Monster Island(24)

One girl-one of the youngest, her name was Leyla, I think-wandered along the merchandise racks, one hand holding the strap of her AK-47, the other flipping through the various CDs on display. Her lower lip curled down or up as she read the titles and sometimes she would bend at the waist as if desperately trying to contain the urge to jump up and down in excitement at finding some particularly popular group. Watching her made me think of Sarah. Leyla might be a good deal older and much more dangerous but she still thrummed with spirit, with the barely-controlled energy I had come to adore in my daughter.

Sarah never felt so far away as then.

“There’s nothing more that I can do for her,”Gary told me, peeling off a pair of latex gloves. I looked over at Ifiyah and saw that she was sleeping or at least passed out. My mind had been wandering.

Garysat down on the floor and peeled open a piece of beef jerky. Chewing idly on it he stared at me until I began to feel the silence between us turn into something that had to be tamed. It was Gary who spoke first, though. “Why did you come toNew York?” he asked. “Did you have family here?”

I shook my head and peeled myself away from my navel-gazing. It wasn't easy: I had a powerful urge to just sink into myself and shut out the world. “My parents died years ago. It’s funny-at my Mom’s funeral I remember thinking how badly I wanted her to come back.” I glanced toward the windows. “I guess you should be careful what you wish for, huh?”

“Christ, you’re so hardcore,”Gary said, rolling his eyes. “Relax a little.”

I nodded and squatted down next to him. I realized I was hungry and gratefully took one of his plastic-wrapped food-like snacks. “Sorry. I guess I’m scared. No, we came toManhattan looking for medical supplies. The President-for-Life ofSomalia has AIDS but anti-retrovirals just aren’t available inAfrica right now.”

“What’s in it for you?”

I took Sarah’s picture from my wallet but I didn’t let him touch it, not with those dead hands. I showed it to him and then stared at it for a while myself. “She and I get full citizenship in one of the safest places on Earth.” In the picture Sarah, aged five at the time, petted the nose of an unaccountably docile camel. The picture didn’t show what came next-the camel’s wet sneeze, little Sarah’s shrieks as she ran all over a camp full of nomads who smiled and clapped their hands for her and offered her fruit. That had been a good day. I always tend to think of our life in Africa as one long horror story-an occupational hazard, I guess-but there had been so many good days.

I realized with a start that I'd been ignoringGary for minutes while I thought those thoughts. How rude of me. “I’d like to rest a while, if you don’t mind,” I told him. I wasn’t tired so much as so introspective it was becoming difficult to focus on anyone else. He obliged by scuttling off to a dusty corner of the store where he could chew on his sticks of meat in peace.

For my part I turned to look out the window-not at the gathered dead people, I was barely aware of them but instead at theEmpireStateBuilding, clearly visible above the trees at the north end ofUnion Square. The iconic skyscraper seemed to just hover there detached from the world. I wondered what if anything you would find in its uppermost stories now-a hell of a walk, since the elevator wouldn’t be running, but worth it perhaps. What kind of safety, what manner of serenity might still exist up there? I’d visited the observation deck plenty of times when I was a kid and I knew you could see the entire city from up there but in my musing nothing was visible but long icy sweeps of cloud, white rarefied ribbons of nothing at all in particular. A veil between me and the filth and strife on the surface.

I’m told this kind of detachment is common among soldiers in combat zones. In the aftermath of a perilous fight the mind shuts down its faculties one by one and drifts-perhaps endlessly reliving the moment when a squadmate caught a bullet, perhaps trying to remember all the details of the chaos once it was past, perhaps just-as mine was doing here-wandering without thought or feeling at all. There’s even a name for this phenomenon, the “Thousand Yard Stare”, this kind of temporary mindlessness. Modern medicine sometimes refers to it as “Combat Stress Reaction.” Doctors are trained to look out for it. Sometimes it's healthy, just a purging of all the encrusted fear and bloodlust but sometimes it can be a sign of incipient mental illness. Usually a victim snaps right out of it as soon as a new task or duty presents itself. Sometimes soldiers drift in and out of it for the rest of their lives-that’s called “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” which everyone knows about.