Dying young

One day in Kuwait I climbed into the hotel shuttle bus outside my apartment feeling the cold rush of air-conditioning meet hot, dry early morning air.

The only vacant seat was next to Hasid, a hotel security man from Sudan. I adjusted to the confinement of a rolling metal enclosure on wheels, resigned to the fact it was faster than walking to work.

“Good morning, Captain!” smiling Hasid said in his regular greeting to me raising a cocked hand in mock salute.

“Howdy,” I said, looking briefly at him. I wanted to ignore him and the chattering Indian workers from Goa along with robust Filipina housekeepers resting on their black garbage bags full of clean sheets and pillowcases destined for expatriate beds.

Unforgiving desert sun glared through windows. The babble of voices increased my trapped impatient anger. The worn paper talisman inside my wallet reminded me of death.

The bus negotiated narrow streets full of gutter trash, past half-demolished apartments, a white mosque needle stabbing clear blue sky, swerved around water trucks leaking their loads and pulled onto Gulf Road. It was a vicious circle.

Hasid had an old Western paperback about a doomsday marshall in his lap. He pulled a creased, black and white photograph out of the book and pushed it in my face pointing to a boy standing with friends in a faded image.

“He died.”
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“Yes.”

His friend was young. The picture disappeared into the book.

“What happened to him?”
“I don't know. Someone from home said he died.”
“I'm sorry.”

I studied three long tribal scars below Hasid's right eye. Spirit protection? Rites of passage? Tear rivers grounded into flesh fabric?

I was afraid to ask Hasid about the scars because I didn’t want to know the details.

At a roundabout where roads formed a spider’s web, a man opened torn cardboard boxes to set up his prayer carpet business. His essential survival items were an umbrella and water cooler. It was going to be over 100.

“It's too bad he died young,” I said.

“Nah, you know Captain, it's better to die young. Better than having to go through it all.”

The paper inside my pocket was a letter from my father written years ago when my sister was dying of leukemia at 13. Confrontations, resolve, letting go. She faced the darkest part early - the part where edges give way. Where it becomes pure and simple.

“Yes,” I said to Hasid, “it's better, I suppose.”

I stared at a blue Persian Gulf washing white sand imagining a Black boy and White girl laughing, dancing, singing without fear.