The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry

Author:I.S. Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2023-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

30

We hadn’t driven far beyond the revolution factory when we saw the smoke. Riots on Budaiya Highway. Confined, modest in size, easily avoided. I reversed direction, headed east on a parallel road. Flashing yellow orbs appeared ahead, sweeping the decrepit neighborhood. Hastily erected barriers rose from the haze. In the periphery one shadow hunched over another, moving up and down like a relentless oil derrick: a cop beating someone. It was a checkpoint.

Rashid spoke my thoughts. “We abandon the car.”

I pulled behind an assemblage of construction equipment, grabbed my bag, stowed the memory card from my camera in my pocket. I could discard it if necessary.

“Exit on my side,” Rashid instructed as I reached for my door handle. “Farther from police.”

I snickered, dubious about his attempts at invisibility (there is no true invisibility, I always reminded him), but hoisted myself nonetheless over the parking brake and out his door.

Crawling on all fours like we were goddamned GIs in the jungle, we ambled across a dirt lot, behind a cement wall. There we crouched, the wall’s vexed graffiti a colorful backdrop for our afternoon drama, the audience—lizards, various and sundry vermin—waiting for the story to unfold. I slumped to the ground. Rashid had inched to the edge of the wall. All safe, he signaled with a thumbs-up.

Checkpoints—worst nightmare of handler and informant. Passages that determined destinies, friend from foe, sometimes life from death. A checkpoint in the slums carried its own particular risks. Rashid was now high enough in the insurgency hierarchy that he would undoubtedly be made an example if caught—humiliated, life for his family made unbearable, rock-bottom prison conditions. Or worse. And my own unpleasant future if discovered with an informant—persona non grata at a minimum, a headlines-topping scandal, maybe even imprisonment.

I lit a cigarette, remembered the gift I’d bought Rashid the day before. “Green apple,” I proffered, producing the pack of Canary Kingdoms. Rashid looked surprised, pleased.

Chants of protest, quieter now, carried from the highway, punctuated by the familiar pop and hiss of riot control gas. Smoke hung in stagnant loops around us. Across the lot a weeping eucalyptus taunted us with a glimpse of its feathery headdress, gray-green leaves drooping over a wall, looking strangely beautiful in the poisonous mist.

“This country,” Rashid smiled. “Not the island vacation you thought it would be.”

I shrugged. “My expectations weren’t too high.”

He sucked thoughtfully on his cigarette. “Maybe, habibi, this is your problem. You have no expectations.” He swatted at the haze. “You are like this air. Empty.”

“This air is pretty potent.”

“Yes. I am right,” Rashid persisted. “You just exist. You do not believe. You do not take sides.”

“Well, my wise friend, you’re right on that count. But my job is not to take sides. It’s to find people who take sides. And pay them. I don’t get involved.”

“If you do not have something to believe in, you have nothing.”

A siren wailed nearby. While we were talking, night had crept into the slums, turned the splintered houses into angry faces. The whites of Rashid’s eyes stood out like moonstone.

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