The Fistfight

In a dramatic twist, N- cornered his bitter enemy F- at the entrance to the Christmas market before starting a fistfight. Constables on duty rushed to the scene to find both men grappling one another like imitation sumo wrestlers. Instead of jumping in to separate the sizable duo, the constables argued about whether the city had already instituted rules about acceptable behavior at the markets and whether it was the responsibility of the constabulary to intervene during such altercations.

As N- and F- crashed and landed on an ever increasing number of stalls – they’d already smashed a row of trinket stalls – half-a-dozen desperate stall keepers decided to take matters into their own hand, before the fight led to financial losses for them. As they were preparing to plunge in and as the constables forged an agreement on how best to proceed, N- and F- got up off the floor, dusted themselves, eyed each other stupidly and then looked around to notice the crowd that had gathered.

The vendors and constables exchanged glances. One of the constables, to break the awkward silence, said in a loud, condescending voice, “Barring the exceptions – and there are always exceptions – this is exactly how all fights should end. By themselves.”

At which point, the half-dozen stall keepers launched themselves gleefully at the constables.

 

Photo from unsplash.com  by Daniels Joffe.

Raffi’s Love

 

Raffi was used to the bazaar, its environment and the characters inhabiting it, some who were helpful and some who were dangerous. He’d sat in the family shop selling wares daily since a child, except on Eid, Shura and the other festivals. He’d gone firstly with his father and later after his father died, he followed his Uncle Hussein.
There came an evening at home over a family dinner, when Uncle Hussein told him that he may not be able to follow Raffi to the bazaar if certain things worked out. He did not explain but Raffi knew that his cousin, Uncle Hussein’s oldest boy, was employed by an American company. There was a possibility that he would have his visa approved to visit the United States. Raffi decided that he was old enough to run the business himself instead of depending on his elderly uncle and began running the business likewise. Time passed slowly until Uncle Hussein told Raffi one day that he would be away for six months, visiting his son in New York. He left shortly after.
There was a certain girl in the bazaar. She was very intelligent in Raffi’s opinion because she liked quoting Rumi and other poets he’d read about. He would have said that she was beautiful – she was most definitely that as well – but the bazaar had many stalls with pretty girls. He’d found time – he’d made time – to speak with her. She liked him, he could tell, because she didn’t waste time talking with any of the other fellows who worked in the bazaar. There were many young guys – selling carpets, jewelry, spices, vegetables and fruits, meat – all either helping their family or working as apprentices with dreams on one day owning their own shop who possessed the typical charm and flowery languages that older boys had taught them and which they tried on girls. The girls were not stupid either. They teased the fellows they liked, were cold to those they didn’t and had an opinion on everyone who plied their trade in the bazaar.
This girl, whom Raffi had fallen for, was different – to him at least – because she did not speak of how big a home she wanted or the number of children she planned to have. Instead, she spoke of degrees and PhDs, foreign universities and travel. Raffi often listened to her, mesmerized. He could see how such a life would bring unimagined possibilities. But he believed that he had one limitation, having walked away from school at age twelve. Now at sixteen, he’d always felt that the knowledge and street-savvy he’d picked up working in the bazaar that kept him out of trouble and allowed him to turn a profit and bring it home safely, was enough to make him a successful man eventually. He could see how one day, he’d own a string of shops in the bazaar, hire people to work for him and have traders come from all over Egypt bringing things for him to sell on their behalf. He’d never felt inadequate or diminished by his choices and his station in life, until he met her. As he listened to her, he was torn – between the life he led and the good things he could reasonably be expected to achieve, and a world far beyond his familiar surroundings. The world she spoke of sounded exotic, exciting and honestly, more than a little intimidating too. But she would be a part of this world and that made him consider it.

He wondered if he could go back to school and pick up from where he’d left off. He dug up the courage to visit and speak with an old teacher. He actually attended a class to get a feel for attending classes again. He would need for several years to spend half his time in school and the other half in the bazaar. It would be tough. Then an acquaintance made a chance remark -whether Raffi took the challenge or not, where would the girl be in a few years?

She came and told him, seeing as he seemed to be sincere in his feelings for her, that she was willing to hold back her studies, to slow down, to allow Raffi to catch up with her. So they could travel together into their imagined future.
It seemed a welcome compromise but it didn’t pan out that way. Her parent’s saw things differently. They were wealthy traders, and they saw her qualifying in a profession that would give her the opportunity to move overseas and leave the family business completely. They did not agree to her seeing a trader boy who’d dropped out of school and who would only slow her down in life at worst and at best, keep her tied up to his family business.
Raffi’s family had their own objections. They preferred he marry a girl who stayed home and looked after him and their future children. How would she be a good wife and mother if she was outside with other men for work, travelling and dealing in foreign matters?
Raffi and his girl met in a street stall and sat dejectedly with their respective drinks amid the tumult of the nearby bazaar on a Friday afternoon. They thought, Do we have only one choice or the other? Give up my dreams or give up your family? Run away together? And live in poverty, without the means to higher education? Or walk away from each other?
Uncle Hussein came back from the States and hearing of Raffi’s romance, visited him. Raffi emptied his heart to his Uncle. His Uncle took him walking in the desert and quoted Rumi:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
What does that mean? asked Raffi. But he considered the words carefully.
He went and met the girl and told her not to give up on her dreams. He told her to walk her path and he would walk his, and they’d meet if they are meant to.
When he repeated the quote by Rumi, she understood. He asked her to continue with her studies and that he would try to catch up if he could. He went to school the next day.

 

Photo by Omid Armin from Unsplash.com

Under a Sky filled with Stars

Written for an exercise in Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass.
“This being our first session together, can you tell me a little about your background?”
“I’m from here but originally, my family was from farming country in the east. Let me volunteer that I’m from a long line of hunters.”
“Really? Well actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that.”
“Yeah, just look at me. A born hunter. As were my parents and their parents before them. Constantly hunting and  moving. Over the years, that’s how the family ended up here in W- State. Each generation eventually finds and settles in its own territory but this is a fine place to end up in.”
“Agreed. Lovely place.”
“Oh yeah. These constant mountains around us and the ever-shifting weather. What a combination. Especially if you are the type that hungers for the outdoors. Nothing like sleeping under a sky filled with stars, rising the next day to go hunting for a meal. Imagine having that kind of freedom generation after generation.”
“I can only imagine what you’re describing. That is some life.”
“You should try it. You’re local right? There’s no law against hunting.”
“Hunting just isn’t in my blood. But it certainly appears that you have a really adventurous life. Such unfettered freedom. So why did  you come to see me today ?”
“Things are fine, generally. But I’ve had something gnawing inside me for years. Its affected my health. My diet’s been uneven over the years.”
“Please go on.”
“You see things are not as pretty as I mentioned.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a hunter but the truth is, that’s only been a mantle I put on when I needed to. I can do it naturally. In truth, I’m a vegetarian. Been so for years. I don’t blame your look of surprise Doctor. Let me explain how it came  to this. As I said, we’ve only known a life as hunters. Sure, over the years, some of my – shall we say -species have migrated into the suburbs, gradually learning to live in locations with greater and more varied populations.”
“There was a lot of your family from out of state too,  I believe.”
“Still are. When the valleys get overcrowded with farms and farm animals, things are good for a while. Then farmers get angry and come at us with guns and traps. We move elsewhere, up into the mountains, to newer fields. Eventually, even the mountains get a little too crowded and competition is always bad. We’ve learnt to move with the times. You don’t see many of my kind here in town but  there are cities on this continent that are popular habitats for my kind.”
“Did your diet change because of the movement to the city?”
“No. Not at all. A lot of these fellows nowadays -take 90% in any city -go vegetarian partially because its fashionable and the other 10% is because of  what they say are ‘humanitarian’ reasons. They avoid meat because it’s no longer fashionable. I got no beef with that. I’m fine with the directions that migration has taken us. I get that overpopulation and climate change impacts all of us, every single species on the planet. If that means less of us prefer to hang out under the stars at night and hunting day by day, even less of my species finds hunting attractive, that’s fine by me. My own problem started long ago, long before these city fashionistas and their diets and their first pinpricks of conscience. It started  when I was just out of my teens, ambitious and hungry, full of hope for the future.”
“What happened?”
“In return for a species-transcending act of unnatural compassion on my part, I was betrayed. I became an outcast among my family and friends.”
“I thought wolves were fine with a life of solitude.”
“Yes we are, but we still find mates and settle down eventually. We have our own dens.  I say we, but of course, I never did any of those normal wolf things.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, I became an outcast due to a particular incident in my youth. I’m not sure if you’d heard this but where I come from -“
“How long ago are we speaking about ?”
“This was nearly forty years ago. Where I come from, my story is legendary in a negative way. It’s become a folktale, a cultural warning. I’d gone hunting in the mountains and found a trail of piglets followed closely by human shoeprints. I figured it could be a farmer tracking his escaped animals.”
“You followed them.”
“Of course. The easiest and most natural thing in the world for a wolf to do.”
“What happened?”
“After some time, I heard distinct squeals. I moved as silently as I could and came upon a clearing in the forest, where I saw the farmer brandishing a crudely fashioned stake, poking and prodding at three pigs, who were trapped in a makeshift wicker cage.  They could not have been more than piglets but they looked well fed and had rosy cheeks. Now they were frightened and dirty. He’d caught up with his escaped animals.”
“What did you do?”
“I was overcome by a strange compulsion.”
“You attacked the human?”
“Not at first. I don’t kill for sport. Or social justice. But the man was prodding and poking a little too deliberately, and I could see that the stake-end was reaching its mark with every wild cry and a few spots of blood appearing on the bodies of the pigs.  I felt a strange, new compulsion to me then and gave in to it. I attacked him from behind.”
“Out of compassion, as you said? This was the species-transcending act.”
“Yes. Yes, that was it.”
“Did you attack the human since he was threatening to kill your meal?”
“That’s how I explained it later to my family and acquaintances – unsuccessfully I admit – when I was asked to justify my actions. At the time, it felt the right thing to do. It felt right to me to stop the pain the man was inflicting on the little pigs.”
“What happened to the man?”
“I killed him as soon as I embedded my teeth into his neck.”
“Then?”
“I freed the pigs.”
Silence.
“They asked for help. I’d killed the human., their farmer. They asked me to free them and help them get safely off the mountain.”
“And you freed them? Why?”
“I don’t know. That felt like the right thing to do as well. We left the bloody farmer’s corpse. I led them down the mountain. When we came out into a meadow, they asked me to help them further.”
“Help them how?”
“Shelter. They needed shelter as they’d run off their farm. They did not want to go back. So the pigs gathered grass and leaves and I tried constructing a rudimentary shelter for them. To test it, I blew on the structure and the flimsy house fell in a single breath. Then we tried another, shadier location, where they found twigs and dried branches. Again, when I blew on the structure I’d constructed from different angles, it too collapsed. Finally, we came to an abandoned outhouse next to a burnt shed that local farmers had once used when they took their sheep into the fields and stayed overnight when the weather was poor. I managed to move some pieces of timber and broken bricks around. Another rudimentary shelter but this one was solid. This time, when I blew on it repeatedly. I leaned against it and threw a few bricks as well but the structure stood firm. Job done. That was it. The pigs went into their new home and I turned to go when out of nowhere, shots were fired, narrowly missing me. A handful of armed men came out of the trail leading from the mountain. I went in the opposite direction, losing myself in tall weeds and grass. But I didn’t go far. Worried for the pigs, I stayed close enough to see that they were safe. When the man leading the gunmen approached the outhouse I’d just helped turn into a home, the three little pigs ran out.
I heard them stop in front of a bearded, big bellied man who appeared to be the leader of the group.
“Mr. Y- is dead. We found his body in a clearing on the mountain. How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Kill him!”
“We didn’t do it. That wolf did it. The one that you just scared off! Didn’t you notice the bite marks on Mr. Y-‘s  neck?”
And so, the story spread that I’d killed the farmer and allowed the pigs to escape. The tale,  told and retold many times, eventually came to the knowledge of my folks, in a form that was far removed from the truth as I’d experienced it. It became accepted wisdom that I, a wolf, had let off three little, succulent pigs after killing their owner, aiding their escape and after building them a nice house.”
“Why do you think the pigs did what they did? You’d saved them and had even helped build them proper shelters. Although, arguably, they did tell part of the truth, it was not the whole story. Did you feel betrayed?”
“Very much so, initially. In fact, I felt wronged for some time afterwards. But eventually, it struck me that they probably had no other choice. By making me the villain, they would escape punishment for being responsible (even if only partly) for their farmer’s death. To be accused of killing a human being is one of the greatest horrors to befall a creature, certainly for a creature that historically is not used to carrying such a burden, unlike say wolves or other predators. I can understand that perfectly, although accepting it with equanimity is another matter.”
“You saved three little pigs and let them get away. You didn’t kill them. “
“No, I didn’t.”
“And you built them a house to boot.”
Nod.
“That is the burden you’ve been carrying. Its affected your relationships and your diet. It’s challenged who you are as a wolf. Your identity.”
Another nod.
“Do you think about this sometime when you’re under the night sky?”
“I certainly do. I wonder if I’d made a different decision along the way. I even think how things would’ve turned out, imagining that I was eating roasted piglets under the night sky.”
“Does that help?”
“No, I’ve given up on meat. I can’t see myself as society’s accepted image of a wolf.”
“Even though the pigs set you up?”
“Yes. That seems trivial. I’ve become a different animal because of my experiences. But I’m not sure if I see myself as wanting to go back to being the cliched wolf that I’m supposed to be.”
“Does that make you feel better instead?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes, instead I feel inadequate. That something is seriously wrong with me. I stopped eating meat shortly after. Imagine how that played in the family and community? My parents thought I needed to see a shrink, that I must be having some serious mental-health issues. The community? I was the butt of jokes and a warning to other young wolves on the dangers of becoming too modern and soft. A wolf that did not behave as a wolf was supposed to. I kept to myself and went away as often as I could.”
“Did you speak to anyone about how you felt?”
“I spoke with a few girls who firstly, did not appreciate a wolf who shared his problems. When they discovered I was a vegetarian – usually by the first date meal – they’d have made up their mind about me. One girl told me she was going no further with me because she couldn’t imagine how we’d raise healthy cubs when one parent was vegetarian. That she couldn’t be expected to carry the burden of hunting and raising the young at the same time.”
“How about friends?”
“I got nothing beyond stock macho advice from them. ‘Its probably only a phase.’ ‘Come with us. We’ll hunt something. A good meat meal will do the trick.’ Eventually, as it dawned  on them that I wasn’t going through a phase, they  had less time for me or to listen to my problems. I left the place, came over here. I still love the mountains and being out there alone but the suburbs here allow me to blend in. And I’ve been carrying this sense of inadequacy within me ever since.”
“Did you ever come across the pigs again?”
“Those same pigs? No.”
“What do you hope to accomplish now, since this old experience is still there at the back of your mind?”
“Is there any way I can be exonerated?”
“Exonerated?”
“Of the mistakes I was supposed to have made? That might help me.”
“That your act of species transcending compassion should have been lauded if the true story was told.”
“Yes. Absolutely that! That if the truth was made known – that I actually helped them, in a moment of compassion to escape their tormentor. That I led them to safety, built a shelter for these defenseless piglets before leaving – I should have been given a medal for what I’d done. Animal rights organizations should commend me. I should be invited to give talks on doing the civilized thing long before such acts were accepted in most societies. They’re still not accepted in all places. Helping fellow animals instead of reverting to instinctive responses should be recognized as a great act on my part.”
Pause. A smile.
“I’m telling you what I want. It shouldn’t matter what I want. What do you think, as a professional?”
“I think that’s an interesting thing to want. And it’s not wrong for you to desire it, even if its difficult to attain.”
“In my opinion, that’s actually quite a reasonable desire on my part. But speaking with you about it has certainly helped. But, exoneration? You’re right. That’s not in my hands.”
“Perhaps not.”
“But worthy of a medal, you might say.”
“Definitely.”
“Well, I’m glad you feel better speaking about the whole thing. Come back again whenever you want to Mr. Wolf and we’ll discuss further on exoneration.”
Photo from Unsplash.com by Taylor Leopold