jumpingfish

“You didn’t really think he was going to step down, did you?”

My heart was black. I felt like a heel. How could I have let the cheering and the flags and the singing and chanting lead me to believe in change, lead me to believe that something good can happen there?

That was yesterday.

Today, on Friday, on the evening of the day of prayer, under the glowing lights of Tahrir Square, the square is packed. The people are jubilant. They are cheering. They are chanting. They are singing and screaming and whistling. They are jumping up and down. Cars are honking their horns. The flags are waving furiously back and forth.

Mubarak has resigned. The people have brought the regime down.

It is too early for tears, for there is so much work to do. Yet I am in tears. And I know I am not alone.

It’s 19 hours GMT, and Al Jazeera is covering live what is sure to be one of the great events of the early 21st century.  What amazing coverage. I had given up on journalism.

“After seventeen days of protest, excitement is growing.” And as far as you can see, they tell us, every street leading into Cairo’s Tahrir Square is packed, and still the people are arriving.

The cheering and clapping and whistling of the crowd sounds like a great football game. From this distance you can hear the joy in their shouts. And the energy. And the anticipation. And the hope. They are waiting.

“Yalla! Yalla!”

Bring him on. Let’s hear him say he’ll leave.

The room was glowing red.  Red balloons were hanging from ribbons from the ceiling. And there were red valentines. From back to front. From left to right, ribbons and balloons and valentines hung over the tables, dangling over the heads of the seated diners.

“One for dinner?” a waitress asked.

“Two,” I said. “My wife is outside on the patio.”

“Follow me,” she said as she grabbed two menus.

“Looks like Valentine’s Day came early,” I said to the manager as he walked by.

“It’s been Valentine’s Day since January first,” he mumbled.

“Ah yes. We live from one holiday to another.”

“Yes we do.”

The man walked up to the counter at the end of the long, warmly lit room. A couple was sitting in some overstuffed chairs in the corner, but otherwise the place was empty.

The clerks looked up as he approached. They had been talking and stopped as he got near. He smiled, but they just looked at him without returning the favor.

“Well, I’m not coming in for coffee this time,” he said.

This time. It had been many months since he’d been there. He tried not to let it show, but they were still not smiling, and he felt busted.

“I’m curious if you… Do you have any coffee grounds? You see I’m planting strawberries and…”

He felt like a panhandler: Need help. Will work for coffee grounds.

“Actually, we do have grounds,” one of them said. “But there’s this other couple…” and he held up his hands in a what-can-I-do pose.

“Oh I see. No, that’s just okay,” the man said, glad in a way that at least their grounds go to a good home. He smiled as he backed, up waving and then turning to leave.

“Do you want to stop at Starbucks?” his wife asked when he got into the car.

He didn’t want to. Somehow he felt a bit odd about the whole thing. He asked if she would. She said no. Maybe he’d try again on the weekend. The strawberries would have to wait.

“It’s not going anywhere,” he said as he pulled hard on the cord and tied one last knot.

The desk came in parts, and I figured they’d all fit in the back of my little station wagon, but I figured wrong. The guard outside the store offered to help me tie it onto my car rack.

He seemed to know what he was doing. And I keep nylon straps in the car. So I figured between the two of us, we could strap it down securely. But as I watched him tie his knots and pull the cords, I started to shake. Literally, I started to shake. It was dark. It was getting late. I had a long drive ahead of me. With that thing on top of my car? What was I thinking?

“I’m driving home to Austin,” I told him.

“Good luck,” he said as I got into the car.

I was still shaking as I pulled onto the westbound feeder road. As the car got up to 35 miles per hour, the load began to buzz and vibrate. How was I going to make it home? It was now almost 9:00 at night, and I still had over 150 miles to go.

What on earth was I thinking?

I pulled off the road and tightened everything.  His not-going-anywhere knots had already slipped. So I retied them and added more cords and knots of my own, and satisfied that it was finally as secure as I could make it, I pulled back into traffic.

But seriously, what was I thinking?

Minutes later, I pulled into a grocery store and bought some nylon rope: two spools of 100 feet each. And I proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes in the parking lot pulling the 100 feet of one of those spools thru my rank-amateur loops and knots, stopping regularly to untangle the yellow nylon mess lying at my feet.

Oh for heaven’s sake, what was I thinking?

I pulled back onto the road. The highway was still too busy and traffic too fast for me to do anything but drive with the local traffic, going from stoplight to stoplight. If I could just get to the outskirts of Houston on the feeder road, the traffic would surely diminish and I could get onto the freeway.

Red tail lights raced by on the freeway and I chugged along on the feeder road. I drove under the Beltway. I passed Fry Road, which used to be so far out in the middle of nowhere. I kept on going until I was by myself on the feeder road and the highway traffic had thinned. And after a few successful test runs up to 50 mph with no vibrating or buzzing, I got my courage up, seeing that no one was behind me, and I merged onto the Interstate. A drove along at 50, and the few cars that remained barreled by me at 70.

Three hours later, 30 minutes after midnight, I pulled into our driveway with the desktop still strapped firmly to the top of the car. I never got the guts to go faster than 52, and somewhere around Lagrange my gas mileage dropped noticeably when the front of the box split open and the box began gulping the cold night air like a Baleen whale.

It was late, but I was finally home. And I hadn’t hurt anyone. But oh my lord, what was I thinking?