It was 1964 and I had not been born yet. Ahmed was a year old as he sat in the passenger seat of my father’s dark diplomatic sedan in downtown Peking at the peak of the Cultural Revolution. A cigar dangled from my father’s intellectual lips. It caught the eye of a 'figure of authority' infused with xenophobia, ready to revolt! He halted the passage of the car, down the crowded street, totally ignoring the 'Corps Diplomatique' number plate it carried.
Faces pushed their tiny noses against the tinted glass of the black vehicle. As usual, my then little brother assumed it was the attention his big brown eyes had always managed to attract of so many baby lovers. The policeman spoke only in Mandarin; he waved at my father’s face, gesturing that he remove the cigar from his mouth. It was against the law in China, to drive and smoke. My father had not known. He removed the cigar from his mouth gently, then quietly pointed to the car fender where the number plate reared its prominent head. The 'figure of authority' had no authority over the Charges d'affaires of a foreign country, but he had not known. Something in the challenge of a large foreign vehicle had sparked curiosity in his large ego. It was not about the law…It was about a foreigner who would not heed an ‘authentic figure of authority’.
I was born in a remote monarchy. Then whisked off to a police state. Where I grew up in, 'figures of authority' flooded the streets. Their egos loomed like gigantic clouds over the river Tigress. The wrath of their rain, when thunder was provoked, could be felt by everyone walking the streets.
Down River Street, Zinnah’s white Volvo stationwagon went. A black Mercedes followed us; the ‘Palace’ number plate shining in its bronze frame. Mayada started crying. Zinnah kept a level head as she flicked her eyelashes towards the rear-view mirror and back at the road ahead. We would not be provoked!
Suddenly, shots were fired in the air. I turned around without thinking. The man in khaki had raised his hand out of the window, and was now lowering the gun back inside. He beamed at my panicked eyes. The steam of his ego had been released at last, in the face of three arrogant girls who had dared to totally ignore it!
Forty years after China, on a dimly-lit street in front of a huge church, in Columbus, Ohio, I was halted by an orange figure. His orange coat was surrounded by orange flares that lit up a circumference of a few inches around each, rendering him a stunning nightly spectacle.
It was dark and cold and late. A church usher had his duty to perform in front of God and society. I waited while he did. After a while and for a long while, there were no cars anymore. The figure briskly walked to the middle of the street and giving me his orange back completely; chatted up some figures in the dark. I needed to move away. It seemed as if he had wanted to forget me, and I did not want to be forgotten, so I moved.
I was suddenly stopped. The orange man turned into a ‘figure of authority’. The years flooded back.
“What did you think I was, an orange cone with a Sheriff’s hat?” –his orange nose glowed in the headlight.
I would not have recognized his ‘Sherrif’s hat’ as an emblem of authority ‘in a million American years!’
I tried to recover his shattered ego, scattered all over the road…burning with the flares...to no avail. After all…he was a ‘figure of authority’…and whether in Mandarin, Arabic or English…they really all spoke the same language…the language of the Ego.
Faces pushed their tiny noses against the tinted glass of the black vehicle. As usual, my then little brother assumed it was the attention his big brown eyes had always managed to attract of so many baby lovers. The policeman spoke only in Mandarin; he waved at my father’s face, gesturing that he remove the cigar from his mouth. It was against the law in China, to drive and smoke. My father had not known. He removed the cigar from his mouth gently, then quietly pointed to the car fender where the number plate reared its prominent head. The 'figure of authority' had no authority over the Charges d'affaires of a foreign country, but he had not known. Something in the challenge of a large foreign vehicle had sparked curiosity in his large ego. It was not about the law…It was about a foreigner who would not heed an ‘authentic figure of authority’.
I was born in a remote monarchy. Then whisked off to a police state. Where I grew up in, 'figures of authority' flooded the streets. Their egos loomed like gigantic clouds over the river Tigress. The wrath of their rain, when thunder was provoked, could be felt by everyone walking the streets.
Down River Street, Zinnah’s white Volvo stationwagon went. A black Mercedes followed us; the ‘Palace’ number plate shining in its bronze frame. Mayada started crying. Zinnah kept a level head as she flicked her eyelashes towards the rear-view mirror and back at the road ahead. We would not be provoked!
Suddenly, shots were fired in the air. I turned around without thinking. The man in khaki had raised his hand out of the window, and was now lowering the gun back inside. He beamed at my panicked eyes. The steam of his ego had been released at last, in the face of three arrogant girls who had dared to totally ignore it!
Forty years after China, on a dimly-lit street in front of a huge church, in Columbus, Ohio, I was halted by an orange figure. His orange coat was surrounded by orange flares that lit up a circumference of a few inches around each, rendering him a stunning nightly spectacle.
It was dark and cold and late. A church usher had his duty to perform in front of God and society. I waited while he did. After a while and for a long while, there were no cars anymore. The figure briskly walked to the middle of the street and giving me his orange back completely; chatted up some figures in the dark. I needed to move away. It seemed as if he had wanted to forget me, and I did not want to be forgotten, so I moved.
I was suddenly stopped. The orange man turned into a ‘figure of authority’. The years flooded back.
“What did you think I was, an orange cone with a Sheriff’s hat?” –his orange nose glowed in the headlight.
I would not have recognized his ‘Sherrif’s hat’ as an emblem of authority ‘in a million American years!’
I tried to recover his shattered ego, scattered all over the road…burning with the flares...to no avail. After all…he was a ‘figure of authority’…and whether in Mandarin, Arabic or English…they really all spoke the same language…the language of the Ego.