The One Where Naz Hides In A Cupboard

... was set in a war-torn middle-eastern city. I’m not sure why. Possibly because my friend, the extreme photographer James Appleton just went to Jerusalem to take photos and get tear-gassed, possibly because him doing that brought back memories of worrying about my ex-girlfriend living in Sudan during Darfur tearing itself apart. Her reports of riding buses riddled with bullet holes, bombs in the buildings and getting repeatedly gassed still haunt me on occasion.

So, yeah...sorry...got side-tracked there. So, imagine if you will dirty, dusty, with a blazing sun and shattered concrete. Stray dogs on the streets and the scent of smoke right at the edge of detection. People trying to get on with jobs and make a living while the world eats itself around their ears.

The camera (oh yeah, this dream also heralds the return of disembodied camera style dreaming) follows a band of soldiers moving down what used to be a concrete quayside. An upturned lorry gives them partial cover and dropped containers are dry, rusted and looted. Soldier to dusty, beaten, unshaven soldier, commands and questions flow in hand signals and pointed looks like impulses up-and-down the spine of a creeping mouse. Looks made round corners are quick and darting. Move-stop-look-move the mouse moves forward.

PUNGG!

The impact of a single bullet into the corrugated steel of the container sends rust and faded yellow paint flakes everywhere and splits the mouse once more into soldiers diving for cover. More follow. The staccato report of weaponry comes softly from the other end of the street, vastly overpowered by the cacophonous noise of the hailstorm hitting the steel sheeting feet from the soldiers’ heads. Looks are exchanged. Plans are formulated. Soldiers move, silently. Shots are returned. Blood is spilt on both sides. The camera retreats up a side street away from the quay.

Here more soldiers (this time better kitted-out, better shaved, all in black) are creeping up the staircase of an office-block to which they had gained entry at ground level using excessive force. The dream doesn’t show explicitly, but the feeling is that they’ve killed the old doorman or something. The old doorman who’s worked here for forty years. And always wore an old flat cap. And had a tin lunch-box filled with an apple and a sandwich made by his old wife. And they probably killed his old three-legged dog. You understand the mood?

Cut to an office on one of the higher floors. Here the dream is from my eyes. I am a tired government worker. I say government worker, and so does the sign on my door and the sign on my desk, but let’s be honest here were utilities – We build roads, lay water pipes, make sure people don’t go hungry. The politicians and soldiers do the fighting, the country changes hands, but in the end they just change the flag on our building, maybe the colour of the sign on the door and we continue with our work. It’s been this way for decades, always fighting, always un-rest, but in a way, always us.

Naz also plays an office worker on our floor, I guess my subconscious chose him because I can see him as J. Jonah Jameson: Stressed, acerbic, bossy but gets things done. His white shirt has seen better days, the red braces and tie are a little old, but the shoes gleam impeccably. I now remember him with the burnt down nub of a cigar, but I’m not sure if he had one at the time. Possibly.

Secretaries scurry in and out with memos and telegraphs. Placed into seventies style Formica in/out-trays, they constitute a paper information flow not unlike the information flow between the soldiers on the street below. Or the ones approaching silently up the stairwell in the centre of the building. Who make their presence felt at this exact instant: Shots ring out.

Close at hand.

I go to the door in the middle of our floor’s one corridor that opens into the staircase. Looking over the railing I see flashes on the floor below and before I can pull my head back I find myself staring down into the covered eyes of a soldier in a black gas-mask.

Sprinting back into my office I close the door. Naz in busily and cleverly hiding in the only cupboard in the room. Just before he closes the door, we exchange a glance that goes something like this: I know there is no-where else to hide. I know there is not room in the cupboard for two. You have as much right to it as I do. I do not begrudge you your survival, but when you make it through this tell me as a hero in your stories...

Things go quiet. I pace silently to the door. My heart is pounding so loudly I’m honestly afraid they’ll hear it. “Nonsense, man, it’s a heart. They won’t hear it: get a grip” I tell myself.

Cracking the door, I stare out onto the silent and deserted corridor. Suddenly, there’s a single gunshot and blood hits the beige (like, 1978 beige, not 2002 beige) carpet tiles. Once again I catch the eyes of the mad in the gas-mask. I throw myself backward into the room and lock the door. I’ve got seconds. I know that. Myriad solutions flash through my mind in a second: I look at the window. I could jump? I might even live, but I’d be on the street with broken legs – a sitting duck. I consider hanging outside the window, but I can see the sadistic delight he’d get from finding me there. Maybe, one of his colleagues on the floor below would shoot me in the gut while I was hanging there. I could hide under the desk? I could sit at my desk like I wasn’t afraid, accept the inevitable?

In the end, I’ve not made up my mind as the glass in the door is smashed in and the man in black is shooting a handgun into my office. I dive behind my filing cabinet (grey-green for those that were wondering) and hear six shots miss me by inches. He lets himself into the room and I launch myself at him like an animal, dodging and diving with enough vigour to impress Patches O’Houlihan. More bullets smash bourbon glasses and the framed pictures on the walls.

But a middle-aged office worker in a shirt and tie is no match for a strong, young soldier. After a second or two of grappling, he throws me back against the heavy wooden desk. I’ve always liked this desk, thought I. My hands stretched instinctively behind me to stop my fall and I felt my heavy, cut-glass ashtray. An angular, seventies monstrosity. A relic. I grip firmly with my hands to steady myself and look down the barrel of a black and menacing hand-gun.

Click.

(If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that six + two doesn’t equal a full clip, but A, this is a dream and B, maybe he shot the old doorman’s dog a few time for luck?)

Without a second’s hesitation, I swung the firmly-gripped ashtray into the man’s skull. He went straight down and I went down after him. I knelt over him and time and time again I struck him on his shaved scalp. Long after he was knocked unconscious I continued to strike him. There was blood on my hands and arms and I could feel fragments of his smashed skull moving under the lacerated skin.

I could see Naz watching me through the door gap of his hiding place. Maybe he wouldn’t tell me as a hero after all.