Terrorist
In my last year of junior high, I managed to get myself on the bad side of a couple of skinheads. Not because of anything I could control, really, besides breathing. Skinheads don’t need much reason to be angry at you beyond you having a level of melanin in your skin above ‘Aryan’ and your, well, existing. And I, being of the same racial stock as one O. Binladen, well, I’m sure you can guess how I made them feel. They cornered me on the path through the woods that connected the school’s baseball fields to a residential area, two of them approaching me from either direction on the path. I wasn’t looking for a fight; I raised my hands in surrender, weakly tried to reason with them, averted eye contact and pleaded in a slow, clear voice, “C’mon now, you don’t really want to do this. . .”, treating them like a pack of vicious dogs. I guess I shouldn’t have spoken, because after I pleaded with them, they didn’t even bother with laughing at my cowardice, instead becoming enraged at the accent that tinged my voice. They unleashed the whole range of slurs on me, from ‘Towelhead’ and ‘Cameljockey’ right through to ‘Sand Nigger’, gnashing their teeth and circling me, closer and closer like bloated buzzards. They asked me patronizingly if I wasn’t going to ask Allah to save me, and I didn’t bother answering. I’d never really believed in Allah, not like Mom and Dad had, but I figured they wouldn’t believe that answer. How could I be a terrorist if I didn’t believe in the terrorist God? And there was no way I could be Arab and not a terrorist, certainly. I considered fighting back but realized I was outnumbered and outmuscled, the four of them having an average of about seventy pounds of advantage over me. I dropped my backpack, thought about running, but found my escape largely obstructed by the treacherous trees of the forest.
Even as I was trying to plan out a route of escape, the first punch collided with my jaw, sending my head reeling with an awful crack that resounded all the way down my neck from my ears. I righted my head again just in time to receive a second punch, this time to the nose. I felt the blood running down my face and shut both eyes, shielding myself with my forearms even as I took a blow to my stomach that doubled me over and dropped me to my knees on the muddy path. I wanted to cry out, to beg them to stop, but steeled myself instead, hoping that maybe if I didn’t fight back, they’d give up on the whole thing out of boredom and find a Chinese or black kid to beat up on for awhile. After a knee to the side of the head, I curled up on my side in the dirt, arms over my head, feeling a little bit like a caterpillar playing dead after being prodded by a child’s grubby finger. The four of them seemed to be losing heart at this point, kicking me listlessly at random and muttering allusions to September Eleventh in annoyed voices. Back in a safe corner of my mind, disassociated from the pain, I wondered if they’d actually even lost anyone in the attack, even mourned when it happened. I had.
When they were finally beginning to lose interest, I heard footsteps approaching but was too scared to look and confirm whether the newcomer was my saviour or another skinhead. “Hey!” I heard him shout, the ‘h’ awkwardly pronounced. “Fuck off, you fucking Nazi fuckers!” Some cynical part of me, separated from all of this, commended him on his use of vocabulary. The other part of me was whimpering with utter joy at the fact that help had arrived. The skinheads responded to his jeer in kind, swearing and shuffling all around me. I received another boot in the ribs and wheezed, peering up to catch a glimpse of whoever had come to rescue me.
I was met with shined brown leather shoes, pre-faded tight jeans, a silk button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled up mid forearm. Perfectly coiffed hair.
Later, as we lay together on our backs in the mud, sniffling back the blood clots in our noses and watching the sky darken above us, he turned his head toward me with an awkward smile. “So, uh,” he began, expression nervous, unable to look me quite in the eye, “you’re not a terrorist, are you?”
“Of course not,” I replied, laughing, “If I was, I’d have reached into my jacket and blown those infidel mothers up for so much as looking at me!” He looked relieved at that, returned his gaze to the sky a moment before looking to me again.
“But uh. . . you can still put a Jihad on them, right?”
“It’s not a fuckin’ voodoo curse, man. You don’t. . .put a Jihad on a person.”
A minute or so passed and I listened to our rattled, laboured breathing, considered getting up but vetoed the idea after the mere thought of physical effort in my condition.
“I’m Luc,” my companion introduced, but through the congestion of blood in his nose it sounded a little bit more like “Loog”.
“Jeff,” I responded.
Even as I was trying to plan out a route of escape, the first punch collided with my jaw, sending my head reeling with an awful crack that resounded all the way down my neck from my ears. I righted my head again just in time to receive a second punch, this time to the nose. I felt the blood running down my face and shut both eyes, shielding myself with my forearms even as I took a blow to my stomach that doubled me over and dropped me to my knees on the muddy path. I wanted to cry out, to beg them to stop, but steeled myself instead, hoping that maybe if I didn’t fight back, they’d give up on the whole thing out of boredom and find a Chinese or black kid to beat up on for awhile. After a knee to the side of the head, I curled up on my side in the dirt, arms over my head, feeling a little bit like a caterpillar playing dead after being prodded by a child’s grubby finger. The four of them seemed to be losing heart at this point, kicking me listlessly at random and muttering allusions to September Eleventh in annoyed voices. Back in a safe corner of my mind, disassociated from the pain, I wondered if they’d actually even lost anyone in the attack, even mourned when it happened. I had.
When they were finally beginning to lose interest, I heard footsteps approaching but was too scared to look and confirm whether the newcomer was my saviour or another skinhead. “Hey!” I heard him shout, the ‘h’ awkwardly pronounced. “Fuck off, you fucking Nazi fuckers!” Some cynical part of me, separated from all of this, commended him on his use of vocabulary. The other part of me was whimpering with utter joy at the fact that help had arrived. The skinheads responded to his jeer in kind, swearing and shuffling all around me. I received another boot in the ribs and wheezed, peering up to catch a glimpse of whoever had come to rescue me.
I was met with shined brown leather shoes, pre-faded tight jeans, a silk button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled up mid forearm. Perfectly coiffed hair.
Later, as we lay together on our backs in the mud, sniffling back the blood clots in our noses and watching the sky darken above us, he turned his head toward me with an awkward smile. “So, uh,” he began, expression nervous, unable to look me quite in the eye, “you’re not a terrorist, are you?”
“Of course not,” I replied, laughing, “If I was, I’d have reached into my jacket and blown those infidel mothers up for so much as looking at me!” He looked relieved at that, returned his gaze to the sky a moment before looking to me again.
“But uh. . . you can still put a Jihad on them, right?”
“It’s not a fuckin’ voodoo curse, man. You don’t. . .put a Jihad on a person.”
A minute or so passed and I listened to our rattled, laboured breathing, considered getting up but vetoed the idea after the mere thought of physical effort in my condition.
“I’m Luc,” my companion introduced, but through the congestion of blood in his nose it sounded a little bit more like “Loog”.
“Jeff,” I responded.
posted by Heather Salmon at 2:21 a.m.
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