Mind on Baghdad and Bad Memories
She shrugs. She has been sleeping in her pantyhose on the couch in the bathroom, listening to the cleaning lady run her duster, (a stick with a blue cloth tied to it) through the semi darkness, the world has rocked. She drops into a chair on a damp Holiday Inn towel. He pulls her and the chair away from the wall until she's directly in front of the TV. On the screen, Saddam Hussein glowers, his beetle brow and mushroom fleshiness at the head of a banquet table. Followers surround him. Their mouths move, but the men look made of play dough. Saddam is warning America that Iraq will destroy if they attack. His hand closes into a fist on the table that is covered in red cloth. Behind him hangs a red banner like a gush of blood, the color of torture, of men being beaten with sticks soaked in water so they cut flesh like butter, men beaten so much it is impossib-le to tell if they're wearing clothes. The Iraqis use cheap film in their cameras. The streaky footage cuts to the streets where civilians have been bombed. Every pair of eyes, orange coals, every factory and street, every barefoot, soaked in oranges as if Iraq is a burning blurred land. She rubs her temples; thinks of her own orange days of doing cocaine, hating it, but taking it because she was young and lost. It was her first year of being maimed and she stewed in the dormitory bathroom, eating Popsicles and staring at herself in the mirror as if looking could change something.
"Listen to that son of a bitch," The man bounces to his feet.
Her life is out of control, most days are good, but the bad days cast long shadows.
The volume goes up.
Later, Baghdad disappears from the screen and is replaced by an oil spill on the Black Sea. White cranes drenched in crude oil huddle on shore. They'll starve, the announcer says, if they don't die of oil sickness. She can feel the despair of the cranes staring out to sea. The fish dead, the plankton smothered. Saddam was beaten as a child, as these white cranes played.
"Listen to that son of a bitch," The man bounces to his feet.
Her life is out of control, most days are good, but the bad days cast long shadows.
The volume goes up.
Later, Baghdad disappears from the screen and is replaced by an oil spill on the Black Sea. White cranes drenched in crude oil huddle on shore. They'll starve, the announcer says, if they don't die of oil sickness. She can feel the despair of the cranes staring out to sea. The fish dead, the plankton smothered. Saddam was beaten as a child, as these white cranes played.