me and my warlord
The word "warlord" gets tossed around so much these days. But how well do we know them? Reminds me of a pretty dangerous dude I met this summer. Big deal guy, no bomb explodes in the province without his say so, of course that could be rumor, but well, he's got five wives and it's not because he's such a knockout. Takes the girls he wants, takes the money he wants, rich as hell off poppy, visited him in his tinted glass windowed massive compound at the end of a wide empty desert road. Inside, I'd never seen so many roses.
Anyway I hadn't planned to meet him, but we had some time to kill before our meeting with the governor, so we called him up and he had time. We talk with the four lesser mafiosi outside, we get the lookover and then we're approved, we slip off our shoes and head into the...well, into ONE of the houses (i guess he has at least one for each wife), and there's this little guy standing there next to an overstuffed E-Z chair. And i figure this is the guy who will lead us to the kingpin but no, this is the kingpin, and as I'm introducing myself I'm looking at this little moustachioed slight man who comes up barely past my shoulder and I'm thinking - if i was casting a sitcom I'd cast this guy as the harmless nerdy neighbor...
but that impression faded very quickly. I don't know what it was about him. Maybe it was the way he lay completely still until he spoke. Or maybe it was the way he took his paralyzed left hand and cracked the knuckles. Over his head.
"I fought my whole life. I'm ready to step out of violence and be a private man," he said. I mean really the dialogue was straight out of godfather.
From there I went straight to the governor's office and he too was a scary, proud, powerful, crafty and fundamentally uneducated man. Later someone said that I'd met the two most powerful people in the province. And there was I, sweaty, dehydrated, dodging fat-bottomed sheep in the street, wearing my ink-stained afghan clothes. There are times that being here feels like I stepped straight into my TV screen. Sweatpants on and dorito crumbs in my lap.
Anyway I hadn't planned to meet him, but we had some time to kill before our meeting with the governor, so we called him up and he had time. We talk with the four lesser mafiosi outside, we get the lookover and then we're approved, we slip off our shoes and head into the...well, into ONE of the houses (i guess he has at least one for each wife), and there's this little guy standing there next to an overstuffed E-Z chair. And i figure this is the guy who will lead us to the kingpin but no, this is the kingpin, and as I'm introducing myself I'm looking at this little moustachioed slight man who comes up barely past my shoulder and I'm thinking - if i was casting a sitcom I'd cast this guy as the harmless nerdy neighbor...
but that impression faded very quickly. I don't know what it was about him. Maybe it was the way he lay completely still until he spoke. Or maybe it was the way he took his paralyzed left hand and cracked the knuckles. Over his head.
"I fought my whole life. I'm ready to step out of violence and be a private man," he said. I mean really the dialogue was straight out of godfather.
From there I went straight to the governor's office and he too was a scary, proud, powerful, crafty and fundamentally uneducated man. Later someone said that I'd met the two most powerful people in the province. And there was I, sweaty, dehydrated, dodging fat-bottomed sheep in the street, wearing my ink-stained afghan clothes. There are times that being here feels like I stepped straight into my TV screen. Sweatpants on and dorito crumbs in my lap.
posted by gregory arthur at
21:40
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