The Danger of a Single Story
Project Reflection
- This project was widely focused on understanding the whole truth of imperialism, africas civil state and history, and undermining stereotypes through writing a short piece of historical fiction based off of research from a chosen south african country, which varied per student. In order to gain a sufficient amount of background knowledge, we read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, watched King Leopold's Ghost, and analyzed The White Man's Burden.
- My largest takeaway from this project is that in order to make a piece of fiction accurately reflect reality you have to include the whole truth behind a subject, not simply showing a one-sided stereotype.
- Writing my piece of historical fiction was my favorite part of the project and the part which I did best, but also the most stressful part. I put a lot of time and effort into the writing but I lost my second and third drafts due to technical difficulties. I turned in my first draft as my final piece and and received a 210/250.
- My cover art was something I did last minute after coming to terms with losing the rest of my work. I didn’t put even a fraction of the effort into this as I did with the story itself but I still think I did well to communicate the tone of my story through symbolic and metaphorical elements.
- In all honesty, I was very disappointed with this project. I started it, excited to finally do some creative writing, I enjoyed the book but the overall process and structure of class and everything leading up to the exhibition was way too strict and when I have boundaries around my writing, it makes it difficult to do well.
Dead Weight by Alden Gray-Stallings
(May 20, 1983)
“I’m not sure if Maputo is a good place for me to settle. This civil war is getting worse and worse by the day, as is my sleep. There isn’t too much violence here, but I’ve noticed more and more homeless men and women accumulating on this side of the city. I’ve exchanged many U.S. dollars for Mozambican meticais and I don’t think anyone has gotten too suspicious. I have a meeting with the owner of a large mansion on the outskirts of the country soon and I think buying might be a wise decision if things continue to go the way they have been.”
The clock on the wall showed 6:43, but it was four minutes slow. His plate was clean, his cup, half empty; his eyes were watery and his stomach, half full. At this point, where he laid on his cot, everything was fine. Not perfect, but no one’s life ever is. He had a new life entirely. Finally, a fresh start, a new beginning, a chance to forget the past, embrace the present, and look to the future. The key figures of his old life hadn’t seen, heard of, nor worried about his return since the dust had settled on the surface of his puddled blood as they disregarded his spasmodic body shrinking in the rearview mirror. At a time where the vicious people with whom he once trusted with his life had broken this trust, he could rest his head in solemnity, and pursue what it means to truly live. He had no real goals or external motivation. Nothing that he was really working towards, just simply trying to maintain his contentment with his new-found sense of being, as he had been for nearly a year. The woman at the fruit stand always set aside fresh tomatoes for his routine purchase, the bum on the corner three blocks closer to his house always greeted him with a smile in knowing that his empty hands would be slightly weighted for a day, the barefoot boys dribbling a soccer ball through the alleyways in the afternoon always made a playful gesture to pass the ball to him when they identified his long dreadlocks. He had no regular job, only the wise spending of the remnants of his “inherited” fortune. The one-room house was spacious. There was a small table by the oven and counter at the wall, above which cabinets containing dishes hung, a sink, a curtain hiding the toilet and a washtub, his cot, and his desk on which his pencils and sketchbook were set neatly for the next time he felt a flush of artistic motivation. The windows were cracked, but the glass was clear, revealing his dented, gray pickup truck in the driveway. A glance over the shoulder every other corner and a single eye open in the dark of night was no longer necessary, but comforting. His worries had vanished and his beard had grown. The floorboards were loose and creaky, beneath which he kept his journal and boxes of assorted large and small bills, providing that each and every day he had enough change in his pockets to rattle down the street, buy an inexpensive dinner, and support the drug habit of the transient on the curb on the way back home. The mirror above the sink had a crack running diagonally, distorting the reflection of soapy water dripping from his pronounced cheekbones. He ran his fingers through his thick beard. “I need to shave,” he said to himself under his breath. His lips shaped an unseen smile at the thought. Most of his thoughts before that point were grimmer and more dire. The things Burhaan Amburo needed to do usually consisted of relocating crates of conspicuous cargo to drop spots for over-the-border transactions, staying hidden from public sight after a violent heist, or as his old boss had put it, assuring the silence of those who knew too much. The red light of the falling sun folded through the window. Burhaan let it warm his skin until it vanished behind his neighbors’ houses. He lit a candle and sat at his desk with his sketchbook a pencil, and a knife to keep it sharp. He drew a leftward facing curve off of the center and paused to look at it. Having no idea what to draw usually wasn’t a problem. Most of the time, the lines, curves, and shading put itself together at the tips of his fingers. He looked at the curve with intensity. It could be the side of a face, or the bottom of an eye, or an infinite number of other things but his hand had no creative motion in it that night. He felt a strange underlying sense of destruction beneath his contentment. Though he had cleaned his act for the most part, all of the memories were still there and the pain found its way to the surface nightly. It was not a healthy night to overthink everything, so avoid his cascade into negativity, he gave into his fatigue. He then laid on his cot, and closed his eyes.
He found himself in a familiar setting: the little Somalian village where he grew up with his foster family. It was an event among many others that he relived in almost every dream. As the smoke grew thicker in the air, his eyes stung and he struggled to keep them open. The blurring movement in the distance between the streetlights seemed to disrupt his vision in an almost hallucinogenic way. It could have been the past four nights of utterly painful consciousness or a number of other things, but what he saw and what he knew were one and the same. Violence. He regained focus. After the first explosion, his ears rang so loudly that the next two sounded as muffled gusts of wind. The ringing widened into a low drone. His heartbeat struck his veins so bracingly that his skull sounded as if it shattered with each pulse, again and again. To him, suicide was a topic that was commonly considered, but never before had he wanted to stop his heartbeat for this reason. A woman ran across the street before him and her footsteps seemed as nonexistent as his chance of survival. The rag did well to filter the fumes from each inhalation, but the scents remained. Which smelled stronger? The burning tires in the roads, or the corpses? He’d learned the simple differences of the two as a child, but now his shell shocked perception disregarded the necessity of sensory definition. He kept his mouth closed. He dared not breathe in the agony that surrounded him. A swallow of blood each time his mouth refilled was enough to distract him from the pain where his molars had once been. The flavor of terror was all too familiar. The ground was no longer shaking, but his legs were. The fringed edges of the tears in his jeans were blood-welded to his kneecaps. His fists were clenched so tightly that his nails punctured his palms. More blood dribbled from between his knuckles with each violent heartbeat. He was in a state functioning only from primal instinct. All along his shaking body, he could feel nothing. Nothing but fear.
He opened his eyes into the shimmering morning light. Sweat had welled up in the divot between his collarbones and neck, causing his dark skin to shine and sparkle like overturned garden soil. He sat up and with the back of his hand, wiped the tears and sweat that had beaded above his temples. He walked to the sink and splashed his face with tap water. Straight razor in hand, he began cleaving his thickened facial hair from his angular jaw. As if to remake a work of picasso, he gradually revealed segments of his scarred face to the cracked mirror from different angles. He washed the soap from his chin, wiped both sides of the razor on a hand towel, and met the berating green eyes of his warped reflection. He hadn’t seen all of his face for a long time. He looked like another man entirely. Scanning across the defined muscles of his neck, shoulders, down his arms to the fringed tips of his braided dreads, he pondered how well he could actually recognize the man he had become. He was almost proud until his line of sight crossed to the indention of the crescent shaped scar above his heart. He ran his fingertips over the distortion of his smooth skin and felt a linear tingling through his flesh, where the bullet had been so many months before.
Matisse was driving the cargo truck at a dangerous speed. The dirt road was narrow, cliffs ascending on the left and descending on the right. Matisse turned a tight leftward corner and the inertia shifted; Burhaan’s blood spilling over the edge of the leather seat where it had pooled. He pressed his palm tightly over the hole in his lower chest, barely able to slow the bleeding. He moaned and grunted with each turn, but it was drowned out by the engine and the tire treads popping around the rocks on the road. An assault rifle slipped from its perch between the seats and Burhaan looked directly down the barrel. He readjusted it to point to the ceiling with his unoccupied hand. They turned another corner and proceeded down into the valley. There was a switchback below the higher road where Matisse slowed to a halt, but let the engine run.
“Why did we stop?” Burhaan wheezed.
“What’s the take?” Matisse asked Farai, Ignoring Burhaan.
Burhaan knew better than to demand a response from his boss. He was a dangerous man. This had been exhibited time and time again.
“The American said it looked like about twenty three million worth before he took one in the skull.” Farai answered, leaning forward between the seats.
“U.S. Dollars?” The look in his eyes changed. They were unfocused and glossed with greed.
“Yeah.”
Burhaan let out another groan of pain.
“How are you holding together?” Matisse asked.
“I think I might make it if we can get to a doctor before nightfall.” He coughed and blood poured out from his lips.
“We’re too far from camp,” Farai said. “And I doubt you’d even last that long.”
“Please, we have to-” He coughed up more blood before he could finish his sentence.
There was a pause as the two uninjured men exchanged a look in subtle decision.
Matisse nodded and demanded, “Pass me the med kit.”
Farai pulled a first aid box from the wall and handed it Matisse, who placed it in Burhaan’s lap.
“I’m sorry my boy,” he said in a low tone. “But you’re just dead weight, now.” He leaned over, opened the passenger door, and pushed Burhaan out onto the ground. He began shaking violently, bleeding more and more profusely, until he stopped moving. Gunshots rang out from further up the valley. A dented pickup truck sped towards them. The passenger was leaning out the window with a rifle firing away in their direction. Matisse stomped on the accelerator, leaving Burhaan unconscious on the ground. The pursuers briefly slowed by him and the gunman in the truck bed said, “Keep going, he’s dead.”
When the dust settled, Burhaan gasped back to consciousness. He rolled onto his side abruptly and opened the first aid kit. Most of the supplies had already been used; all that remained were a needle, thread, a roll of gauze bandage, and a half syringe of morphine. He immediately pumped the morphine directly into the wound, sat up, and tore off his blood soaked shirt to wrap the bandage around his chest until there was no more. It wasn’t tight enough to stop the external bleeding, but the morphine kicked in quickly. He stood and heard a metallic crash in echo down the valley followed by gunshots. Then splashing water from a faucet. His eyes widened and he reentered the moment, razor in his shaking hand, water still running. He focused on his reflection and slowed his breathing. His skin was smooth but his past was not. He turned the water off, put on a nice collared shirt, slipped his feet into a worn down pair of sandals, and took 2000 meticais from his stash. Before replacing the floorboards, he sat at his desk with his increasingly incriminating journal.
(May 21, 1983)
“The dreams aren’t getting any better, if anything, they're only getting worse. Last night, it was the one from the day I was abducted. I usually wake up when the bombs go off, but it went on longer. This morning, I shaved my beard for the first time in months. I think seeing my whole face triggered more vivid memories. I look more professional, maybe I should try to find a job. People might start wondering where all my money is coming from, and it never hurts to have a little additional income.”
Burhaan hid his journal and opened the door, letting the sounds of Maputo flood his ears before taking his regular route to the produce store. Gabrielle, the owner, had a very sore look around her old eyes.
“You look troubled,” Burhaan said to her. “Something I can do?”
“No child,” she replied. “This violence, day by day, is beginning to chip away at my heart.”
“Yes, it seems this country finishes one war just to start another.” His eyes glazed over. “Why do you call me child?”
“Because you can’t be more than half my age,” She started, as if it was rehearsed “And you’ve never given me another title.”
“I’m thirty-six.”
“You’ve aged well.” She said, her tone slightly surprised.
“As have you.”
“You don’t need to lie to me,” she said as she put three tomatoes, an avocado and a head of lettuce into a paper bag. “I hear enough of those from my husband.”
Burhaan made his purchase and strolled around the block.
Children's joyful shouts rolled around the houses and businesses. A soccer ball rolled from a wide alleyway to Burhans feet. Four young boys stopped playing and stood in a crescent formation to watch Burhaan with awe, who smiled and kicked the ball back to them. As he continued walking, paper bag tucked under his left arm, he heard one of the boy’s adolescent voice say, “I want to be like him when I’m older.”
He was now out of earshot, but in a low tone, he said, “I hope you won’t be.”
He overshot the beggars perch by a block, and came to a liquor store. He stood outside for a moment, mulling over the possibility of drowning his night-terrors in alcohol. He succumbed to the temptation, and found his way home with a second paper bag, concealing a bottle of rum.
While the stars and moon crept over the city, Burhaan took to his desk. The page of his scrapbook from the previous night was still lying peacefully, the single curve of graphite glistening in the candlelight. He picked up the pencil, sliced away curls of the soft wood until the point was sharp enough to be weaponized. Slowly, steadily, and blissfully, the single, lonely curve turned into a magnificently shaded portrait of the four boys in the alleyway, mouths agape, and eyes wider. His gaze softened, content with his work. Glancing across the room, his widened pupils found the bottle of rum on the table. He took a moment to admire the persistence of the second hand ticking in circles and decided it was time. He strutted through the dim light and poured himself a glass. He took a sip and letting it burn gently down his throat, repositioned himself so that he was sitting on the edge of the table, one leg swaying, the other strongly rooted on the ground. He finished his glass and poured another. The sips turned to gulps, followed by prolonged closure of his eyes. One last swallow and in the darkness behind his eyelids, Matisse’s face appeared. His eyes reopened, more watery than before. His final attempt to pull the cork from the bottle was interrupted by the room, as he perceived it, rotating around him, as if he was the center point of the clock. In another long blink, he saw the way his hands used to be; small, fragile, childlike, and covered in blood. He stood up and started for his cot. He felt his head hit the fabric, worsening the bassy throbbing followed by the crawling of the grainy scar tissue of his back. Slowly, unsteadily, his vision blurred to darkness. Once again, this darkness provided the perfect backdrop for him to lucidly relive his trauma.
In the muddy mixture of dirt and blood where he laid just as he was left by Matisse, his eyelids rolled apart and he awoke into another coughing fit. Again, syringe in the wound, bandage restricting his breath. The alcohol, inhibiting his real state of mind, replaced the sensation of the morphine. When he stood, his world of painful reminiscence began to spin. The same metallic crash was heard, but it was morphed in a strange hollow way. Followed by the gunshots He was overcome by dizziness, but his steps towards the noise were no more staggered then they should have been. In most of his recurring nightmares, he felt the same emotions, and took the same courses of action. This time however, he felt as if he wasn’t in control of his body. He felt automated. Possessed. His body was inhabited by the man he used to be, and all the drunken, unconscious Burhaan could do was observe himself through his own unfamiliar eyes. He stumbled up the road, more blood coming from his mouth and nose than from the bullet hole. Drop by drop he left his reddened trail leading to the source of the noise. The cargo truck was on its side, boxes of money, drugs, and jewels strewn across the road. Among them laid four copses, the three pursuers and Farai. Numerous wounds of varying caliber decorated the bodies. A pair of tire tracks led away from the scene, left by Matisse, who had taken the pickup. The wobbling world was soon to be descended upon by vultures, followed by starlight. Burhaan’s mind being impaired even more than his physical condition, he crawled inside the overturned haul and let his consciousness slip out.
(May 22, 1983)
“Last night I tried drinking again for the first time in months. I thought it might help calm my mind, or at least slow it down, but all it did was worsen the physical sensations of my nightmares. From what I remember, it was from the evening when Matisse left me for dead. I remember seeing Farai’s body riddled with bullet holes, just the way it was, but it seems like there were a lot of subtle differences; less blood on the ground, more holes in the truck. It was warmer, too. Maybe it was the alcohol, but usually the dreams are lucid and I feel exactly as I did when these things actually happened. I don’t know if I’m getting better or worse, but I resent sleep and wake up in tears. I can’t go on like this, but I think I’ll make it. Either way, hell is much easier to go through in retrospective. On a brighter note, I’m meeting the owner of the mansion today. This gives me something to do with this money.”
Burhaan finished writing the final sentence and closed his journal. He doused his face in chilled water and dabbed it dry with a hand towel. As he revealed his eyes to his reflection, painful reminiscence found its way to the surface. Matisse was a man Burhaan once respected, but at this time all of the hard found respect was converted into resentment, only half of which was directed to Matisse, the other half at himself. The bottle on the table was still half full, as if prompting him to finish it off. “Not now,” he quietly said to himself. “Not until I need it.”
Hours passed and Burhaan drove to his meeting. He sat on a park bench in a small uninhabited field. After a few moments, he began to get impatient, but a tall white man in a suit holding a briefcase approached and sat beside him. “Mr. Amburo?” he asked.
“Call me Burhaan.”
“You recall our brief phone conversation last week.”
“Yes, Mr. Kane.” He answered. “You said you would take care of the official reports of the sale in my name, after you received the payment.”
“We have both upheld each end of this transaction.” He opened the briefcase and handed Burhaan a map from inside, containing the rout and address to the mansion, and the key to the front doors. Hands were shaken and Burhaan returned to his house for his final night in Maputo.
Burhaan packed most of his belongings into the back of his truck; pots, pans, knives, his journal, and the remaining twelve million dollars. He was not afraid of robbery as it was late and his damaged truck looked less expensive than the clothes he wore. All that remained in the house was his cot, the bottle of rum, and a handgun. He laid on his cot and his eyes gradually closed. Then there was a loud whistle-like noise rapidly ascending in tone. Burhaan opened his eyes. A reality-shattering explosion shredded half of the block. Then another, further away, but louder still in Burhaan’s ears left nothing but a crater in the market square. Burhaan burst outside, his ears carrying the off key ringing. He couldn’t hear the car alarms, nor the screaming of his neighbors, but he didn’t need to in order to understand how to survive this moment. He looked up at a jet approaching in the distance. It fired another missile toward his neighborhood. Burhaan ran back inside his house, and ducked beside his cot. Another explosion, much closer. The shock wave threw him, his cot, and half of his house into the other side, forcing the second wall down. His truck rolled over once, onto its side, and fell back onto its wheels. One of the six crates fell from its restraint and cracked open on the ground, money sailing in the wind. Burhaan crawled from the rubble, disregarded the two-million lost dollars, picked up the pistol and the somehow unscathed bottle of rum and leaped into his car. He turned the key. Nothing happened. Again, revving it for a few seconds longer. Finally the truck's engine cursed the flaming ground. Burhaan stomped the pedal to the floor and the speedometers needle met forty kilometers per hour in very little time. He looked into the mirror and as the drone in his ears slowly quieted, the truck accelerated, and he watched the shrapnel fly from his home in one final fiery statement.
It was noon, one day after South Africa's missile strikes on a residential area in Maputo. Burhaan hadn’t stopped the car since he left. He hadn’t closed his eyes for hours, not even to blink. He spent the entire time pondering his life up to that point. Abducted, forced to be a child soldier, escaping with his closest friends, wading through years of blood and mud, dirtying his hands, heists and murders, one after the other, only to be betrayed by those he trusted most. And now this. After settling down and trying to live the rest of his life in peace, Mozambique's civil war just increased in violence. The trauma haunting him from the rest of his life was already a disability enough. The truck was running on reserve. He pulled over and poured more into the tank from a gas can in the back seat and returned to the wheel. The day was brisk and he was far from the coast, driving along the border of Zimbabwe. Five more hours rolled by and at long last, he skidded into his driveway. He limped through a large courtyard surrounding a dry fountain and pushed the key into the lock of the two massive doors. The humidity of the outside polished his lungs as he opened the doors to his colossal, bright, new, furnished home. In the main entrance, there hung a chandelier between two staircases on either side of the room, illuminating the doorways to the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom. He stayed motionless between the doors and gandered at the architectural divinity.
(May 24, 1983)
“Last night was not one I want to remember, yet it will never be forgotten. I’m not sure if I want to go on anymore. I’m not sure I can. Why is it that every time I survive a nearly impossible situation, I always regret my decision to live?”
He had just finished moving all of his remaining possessions into the mansion. Sitting on the sofa in the living room with his feet beside his pistol on the coffee table in front of him, Burhaan’s stomach made a low rumbling noise. He stood, walked into the kitchen, took a butter knife from the drawer beneath the counter and started to spread peanut butter on a piece of bread. He lifted it to his mouth to take a bite, but was interrupted by a knock at the front door, echoing through this new home so ominously. He stood still, wondering who on earth would be knocking on his door. They knocked again, and he dropped the peanut-buttered bread. He took a sharper fillet knife from the same drawer, and approached the door. He waited for a third knock, but after several seconds, it did not come. Holding the knife out of sight in his right hand, he used his left to open the door. His blank expression was immediately met by the barrel of a six shot revolver. “Back up.” Matisse ordered. Burhaan slowly stepped back, turning just so the knife went unseen. He swallowed and said, “Matisse. Great way to greet an old friend.”
“How did you survive?” Matisse asked, slowly.
“Survive what?”
“Getting shot.”
Burhaan chuckled quietly. “I’d almost forgotten about that after last night.”
“Last night?” One of his eyebrows was raised.
“I was in the bombings.”
“My god…” There was much surprise in Matisse’s voice. “How did you get to Maputo?”
“After you left me to rot,” Burhaan began. “I slept in the truck bed, bleeding out for a day. Eventually an old man, a Botswanan immigrant, drove up to the wreckage. I gave him a quarter of what was left to drive me to Maputo and stay quiet about who I was. He stitched me up and gave me some opiates for the pain. We never got the bullet out. How did you find me?”
Matisse lowered the gun from Burhaan’s head to his chest. “Such a large purchase in such a meaningful name was bound to draw my attention.”
Burhaan’s eyes sought the floor.
“I truly am sorry.” Matisse said.
Burhaan realigned his eyes to meet Matisse’s and developed a glare. “Then why are you holding me at gunpoint?”
Matisse pulled back the hammer. “I came for the money.”
“Of course.” Burhaan sighed.
“You will make this easier and show me to it, won’t you?” Matisse’s words sounded more like a command than a question.
“Right this way.” Burhaan spun the knife and slashed open Matisse’s right arm, from which he dropped the gun. It went off into the base of the overhead chandelier and he let out a cry of pain. Burhaan sprinted for the staircase.
“You fool!” Matisse picked up the gun with his non dominant hand and fired three rounds his direction, all of which left blackened holes in the wall behind him as he ran. “This could have been avoided!”
With his old mentor in pursuit, Burhaan pulsed through a long hallway and ducked into a small room, empty aside from a large rug and floral wallpaper that matched the rest of the second floor. Breathing heavily as his back hit the wall by the door, another bullet tore through the wall next to his head. Loud footsteps stopped at the entrance. Matisse stepped through the doorway and Burhaan lunged at him. The gun went off again, passing through the flesh below his left shoulder, and his open hand met Matisse’s throat, forcing his head back onto the corner of the doorway. The two fell to the floor, struggling and bleeding with vicious intent. Matisse put his foot on Burhaans chest, forcing him off. The two paused, nostrils flaring, breath rumbling like the growls of two foul beasts. Then, the smell of smoke suspended in the thinning air.
“Stop.” Burhaan croaked.
“Fire.” Matisse said, wearily.
“The wiring to the chandelier.”
They stared at one another for a moment, anticipating attack. Burhaan broke the silence.
“We need to get out.”
They stood and Matisse asked in a sarcastic tone, “Have you forgiven me already?”
“We’ll see about that if we both make it out of here alive.”
They ran back through the hallway and into the main hall, smoke thickening. The flames painted the walls and clutched the stairways in its blazing jaws. They stopped at the balcony and made panicked eye contact. There was no way off of the second floor.
“The window?” Matisse suggested.
“Too high.” Burhaan replied.
From outside, Matisse's name was yelled, barely heard over the roaring fire.
“Backup?” Burhaan said, beads of sweat rolling down the sides of his face. “You fu-”
“They’re here to help us!”
“To hell with that,” He interjected. “They’ll kill me on sight!”
There was a pause, then the front doors were smashed open. Four men holding rifles lined up in the entryway. Matisse broke a long piece of wood from the railing, which was beginning to burn, and swung at Burhaan, catching him in the already bleeding side of his face. He fell to his hands and knees and looked up at Matisse, who was walking towards him with a menacing stride, surrounded by falling sparks and dripping with blood. Fire engulfed everything around them. Matisse raised the embered pole to strike once more, but Burhaan swept his leg out from beneath him. As he stood, Matisse fell. His back hit the floor and it cracked. The floorboards dropped out from under Burhaan and the two came crashing down to the living room. At this point, the heat was so unbearable that the impact of hitting the ground was felt harder Burhaan lost his breath and began coughing violently. Blood dribbled down his chin and he opened his eyes. The fire was much louder in the smaller space. Matisse’s screams creeped between the other noises and Burhaan looked to see him on his back, a huge beam laying across his chest. The lower end of the beam was engulfed in flame.
“Help me!” He huffed.
Two men approached the room’s entrance. The pistol was still on the table, until Burhaan took it in his hand. Shots went into the wall behind him and he returned fire, three rounds and two warm corpses.
“Help you?” Burhaan looked at Matisse with one eyebrow raised, hatred in his voice
He groaned in sequence with the crackling of the fire.
“You want me to help you?”
“Please Burhaan, I’ll die!”
Burhaan yelled in rage. “You’ll die?” His then voice quieted so that it was barely loud enough to be heard over the crumbling building and the look in his eyes changed from anger to a dark malicious hatred. “I’m the one who you left bleeding to death on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.”
The fire crept further up the beam, towards Matisse's head. “I’ll change!”
The other two men came through the blackened doorway and Burhaan put them down before they had a chance to aim their weapons.
“You’ve already changed.” Burhaan turned to face him and squatted down to eye level.
“Please give me another chance!” Tears began to roll from his eyes.
“I’m sorry my boy,” Burhaan said, “But you’re just dead weight, now.”
He rose and walked away, shreds of the ceiling and walls peeling off, the stairs like waterfalls of fire and ash, the mansion imploding to its demise. Before he strutted out, he broke off a piece of the flaming doorframe and pressed the hottest, yet least ashen part over his freshest gunshot wound to cauterize it. He made not a sound and his lips and eyes barely twitched. Over the crushed doors he walked and the stars shone through the black smoke, like the tears and sweat that glimmered on his skin. Across the courtyard he walked, climbed into his truck, backed out of the driveway and accelerated down the street, away from his smoldering mercilessness. Miles later, where the mansion was merely a faint glow in the distance, he parked the car on the edge of cliff and took his journal from the glovebox.
(May 25, 1983)
“The mansion is gone. The money is gone. Matisse is gone. Mozambique is war-torn. It was a long drive and I’m close to the border. I’ve had a while to think. I won’t be sleeping any better, but I think some monstrous part of me may have died with him in that fire. In the past nine months, I’ve lost three homes, many friends, and possibly my mind. I’ve been shot twice, one bullet is still inside of me. Nine months. It’s as if this is the time it took for me to be... reborn. But what do I have left? Plenty of scars, a truck that needs to be fixed, a pistol with one round in the chamber, my drawings, this journal, and half a bottle of rum. Right now, this is all I need.”
“I’m not sure if Maputo is a good place for me to settle. This civil war is getting worse and worse by the day, as is my sleep. There isn’t too much violence here, but I’ve noticed more and more homeless men and women accumulating on this side of the city. I’ve exchanged many U.S. dollars for Mozambican meticais and I don’t think anyone has gotten too suspicious. I have a meeting with the owner of a large mansion on the outskirts of the country soon and I think buying might be a wise decision if things continue to go the way they have been.”
The clock on the wall showed 6:43, but it was four minutes slow. His plate was clean, his cup, half empty; his eyes were watery and his stomach, half full. At this point, where he laid on his cot, everything was fine. Not perfect, but no one’s life ever is. He had a new life entirely. Finally, a fresh start, a new beginning, a chance to forget the past, embrace the present, and look to the future. The key figures of his old life hadn’t seen, heard of, nor worried about his return since the dust had settled on the surface of his puddled blood as they disregarded his spasmodic body shrinking in the rearview mirror. At a time where the vicious people with whom he once trusted with his life had broken this trust, he could rest his head in solemnity, and pursue what it means to truly live. He had no real goals or external motivation. Nothing that he was really working towards, just simply trying to maintain his contentment with his new-found sense of being, as he had been for nearly a year. The woman at the fruit stand always set aside fresh tomatoes for his routine purchase, the bum on the corner three blocks closer to his house always greeted him with a smile in knowing that his empty hands would be slightly weighted for a day, the barefoot boys dribbling a soccer ball through the alleyways in the afternoon always made a playful gesture to pass the ball to him when they identified his long dreadlocks. He had no regular job, only the wise spending of the remnants of his “inherited” fortune. The one-room house was spacious. There was a small table by the oven and counter at the wall, above which cabinets containing dishes hung, a sink, a curtain hiding the toilet and a washtub, his cot, and his desk on which his pencils and sketchbook were set neatly for the next time he felt a flush of artistic motivation. The windows were cracked, but the glass was clear, revealing his dented, gray pickup truck in the driveway. A glance over the shoulder every other corner and a single eye open in the dark of night was no longer necessary, but comforting. His worries had vanished and his beard had grown. The floorboards were loose and creaky, beneath which he kept his journal and boxes of assorted large and small bills, providing that each and every day he had enough change in his pockets to rattle down the street, buy an inexpensive dinner, and support the drug habit of the transient on the curb on the way back home. The mirror above the sink had a crack running diagonally, distorting the reflection of soapy water dripping from his pronounced cheekbones. He ran his fingers through his thick beard. “I need to shave,” he said to himself under his breath. His lips shaped an unseen smile at the thought. Most of his thoughts before that point were grimmer and more dire. The things Burhaan Amburo needed to do usually consisted of relocating crates of conspicuous cargo to drop spots for over-the-border transactions, staying hidden from public sight after a violent heist, or as his old boss had put it, assuring the silence of those who knew too much. The red light of the falling sun folded through the window. Burhaan let it warm his skin until it vanished behind his neighbors’ houses. He lit a candle and sat at his desk with his sketchbook a pencil, and a knife to keep it sharp. He drew a leftward facing curve off of the center and paused to look at it. Having no idea what to draw usually wasn’t a problem. Most of the time, the lines, curves, and shading put itself together at the tips of his fingers. He looked at the curve with intensity. It could be the side of a face, or the bottom of an eye, or an infinite number of other things but his hand had no creative motion in it that night. He felt a strange underlying sense of destruction beneath his contentment. Though he had cleaned his act for the most part, all of the memories were still there and the pain found its way to the surface nightly. It was not a healthy night to overthink everything, so avoid his cascade into negativity, he gave into his fatigue. He then laid on his cot, and closed his eyes.
He found himself in a familiar setting: the little Somalian village where he grew up with his foster family. It was an event among many others that he relived in almost every dream. As the smoke grew thicker in the air, his eyes stung and he struggled to keep them open. The blurring movement in the distance between the streetlights seemed to disrupt his vision in an almost hallucinogenic way. It could have been the past four nights of utterly painful consciousness or a number of other things, but what he saw and what he knew were one and the same. Violence. He regained focus. After the first explosion, his ears rang so loudly that the next two sounded as muffled gusts of wind. The ringing widened into a low drone. His heartbeat struck his veins so bracingly that his skull sounded as if it shattered with each pulse, again and again. To him, suicide was a topic that was commonly considered, but never before had he wanted to stop his heartbeat for this reason. A woman ran across the street before him and her footsteps seemed as nonexistent as his chance of survival. The rag did well to filter the fumes from each inhalation, but the scents remained. Which smelled stronger? The burning tires in the roads, or the corpses? He’d learned the simple differences of the two as a child, but now his shell shocked perception disregarded the necessity of sensory definition. He kept his mouth closed. He dared not breathe in the agony that surrounded him. A swallow of blood each time his mouth refilled was enough to distract him from the pain where his molars had once been. The flavor of terror was all too familiar. The ground was no longer shaking, but his legs were. The fringed edges of the tears in his jeans were blood-welded to his kneecaps. His fists were clenched so tightly that his nails punctured his palms. More blood dribbled from between his knuckles with each violent heartbeat. He was in a state functioning only from primal instinct. All along his shaking body, he could feel nothing. Nothing but fear.
He opened his eyes into the shimmering morning light. Sweat had welled up in the divot between his collarbones and neck, causing his dark skin to shine and sparkle like overturned garden soil. He sat up and with the back of his hand, wiped the tears and sweat that had beaded above his temples. He walked to the sink and splashed his face with tap water. Straight razor in hand, he began cleaving his thickened facial hair from his angular jaw. As if to remake a work of picasso, he gradually revealed segments of his scarred face to the cracked mirror from different angles. He washed the soap from his chin, wiped both sides of the razor on a hand towel, and met the berating green eyes of his warped reflection. He hadn’t seen all of his face for a long time. He looked like another man entirely. Scanning across the defined muscles of his neck, shoulders, down his arms to the fringed tips of his braided dreads, he pondered how well he could actually recognize the man he had become. He was almost proud until his line of sight crossed to the indention of the crescent shaped scar above his heart. He ran his fingertips over the distortion of his smooth skin and felt a linear tingling through his flesh, where the bullet had been so many months before.
Matisse was driving the cargo truck at a dangerous speed. The dirt road was narrow, cliffs ascending on the left and descending on the right. Matisse turned a tight leftward corner and the inertia shifted; Burhaan’s blood spilling over the edge of the leather seat where it had pooled. He pressed his palm tightly over the hole in his lower chest, barely able to slow the bleeding. He moaned and grunted with each turn, but it was drowned out by the engine and the tire treads popping around the rocks on the road. An assault rifle slipped from its perch between the seats and Burhaan looked directly down the barrel. He readjusted it to point to the ceiling with his unoccupied hand. They turned another corner and proceeded down into the valley. There was a switchback below the higher road where Matisse slowed to a halt, but let the engine run.
“Why did we stop?” Burhaan wheezed.
“What’s the take?” Matisse asked Farai, Ignoring Burhaan.
Burhaan knew better than to demand a response from his boss. He was a dangerous man. This had been exhibited time and time again.
“The American said it looked like about twenty three million worth before he took one in the skull.” Farai answered, leaning forward between the seats.
“U.S. Dollars?” The look in his eyes changed. They were unfocused and glossed with greed.
“Yeah.”
Burhaan let out another groan of pain.
“How are you holding together?” Matisse asked.
“I think I might make it if we can get to a doctor before nightfall.” He coughed and blood poured out from his lips.
“We’re too far from camp,” Farai said. “And I doubt you’d even last that long.”
“Please, we have to-” He coughed up more blood before he could finish his sentence.
There was a pause as the two uninjured men exchanged a look in subtle decision.
Matisse nodded and demanded, “Pass me the med kit.”
Farai pulled a first aid box from the wall and handed it Matisse, who placed it in Burhaan’s lap.
“I’m sorry my boy,” he said in a low tone. “But you’re just dead weight, now.” He leaned over, opened the passenger door, and pushed Burhaan out onto the ground. He began shaking violently, bleeding more and more profusely, until he stopped moving. Gunshots rang out from further up the valley. A dented pickup truck sped towards them. The passenger was leaning out the window with a rifle firing away in their direction. Matisse stomped on the accelerator, leaving Burhaan unconscious on the ground. The pursuers briefly slowed by him and the gunman in the truck bed said, “Keep going, he’s dead.”
When the dust settled, Burhaan gasped back to consciousness. He rolled onto his side abruptly and opened the first aid kit. Most of the supplies had already been used; all that remained were a needle, thread, a roll of gauze bandage, and a half syringe of morphine. He immediately pumped the morphine directly into the wound, sat up, and tore off his blood soaked shirt to wrap the bandage around his chest until there was no more. It wasn’t tight enough to stop the external bleeding, but the morphine kicked in quickly. He stood and heard a metallic crash in echo down the valley followed by gunshots. Then splashing water from a faucet. His eyes widened and he reentered the moment, razor in his shaking hand, water still running. He focused on his reflection and slowed his breathing. His skin was smooth but his past was not. He turned the water off, put on a nice collared shirt, slipped his feet into a worn down pair of sandals, and took 2000 meticais from his stash. Before replacing the floorboards, he sat at his desk with his increasingly incriminating journal.
(May 21, 1983)
“The dreams aren’t getting any better, if anything, they're only getting worse. Last night, it was the one from the day I was abducted. I usually wake up when the bombs go off, but it went on longer. This morning, I shaved my beard for the first time in months. I think seeing my whole face triggered more vivid memories. I look more professional, maybe I should try to find a job. People might start wondering where all my money is coming from, and it never hurts to have a little additional income.”
Burhaan hid his journal and opened the door, letting the sounds of Maputo flood his ears before taking his regular route to the produce store. Gabrielle, the owner, had a very sore look around her old eyes.
“You look troubled,” Burhaan said to her. “Something I can do?”
“No child,” she replied. “This violence, day by day, is beginning to chip away at my heart.”
“Yes, it seems this country finishes one war just to start another.” His eyes glazed over. “Why do you call me child?”
“Because you can’t be more than half my age,” She started, as if it was rehearsed “And you’ve never given me another title.”
“I’m thirty-six.”
“You’ve aged well.” She said, her tone slightly surprised.
“As have you.”
“You don’t need to lie to me,” she said as she put three tomatoes, an avocado and a head of lettuce into a paper bag. “I hear enough of those from my husband.”
Burhaan made his purchase and strolled around the block.
Children's joyful shouts rolled around the houses and businesses. A soccer ball rolled from a wide alleyway to Burhans feet. Four young boys stopped playing and stood in a crescent formation to watch Burhaan with awe, who smiled and kicked the ball back to them. As he continued walking, paper bag tucked under his left arm, he heard one of the boy’s adolescent voice say, “I want to be like him when I’m older.”
He was now out of earshot, but in a low tone, he said, “I hope you won’t be.”
He overshot the beggars perch by a block, and came to a liquor store. He stood outside for a moment, mulling over the possibility of drowning his night-terrors in alcohol. He succumbed to the temptation, and found his way home with a second paper bag, concealing a bottle of rum.
While the stars and moon crept over the city, Burhaan took to his desk. The page of his scrapbook from the previous night was still lying peacefully, the single curve of graphite glistening in the candlelight. He picked up the pencil, sliced away curls of the soft wood until the point was sharp enough to be weaponized. Slowly, steadily, and blissfully, the single, lonely curve turned into a magnificently shaded portrait of the four boys in the alleyway, mouths agape, and eyes wider. His gaze softened, content with his work. Glancing across the room, his widened pupils found the bottle of rum on the table. He took a moment to admire the persistence of the second hand ticking in circles and decided it was time. He strutted through the dim light and poured himself a glass. He took a sip and letting it burn gently down his throat, repositioned himself so that he was sitting on the edge of the table, one leg swaying, the other strongly rooted on the ground. He finished his glass and poured another. The sips turned to gulps, followed by prolonged closure of his eyes. One last swallow and in the darkness behind his eyelids, Matisse’s face appeared. His eyes reopened, more watery than before. His final attempt to pull the cork from the bottle was interrupted by the room, as he perceived it, rotating around him, as if he was the center point of the clock. In another long blink, he saw the way his hands used to be; small, fragile, childlike, and covered in blood. He stood up and started for his cot. He felt his head hit the fabric, worsening the bassy throbbing followed by the crawling of the grainy scar tissue of his back. Slowly, unsteadily, his vision blurred to darkness. Once again, this darkness provided the perfect backdrop for him to lucidly relive his trauma.
In the muddy mixture of dirt and blood where he laid just as he was left by Matisse, his eyelids rolled apart and he awoke into another coughing fit. Again, syringe in the wound, bandage restricting his breath. The alcohol, inhibiting his real state of mind, replaced the sensation of the morphine. When he stood, his world of painful reminiscence began to spin. The same metallic crash was heard, but it was morphed in a strange hollow way. Followed by the gunshots He was overcome by dizziness, but his steps towards the noise were no more staggered then they should have been. In most of his recurring nightmares, he felt the same emotions, and took the same courses of action. This time however, he felt as if he wasn’t in control of his body. He felt automated. Possessed. His body was inhabited by the man he used to be, and all the drunken, unconscious Burhaan could do was observe himself through his own unfamiliar eyes. He stumbled up the road, more blood coming from his mouth and nose than from the bullet hole. Drop by drop he left his reddened trail leading to the source of the noise. The cargo truck was on its side, boxes of money, drugs, and jewels strewn across the road. Among them laid four copses, the three pursuers and Farai. Numerous wounds of varying caliber decorated the bodies. A pair of tire tracks led away from the scene, left by Matisse, who had taken the pickup. The wobbling world was soon to be descended upon by vultures, followed by starlight. Burhaan’s mind being impaired even more than his physical condition, he crawled inside the overturned haul and let his consciousness slip out.
(May 22, 1983)
“Last night I tried drinking again for the first time in months. I thought it might help calm my mind, or at least slow it down, but all it did was worsen the physical sensations of my nightmares. From what I remember, it was from the evening when Matisse left me for dead. I remember seeing Farai’s body riddled with bullet holes, just the way it was, but it seems like there were a lot of subtle differences; less blood on the ground, more holes in the truck. It was warmer, too. Maybe it was the alcohol, but usually the dreams are lucid and I feel exactly as I did when these things actually happened. I don’t know if I’m getting better or worse, but I resent sleep and wake up in tears. I can’t go on like this, but I think I’ll make it. Either way, hell is much easier to go through in retrospective. On a brighter note, I’m meeting the owner of the mansion today. This gives me something to do with this money.”
Burhaan finished writing the final sentence and closed his journal. He doused his face in chilled water and dabbed it dry with a hand towel. As he revealed his eyes to his reflection, painful reminiscence found its way to the surface. Matisse was a man Burhaan once respected, but at this time all of the hard found respect was converted into resentment, only half of which was directed to Matisse, the other half at himself. The bottle on the table was still half full, as if prompting him to finish it off. “Not now,” he quietly said to himself. “Not until I need it.”
Hours passed and Burhaan drove to his meeting. He sat on a park bench in a small uninhabited field. After a few moments, he began to get impatient, but a tall white man in a suit holding a briefcase approached and sat beside him. “Mr. Amburo?” he asked.
“Call me Burhaan.”
“You recall our brief phone conversation last week.”
“Yes, Mr. Kane.” He answered. “You said you would take care of the official reports of the sale in my name, after you received the payment.”
“We have both upheld each end of this transaction.” He opened the briefcase and handed Burhaan a map from inside, containing the rout and address to the mansion, and the key to the front doors. Hands were shaken and Burhaan returned to his house for his final night in Maputo.
Burhaan packed most of his belongings into the back of his truck; pots, pans, knives, his journal, and the remaining twelve million dollars. He was not afraid of robbery as it was late and his damaged truck looked less expensive than the clothes he wore. All that remained in the house was his cot, the bottle of rum, and a handgun. He laid on his cot and his eyes gradually closed. Then there was a loud whistle-like noise rapidly ascending in tone. Burhaan opened his eyes. A reality-shattering explosion shredded half of the block. Then another, further away, but louder still in Burhaan’s ears left nothing but a crater in the market square. Burhaan burst outside, his ears carrying the off key ringing. He couldn’t hear the car alarms, nor the screaming of his neighbors, but he didn’t need to in order to understand how to survive this moment. He looked up at a jet approaching in the distance. It fired another missile toward his neighborhood. Burhaan ran back inside his house, and ducked beside his cot. Another explosion, much closer. The shock wave threw him, his cot, and half of his house into the other side, forcing the second wall down. His truck rolled over once, onto its side, and fell back onto its wheels. One of the six crates fell from its restraint and cracked open on the ground, money sailing in the wind. Burhaan crawled from the rubble, disregarded the two-million lost dollars, picked up the pistol and the somehow unscathed bottle of rum and leaped into his car. He turned the key. Nothing happened. Again, revving it for a few seconds longer. Finally the truck's engine cursed the flaming ground. Burhaan stomped the pedal to the floor and the speedometers needle met forty kilometers per hour in very little time. He looked into the mirror and as the drone in his ears slowly quieted, the truck accelerated, and he watched the shrapnel fly from his home in one final fiery statement.
It was noon, one day after South Africa's missile strikes on a residential area in Maputo. Burhaan hadn’t stopped the car since he left. He hadn’t closed his eyes for hours, not even to blink. He spent the entire time pondering his life up to that point. Abducted, forced to be a child soldier, escaping with his closest friends, wading through years of blood and mud, dirtying his hands, heists and murders, one after the other, only to be betrayed by those he trusted most. And now this. After settling down and trying to live the rest of his life in peace, Mozambique's civil war just increased in violence. The trauma haunting him from the rest of his life was already a disability enough. The truck was running on reserve. He pulled over and poured more into the tank from a gas can in the back seat and returned to the wheel. The day was brisk and he was far from the coast, driving along the border of Zimbabwe. Five more hours rolled by and at long last, he skidded into his driveway. He limped through a large courtyard surrounding a dry fountain and pushed the key into the lock of the two massive doors. The humidity of the outside polished his lungs as he opened the doors to his colossal, bright, new, furnished home. In the main entrance, there hung a chandelier between two staircases on either side of the room, illuminating the doorways to the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom. He stayed motionless between the doors and gandered at the architectural divinity.
(May 24, 1983)
“Last night was not one I want to remember, yet it will never be forgotten. I’m not sure if I want to go on anymore. I’m not sure I can. Why is it that every time I survive a nearly impossible situation, I always regret my decision to live?”
He had just finished moving all of his remaining possessions into the mansion. Sitting on the sofa in the living room with his feet beside his pistol on the coffee table in front of him, Burhaan’s stomach made a low rumbling noise. He stood, walked into the kitchen, took a butter knife from the drawer beneath the counter and started to spread peanut butter on a piece of bread. He lifted it to his mouth to take a bite, but was interrupted by a knock at the front door, echoing through this new home so ominously. He stood still, wondering who on earth would be knocking on his door. They knocked again, and he dropped the peanut-buttered bread. He took a sharper fillet knife from the same drawer, and approached the door. He waited for a third knock, but after several seconds, it did not come. Holding the knife out of sight in his right hand, he used his left to open the door. His blank expression was immediately met by the barrel of a six shot revolver. “Back up.” Matisse ordered. Burhaan slowly stepped back, turning just so the knife went unseen. He swallowed and said, “Matisse. Great way to greet an old friend.”
“How did you survive?” Matisse asked, slowly.
“Survive what?”
“Getting shot.”
Burhaan chuckled quietly. “I’d almost forgotten about that after last night.”
“Last night?” One of his eyebrows was raised.
“I was in the bombings.”
“My god…” There was much surprise in Matisse’s voice. “How did you get to Maputo?”
“After you left me to rot,” Burhaan began. “I slept in the truck bed, bleeding out for a day. Eventually an old man, a Botswanan immigrant, drove up to the wreckage. I gave him a quarter of what was left to drive me to Maputo and stay quiet about who I was. He stitched me up and gave me some opiates for the pain. We never got the bullet out. How did you find me?”
Matisse lowered the gun from Burhaan’s head to his chest. “Such a large purchase in such a meaningful name was bound to draw my attention.”
Burhaan’s eyes sought the floor.
“I truly am sorry.” Matisse said.
Burhaan realigned his eyes to meet Matisse’s and developed a glare. “Then why are you holding me at gunpoint?”
Matisse pulled back the hammer. “I came for the money.”
“Of course.” Burhaan sighed.
“You will make this easier and show me to it, won’t you?” Matisse’s words sounded more like a command than a question.
“Right this way.” Burhaan spun the knife and slashed open Matisse’s right arm, from which he dropped the gun. It went off into the base of the overhead chandelier and he let out a cry of pain. Burhaan sprinted for the staircase.
“You fool!” Matisse picked up the gun with his non dominant hand and fired three rounds his direction, all of which left blackened holes in the wall behind him as he ran. “This could have been avoided!”
With his old mentor in pursuit, Burhaan pulsed through a long hallway and ducked into a small room, empty aside from a large rug and floral wallpaper that matched the rest of the second floor. Breathing heavily as his back hit the wall by the door, another bullet tore through the wall next to his head. Loud footsteps stopped at the entrance. Matisse stepped through the doorway and Burhaan lunged at him. The gun went off again, passing through the flesh below his left shoulder, and his open hand met Matisse’s throat, forcing his head back onto the corner of the doorway. The two fell to the floor, struggling and bleeding with vicious intent. Matisse put his foot on Burhaans chest, forcing him off. The two paused, nostrils flaring, breath rumbling like the growls of two foul beasts. Then, the smell of smoke suspended in the thinning air.
“Stop.” Burhaan croaked.
“Fire.” Matisse said, wearily.
“The wiring to the chandelier.”
They stared at one another for a moment, anticipating attack. Burhaan broke the silence.
“We need to get out.”
They stood and Matisse asked in a sarcastic tone, “Have you forgiven me already?”
“We’ll see about that if we both make it out of here alive.”
They ran back through the hallway and into the main hall, smoke thickening. The flames painted the walls and clutched the stairways in its blazing jaws. They stopped at the balcony and made panicked eye contact. There was no way off of the second floor.
“The window?” Matisse suggested.
“Too high.” Burhaan replied.
From outside, Matisse's name was yelled, barely heard over the roaring fire.
“Backup?” Burhaan said, beads of sweat rolling down the sides of his face. “You fu-”
“They’re here to help us!”
“To hell with that,” He interjected. “They’ll kill me on sight!”
There was a pause, then the front doors were smashed open. Four men holding rifles lined up in the entryway. Matisse broke a long piece of wood from the railing, which was beginning to burn, and swung at Burhaan, catching him in the already bleeding side of his face. He fell to his hands and knees and looked up at Matisse, who was walking towards him with a menacing stride, surrounded by falling sparks and dripping with blood. Fire engulfed everything around them. Matisse raised the embered pole to strike once more, but Burhaan swept his leg out from beneath him. As he stood, Matisse fell. His back hit the floor and it cracked. The floorboards dropped out from under Burhaan and the two came crashing down to the living room. At this point, the heat was so unbearable that the impact of hitting the ground was felt harder Burhaan lost his breath and began coughing violently. Blood dribbled down his chin and he opened his eyes. The fire was much louder in the smaller space. Matisse’s screams creeped between the other noises and Burhaan looked to see him on his back, a huge beam laying across his chest. The lower end of the beam was engulfed in flame.
“Help me!” He huffed.
Two men approached the room’s entrance. The pistol was still on the table, until Burhaan took it in his hand. Shots went into the wall behind him and he returned fire, three rounds and two warm corpses.
“Help you?” Burhaan looked at Matisse with one eyebrow raised, hatred in his voice
He groaned in sequence with the crackling of the fire.
“You want me to help you?”
“Please Burhaan, I’ll die!”
Burhaan yelled in rage. “You’ll die?” His then voice quieted so that it was barely loud enough to be heard over the crumbling building and the look in his eyes changed from anger to a dark malicious hatred. “I’m the one who you left bleeding to death on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.”
The fire crept further up the beam, towards Matisse's head. “I’ll change!”
The other two men came through the blackened doorway and Burhaan put them down before they had a chance to aim their weapons.
“You’ve already changed.” Burhaan turned to face him and squatted down to eye level.
“Please give me another chance!” Tears began to roll from his eyes.
“I’m sorry my boy,” Burhaan said, “But you’re just dead weight, now.”
He rose and walked away, shreds of the ceiling and walls peeling off, the stairs like waterfalls of fire and ash, the mansion imploding to its demise. Before he strutted out, he broke off a piece of the flaming doorframe and pressed the hottest, yet least ashen part over his freshest gunshot wound to cauterize it. He made not a sound and his lips and eyes barely twitched. Over the crushed doors he walked and the stars shone through the black smoke, like the tears and sweat that glimmered on his skin. Across the courtyard he walked, climbed into his truck, backed out of the driveway and accelerated down the street, away from his smoldering mercilessness. Miles later, where the mansion was merely a faint glow in the distance, he parked the car on the edge of cliff and took his journal from the glovebox.
(May 25, 1983)
“The mansion is gone. The money is gone. Matisse is gone. Mozambique is war-torn. It was a long drive and I’m close to the border. I’ve had a while to think. I won’t be sleeping any better, but I think some monstrous part of me may have died with him in that fire. In the past nine months, I’ve lost three homes, many friends, and possibly my mind. I’ve been shot twice, one bullet is still inside of me. Nine months. It’s as if this is the time it took for me to be... reborn. But what do I have left? Plenty of scars, a truck that needs to be fixed, a pistol with one round in the chamber, my drawings, this journal, and half a bottle of rum. Right now, this is all I need.”
The Truth of War