happenings

The other day I was talking to my parents on the phone from China, and suddenly there were popping sounds, loud and prolonged, out on our street. Sampson, who had been snoring on the veranda outside my office, practically leapt into my arms. As I sat on the ground with his head in my lap, cradling the phone amidst the continued popping, my parents asked innocently, "Boy, what's all that noise?"

"Firecrackers," I responded. "Not sure why."

I was pretty sure they weren't firecrackers. But what I strongly suspected them to be -  gunshots - while plausible in light of the fact that Sara had just called to breathlessly inform me she'd been caught in a riot downtown and a frenzied crowd had thrown rocks at her truck but she had escaped - didn't seem like something you admit to your parents. 

Chinese people invented firecrackers, if you recall, and I think because my parents had recently celebrated a raucous Chinese New Year replete with them, they accepted this explanation wordlessly.

About this lie: they might have been firecrackers. I reasoned:

1. Considering Sara's call, there is a slim chance those aren't gunshots.
2. However,  my life is rarely so exciting. There was that incident in Honduras with the bus and the guy with the handgun but...
3. Not likely. It's probably a kid shooting bottle rockets. Is that a thing here?
4. Sara diiiiiid mention riot police with guns.
5. Nah. You just want stories, better to play it conservative.

So I did, we hung up, and I ran out to meet Sara who had just roared up and slammed to a quick stop in our red truck. Some people were running down the street in front of our house. "Quick," she urged. "I think we need to get the truck locked up in the garage and get in the house."

We did, my heart raced, and we laid low in the house for the rest of the morning. Sometimes you do escape your middle-class upbringing, even if the circumstances turn out to be ugly and violent. Given a choice, I'd stay boring and let the world stay peaceful. But we're not always given a choice.

You can read about what happened on Sara's blog. While we were away in Beira late last week, it happened again, our night-guard reported to us. Two more killed. There's nothing romantic about poverty and desperation.

One-legged Aragorn lives in my tape dispenser. I never feel afraid.