I had a boiler in the backyard that I cut in half and flipped vertically to burn in it all manners of garden junk, branches of the overhanging oaks, climbing vines, clippings of the apple trees. It was a beast, steel walls as thick as my fingers and deep. Once the fire got going the base would get hot enough to glow orange and whatever I threw inside incinerated quickly, first to a tar then to a light grey ash that danced in the updraft at the periphery of the flames. I sat in a fold-up longchair and babysat the fire for a long time, the weaving of the colours, the gentle crackling, the shapes coming into and going out of my imagination, the soothing heat that at times produced beads of sweat in this Hamadan cold. Our lands were vast and went all the way to the base of Alvand in Asadabad. When my uncle was away at his brick factory, no one came to chide me for my pyrothechnical obsession.

The best displays were when it snowed. The brightness of the white erased most of the subtle hues to only leave the dancing ash against an otherworldly orange show, something like a summoning from the deep magma under all that mass of the volcano. And sometimes, very rarely, the call would get answered. Unfortunately, in the trance that I was, the details would be murky. Don't get me wrong, I wished for nothing, being more or less in an unthinking fog that I only overcame in my late twenties and this was decades earlier. I had few needs that weren't fulfilled by a large and mostly feminine extended family. It only left a taste of power of which I had no use for. Back then.

No life goes on without begging at some point. It could be that you're where you should never be alone, late at night, putting yourself in between your girl and the burly guys, one in a long leopard coat and the other with a ski jacket two sizes too short, holding your wallet and camera in front of you, watching their eyes shift to her and feeling your heart sink, that this might be it. But then there is a dancing flame in the eyes, a softening of shoulders, the wallet and camera enough payment for two lives.

Now scrolled images flicker in my eyes. I am given to watch the atrocity exhibition, one short clip after another, one life after another thousands, indiscriminate and mean spirited in a way that it's no longer about payments, or even the safeguarding of resources. but rather macabre enjoyment and sadistic voyeurism. Yes, we are that inhumane. No one dares to hide a young Honduran in an attic like Anne was for two years and one month. Instead we look away and sigh. We don't expose anyone because they are in the open and broadcast hourly.

Just like we judge the excesses of the past (fight the communists in our midst anyone?), we will be judged by the future. Make no mistakes that uninvolvment will not be a pass. The judgment, as written, by fire.


jam25