The Emergency Almanac

Flag 

by Jayson Iwen 

Thirty six stars and four stripes left, it hangs like a dishrag in the wet grey sky. Now a sudden wind lifts it an inch or two, as if to inspect its underside, and, finding nothing, drops it again. How else could such a hyperactivity of symbolism come to an end, unendingly.

During the siege of Stalingrad, the German soldiers were terrified of the female militias they encountered. Whenever the women caught a German, they’d cut off anything that seemed remotely phallic. Anything that protrudes into the world. Genitalia first. Then noses and tongues. Then fingers and toes and ears. Then the men were sent back to where they would beg their comrades, as best they could without fingers or tongues, for death.

Then the Germans captured some of the Russians. They drove long Russian bayonets into their birth canals and out their backs, then nailed them to the floorboards of a Russian truck and drove it back into Russian territory. Anything inward that requires pinning down.

In such symbols they spoke to one another. And in such symbolism they understood one another, for, after that, they returned to the civility of simply killing each other again.

Beyond words lurks a fear too great for words. It hides in the blinding light of the obvious. Just now it hangs like something gutted, from the top of a flag pole before the VFW hall.

Object Lessons: ’67 Mercedes-Benz

by Jayson Iwen 

 

I’d like to be in love with someone in that cavernous back seat, staying close for heat, but that’s not my first thought when I see certain cars anymore. Probably not even my second.

Before the love are car bombs now. I cut myself shaving when the first one went off. I ran to the balcony and spotted the smoke column two blocks away. The Mediterranean breeze took it slowly in our direction and soon I could smell it. Not unlike the smell of a hot grill with steak turning to cinder on it. Then I realized what it was. Close the windows, I shouted.

Later, when Hariri’s motorcade blew up, we ran toward the smoke downtown. I watched a shirt burn in a car window, blown back and forth by gusts of heat. Then it crawled out the window and I saw a body was in it, struggling to stand. The police held us back. Someone on the inside ran to the figure and threw his jacket over it.After that they came more frequently. I got used to being awakened by explosions at night. My friends and I would meet in the expat sanctuary of happy hour at the Mayflower Hotel and we’d laugh at a common acquaintance’s latest mishap, and I’d smile vacuously and stare through the plate glass window at the rows of cars in the street and calculate how much of a political target we’d make. The UN was pressuring Syria to pull out of Lebanon, so a well-known peacekeeper R&R hangout like the Mayflower might be a tempting target, but doing so would make it seem obvious that Syria was behind the other bombings, which they were trying to convince us were the work of Lebanese factions. Conclusion: possible but not probable. I’d nod at what Ritta had just said about Khaled’s recent escapade, and I’d glance around at the circle of eyes and see the same glittering conclusions there.

After the first bomb, I felt trapped in a sustained, tightly restrained state of panic. For awhile. But after months of explosions, I started to envision clouds of flame engulfing whatever I looked at. I imagined I was living in the flame, already dead and living still, and in that waking dreamstate of death the panic dissolved.

On a hike in the mountains, my friends and I found ourselves, through inattention to the Arabic signs, in the middle of an active mine field. When we finally took notice of a sign nailed to a tree, we shrugged our shoulders. Mike chuckled. We were emotionally prepared for this now. We found a sheep path to follow out, because that’s what you do. You find paths where thought has gone before. Whether human or not, a decision moved as far as the path in the grass proceeds, and decisions are, above all, alive.

In the past, detonators were commonly attached to a car’s ignition. This is not the common practice anymore. Cars can be started remotely now, and the electrical drain caused by an attached detonation device can set off the car alarm. Both factors significantly reduce kill ratio. Now it is more common to simply attach the bomb to the underside of the target vehicle and either detonate it remotely, or have it set to be triggered by a particular movement of the vehicle–starting, stopping, or turning, for example. In either case the car should be moving. That way one knows the decision maker is on board.

There was a time before both bombs and lovers. My little brother and I stood at the side of highway 54, and I said to him, “Look. That car is going to turn right.” And it did. “And that one is going to turn left.” And it did. “How do you know,” he asked. “Watch the lights,” I said. And he did. “I get it,” he said. The connection we’d made between signals and motion utterly intoxicated me. Until then I’d felt like an animal trapped in the world of man, more comfortable with our dogs than our parents. But now these signals and lights radiated into the human wilderness. They seemed to show me a powerful new way to understand the contours of a world made terrifying and unintelligible by humans. I said, “Come on,” to my brother, and we crossed the street to school. Into each our own expanding circle of human flame. That’s my second thought, at least.

I’m far from the political assassinations now. And I envision carnage less. I still take notice of cars that look like they’ve been unattended for too long, but I’m losing the calculation instinct. When I look at a particular car, say a sixties era Mercedes, by far the most common vehicle in Beirut, I still feel a burning, like a tracer burrowing into the night. But after it burns out I’m still here. Life is still buzzing around me. And I can still be thankful for third and fourth and fifth thoughts, for love in a cavernous back seat. We may signal our entrances and exits from the world, but there is still the motion between.