Diabolic Digest
Episode VI –
Miscarriage
in the air
Date: Unknown
Time: Uncertain
Place: Top secret PAPA HQ – Detention cell
As told to Khaled Diab
I look around
the murky interior of the cell trying to make out the source of the music. I
see what is akin to a guitar-strutting apparition. Could this music be coming
from beyond the grave? No! It’s too alive. Too essential. Too full of pain and
suffering that can only be of the earthly variety.
Wanting to throw some light on the matter, I
fumble around for the light switch. A spot in the wall feels rough and
misshapen. Bewildered by this peculiar phenomenon, I trace my hand back to the
spot. Accidentally pushing down on some kind of lever that has a soft texture
to it, I am delivered a painful surprise as some dozen or so nail-like
protrusions dig into my hand. Startled, I snatch away my now tender hand in
agony. The Baladi Blues song reaches
its climax.
Habibti, I feel blue
Don’t think it’s the flu
I need a dose of you
A pill for the chill
30 mils of thrill
Tantilise me with your fingertips
Let me trip out on your lips
By the time I find the light switch, the music
has died out. I take my new surroundings in. Clandestine or not, PAPA is
serious about its image. It certainly knows how to pamper its captives. It
wants to gain ground in the PR race and treating its ‘guests’ well is
definitely one way of advancing its message.
The walls are a freshly painted flamenco pink
and, to one corner, is an en-suite bathroom. On a desk lies a computer terminal
and a television blinks with the (mercifully) silent images of yet another
morality soap. An old man sits on one of the beds hunched over a bowl. He
raises the contents, one morsel at a time, to his mouth. Every bone, joint and
ligament in his body creeks with the labour. His crumpled and toothless face is
a mad frenzy of motion: groaning jaws and squeaking sockets. I watch him
laboriously consume another handful of soft vegetables. He sees me looking at
him. He stops his feeding and grumbles “This place is going to the dogs. Can
you believe it, they forgot the dressing!”
Crouching on the floor against the only bare
wall in the cell is a young man. He is busily darning a pair of socks. Beside
him is a large pile of clothes. The deftness of his hand makes me suspect that
he is a raffa (professional clothes
mender). However, something strikes me as being unusual or out of place with
this agile clothes-mender. “Darn!” I say out loud as I try to put my finger on
it. “I am,” he says indifferently as he lowers his head once more to get on
with his business.
I carry on my visual inspection of him
unabashedly. Over his nose and mouth I can detect what looks like a sanitary
mask. He pulls out the needle with pliers. I notice that he is wearing surgical
gloves on his hands. Over his upper body is a spotless white gown. I am baffled
by his behaviour.
Finished with the socks, he walks over to the
sink, removes his gloves and disinfects his hands. He puts on a pair of fresh
gloves, after which he returns to the pile of clothes. He picks up a pair of
trousers. He lays the trousers out on the bed. He proceeds to inspect them with
surgical precision. After diagnosing their malady, he proceeds to operate on
them. Slowly but surely, the hole in the knees begins to vanish almost without
a trace. I am intrigued. My curiosity tickled, I try to catch his attention but
he dismisses me with a “Hush, I’m working!”
There is a guitar leaning up against the wall
near him. Could he be the source of the heart-rending Baladi Blues number I had been listening to only a few minutes
earlier?
I ask him if he was the one making the music.
“What if I was?” He snaps defensively as he bites off the thread.
I must win his trust. I praise his musical
talent and tell him that he is destined to become a great musician some day. It
backfires. I suddenly find him standing a breath away from me. He waves his
scalpel at me in a manner that I interpret as being not very friendly. What he
says next confirms my suspicion.
“Don’t mock me!” he says in a wavering voice.
“I can mess up your face, you know?”
I take the wind out of his sails by saying,
“Can’t you see I’ve already taken care of that?” He looks at me quizzically.
I explain to him about my deconstruction
surgery but I lose him in the complex philosophical argument underpinning my
momentous decision.
“Why are you so touchy? Some sort of childhood
trauma?” I ask.
“Yes,” he admits.
“Your father was a bit of a tyrant?”
“No. Actually, it was a dog.” I know it is in
vogue to blame anyone other than yourself for your failings, but this outlet
for blame is new. It’s fresh and exciting. It is mind-boggling. I have to get
to the bottom of this.
“Surely a dog couldn’t cause you so much
anguish with your music, could it?” I ask sheepishly.
“You don’t know this dog. Every time I played
my guitar, he would howl madly in the street and Um Hussein, the old lady next door, would yell ‘stop that infernal
racket’. You don’t know what effect that kind of pressure can have on a budding
artistic talent,” he laments. “You can’t imagine how I hated that dog. I
decided to drop music and to become a vet so that I could make him suffer.
Then, during the first year of vet school, I transferred to medical school
because I forgave the dog and turned on humanity when I discovered that it was
humanity that was making me suffer far more than that poor dog.”
I ruffle my eyebrows. “And you couldn’t survive
on a doctor’s salary at a government hospital, so you turned to clothes mending
to supplement your income because that’s where the real money lay?”
“Are you Haflatoun?” he asks reverentially.
“Yes, my son,” I reply simply and modestly. He
lowers his defences instantly.
Left with nothing better to do, we burn the
midnight oil immersed in deep conversation. It emerges to me that the lad is
trying to fuse his art with his profession. He was thinking of taking on the
stage name of Dr Sing. “But then people would think you were an Indian
gynaecologist,” I point out.
He begins his lecture. “The human body is not
only an intricate piece of biological machinery, but a beautiful poetic
landscape. Why sing only of the heart? What’s wrong with say, the lower
intestine or the pancreas? Aren’t they also organs of essence and beauty?
Listen to conventional songs and the women they describe sound like a twisted
Picasso portrait: just big dark eyes, silky hair, lethal lashes, rosy cheeks
with a big, throbbing heart slapped bang in the middle. I’m going to bring a
more truthful tone to popular music – a woman is more than just a set of eyes.”
I drift off to sleep and the background prose
intrude on my dreams. My dream of luscious lungs is interrupted by a prodding
in my sides. I stir awake and see one of the friendly guards who had escorted
me to the cell peering down at me.
“Mr Haflatoun? Quick! Get up and get dressed!”
“Not another interrogation,” I complain. “Can’t
it wait till the morning?”
“Me and my partner believe in your message.
We’re going to help you escape. You must be on the outside again to foil PAPA’s
sinister plans!” Thinking that this sounded too cliched, I conclude that I am
still dreaming and roll over and go back to sleep. Finding it useless to
explain, the two security guards pick me up and carry me out of the cell, out
of the complex and to freedom.
Place: Cabin of Aeroflop Flight 122/999 to
Amsterdam
Date: 5th November 2000
Time: 2.42am
I can hardly believe that an entire month has
elapsed while I was being held captive by PAPA. Where did it all go? It felt
little more than a day. Well, now I have not a moment to spare. I must get back
on the scent of my beloved Luna (And oh what a scent she has!)
I am filled with optimism as the plane gets
airborne. At least this time I have got further than I did last time. Besides,
what can possibly go wrong now?
I am half way through enduring my meal, when I
hear a loud scream. At first, I think one of the female passengers has found
something in her food. Then I realise that these are not screams but shrill
female utterances. I wonder who can possibly have such a high-pitched voice. It
sounds like Kahka when she is in the middle of an excited argument. It is
Kahka! What is she doing on this flight? Who is she arguing with?
I look down the aisle. A tall female figure
jumps up off her seat and turns to face my way. I see Kahka’s oddly flattened
face, rather like a Persian cat’s. She is brandishing an Uzi. “This is a
hijacking! Everyone stay calm and no one will get hurt!” she yells at the
passengers. Down the other end of the aisle stands a dark haired woman, Kahka’s
accomplice, who also carries an Uzi. The bewildered crowd laugh out raucously.
“Shut up! I don’t want to kill anyone!”
“She’s really good!” “So convincing!” The crowd
agrees joyfully. Hijacking hasn’t been quite as straightforward or simple as it
once was ever since Aeroflop, in a counter-terrorism-cum-entertainment bid,
started to stage pretend hijackings periodically. The hijackings have become so
popular that Aeroflop flights are booked solid for two years in advance.
Other than being good for business, these clone
hijackings have hit the authentic product hard. Genuine hijackers, if they are
misguided enough to choose an Aeroflop flight, as Kahka seems to have been,
often find it so hard to convince the passengers of their authenticity that
they just give up and return to their seats.
This has, of course, stripped the
under-represented and downtrodden of an important medium from which they can air
their grievances to the world. On the other hand, it has made air travel safer
(although the recent spate of plane crashes may have more than compensated for
the shortfall, especially as hijackings are becoming more ritualistic in
nature.) The hijackers take the plane, make their statement and demands and
then give themselves up to the authorities – with time often being the only
casualty.
Kahka, showing how strong her mettle truly is,
remains defiant. She fires a shot into the ceiling of the cabin. A deafly
silence drops on her audience as they realise that they may really be hostages
after all.
“Kahka!” I reprimand. “What the hell do you
think you’re doing?”
“Stay out of this, Haflatoun,” she warns. “This
is not your battle.”
“There are innocent people on board and you’re
being reckless by firing into the ceiling. Stop this instant!”
“Innocent people! Innocence has become
extinct.”
“I know you’re cynical but you’ve always been a
staunch supporter of the people, the oppressed.”
“I still am but sometimes you have to make a
few sacrifices for the greater good. Besides, I’m not planning on killing
anyone.” A relieved cheer rises from our captive audience.
“So what cause are you fighting for?”
“Women’s independence.”
“Isn’t this a bit of a drastic way of fighting
for equality?”
“I’m talking about true independence.”
“I’m not following,” I say confused.
“I mean setting up an independent nation for
women.”
One of the passengers stands up and flirtatiously
suggests, “Well, while you’re at it, why don’t you call for the establishment
of a gay state?”
“Sit down! I’m trying to get the situation
under control, so keep your wacky suggestions to yourself.”
“Hey man, isn’t there one in the Bible? So, why
shouldn’t we have one now?” he argues.
“That’s different from what you have in mind.
Anyway, it was destroyed. Now, will you button it?”
“Man, don’t underestimate the power of the gay
lobby in the States. We’re a swing (but I prefer swinging) vote. But you’re
right, I was just trying to help you dispel the air by showing this lady what a
ridiculous notion it was,” he explains before sitting down.
“See Kahka,” I say. “Why are you following this
irrational political path?” I ask.
“I used to think that it was institutions of
power and government that corrupted life for humanity. But, one day, as I was
watching the news, I started exploring a different avenue of thought. Look at
the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa. All the turmoil in the world has men
behind it. The theory is nothing new. Certain feminists have been saying for
years that if women were given a chance to rule the world, then it would be a
better and safer place. I’m not sure if that is true, so I want to put that
theory to the test. The world is in a desperate state and this calls for
desperate measures. If it works it may be the salvation of humanity. If it
doesn’t, then the theory will be disproved and discredited forever.”
“But women in power have already shown they can
be crueller than men. Take Meyer, Thatcher or Bhutto.”
“But they were operating in a system created
and run by men. That’s the only way they can survive.”
“But your notion is totally unworkable. Where
will your nation be?” I ask reasonably.
“How about South America? A lot of it is
sparsely populated and we can commemorate the Amazons.”
“But they were warriors.”
We argue a little longer about procreation and
the impracticality of keeping a few men for breeding purposes. Kahka eventually
admits that she hadn’t thought it over properly and she had acted in a moment
of passion. I comfort her by telling her that we all slip up from time to time.
Of course, I am delicate enough not to remind her of the magnitude of her
current slip-up so as not to hurt her feelings too much.
“But we have a plane that is now officially
hijacked,” she panics. “What are we going to do with it?”
“It’d be a shame to let it go to waste,”
remarks a passenger. “Why don’t we fly it to New York and land it by the UN
building, where we can protest what the Israeli army is doing to the
Palestinians.”
“Let’s also say that all the passengers have
taken command of the plane so that the impact of the message is not lost amidst
talk of a hijacking,” suggests another passenger.
“Yeah, let’s do it!” ripples through the crowd.
“Well, we’ll have to recruit the pilot and the
crew, too,” I say.
Kahka shouts, “On to New York!”
Sorry Luna, but you’ll just have to wait.
This piece appeared in the November 2000 issue
of Egypt’s Insight magazine.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.