Rawi Hage - Carnival

One night a police car pulled up quietly behind us. Only when they were nearly touching us did they switch on their beams. I, Fly, who was accustomed to the glaring floodlights of circus spectacles and the harshness of stage lights, jumped over a fence and fled into the neighbouring backyards. But Otto, nocturnal creature that he was, froze like a deer in the road. Two officers began pulling down the posters. Instead of running away, Otto protested and kicked one of the buckets. It hit the police car, covering the hood with glue. They pulled Otto into the shadows and beat him with sticks and left him half-conscious on the road. That was for dirtying my shoes, one of the officers said on his way back to the car.

When I realized that Otto had stayed behind, I ran back. I saw him lying on the ground. I went to him and tried to pull him up. His shirt was bloodied, his eyes rolled in horror, he hissed, spat red colours, and cursed, Fucking cops, fucking pigs. He wiped blood from his face and said, It is not over between us. .

Aisha kept up her work with battered women, neglected children, and evicted tenants until one day, not long after Otto’s beating, she collapsed. We are both burned out, she said, crying. It is time to rest. We decided to split up. Otto and Aisha left the house and the neighbourhood, and I went my own way. They put the struggle on hold because they had watched each other getting older and poorer and seen their comrades leaving the cause and getting married, holding jobs, and raising children. Aisha said to me that now they wanted to take care of each other, and I understood. And she wept and told me how much they both loved me.

For years afterwards, I wandered alone, though I stayed in contact with Otto and Aisha. Once in a while they would come and live with me for a week or so, and we would talk about books, music, and the old days. Once or twice they mentioned Tammer and his troubled mother. Then they would leave and I wouldn’t hear from them. Until one day Otto called me and asked me to meet him at the hospital. Aisha was in a single bed and looked much older and very frail. She hardly recognized me, and I held her hand and wept. I looked at Otto and I said, Forgive me, I am crying, and Otto said, We are all crying.

AFTER AISHA’S DEATH Otto withdrew for a while and no one saw him. I would call him but he would never call me back. And then, suddenly, he showed up at my door with a beard and a six-pack of beer and he said, For a short while. He slept in my bed at night while I went to work. In the morning I would wake him up and take the bed and sleep while he sat in the kitchen and smoked and drank coffee until the afternoon. Then he would eat a piece of bread and leave, and the apartment would be empty for a few hours.

Otto stacked the kitchen table with files and literature. He would sit there and write, copy, and take notes. He borrowed books from the library and read and bent pages and underlined paragraphs. When I asked him what he was working on, he said he was gathering a list of important people.

For donations? I asked.

He laughed, puffed a few rings of smoke, looked at me with a half-smile, and said, Yeah, donations. You are a joker, Fly.

Once I tried to bring up Aisha, but he looked at me and said, She is dead. They killed her.

Who killed her?

This world killed her.

One night I came home and found the kitchen table cleared and a note telling me he was moving on and that he would be in touch.

A few weeks later, Otto joined a large march organized by community groups, unions, leftist intellectuals, anarchists, and activists. They had mobilized to protest a three-day summit held by the leaders of the region, who planned to impose a series of neoliberal economic policies.

The march was attended by thousands. The police erected fences and closed a part of the downtown and forbade all access to it. Speeches were made by various workers and leaders, flags of resistance waved, banners flown, and songs sung. One evening a few hundred activists camped out around a big fire in the park. They drummed and danced all night.

Otto was there. All of a sudden he heard the sound of activists yelling. A voice from the police megaphone ordered them to put out the fire and vacate the park. The activists started to boo and shout and the police, in full riot gear, banged their sticks against their shields and marched, pushing the crowd back, and then another platoon approached in the same slow and relentless manner from the opposite side. Otto shouted, It is a sweep! and he raised the beer bottle in his hand, ran towards the line of police, and threw the bottle against the shield of an officer. The bottle fell and shattered. Many were arrested, but Otto was singled out.

I hadn’t heard from Otto for many months. One morning, as I was about to park my car in the garage, I saw him standing on the sidewalk in front of the building. He was smoking and had a foam cup of coffee in his hand. I parked my car and went to him. I stood there and tried to engage him a bit longer, thinking I might catch Zainab on her way down, but he walked towards the entrance and took the stairs up and I followed. He breathed heavily, he looked hunched and fatter, and his leather jacket moved in gigantic forms against the light of the stair’s windows as we moved between the floors. A faint smell of food rose from a neighbour’s apartment. I immediately thought of hunger, it must have been hunger that was causing Otto’s slowness, because when Otto was down before, he would go through weeks of drinking hard liquor and eating one meal a day, or sometimes only peanuts in the morning.

He sat at the kitchen table, and when I offered him food, he asked for a glass of water. He pulled out some pills and swallowed them.

Talk, I said, and he told me the story of his incarceration.

BARREL

I AM BLEEDING, Otto said, as he sat on a chair in the police station.

Name?

Langston.

Real name.

Stokely.

Real name.

Carmichael.

Real name, one of the officers said, and he pushed a paper and a pen towards Otto.

I can’t write.

Real name, he repeated. Write down your fucking real name, because I know who you are. So just write down your fucking name. I have your file. It’s been a while, but I see you are making a comeback. Kind of like those Motown singers, and the officer looked at his partner and they both smiled. Now write down your name.

Otto wrote down Stokely Carmichael .

Your real name.

Black .

Look, Bob, he wrote “Black,” but he looks a little pale to me. I wonder how that happened. It must have been his great-great-grandmother holding on to that white boy’s ass in the barn and not letting him pull out in time. Now, real name, motherfucker. .

Panther Fist , Otto wrote.

I’ll ask you again, write down your real name.

God .

One more chance, chocolate-milk boy, the officer said.

A Fuck you appeared on the paper.

Otto was pushed out of his chair. One police officer watched while the other beat him with his stick. After a while the second officer came over and started kicking Otto and stomping on him.

Otto started to shout, I am God, motherfuckers! That is my real name. My name is fucking God.

The first officer smiled and said, The man needs help. He thinks he is God.

They left the room and Otto was left on the cold floor, his head hurting, his body still. He closed his eyes and lost track of time.

LATER, TWO MEN in green aprons came to see Otto in the interrogation room. They said they were there to accompany him. When he asked where they were taking him, one of the men spoke to him softly and sounded very professional.

Sir, I have to inform you that you are now in our custody and that your safety and well-being have been assigned to us and are out of police hands. We ask you to cooperate and make it easy for everyone. You will be driven to a psychiatric ward for assessment. In the event of non-compliance on your part, we might have to employ restraining measures. Now I want you to answer me with a simple yes or no. Sir, do you understand what I’ve just told you?