Chameleon (Days)

by Dean Serravalle

  These men, these new soldiers, are also young, or so The Messenger observes, although slightly older than the last troop. They appear more rugged in their skin texture. Foreigners to this land. Their heads are square and unclothed.

  Kashif refuses to speak aloud. He only speaks when necessary.

  The leader of this troop of five venerates him with a humble bow. They treat Kashif like royalty, revere him as they would heroes read about before bedtime as children. Another man unclasps a box on his belt. He unburies a tiny perfume bottle and pours it on Kashif’s sandaled feet.

  “It has been blessed,” he explains.

  Kashif nods and peers in the direction he wants them to walk towards. They understand the instruction.

  The Messenger follows cognizant of the fact these men leading them will also perish before their final destination.

  DAY 30

  This troop is much more foolish. They take pictures with their phones and it is obvious they are seeking fame from the capture. Kashif is stoic to the flashes. He walks within their shadows and slows his pace again. There is no one guarding the backside this time, so he waits while they move ahead enough not to hear him whisper under his lips.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes.”

  Kashif slips The Messenger the canteen. The water is surprisingly cold.

  “Have you ever killed another man?”

  “No.”

  “This is the reason you can’t kill yourself. Do you want to die, still?”

  “How do you know I am rethinking it?”

  “Your face is different. You found some peace watching the others die. You reacted more when I killed the goat. You are growing insensitive to death. Death doesn’t come to the sensitive, just the unsuspecting.”

  The Messenger had never thought of it this way. Kashif makes it sound so formulaic, almost scientific.

  “I have killed too many. And too many have been killed because of me. These boys live only for the moment. They don’t know what evil has befallen them.”

  The Messenger believes Kashif knows their own final destination, even where the miracle child is held captive.

  “Do you know where the boy is?”

  Kashif doesn’t say a word.

  “If you do, why don’t we go and find him ourselves. No one else needs to die. This is the worst escort service ever.”

  “You’re right. It is necessary. For the boy to leave with us, these are the sacrifices.”

  “You have a plan, I’m assuming.”

  “It is already in motion.”

  “How will it end?”

  “It will end at the hospital. I will save her for good.”

  In between these snippets of conversation, The Messenger analyzes the value of one life over another. He had always believed that the value of one could never exceed the same. What made one life more important or less expensive in the yin yang of supply and demand? And how could one life usurp the importance of another? Was there a balance at stake? Did catastrophes arise as a result of an imbalance? To even the score, or to adjust the ­values?

  Kashif acts like the young lives ending tragically before him, literally at his feet, are worth less than his daughter’s life, worth less than his own. He acts like an immortal entrapped in a human form and this arrogance annoys The Messenger.

  “What if I decide to leave you now?”

  “Someone will kill you.”

  “Will you kill me?”

  “I am keeping you alive.”

  “I wanted to die.”

  “You will, like all of us, in the proper time of your destiny.”

  His words make too much sense, thinks The Messenger, which makes them despicable to listen to. The young boys ahead of them, their machine guns at their sides, are eating ravenously, like famished children. The Messenger catches the scent of ripened fruit while shards of peel float upon the longer grass on either side of them.

  “Stop,” Kashif advises.

  An explosion is set off and the boys are vaulted to an area twenty feet behind them.

  “Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back,” Kashif raises his voice.

  The sound of a vehicle intrudes upon the smoke rising from the detonated explosion site.

  “We will move forward now.”

  Kashif walks into the smoke. He is swallowed by a wall of trees and the invisible sound of an engine.

  When I was younger, I remember my father taking me out to drive for the first time. I think I was thirteen or so and he was bored. Or just waiting for his friends to arrive at the coffee shop from a construction site or something. My father, when he walked, worked twelve hour days. He arrived home without a tongue, showered, sat at the head of the table with his shirt off, his skin beading in sweat, his hair perfectly styled and sprayed with chemical.

  He ate voraciously and we knew not to bother him. Sometimes, he intimidated us into starting an argument, or forced one of us to outwit him and make him laugh. Then he would leave, midstream, my mother not having eaten yet, dress in his finest clothes and shoes and head to the coffee shop. My mother called it stress relief for building a business. We never called it anything. We were so used to him leaving us.

  But that one sunny, spring day, he saw me kicking the ball against the porch steps and he must have felt sorry for me. Fully dressed and emanating cologne, he didn’t want to join me playing. I have a fond memory of the first time he volunteered to play with me. I begged him to go in net, between the shrubs in our front yard. He was dressed again in his silk shirt and leather boots. I wanted to prove to him I could score on an adult. I wanted to prove to him I was a good soccer player. I shot the ball towards a corner and it went in but not before dirtying his pants. As he dusted off the mark, he accused me of not aiming for the corner. He lit a cigarette and left right afterwards.

  So when he asked me if I wanted to drive for the first time, I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid. It meant he was interested in spending time with me so I didn’t want to give it up. He threw me the keys and lit his cigarette.

  I hopped in the car.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t worry where we are going. Just drive.”

  I struggled to find my seatbelt.

  “What are you doing?” he raised his voice.

  “Trying to get the seatbelt to click.”

  “You don’t need the seatbelt. Let’s go. Put it in reverse.”

  I did as I was told. I was so afraid to disappoint him.

  “Keep it steady in the middle,” he barked out orders. He seemed more upset that I was disrupting the flow his smoking routine, which he always enjoyed while driving himself.

  I noticed people in the neighbourhood waving at me but I wouldn’t wave back. I kept my eyes on the road and I was obsessed with checking my rearview mirror.

  “Get your foot off the brake,” he ordered before changing the instruction. “What foot are you using on the brake?”

  “My right?”

  “And which one on the gas?”

  “The same one.”

  “No,no,no. Put your right foot on the gas and your left foot on the brake. Like a race car driver.”

  I did as I was told. Years later my driving instructor would nearly kill me for these bad habits, but this was my father, the best driver I had known at the time.

  We stopped at a four-way stop and I checked my rearview mirror again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking behind me. This guy is close.”

  “Never look behind you. Always look ahead. If you look behind, he will crash into you. People who look behind crash into those who move forward. That’s life,” he added, and released smoke from his nose. For some reason, I am remembering this scene more and more in my life these days, and I feel foolish for not taking t
he best advice my father ever gave me.

  When I visit him now, I am surprised by the fact he would rather spend time somewhere else. He is trapped in his wheelchair and some days, although it is suffering for him and my mother who nurses him, I believe it to be a blessing in disguise. I never knew my father when he walked, when he worked, when he came home, before. He never talked. We never ­conversed. And as the first born, he made me the example for the others. After his accident, the wheelchair trapped him into staying in one place, or within arm’s length. And I knew my brothers felt the same. Although it was a traumatic experience in all of our lives, the shepherd being struck down and the sheep scattering, we all knew this was our chance to gain his attention, his real attention. I think we spoke more to him while he rested in his coma. And when he woke, and we waited for him to recover, we spoke more to each other in his presence.

  He needed us to visit. He needed us to speak to him. He had never been in a hospital before. He had never been sick. To see us visit pleased him. When he returned home, it became a chore for him to talk. It depressed him not to have the freedom of his legs. As much as he tried, I think we came to understand that in his heart we were always the first option, but for his time we could never achieve that status.

  Ironically, and not surprisingly, I value my work in the same manner, except for the fact that I enjoy my family and my kids. Perhaps I fear losing them more. Or maybe I have more of my mother in me than my father.

  So I finish this session creeping in the dark to hear my children sleep. They breathe so beautifully in the night. I sit on the floor and come to realize that even The Man can’t disrupt the peace here.

  DAY 31

  Kashif and The Messenger have been placed in the back of a dark cargo truck for purposes of discretion before crossing the border. The Messenger can’t see Kashif in the dark, which makes him more accessible for conversation.

  “Who are these people?” The Messenger asks.

  “Another local group. They will serve the purpose of getting us across the border. We will most likely be kidnapped again afterwards.”

  “How many groups are there?”

  “As many as you can imagine. There is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, and it is bottomless to whoever brings me in.”

  “Tell me about her?”

  “My daughter?”

  “The mother of your daughter.”

  “Why? She has passed.”

  Kashif always speaks in a matter of fact manner. There are no emotional links. Just connectors or patterns, with no weight or bias attached to each.

  “Did you love her?”

  “I don’t believe in the term.”

  “But you love your daughter.”

  “I ache for her. It’s all I know. She suffers and I suffer at the same time.”

  “I think people call that love.”

  “I call it pain. And pain needs to be fulfilled. That’s all it needs, the fulfilment of release.”

  “So you are saving her for you?”

  “I don’t want her to know pain as well as I do.”

  “She has been suffering a long time. She probably knows it more than you.”

  “When she is cured, she will live a beautiful life free of it. She will live by the right instincts, and even the wrong ones will guide her to live fully.”

  “And what about your pain?”

  “I am cursed with it. It will never go away.”

  It is silent in the truck and the ground underneath is one cratered pothole after another. The back cabin shakes and its metal bearings vibrate against the wind.

  Kashif confesses.

  “I met her at the market. I was tired of my hiding, tired of the people surrounding me for my protection. Tired of their body scents, their jokes, and their feigned sacrificial gestures. So I escaped them to find open air. Not too far away from here. Further north, in the mountains. A festival for a village Saint. I could hear children’s voices and ripened fruit luring me to the center of the village. No one recognized me. They paid me no attention at all, really. They focused on the statue of the bearded saint in a procession up another mountain. Festivities drew the villagers to the market, next to the church, and I was hungry for real food. Not hunted food. Prepared food, by a woman.

  “So I found myself in the market. While hawkers tried to sell me on charms or religious articles, she approached me. Her hair was dark and long and her eyebrows sharpened. I have never seen black eyes like hers before. Blacker than the brown of her hair.

  ‘So this is what it took to smoke you out?’ she said.

  “She knew me, I could tell. My instincts had failed me. She surprised me with her recognition. She surprised me by how much she could see into my thoughts, and I had never met her in person before. I tried to play the role of the ignorant by observing some shelled trinkets sprawled on a board before me. She pursued me.

  ‘I have been waiting for you.’

  ‘You have me mistaken.’

  ‘I know who you are. My father pays you for your work.’

  ‘I don’t know your father.’

  ‘Yes, you do. He pays you to create fear.’

  “The more she spoke, the more I wanted to escape. I had left one prison to be entrapped in another. I felt myself suffocating the more she stared at me. The more she leaned into me.

  ‘I have been waiting for you here. I will find you in other places when the time comes.’

  “She spoke to me as if she knew she would bear my child already. She slid her arms around my waist and placed her head on my chest. I didn’t move, I simply stood still. She then left and disappeared into the crowd. She had planted an evil seed in me. And from that point forward, I could think of only her. I searched for her late into the night, after she had disappeared from the festival. When I returned to the camp, everyone dropped to the ground praising Allah.

  “Some took a bullet to the head for not watching me close enough, for not protecting me the way they should have. I believed I would never see her again, until she found me in the desert.”

  The cargo truck stops and the sliding door opens with a loud rattle. The bright light of the new day blinds him temporarily. When his eyes dry some more, The Messenger recognizes the Valley of Kaa behind the men about to inspect the contents of the truck. When the outlines of these men clear, The Messenger identifies the border man, the general, whom he had paid to cross. The official recognizes The Messenger as well and is shocked to see him sitting next to Kashif.

  The Messenger realizes there is no need to pay this man this time around. He walks into the truck and approaches Kashif himself.

  He says, “I am sorry, I didn’t know.”

  Kashif doesn’t respond. He looks over to The Messenger.

  “Prepare yourself.”

  “For what?”

  “For the desert where she found me.”

  DAY 32

  Crossing the border is easier than driving by it on a secret road. The door is closed again, so The Messenger assumes they are in Syria. It isn’t long before the cargo truck stops and there is calm before a storm of bullets and shattered glass echo within the cab. The Messenger cups his ears. Kashif is numb to any reaction but waiting.

  The door slides open and black men in military uniform enter the cargo area. Their skin is spotted with perspiration dots and their tongues are healthy pink when they talk.

  The Messenger understands their dialect. They are Nigerian.

  Kashif gets up and they lower their rifles. When they see him, they nearly forget The Messenger is present as a potential threat. They offer Kashif their hands and kneel before him like he is their god. They guide him softly, as they would an elderly father, from the cargo truck and curse the former group for transporting such a valuable asset this way. The Messenger translates their anger and Kashif understands it.

&n
bsp; They have reached an open plain surrounded by towering trees. The area has been cleared to be used as a dirt runway of sorts. There are single engine planes awaiting them.

  “A star must fly amidst the sun,” one of the leaders says to Kashif. He doesn’t return the appreciation with any words or gestures. Kashif points to The Messenger. The group of men nod. They escort Kashif and The Messenger to a plane third in line of the fleet.

  The pilot is honoured to have them on board. He nods to Kashif and The Messenger.

  They fly in a cross pattern, The Messenger notices. One plane ahead of them, one behind them, one at either side—their plane in the middle.

  Kashif stares out of the circular window. He doesn’t seem at all impressed by the royal attention he is receiving. If anything, he seems burdened by its particulars, almost annoyed by the honours. The Messenger decides not to bother him with conversation.

  In his own mind, The Messenger remembers the first time he met his own wife. It wasn’t as suspicious or dangerous as Kashif’s first meeting, although it introduced him to the foreign feeling of having something to lose for the first time in his life.

  Karen was sitting on one of those comfortable chairs in the lobby of a hotel in Toronto. He was checking out and preparing to return to Switzerland. There was a line up. So he decided to just sit and wait for the line to disappear. He didn’t like waiting.

  “I hate to wait in line,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “No one ever sits on these chairs. They are decorative. They remind me of my mother’s living room at the front of our house. No one was ever allowed to sit in them, just in case important company came over. But no one was ever important enough to sit in the room. My mother just kept it clean, just in case. And when she died, I did the same, for no other reason but force of habit.”

  The Messenger appreciated the story. It was honest enough to grab his attention and it reminded him of his own home. Every family had its neurotic habits. Hers was no different. Her hair was light ginger and her skin freckled and she crossed her legs so naturally. She seemed at ease in the lounge chair. They watched people walking in and walking out of the hotel lobby, this area of transition. Concierges greeted them the same way as they said good bye to them on the way out.