{"id":10,"date":"2008-02-28T13:02:45","date_gmt":"2008-02-28T21:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/?p=10"},"modified":"2008-03-12T09:56:29","modified_gmt":"2008-03-12T17:56:29","slug":"iwen-object-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Iwen: Object Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/p>\n

Object Lessons: ’67 Mercedes-Benz<\/span><\/p>\n

by Jayson Iwen\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to be in love with someone in that cavernous back seat, staying close for heat, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not my first thought when I see certain cars anymore. Probably not even my second.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>Before the love are car bombs now. I cut myself shaving when the first one went off. I ran to the balcony and spotted the smoke column two blocks away. The Mediterranean breeze took it slowly in our direction and soon I could smell it. Not unlike the smell of a hot grill with steak turning to cinder on it. Then I realized what it was. Close the windows, I shouted.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>Later, when Hariri\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motorcade blew up, we ran toward the smoke downtown. I watched a shirt burn in a car window, blown back and forth by gusts of heat. Then it crawled out the window and I saw a body was in it, struggling to stand. The police held us back. Someone on the inside ran to the figure and threw his jacket over it.After that they came more frequently. I got used to being awakened by explosions at night. My friends and I would meet in the expat sanctuary of happy hour at the Mayflower Hotel and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d laugh at a common acquaintance\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest mishap, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d smile vacuously and stare through the plate glass window at the rows of cars in the street and calculate how much of a political target we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d make. The UN was pressuring Syria to pull out of Lebanon, so a well-known peacekeeper R&R hangout like the Mayflower might be a tempting target, but doing so would make it seem obvious that Syria was behind the other bombings, which they were trying to convince us were the work of Lebanese factions. Conclusion: possible but not probable. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d nod at what Ritta had just said about Khaled\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent escapade, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d glance around at the circle of eyes and see the same glittering conclusions there.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>After the first bomb, I felt trapped in a sustained, tightly restrained state of panic. For awhile. But after months of explosions, I started to envision clouds of flame engulfing whatever I looked at. I imagined I was living in the flame, already dead and living still, and in that waking dreamstate of death the panic dissolved.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>On a hike in the mountains, my friends and I found ourselves, through inattention to the Arabic signs, in the middle of an active mine field. When we finally took notice of a sign nailed to a tree, we shrugged our shoulders. Mike chuckled. We were emotionally prepared for this now. We found a sheep path to follow out, because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what you do. You find paths where thought has gone before. Whether human or not, a decision moved as far as the path in the grass proceeds, and decisions are, above all, alive.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>In the past, detonators were commonly attached to a car\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ignition. This is not the common practice anymore. Cars can be started remotely now, and the electrical drain caused by an attached detonation device can set off the car alarm. Both factors significantly reduce kill ratio. Now it is more common to simply attach the bomb to the underside of the target vehicle and either detonate it remotely, or have it set to be triggered by a particular movement of the vehicle\u00e2\u20ac\u201cstarting, stopping, or turning, for example. In either case the car should be moving. That way one knows the decision maker is on board.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>There was a time before both bombs and lovers. My little brother and I stood at the side of highway 54, and I said to him, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look. That car is going to turn right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And it did. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And that one is going to turn left.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And it did. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do you know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he asked. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Watch the lights,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. And he did. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I get it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. The connection we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made between signals and motion utterly intoxicated me. Until then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d felt like an animal trapped in the world of man, more comfortable with our dogs than our parents. But now these signals and lights radiated into the human wilderness. They seemed to show me a powerful new way to understand the contours of a world made terrifying and unintelligible by humans. I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Come on,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to my brother, and we crossed the street to school. Into each our own expanding circle of human flame. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my second thought, at least.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m far from the political assassinations now. And I envision carnage less. I still take notice of cars that look like they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been unattended for too long, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m losing the calculation instinct. When I look at a particular car, say a sixties era Mercedes, by far the most common vehicle in Beirut, I still feel a burning, like a tracer burrowing into the night. But after it burns out I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still here. Life is still buzzing around me. And I can still be thankful for third and fourth and fifth thoughts, for love in a cavernous back seat. We may signal our entrances and exits from the world, but there is still the motion between.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Object Lessons: ’67 Mercedes-Benz by Jayson Iwen\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to be in love with someone in that cavernous back seat, staying close for heat, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not my first thought when I see certain cars anymore. Probably not even my second. Before the love are car bombs now. I cut myself shaving when the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}