The International Writers Magazine: Dreamscapes on Racism

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Hate Drives A Mercedes Benz • Sidi Cherkawi Benzahra Kevin Meyer was one of the "luckiest" men in Minneapolis. He was rich and young, rich mostly from inheritance. He was too young to have made all that money in a short time. He was also tall and slender, blond and blue-eyed. In facts he looked like he was carved out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

His hair was always dressed up with a fine comb. His face was clean and shaved whenever you looked at it. His teeth were always sparkling clean. When he smiled a twinkle would beam out of his teeth as though his teeth were made of some special diamond. A small toothbrush was tucked at all times in his deep breast pocket, just in case he smelled his breath, or felt a piece of food stuck between his teeth. Unless he was angry, his voice was soft, with a touch of upper class. His underwear was always fresh and white--sometimes he changed them twice a day. Avoiding sharing the toilet seat with other people, he scheduled his crap time so that he could only take a dump at home. When he peed at the urinal, he stood as far as he could so that urine won't bounce back at him. And when he was about to finish peeing he would move forward closer the urinal and gently knock his cock a couple of times with his forefinger to dry it before tucking it in. He was always aware of his environment. He could feel himself walking when he walked, and he could hear himself talking when he talked. He rarely wasted words, and he would pay attention to every word he would say.

The Meyers were proud of their heritage and upbringing. They owned several buildings in Minneapolis and St. Paul. They owned thousands of acres of farm land in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. Many grocery stores, hardware stores, and even Laundromats belonged to them. They owned a dozen big houses in the suburbs and they lived in one of them. They drove luxury cars and ate in fancy restaurants. They wore fancy clothes, too. The mother, Kristi, lived a life which was all pearl necklaces, speak-easies, unbelievably glamorous women or drop-dead handsome men. And moreover, she was always on vacation in poor, exotic places, telling the natives how to live their lives. The father, John, was always flying, going places, and generating a lot of money. He was the search engine for money. You counted one two three, and he would make more money than a librarian would make in a year. He forgot about the purpose of making money. It never occurred to him that he was living to make money instead of the other way around. Several thousand dollars were at all time in his kids' bank accounts, ready to be used.

Kevin's sister, Melanie, was the type of a woman you would see in a hallway and keep on looking at her until you knocked down a child or flower stand or something of that sort. She looked charming and clean, tall and healthy, sexy and witty. She could pop the pouch of your hormone if she got closer to you and said hi. She was herself full of hormones and adrenaline. She loved people of all kind. She was the kind of woman who would fight for you even if she didn't know who you are or what race you belong to. Any cause to her about racism was a significant cause. She would care for humans and for animals at equal level. Animals to her were humans, and humans to her were animals. There was no difference between the two. The only difference is that humans pay taxes, she once said to her mother. Once she saw a dead cat on the road and she blocked the whole traffic with her 5-series BMW just to drag that cat out of the road. She once hit a deer on highway 55 and she became sick for two weeks. She didn't want to drive anymore, but then she somehow had come back to her senses and started to drive again. She was eccentric in the good sense of the word.

But this is not the end of the story. Brace yourself for what you are about to read in the coming pages, because Kevin, unlike his sister, was extremely racist. He hated Blacks, Jews, Chinese, and Mexicans. Not to forget gays and lesbians. Anybody that has slant eyes was Chinese to him, and anybody that spoke Spanish or was south of the border of the U.S was a Mexican. Puerto Ricans were Mexicans, Brazilians were Mexicans even though they speak Portuguese, and Hondurans were also Mexicans. Not to forget the Argentines. He didn't make the difference between Korean and Japanese, Vietnamese or Chinese. They were all Chinese to him. Blacks were all Africans, and so were Africans and Americans, light skinned and dark skinned, thick lips and thin lips. If you have dark skin, you were black, and if you were black, you have dark skin. If you were a part black you were black. In facts, all mixed with Blacks were Blacks. Even if you looked white and he happened to know that you were mixed with Blacks, he would consider you Black and you would automatically become inferior to him.
Jews couldn't escape him either, even though they 'looked' white. Anybody that had a German name and didn't look German was a Jew to him. Anybody that was white with hawked nose was a Jew and anybody that has curly hair and fair skin was also a Jew unless their hair was red and their eyes were shining blue. This might sound horrifying to you, but this is how Kevin was and this is how he had always been. If you don't accept this, you are just another chicken cuckdoodling your way out of reality.

Nobody in this rich family knew how Kevin developed his racism. He was loved by his family from day one. His diapers were always changed on time. His formula bottle was always full and warm and ready for him to suck on. All kinds of toys were at his disposition. A laptop computer was placed on his lap before he even turned eight. His save-the-whale mom was forty five when she delivered him. When she and John got married, they tried to start a family right away and she got pregnant and had a miscarriage. She miscarried three more times and the doctor told her she'd never be able to carry a baby to term. But the doctor turned out to be wrong because she had not just given birth to Kevin; she had given birth to Melanie too. So this miscarriage stuff couldn't have been the cause for his racism, because Melanie was not racist at all, or maybe was a racist is a subtle way. Some people who knew Kevin better had claimed that he was probably genetically predisposed to be a racist. But this couldn't happen because there is no such thing. Some relatives said he learned racism from the internet, but others thought he was just a twisted, white kid, trying to be difficult on society. So Kevin remained suspended in a psychological limbo: a state of pure potentiality of all possible racist behaviors he could conceivably entertain. And what's so interesting about all this, is that Kevin had chosen to be careful with his racism. He wouldn't show it to anybody unless he became angry and nobody else was around. And the way he looked angry was different. You could hardly tell he was angry. He could laugh on the outside and be angry in the inside at the same time. He could also laugh at you and make you feel terrible. There was some majestic pathos in him that fit the way he lived. He would attack you only when a good opportunity came. You wouldn't know he was a racist unless you paid a good attention to his behavior. You have to have a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to know what was really going on in his mind. If you were black and you happened to meet him in the street or in the elevator he would smile at you, or even say hi, but deep down in the back of his mind, he wished you were dead. To him, the good black man is the dead one, the good Jew is the dead Jew, and to him there was no good black man or a good Jew on this earth.

He went even further once and considered people with dark hair to be inferior. He once was told by a Swedish woman that there were groups in Sweden who considered people with dark hair to be inferior. She even gave him the name for them, which he forgot, probably because it was in Swedish. It was something like Voomvaghenvoom or something like that.

But these are just talks about Kevin being a racist. Let's see what terrible things he had done in the past, since you are probably impatiently waiting to know. Once upon a time, on his way home from a party, driving his black Mercedes, Kevin saw a middle-aged black man pedaling an old bicycle up a hill on University Avenue. The black man looked tired and withdrawn into himself. He was probably tired from a long day of work at a pizzeria or at the Speedy Market which was located nearby the State Capitol Credit Union. There are many small businesses along University Avenue, but at this time of night they were all closed, and the avenue was all calm and wet and shining under the orange lights of the lampposts that stood along the avenue. The black man was slowly pedaling, his upper body moving up and down with the pedaling. It was so quiet that you could hear the faint squeaking of the wheels, the turns of the chain, and the breathing of his lungs. The black man looked like a poor working man. He was in his forties. He was wearing a wrist watch and he was carrying a plastic bag full of groceries. You could tell, because a milk carton was poking out the skin of the plastic bag. His shoes were shining from the rain that had just fallen a minute ago, and he had white socks and a shabby vest.
Kevin wanted to make fun of this lonesome black man. For some reason or another he didn't want to hurt him; he just wanted to make fun of him. He drove slowly, quietly behind the bike and followed it with the same speed. The black man heard the purring of the Mercedes engine right behind him and turned his head to see what's going on. He saw this expensive of a shiny black car moving at constant speed with him. He tried to look at the driver but he couldn't make out who he was. He stopped and the car stopped right with him. The black man moved the plastic bag of groceries from one hand to the other and started pedaling again. The car followed him slowly. Kevin laughed inside. He was having a good time. He was cherishing the moment. Moments like these don't come that often, he said to himself. The encounter with this helpless black man was probably the best thing that had happened to him since 1997. The black man was an easy target. He was black, the night was black, the car was black, and the neighborhood was white.

Surprisingly, the car suddenly bounded away from the black man and sailed smoothly up the avenue. The black man was already pissed, so he fingered the car from behind. Kevin saw that in the rearview mirror and became pissed too. The black man made a big mistake. He probably made the biggest mistake in his life. He didn't know that he had just fingered a loony, a loony from the white established society.
"Fuck!" Kevin screamed in his car and pulled tightly on his steering wheel.
The car sped almost jumping and turned around the block, making a screechy sound, the tail almost hitting a fire hydrant. The black man didn't know if the car went away for good or just went around the block to come back to him. He became scared shitless. He looked around; nobody was around. He braced himself for danger, but he kept on pedaling. The plastic bag of groceries was making it hard for him to go fast, because it kept on swinging and bouncing against the front wheel. He could now hear a screechy sound of a car, a block away. By the time he turned around he saw the black car coming right at him. He knew it would hit him if he stayed on the bike, so he jumped like a frog from the bike onto the sidewalk and rolled over twice. The car slammed onto the bike and the bike went under the car and rumbled underneath and then came out twisted. The black man stood up in a state of shock. His eyes were popped out and his mouth was wide open. Kevin, on the other hand, was biting his lips as he was working on the steering wheel. His face had gone bright red in that darkness. He was in a state of madness. He was on the border line between psychosis and neurosis. The car made a U-turn slamming onto the curb and the black man ran out for cover. The car chased the black man, almost hitting a lamppost. The milk from the carton was spilling onto the ground while the car was chasing the black man. The Black man jumped over some stairs and plunged into a dark alley and disappeared. Kevin couldn't go in there; the car might get stuck in the stairs. He backed his car away and drove back to the street. The car then glided up the avenue, and vanished like if nothing had happened. After a moment or so, the black man came out from the quiet, dark alley, his eyes looking around, asking many questions. He was scared and pissed at the same time. He went to his twisted bike and studied it for a moment.
"He totaled it," he said to himself lamely. "I have to buy another one, Fuck!"

He then dragged the bike to a tree and picked up his groceries from the wet street and put them back in the plastic bag. He looked at the cream cheese package for a moment, thinking deeply, and then he put it back in the bag. He finally walked away, leaving the milk carton behind. He was looking back every once in a while to see if the black, evil car was coming after him again.

This is nothing compared to what Kevin had done in the past. He had done worse than this, and he had done it many times. Although he had never murdered anybody, he was always thinking about committing a murder. He was smart to the point that he would never leave any evidence on which a judgment could be based. He had the good sense to stay calm while committing his sins. He would lie low and sort things out calmly before he would go back to his daily routine. Bad people usually get caught, but Kevin was not a typical bad person. He didn't use drugs, drink alcohol, or hang out with prostitutes, or even smoke cigarettes; and this made him always on the alert, always healthy, always sober, always knowing his next moves, and always dangerous. Secondly, he was rich, which means he could use his money to protect him. He could suppress you with money the same way a rich society would suppress a poor society. Thirdly, he was good looking, and this is also very important, because good-looking people have better chance achieving their goals, better chance succeeding in life, better chance even in getting laid.

The black man was relieved after a moment of quietness. He walked only a few blocks away from the site of the attack before he approached a dark, vacant lot. He preferred to walk through that vacant lot for fear the black car might come after him again. But when he approached the center of the lot, he heard the murmur of the Mercedes engine again. It scared the almighty shit out of him. He would never forget the sound of that murmur. It reminded him of the hell he had been in just a few moments ago. He knew he was in trouble again, and this perhaps was his last draw. But the only thing he could do about this was jump in his place and run as hard as he could away so that he could disappear in the darkness of the streets nearby. Surprisingly, the black car didn't go after him. It waited for him until he reached a good striking distance and then chased him.

This time Kevin wasn't playing games. He had been playing games for a long time and now the time had come for him to kill somebody. He needed to do something that would knock the living shit out of him, something that would strike the strings of his psychosis; something that would fuck his life and give it an orgasm. So he made up his mind to kill a black man. To kill a mockingbird, he heard a voice saying in the back of his mind. He was happy about this decision in a way, but nervous about it in another. Killing a black man was no longer a fantasy to him. It had to become a reality at least once in his lifetime. He knew this would happen to him one day, knew that he could probably kill a colored person and get away with it, like he had gotten away with many bad things in the past. It dawned on him that he had a big problem, but in spite of his dark intelligence, he could not figure out what it was. He was intelligent, but not intelligent enough to understand himself and know exactly what he was going through and what he was doing. For a second he almost caught himself feeling sorry for this helpless black man, but he crushed that out quickly. He made up his mind and pushed down hard on the gas pedal of the black car and the black car went for the kill. To kill a mockingbird, he heard a voice echoing in the valleys inside his head. The black car chased the black man and the black man ran away from it. It took only a few seconds before it got to him and hit him hard. The black man fell helplessly to the ground and the car went over him. It did to him what it had done to the bike. The black man rolled like a cylinder under the car and his head bounced up and down, between the bottom of the car and the ground, two, three, or four times. The black car then moved away from him and bounced out of the vacant lot and disappeared into the dim-lighted streets. The black man was left there on the ground, lying on his back, in his blood, motionless, helpless, and dying. His life was hung from a thin string and God was watching over him. God always watches over things and does nothing about them. The sand of the lot was slowly soaking the black man’s blood as the black man was facing the dark sky, looking with his dying eyes at the stars, who were also watching over him and doing nothing.

Kevin drove home shaken by what he had done. He almost hit the garbage can when he drew up his car in front of his house. This time he couldn't hide his feelings. His white hands were shaking when he took off his coat and hung it in the closet by the entrance, thinking about what he had done to that poor innocent black man. Luckily nobody was home to look at his face and draw bad conclusions. If his sister had been there, she would've known he had done something wrong. She , knew him like she knew the back of her hand. Kevin went to the bathroom and pulled out his shriveled penis and took a quick leak. He then moved over to the sink and washed his face with cold water. He calmly stared at his pink face in the mirror and his face stared back at him. He focused on his sparkling blue eyes and his sparkling blue eyes focused back on him. It felt as though somebody else’s eyes were focusing on him instead. He looked away for a moment afraid of the look on his face. He pulled out his tooth brush from his breast pocket and, without tooth paste, began to constantly and nervously brush his teeth. He kept on brushing and brushing until he felt pain in his gum. He knew his gum was bleeding because he tasted something salty in his mouth. He spat a mixture of blood and spit into the white sink and held up his head to look at the mirror again and check his face and teeth. His face looked like the face of a ghost. It looked like the face of somebody who had just crawled out of Roselawn Cemetery on Larpenteur Avenue, in St Paul. He went to his room and pulled out his red and white pajamas, and a new piece of underwear. He quickly put them on and went to bed, thinking about his crime.

Kevin woke up in the night feeling strange. He had never felt this strange before even though he had woken up in the middle of the night hundreds of times. He couldn't believe his right hand when it touched his head and felt his hair. The hair, which had been soft and straight, and which he had combed many times during a day, now became thick and fuzzy. He could feel the thickness of it on his skull. He could feel his thick hair pulling against the skin of his skull. He looked at his hands only to see that they were black. They were black hands with long black fingers. He bolted up into a sitting position, screaming. He didn't know what to do with his hands. He stared at them for a moment and stood up and looked at his black feet and jumped in his place as though to jump away from them. But they were his feet now and he couldn't get away from them. He went to the long mirror that was hung on the door of the closet and looked at himself. He saw the image of the black man he was chasing the night before, looking back at him. He let out the mother of all screams and the image in the mirror screamed with him. His sister heard all these screams, dialed 911, and came running down to his room. Kevin quickly got out of the room and ran crazily to the hallway checking his black hands, and black feet. His sister looked down at him from upstairs and said, what’s going on, Kevin? Kevin ran out of the house in his red and white pajamas.
© Sidi Cherkawi Benzahra September 2004
sidi.benzahra@ndsu.nodak.edu

Also by Sidi
The Mannequin
The Woman with Hoofed Feet

Sidi Benzahra has also writen papers on Grand Unified Theory and Quark-Gluon Plasma

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