You’re giving me a deal, eh?
SADIQ:
What is your name?
MERCER:
Mercer.
SADIQ:
Mercer. I am Sadiq.
MERCER:
Sadiq?
SADIQ:
Sadiq. Yes, we make deal. Seven five purple fish.
MERCER:
Here, Sadiq.
Hands SADIQ money.
SADIQ:
Look, I have nice envelope for picture. Customer is always right.
MERCER:
Yeah.
Pause.
MERCER:
What are you doing?
SADIQ:
Look at water. Beautiful.
My brother is over there (he points). In West Bank. I not see since I am twelve. You have brother?
MERCER:
How old are you?
SADIQ:
Sixteen.
MERCER:
Sixteen, huh?
SADIQ:
And you?
MERCER:
I’m twenty.
SADIQ:
I am seventeen very soon. One—two month. You skinny to be soldier.
MERCER:
What?
SADIQ:
You very skinny. Americans soldier much more, you know, with beef. Canadian soldier is much less beef, yes?
MERCER:
Well, I don’t know if skinny is the word I’d use but—we’re not all the same, you know.
SADIQ:
You—different. How you different?
MERCER:
I don’t know.
I went to university.
SADIQ:
I do not understand.
MERCER:
Most of these guys, they join up ’cause they got nothing else. Or they want a free education. Not me.
SADIQ:
Why you join?
MERCER:
I wanted to get my shit together. I was at Queen’s University. What a fucking waste of time.
SADIQ:
School. Puh. School is no good.
MERCER:
You’re telling me.
SADIQ:
My brother real good in school. Always top. Now he is in prison.
MERCER:
Oh yeah?
SADIQ:
Here I learn real life. But my father, he know I not go to school, he would break my throat.
MERCER:
Fuck. When I quit school and joined up, my father freaked.
SADIQ:
Freak?
MERCER:
He got really angry.
SADIQ:
For why?
MERCER:
He’s a government big-shot. Makes him look bad, his son’s a stupid soldier.
SADIQ:
Yes. You like me.
MERCER:
What?
SADIQ:
You … like … me.
MERCER:
No I don’t.
SADIQ:
No, I say, “You like me.”
MERCER:
I don’t even know you.
SADIQ:
No, no. Like me. For angry father you join army—come to Qatar. Me also. Work for Salim and go to Kansas.
MERCER:
No. I didn’t join because of him.
SADIQ:
Then why you join?
MERCER:
I told you. I wanted discipline.
A few months ago there was this thing that happened in Canada with our Indians, they blockaded this town—I watched it on TV at our base in Germany. This soldier—some stupid private—standing at the barricade while this Indian’s calling him the worst kind of shit. Guy’s spit landing right in his face—soldier didn’t move a muscle, not even a twitch. Two inches away, injun’s screaming, calling him goof, fuck-wad, cocksucker—
But nothing could touch that guy. That’s why I joined.
SADIQ:
Why Indian so for angry?
MERCER:
Oh, fuck, I don’t know. It was some fucking golf course they wanted
