Extra: 7-5

My foot was still swollen and sore ( and maybe broke, but I was to stubborn to go to the hospital to look into it) from the bus door opening and squishing it.  I had started to walk 40mins down the street to meet a group of visitors for dinner, but after only one stop I was ready to jump on the bus and save my pour foot the pain.  As we speed down the street I happen to look out the window at one particularly busy corner and notice a guy sitting holding his bloody head in his hands.  Instead of being shock, or even grossed out, I remember shaking my head and chuckling “Why is it that if you are going to see a guy bleeding anywhere in town it is right at this corner, what is it about these two intersecting streets that always seem to make people lose their temper and provoke fights?” To my shame I have to admit that by the time we had gone one more stop and I was disembarking from the bus, I had already forgotten about the injured man.  Instead I was busy looking at my watch realizing I the bus had cut my travel time in half, so I had time to kill before the others would be arriving.  As I glanced at what stores were close by I noticed a group of about ten young men running/ skipping through the intersection.  There was something about their boisterous manner and the way they called other to join them, I suddenly had the words to “John Jacob Jinglyhimer smit” running on repeat in my head.  Everyone on the street stop dead silent and still as they watched the young man circle the parking lot keeping up their call for other to come with them. 

It was the stillness of the crowed that caught my interest more than anything. On any normal day you walk down the street and some man with a shriveled leg sits begging and calling out in a loud mournful voice for Allah to have mercy… and no one stops and notices.  A young mother will hike up her skirt and squat on the side of the road so that she can breastfeed her baby in broad daylight… and no one seems to care.  A young couple flirtatiously slap each other on the arm and giggle a little to excitedly and high-pitched… no one pay them any attention.  From dog wearing shoes and sweaters, to the fruit guy slowly pushing his overloaded cart between cars that are honking obnoxiously, they city keeps going.  Everyone has a their own life their own activities and they ignore the mass public around them, but not that night these ten or so guys had somehow captured the nervous attention of everyone.

I noticed a YOU women about my age and asked her “what’s going on?” She looked right past me and ignored my question.  I tried again stopping some from the majority people group and asking them “Who are those guys?  What are they up too?”  Still no answer.  The boys had moved on further down the street and those around me slowly seemed to be coming out of their frozen trance and carrying back on with life.  My throbbing foot was begging to find a place to sit and rest until my friends came.  I crossed the street underground and came up on the other side a min later.  The voices of the guys could be heard coming closer again, and now this side of the street seemed locked in the same stillness.  This time I insistently tugged on one girls sleeve “Hey what’s going on?”  She pulled out of my grasped and backed away slowly. 

“Hey you are one of the foreigner students that go to the university just up the street right?”  Finally someone was talking to me.  “I have seen you on campus.  You have to go home right now”  The young YOU man who had approached me seemed very insistent.  “But don’t go back up this street”  he gestured to where my bus had just come from “Go along” He named a parallel rout “It’s still safe”.  “But what is going on? Who are those guys”  I looked over at the “JingleHimerSmit” and his boys and noticed his number had already grown… instead of just ten guys like I had seen five minutes before there was now close to 20 of running and jumping around excitedly.  I turned back, but the guy who had stopped to warn me had already moved on and was out of sight. 

I thought about what he had said, but since the guests I was meeting for dinner didn’t have a cell phone and I didn’t have their hotel number I knew I had to meet them as planned, there was no way to call off the dinner and I didn’t want to leave them on their own. 

We meet up shortly after and went to a near-by restaurant for dinner.  I love having groups of newbies in for a visit.  I go all out ordering one of all the famous dishes so that they can have a small taste of everything.  But that night I remember the restaurant we went to had nothing.  Every dish I asked about they said “No we don’t have that right now”, “NO we are not cooking right now”.  I was so confused.  We ended up just having nan, salad and kabbas.  Even those took forever to come, which I didn’t understand since we were like the only people at the restaurant.  There was one other guys sitting at a table off to the side, but he seemed more intent on watching us than he did any food he could or couldn’t order.  All the wait staff was sitting on the front steps or gathered by the big window at the front.  They I could get anyone attention and remember being really mad as I had to find my own clean spoons and refill the tea pot myself.  “What a bad first impression of a nice restaurant to give my guest”.  

Still rather hungry the group and I decided to grab a cup of coffee.  The warm summer night air was pleasant as we walked towards a nearby coffee shop.  We took our time strolling down the street.  As we approach a corner rather frantic western looking couple that I didn’t know ran past us.  “Don’t go that way something just exploded.”  They didn’t slow their pace to share this information, but hurried off in the opposite direction from what we were heading.  “Maybe we should to back,” I said to the group, who all looked a little worried.  We did and about face and started walking a little faster back up the street.  Halfway back to the restaurant where we had had our unsatisfying dinner we noticed a frightened mob of people running down the road towards us.  We turned back around and had to run with the crowed or risk being trampled in their fearful dash. 

At the head of the street I instructed my group to make a sharp right hand turn… we were right back where we had meet the couple running form the explosion, so I knew turning left wasn’t a good option either.  The trampling mob dispersed heading all different directions at the corner and my friends and I were able to re-group.  I suggested that the newbies head back to their hotel which was only a block away.  I remember offing to accompany them, but they assured me they would be fine.  I was still copying down their phone number when one of them pushed me flat against the wall in order to get out of the way.  Running just inches in front of us was a group of national, camouflaged clad soldiers.  There riot shield was literally only a few centimeters from my face.  Time seem to freeze as I met the gaze of one of the terrified troops.  He was just a kid, no more than 18 or 19 years of age.  His clean shaven face was puckered into an expression that was meant to look fearless, but ended up giving more of the impression that he just wanted to run and hide.  All of this training and drills had been safe replications of what might lay ahead of him.  He looked at me and I tried to melt into the cold hard brick wall at my back.  The moment lasted forever, and was gone in a second as he marched by into an uncertain fight.

Seconds past before we exhaled the breath we didn’t even know we had been collectively holding.  The group started to climb the stairs to cross the street via the over head walk way.  They weren’t even at the top step when we heard the commotion.  Car horns were beeping, feet were marching and young men were hooting and yelling with excitement.  They were jumping on the rough of parked vehicles, they were shaking their fists in the air and claiming victory.  The group of ten boisterous boys from an hour ago, were now more than 1000 young people taking over the street.  They were coming from the direction I had just seen the solider go to forty.  Seeing this enraged mob angrily calling out “YOU, YOU, YOU” I knew why we had all most been trampled running down the street.  In fact my eyes now likely mirrored the fear that I had seen in the solider. 

My TL’s were with me, and we started trying to map out our best rout home.  Suddenly the glimpse of the guy bleeding from the head on my way here, the warning from the young man not “to take the other road it is still safe” and direction the couple told me they had seen and explosion, the mob, the riot police, all of the pieces confirmed we should weave through back streets until we got to the other side of the highway.  Our walking was tense and quite as we hurried back.  The fast pace thudding of my heart tuned out any remaining throbbing of my foot.  We kept walking to shock to really talk through all we had seen in such a sort amount of time or too scared to consider what might be waiting for us around the next bend. 

On the other side of the highway life seemed to me back to normal.  The night bazaar street was busy.  Teenage girls were holding cute summer sundresses up to their face to get their friends attention.  Families were sitting on stools eating dinner at the picnic tables out front their favorite restaurant.  The sound of barraging, laughter and life were all around us.  These people were having fun.  We walked with purpose through the crowed, we were numb to their joy, and they to our pain. They had no idea that only ten minuet down the street people were being terrorized.  I knew the news was soon to hit this happy street.   With an eye to the sky behind us I could already see dark puffs of black smoke were billowing out of building and breaking the brilliant blue of the summer sky.  They were clear angry signs of fire and death and destruction that were heading this direction.

I couldn’t keep going.  One of my best friends only lived a block from where we were.  I decided to stay at her place for the night instead of trying to walk the rest of the way home.  Sadly my TL’s decided to keep going.  Their evening went from bad to worse, being burned out of a building, seeing car’s set on fire with their driver still in them and so much more.  Terror had come to the place I call home.