SHORT STORY BY MARY O'HARA
Up until last Sat'dy arvo, I'd never thought of myself as a terrorist. I knew that terrorists were our greatest enemies. World leaders have left me in no doubt as to the seriousness of the threat posed by these vicious, fanatical maniacs (the maniac terrorists I mean, not the world leaders). In fact, I've been cheering and barracking from the sofa, every time the Yanks blow up a piece of the Middle East or the Israelis demolish another refugee camp.
"Good on ya George", I've been saying. "Go get 'em. Don't stop. Nuke North Korea. Irradiate Iraq." I was overjoyed when our treasurer decided to kill off a few of our sick and elderly by reducing their access to medicine, so that we could spend more on helping our mate George. He's on the side of Good and De-maark-rassy, which is very noble. It means he's trying to stop those evil terrorists from killing innocent people like the sick and elderly.
So I've been keeping an eye out for the last six months, just in case any terrorists try to make an attack on West Jigalong. I've even been getting the dog to sniff my mail before I open it, though he won't do it unless I hide a chop bone under it. But there hasn't been the slightest hint of terrorism. Nothing.
Until last Sat'dy arvo, that is. That's when we had a plasterer in to fix a bit of cornice. After he'd gone, I started cleaning up the mess he'd left behind. There was quite a heap of powdered plaster and gyprock by the time I'd finished sweeping, and I thought of posting it back to him as a gentle reminder to clean up his own messes.
When I suggested this course of action to my One and Only, she gave me a funny look and said, "Don't worry, I'll come and visit you."
"Huh?" Had she gone mad?
"Ten years is a long time, you know", she replied.
Then it hit me. I was the terrorist. Ever since some American mixed anthrax with a white powder and stuck it in a postbox, the mailing of any white powder has been outlawed, and is now punished more severely than infanticide.
Help! George was right. The terrorist network is everywhere. Their tentacles reach out across the world, even into our own homes. Nothing is safe. They're behind the door, under the bed and down the back of the piano.
I quickly emptied the tell-tale dust into the bin before someone spotted me with it. Then I resolved to take the bin to the tip, to dispose of the evil substance.
"While you're at it", suggested my One and Only, "you might as well take a load of junk from the garage. Fill the car up."
And that's when the trouble really started. Garages and sheds should never be tidied up. Most human misery can be ultimately traced to someone's decision to "clean out the shed", and it was no different this time. Here's some of what I found:
- Six polystyrene foam boxes;
- One cassette-deck with buggered play-head (too old to get fixed);
- A small quantity of lawn fertiliser;
- Toy car, remote-control, broken rear axle;
- Approximately one dozen empty glass bottles;
- Petrol for lawnmower; and
- A small quantity of barbed wire left over from Fred's fence.
There was a lot of other stuff too, but I think it's pretty clear from what I've just mentioned, that I was in big trouble. Our garage was part of the terrorist network. It was obviously an arms factory, and there seemed to be evidence that research into biological weapons took place here. It's amazing what can happen in a bloke's shed while he's asleep or watching the footy.
Even when I considered the unlikely possibility that this potential arsenal hadn't been assembled by a terrorist, it was obviously my duty as a responsible global citizen to deny the use of these materials to the enemy. My trip to the tip had acquired a new meaning. Instead of taking junk to the tip, I was bringing justice to the terrorists. Now I too could play a part in the battle between Good and Evil.
As I set off, all I could do was hope I wasn't caught, because if I was, I knew ASIO would probably assume I was Osama bin Laden, considering what I had in the car. That broken toy car wouldn't be a broken toy car to them, it would be a device for the remote detonation of explosives. The ammonium nitrate in the fertiliser would be one of the ingredients for making the explosives. To them, a stockpile of glass bottles and polystyrene would show a clear intention to make Molotov cocktails.
I'd managed to dispose of the petrol by pouring it into the car's petrol tank, but I couldn't do that with the buggered cassette player. It wouldn't fit. I had to drive along public streets for nearly 10 minutes with that wretched thing in the boot, knowing all the time that its little electric motor could be employed, oh so easily, by a resourceful saboteur wanting a device to pull the pin from a hand grenade while s/he makes her/his getaway.
At last I arrived at the tip. "Just household garbage?", enquired the man on the gate.
"Er, yes", I gulped, feeling sure my guilt was written all over my face.
But he just waved me through. I couldn't believe my luck, and headed straight for the tip-face. Out came the dirty dishcloths. Never again would they be used for germ warfare. The barbed wire was next. I wasn't going to let any Enemies of Freedom use it to defend their gun emplacements. It was followed by the foam boxes, the gyprock powder, fertiliser, broken toys and the rest of the sordid little collection.
But that wasn't the end of my little brush with terrorism. When I arrived home, I looked around me with renewed vigilance and realised that our entire house and garden are full of the "clear evidence of terrorism". There are truck-loads of the stuff that George and Ariel and their merry men have been uncovering in Afghan caves and Palestinian shanty-towns. There's "sophisticated communication equipment" like a TV and cordless phone, charcoal in the fireplace that could be used to make gunpowder, and worst of all, the toilet brush, which is clearly an attempt to create biological Weapons of Mass Destruction.
It's all too much. I've written a letter to George asking him to send over a few B-52s to bomb the joint, while I take the family on a short holiday to North Jigalong. After all, it really is the easiest way to deal with these little problems.
We'll move back in at Christmas, when it's all over.
[Mary O'Hara lives in Lismore and can be contacted on (02) 6624 8505.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 1, 2003.
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