Chapter 10 the road and rock face: Amman to Haifa 2006

Amman is a city of cheap abusive architecture, the buildings colored as coffee stained teeth. The car spun through it's traffic cirles and stopped before an abandoned looking building.   We walked into it's unlit staircase, passed through a steel door and entered the office. It had hanging wires for light fixtures and a variety of cheap anti-Semitic editorial cartoons (ranging from subtly implied to bat-shit crazy) taped onto the walls, covering them completely. Meet the cheap oily man hired by the FAT ASS. Chief Chuckles.  Welcome to the FAT bureau Amman and one can only guess how much it cost them.

The office, in its torture porn splendor, was also the bureau of five or six other channels, at least two of them American (guess which ones, fun game to play at parties). In the corner was a mic stand with six mics on it, each with a different meatball logo on it. Supporting diversity in media.

-Only one works, said this sleazy thin man with white hair in a cheap suit. Taller than me, bone colored thin fingers, he says : You only need one to work, the rest are just painted sticks.

He runs his finger beneath the head of one, with a delicate flair.

This is the FAT producer for Amman, next to him is the biggest fucking Arab that has walked the sands since Conan road on a tiger and lept out of Sumeria. This was the most postapocoplectic motherfucker imaginable, he should have been riding on top of a tricked out hummer, in nothing but football gear and a leather jockstrap, with Mad Max smeared beneath the wheels. Two meters tall, shoulder length black hair, goatee, a broad smile with yellow but strong teeth. The kind of strength an animal gets by gnawing at the bone. He was a wonderful human being.

Perfect English, quick wit and always joking. A genuinely delightful killing machine. He was the bodyguard and he always had that smile on his face while beating people to death. People who aren’t afraid of anyone are typically wonderful to be around.  

Next day, cars, grab two British engineers who are going to Lebanon, through Syria with the kit. Drive out through the desert to the Syrian border, they take the kit and put me in a car for Sheik Hussein again.

Jordan's side of the crossing was good, duty free shop, picked up a bottle of Scotch, some fruit teas, and some kinder eggs. Definitely good deals, A+ for Jordanian duty free. The platform had plenty of shade and lots of seats.There was even a water fountain.

Then the absurdity hits. The profits from this duty free shop, not only paid for the foutain and the waiting area but also more than pay for the cost of it's air conditioned interior. Knowing how well the Israelis do things, their side of the boarder should be superior to this. It was literally costing the Israelis money, perhaps millions in uncaptured revenue, to treat Arabs badly. The nausea makes it difficult to get on the bus when it arrives. The back mucles clench as they prepare for the misery to follow.

Dial up Chuckles, eight or nine times, until you get him and ask for a car.

The bus rolls you over the border and Israeli security gets all hot about a one day trip to Jordan without any bags.  It makes me look like a  fucking spy and they are going to crack me like a walnut. A woman looks into my eyes as if they were a window to my rectum which must contain a Hamas terror cell. 

-But why do you already have a hotel room in Israel?

Because FAT sent me to deliver the sat gear listed on this carnet that your people, at this crossing, authorized to leave the country. The guy who stamped the fucking sheet is outside having a cigarette. 

-So to be clear, you took highly regulated, advanced radio technology, that has military applications, over to the Syrian border and gave it to some British people.

British people with FAT TV!

-FAT TV is so wonderful...

They vacillate between obnoxious, light headed, and oh-wow-FAT is the best channel! Are they in Israel yet?.. They hand around papers left and right, they love papers.

Power, money, motions. These guys just go through the motions. Security expert, no one over the age of thirty, each in a green tee shirt, security experts. The bus over had 5 people on it, myself included. It took an hour to move me through security.

Security Experts, are they draftees or are they just incompetent civil servants or is this the fruits of privatization? You understand Palestinian rage when you pass through a checkpoint. Life is on the line here, and no one takes it seriously.  Look across is a person that really doesn't want to be there, dragging every brutal procedure with the bearing of the dead. Lifting the stamp to put the inkmark on paperwork, is like lifting lead. Being Palestinian is like going to the post office and never ever leaving. Worse because a post office job is a good job; here, at this checkpoint.  a Security Expert’s job suck. Worse still; since Palestinians don't vote in Isreali elections, the facilities for the Palestinians are notoriously underfunded. This not shocking, the management of the commons, a primary purpose in Democracies, requires that the affected people be given representation. Much as Americans give no representation to non-citizens, Palestinians have no say in the allocation of resources that directly affect them. This is even worse in a proportional representational system, where you vote a straight list because none of the reps have any direct relation to a specific location.

This same problem affects Arab-Israelis in that Arab parties cannot join a government, not by law but because of the politics.   So, continuing the thought experiment,  being Palestinian is like being in the most run down, angriest, laziest, post office full of people who think  the Palestinians want to kill them. And in fact, if after an hour of this Jack, if you do not want to strap on a belt pack and see those 72 virgins, taking all these assholes with you, then you are mentally deficient. After a hour and ten mines you are begging for death. At an hour and fifteen, in masochistic, prostate probing delight, you hit the sweet spot and coast the rest of the way.

Past security, waiting for my ride, sitting outside in the sun, there across the street where the security experts. They were smoking cigarettes and horsing around. Clearly one or two were still 19, just kids.

A car pulls in and a guy of about 21 steps out and waves me over. He's my ride. Stick thin, handsome, tan, close cropped hair done in a fade, cut off jeans, red tee shirt and mirrored sun glasses. He's a kid, like those kids, attractive, young, full of life. The natural look on the face is a smile. He's a FAT local hire, working to run errands, must be slow back at the hive.

The kid said:

-You have to talk to the FAT ASS chief. We got hit with about two hundred missiles last night, big changes.

So things didn't go that slow.

The kid drives like a person who is driving someone else's car, which he is. The FAT ASS chief's and it goes real fast. Who knew it could handle these tight turns, at astonishing speeds on these narrow roads? 

Certainly not FAT ASS.  We loose a hub cap as the landscape passes and Schumacher talks of life in Tel Aviv, of his girlfriend, of the beach and of finishing work. And then hopefully job with Americans, hopefully not INTEL. INTEL is where dreams go to die. Maybe something in media. Poor foolish bastard.

We roll through the woods to Kiryat Shmona, past black patches of burnt land still smoking. The pale green of these woods, has further been damped by the layer of smoke, the dust in the air has become a silt from the flames. It is all decidedly less picturesque.

We arrive back at the Chalet, and the gourmet food wagon is no longer in front. In war, craft services are the first casualty.  

Shaun was walking about packing up his stuff and told me the score.

The live position was showered with missiles the night before, the entire country side around Kiryat Shmona was set alight around two am and again around 7am. The first wave happened when there were no correspondents, so everyone had been sent home to sleep except the new engineer from New Orleans, who was a PTSD basket case. The guy was looking foward to being in a nice place after watching death and destruction during Katrina.  He didn't know fuck all about how everything was set up. Couldn't even power up the amps to go live. 

There was chaos at the position as the Chief went ballistic. Then, while the Chief was screaming at the freshly woken Seamus and Shaun, the second wave of missiles happened. The sky was filled with missles, the trees where on fire around them, and no one (ie Seamus and Shaun) had left a camera plugged in. There was a camera on a tripod, but it was running on battery power and the battery was dead. The Chief like a good IDF madman, had run out into the line of fire, grabbed the camera and discovered that it wasn't hooked up to the sat, then as he is rolling on tape the camera goes dead.

At this point no one was afraid of Hezbollah, everyone was afraid of the Chief. The man stood there in the middle of a forest flames and incoming fire, screaming at terrified engineers to get there now soiled asses out there and get him a goddam power source. It was the worst thing that could happen, they missed the shot again.

Shaun was in the woodshed for the fuck ups, and was being sent back and he couldn't give a fuck. The attacks occurred off news hours, who the fucked cared if it was live at 2am, they could still get pictures for FAT & FIENDS. A little shit stained shorts with America’s morning coffee. Only people who would have seen it on FAT at two where the insane, which is true for every hour of the day with FAT. Seamus had lost it and was demanding to be sent back to the USA ASAP, by fucking mail if need be, just not in a coffin. He wanted his Yankees, his dog and his wife, in that order.

Me they put in a cab and sent to Haifa

The spin had been that Hez was on the retreat, and that the IDF was in command of the situation. The only questions were if they were going to reoccupy southern Lebanon like the Bush administration wanted (so they could mop up the terrorists) or if it was going to force a new civil war in Lebanon. The stated Israeli goal of getting back the soldiers (or at least their bodies) and disarming Hez, was a non starter.

Last night proved that Hez was in no mood to be disarmed and were looking forward to the clean up operation. That they had an entirely different idea of what clean meant. All the heavy shelling had done nothing to their military capabilities. And the missiles had struck Haifa. This was bad shit.

Night fell around us as the cabbie drove me down through the interior of the nation. Ahead was Haifa. The lights of industry, factories and the refinery lit up under the reds of the twilight sky, matching with the flickering stars. It was not hot out but the air conditioner was still on. 

The cabbie was listing to a song on the radio, Yahlla Yahlla Nasrallah. It was clearly a spoof song, with a really bad mock Arabic music in the back ground, and there was every Arabic word that had made it into hebrew slang.  It sounded demeaning and racist, but my Hebrew wasn't good enough to know if it really was. What was clear was that it was a piece of shit song. We heard that song about five times on the drive down. Always on the radio.

Eyes open to the polluted industrial hinterlands of Haifa, a haze of ozone covers the land, factories and long jetties reachiing out like fingers caressing the sea. In the distance there is the rise of land, a mountain leaning over the sea, a green city, with diamond lights in the darkness. The driver asks me where the hotel is, he's asking the wrong guy.

He starts stopping random people in the streets asking where the hotels are, because they are all in one place.

...

-It works, said Jakov standing nervously next to it.

My eyes lock with the sat agencies rep, who was working the gear.

It is a piece of shit.

It was the worst sat kit ever. The dish was a stationary 1.5 meter job that was never meant to be moved anywhere. It was meant to be permanently installed in one location and occasionally adjusted when the the cheap piece of shit slipped out of position. The rest of the gear was sitting in the hatchback trunk of a 1993 Ford Galaxy. Everything was held together with string, some gaffers, perhaps some chewing gum, and roped off with some barrier tape.

My instinct is to flee.  Jackov, you have this roped off in case it explodes, right?

-It works; says Jakov.

At what cost, infertility?

-Who can say, but it gets you on the air, and it was all we had left. We just threw this together as a favor for FAT. the encoder is the best, the reciever, well who gives a fuck about reciving.

Unless there is a problem with the signal they pretty much everyone gives a fuck about receiving, but you are right, it is a top encoder. As for this being a favor, gee, thanks, really kind of you guys. And this is? What, a 4000 dollar a day favor?

-Very good, you are not stupid. You Jewish?

New Yorker.

Jackov smiled, nodded and winked:

-Good! It really is all we had left though. Every other kit had been rented, and for a lot more money, ok a little more money. You know times like this don't happen often and you have to make the money while you can. That is why you are here Jack, no?

Hey Jack, why are you here? Are you just waiting to die? Are you just wasting these fine folks time?

Look up at his face, sharp eastern European features and curly brown hair. Look in his eyes, he’s a smart guy.

Too true. We are all here for money Jakov. So how do we move this Soviet surplus product?

-We strap the dish to the roof with these, Jakov said holding up limp bungee cords.

So we shouldn't move it then.

-It would be better, no? Besides who would want to move it from here?

Jakov pointed out toward the wine colored night sea befor us. The terraced mountains, green and steep which went down to the sea, the star filled sky above it. San Francisco, Napoli, Palermo, the night breeze cool, the moons refection off the waves.

Quite right Jackov, it would be better not to move from here, perhaps not ever. As for the who would want to move it; well imagine some asshole that want to use a blast area as a backdrop for the empty head of a corespondent.

-There will always be one of our engineers with you no worries. That way it could be moved in about an hour. That should be enough time for the police to close the blast area so you can't get in.

Excellent, any advice?

-Stand a bit away when it is on, if you want to have children after this.

Children? Do you want to have children? What does she want?

The producer on call was nervous, thin, British and gay. His thin fingers of his thin form played with the thin wire rimmed glasses. He would fiddle with an old SLR camera he carried with him at all times. He was a horrible vision of a mouse from an animated children's cartoon, preparing to make pedophilia porn.   He sat at the live position in a flak jacket. The idea that he worked for FAT seemed absurd, but no less absurd that my working for FAT. Good man, bought the crew drinks every night, never even thought twice about it.

What he was thinking about was dying. Most TV producers are afraid of losing their jobs, but he wasn't. His corespondent was solid, and off camera quite rational and interested in the story. On camera she was all FAT, which made her perfect, though New York thought she should be a little sluttier. That she should throw on the FAT News hottie push up bra. So this producer didn't have to worry about loosing his job here. There were other things to worry about.

When the air raid siren went off he sat in the lee of a stone wall, flak jacket and helmet on, and wavied me over. He said:

-We sit here when the missiles come in, no one has been killed yet and they mostly have been landing in the bay, but they could hit anywhere anytime. Your hotel room, does it have a view of the bay?

Yes it is quite scenic.

-You may want to complain and move your room, perhaps to one that doesn't face Lebanon. Perhaps to a lower floor. Still they probably won't be able to move you, the rooms on the city side are all full.

In case a missile hits the hotel?

-Exactly, though it probably won't make any difference, these missiles are quite powerful, very deadly. In any case, when you hear the sirens go into the bathroom, there it might be a little safer. That is why we are sitting here, perhaps we could get a little more protection here rather than out in the open. Perhaps.

The camera man chose to join in our conversation. A tall blond dutch boy haircut shorts and flip flop wearing type who should play a cameraman in a movie rather than in real life. Not that he wasn't good, no he was quite good, it was that he looked like he was playing a role. He offered his wisdom:

-It doesn't really matter where you sit, the Katuscha's are packed with ball bearings, the point is that the metal ricochets around tearing the flesh of anyone around.

The producer nodded:

-Of course he is right, it is probably quite useless to sit here, but it is best not to tempt fate. In fact, the real danger is if they hit the oil refinery. The toxins that it could send up into the air, the fuel storage depots exploding, the death and toxicity would be enormous. Perhaps the lower half of the city could become some type of blighted inferno. So we have already mapped a route down to it so we could go live from there if it happens. How long would it take to break down and get back up on the bird?

Its kind of a unique set up.

-Don’t be worried Jack, you are just as dead up here as you would be down there.

As comforting as that is, we have an artisanal set up here, which is working just fine. Amazingly well, shockingly.  

The corespondent, American woman, UK based, not typical fluffy FAT girl, she knows the story, has an Israeli boy friend who is up at the front. There is also an Israeli fixer, tall Arab Jewish guy, with a face chiseld out of stone and a keen brilliant look on his face.

The crew wanted to know what it was like up there in Metula.

South Asians, dogs looking for their masters, smoke from forest fires, missiles firing, artillery blasting without end, the smell of sulfur. Couldn’t be better. Already booked a Zimmer for my next vacation. How is it here?

The producer clutched his beer and said :

-The city is empty, still you'll see the poor here because they have no where else to go. They are Arab, Russian and Eastern Europian. These are the people who need to work. The missiles come in the morning, that is our prime time.

My room had a TV, fridge, bathroom with a big tub. The exterior wall was all window with a clear view of the bay, the old city beneath and up hill the glass boxes of the new city full of beer pubs. The new and the old are linked by roads and by a funicular rail.  The window was a big target inviting a missle to fly on through.

In this hotel there were people who thought their windows were going to kill them, that Hezbollah was aiming a shot right at them, and just had  not hit yet. No point in thinking about it, dead or not, either  way a walking irrelavant shaddow dissolved under the movment of the sun. Alive or dead, the worry was not going to buy one more minuet of the day. Shy man, live man, cry man, sly man, we all die man. There is only life, sleep, death and dreams.

Standing at the window naked, turn your bare ass to Hezbollah, fire a missle at this.

Impossible peace : The outsider

A spaceship lands and makes everything ok for everyone forever. Hopefully it will be a funky one.

This solution has mulitple variations.