Don't Be Afraid of the Bullets by Laura Kasinof

Author:Laura Kasinof
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

When I traveled back to the US for my mom’s surgery, I decided to keep everything that happened over the last few months stowed away in a little locked box. That seemed simple enough to do when the worlds I was traveling between were so outwardly different. It was like there was a me who existed in Yemen and a me who existed with family, and I could swap them during a transcontinental flight. The chaos, sadness, and at times absolute absurdity that Yemen had pulled me into were not to be unveiled in America. Why live through that again anyway? It would just be easier to forget about it. It’s not like I had ever intended for it to happen.

When I first moved to Yemen I had been afraid of what America had told me to be afraid of. Then I began to see that those fears were inconsequential and I only had fun in Yemen. This was often heightened by the riskiness of the place, like drinking beers in the middle of Hadda Street at three in the morning and then hitchhiking back to the old city in the back of a qabili’s pickup truck. It was especially fun because it was taboo in both of the worlds where I existed. Then the risk increased once the protests began, but I was still having fun. Then everything became horrible. But even in that there was the fun of surviving amongst the chaos, because although it was difficult, the mind can shut the bad out for a while, and instead I concentrated on the good, the fun, the friendship, and the praise I was receiving for my work as journalist. It was easy to convince myself that it was worth it. Yemenis had a lighthearted touch in dealing with heartache, and it helped keep my heart light as well, for as long as it could.

Yemen was relatively calm when I left, with Saleh still in power, Ali Mohsin’s soldiers guarding the Square, and protesters not staging any more marches outside their protected areas like Kentucky Square. There was talk of Saleh signing an internationally brokered agreement that would eventually hand over the presidency to his deputy, but I doubted that would happen. So I felt some peace with leaving for a few weeks. I was calm just like Yemen was calm: artificially.

• • •

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Washington, DC,” the stewardess announced over the intercom. She repeated the same message in French.

I turned my phone on as soon as the plane touched down. I had been in the air for around eight hours.

“Please remain in your seats until the plane has come to a complete stop.”

My phone slowly captured the signal. I waited impatiently.

“It is now safe to use all approved electronic devices.”

If I were in Yemen, I would have taken out my phone while we were still descending.

Three bars appeared in my phone’s top right corner. My email loaded. I scanned through the messages. There were

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.