OUTSIDE THE DOG MUSEUM by Jonathan Carroll

Author:Jonathan Carroll [Carroll, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macdonald
Published: 1991-01-30T21:00:00+00:00

The road from Bazz’af airport to the capital is a black asphalt ruler, straight across the desert, covered with the damnedest-looking traffic I had seen in some time. After a few days there, I realized the primary mode of motorized transportation in Saru appeared to be bicycles and scooters. Which made sense because both are relatively cheap and easy to maintain. But the rigors to which they were put were unbelievable and downright imaginative. Three or four people on a little Italian scooter were a typical sight: Papa, Mama, and two children covering every possible inch of the vehicle as it crawled down the road. Or a French ‘velo’ pulling a homemade trailer loaded with a few zillion pounds of cloth or dung or vegetables.

That first day the Royal Highway was a slow procession of these martyred two-wheelers wobbling along down the middle of the beautifully paved road, ignoring anything behind them. Add to this various ancient trucks and cars spewing exhaust smoke thick enough to melt the eyes, horses and donkeys pulling wagons… and you get some idea of the traffic flow.

It was long, empty miles of parched desert countryside, bedouin camps, and large goat herds wandering the sides of the highway before modern civilization began to show its face. Five or six miles out of town large billboards advertised in both Arabic and English such things as Saru Airlines, “Direct flights to Qatar and Jidda twice daily” and the Bazz’af Concord Hotel’s “Casino, Olympic swimming pool, festive conference rooms.”

Two images in particular remain in my mind. The first is of a small boy holding a camel on a rope standing in front of a poster for Siemens telecommunications. The picture was of a satellite in space beaming sherbet-green light down to a sexy red phone held by a sexy white Occidental hand. What did a satellite mean to this kid? Or a telephone? As we passed, the camel turned his head and gazed our way.

Image number two was of a Coca-Cola poster a few miles farther on. It was a familiar one that I’d seen recently in California. Only here the middle of the picture was gone and in its place was a blackened ragged hole where a perky girl’s face should have been. Her hand, holding a frosty bottle of the world’s favorite drink, survived.

“What happened there?” I asked no one in particular.

“Mortar shell,” Hassan and his bodyguard said simultaneously.

“Why would someone shoot at an ad?”

“Because Coca-Cola isn’t a drink, Radcliffe, it’s America. Do you have any idea how many people in this part of the world hate your country?”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Prince. America isn’t gaga about the Mideast either. I’m tired of being told my country is shit. Because if we are such shit, how come the rest of the world keeps copying so much of what we do? How come kidnappers in Beirut wear Michael Jackson T-shirts? Or the Japanese use Cray computers to forecast their weather? Why did you go to college there if it’s so despicable?”

That put the kaibosh on chitchat for a while.

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