Traffic Light

Chapter 4: Red Light

One of those days, at a point where we had gone without food for almost a week and our bodies were so frail that a gust of wind would knock us off our feet, Mr Boss showed up in the evening with a truck full of packets of food. Each packet contained mashed potatoes, a handful of greens and a piece of fish no smaller than the size of my pinkie finger. For the starving masses within the compound, this was enough to make grown men squeal in excitement like children at the playground. Half way through our meals, as we gorged on the plastic Tupperware feasts before us, Mr Boss walked up to Sabr and pulls the container out of his hands. Looking up at the towering juggernaut, Sabri wore a look of dismay and disappointment as he watched his meal being taken from him. Mr Boss pointed a finger at him and says in perfect, unbroken English “No more for you, too much energy and you’ll cause problems for me again.”

I looked on, bewildered by the fact that he could form such perfect sentences of English. In my opinion, that made him all the more terrifying. Not only was he a gargantuan brute, he was also rather intelligent and that was a lethal combination for a man so cruel. I glanced over at Sabr and tears were starting to well up in his eyes, his face turning a deep red, his teeth clenched and his fists closed and started to shake. In an attempt to de-escalate the situation, I shift over beside him and quietly place my container of food on his lap. The red in his face instantly disappears as he looks down at the half-finished meal then up at me with an expression that asked for permission. I nodded and let go of the container for him to continue eating. The rest of the workers have stopped, looking up from their trays in suspense.

Just as he dug his fingers into the potato, the large juggernaut marches back to where we were seated, fuming at the ears. He slapped the container out of Sabr’s hands once more, turned over to me with piercing squinted eyes, then with unbelievable speed lifted his thick, jagged right knee and drove it square into my face. I tumbled backwards into the dirt, completing a single flip across the ground as my roll came to a stop about three feet away from where I was originally. Sabr’s head was turned over to where I stopped, just short of a large rock behind me. I see the deep red in his face return and as he screamed, he turned back to Mr Boss and lunged up, hands stretched outwards for his enormous throat.

Before even reaching anywhere close to his target, his arms were swiftly grabbed by the roaring monster. Sabr helplessly dangled above the ground, still struggling to strike, foaming at the mouth. With one smooth movement, Mr Boss flung him by the hands right over his large shoulders and sent my good friend flying across the compound only to land in the filthy stream of wastage with a loud splash. Even before he could rise out of the mud to continue his impossible duel with his overpowering opponent, Sabr’s s**t-covered face is met by a hairy fist the size of a large coconut which put him on the ground as quickly as he tried to get up from it.

With me, still shaken by the terrible force unleashed upon my head, nose bleeding profusely, vision still woozy and my good friend, crawling on all fours like a slow moving earthworm on the brink of death, we are a helpless duo surrounded by silent onlookers. Mr Boss shook his fist, attempting to remove whatever pieces of wastage was left from his single punch. Taking a closer look at his hand, then turning his attention to the wriggling worm beneath him, he scowled and began to unbuckle his belt.

As he pulled the long, leather, snake-like weapon from his cargo jeans, a driver sticks his head in from the entrance and yells at Mr Boss in their language. The towering juggernaut ignored his comrade and begun to swing his belt by the end, the golden buckle shining in the air as it spins, picking up speed. Then, with the mighty sound of a crackling thud, he began to mercilessly whip the scrawny man under his feet. I’m seeing double and I can’t stand straight, but I can hear the screams of my good friend as he is beaten to a pulp. To this day, I hear the crashing sound of that golden buckle, smashing ribs and breaking skin.

For five whole days, I laid in a thin sunken mattress with Sabr beside me slumped on a separate mattress as a bloodied mess, eyes closed shut from bruises and cuts all over his face from the razor edges of the barbaric belt buckle of Mr Boss. The medic tent was as tragic as the rest of the compound, but at least it was located a distance away enough that the smell of sewage was overcome by the scent of strong medicines and oils.

A man in white overalls and a haze mask mixed concoctions and loaded syringes in front of us at a long table filled with supplies. Songs with English lyrics were playing from a small, retro looking radio, and the man hummed and swayed to the beats while he worked. He never said a word to us and he was only ever there when he was needed. He must have been a good doctor, because my concussions healed fairly quickly and my broken nose had been fixed back into place, though there was still a slight bend at the bridge with a long scar running across one end to the other. I was ordered to leave on the fifth day and Sabr was only discharged after two weeks, but he would never be the same.

Some nights as we slept, I would hear weeping coming somewhere from the crowd of limp bodies. I suspect they were from the newer batch of workers, still unable to cope with the reality of being trapped. I’d lie motionless and just listen, being transported back to my mud-coloured abode, listening to the silent sobbing of my distraught mother in the dead of night. At this point, anything that reminded me of home, anything that reminded me of being in the presence of my mother was comforting. So I’d listen with my eyes closed until I finally managed to doze off again.

Other nights were worst though. On those ominous nights, the silence of the night would be broken by a soft, low, grumbling voice in the not too distant proximity of where I would be sleeping. I’d hear someone rise up from their resting place and walk off. Sometimes I’d slowly peer over my shoulder to see what the commotion was and I’d see Mr Boss tugging at the collars or arms of one of the younger boys, being led out towards the main entrance. He’d disappear for long periods and wouldn’t return before I fell asleep. We all knew what went on those nights, we all just decided to ignore the things that we had no control over. What would you have done in these situations? At this point, we were all really just hoping to sleep-walk our lives away. We weren’t really hoping or waiting for a break from this torture anymore. We all kind of just accepted things as they were. You’d be surprised with how much you could really justify to yourself if it really came down to it.

-

Block A of Goliath Residences is complete. Two years, six hundred thousand various blocks of concrete, three thousand pillars and two hundred varying levels of metal scaffolds later, the gigantic work of art stands strong as a towering testament to what we have to show for ourselves. Will our names be etched in stone below the bright, glowing landmark? No, there is no credit given to the invisible ghosts that build these astonishing structures. We erect modern marvels in the name of fear and deceit. We build the foundations that lay the grounds to progression for this city, only to have our spirits, minds and bodies left beaten to a pulp, waiting for the next big project to come scrape us up from the sidewalk.

Between the enormous accumulations of debt, a lifetime of shame and a deep dark trench of unending poverty waiting for us back home if we are ever deported, or the wondrous misadventures of suffering by the hands of Mr Boss and his concentration camp coupled with the rivers of sewage, months without any form of payment and ruthless shortages of food, it isn’t like we have anything better to do.

Sabr doesn’t say much of anything these days, he looks to the ground for the most part, unless he’s looking up to the sky with quivering hands pulling ropes of heavy loads up to the higher floors while we work. I see him squatting low for the most part, picking things up from the unclean floors of completed sections. Cleaning up perhaps, or killing time. Whatever it is, he doesn’t look like he’s in a mood for asking about passports anymore.

That night, as I lay on the ground bracing myself for the cold winds, I notice my good friend sitting upright against the bare brick walls of our entrapment. He’s looking up at the night sky, softly mumbling to himself. I raise my head and try whispering his name but he ignores me. I get up and quietly make my way over to his spot and sit cross legged next to him.

Without looking down at me, still staring into the night sky, he began to speak slow and clear. “My friend, do you remember the fertile soils of our homeland? Do you remember the smell of fresh cut grass? I can see my wife and daughters, they are walking along the neatly lined crops we worked on all month. I can see smiles on their faces as they reap the fruit of the seed we have sewn. I can feel the warm breath of my lover, I can feel her skin against mine.”

His eyes begin to well up, glistening in the reflection of the bright blue moon as he stares up into the darkness. “I can smell the onion and meat laced stew that she is stirring on the fire at the entrance of our hut. I can taste the sizzling hot carrots, the freshly baked bread. I can hear the laughter of my child as she ties braids onto her little sister’s long hair. If I’m looking at this sky now and they’re looking at the same one I’m under, does it mean that I never left my home? Does it mean that I’m still among my people, in the same village I was born and raised in? Am I in a horrid nightmare, the kinds that seem long and dreary, yet only last a blink of an eye? If I wake up now, will I see my family once more?”

A long silence filled the cold night air. I felt compelled to respond to the distraught man. “Sabr, you will see them again. This nightmare will come to an end soon. God willing, we’ll get out of this wretched country. I’ll come visit you at your village one fine day.” I whisper to him with a smile on my face. He didn’t seem to be listening. The smile on my face disappeared and I touched him lightly on his shoulder as a gesture of reassurance, he held a small sheet of cloth, bundled up into a tiny ball in one hand and a picture turned over, dangling on the tips of his fingers in the other hand. I slowly laid down on the ground beside him and kept my focus towards him until gradually, my vision blurs and I fall into a deep and quiet slumber.

I woke up to the blaring heat of the sun shining down on the upper section of my face, hitting my eyes in an instant and forcing me to squint while shifting my head away into shade. As I open my eyes, I see my good friend slumped over to his side, lower back still fixed against the wall. His eyes were half open and blood was streaming out of his mouth, travelling down towards me. I noticed blood on my hands and stained red sleeves that lead up to my shoulder. The tiny ball of cloth was in his hand, unfolded to reveal an assortment of razor blades, screws, shards of glass and sharp scraps of puny metal edges.

My good friend died in the night, choking on razors that he swallowed one by one until the blood rose up through his throat and spilled over the dry, grainy sand of this lifeless land. I screamed his name and lifted his limp body to an upright position, while the others around me woke up, startled by the loud noises emanating from the corner of the compound. My good friend had finally succumbed to this nightmare, this chaos we all shared. It took him from us and lifted him away into its black abyss. Took him from us in the night like a ghoul preying on the weakest of the herd.

I watched as an army of men, collared shirts tucked in to their cargos, walked in one by one through the entrance. I sat outside on a large rock under the shade of a single tree, in the scorching heat of the morning. I watched as they slowly left one at a time, finally carrying a large, black, shiny bag with the body of Sabr, village farmer from the Northern outskirts of Bangladesh. They carried him towards an open truck, lifting him up, loading his corpse to the back of the large four-wheeler and drove off leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

My sleeves and hands still stained with dried blood, I looked down at the picture that Sabr left behind. A coloured image of his wife and two daughters flanking the tall, loving husband and father of two. They are standing on the vast plains of his origin, in the distance is his village. In the picture he is looking fatter, healthier and happier than he did the night that he finally decided to wake up from his nightmare.

-

It’s dark, pitch black. I can’t see a thing. It sounds as if I have my head plunged underwater. A deep, throbbing, blurry sound echoing silently in this engulfing darkness. I feel the world pressing against my skull then slowly without warning, I can hear the distant yet distinct sounds of coughing. Slowly growing clearer, I can recognise whose coughing that is. It’s my mother’s. Her coughing travels around my ears, surrounding me at every turn, disappearing to one corner of the darkness, then shifting from side to side. I try to scream her name, but nothing comes out of my mouth. Nothing can be heard except for the low ringing that echoes throughout the pitch blackness and the violent coughs of an invisible phantom.

My eyes opened and I jolted up from the sandy ground, coughing up dry dust and choking on dirt. I carried myself out of the pit of sleeping bodies and hurriedly searched for some water. Hands against my throat, still gagging from the intense burning from inside my mouth. I stumbled over to the well, grabbed the ropes with both hands and pulled a bucket of murky dark liquid. I quenched my thirst with the tainted water and looked around me. It was still dark. Among the droves of sleeping workers in every direction, there stood one empty spot in the far corner of the compound directly against the wall. I could see deep stains on the dirt and bricks.

I dropped the bucket back down into the well and slowly made my way over to the direction of Sabr’s suicide. I stood over that corner for a moment and stared at the empty spot among the crowd of slumbering flesh surrounding it. The bastards didn’t even have the decency to properly clean the blood stains off the ground and we couldn’t effectively get rid of it ourselves because we didn’t have enough water to wash it with. So it was just left splattered there, engrained on to the walls and dirt covered surface.

It came to me like an epiphany or a revelation of some sort. As I stood over the empty section of the compound, just staring at the blood stains, I remembered my nightmare that consisted of nothing but darkness and my mother’s coughing. Could it be that what I thought was a nightmare was actually my waking life? Could this really be the true nightmare? Was Sabr right about that twisted reality? The more I thought about it, the less ridiculous it started to sound. He was here, now he’s gone. Where did he go? Could he have escaped this ghoulish realm for good?

Block B of Goliath Residences was underway. Two more years, six hundred thousand more blocks of concrete, three thousand pillars and two hundred more varying levels of metal scaffolds until this gigantic work of art stands strong as a towering testament to what we have to show for ourselves. Will our names be etched in stone below the bright, glowing landmark? No, there is no credit given to the invisible ghosts that build these astonishing structures. We erect modern marvels in the name of fear and deceit. We build the foundations that lay the grounds to progression for this city, only to have our spirits, minds and bodies left beaten to a pulp, waiting for the next big project to come scrape us up from the sidewalk.

Not me.

I stood some twenty three stories off the flat land, balanced on a thin and crooked metal rod and waiting for the next batch of cement to be lifted up onto my floor. Up to this point, the balcony I was on was the last one that was built. Above me was sky, around me was an endless fake landscape. A little virtual world. A plastic city filled with farce straw inhabitants and indifference to the pain and suffering of others. I wasn’t going to play this little game any longer.

I wasn’t going to stay asleep anymore.

I stood staring straight down, on the far edge of the thin bed of metallic rods. Below me, little people walking around, manning their little machines, busy with their individual jobs and shifts, did not notice me on the verge of my awakening. They did not notice nor did they care that I had already caught on to the falsehood of this nightmarish world. I no longer had the desire to struggle and survive in this realm, I had the desire to live and wake up from this unbearable prison. My eyes were pointed straight down. It was proving difficult to find my nerve and jump while I was looking at such a vivid illusion of height right below my feet. So I closed my eyes and that made it much easier. All I could feel was the hot wind blowing against my face, drying up the beads of sweat as they rolled across my forehead. It was easier now to just lean forward and let gravity do the rest of the work for me.

“Brother.”

I hear a soft and high pitched voice coming from behind me. I didn’t notice that there was anyone else on the top with me at that moment.

“Brother. Help me.”

I opened my eyes and exhaled loudly before slowly turning my head to see who was calling out to me. Standing square at the center of the platform was one of the young men from the compound. I squinted at him and realised that he was the young man that went missing every other night. The one that I saw Mr Boss tugging by the arm or collar, quietly sneaking away into the darkness. Unspeakable things being done in the silence.

He had a narrow shaped head, sharp and smooth facial features, with lips that were dried and cracking from the hot sun. He stared at me with a look of concern. He repeated the words. “Help me brother.” He gave a nod and a reluctant smile, pointing towards the pile of concrete blocks that had already arrived from the bottom floors. He held the rope from the lever that had been used to lift up the heavy objects. I stared at him, processing what I should do at that moment. I shook my head vigorously and blinked my dry eyes with one final exhale, then I slowly started walking towards him.

The kid saved my life that day. He broke me from my unexpected trance and I think he knew exactly what he was doing.

The whole day was spent lifting concrete after concrete, loading them on the intricate placements from the blueprints. The kid followed me everywhere I went helping me with the heavy work, being a chatter box the entire time. While we waited for more concrete to line the half-completed walls of the top floor with, he would sit in front of me, wiping the sweat from his forehead and blabbering away.

He asked me where I was from, what my name was, how I ended up in this hellish situation and why I was so small in stature. He was being a pain in my ass the whole time, but to be honest, it was probably what I needed right there and then. A little social interaction can go a long way. In the evening, as the sun was setting and our supervisors allowed us some downtime before we began our night shift, I sat against one of the completed brick walls at the bottom of the site just catching my breath and bracing myself for another eight hours of endless heavy lifting.

The kid came up to me, with two paper cups of hot tea and two paper containers of some rice and beans. I looked up at him in shock.

“From the bosses of the management team. They had some guests over and they took them on a tour around the site. They need to keep up their appearances right? Looks like we hit the jackpot brother.”

He sat down beside me and passed me my share of the rare paper delicacy. He sipped his tea and immediately began to gouge down on the rice, as did I. The other workers started gathering around us too, finding places to sit and enjoy their hot meals.

Half way through our dinners, the kid tapped me on the shoulder and discreetly pointed towards the front entrance of the site, where a group of well-dressed men and women crossed the iron platforms, avoiding the muddy ground. They were just leaving when they began turning towards two large men following the group from behind. They shook hands and took turns having a few last words before their departure.

The kid leans in and says “Boss number one, the large fat one with the brown coat and balding head. He’s the managing director of this whole development company responsible for Goliath Residences.” He has a large golden ring and a stunningly bright wrist watch made from a combination of gold and silver. He dons a small tight goatee that stretches to the ends of his massive cheeks when he grins to bid his guests farewell.

“Boss number two, the guy with the nice leather jacket and cowboy boots. He’s the operational manager of the sites, for this project and the other ongoing ones throughout the nation.” Gray strips of hair slicked back to the side of his ears, he wore a pair of thick glasses and donned a massive golden tooth that was visible even from where we were sitting.

The kid continued “Boss number one and boss number two, they know all about what is happening with us. They know all about how the caretakers treat us, as long as they are making the money, it doesn’t concern them how our living conditions are like. It seems like they have closed their eyes to how their people are running things below them.”

I turned to the kid, rather impressed and asked him how he knew all of this.

“I ask, we have been here almost three years. I talk to a lot of people. I know things here and there.” He replied with a cocky albeit innocent tone, while licking his fingers clean of the food he was just finishing.

I suppose being an overly sociable chatterbox does have its advantages.

He seemed like an interesting character after all, so being curious as I was, I began to open up. I asked him why he even bothered finding out all this useless information. He looked down at his tea for a moment, seeming a little bothered by the question, then raised his head up with a smile and said “Brother, I have already let one caretaker have his way with me. The way I see it, the more I know about whose ass I should be kissing, the more I know about who I should be giving mine to. Might as well w***e my way out of here or at least out of that blasted compound.”

I stared at him rather shocked. His plan sounded like a horrible one, given the fact that he thinks all the men in this country swing that way and given the fact that he had to put himself through immeasurable pain just for a better life. But at the same time, I was extremely inspired that he at least had a plan, unlike the rest of us useless sheep.

He told me his name was Syed, he had many brothers and sisters waiting for him back home. He was hoping to send money to them so they could build a house for his parents. Now that he is in this hopeless situation, all he wants to do is contact his family back home to let them know he is at least still alive and to at least try delivering on his promise. This kid was uncompromising in his optimism for life.

“And where are you from Syed?” I asked him after I managed to catch a break in his sentences.

“Me? I’m from Dhaka. Where I used to live, there was a business district not too far away. I lived on the south side of the city. I would help my brother wash cars in the busier parts of the roadside. We’d push our carts along the highways, filled with pails of water and such. Then whenever we found someone willing to pay for a wash, we’d accommodate. On one of those days that we were set up in the business districts, we get paid by a young man with a small but fancy car. Said his name was Jake. I thought that was pretty funny, seeing that he wasn’t exactly a foreigner. While we wash his car he’s asking us if we want to make a ton of money from an overseas job that pays well and lasts only six months at a time. Well that’s how I ended up here. My brother stayed back because his wife was due for labour any moment with their first newborn. I took a loan and gave Jake my so called deposit money for the trip. Haven’t heard from him since.”

He stopped and looked at me with a bit of a worried expression, noticing my face change at the mention of the name. Jake, how was it that I had somehow almost completely let his contribution to my situation slip by? Syed watched as my hand holding the paper cup of tea began to shake and my face turn a bright red. “Don’t tell me you know Jake? Were you dragged into all of this by him as well?” His expression of worry turned into shock. We both just sat there for a while in silence, letting the unpleasant coincidence sink in.

-

I’m swaying back and forth, it’s the same sensation you get from laying on a hammock by the beach. My body is heavy, my vision is blurred. I can barely move let alone think of moving. The whole world is swaying back and forth. My vision begins to improve, before me I see an endless dark spiral with dim lit colours of red towards the end. It’s all still very blurry, I’m trying to make sense of whatever is closing in from the other end of the spiral. There’s a silhouette of a figure, he either has a very large head or is wearing something very long on that same head. The figure moves too slowly forward. Eventually, the swaying begins to reduce in intensity and the dark figure reveals itself, gliding lifelessly into the dim brightness. It is the nutcracker.

With streams of red running down his gaping mouth, eyes fixed in a wide open stare. It wants something from me. I’m not sure what, but I’m sure it is something wretched. An unthinkable request, or an impossible demand. Its gaping jaws begin to click closed and open again, the sound of chattering gets faster and louder as it stares at me with large unflinching eyes. The red liquid begins to run by the gallons out of its moving mouth and the dim red light slowly begins to brighten, casting a crimson tone on the nutcracker’s face. The blood is oozing down onto the iron covered ground, lazily making its way towards me. Inches away from my feet, the overwhelming stream of blood is about to touch me. My eyes open. I’m back in hell. What a relief.

I rose up from the pit, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. I looked around me, trying to recover from the disorientation I just experienced. I reached down towards my waist to touch the pouch that almost never leaves my body. I unzipped the dusty top and reached in to pull out the tiny nutcracker toy that my father had given to me as a present. I stared at it for a moment and it stared back, without the same grimness I had just witnessed a minute ago. It was just a little play thing. Harmless and innocent.

I put the toy back in my pouch and started to look around for Syed, he didn’t seem to be in his usual sleeping spot. I rose up from my position until I was on my knees, squinting my eyes as I searched for my new found friend. He didn’t seem to be in the compound at the moment. It was probably one of those unfortunate nights that Mr Boss had been feeling rather lonely and decided to help himself to some company. I lied back down onto my makeshift bed of dust and dried mud. There had to be a way to help my friend and there had to be a way that my friend could help me. In this life, things are just much easier when you have a little assistance every now and then. Taking a page from Syed’s playbook, I began to hatch a plan in my head. I lied still in the cold windy night and for the first time in many years, I started to think of a way up instead of a way out. If you are finding it nearly impossible to change your environment, then you may be better off trying to improve your situation. If you find yourself in a physical gridlock, it may be of help to switch your mindset.

It was time to crash that red light.