The Devil Is a Black Dog by Sandor Jaszberenyi

Author:Sandor Jaszberenyi [Jászberényi, Sándor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9900043-3-2
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2015-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

End of the World

If you decide that you want to see the end of the world, you will need the permission of the military in Sana’a. The night will be heavy and cold. No more so than in Europe, perhaps, but there won’t be electricity and you can see the stars. You will be up in the hills, in the middle of a crater, where they built a city near the sky.

You were always curious about the end of the world. The zero point where everything reaches its end. Civilization, culture, government, order—everything. All the rules that bind the world. Unlike the center of the world, you can go to the end of the world, because there’s no competition to get there. Where questions of religion and discrimination can’t find you.

They will summon you for 7:30 PM at headquarters, half an hour before evening prayer and twenty minutes before the khat begins to kick in in their hearts and heads. You know, because your mouth will also be filled with khat. You will swallow the bitter and green spit until the effect takes hold.

“True, its kiss is more bitter than a woman’s, but it’s a kiss of eternal pleasure,” the dealer you buy it from says. He’ll only cheat you by a few dollars, because he thinks you are Muslim when you slip in an Egyptian-accented “Salam.”

You knock at headquarters, but you wait in vain for somebody to answer. With two fists you beat the door until someone finally opens up. It will be a conscript, a familiar-looking weapon in his hand and his cheeks stuffed with khat.

He will show off his small piece of Hungary. Since you set foot in the Middle East, you’d hoped that this wouldn’t be how people know your homeland. You figured that even in the Gaza Strip they’d speak of soccer legend Ferenc Puskás, the Golden Team, or the Rubik’s Cube. Anything but this. That a young Hamas recruit wouldn’t tell you what a wonder the Automatic Modified Paratrooper rifle is, what a great people you are, because your country gave the world something you can properly kill with, and that it even comes with a scope mount. For a moment you hope that this won’t happen, that the talk will be about Puskás, Rubik, the Golden Team, or even paprika—but no. You are Hungarian so it’s the AMD-65 rifle. Slowly it dawns on you why every Hungarian embassy in the area has a military attaché. You can’t spit because your mouth is full of dry khat.

The conscript will grin at you, strike the floor with green spit, then indicate that you should follow him. The corridor you walk down is lit by petroleum lamps, and it takes you past the weapon stockpile. The collection, which includes the Eastern Bloc’s every last wonder, will be on a long, hardwood-carved lunch table.

He escorts you to a door, its red paint flaking. You enter; there sits an older soldier. In his eye you will see that he is good with God.

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