Basam Witnessed the Presidio

CRUZER PARK PRESIDIO
Scanning the Cruzer
Overwhelming sea of days
More BUROCRAZY TRANSITION
October a
Date
I sat down in my old spot in the narrow park between office buildings right by his falafel cart and Basam asked me where I've been. I didn't tell him I've been getting into the culture of working through lunch up there in the burocrazy. For a moment I wished Basam kept track of my skipped writing days. I wished I had a writing Father taking care of my writing life, telling me what to write, making me feel I know what comes next, the next sentence, the next page.
But then I remembered walking past the perfect cube of Basam's stainless falafel cart, the steel sides pulled shut. “Where were you? How do you know I haven't been here when your stand was shut?”
Basam handed me a falafel sandwich half wrapped in tinfoil.
“ I've been back for a week and I asked Mohamed, with the fruit, and he told me he hadn't seen you. I was on the Island, visiting my mother.”
For a moment I get what he's just told me and I'm speechless.
“You were there during the Presidio Attack?”
Basam nodded. He looked away from me and lifted the deep fry basket from the fat. He turned to face me as he set down the basket of perfectly round, browned falafel balls.
“I was driving over the bridge to _____ and I saw the flames coming out of that mound of rocks, and people jumping.
“The funny thing is even though we were heading right to the Presidio we all just kept driving.
Later, I wondered why I didn't just stop, ditch the car right on the bridge and walk away in the opposite direction.
Traffic was moving, but it was moving slow and by the time we got to the other side of the bridge it had stopped. Cars, stopped behind cars. People milled around. A few people headed back over the bridge on foot.
It took hours for any police to show up. They couldn't get their own cars and vans through and it looked like they didn't have a clue what hit them. It took them awhile to figure out to drop City Troops with helicopters.
I looked up and they were swinging toward us. Troops in black riot gear with helmets and clear plastic over their faces were climbing down swinging rope ladders dangling overhead from a swarm of helicopters.
“They dangled hooded crates and that's where they had the weapon sniffing dogs.”
“Were those the Mercuries?”
“We found that out later. Hard to believe we didn't know they had privatized armies .
“They swept the crowd with weapon detectors and had their huge dogs sniff for explosives.”
“They set up a prison right there. That they were ready for. They strung barbed wire along the side of the road so fast you knew they'd gotten lots of practice. I finally figured out they were looking for anyone who might have escaped from the Presidio.”
I kept nodding my head. I couldn't take his words in any more. After the Presidio there had been three visits by City police to my house. Am I supposed to believe they don't know where Ori is? Could it be he's not detained at all and left me after all? I dropped this ballpoint pen and red spiral notebook I'm writing with which I just bought at the newstand across the street, after Basam shamed me into writing.
Because it's just hit me. Of course the City cops don't know. It was Mercuries took Ori. And I can't think about this any more. I turn my body away from Basam who suddenly has a line of people ordering halal lamb and rice.
After so many days of no writing I don't remember who I am. Basam told me the trick is to always figure out how to come back to the paper and the pen. “Oppression's always going to pull you away.” Turns out Basam was a journalist in his country. I never get around to asking him if he's writing something now. I'd rather have him listen to me than do the listening. He should be writing about the Presidio.
I've been waking up terrified. My night terrors have gotten worse since the Presidio. My abiding terror has found something to seize onto in the world outside my head. So much of my terror comes from growing up in a war in Ventura. It was a just war and a necessary war. (Is any war ever truly necessary? Made necessary only because imperialism sets the terms.) And the revolutionaries won. But I grew up with bodies in the ditches, hearing stories of the tortured, knowing that neighbors and family friends had been disappeared, hearing my parents argue in the night about his conspiring and knowing my parents were afraid my Father would be disappeared. They finally came to the City to escape war. But here it is.