The Distance Between Us. Masha Hamilton
and man-sized chunks of concrete spray-painted black with Arabic graffiti. A Yaladi roadblock. She didn’t expect it this soon. The driver cuts the engine and the air grows defiantly still. The dust finally gives up and sinks.
A slouching man with a knife tucked into his belt separates himself from a concrete slab, sticks out a hand to collect their press cards, and then, self-important on squat legs, strides into a hut. A second roadside militiaman, baby face and pear belly, plants himself next to their Land Rover, machine gun cradled in his arms.
Caddie brushes the dust from her hair. She wishes again that she were more familiar with this route from Beirut to the south. They are probably twenty miles from the border with Israel, twenty miles from the Mediterranean Sea. The land is scraped and stingy, abandoned even by animals and insects, left to these imprudent men with their weapons.
“One-two-’twas brillig and the slithy toves . . .” Rob intones into his microphone.
“You’re going to drain the battery before we get there,” Sven says.
“Something’s wrong with the goddamned pinch roller,” Rob says. “If I don’t get the interview on tape, I might as well have slept in, saved myself this cowboy ride.”
Incessant worrying over the equipment, Caddie knows, is part of his routine. She has habits of her own. During interviews, she often makes up a ridiculous question or two that she would never actually ask, then imagines her subject’s response. It’s oddly soothing.
“You worry too much,” Marcus says. “If the pitch is off, it’s so slight no one will notice.”
“Hey, bud, I don’t worry enough,” Rob says. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be in the middle of fucking East Jesus letting some monkey point his gun at me.”
Their guard has begun shifting gently from foot to foot, swinging his weapon as if in time to music. Watching him, Caddie almost hears her ballet teacher’s shrill military voice: “One, two, on your toes, lift your head.” She’d been, what? Eight, maybe nine years old, and remarkably clumsy, all clashing elbows and difficult knees. “Again, from the top. Let’s plié . . .” She pictures this bulky militiaman, with his unexpected Santa Claus face, wearing a pink tutu. As he sways next to the hunks of ruined concrete, she is struck by a single, distinct wave she can identify only as elation.
How could she ever explain to someone back home what it is to cover a conflict? At least one like this that crisscrosses through the region, its front line changing daily, so that she can find herself unexpectedly in it at a moment’s notice. Everyone with a television set observes the violence and horror. But, sitting on their couches, can they imagine the delight of unexpected absurdities? The rush of ecstasy, even, when the exotic intersects with the familiar? Or the way that seeing all this, up close, elevates a common life?
“I have an idea for dinner tonight,” Marcus says near her ear.
“I’m filing tonight,” Caddie says. “And you’d better be sending a couple pictures.”
“That’ll take half an hour. As for you, what? A couple quotes from the drug lord, a little local color from his hideout. You could almost write it now.” Marcus shifts in his seat and pulls a crumpled receipt from his back pocket. “Here.”
“I’ve got paper, thanks.”
“How about your phone number, then?” he jokes, pseudo-husky, leaning in again to smell her cheek. She laughs, shoving him off. He winks, and the color of his eyes makes her think of olives resting in martinis.
Okay, so she’s partial to his blond good looks, his humor, and his consummate skill with a camera. She likes that he’s drawn to her face without makeup and her constantly disheveled short hair. But they aren’t a couple; spare her that conventionality. They are colleagues. Plus lovers, when the mood strikes. Both of them journalists who find the story irresistible and plan to live in it a long time. Discussions about relationships soon bore her. Too much dependency invariably backfires, in her experience.
Usually she thinks Marcus agrees. There are, of course, those other times. Like in the hotel bar last night. She’d been talking about how she didn’t want to sign another year-long lease on her apartment, and he’d said she’d become afraid to commit to anything, too hooked on the ephemeral news story to ever be satisfied with the solidity of real life. His tone was surprisingly wistful. She refused, though, to give him a serious response. They were in a bar, after all, with colleagues. Screw you, she’d countered, laughing. News stories are real life. And they were—a form of it, anyway, the way bottled perfume was a form of odor. Besides, I’m just talking about a lease. She could tell he wanted to say more, but he took another slug of beer, letting it drop.
The mustachioed militiaman who collected their cards strides out of the hut, shaking his head as though he’s uncovered a plot. He motions. Their driver—what’s his name? Hussein? Mohammed?—glances back without meeting anyone’s eyes. Grains of sweat darken his temples and bead above his lips. He slides from the jeep, taking the keys with him, as if these journalists were inmates, plotting to drive off and leave him behind in the vacuous Lebanese landscape. Christ.
The gunman speaks to the driver in a dull slur that Caddie can’t make out. Their guard is still swaying, his AK-47 balanced delicately in his arms and pointed in their direction. The crickets grow loud, unusual for midday.
The driver shuffles back and passes out press cards. Three.
“Excuse me,” Marcus says. “Where’s mine?”
The driver shrugs.
“Brilliant.” Marcus swings out of the jeep, the two Nikons around his neck bouncing.
Their pear-belly guard stiffens, aiming his gun at Marcus’s chest. Caddie reaches from the Land Rover to try to grab Marcus’s arm, but he’s too far away.
“Okay, okay.” Marcus raises his hands. “I need my card back. Card. Back. Comprenez?”
The guard holds his gun steady.
“Tell him, Catherine.” He’s still grinning, still outwardly confident that this adventure is manageable, no more threatening than a Ferris wheel ride. But Caddie knows he drops her nickname only at serious moments,
“My colleague, please, must have his press identification,” Caddie says in Arabic, addressing both militiamen, trying for a there-must-be-a-small-mistake smile. “Then we will depart, thank you.”
The mustachioed militiaman speaks shotgun-fast to the driver—to Caddie it sounds like “these beans should be fried again in Syria”—and the driver listens without expression. Caddie’s Arabic isn’t bad, but now she wishes, deeply, for a better grasp of local colloquialisms.
Another man emerges from the hut. Shirtless, skinny and muscular, he appears younger than the others. His face is creased in irritation. His hair sticks up in tufts as though he’s been unwillingly roused from bed. Carrying no weapon, he walks with shoulders high, hands alert, fingers slightly extended. Caddie’s tongue suddenly tastes metallic.
“You still here?” The shirtless man speaks in English.
“I need my identification card.” Marcus enunciates as if to a child. “What a fashla,” he says to Caddie in an aside, using the Arabic for “mess-up.”
The young tough squints. “What you want?” he asks in English, in a tone that convinces Caddie the best answer would be “nothing.”
Marcus chuckles. “This guy speaks pretty good caveman.”
Caddie speaks sharply, quietly. “Shit, Marcus. Shut. Up.”
Yes, this sleepy-eyed militiaman is a fool, made silly by the handful of power he holds over a hut and two armed men. But Marcus, it’s clear, has a case of Superman Disorder, the disease that worms its way into journalists, fooling them into believing they’re so seasoned, their instincts so developed, that every risk is manageable. That even the clouds and the dirt will back