The Iraqi [Intro] an urban Odyssey by Al Saffar

The Shadows of My Brother, My Partner & I in my HOME TOWN

To elope: to escape; to leave everything behind; to never look back again; to lose the core essence of your past identity; to formulate a new one:  a finer gimmick in the eyes of the absurd un-evolved creatures, the worst arrogant-for-nothing most humbled species…  I get out of the house and watch my town sway. It's my very last stare for a long time, and I want to memorize everything without any solid archive. This is my ever last look. A man’s wearing an overcoat in front of a grocery store.  Another man cycling his soul out carrying buckets of milk with exaggerated fatigue. Two young men standing in front of their exchange currency shop, they’re sipping coffee from paper cups, both wearing leather jackets. A police man leans against a thyme loaf kiosk's  wooden wall and laughs into his mobile while picking his nose.

I mount the transportation van. It drives away as I look back at my shrinking town blurring away. The foggy traffic in Dahr El Baidar Peak balances the smoke cloud inside the van as the car horns are in harmony with screeching sound of a horrible Syrian Coastal singer coming out of the radio. I smile with a sour blue right cheek & a black right eye. I look at my zooming fingers with bits of blood stains failing to vanish after thorough washing.

To erase an unfixable event is to delete your whole past, your whole identity and what is left of your character: to leave; to go wherever you want as far as you can. To go north!

I stop at a small town clinic, get me stitched up and keep going. We'll drive and keep driving. Find a far away little poor town. Start over, different routine, different traits, different beliefs, create new history, new background; recreate false wishful memories; A decent normal easy going nice guy. My town melted away; it doesn’t exist anymore!

I’m out to the middle of nowhere. The third van I took, parked in front of small minimarket with a rusty sign. I step out of the van: buy cigarettes, water and a bunch of snack bars and walk while watching the van drive away.

I look for a private teaching job; minimum wage, a job that pays cash and a boss or a client who doesn’t ask questions. I never leave that town. I won’t write; I won’t call; I won’t visit anyone I used to know. I make a new life; never come back. Find myself a decent gal; marry her, have a kid- just one. Two is a crowd; one is perfect especially in relocation. Maybe after a decade or so, I send a word to my brother and my partner. Maybe one day, years from now when I’ll be a granddad, I may tell my family who I really am and where did I really come from. I tell them the truth! I tell them the whole thing, the whole bloody affair. I tell my son the truth: that his life was so close to not happening.