The Sniper

It was a very calm, chill morning after a hot night where both sides exchanged all kinds of heavy arms, shells and rockets. The smell of death, burned buildings and gunpowder took over the dawn air. A man was riding his bicycle with a box full of bread bags hanging on the back of it. He was in a hurry. He used to fetch the bread bags each morning from the West side of the road and distribute them, still hot, to his customers on the East side of the same street. Spring in Beirut was hot and humid on this day. The sunlight was weak and drops of feeble rain covered the empty streets. At the wet intersection, the man did not stop to survey the road, nor did he slow down. He made a deadly left turn. A sniper’s bullet hit him in the right ear. His lightweight body fell down at once; his bicycle lay over him with its rear wheel turning for a while. Three bread bags were left scattered around the crime scene. The sound of the gunshot was heard clearly in the nearby houses. Soon, everyone discovered the crime. At the top of the hill, an old man standing behind the palace’s huge window had seen the forty-year old man falling down on the wet road with his bicycle over him, but he did not move. Even the Lebanese army soldiers, whose military base was only a few dozen meters away from where the poor man was hit, none of them came out to see the deed. A deadly silence hung over the road. After hours, a Red Cross ambulance stopped beside the wet corpse. Two volunteers with two sides-“Red Cross” printed white jackets got down from the car to check the body. The driver was a tall, thin young man with a half burned arm, while the other one was a short, plump chap with long hair, who put on glasses. “Is he still alive?” the driver asked while he was lighting a cigarette. “He is hit in the head.” The second volunteer responded spiting near the killed man’s head drowned in a spot of blood. “Where shall we take him?” The little stout volunteer began to check the dead man’s clothes. He took the bicycle off the sniped man, his hands touched the bread bags; he took one of them and opened it; the smell of the hot, fresh bread stimulate his appetite. He closed it and threw it into the opened trunk. “Take a look”, he said giving the man’s ID to the driver who examined it, holding the cigarette by his two thin brown lips. The man’s name was Adam and his religious reference was covered by a large, solid red dot. “Is this a blood spot?” The second volunteer stood up, cleaned his glasses and looked to the ID card carefully: “I think it is.” “So where should we take him now?” The short, plump young man continued checking the ID, trying to figure out the place where they should secure the body, “God, we can’t figure out his religion even by his name.” The tall, thin driver dropped his cigarette butt; he heard the sound of his cigarette hitting the black asphalt. He walked back and forth trying to unfold this puzzle, but his colleague interrupted his thoughts. “We should leave now; the cease-fire period is already over.” Fearing to be snipped like the one on the wet road, the two volunteers lifted the dead man into the trunk, covering him with a white blanket, and then closed the double door. One of them thought the rigid body might still be alive, never mind how cold it was. The bread distributor’s bicycle and stock remained on the road, and the white car with its so familiar Red Cross drove away quickly, speeding silently. The old man was still looking from behind the window, and so were the other dwellers of the vicinity, to see if someone can make a safe turn at this intersection, no matter left or right. On both sides of the crossroads, two white posters with the word of caution, hand-written in gigantic, primitive black curves, had been hanged: “Beware sniper”.