I've got a rock

[talonkarrde]

It was my first time reporting in a wartime environment.

I was staring down at the orderly rows of protesters slowly winding their way up the street, waving signs that said “Let Us Be Free!” and “Our Voices Will Be Heard!”, from a balcony of the hotel, one that I thought would be deserted, given the demonstration going out on the streets. But then, a voice from my left.

“Disgusting, aren’t they?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to face the man. Average height, average build, black, curly hair, dark brown eyes, a red power tie. An unpleasant face is what caught me the most, with a mouth that looked like it hadn’t smiled in the thirty or so years he had been born.

“They are sheep to slaughter,” he answers. “And too stupid to realize it. Do you know what the difference between a riot and a demonstration is?”

I shrugged, not really interested in continuing the conversation; besides, the leaders of the protest were almost in contact with the police line.

“It isn’t, as commonly held, when someone throws a bottle, or a rock, or when the guns start firing. That’s just the illustration of the turning point, the start of the death toll. But it’s a riot before then. You can spot it by the attitudes that the two sides have. The rocks that protesters carry, the guns that the soldiers finger, even when they’re told to stand down. A riot happens the two sides hate each other, intensely, and want the other side to fail and to die.”

“There are plenty of Western sources of history where the people peacefully demonstrate an unpopular government, though,” I countered, watching as the shopkeepers started closing down their shops. It seemed unnecessary to me, as the march was still heading peacefully past these shops.

“And plenty more where a flower planted into the barrel of a gun was shot back, with lead, into the protesters’ faces,” he responds darkly, and I frown. “It’s the truth, and you’d best believe it. There, see — it begins.”

And I see a guy reach out, and throw a rock at a policeman. He is hit, and once the others see blood, they take it as an automatic order to stand ready, their guns — rubber bullets, the government said — pointed at the opposing line.

And for a moment, everyone pauses. The protesters, the soldiers, the bystanders. Everyone freezes, and watches, and waits.

“See? They’ll stand down now,” I say, hesitantly, hopefully.

And then he sneers, and the sound of firing — with live bullets — starts, and the screams of the dying, and I stare, transfixed, as the crowd begins to panic, some fighting back, some running away. I lean over the edge, and only as I feel his hand on my back do I realize that I shouldn’t have trusted him.

“Go, then,” he said, “join your sheep,” and I was falling.

#
 

There are only flashes of the riot, short clips I remember intensely, bright splashes of colour in the darkness. There is my landing, when I hit three, four people, and they all go down in a pile, and others start stepping over — stepping on — us, in their haste to get away, to run from the bullets, the advancing figures. I roll; I feel someone kick my back, harshly, and I do not know if it is someone under me or someone running away. I feel scrabbing on my face and I close my eyes to the gouging, feeling the nails, the claw of a hand trying to find something to grab on to, and finding nothing but my mouth. I almost bite down, almost, choking on his, her, someone’s fingers, but I wrench myself away, instead.

I remember being hauled up by two bystanders, a man and a woman, who make sure I’m on my feet before moving away, helping others, helping those fallen, even though they were in danger of being trampled themselves. And as I watch, one of them does go down, bowled over by a man running away, and then they are lost, swept away—

I cling to a pole in the crush and see a soldier firing into a man crawling away, hitting him in the back; I watch as the blood comes out of the neat hole in his back, and then, as he turns over, I see the gaping maw that was his stomach, and I vomit, down, into the crowd, into the street that is becoming slick with sweat and blood and urine and vomit.

And then I look up, and see as the man cries out for mercy, and I see the soldier raise his gun again, pointing at the man’s head, and another soldier knock the gun out of the way, calling for a medic, kneeling beside the man. The first soldier stands there for a second, and then takes off his helmet... and then falls, a bright mist coming out of the side of his head, as a pistol finds him, blowing his brains against the side of the street. And yet, the medic still keeps working, doing the best he can for the protester, even as gunfire continues around them, even as he starts bleeding from the ear, a direct hit from a rock that dazes but does not stop him—

I remember having a rock on my hand, and seeing a soldier on the ground, and seeing it bloody. He is knocked out, and there is a girl standing over him, a girl who has a rock in her hand as well, and she is hitting him with it, hitting him in the helmet. And then she kneels, and takes the helmet off, and raises the rock, and her saying, this is for my brother, you bastards—

I remember hauling the soldier upright, and dragging him towards his own lines, my hands empty, my face bloody. I remember snarling, snarling, as if I were an animal, at the protesters that came near. I remember the captain snapping his fingers, his uniform clean and pressed and as if he had just come from a parade, telling me to get out of his sight, that he could have me shot but he wouldn’t, because I had sided with the right people. I remember saying, sir, yes, sir—

And then going back into the fray, because what else could I have done? I had seen enough, perhaps, for a million stories, but there were still children bleeding out, fathers and sons and daughters and sisters that needed help.

The story could wait.

#

It’s hours later before I stumble back to my hotel, but I do manage to get there, battered, bloody. I stumble into my chair, curl up into a ball, and start shaking, trembling as the sobs come and don’t stop, as the images start replaying themselves across the inside of my eyelids.

And it’s there, an hour after I get back, that I open my laptop, that I start typing, knowing what my job was, knowing that I had to refute him, knowing that I had to tell the world. I remember the bystanders, the medic, the soldiers that would not take innocent lives, the protesters that just wanted to peacefully call for change.

And I write. I write my fucking heart out, take all the pain that I’ve just witnessed and try and put in all the hope that I’ve seen and I write to change the world.

Even in the darkest corners of the world, there is hope...

Comments

[beautyofgrey.livejournal.com]

This is intense and brutal to read, in all the right ways. ♥