The 4th installment of, 'Kiddo"

I hope this entry finds you well.  

Enjoy!

JRA

طفل

The reluctant night sky eventually embraced the morning light as an angry lover would their other after being scorned yet needing the warmth of their affections.  The nagging presence of a daunting task filled her body and the hands that touch in a speaking way banishing the unwelcome guest from her temple was absent.  A familiar ache took up station just above her eyes busy with the work of shooting detrimental thoughts across the landscape of her mind. 

Her bed most days a missed friend she enjoyed visiting now a foe singing lullabies of temptation purposefully working against her ambition.  Ignoring its songs she rose and found her phone on the nightstand, longing for its message of good news.  This messenger had failed; still, she was without word from Him. 

She felt the stab of betrayal, preferring its precision and quickness over the heart ripping claws of something ill fated which leaves one to mend an impossible wound impervious to time. 

She sighed and with that made the decision with the fury of jealousy and the quickness of faith to shield her lands from the stations fire if only from those thoughts. 

She had an exam to write and needed the focus of a sniper whose aim was rue and never failed. 

Surreal yet real, the adrenalin’s effect was wearing thin, allowing the throbbing pain to sleuth its way through His left side.  He was damaged, this much he knew.  The intoxicating effect blurred the scene about him; a melee of limbed chaos.  He could hear his name being shouted but the faces he saw, crowding and running into the streets, mouthed nothing but long animalistic screams.

He stumbled a few feet and caught himself against a hollowed cinder wall when he felt something pulling at his arm.  He dipped his head around and saw a face, which took a few moments to recognize.

'Habbibi!  Hurry!  Hurry!  This way!' Sayid yelled.

Chaos reigned in the streets.  Surrounding buildings had been damaged by the collapse.  Debris was strewn in every direction.  Its result was injury.  Dozens more of innocent people bled through dust covered skin.  Sayid pulled Him up, dragging him along.  If it weren't for the blood all over Him, one might think him drunk, unable to walk a straight line, stumbling on stones and mortar.  They hurried in the direction of the white Benz, which was parked where Sayid had dropped him off, ironically only fifty yards from where he had been taken - from what remained of where he had been.

Through the haze He was in, he managed to remember his cell and jump drive. He broke free of Sayid and tripped towards the spot it had been left.  Sayid screamed after him, 'No, we have to get away from here!'

He reached the spot and found both items, looking odd just lying there on the ground, somehow untouched.  People ran down the alleyway screaming and shouting and moaning. He picked them up and turned back to Sayid. Trying to run again, he fell, dropping the phone, its battery bouncing on the pavement.  Sayid grabbed him again, this time by the collar, and dragged him.

'I can't leave it!' He shouted at Sayid, who then picked up both the phone and the battery. 'Sharmout' Sayid cursed in Arabic.  They made it to the car, pulling the door open. Sayid pushed him into the passenger side, throwing the cell, battery and jump drive on his lap.

The world started to go dark on Him as the scrambled sounds of the frantic street faded, muted by the car door slammed shut, and before he passed out he looked down at his camera, in his bloodied hands, and grinned.

In the darkness, the blurred shape of a woman working at something in the corner trumpeted his heart.

'Hey' He spoke softly.

His body was exhausted and sore, he could barely keep his eyes open let alone line up his thoughts, but he was ever so thankful that he was home.

'I'm so sorry, babe. I didn't think it would turn out this way.  I got the shots, though' He could barely get through his sentence.

'Shhh' she sounded out with Nightingale empathy. He closed his eyes, fighting to reopen them, but couldn't. He was out for hours.

He felt her hand touching his left side, a damp cloth being gently dragged over his skin.  A loving touch caressed his face quelling the fitful pain.

'I love you so much' he exalted.

The hand moved away quickly and down he went again.  His wounds needed the healing power of sleep.

He dreamt.  Strange and disjointed rememberings of high school basketball practice, countless lay-up drills and then the crowd cheering with seconds left on the clock.  He needed to shoot a three pointer, but the ball was impossibly heavy.  Then he was in his car with friends laughing and having a good time, but the gas gauge was past empty and he needed to get to Her.  John, his agent kept calling, yet every time he picked up the phone he could hear John, but John could not hear him.  Pain.  Intense shooting pain in his side. 

Through what seemed like an Irish fog, a woman spooned broth into his mouth, hot and thick, his eyes weighted, the real world still vignetted with darkness.  Time, not a thing at all, just convoluted nothingness in a dark space.  His pain: his only comrade, ever present, the only real thing. 

He could feel the heat like molten lava just beneath the surface of his nakedness. He lay sweating, soaking the sheets.  His body fought hard to stave off infection and mend itself.  He slipped in and out of consciousness, at times conscious enough to hear voices - a familiar one that he could not put a face to and a female voice that spoke not English - then the darkness would pull him back down. 

He dreamt of home, strange dreams in which nothing really happened but the day-to-day things, like preparing dinner for Her or working in his office.  Some of them could not be called dreams for they were simply things that had happened, replayed in his mind.  Memories revisited, born of a subconscious longing. 

One such memory dream was of His first date with Her. They had know each other for nearly two years and had become official in their relationship, not to mention that they had been sleeping together for nearly a year before that. Yet between their combined schedules they realized that they had in fact never had a proper date.  It had come up plainly during a hangover conversation en route to Starbucks the morning after a house party His roommate had thrown for his girlfriend. 

‘We should go see a movie sometime.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything at the show’ she had said.

 ‘We haven’t ever really done anything like that, have we?’ he asked, surprised at that fact.

‘No, I guess we haven’t’ she agreed.

‘Come to think of it, we’ve never actually had a proper date.  Well, that’s going to change’ he said, the two laughing at themselves. 

‘Lets do it properly, we’ll go to dinner then to a show’ he continued plotting.

‘That sounds amazing’ she concluded. 

They had met through work, both of them employed at a hotel downtown.  He had taken the job as a temporary fix to subsidize his acting, which had fallen off the gravy train, due to the strength of the Canadian dollar, however, bills still needed to get paid and when a buddy offered to get him in, he jumped at it.  He worked evenings in the valet department, chauffeuring guests about town in the hotels fleet of classic cars. The job was a blast, especially working with a half dozen of his actor friends, it felt more like hanging out than work.

She was there working in the Concierge department, a summer job her father had set up through his connections at the hotel.  She had wanted to work, though her parents would have rather she worked at the camp she had been doing most summers. But this timing would play a huge role in setting into motion things that would change both of their lives.

They had met in passing a few times. He was good friends with Jack, also a Concierge, and they would usually head out after work to drink Belgium beer together.  The first time they had met, the conversation was nothing more then Jack making polite introductions. 

‘It’s nice to meet you’ He had said.

‘Nice meeting you, as well’ She had returned.

‘Alright Jack, what do you say?  Let’s get out of here.’ He changed the subject back to the evening ahead of them without the slightest understanding of who this girl would become to him.  And that was it.  Not that anything beyond that would have happened. He, at the time, was in a relationship, and She was just another face that worked where he did. Working in a hotel requires that you meet hundreds of people a day, and she was one of them.  How little He knew of how important She would become.

Slowly over time He found himself talking with Her with much more frequency. His relationship had ended and She gave him something he had never known, though he did not realize it at the time.  

He marveled at how easily the two could talk about anything and everything, jumping from ridiculous Hollywood gossip to the most intense discussions about politics and religion, topics that usually ended with one party angry at the other, but it wasn’t that way with them.  Either they agreed on ideologies or challenged each other enough with logic to see the other’s point. 

Over the course of a year or so they began having drinks after work, usually with others, then slowly it became just the two of them.  Jack had moved on from the hotel to pursue a different line of work and others got fired or quit, and the rest got bored with going to the same place - so that became their routine, just the two of them having drinks and conversing. 

He found himself looking forward to the days he knew she would be working and spending the shift with Her just talking.  Then one day, unprepared and seemingly out of the clear blue sky, He was watching her from afar. She was helping a guest plan a trip to Niagara Falls.  It filled him with a feeling he to this day cannot properly describe.  His whole being and everything he ever knew as truth now felt helpless and moot if it couldn’t be with her.  In that moment, when she looked over for a split second smiling at him, he knew, he felt for her, a love that he thought only existed in movies and long winded novels, the love that elders and dreamers talked about his whole life.  ‘You’ll know it when it happens, and it will happen when you least expect it’.  This was it!  It was happening, and happening to him.    

Things moved quickly after that.  She felt for him, as he did for her, and the fact that they had become such good friends before hand had built them an immovable foundation for which they could build their pillars that would, in time, stretch well into the future and weather any tempest life would invariably put upon them. 

And so one Saturday evening, two confessed lovers whom had known each other for years, met downtown and had their first real dinner date.  They had decided to splurge on a fancy Bay street eatery, laughing their way through course after course, enjoying the food and wine immensely, though enjoying each other even more.  They had an infections way about them.  People seemed to go out of their way if only to steal a glimpse of how happiness should be.  They ended up being late for the show.  The film that they had intended to see had sold out so they settled for some random picture, which they never ended up seeing the end of. Their need to be together, that need to touch and share in each other’s bodies, floated them back to his place; a hunger beyond famine, for each others lips, body and soul.  They made love that night, well into the small hours of dawn, quenching their lustful thirst then falling into peaceful slumber in each other’s arms.

Warm sunlight cascaded onto his face from the window and when he tried to rub his eyes he felt gauze on his left hand.  He opened his eyes, puzzled as to why his hand was even wrapped, looked around the room, and total confusion set in.  He swept his mind, but his search light of remembering was dim and unresponsive.  Slowly, like the memories of a drunken evening, images came to him. Scattered and scary and horrific, yet like remembering some long ago television rerun. 

All of it through his lens.

But where am I?

He attempted to get out of bed but was halted abruptly by a barbarous pain that issued a loud involuntary grunt. He clutched his side with his gauzed hand and saw that his torso was as well bandaged, stained on the left with jaundice crimson.

Sayid strolled into the room drinking a sweaty bottle of coke. ‘Finally you're up!' Sayid joked

'Where's my camera?' He asked almost angrily.

Sayid pointed to a bureau under the window where his camera - dirtied, bloodied, and looking so awful that it caused a whimper in his mind - sat.  Sayid, sensing that He wanted the camera and also eager to see the shots He had taken, picked it up as one would a fragile crystal ornament and brought it to Him.

'Thank you Sayid' He said, trying not to grimace at the pain and took it from him like a practiced mother would a child. He wiped clean the playback LCD and turned the camera on.  It was dead.

'Nothing's happening' Sayid pointed out.

'The battery's dead. Do you have my backpack?'

'Yes!' Sayid exclaimed and he was gone.

Left alone He began wiping the camera, using spit to loosen the dried blood and his gauze as a cloth.  He managed most of it but failed to reach the stains in the fine impressions. He popped the lens cap off to see how dirty the lens was and saw, to his dismay for the second time this week, that the lens was cracked!

'Son-of-a-bitch!' he surrendered viscerally. 

He felt nauseous. His stomach ached with cramps.

Sayid reemerged from the hall carrying His backpack, panting, slightly out of breath.

'What's happened?' Sayid asked through inhales.

'Another lens bites the dust.' He tried to make light of the situation.

Sayid passed him the backpack. 'Like the song,' he said smiling widely.

'Yeah!' He tried to chuckle. ‘Like the song'. 

He had Sayid help him fish one of his spare batteries out of a small pouch and into the camera to replace the dead one. The camera came to life instantly and Sayid sat on the bed next to him to better see the photographs.

As He scrolled past some shots he had taken at the hotel his heart began to race and he could feel his palms starting to sweat with excitement.  The last picture he had taken before he had left the hotel was from his window of the sun setting brilliantly over still palm trees. He paused for a split second and scrolled to the next shot.

There in the little lighted screen stood the leader of an extremist group, holding a photograph of a man that was single handedly responsible for so many useless deaths, and next to him -- 'Tamman!'

Sayid tore the camera out of His hands. 'How do I make it bigger?  The picture.  Make it bigger!' Sayid asked impatiently.

He had forgotten that this man was Sayids friend. Killed. Uselessly. He zoomed in on Tamman, the camera never leaving Sayids hands.  'This was a great man, Habbibi' Sayid said looking terribly sad while looking fondly at the image, the last image of his friend, Tamman.

He let a silence build, holding back all the questions he had for Sayid. Why was he friends with a soon-to-be terrorist?  Why would anyone, after loosing a brother, want to follow in the same way? 

He was about to ask Sayid how he and Tamman had even been friends. Sayid was Muslim but hated the extremist factions.

'The money I told you you needed to give to me. The ten thousand. It was going to be used by Tamman to escape, to get he and his mother to Australia so that he might live a life away from the people that cost him his brother'. Sayid’s eyes looked blood shot but He knew Sayid would not cry. 'Now he is dead. Just like his brother.' Sayid looked Him straight in the eyes.  ‘He was a good man who loved his family unconditionally. You would have liked him very much… had things not happened as they did'. Sayid spoke with the most sincerity He had ever heard.

Sayid, with gentleness, surrendered the camera, putting it back into His hands and He, understanding the moment, sat in silence. Sayid had lost a friend, a friend that wanted more than the taste of revenge. More than to continue the circle of hatred that carries one like a current stronger than the strength it takes to break free.  Tamman, rest in peace.

'You must be thirsty,’ Sayid said changing the subject harshly.  ‘I will get you something to drink. And your bandages need changing'.  He left the room.

When Sayid was gone, His attention pulled back to the photos he had taken.  His curiosity momentarily masking the pain, He scrolled through them seeing the last shot he had taken of the leader and Tamman from a low angle and much to his enjoyment, the framing worked perfectly. This particular angle gave them a much more powerful, sinister appearance. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow and moved on to the next shot.

Horror.

طفل

Part 3 of 'Kiddo'

 Ok then, here we go. The third installment.   I  hope you're enjoying it!  If you are, please do share it with friends.  

            

The ceiling fan above his bed whirled with a consistent electrical drone, making more noise than any sort of breeze.  The heat unbearable, six O’clock in the evening and the temperature still hung at around 95 degrees.  Lying on his bed in his hotel room, sweating, he still had a couple of hours before he had to set out for his days work.  He couldn’t believe what he was about to do.  How had he gotten himself into this?  I could die!  They could take me hostage and demand ransom, then slit my throat when Mom and Dad couldn’t come up with the money.  Jesus.  Don’t think about it.  Enjoy the down time. 

And of course it was always in the down time that his thoughts returned home, to her.  

                

It always baffled him, how entirely he missed her whenever he was away from her or her from him.  Withdrawal - was the word that he heard resonate in his head.  My body, heart and soul need her.  She is my addiction.  He had been in many relationships before her but none of them carried this degree of intensity. 

He felt a complete rightness and security but also an underlying fear like the rush of being on some great precipice; sure footed yet millimeters from falling to your death.  Of course it might be the fear of death that brought this thought to his mind.  He thought about her laugh, her smile, and body.  Oh he wanted her body, badly, even now.  If he made it through this and got home it would be like it was every year. 

The two of them would travel to some randomly selected place in celebration of her having completed yet another year.  Soon enough they would be able to spend days on end most likely never leaving their bed accept perhaps to eat or recover on the beach.  Soon enough.  Be patient.  Still he wanted very much to ring her and with a little luck she might just be up.  Or she might be sleeping soundly trying to soak up as much sleep as possible.  Fuck.  He got up from the bed instead, wearing only his jeans and made his way to the bathroom.  His body glistened from a mix of the humidity and sweat. 

In the mirror his body looked thinner which he didn't mind at all.  It always took him a full week to become accustomed to the local cuisine.  The water from the tap ran refreshingly cold and he splashed his face and chest with it.  Why these places don't have air conditioning is bloody ridiculous.  Next time I'll have John book a room with AC. 

Call her.  Tell her you miss her. 

He grabbed a beer from his stash in the mini-fridge.  While taking a sip he thought it was pointless to drink because you sweat it out moments later, however it was cold and tasty.  He took a second swig and lit a cigarette and began the routine of checking his gear.  He enjoyed this routine of trying to envision what he might need, what he knew he wouldn't need and what might surprise him that he had had the where with all to pack. He gathered a few prime lenses, cleaning each one and its filter and laying them out on his bed to take visual stock. When he reached for his longest lenses anger rose in his throat. 

A five thousand dollar lens; it was now not worth a single red cent.  It had gotten smashed three days before and, though he should have been thankful it was only the lens that got damaged, it still felt like a grave sin that it should no longer capture life’s moments.  He replaced it into its case, unable to throw it out and sipped the last of his beer.

The blackberry on the nightstand loudly buzzed to life with a phone call.  Please be you. He grabbed up the phone, checking the caller ID, it's not you.  Disappointed he answered it so, 'hello'. 

The voice on the other end was loud and jovial 'my friend!  It's me Sayid.   I’m just making sure you are up!  I shall be by to pick you up in an hour'.  Sayid spoke with a thick Middle Eastern accent.

'Great, I'll be here.  How much time will I have once we get there?' he asked Sayid. 'My friend, not very long at all, so be sure to be prepared. I'll see you shortly Habbibi'.  The phone cut out.

The dread set in.  He had known him for years and hired Sayid, as a sort of guide or inside guy to get him around town and also to get him into places a westerner could not go.  Never did he imagine that he would have happened into such a situation.   If his parents, friends or his girl knew what he was up to, there would be major repercussions. Not the repercussions he could ultimately face with what he was about to do but the loving kind. 

Especially with his girl, she would almost undoubtedly slap him in the face and threaten leaving him, however it's sometimes easier to beg forgiveness then it is to ask permission.  Besides with one shot he could stand to make some decent money not to mention getting closer to finally having one of his shots printed in National Geographic.  One day. 

I'm going to call her, I'll just shower first then I'll ring her, just to tell her I love her.

The cold shower felt amazing.  Dressed and ready to be picked up, his gear packed and his passport and wallet locked away in his room’s safe.  He had been told by a friend to, ‘always carry a jump drive with digital copies of all of your documents.  It's easier to replace a jump drive then your passport.  And people here will steal your documents because there's good money in it on the black market.’ 

Sayid was late, as always, so he cracked another beer wanting to numb his nerves.  He grabbed his phone and rang his girl.

'Hey' she answered sounding groggy.

'I didn't wake you did I?'  He knew he had.  She was a dead give away.

'No.  I was getting up anyway.  How are you?'

Trying to sound totally relaxed he said 'good, I'm good.  I was just really missing you and wanted to say hello'.

She made an endearing sigh. 'I miss you too!'

Knowing that she wasn't yet fully awake he decided to let her go, hoping she might get back to sleep.

'I just wanted to tell you that I love you kiddo.'   He felt great saying it.

'I’ll see you soon right?' she asked.

'Yeah three days'.  He said it quickly.

'I love you kid, can't wait to see you'. She said.

'Ok get some sleep you... bye'.  He hung up the phone before she had finished saying goodbye.  He was really rethinking this whole situation.  The number of things that could go wrong was absurd.  It all seemed too easy how he got here. 

Sayid had a friend whose brother had martyred himself, only he had made such a mess killing hundreds of Jews and Christians that the leader of his extremist group felt great honor to have his younger brother in the ranks.  The brilliance of the entire situation was the simple fact that no known photograph existed of this man, their leader.  However many people in the news world had begun reporting that he was in fact fictitious.  Even other extremist factions were working hard at discrediting his existence. 

Pride is a dangerous affliction.

With all of these things happening in and around the same time the perfect climate was created for an eager photographer to ask the right question at the right time.  Now he faced the realization that he would be in the presence of this man, this terrorist, risking god knows what for a single shot. 

He figured Sayid’s friend would want something in return; money most likely and he figured he could pay him off for a few hundred dollars if not a grand. 

His knee was bouncing nervously and his gut was screaming with alarm, which on any other day he would have followed, but the whole thing seemed too nicely gift wrapped to bail out of.  This could be something huge and the greed did its job to quell his gut. 

His phone rang almost vibrating off the desk.  Sayid was downstairs.  He grabbed his gear, pausing at the door to take a deep breath.

Sayid was waiting in the car parked on the roundabout outside of the hotel, The Ambassador.  It was surrounded by lighted palm trees; thick ornate iron rod fencing and looked like it had been built for a prince a hundred years ago.  

Sayid sat, smoking a cigarette, in a white 89 Benz convertible with the top up, the wailing of his music competing with the purr of his engine. Sayid watched him as he came out of the lobby walking hurriedly carrying a large back pack full of gear over his shoulder, sticks in hand.  He raised the tripoded hand in a wave of sorts.  Sayid took a drag, letting the smoke spill from his nose and ashed in the overflowing tray in the dash.

'Sayid!  How are you?'  He said getting into the car. Sayid had a different look about him, his usual smile absent, and his brow lowered almost menacing.  The thought crossed his mind that almost all Middle Eastern people can go from looking like the sweetest people, salt-of-the-earth shirt off their backs, to plain right scary. He had learned this at a young age, his father Lebanese, was not one to piss off; though the kindest, loving soul he'd known.

Sayid flicked his smoke out the window.  'My friend if you think you are going to bring with you all this equipment you are dead wrong' Sayid spoke evenly and the choice of words did not go unnoticed.

'What the hell can I bring then?' he half snapped, solely due to nerves. 

'Just your camera' said Sayid.

'Unbelievable!’ He sighed, though he quickly warmed up to the idea.  Less gear felt safer and any ounce of that was needed. 'Okay' He said 'I guess I'll manage'

'You'll have to'

 Sayid threw the car in gear and sped off into the cool night air, leaving the comfort of the gated hotel. 

As they drove He noticed the city’s nightlife just waking up.  The club scene happened late and thumped its bass till the black sky broke with the blue of dawn.   He discretely watched Sayid driving with surgical precision through tight streets filled with mopeds and pedestrians. He thought about how much more relaxed driving was in down town Toronto. Or Montreal for that matter. He lit a smoke and tried again to relax, his hand trembling, betraying him.

'This is how it will work' Sayid said breaking the silence. 'I will drop you off at a specific location and leave you there where you will wait. You will be picked up by some of his men, they will bag you'.            

He almost coughed on his exhale.  'Bag me?’ He asked.

Sayid stared at him dumbfounded. 'Yes!  They certainly aren't going to take any chances letting you know where they are located'.

He felt foolish for asking and terrified that it might be a long ride to wherever they might take him, with a half suffocating dirty cloth bag over his head.  But of course they have to 'bag' me, he thought. Remembering movies that he had seen in which the bad guys always used black burlap bags, which they would duct, tape tightly at the neck. Jesus Christ, I can't do this. 

Sayid jerked the car down a narrow alley driving fast, the walls of the adjacent buildings close, so close he could touch them if he stuck his arm out of the window. 'Also, do not speak to them unless you are asked a direct question. You don't speak Arabic so answer them in French. This they will be able to understand.  Take the pictures, no more than a dozen. He will tell you what he wants. Once you are done they will bag you once more and deliver you back to where I am to drop you off and I will return' Sayid said over annunciating all his words. 'When you sell the picture you will give me ten thousand dollars, this money is for my friend who got you this meeting'.

'Ten grand!' I don't think I'll get half of that for these shots' he lied, knowing that they would net him much more though he knew not how much exactly. 

Sayid sighed, now frustrated, then continued with raised volume. 'Ten thousand whether you get that or not or they'll be consequences.’

The whole thing was now right out of control.  He could feel his hand trembling but didn't dare to look at it.  Seeing his own fear realized physically would be too much. 

'Sayid, I'm starting to rethink this'. 

Sayid lit another cigarette letting his words hand in the air.

'Habbibi, I'm afraid there is no turning back now' he said a hint of his gentler self returning, almost apologetically.  'You'll be quite fine, and you will tell me all about it when I pick you up.' Sayid smiled at him broadly now.

His cell phone rang.  The ring tone was an Arabic song. Sayid answered it, agreed a few times and hung up.

‘We are almost there.’ 

Sayid veered the car onto a different street, the city and its parties now in the distance. The houses and store fronts all low and stacked on top of each other. Random whinny music from old radios doppled by from open windows. Still the streets crowded with people, so many people seemingly all the time.  What were they all doing?  What were their lives like?  The urge to capture them flooded him and he realized he needed to get just his camera out and the best zoom he had. Swapping out the 50mm prime for a 24-200mm; onerously ignoring his quaking hands. 

Sayid slowed the car and turned down an alleyway stopping just at its threshold. 

'Here we are.  Good luck Habbibi'. Sayid shook his hand firmly.

He tried to smile in return but failed and, taking a deep breath as if he were about to swim to some outrageous depth, flung the door open and got out.

He watched the old Benz speed off, leaving him alone in a dark alley. 

You are fucking crazy.

He stood for what seemed like an eternity, his senses heightened, three minutes in reality.  Scanning the surrounding buildings he noticed a faded MacDonald’s billboard painted on the side of one of them.  How strange with it's Arabic writing.

He lit a cigarette. 

Smoking nervously, he jumped at the slightest sound, constantly looking up and down the alleyway fully expecting to be mugged before the real bad guys even got there.  Shouting he heard in the distance set the hairs on the back of his neck on end.  He had finished his cigarette, thought about smoking another but didn't, and instead he thumbed the focusing ring of his cameras lens.

Shit I forgot my flash!! If the lights low I'll just have to use-- god damn it! He was without his tripod as well.  It would be impossible to hold the frame steadily enough.  The shots would be garbage, blurred; ruined, this whole mess entirely moot. 

Suddenly the sound of a speeding car ricocheted off the walls.  He turned and saw a black Range Rover, the windows so tinted that at first it appeared to not have windows at all, bouncing through the alleyway.  The fear dried his throat.  It pulled up twenty feet away and he instinctually put his hands, which had ceased their shaking, in the air.  Three men jumped out, all wearing something to cover their faces.  One of them was shouting and pointing, wanting he thought, to have him turn around.  He did just that, hands still raised above his head.  He looked down the alleyway and saw a stray dog pissing on the wall - the world went black. 

He had expected to be thrown into the trunk but thankfully Range Rovers don't have conventional trunks.  Instead he was seated between two of the men, comfortable enough.  He could feel the vehicle speeding down the streets, the driver honking the horn every few seconds.  He had been thoroughly padded down after having his head put into a bag.  They found his cigarettes, one of the men looked through the pack suspiciously, then took one for himself when he was satisfied that they were in fact just smokes.  They found the jump drive and his Blackberry, which were simply tossed on the ground.  The man who tossed them moaned something in Arabic about being able to find them here when he got dropped off to the other men.  

The vehicle turned sharply left.

Then right. 

So many turns that had he been trying to keep track of the route he would have failed magnanimously.  He was clutching his camera to protect it and so that it might protect him.  He wondered if the men were armed.  He hadn't seen any weapons but was sure they had something that fired bullets and took lives. His face was sweating and the exhale of his own breath was making him feel light headed.

Closter phobia.

Don't let the thought exist, make it different.

He wanted to be at home, in his living room doing nothing with his girl.  He vowed to call her the second he got back to the hotel.

He remembered that his phone was in his pocket and he prayed it wouldn't go off.  Should have left it. 

The vehicle swerved hard and didn't come out of it. 

We're crashing. 

I'm going to be in an accident with three extremists and a bag over my head.  They'll find me and inform my loved ones that I had probably been kidnapped by terrorist; they'll never know this was a decision that I made.  But the crash didn't happen, the Rover didn't roll but they were still banking hard - were driving in circles!!

Is this to fully confuse me?

Finally they came out of the hard loops and he and his two new friends all went flying to the other side of the truck. He gripped his camera tight, breathing laboriously, face hot and eyes shut fearfully.  Seconds later the vehicle came to a stop, the doors opened and he was pulled out.

He was lead for a while, having to trust whoever was leading him.  When they stopped he was pushed back but landed in a chair.  The bag came off, the fresh air like a cold shower.  He could barely see anything at first but slowly his sight found him.

He was baffled. 

The room he was in was beautiful, the walls cover in fantastical paintings.  The ceilings of the room vaulted and painted as well.  It was not what he had imagined.

Never assume he heard echo in his mind.

On the floor ahead of him about ten feet away, giant, colorful pillows created a sitting area.  He was impressed and thankful that the room was well lit. A man entered, face covered like his escorts. He barked something in Arabic.

'Je ne comprant pas.' he answered like Sayid had told him.

The covered face man then switched to French, telling him that his leader would enter with one other man and the two would stand against the far wall and that only three pictures should be taken.  The man asked him if he understood and he responded by nodding his head yes. The man with the covered face left the room. 

Quickly he pulled the lens cap off and checked his meter and framing.  As he found it a bearded man with very intense presence, dressed in a long shirt and a plain vest, entered the room with a young man almost the same age as He.  The leader carried a framed picture of a man that looked younger than the other.  The face looked terribly familiar.  He had seen it on the news countless times.

Oh my God.

It was he that killed the hundreds of Christians and Jews. 

Hatred breeds hatred.

The bearded leader spoke with a booming voice.  He wasn't speaking to everyone though it sounded as he might be, but he spoke in French and spoke directly to Him. The leader declared that he should feel blessed that he had been allowed to be the photographer to take such an important photograph; important to their cause, the family of the Martyr and to the pages of history.  He listened carefully, the leaders French was Parisian and quite different from the Quebecois slang he was brought up with.  He made every effort to listen without expression. Thoughts of hatred and the possibility that they might also want financial restitution from these photographs filled his head.

Would they threaten my life?

Or the lives of my family? 

Could they track me down in Toronto and take my girl from our home?

Rip her from her bed while she rests? Take her away, torture her, beat her to within inches of her last breath?

All for money.  How much might they want?  Fifty grand?  A hundred?  A million?  He thought he might vomit in that moment.  He realized he hadn't been listening at all.  Hadn't been blinking or breathing.  He felt moisture drip and slide down his body, his shirt no doubt stained dark with nervous sweat.  He would regret this decision forever. The leader still spoke but He could not hear words, his ears burned with white guilt keeping the audible at bay. 

Snap out of it man.

Everything stopped.  The leader looked to him, waiting. What had been asked?  What do I say?  He nodded, the only thing he could think to do.

'New York Times' the leader said to him then turned his focus, switched to Arabic and started barking at his men.

The leader with the framed portrait in hand and the young man took up position standing before the painted wall.  There the leader placed a hand on the young mans shoulder as the two shared in the holding of the portrait.  Instinct took over.  He worked methodically framing, metering, double checking his focus and firing. Re-framing, metering, focusing and firing. He lost track of how many shots he had taken but wanted one more from a lower angle.  The leader though was done with it and was moving away when He said, 's'il te plait!  Encore une fois'. Without wasting time for an answer he got low, really low on his side so that he almost laid down, to frame the shot. 

The leader perhaps envisioning the result stepped back slowly and repositioned himself. 

Frame, meter, focus, fire. Got it. 

He checked the playback quickly and liked what he saw.  Standing back up the leader and his men were milling about and the framed portrait was taken away by one of his men and another of his men approached Him, burlap bag in hand. He stared at the leader who nodded at him and He found himself nodding back. Then the world went black again and he was lead out of the room just as crazed shouting filled it. He was pushed from the room and fell to the floor in the hall the bag slipping off enough that he could see somewhat.  He was alone.  Gunfire rang out, rapid machine gun fire that sounded like a choir or steel snare drums being played, over a symphony of screams and frantic yelling.  He jumped to his feet and ran down the hall a ways before seeing two men with vicious machine guns in their hands that seemed to not notice him at all.  He pressed himself against the wall when they approached and stayed glued to it well after they had past.

What is going on? 

Run! 

He didn't hear it but he felt the pressure of it on his ear drums as if he were in a plane climbing far too fast.  It threw him several feet slamming him hard on the Marble floor. When he opened his eyes, grey, was all he could see.  He chocked a cough and spat an amuse bouche of concrete dust, high explosive and blood.  It was exaggeratedly quite, he wondered if he might be dead.  Panicked, he searched himself for wounds.  He seemed fine but could not explain the amount of blood all over him.

Your camera!  He looked it over, found it intact, wiped the lens clean and turned it on.

Get out of this building.  He got up feeling somehow fine.

Move.  He stumblingly jogged down the hall trying different doors eventually finding one that opened into an alleyway.  He followed it to the street, the scene before him stopping him dead in his tracks.

The street itself chard, people moving rudderless, some bloody and injured others crying and screaming.  A bellow of angry black smoke rushed skyward from what might have been a car.  Its front half plowed into what was once a building, now a horizontal crater.  Bodies were strewn about in the blackened carcass of what remained of the edifice.  This was the room he had just been in.  His eyes searched the bodies. 

There he was.  The bearded leader, a pool of blood collected from his shredded shoulder, his arm nowhere in sight. His face blackened, the beard half burnt off -dead.

He found frame and fired, the shutter going off in rapid succession. He moved himself closer to the dead men and fired countless frames, wiping his lens as often as he could remember to do so. He moved quickly back out of the chard structure and shot as wide as he could fitting as much as he could into his lens. He turned and captured the scene surrounding the epicenter of the blast.  Injured faces fearful and screaming.  A thin man, shirt torn half off by the force of the blast stood blatting cries of sorrow for the little girl he carried in his arms; her little inners dangling out of her stomach and over his wrist.  The lens protected Him and made it all make-believe. He fired more frames, random shots, in the last one people were pointing up to the roof top of a nearby building he swung himself in that direction never dropping the viewfinder from his eye and began firing anew.

There on the rooftop above a fade ad for MacDonald’s a man pulled a rocket launcher onto his shoulder and took aim. 

A rocket launcher.

His body was already on the move before his brain could relay the message. He heard the sound of its death flight, screaming towards its target.  He ran faster then he knew he could and dove a round a corner for protection. This time he heard the explosion and saw the street fill with dust. The ground began to rumble, he peered around the wall to see what it was.

A tank?  An earth quake? 

The rest of the building, the one he had just been in, was crumbling in on itself. He wiped his lens and fired frame after frame until the dust rushed towards him and choked the air out of his lungs. He pushed himself up and moved away from the scene fighting the crowds rushing towards it.  When he was well enough away he stopped, struggled to breathe, and finally he vomited until his stomach wretched. 

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, still doubled over when He heard a car horn honking in long intervals. 

He looked up.  It was Sayid.

طفل