion, Vortex scope
ST. AUGUSTINE, DECEMBER 31, 1840.
GLORIOUS—FORTY INDIANS CAPTURED—Ten Indians Hanged.—Capt. Thompson, of the Walter M., arrived this morning from Key Biscayane, brings a verbal report that Col. Harney, who had proceeded into the Everglades with ninety men, succeeded in discovering the town of We-ki-kak, where he captured 29 women and children, and one warrior, and killed or hanged ten warriors—(they were perhaps shot in the attack.)
We hope, however, that they were hanged, after being caught alive, for belonging to the gang which committed the massacres at Carloosahatchie, and Indian Key, they deserved neither mercy, judge or jury—nothing but an executioner; and the People of Florida have long deplored the unfrequency of such salutary retributive examples. If these Indians were hanged, their people will see we are at last in earnest.
CARINE (1991)
Everyone said to bear the years. Nothing but time will make it better, they said. But time’s a stretched rubber band bound to snap right back into place. Lately, she’s all I see when I sleep, my mother. Filling my nights with dreams that chase me well into the day.
It didn’t help me none that Samuel wouldn’t talk about them when they passed. Even the mention of our parents’ names made him droop and fold into himself like mimosa leaves after nightfall. I was left alone with it. Over and over I thought of what fears they might’ve had that day, what thoughts of us they held in their final moments.
For months after, Adele cried for her mama and baba, and I couldn’t tell her nothing but that they were off and away working and soon they’d come home carrying sweets and stories. She was only four, the youngest of us all, and no one could bear to tell her. How do you make a child understand something like that? No. It was for the best. Try and help the only one of us who could forget. Not a year passed before she stopped mentioning them altogether and began calling Aunt Mariam Mama even though the rest of us never did. This made Lily mad as a wet hen. ‘That ain’t your mama,’ she screamed until Adele cried and Aunt Mariam and Uncle Joseph had no choice but to lock Lily up in the bedroom until she settled down.
When Adele passed last year I told Samuel it was only right to let Lily know. He just shrugged when I said it but he still tracked down an address, the first I’d had for her in more than twenty years. He left it to me to write the letter and all I said was she ought to come to the funeral even after all this time. Baby Adele ain’t a baby no more, I said, but an old lady lik
e us who passed in her sleep.
Well, she didn’t come. And I didn’t mention the letter to Samuel and he didn’t ask, but I know he was thinking what I was, that she was living in Florida again, wondering how she could bear it. Even now I wouldn’t step foot in that country. Me, a seventy-five-year-old woman still dreaming of her mama, frightened of waking up with her face singed on my mind’s eye, her body bleeding and her belly round and sticking up in the air.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1907
COMMISSION IS SPLIT
Members Still Differ Over
Restricting Immigration.
SOME UNDESIRABLE ALIENS
Education Best Test.
Judge Burnett said last night that the only solution of the immigration problem is the educational test requiring each immigrant to be able to read and write in his own or some other language. This, he declares, will cut off 75 per cent of the undesirable immigrants, most of whom, in his opinion, come from Asia Minor, Southern Italy, and Sicily.
“Not 60 per cent of these people can read or write,” said Judge Burnett, “and it is of the utmost importance to this country that they be shut from our shores. Especially from Sicily, our immigrant is ignorant and vicious. He is coming to the United States on every steamer, and should be stopped.
Syrians Are the Worst.
“The Syrian immigrant is even worse. I found many of them who cannot even get through under our present elastic laws, and who frankly stated they were on their way to Mexico or Canada, preferably the former, in the expectation of eventually reaching the United States through those countries.
“The immigration from Germany is undoubtedly the best we get, but, unfortunately, compared with the Southern Italians, few of them are very anxious to come to this country. They are prosperous at home. We cannot get too many immigrants of the right sort from Germany, the British Isles, Switzerland, or Northern Italy, but the most drastic laws should be framed for the benefit of the Southern Italian, Sicilian, and Syrian.”