About the types of weapons

من حكايا أبو هزاع الطلسماني

From the tales of Abu Hazza' al-Talsamani


About the types of weapons


Samer kicked the large window shattering it into small pieces. We went through them and picked few good ones to smooth the surface of our wooden desk that we shared. The window was at our old elementary school where a ball or a rock had gone through it leaving a huge hole in the middle. It was thick glass and good for what we wanted to do. We had played soccer all afternoon in the school. We also threw the cork bombs we made over the last few days. They made an amazing sound. You could have heard the explosion from our house. We ran. Each of us threw one. Samer was faster because he was taller, but he ran funny. Bashar was nowhere to be found that day.

WE parted ways. Samer went to his home that he shared with his older brother, older sister as well as both of his parents. And I went home to where my two older sisters and well as my two younger ones lived with both of my parents. My brother, who was the eldest among us left a month ago to go to the medical college in the Capital?

My mother screamed at me and said I was dirty. She made me go and wash myself. My father had a book in his lap and was listening to the news on the radio and did not care to interfere. He was angry with me the day before, as well as all of last week, the weeks before that, and the few months before that also.

My father was smoking, of course. But to my luck, something was going on that day that made him not noticing my arrival. He was going through the radio stations fast. He knew the schedule of these stations and did not care to look at me when he heard my mother screaming at me. Then, while still smoking his cigarette, he rolled another one and placed it on the arm of the chair he was sitting on next to the radio in our living room.

Skinny Samer and I were together in the same 7th grade branch or Shu‘ba as it was called in Arabic. The school contained grades from the 7th to the 12th. There was 4 Shu‘bas of Seven graders with around 52 students in each one. Three of them studied English as the foreign language and the forth took French. All other subjects were taught in Arabic.
Samer and I were in the Second Branch, or al-Shu‘ba al-Thaniyah. The French had smaller number of students.

The name of our middle school was Usama Ibn Zaid, a Muslim who died fighting the Romans in the early days of Islam. It later became a high school, from which I later graduated. The city had two major high schools, with many middle schools. Usama Ibn Zaid used to be downtown, where al-Nidal Elementary School now. My brother went there before going to the nearby al-Maliki High School, one of the two main high schools in the city. The director of my school, a short man with jet black think hair, reminded me on my first day that my brother was a good student. As a matter of fact, my brother was a great student, one of the best to ever come through our city.

My brother graduated from al-Maliki the same year I graduated my elementary school. al-Maliki, by the way, was an army officer who was assassinated in the 1950’s during a soccer game in the Capital. The other big high school in the city was also named after a man died in 1956 during the British, Israeli and French attack on Egypt when he rammed his torpedo boat into a French warship, as they say.

It was common to believe among us boys that those who decided to take French as their second language were soft. My brother took French and was not soft at all. He was serious all the times. The French teacher of the seventh graders almost made Samer switch to French. We watched her everyday. Samer talked about her a lot. She was tall with wavy brown hair. Her posture was like those they write about in the poems I read in the books.

After leaving al-Ghafiqi Elementary School my parents enrolled me in Usama Ibn Zaid Secondary School. It was closer to our house than the ones downtown. Then, suddenly and after one month of schooling we were told that we were to be relocated to the new building next door that would be named the same but as a high school because it would offer tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades.

The new building was a U shaped- three story with small space for sport. WE did not understand things fully, because our biggest school was our elementary school, which had a full soccer field, a full basketball court, a full handball court, a volleyball court, a theater and a huge garden. We went from big to small and that did not make sense.

Transforming and then renaming was not new to our city. Take the sports teams for example, al-Sahel became Hutteen after adding al-Sharq to it and Tishreen is the old al-Hurriyah, al-Qadisiyah, al-Wathbah and al-‘Arabi. Our beautiful city was like that too. It was called many different names depending on the ruler and their likings.

**

They brought the desks from our old middle school to our “new” and “bigger” high school. They were not the same ones we had in mind. We wanted fresh new desks. Samer, Bashar and I were pissed for that because the tags from the year before were covering the face of the desk and we had to do the smoothing and cleaning before putting our throw ups. We already cleaned a lot from the desk we had for a month, but, we did not draw a thing on it.

‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi Elementary School was on Samer’s block and about a block and a half from my house. It was the place we met to look for glass for our new project. We knew where to go and were able to find the broken window that we finished and collected few good pieces each.

Samer had came to the city to live after being born in Saudi Arabia where both his parents were teachers; his father was teaching history while his mother did Design. They were originally from a part of our land that was given by the French to the Turks. Most of his family left Iskandaron and came to live here among the large wave of refugees from that part of our land. Although Samer and his family were refugees of a sort, they were rich and affluent back in their home, so they were able to get comfortable living of a sort. My family had also came to the city from where I was born by the Capital. But, we were originally from the mountains sitting beautifully just east of the city. My brother and two older sisters were born in another city by the front and where my father was in the army military police before he retired and bought the house we live in now.

**


Our new school was an ugly one. It was a dark bleak grey building in the part of town called al-Qal‘a, which meant the Castle. The city is ancient, of course, and the layers of history are seen all over the place standing witness to what had happened. The high school rested on the eastern slope of the hill leading to the old Castle. Then at the top of that hill the city’s main water tank occupied the space of the northern side of that Castle that was destroyed over few violent attacks through out history. Nothing left of it but the name and small tiny part of its walls here and there. It is the highest point of the city that had witnessed lots of violent attacks throughout time. It also enjoyed great prosperous days too.

To the south of that ugly grey structure was an assortment of 14 mm anti aircraft guns to protect the army radar that occupied the southern tip of that hill. A cemetery spread on the southern slops too cheering up the atmosphere. Along our school there was another “new” school. It was the newly built College of Medicine of the newly established University in the city, along with the College of Civil Engineering. It occupied our school’s southern side. The sea was on the other side of the Castle. We used to go up to the Castle and watch the whole city from the top. The mountains occupied the whole eastern view of the city. In some places it intermingled with the city to create that lush place. The castles that were left from the older wars decorated that lovely mountain. One cannot see them quite well from the city itself. That did not bother us at. What we cared about that we could not see the sea from our four large windows in our classroom.

WE were on the second floor where you can see through our windows the huge yard in the back of the College where in the corner adjacent to our school’s wall there was the room where they kept the cadavers that were to be used for anatomy classes. My brother chose the medical school in the capital because it was better. He had moved out of our house just few months ago for the first time ever. He came home last weekend and stayed for two days. I asked him about the cadavers in that room. He brought with him some human bones that he bought for his anatomy classes. He also brought his books with him. He showed me things in his anatomy book. Every page of it was colored and not like the anatomy pictures in the big Arabic-English dictionary that we had in the house. The smaller dictionaries always carried those pictures, but not colored.

We did not smell the stench of death because the cadavers were kept as my brother said in a special liquid. Every now and then we would see the old janitor carrying one of them to be dissected. He would have them wrapped with blankets. He was a tall man with a little slouch who walked dragging his feet somehow.

Both of my older sisters went to al-Ba‘th Girls High School. It was the first one and the biggest now for girls in our city. Its name is the official name of the ruling party. It meant Renaissance, or Resurrection. The oldest was in her last year of High School and my other sister was in the Tenth grade. Al-Ba ‘th was between al-Qal ‘a and the sea. Both my sisters took the bus to school. The bus stop was on a corner from both al-Ghafiqi and our house. I walked with Samer to school everyday and always met by the bus stop because the other corner was where the huge dog that we scared laid waiting to attack us, or take a piece out of us. We noticed him many times just watching us.

**

Our new desks were still filled with all the tags and drawings done by the students who occupied the desk the year before. Some writings had the names of girls. We read them and always tried to figure out who did them. There was nothing like what we wanted to do. We needed first to take all of that writings and designs out and have the new wood pop from below the surface so we can draw our favorite tanks and jet fighters without any interruptions, at least till year's end. It would take us a week to finish the job by scrapping it with the pieces of the broken glass. Samer wanted to draw on his side over the others’ words, messages and tags because he does not want to clean his side a lot and preferred that look for its camouflaged effect.

**

I heard Samer whistling while I was still eating the sandwich my mother had made me. Together we were listening to her favorite morning radio show. I did not mind the show that much, but always preferred the ones my sister just older than I listened to all day when she could. My older sister did not care that much about the radio. She was reading most of the time. My two older sisters handled things differently. Each had her own vision of life and fought sometimes.

My eldest sister was just like my older brother; very serious. She was one of the best students in her high school all the time, while the sister just older than I was rebellious. She not only listened all day to radio shows, but also sent letters with her friends requesting songs. Soon her name was on the radio getting shout outs from people as far as Morocco. I laughed when I first heard her name on the radio on a show that is the Arabic version of a British request show. My mother was not amused with that at all. She told me father about it. My sister requested a dance disco song.

I picked my bag and made sure that I had the glass we collected the day before. We walked to school and to our surprise a long column of tanks loaded on huge trucks, and which were covered by large tarps, were heading out the seaport. They had to pass by our school on the way out of the city. We were able to distinguish the types of the tanks and its number. They were T 55’s and some soldier carriers. We were able to figure things out fast.

When we got to school, they lined us according to grade and made us sing the ruling party’s anthem then we saluted the President and entered the classes. Before, and when we were lined up, Samer and I stood toward the end of the class and the teachers watching us enter always kept an eye on those standing into the end. It was composed of those arriving late. We took our time watching the trucks. We counted many and were surprised to find most of them covered with tarps. We heard that at night they transport a lot of weapons too. Samer knew as much as I did about weapons. We knew a lot about airplanes. But, I knew more about World War II because of the two books I found. One of them was a story of a German Warship. The other was a list of all of the German gear in that war. Samer borrowed that from me to draw some of them. He was a better drawer than me, but I always came up with the stories.

Our first class was math as usual and the teacher made us show him our homework, which I had done with Samer. We worked on it the day before and right after lunch and right before our trip to our elementary school to play soccer and collect the glass. The math teacher lived in our neighborhood and one of his sons was in our class too. But, Rami, the math teacher’s son, did not know or cared about weapons like we did. He also played rarely with us in our old elementary school. He also had two brother one of them was really fat, but we liked him because he always wanted to be with us scheming.

That hour I managed to scrap a little of the surface. The teacher heard it while his back was turned to us and asked us to be quite. He was stern but not super tough. It was a tough hour on me though. But, I managed to listen to the teacher and write most of the important things and scrap few square inches. Samer did not scrap and instead wrote everything the teacher said in a very organized manner in his neat copybook. He was all ears because he loved mathematics and wanted to learn more, and wrote away. That hour was hard.

**

I always liked the touch of wood after you scrap is and remove a layer. I liked the smell of it too. And after the teacher gave us what we have to do at home for the next class and which was the first thing in the morning of the next day, and before our ‘Arabic teacher came in, Samer and I managed to scrap good ten minutes. The ‘Arabic teacher was a little late because he was having problems with the older students. He was old, but walked super fast.

**

Our ‘Arabic teacher busted into our boisterous room so quick that he almost tripped on the step of the platform occupying the space in front of our desks and underneath the blackboard that was framed into the wall facing us. On that platform there was a table and a chair right by the window giving the teacher a great view of the back yard and the action there. A map of the Arab World occupied the space behind the chair and in between where the blackboards ended and the window. The Arabic teacher had the thickest glasses among all of our teachers. Samer’s dad had big glasses too. He was a History teacher at our school, and taught the higher grades.

Our Arabic class was conjugation. We had a homework that I have done with the help of my older sister. My sister did not know anything about weapons like us boys, Samer and I. But she knew a lot about conjugation. She started reading lately the books that my brother had brought with him from the Capital. He told us about his new friends and brought us some tapes of songs, poetry and banned plays among other things. My father started tapping into that stack of books too.

I had to conjugate a line of poetry from a poem that I have to memorize on top of things. It was a long poem, but luckily, we had to memorize the first twenty lines from it. That fell, of course, into my father’s educational territory, since that he had to show that he was helping his kids in their schooling. He knew what we have to take every year, and asks all the times about something he could help with. He found it. It is memorization, something my father have been doing with my sisters and me for years. Math, Physics, Conjugation, Composition, and all the other hard subjects were the realms of my brother and older sister.

I conjugated the line, but I did not know more than the first eight lines of the poem. I knew who wrote it and know his life story by heart. My sister told me about the meter of the poem and many other technical things. My father got busy, to my delight, with something my mother made him do, and which he prolonged so he could go and pretend to have a shave or a haircut with his friend the barber where they would play backgammon for an hour or two.

I was lucky again that day and the teacher did not ask me to read the poem by heart. He chose another student, who started reading it while the teacher went through the class collecting the papers that included the conjugation assignment to take and grade. That meant that he had to walk from desk to desk. There were three lined of desks with two paths in between then. Each desk was occupied by two students except for some that had three, and by the time our teacher would go through them all, we would have a solid five to ten minutes of scrapping the desk.

After the Arabic class we had our first break, and all of the students in the school went to the yard. Before we left we made progress with our task. We were cut short and yelled at and send out of the class to the recess. Samer and I went and bought sandwiches along with Bashar my new friend and who lived right next to Samer. Being friends with Samer meant meeting Bashar all the times. We tried to go back into the class early but they did not let us. The doors from the yard into the building were closed. The School director and the principles were roaming that area along with some of the student body that runs what is called the “Discipline Unit.” They would not let us back in till due time.

We wanted to clean the rest of the desk. Samer told me that he would make his first drawing of a tank during our last hour, which was history. He wanted to draw the new tanks we saw them unloading off one of the ships in the seaport. We saw that when we were sent to the main post office down town to mail something. That post office was downtown and we had to take the bus. It was right next to the northern exit of the port and where one could see the ships on the docks and what they were unloading. My parents did not know that I left the neighborhood and took the bus.

By the end of the recess they had to line us again, but without singing the anthem of the party or saluting the President and shouting wishes for him to lead us forever. We have done all of that in the morning. At this time students had to be in classes fast. But, all students try to slow the process as possible. Samer and I would stay by the end of the line that had to be according to height. We should stand almost to the front since that we were among the shortest segment. The ones who stood in the back were the tallest ones some of which are the ones who failed the pass to the 8th grade and those kids that grow up fast at an early age. Ammar was one of them and he also was from our hood. He just lived with his family on the ground floor of the two-story building where Samer lived. Ammar was around six feet already with facial hair. He was sought after by the basketball teams in the city and always challenged us to play him in al-Ghafiqi our old elementary school. Samer, who always wanted to be taller, and who started having lots of hair on his forearms and legs, would ask me to play basketball with Ammar.

The third and the forth classes were hard and slow and we were not able to do lots of work except for the five minutes window between the classes. We had Physics and the teachers of both subjects intimidated Chemistry and us. The Physics teacher hits few students almost every class. He knew when to strike and whom to pick up for that and why. We were bellow his radar sitting in the first raw writing away what he was saying and cleaning our desks every time we could, like during the fights for example. He never suspected what we were doing because we had our homework on time all the times. He lived on our street closer to the bus stop and snitched on me few times to my parents.

The Chemistry teacher was the same, tough, rough and not too many things could pass him. He was mad most of the times and cursed at our parents many times. Again, we always had our homework ready for that monster that would boast about his beating to other students all the times. Our second recess was next and we tried to play with the other student with the basketball they were able to bring from the sports room.

The older students, and many of who play for the clubs of the city, played of course. We waited to be picked and when we were passed we decided to try and get back to our class but to no avail. They lined us up, where Samer and I were standing in the first line trying to get to our desks as soon as possible.

The last class was History because our lovely English teacher was not feeling well. We wanted to see her badly. Samer was telling me about how much he saw of her when he passed by the teachers’ room the other day and where she was wearing a skirt. Every student was in love with her I always thought. Samer and I had a crush on her of course. Samer told me that most of the teachers were in love with her. I believed all of that. But, both of us agree that the French teacher of the seventh grade was as sexy.

That day and to our dismay, instead of her in her pants and shirt we had our sweaty principle with the huge round face, and who subs as a history teacher, came in. He was tired and sat on the table and never moved and started by asking us to write notes of what he was saying. He took his feet out of his shoes and started his normal diatribes.

It was the last hour and the most boring one of the days. We were waiting to go home. The teacher was not into what he was talking about. He was telling us about some glorious past. We were sitting in front of him in the first row of desks looking straight at him and nodding to everything he said. He did not suspect that we had one hand with a pen while the other had the piece of glass scraping underneath the notebook that was serving also as a cover for that action. And, when he picked up one of the students who sat in the last row to slap and kick, he mentioned us as an example of how students should be in his class. He hit one of the students who were making noise through a string that he connected between the legs of the desk making an improvised string instrument. The teacher was baffled first with that sound, and which he though coming from outside. But, after few laughs of the students and the negligence of the student responsible for that sound the teacher, principle, was able to pin point it and caught the culprit. Punishment was hard and swift and the student was sent home and was asked to bring his dad with him the next day.


But, to have the principle as a sub teacher has its advantages also. He had to leave early so he could organize the exit of all the students from the school at the end of the day. The sweaty principle with the huge round face had to leave us unattended for at least 20 minutes. He had his point student, and a good candidate to the “Discipline Unit,” Yasser watching us and recording the names of those who cause trouble. I had the pen ready and the desk was clean at that moment and I was ready to be in the world of no troubles. Yasser was our friend from the elementary school days and never ratted us, so we started.

By the last bell of the school day we had them done: Samer did a tank and I drew a Mig jetfighter that I kept on thinking about its beauty till the next day. I started thinking about it the moment we left school to go back home. On the way back there were no trucks with tanks. I had to be home as soon as possible so I can buy bread before the bakery was to close. I was lucky that day, I did not have to be pushed and wait for hours to buy bread. I got my bread fast and went back home to my mother. All of my sisters were at school and my father was out also.

*

A couple of real Migs flew over the city in the afternoon. Probably they were on patrol. I did not see them but Samer did. He told me later. I heard them though. I was studying and trying to memorize a poem for my Arabic class the next day. I liked the poem and started thinking about the hero described by the poet. My daydream was cut short by the sound of the returning Migs again. I dreamt about being a pilot. It was not the first time. It was the highest on the day dream scale. I kept on thinking about the plane I had made. I went and looked for one of the magazines in my brother’s closet. He allowed me to look at his magazines, and when I found the right one, it contained beautiful pictures of jetfighters. I liked the one I made. It was not complete yet, I told myself. I forgot to draw a star on it.