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Glock:
a short recoil 9 mm Luger semi-automatic pistol with a standard
magazine capacity of 17 rounds of ammunition
My good friend Moose and I were walking
through the Emmarentia Dam park grounds discussing phenomenology
and bagels when this tall so-called black man pulled a gun on us
and demanded stuff.
Phenomenology I have never understood, despite many attempts at
reading Husserl and even Heidegger whose use of language makes Adorno
seem like a telegram typist. But I digress...
The thing is that Moose and I had seen this tall so-called black
man earlier in our perambulation, he was with a much shorter so-called,
but that one was wearing a security guard uniform and hence we felt
disinclined to be worried about the possibility of getting mugged.
Now here I feel predisposed to mention the words "mugged" and "perambulation".
These are both good words in very different ways and I like the
fact that they are nestled comfortably in the previous paragraph.
I also like the way that "nestled" itself is nestled in this
paragraph. The truth is that writing about a nasty event is a lot
less nasty than the event itself. I should imagine that reading
about the event has a similarly diminished quality. And this of
course is the problem.
Because I honestly don't have the words nor the talent to describe
to you how awful it felt to walk slap bang into the barrel of that
9mm. It felt like a big turdypoo had just pushed its way out of
my bum as I was about to deliver a perfect pickup line to the most
beautiful barely legal 18 year old girl you ever laid your eyes
on. It felt that bad.
So the hands go up, and the next thing both Moose and I are being
patted down by the very tall very black so-called black's accomplice,
who is none other than the so-called security guard. He even has
a badge with his name on the uniform to prove it, and for all I
know it is his real name and he does work for the security company
and is only doing the mugging in his spare time. In order to earn
some extra tom to pay for his driver's license.
What is mugging? What is a perambulation? Where do these crazy words
come from? Etymologists make it their business to find out but I'm
not one of those birds. I'm currently a visiting Professor at a
University in Sweden. I walk through the park here twice a day and
every night very late after putting in long hours behind a keyboard
where I compose these little stories that are my way of making a
living. Nobody ever mugs me in the parks here. I perambulate. I
don't get mugged.
Back home in Jozi I walk with Moose, who is by no means a nancy.
Moose used to be with the Mossad and knows from the old tough guy
routines believe me. But what can we do. It's hard to argue with
the barrel of a 9mm in your face and the very tall so-called black
man in front of you looking nervous and his finger wriggling itself
all over that trigger.
The ex-security guard feverishly pats me down and takes R300 in
cash notes and my Sony Ericsson w900i limited edition cell phone.
Then they are both running away. Not perambulating but running.
Mugging all done now the running's begun.
Here is where my little story becomes exceedingly painful for me
to write. I drop to my knees and lift up the trouser leg of my baggy
camo trousers. I exchange glances with Moose who sees my Glock and
nods to me as if to say "yes". I pull the gun out of its snug ankle
holster, cock it and lift it.
Probably in the real world the time it takes to lift the firearm
from the position it was in when I cocked it, to the position it
is in when I have the tall so-called black man's back in my sights;
the position change from vertical to horizontal; is no more than
a fraction of a second. What they call in fast stories a "split-second".
But this is not how long it takes.
A phenomenologist like Husserl would be able to give you a very
good reason why it takes me so long to lift that gun from the vertical
to the horizontal, to traverse 90 degrees of Euclidean geometric
space-time. But I wonder if Euclid, Husserl and Heidegger together,
if all three of them could explain to you (or to me) why the gun
is suddenly so heavy.
Maybe it would make more sense to try old Newton, after all, he
was the one who was made clever by a falling apple. That was a moment
of what the Japanese zen monks call "satori" - a sudden dislocation,
an abrupt opening unleashed by the unforeseen experience of strangeness.
You might have noticed that the previous sentence seems like it
was written by a much smarter person than myself, and it was. That
sentence was written by Georges Bataille in his book called "On
Nietzsche". Now "On Nietzsche" is I think a very funny title for
a book. I'm one of those very literal kind of guys who likes words
to mean what they mean. So when I read On Nietzsche I don't immediately
think it's a book about Nietzsche, I get an image of Nietzsche lying
down having a snooze with Bataille's book covering his head, on
Nietzsche, guarding him from apples of the falling kind and
other misadventures that might cause bodily damage. Like mugging.
So, what comes to my mind as I lift the Glock 9mm is that this moment,
just like Newton's apple moment, or that Eureka moment when Archimedes
jumped into the tub, might very well be the most important moment
in my life to date. And it is. And it only takes a split second
in the world they say is real, but in that moment, in that sudden
dislocation, my life is forever changed. I can never be the same
person again.
You see there is a part of me that wanted to kill the so-called
black man. That wanted to blast him in the back with my dum-dum
bullet, knowing full well that he would not survive such a wounding,
that he would not have time to turn around and fire back, that he
would in fact be too dead to do such a thing. Then there is another
part of me that was thinking, "if you shoot this man in the back
whilst he is running away from you, while there is no direct danger
to your own life, the result of this shooting will be murder and
the consequence will be imprisonment of your own body to which your
mind and soul are irrevocably attached and therefore all three of
you will be imprisoned.”
As you can reasonably deduce from the above, a goodly amount of
consideration was taking place between these two parts of me - the
part that wanted revenge, and the part that didn't want to go to
prison (that was in fact three parts) - and all of this consideration
was taking time.
And then I knew that I could not shoot a man in the back, that it
simply was not the right thing to do.
And then I fired.
The bullet is probably still in one of those gorgeous oak trees
in Emmarentia. Both so-called black men started sprinting in different
directions. The tall one that I had shot at turned around and shot
back.
Nobody had ever shot at me before. I shot again. He shot again.
Moose and I running. Again I go on my knees. Shooting as deliberately
and calmly as I can. Shooting into trees or leaves or clouds, whatever,
but aiming at the tall so-called black man's back. Aiming. Doing
my best to create gross bodily harm to my mugger. Eventually five
of my shots miss him. Eventually five of his shots miss me.
Moose and I keep on running after him. We are joined by a group
of tall so-called black men who probably hail from Kenya, they have
high cheekbones, are very black, and run like gazelles. They also
reek of dagga so they run like very slow, very stoned gazelles.
Meanwhile Moose and I are both realising that we are not what we
used to be in the running department. Or maybe it's just that our
mugger has so much adrenaline pumping through his long legs that
nobody is ever going to catch him.
He exits the park, now there are at least six of us chasing him.
A minibus swerves to avoid him, crashes into a high wall. He keeps
going. A bakkie knocks into him, he falls down, jolts up
again waving his gun at the bakkie driver's face. The hands
go up. The mugger keeps on running. I jump into the bakkie
next to the very rattled driver. "After him."
We lose him on Barry Hertzog drive. He might have jumped into a
taxi. I see two security bakkies parked on the side of the
road. Rush to them, tell the bulldog-faced security guards what
happened.
"Show me the kaffir, I'll kill him for you."
Two double-barreled shotguns are cocked loudly. Oh no, I'm thinking,
we've just travelled back in time to 1976. The security heads keep
on stopping their vans and poking their shotguns into the faces
of any youthful looking so-called blacks strolling by on their way
to the taxi rank. I keep on having to explain to the security toughs
that these aren't the right ones. They're eager to kill. They have
a valid excuse. They want to make the most of the occasion.
Eventually we see a cop car parked erratically in a driveway. Two
white cops pointing their handguns into the faces of a very old
grandfather and his kwaito-hatted grandson.
"These are not the muggers."
I'm out of breath and quite angry with the security guards and the
cops for being so trigger happy.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
They drop their guns. The old grandfather pushes up one of the smiley
masks I remember from the sixties.
"Dankie baas."
His grandson looks at me with pure hatred radiating from his eyes.
He's ashamed of his grandfather's theatrically played out gratitude,
outraged by the blatant unjustness of the situation, his dignity
ripped out and left in tatters on the ground. I understand where
his rage is coming from, but what can I do? I've become the bad
guy in his scenario but I'm still the good guy in mine. There are
no so-called blacks or whites anymore, just a dirty shade of grey
called reality.
I ask the cops if they can give me a lift to the station. They look
disbelieving, at me. "No look, sorry, we have to pick up our supper
from the Wimpy." The bakkie driver has caught up with us.
He gives me a lift back to the park where Moose is waiting for me.
We go together to the cop station to lay a charge. "A tall and a
short one? In a security guard's uniform, yes we've had that description
before, they've been working all week in the park."
"Then why don't you do something about it? Put plain clothes policemen
there?" She looks back at us vacantly, the idea seems like too much
effort. I'm thinking, "working?” Working? I suppose mugging
is working. And it's quite an interesting thought, that every morning
the muggers wake up and they hop into a taxi and mug all day and
then they knock off at 6pm when the sun goes down and go home and
watch tv. Just like any working person.
So what happened? What changed my life? What was the moment of satori?
I realised that I am a big bullshitter. I have been pretending to
myself that I am some kind of macho tough merely because I carry
a loaded weapon with me. When in fact I am utterly useless at killing,
I have no instinct for it, no passion, no killing sensibility.
But even more ridiculous than this, I have also been pretending
to myself that I am a highly moral person, with strong ethics who
always weighs up choices heavily and makes the best possible decision
under the circumstances. This is not true. I didn't miss my mugger's
back for ethical reasons. I missed because I am a lousy shot. I
did three weeks of training five years ago. I probably couldn't
kill myself if I tried putting the barrel in my mouth and pulling
the trigger. The bloody Glock would misfire.
A few months after my mugging the country erupts with xenophobic
passion. The left-wingers are all up in arms about how terrible
the xenophobia is. I'm thinking about my mugger's accent, about
which country he was from. Whether he's been necklaced by a crowd
who weren't inhibited by my lack of killer instinct. South Africa
is a war zone. More than 25 000 people are murdered each year. Hundreds
of thousands of idiots like me walk around with loaded hand guns
waiting for the opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot.
I still don't know what phenomenology means. I'm selling my gun.
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