Rawi Hage - Cockroach

Have you handled a gun before? I asked.

The guards in the jail used to walk with guns hanging off their belts. I did not know how gunfire sounded until one night we heard trucks coming and going, and for a week every night we heard shots coming from the backyard. They brought people every night and shot them against the wall. They must have killed thousands of men and women. How quiet they were. None of those prisoners complained, none of them objected or said anything. They must have known that they were about to die. Maybe they were too scared, too tortured, too weak, or maybe they were just happy to die. At times I wanted to be there, I wanted to be against that wall, I thought they were the lucky ones. One night, just before the shooting, I heard one man scream: For Iran! And the rest of the prisoners started to shout, For Iran! And then there were many shots and a long silence. Can I see it?

What?

The gun!

I do not have it on me.

Can you teach me how to use it? Shohreh asked.

Yes.

When?

Wednesday. We will go far north and into the woods.

Good. I will rent a car. It will be only the two of us. We can go far and away from this city.

AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING on Wednesday, Shohreh knocked at my door.

I opened it, and saw that she was wearing sunglasses and had a backpack over her shoulder. She entered. I slipped under the bed, crawled over to the middle of the mattress, and pulled out the gun.

We took Highway 15 north. At the beginning of our drive we passed many cars, houses, gas stations, and generic restaurants with large signs that stood like faux totems. The farther north we went, the fewer cars we encountered and the more hills appeared, the more curved roads, more trees, more wind, more sky, and more horizon.

In September, Shohreh said, the leaves are orange and gold. It is so beautiful. Just beautiful. Everything turns to gold here.

We stopped at a diner. The waitress, who was old and talked in a jolly tone, who smiled in spite of the absence of teeth, handed us menus. We both had eggs, toast, and coffee. Then Shohreh disappeared into the bathroom. The waitress smoked at the counter. A couple of truckers watched TV, hunched over white oval plates. I could hear noise coming from the kitchen, sizzling sounds and drumming on pots. The cook, a Native Indian, came out of the kitchen, went downstairs, and reappeared with a cart in his hands. He stopped and looked me in the eyes, and before I had the chance to bow my head, to thank him for the food, for the trees, the mountains, and the rivers, he disappeared again.

I followed him to the kitchen entrance. I stood there and asked if he had seen any cockroaches. Before he could be alarmed, I said: I am interested in these creatures and their history.

Come. Follow me, he said. I will tell you all about them.

We stood outside the kitchen’s back door and smoked peacefully. Listen, he said. After the Creator made the mountains and the sea and everything, he left behind a huge drum made from a white buffalo skin. He had used the drum when he was creating the world, but he warned all the creatures not to play the drum, or the sun would come closer to listen, and never go back to sleep, and melt all the snow. At this time the birds had never flown and they ate bugs from the ground.

Cockroaches, too, I asked?

Yes, those too. The birds didn’t need wings, because everything was available — fish in the sea and bugs on the land. The bugs were kept in good numbers, because the birds ate them every day for a long time. Then, one day, the coyote came to this land on a large ship. The coyote was curious and hungry from his lengthy travel. He was looking for food and anything that he could steal and take back with him to the other side of the sea. When he saw the large drum made from the white buffalo skin, he wanted to steal it. But the bugs were always crawling around the drum, protecting it. So the coyote trotted over to the birds and told them that the bugs around the drum were sweeter and tasted better than any other bugs. The birds were excited by this news, and they rushed over and ate all the bugs around the drum. The coyote stole the drum and took it onto his ship and sailed away with it. On his ship he played the drum, and this woke up the sun and made it shine. When the birds saw the sun they grew wings and flew towards it and left the earth. There was no one left to eat the bugs anymore. And the land was covered with bugs, and the bugs grew more and more numerous. They covered the land and ate everything.

I thanked the cook for his story, and when Shohreh came back, we paid and left. We drove for hours, and the farther north we drove the colder it got. The snow still covered the landscape in patches that were reluctant to melt into streams and slip under the rocks and the trees to form pools and lakes and sweeten the seas. The trees were bare. The sky looked bigger, endless, and Shohreh had a smile on her face. She was filled with joy, she was so happy to be behind the wheel. She gazed through the windshield at the flying-by landscape of trees, wolves, hills, and deer. After a while she flipped through the radio stations. She asked me what kind of music I liked, and before I answered she found a song that she liked. She told me how much she loved that song. It was a French song and she sang it in her heavy French accent. Suddenly she turned right and took an exit. She stopped the car on a little deserted and unpaved road, unbuckled her seatbelt, moved her palm to my hair, pulled my head towards her, and kissed me. We kissed for a long time. When I touched her breast, she pulled back and put her seatbelt back on and we drove north again.

Do you have a place in mind? I asked her.

Yes, she said. It’s a little place that I know, a faraway place with a cabin. I was there once before. I spent a week there with an ex-lover. We came in the summer and we decided to live like two wild women in the woods, without anything. It was fun. She grew up in nature and loved nature. We fished and ate wild berries, we jumped naked in the river. We hiked and climbed. You should try dangling above a cliff with only a rope to hold you.

Oh, I might fall, I said. I have an attachment to ropes and dangling, but the cockroaches always cut it for me. I was silent for a moment. Then I said, I often think of you. Do you think of me?

Shohreh smiled, reach her hand over, caressed my hair, and didn’t answer. Then she smiled and said, You and your cockroach!

WE WALKED TOWARDS the cabin. Shohreh entered it and called me in. Look, she said. It is still the way we left it. We used to sleep on the floor and we made a fire over there.

Later I pulled out the gun, cranked it, and aimed it at a tree. I fired, and the echo of the shot rose from the other side of the mountain. The tree trunk released a little air from the spot the bullet hit.

Okay, Shohreh said, blowing warmth into the joints of her fingers. My turn.

I pulled the magazine out. I show her how to insert the bullets, how to push the magazine inside the gun’s butt. I showed her slowly how to crank it, cock it, lift it. I told her never to point it in someone’s face, always to point it to the floor or up to the sky. I showed her how to make an imaginary line that starts at the end of the gun and goes to the end of the barrel and extends to the target.

She grabbed the gun and stretched her arms.

Where are you aiming at? I asked her.

The stone, she said. The big stone at the edge of the water.

She fired and her hands swung a little. The bullet was far from the target.

I told her to hold her hand steady, and before she shot to hold her breath, focus, and then not to hesitate.

Once you decide to shoot, just do it. Do not think, and never hesitate.

The second shot was closer. Shohreh kept on shooting until she emptied the magazine. She hit the stone once and then she turned, bouncing, and asked me if I had seen the shot.