The Screaming Eagles (7 page)

He shouted, “Who’s there? Come out!” If they came with a gun or knife, he’d run. Maybe they were planting a bomb. He hoped it was just a burglar instead.

“Who the hell are you? Come out. I’ve got a gun.”

“Agha Lawrence, please Agha. It is I, Jalal. Agha, what is wrong?”

“Jalal, you crazy bastard. Why didn’t you answer? I thought it was the crazies that threatened to blow up my apartment. You scared the hell out of me.”

“I know, Agha. This paper was on the door when I came here after school.” Jalal handed a brown paper torn from a grocery bag similar to what Michael found the previous day on the door.

“Dog, tonight you die, just like number seventeen.” This was unusual, a second warning. Involuntarily, Michael shuddered. If they wanted his attention, they had it, totally and completely. Six weeks ago, while Michael was having breakfast and listening to the news, an explosion broke every window in his apartment facing the street. Dust sprayed through windows settling all over his apartment. Michael had rushed to a window to see what had happened. He saw number seventeen, the apartment building across the street, totally crushed, blown apart. Cement slabs, twisted steel and concrete pieces were falling, thick dust heavy and dark rose up in great clouds, giving off a wet cement smell that permeated his apartment for many days. No one came out of the building. It just collapsed. Ambulances, fire trucks and police came, but no one had been rescued. For hours Michael stood at his window watching the frantic activity as they searched. Neighbors, still in pajamas, pulled at rocks and tried lifting wooden beams. If people had been trapped alive, no one ever found them. The explosives used by the terrorists had been expertly detonated.

The authorities, seeing it was hopeless, left the scene after a few hours. For two days, weeping family members dug with their hands spades, pneumatic drills, and finally bulldozers, but number seventeen would not give up its bodies. Number seventeen concealed, hid, and buried them so that, only worms would find them. The rescuers couldn’t. Rubble that once was seventeen still stood there. Weeds would start growing soon. The first few times that he walked out of his door after the explosion, he saw in his mind how the building had looked before it had collapsed. After a while it had become rubble and was no longer an apartment building, just twisted metal and broken concrete. Until now, he’d always felt he was invulnerable. Iranians didn’t kill foreigners. They cursed them, spat on them, ignored them, but didn’t kill them. It could never happen to him. That was yesterday’s theory. The brown paper said if he didn’t leave today, he might become a body no one would find tomorrow. His building could become a new seventeen.

“Jalal, I think I better leave now. Lock up everything and finish tidying up while I pack.”

Michael kept the bank statements and took all the important papers and cash that he could find. He decided not to take a suitcase as he might have trouble carrying it or getting it on the plane. When his briefcase was full he started calling taxis. As soon as they heard his foreigner’s voice, they slammed down the phone. He felt himself growing more and more angry. Quietly, Jalal suggested that he sit down. Jalal would organize a taxi. Michael stared at him. He’d always been so quiet. It was two years since Jalal had arrived at his door. Michael had paid his tuition at school and now college. Jalal insisted that one day he would pay Michael back. Jalal scrupulously kept an accounting of funds he was given, at the end of each month, checked with Michael to see if their totals tallied.

Jalal called a taxi and told Michael to wait by the door. He would get in the taxi and leave the door open. Michael was to slide in next to him. He gave Michael his Farsi newspaper and asked him for a fifty-dollar bill that he tore in half. Normal fare to the airport was five dollars.

Ten minutes later, a taxi arrived. Jalal greeted the driver carrying Michael’s briefcase and got in. Michael jumped in next, slammed the car door shut, and opened the newspaper as if he were reading it. The taxi driver became apoplectic, ordering him out, saying he would be killed, his car stoned. Jalal put the torn fifty-dollar bill in the driver’s hand and gently said no one would know who was reading a newspaper. The other half of the fifty dollars was his when the passenger arrived safely at the airport. The driver’s bluster cursing, and rage ceased as pure economics and greed took over. Fifty dollars, ten times the going rate, was too good to give up.

Jalal handed Michael his briefcase and shook his hand. “We will meet again soon, Agha. I have your address in Israel and also in Chicago. I will write soon. I will also send you the money I owe you.” He got out and closed the door.

Still grumbling and talking to himself about the mortal danger and risk he was taking by having a foreigner in his car, the taxi driver drove to Merhabad Airport.

The drive to the airport gave Michael a chance to reflect on Jalal and their relationship. There was something mysterious about that young man. One day they would meet and at that time he would discuss all topics that, for two years had purposefully, not been discussed. Even the unmentionable personal topics, Michael was determined to get answers no matter how uncomfortable it would make Jalal.

It was nearly curfew time when Michael finally managed to push and bully his way into the airport building. Without having to move suitcases or be encumbered by boxes, carpets or children, he was able to squeeze through gaps speedily. Once inside, he moved toward a row of benches. He got there just as a siren went off. Soldiers using megaphones shouted to the mob outside to move toward one of the hangars. People would spend the night there. An old woman suddenly jumped up, nearly knocking Michael over, shouting that she wanted to go with her family to the hangar. Struggling with a large fat man, Michael managed to shove him away so that the man nearly over balanced, allowing him enough time to scramble into the old lady’s vacated seat.

Soldiers locked all doors leading into the departure lounge. No one could come in or could get out. Large arc lamps were turned on, illuminating the whole area so soldiers could immediately react to any terrorist acts. Three tanks clanked noisily outside each moving into a designated area as they took up their positions for the night. Making sure that everyone in the lounge could see and hear them, soldiers set up a machine gun near each of the doors. Families that had been sitting near the doors scattered in all directions, moving away from the guns, trying to get out of the line of fire. Nervously, they watched as soldiers took up battle positions. The loud din in the room ceased. People became quiet and spoke in hushed voices as they tried to find as much space as possible to settle in for the night. Neither riches nor influence would help anyone that night. Trying to escape out of Teheran introduced a commonality. Sitting on the floor was a great leveler of rich and poor. No one admitted they were escaping, all spoke of looking forward to their vacations. The only thing of importance was how many square inches of space they could occupy before an elbow or foot intruded into their personal space. Having a seat gave Michael status. He knew it caused envy and resentment. He could see it in their eyes as people prepared to settle them selves on the floor. Suitcases and valuables were stacked in a pile. Vigilantly, family members positioned themselves strategically around their pile of suitcases, backs resting against their property, sitting with legs stretched out in front, hands ready to ward off thieves. Resourceful women had brought food, tea, soda and water. Michael had hardly eaten the previous night, nor had he slept. The next twelve hours would be his second night without sleep. He’d only drunk two cups of tea that day, and his stomach rumbled constantly, craving and demanding water, food, anything. He could smell and taste foulness in his breath. However, money would not buy him even a crust. If he wanted something to eat, he would have to trade something. He could only trade his seat for food to one of those sitting on the floor, but decided nothing would make him give up his seat. Michael felt he was establishing his superiority over this group of Iranian people who were forced to sit at his feet. These people hated him, and he too had begun to hate them with a passion. Closing his eyes, not wanting to see people eating, not wanting to betray how hungry he was, he tried to close his nose to seductive aromas of food. Checking his watch, he calculated nine hours and forty minutes before this prison would be unlocked. He tried to formulate a plan of what to do when morning came. Breathing deeply, he repeated a mantra, but couldn’t concentrate. He tried doing relaxation exercise techniques to calm himself, but he knew he was starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep and lack of food.

In the army, there had been a drill they had gone through many times. They called it T.R.O.D., “The Road of Dreams,” but they’d all known it was only a drill. A shower and a hot meal would be there at the end as they compared and joked about the levels of hallucinations they had gone through, what they had experienced, and how long it had taken them to collapse. But nothing had prepared him for the trauma, tension and terror he had experienced over the last twenty-four hours. This was real life, not a drill.

By midnight, Michael knew that the Devil had opened a branch of hell in the airport. He must have fallen asleep, for he suddenly awoke to see the devil floating in a black chador. Wherever he looked, it followed him, floating into his vision. It had no eyes, but he knew it could see him. Their relationship was friendly. He was not afraid.

All toilets in the airport were by now blocked and overflowing. A ripe stench of sewage wafted everywhere. He felt sure he could feel it settling in a thick mist falling into his hair and all over his body. Babies and adults urinated and defecated where they sat. Some people had diarrhea, moaning in pain as their bowels opened where they sat, unable or unwilling to move. Smelling the stink, gagging, people tried to move away, but there was no place to move. They implored the soldiers to open the doors, offered them money, and pleaded with them, begged, all to no avail. From past experience, knowing what would happen to the toilets, soldiers had come prepared. They had neck scarves over their noses and mouths. The soldiers trusted no one, suspected everyone. If anyone came too close, they screamed, guns cocked, ready to shoot anyone for doing anything. They were jittery, expecting to be attacked, not knowing where it would come from, sure that it would happen that night.

A few hours ago, he realized that he needed to urinate badly. He had tried sitting cross-legged, tried moving from side to side. It was like a grinding, persistent knife turning in his groin. The pain was becoming so unbearable that he couldn’t endure it any longer. Politely, with hesitation, for these were the first words he’d spoken to the man sitting on the right of him, Michael him if by chance they had a spare tin, pot or bottle that he could use to relieve himself. He apologized most profusely for bothering them, but he was in pain and could not wait any longer. The man on his right just turned his head and ignored him, not bothering to answer. The man on his left apologized and said that unfortunately he had nothing that could be used. He was alone and only had one small suitcase. Turning away from Michael, the man continued to count the circle of Moslem prayer beads, divided into three sets of thirty-three. These were the ninety-nine Tributes to God, praising God at all times, always held in the right hand, the hand of righteousness.

By now he was writhing in pain. His head throbbed and ached as lightheadedness returned, and with it the devil mocking his pain. Michael spat on the floor near the shoes of the man sitting on his right drawing a sharp stare from the man as he sat primly on his seat picking at his teeth while his wife and children sat on the floor. Grabbing the man’s elbow he squeezed it hard. Alarmed, the man turned toward Michael who squeezed harder, put his mouth next to the man’s ear and hissed, “Agha, I am a madman that has a devil that sits on my shoulder. I was released from an insane asylum this very morning. It is with pride I say I am truly crazy, and, I enjoy, killing people. If you do not give me a container to piss into right now, I will piss on your suitcases, over your clothes and put you on the floor, hold you down and piss in your ugly loathsome face. Do I get a container now or do I start pissing, you sniveling piece of shit?” The man’s mouth opened and shut, blowing like a fish, his eyes bulging. He turned to his wife furiously “Stupid fool, give this man an empty bottle, quick, any bottle. Don’t look at me like that, woman, must I beat you first? Give me that Pepsi bottle there, that one on the floor.”

Michael grabbed the bottle from her outstretched hand, unzipped his pants and started urinating. Embarrassed, the woman turned away from him. Urine unable to flow dribbled out slowly, causing him so much pain that he groaned. He gritted his teeth, for the pain was excruciating as he continued dribbling slowly into the bottle.

It took a long time to fill the bottle. When it overflowed, he continued to urinate on the floor oblivious of people staring at him. Eventually he opened his eyes and saw the disgust and loathing on their faces. Looking at them he smiled closed his eyes and continued pissing.

Many hours had passed. Michael drifted in and out of sleep. Most people were asleep. He felt lightheaded again, pleased, relaxed and so very happy. The Devil was happy too, they continued to laugh together. She was still sitting lightly on his shoulder comfortable and at ease. He suddenly realized that if the Devil wore a chador, she must be a woman. This would be his or her very own secret, no one else would know that the Devil was a woman. He started to smile at the fact that he had a secret, a devilish secret. Every religion thought that God was a man. Everyone thought the Devil was also a man, only Michael knew the truth. The enormity of this revelation was breathtaking. Laughter took control of his body. Small personal giggles at first. He tried to laugh quietly, but couldn’t. His body shook, twitching and trembling while he fought to control it, wondering how far he was in T.R.O.D., how far down the pathway had he traveled on “The Road of Dreams.” He was sure he had never reached this depth of plateau before. Michael was scared. All his life he’d been a leader, not a follower. He had been a tower of strength. He knew he was falling apart. Unashamedly he acknowledged that he was rapidly approaching a nervous breakdown.