Start Spreading the News

The one man digging for garbage helps the other up and over the bin. They respect each other’s space, relying on the lit windows and alley lights around them. It has been non-stop rain for the past three days—tough to persist with the will or the cart to search through waste. This afternoon had cleared, finally, and they are ready to get to work.

Crap! The man in the tattered green jacket yells out. He flashes a local newspaper before tossing it at the blue recycling container. He tells him once there was a time when he enjoyed unearthing the day-old papers, but as time has gone by, and as more jaded he’s become, he’s lost all faith in anything of no value, no money to be spent, no depth in the print.

The other man, in the dark brown hoodie, responds by pointing to a balcony three stories above from where they dig. No stranger to this lucrative spot in the alley, last week, whilst sorting through garbage and treasure, he’d overheard a conversation from the corner of the deck that swoops around the side. A man and a woman, friends apparently, enjoying a couple beers as the sun had set for the night.

He’d spied on them for a while, catching the empties as they simply tossed them down below. The woman was talking about a guy she had met, down the street, at their local.

He was born in Iraq, she explained. Just moved from Dubai. He is from Iraq and he is just that, a man from Iraq: well spoken, well educated, well dressed. He stressed that there is no actual war. People are dying without justice or cause because there is no real war. There is no reason for the fight.

The bartender, she added, had joined the conversation: What is it? Government strategy?

They want us to believe there is a reason to fight—to remain in power, to remain in control? Over us? The joke is on us.

The Iraqi agreed: They spend years searching through caves where there’s nothing to be found. They turn neighborhoods of innocent people against each other in order to continue. If they can create a way to pursue their agenda, somehow, he’d said, they can then sleep at night.

The man in the brownish hoodie mentions that the man from Iraq had posed no threat to the girl on the balcony, no threat at all. Not the threat the papers have taught.

His friend, in the tattered winter bomber sighs.
“Over 83,000 civilian deaths in just four years.”
He shakes his head.
Like us, they used to have names.

Oye! Says his fellow sponger, throwing an empty box in his face. “They still have names!”
I still have a name.
You’re alive, man. You still have a name.
I’m alive, man, and my life can still change.

“Money runs them oppressors, but fear runs the rest. They sell it to them in those papers each day! These people on those balconies buy it, soak in it, they lap it up each night, each day. Don’t you see them, drooling coffee and sugar onto those adverts at all those Cafes? You and I are lucky, man. We don’t have any money. But we still have our names!”

“You’re a fool!” Spits the man in the green jacket, hoisting himself over and out of the bin, grumbling as he marches down the way.

I could be amongst them. Them, on their comfy balconies, warm blankets and beer. I’m the lucky one? Heated-rooms, warm beds, “I’ll tell you something!” He swings around at his friend.
“We’re luckier than they only. The dead ones. The ones with no names.”

Three stories above, a man whose balcony faces that of the overheard man and woman’s stands in the shadows, rolling his tobacco and listening in.

In Afghanistan, he wonders, our country could be doing the same. Do we know? Are we that lucky? Do you consider yourself lucky for being brainwashed all the same? Nah. We still complain. We still whine about the weather, point fingers, and rage against each other. The only ones lucky are those who we call ‘they’.

“Waste your time crying over spilt milk, man. Waste your time!” The man in the brown hoodie rolls his cart after his friend.

Napping that evening a week ago on his living room couch, the man eavesdropping in the shadows had also overheard his neighbors deliberate on their deck. The thought occurred for him to join in, but he chose to remain in his comfort instead.

Does it ever wear you out? He’d overhead him say. It would wear me out. He continued. Starving children, car bombs…living in an army state. It wears me out just to watch on the TV. Makes me want to toss the set. I can read books in comfort. I can surf the net. If it gets too much I can hop into my car and head away. When the tank is empty, I can return home. I have a home. I have this roof over my head.

She had cracked open another beer.
I have an education, she’d confessed. I’m not on the street. I’m not in a field, or in a tent by a ditch. I could be living in this alley, directly below this balcony. I could be the one breaking into your car. But I don't have that need.

Why should I complain about what I have? Why should I want more?

The man on the couch thought to himself in that moment: ‘Grateful’ is not a word I use in my vocabulary too often. There are babies in this world born into a life expectancy of not much more than just five years. And here I lie, feeling sad and depressed because not only am I alive, but also, because my 30th is in just a few days.

Cry me a river. Oh it’s such a shame.


Ldm