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#     About a boy
Friday, September 7th, 2007

“In your head,
in your head they’re still fighting” *

Has anybody seen a boy with light skin, silky half-long hair and a black Samsonite office case in his left hand? He’s always dressed up in suits and he travels first class. Because this boy is a businessman. He’s very tall. I don’t know how tall exactly but very tall. His hands are delicate, with long fingers and polished finger nails, almost like that of a woman. And his eyes are of a crazy shade of blue. You will not notice this strange color at first glance. You will only discover it if you look at him very carefully, while he’s looking at you with his eyes wide open. At least that’s how I discovered it on my first and last encounter with him, 16 years ago, when he was 6 and I was 9.

It was in Baghdad, on a midnight during the Gulf war of 1991. It must have been somewhere at the end of the year (Iranian calendar), because there was a chill in the air. But maybe the weather was not the only reason why I felt so damn cold. I had just spent an evening with my family, in the corner of a big big hall, way down in the basement of a tall tall building in central Baghdad. The hall was full of families, scattered around. There were children running up and down the place, laughing with joy, disturbing the little gatherings on their way. I was happy too, but that was before I became cold. I was happy because I hadn’t seen my father, mother, brother and sisters all together for I don’t know how long, it felt like ages. So I was holding my mothers hand, laughing at my fathers jokes and silently wishing that one day I would be as strong as my brother and as brave as my sisters.

And so I was happy, despite having spent the last weeks in this shelter and that, knowing that there was a war going on outside for which I should be afraid. I was feeling pleased with the family reunion until the realization that it was actually a big fat stinking goodbye. Because at around midnight, a man came into the hall and gave the parents a signal. The mothers started to embrace their children slowly and silently and the fathers stopped joking. People started getting up and walking towards the exit of the big hall, where they stood still. My parents did the same. From there, the children were lead upstairs by the signal man. Only us again. Bye ma, bye pa, bye…

We were lead out of the building, with a lot of unnecessary “hushhhh” and “ssssst”. It was dark outside. And chill, like I said earlier. The fresh air I had longed for for weeks smelled like something was burning. There was a minibus waiting for us in front of the building’s exit. I looked at the other kids, trying to recognize faces in the darkness to see if any of my playmates were around. But it was too dark. It struck me that none of us were crying. Little zombies we were, heads hanging low, following a leader to a place we didn’t know. It didn’t take long before we were all seated and the bus took off.

Our journey had begun. There was something pleasant about it because somehow it resembled a school trip. But not quite, because our tour lady’s speech sounded something like this:
“The building on your right was destroyed by American bombs only yesterday!”
And: “If you look up, you can see the Iraqi air defense missiles light up in the air.”
I did look up and saw hundreds and hundred of bright lights.
She said: “Fortunately, the Iraqi army possesses a vast amount of anti-aircraft artillery. That’s why the American bomb airplanes don’t stand a chance!”
Somehow that didn’t match the ruins that we saw around us.

At dawn I could finally see who else were in the bus. Almost all of the seats were taken by children of all ages. Some were asleep, some were awake but silent and still in shock. There was a sour smell in the bus because one of the toddlers in the back had vomited a few minutes earlier. The children around her kept complaining about it. A group of boys in the front were laughing and teasing each other. Until at one moment all of them stopped talking. They were looking at one little boy in the center of their group, and it looked like they couldn’t believe their eyes. I found it very curious. I got out of my seat and walked towards them. That’s when I saw Him.

He was the one in the middle. He was clearly the youngest in the little happy gang, around six years old. He had light smooth skin and his appearance was surprisingly neat for these circumstances. His big smile didn’t fit our little refugee bus and his bright eyes were of a strange color. They were brown, but there was some blue in them too. He was showing off a tube of chocolate paste in his left hand. Chocolate… chocolate! I was shocked. The thought of the sweet taste of chocolate made me salivate. It made me wish I’d never seen this little proud boy.
“When are you going to eat it?” One of his friends asked in awe.
“Not yet.” He said with his big smile. He polished the metallic tube with his sleeve like it was a precious jewel, and shoved it back into his pocket.

Hours passed until we had a pee stop. I raised my hand for permission to leave the bus. The tour lady nodded. When I got out of my seat, my head started to toll. I was exhausted. Black spots appeared everywhere and the bus interior started to move in waves around my head. When I reached the stairs, I couldn’t handle my own body weight anymore. I crashed down the stairs and out of the bus. One moment I was lying in the misty damp Jordan grass, the next moment… I was out.

When I came around, the tour lady was lifting my head up with one hand and pouring sugar water in my mouth with the other. I was still lying in the grass and my clothes were soaking wet. As soon as my eyes were accustomed to the light, I could see a few kids standing at my feet, gazing at me. He was among them.
“Are you okay?” The tour lady had clearly developed a sort of motherly affection towards me. I didn’t answer her.
“Can I get you something?” She tried again.
That question hit me like a bullet. My heart started to pound quicker.
“I want chocolate paste.” I sighed.
“How on earth can I get you chocolate paste you silly missy?” She couldn’t suppress a smile at the thought of a child’s wishful thinking in a hell like this.
I raised my arm and pointed my finger towards Him.
“He has chocolate paste.”

I never ate his chocolate, I couldn’t. The tour lady got it for me all right. It was easy. He didn’t even resist. All he did was look at me with disbelief in his wide open eyes. And all I did was look back at him and witness how his brown eyes turned all the way to blue. A crazy shade of blue. I lost the tube of chocolate paste somewhere along the way. But I will never forget the look in those eyes.

I wonder if he turned out to be the way I imagine, a tall businessman with a Samsonite office case in his left hand. Chances are he was shipped back to Iraq when he was almost full-grown, to become a military rebel in the Camps of the MKO. That happened to hundreds of children who were smuggled out of Iraq by the MKO, on midnights during the Gulf war of 1991. Children like him and me.

* Zombie by The Cranberries. Video. Lyrics.

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