Ambush
By
Khaled Diab
Somewhere in the sprawling metropolis the mob lies
in wait. Ready for the ambush. Concealed in the consuming crowds. Unbeknown to
the naked eye, but we know they are there – a brooding swarm itching to pounce.
It is early afternoon. The sun is a blazing disc
that hangs heavily overhead: asserting its dominance: beating all into fatigued
submission. The heat is a heavy over-garment: clinging itchily – sticky and
sweat-filled.
The storming party is assembled rogue-fashion
across the hot, cracked surface of the pavement. Each is positioned
strategically according to their individual plans of attack.
The atmosphere grows tenser with every passing
moment, as the stake-out verges onto zero hour. But when is the awaited zero
hour? No one quite knows.
Optimists believe that within ten minutes they
will have penetrated the government transporter and taken their positions
within the enemy camp without sustaining casualties. The more cynical (the
battered veterans) know that the enemy has time on its side and has no qualms
about utilising it to its maximum advantage. The object: to wear them out and
to weaken their resolve and solidarity. The cynics know, through hard-earned
wisdom, that matters will not be quick and clean. Things might even turn ugly.
They could well be in for an hour-long stake-out, followed by a messy, badly
organised advance that will surely dwindle their ranks by anything up to 60% –
women, children, and the aged will make up the greater part of the losses.
Unacceptable, but a sad fact of the current status
quo.
Watch-outs are on the lookout for the
government transporter the mob will hijack as its escape vehicle. Apprehension
grips the mob like a vice as they psyche themselves up for the imminent
assault. You can almost smell it in the air: a sort of under-smell, hidden
below and distorted by the more obvious and pungent aromas, like those of tangy
car fumes and the incessant, but elusive, nose-climber of the human variety
(after a long, hard day in the sun!).
The mob is recognisable only as a loosely knit
collection; vaguely connected gatherings of people – but not so to the
practised eye of a professional.
If we were to take a wide-angled sweep of the
mob, we would find it rather uniform in its obscurity. A few members do,
however, stand out due to their abnormal or striking appearances. They would be
a film-director’s star actors and actresses. He would bring them to prominence
through nifty camera close-ups and by dressing them up in contrast to the
uniform dullness in the surrounding shot. A painter or even a cartoonist would
flood them with flattering attention from his brush and palette – make them
more solid than the blur of lines used to represent the rest of the crowd
scene. A writer would indulge in a lengthy description of the prominent
characters, banishing the crowd (significant only as a whole) to a mere line in
his narrative – as I will now do.
The camera zooms in on the Stubbled One. A
hefty, burly figure, broad as he is tall. He bulges in all the right places so
as to present an intimidating figure to mortal bystanders. Over the tensed,
contoured surface is a continuous mat of hair. Hair is an inseparable part of
his appearance; he was born to shave. His eyebrows come together as one in
harmonious communion. They connect via a faint, yet visible, estuary to his
temples and beard. His stubble travels down his throat, over the piercing,
jagged block of his Adam’s apple; where it stops abruptly – at the borderline –
to confront the opposition forces rising from his chest. Under different
circumstances he might have been mistaken for a South American revolutionary,
or just possibly a bandit.
Dangling from his lips is a smouldering
cigarette. From the casual angle at which it hangs, it seems to be a natural
projection of his face – a disposable bodily organ, a killer mutant. His small
beady eyes, enhanced by the sharp contrast they bear to the remainder of his
generously proportioned features, rove backwards and forwards behind narrow
slits: ever alert, searching for the sign that will knead him into action. His
cigarette, nearing old age, drops from his mouth and under a heavily booted
foot in one deft (and agile) movement.
Further along, and indirectly in the line of
the Stubbled One’s field of vision, is a woman who would look more at home at a
cocktail-party – rather than on this infernal battleground. She stands near
another woman who is more sensibly dressed in baggy shirt, jeans, and trainers
(ready for combat).
Our aspiring cocktail hostess sports the whole
get-up: a black, body-length dress (cut to flatter), jewels adorn her neck,
wrists, and fingers (fakes, I hope for her sake), her hands and nails are a
manicurist’s delight. She stands at approximately 5’8”: 5’4” is her, the rest
are her shoes. All these factors combined conspire to make the coming raid a
daunting prospect for her (she might lose a heel, twist an ankle or, heaven
forbid, break a finger-nail). Not to worry. She has a handsome, gallant gent by
her side who will rough it for the both of them. She represents a welcome
distraction form the sweltering heat and the nerve-racking wait to many of the
mob’s male constituents.
No one else of interest resides in this crowd.
I lie, that is not quite true. So bear with me as I would feel guilty if I
brought this description to an end without mentioning the sweet, little old
lady. Granted, she is not quite the superstar material of our last two
characters, and she is prone to get lost in a crowd, but I managed to pick her
out; and I think if you had been there, you would have given her an
affectionate moment of your attention. Redressed and relocated, she would fit
snugly into a fairy-tale scene. Whether she’d be the kindly granny or the
disguised witch, I shall leave to your own personal taste.
The kindly grandmother couldn’t have been more
than five foot tall and she was very frail and fragile looking -– even brittle.
However, looks can and do deceive. I can imagine her six-foot son being reduced
to a mound of wobbling jelly at one disgruntled glance from those sad, kindly
eyes. Tears and a mother’s disapproving look are powerful, and sometimes
underrated, weapons, especially when in the hands of a competent master
(‘mistress’ would be more appropriate). The little old lady seemed bewildered
and lost until a young man (presumably, her wobbling son) came and whisked her
away and out of the territory of this story (luckily for her).
------------------------
The period of strained waiting is about to come
to an explosive and climactic conclusion. Zero hour is upon us.
The government transporter pulls round the
corner and into sight of the mob. The mob stand paralysed in bewildered,
awe-struck contemplation: rather like the explorer who has just discovered a
lost colony of supposedly extinct dinosaurs. The hijackers check the markings
on the transporter to make certain it is their target and not a false alarm.
The driver has had
this feeling before and he does not like it. That feeling of approaching doom
that has his stomach in a knot. He can almost smell the predatory scent of the
brood: watchful, waiting, up ahead somewhere in the crowded yonder.
He pulls up
momentarily to gather his wits for the expected onslaught. It is at times like
these that he wished his bosses would pay attention to their demands. Either
they satisfy the multitude of disgruntled mobs, or provide drivers, like
himself, with armoured vehicles and fire-arms.
The driver looks
hither and yon to try to gain some purchase on the magnitude of the present
situation - why was riot-control never covered during his job training? He
can’t be certain, things look normal, but he can tell he is on the verge of
something major. He has been here before. He resolves in a quick moment of
self-denial, that if he is to face the music and go up against the wall, then
he is to do it alone - to sustain minimal losses. He drops off the innocents
before the crowd has time to realise and, with only an instant’s hesitation,
advances towards the waiting rabble and his pre-ordained destiny.
The aspiring hijackers still stand
incapacitated, until an observant one from their midst makes an affirmative
sighting and yells out the magic number. The utterance breaks the spell and
they awake to the situation at hand. Woe and behold, the assault is afoot!!
The crowd undergoes the final build-up to the
inevitable confrontation. They take on attack formation. Adrenaline levels
surge. The Stubbled-One is on a major high. Veins rise to prominence on his
hairy, sweaty arms: they are bloated snakes travelling down wet marshland. He
seems to inflate to mythical proportions, or perhaps it is merely the
over-active imaginings of the lesser mortals he is in contest with. He emits an
unholy howl and charges towards the transporter like a one-man cavalry. The
seas part for him and those that don’t see and don’t part are quickly downed.
He is the first to reach the semi-open doors of the moving transporter and
leaps on: grimacing, panting, seeking blood.
The rest of the pack is hot on his tail. They
come at the white shell of the transporter from all angles and all directions.
A horrendous force guaranteed to strike fear in those on the receiving end. The
ensuing scene is a familiar one to anyone who has come into contact with
popular uprisings in the developing world. Change the costumes and the
back-drop and you might well be bearing witness to the French Revolution. Keep
things as they are and you have a bread riot.
Our film director would have had a field day
depicting this particular scene. He would have tens of cameras dotted at every
conceivable vantage point (in the crowd, over the crowd, under the crowd’s
legs, and in the transporter) to savour all the flavour. He would then edit it
into a slow-motion minute-long footage of fury in action from a series of
different simultaneous progressions.
The advancing rioters are a thrashing, lashing
glut of swinging arms and an array of indistinguishable other limbs. People are
at every exposed area of the transporter, at the windows - hanging on for dear
life, or bottle-necked at the door. Others, who couldn’t find a purchase on the
transporter, make do by digging into the crowd, pushing forward, crushing the
front row. Female screams and male yells ring out. Other sounds can also be
heard, not unlike those of colliding bodies, cracking bones, tearing muscles,
and stifled cries of agony.
The hostess with the mostess cheers on and
applauds her companion as he descends into the rampaging rout to fend for the
both of them. She loses sight of him as he is drawn down into the epi-centre. Then,
all of a sudden, as if delivered from the bowels of a whale, her hero surfaces
on the crest of a wave – propelled forward by the sheer momentum of the
current. His summer blazer is pulled back fetchingly around his manly arms. He
appears dishevelled and aggravated, but a hunk to the end. His face is a
fashionable scarlet that perfectly matches his chic necktie (which has
more than a little to do with his bright face colour). The tie has his neck in
a killer grip as he and it are pulled in opposite directions (a neck noose with
the crowd as executioner). He is short of breath but still he pushes (is
pushed) forth towards the ever-nearing portal to salvation. Is it all for the
lady? Or has he reached that point of no return, where the faint-hearted must push
on or perish?
He, finally, crosses the threshold and flings
himself across a seat to reserve space for his lady-in-waiting outside. The
Stubbled One is already seated, mellowing himself out after the torrential rush
through his system. He is deflating to his normal epic (rather than mythical)
proportions.
The driver waits until this tide off fury
subsides, gets up off his seat, bangs the metal hand-bar next to him with his
ticket holder to gain his captors’ attention. He faces the restless hijackers
with an authoritative glint in his eyes. The crowd withers awaiting the dreaded
word. Unnerved, but composed, the driver bellows the legend,
“Fares, please”
Then, he mistakenly adds, “All those not seated
please leave the minibus.” At which point, the rush-hour crowd snap and turn on
our poor, defenceless driver. The ensuing scene was one of absolute havoc. One
that is too ugly and painful to recall in polite society. Suffice it to say
that, you’ve never seen so many do so much to so few; the very foundations
shook. The Stubbled One, upholding citizen that he was, enjoyed chipping in
more than his fair share. Needless to say, his motives were not entirely
altruistic – he got a good kick out of it (and sadly, so did the driver).
1995
ã2005 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.
