Harry The Circle H Ranch Willow Springs, Montana April 28
“Hello back,” came the response from the barn. Proceeding cautiously forward, Joel slid the large barn door all the way open and entered. It took a minute or two for his eyes to adjust to the shadows of the dusty interior. He called again, “Over here.” Squinting through the dust and the darkness, Joel could see that his barn mate was an elderly man. As the stranger stood from the chore of feeding the cats, Joel saw the rough and rugged lines of the face of a Native American man. “Harry,” the man said as he nodded. “I’m Joel Hooper.” “I know,” came the simple reply. Reaching forward, Joel offered his hand. Harry reciprocated with his respectfully limp hand and Joel proceeded to shake it with far too much vigor and enthusiasm. What an idiot, Joel thought of himself. Of all people, having traveled and worked in so many foreign countries, he should be more sensitive to the cultural differences. Freeing himself from the clutch of Joel’s handshake and with absolutely no eye contact at all, Harry retreated back into the safety of the shadows. In silence, Harry proceeded to putter with feeding the horses. From what Joel was seeing, it seemed that the chore was a combination of throwing flakes of hay into the stalls
“Are you okay? You look like something is bothering you.” “Hakim, do you ever think about home? Do you miss home?” “Yeah, I think about home, why?” “For a long time now I’ve been having these dreams. I’m losing sleep because of nightmares.” Hakim’s eyes get cloudy while he browns the prawns in a pan. He turns and looks deeply into Talal’s eyes and asks, “Why do you have nightmares? What kind of nightmares?” “Things from back home in Falluja, the war, the destruction, things like that. I have nightmares about my parents when they died in front of our house, their bodies badly burned. I see them in my dreams all the time.” Hakim becomes agitated when he hears Talal’s description of his dead parents. He finishes cooking the prawns and checks the rice in the cooker; it will be ready in a few minutes. He knows very well about nightmares—he has his share of them. He has had his own nightmares for a long time now, and hasn’t said anything to anybody, not yet. Not even to Talal, who opens the discussion about nightmares as if they were his monopoly. He knows too well the devastating images from home, during those dark days of the war. He has seen himself under the rubble of his house, covered by pieces of cement blocks and broken furniture, the night when the American bombs fell from the sky like lava from heaven and destroyed most of Baghdad. He takes his wine glass and raises it to Talal’s glass. “Don’t worry, bro. Don’t let these nightmares control your life. Here’s to you!” Talal doesn’t answer. Instead, he goes to the fridge and takes out the lettuce for the salad. He starts to cut the lettuce, “I see the images of my parents over and over in my head, as if they are in front of me, like the day it happened.” “Tell me how your parents died, Talal.” “It was that offensive; I think it was 2004, at the beginning of the war, when the Americans fought against Falluja, against what they used to call insurgents. Do you remember?” “Yeah, those were the days of hell. I remember well. I was with Uncle Ibrahim during that time. By then, our house was already destroyed.” “Well, in our case the Americans tried white phosphorous against the insurgents. They used chemicals that burned the bodies like fire. That is how my parents died, because they didn’t leave their house. So much damage was done to the people who stayed behind instead of leaving as they were advised to. People’s flesh got burned up right on the spot. That’s how my mom and dad died. We were a couple of kilometers away at my grandfather’s house,
“Like physical punishment?” Ken asked. “Yes, but of a horrible kind.” “Well, I decided to take them on and use myself as the whipping boy.” “That’s one of the things that interests me about your story and about you,” Patrick said. “Are you sure you aren’t an Indian? That’s the kind of thing we do.” “No, it was just a way of achieving a goal I wanted. It was a mixture of vengeance and proving myself smarter. What were the other horrible things that were done to you?” Patrick looked away. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” On his trips with Patrick, Ken discovered a new world, so far removed from the one he had grown up in, it might have been on a different planet. I began to have the sense that I had left the shadow of my own people and of my own world. I was not in that world and I was not in this world and that has been a familiar place my whole life. In fact when I look at the paintings that I make, they are actually portraits of that. I’m incredibly interested in the places in between. I remember painting an old barn when I was going through the barn phase, as everyone does. I noticed at one point that the barn itself was not it. The barn was there so that I could paint the cracks in it. I began to get the idea that time is short and the journey is long and there is only one way to go in the journey. Imagine a giant sitting on a beach surrounded by huge boulders and he has picked up two of them and he’s banging them together. Every time he bangs them together a grain of sand is created. If he goes on for long enough, at some point, there will be a beach. That concept pleased me no end – that there was no quick way of creating a beach. Consequently, there could be no quick way of getting anything. Whatever it is that I was doing was going to take a very long time and that was okay. There was something very pleasing about the fact that it was going to take a very long time. The times in my life when I have been in some form of contentment are when I have been immersed in a project, the end of which I cannot see. And my mind stops worrying or considering what I will do next. I have paddled from one giant project to the next. He absorbed Patrick’s stories and tried to fit them into a logical context. There had to be a reason for the actions the Europeans had taken. One day while they were motoring on the river he asked Patrick, “Why do you think the newcomers tried to deal with the native population this way? The residential schools seem to be a complexly bizarre notion. We know that if you say to someone, ‘This is my castle and you can’t come in’, they’re going to bash the door down to gain entrance.” “Yes. It’s bizarre,” Patrick said. “When you force people to do anything – well we know what the reaction to that is going to be.”
We threw together in a childish competition that entertained not only us but also the lads kneeling in groups of four holystoning the deck. “Hey!” I turned and saw the weather-worn face of Pedro Mendez, the ubiquitous bosun, obscured by the sun at its zenith, as he glowered down at us from the quarterdeck. Already, everyone knew better than to provoke him. “Ballast is for ballast,” he snapped. He marched toward us, bare feet turning inwards, glared at the bucket, snatched the stone from my hand and shoved the bucket at Bartolomé’s page, a boy nicknamed the Canary for his constant whistling. As the bosun returned to his duties, my fellow passenger chortled, half-covering his mouth with his hand. He took a big step back and bowed with one hand on his belly, the other on his back. “Gregorio de la Parra, at your service.” I had seen Gregorio a couple of times before but had never talked to him. To my surprise, I quite liked him. He was different from the man who stood apart with a haughtiness around his jaw and neck that went all too well with his inquisitive brown eyes. “What did you do back in Spain?” I asked. “I studied Canon Law in the University-College of Santa María de Jesus in Seville,” he said. “But my godfather, who lives in Havana, wanted me to join the next expedition to the land of the Caracas Indians.” “Why, God must have something in store for us, my friend!” I said, “I was sent to join the same expedition!” I assumed we might become friends but instead he briefly frowned and looked me over as though for the first time. “Did you finish your studies, then?” I asked, changing the subject but keeping the smile in place. He pulled at his leather doublet to make it fit more comfortably. “No,” he muttered, straightening his back and looking away. “Are you planning to finish them?” I was mystified by his sudden solemnity. His eyes took on a piercing intensity.
Poison Glass we can only imagine a happy light our wish is not to only exist – to live but to deserve love we measure our love through the eye of the blind as death is also temporary we protect ourselves that we move later on for we are robbed by our common imaginary things let us forget our language from grasses-trees we begin to learn again from the clocks pointers time sharpens a dagger and we do not know what time it is in public places we gather mesmerized by appropriate words we forgive that God left the world unfinished and we drink the poison glass that our torn enamored life offers
Eyes questioning, wondering eyes smiling lips, shy laughter on the screen, momentarily uncomfortable reaction to my comment visceral need for touch, dermal and internal which I dream of experiencing, emotional fast heartbeats, body warm, willing, expecting you in the sweetness of the moment eternal image in my mind
Natasha’s face broke into a smile as she followed the unruly man’s path. Her eyes pierced Jennifer. “Welcome to Moscow. Here is one of our efficient Soviet comrades at your service.” Irony or not? Jennifer wasn’t quite sure. This woman would be the group’s constant companion for the whole three weeks. Jennifer suddenly found herself a little shy. What should she say to her? “Did you have a pleasant flight?” Natasha asked in faintly accented English, one eyebrow rising and falling in interrogation. “No, actually the last stretch was rough! We flew through a storm.” The eyebrow went up again and Natasha frowned. “Statistically, you were safe,” she said. “Only safe landings have been recorded at this airport for the past 15 years.” Jennifer stifled the urge to ask about the unrecorded flights, and she and Natasha stood in silence until the others began to trickle through the gate. ★ The highway into Moscow was wide with very few cars, some antiquated buses that belched black soot and many putty-coloured military vehicles, each displaying a stencilled number. Massive concrete bus shelters lined the curb, their panels dwarfing the few pedestrians. There were no houses. On the outskirts of town a sea of apartment buildings loomed, blocks of boxy housing, surrounded by paving stones between which weeds sprouted. Above, clotheslines were strung across the many balconies. At street level, the store windows displayed no colourful signs, no advertising, and not many goods behind the glass panels. Over each storefront was written a single word describing the store’s contents: Footwear, Produce, Dairy. As their bus left the suburbs and entered the city, they saw their first statue on a street corner. Almost two storeys high, it could easily be identified as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by the pointed beard and round, smooth head. “King Fred,” giggled Len Whalen, one of the undergrads. Natasha’s gaze soon silenced him. Several of the group brought out their cameras, but Natasha called out, “No photos yet, please. Save your film for Red Square, coming up on your right.” The famous square flashed past in a blur—the Kremlin walls, the mausoleum, the striped onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral.
“Joel,” Mr. Lee replied calmly. “I met with our client’s entire management team at the terminal yesterday and they are fully behind the decision. In fact, they were very critical of me for not acting on this earlier, but I thought I would just give you one more chance. I know you are capable of so much more. It is so frustrating watching you waste your talent and poison yourself the way that you do.” “Bloody hell, you bastard. What are you talking about? Just because you don’t know how to have a little fun once in a while doesn’t mean that other people can’t have a good laugh now and again.” “Joel, I can see that this conversation isn’t getting us anywhere,” interrupted Mr. Lee. “But why should I expect it to be any different than any of our other conversations? Everyone I talk to on this addiction problem of yours tell me that you won’t be ready to make the changes you need to make until you hit your bottom. I just hope it doesn’t take you much longer to hit your bottom. There might not be much left. Could you please give me your key to the office and your security pass?” “Screw you!” screamed Joel as he slammed his office key and security pass on the desk in front of him. “You are going to be very sorry. You’ll see. You will be crawling to me asking for me to come back and clean up after the kid. There is no way I’ll ever work for this damn rotten company ever again after the way they’ve treated me. You’ll all be sorry,” he blurted to anyone who cared to listen as he strode across the office, opened the door, and walked into the sweltering heat of the day. If Joel was feeling pretty rough at the start of the day, he certainly wasn’t feeling any better now.
Manolis Aligizakis 