The Semantics of Fear

My breathing is coming easier to me now. I had been laboring for air throughout most of the bus ride, as the kids would sing countless verses of Amazing Grace. I, to be honest, had thought there were only two verses. It seems that in any good Police movie, the inevitable bag pipe rendition of Amazing Grace at the inevitable funeral would only play two verses at most. But these kids around me keep making up new verses with their leader, a 40 year old man suffering from a severe case of dandruff (evidenced by his black shirt) and the inability to stay seated. He is constantly parading up and down the bus isle, his paranoia that the highschoolers may have snuck cigarettes or an airplane bottle on the trip consuming him. Live and let live, my friend. Live and let live.

But now everyone’s attention has turned to this metropolis of Venezuela that we have entered, and as the singing dies, so does my anxiety. The fear and uneasiness expressed in the highschoolers’ faces, one made manifest in them all by these new and unfamiliar surroundings, is what had been gripping me during their invocation of God. I don’t do religion. I don’t do rules and Christianity and all that stuff. The only faith I have is in my faculties, limited as they may be. And to be surrounded by this cultish act of worship only heightens my sense of reality. Reality is the present. Period.

I will make money off these suckers, however. My summer job for the past four years has been a type of Video Journalist for these church groups wanting to do missions in South America. In this way I have not only expanded my portfolio, but I have picked up the Spanish language as well. Streets stuff at least. It gets me around and gets me paid.

The streets of San Fernando are what have captured everyone’s attention. Our plane from Dallas had just recently landed in Caracas at 4 in the morning, and even the sights and sound of their first experience in a foreign country could not keep their eyelids open as the bus escorted us out of the Capital. Our route had been marred by gorgeous landscapes that highschoolers would find too monotonous, their video games scarring their synapses. But I love it. Forests and fields intertwine, and if there is a God, this is where he lives.

And if the fields are his home, the streets of San Fernando de Apure are his foreign lands. It is fun to stare at the desperate eyes of these so called “missionaries” as they enter San Fernando. Most are highschoolers from the suburbs of Nashville, and poverty like this they have only heard whispers of. The tents! The massive amount of tents that line the roads are what grab their attention. Or maybe it’s the shit that lines the sidewalks. As their eyes open wider, and as they start to squirm silently in their seats, I start to smile. Baptism by Fire. Rip them from their comfortable homes and big screen TV’s and show them what real life is. The present. Now.

I play a game with myself by trying to identify the exact moment when they realize that their beds tonight might look a little different from their Tempurpedics at home.

These boys and girls have come not only to bring much needed clothes and labor to the southern communities, but to also preach their gospel of love. But I wonder if the fear I see in their eyes, a fear starting to battle with their overzealous confidence, will become victor and silent their mouths. This is now my fifth missions jaunt to this town, and each has had a mind of its own. It seems the measure of success/failure is all based on the leadership of the adults on any such trip, and as I watch the middle aged youth pastor start to emulate the exact same characteristics of the kids, I am beginning to wager on the complete failure of this trip. The odds are great.

The bus stops roughly a quarter of a mile away from the Casa de Bolivar, the one and only lucrative tourist trap, and I look forward to counting the T-shirts these kids will take home with them featuring the house in all its dilapidated grandeur. We have arrived in front of the local principality where we are to be boarded and everyone must show proof of identity. Since I am the resident Spanish linguist on board, I accompany the bust driver down the stairs of the bus and onto familiar ground.

It is important for me to now note one of my many neuroticisms. “If I go, my camera goes....” I keep my Sony VX-2000 by my side at all times, whether filming or not. I have the inability to leave it on a bus or even locked tight in the largest safe Fort Knox can supply. I am the sole proprietor of this camera, and few things will separate us.

However, a .40 Caliber Smith and Wesson Model 4006 with a 102 mm Barrel and 3-dot adjustable sights will do the trick. With only three steps to the front door of the magistrate’s office, a click resonates in my ear as a slight pressure is applied to my forehead. The glint off the trigger of the aforementioned firearm obscures my view of the armed man. I want to argue that it is solely the luster of the pistol that hinders my sight, and I will be damned if I say I am on the brink of immediate tears, however I will admit something has gotten in my eyes, for they instantly have started to water. In this one moment, I am amazed that out of all the thoughts that could possibly come to mind, such as “run!” or “drop to the ground”, the one image that surpasses them all is the image of my 3rd grade nemesis, Frank Gifford.

No, not the renowned football commentator. He is a saint compared to this cretin of a man-child that sat on the back seat of school bus #82. I used to define fear by my relationship with Frank. He lived down the road from me, and although in the same grade, he easily had me by 2 years of age. Fear was knowing Frank thought he was better than me. Fear was knowing his older brother was a police officer. Fear was knowing my designated school bus stop was Frank’s front yard.

For the first three weeks of school Frank wouldn’t let me stand in his yard to wait for the bus. He put the fear of god in me every morning, and it took my father spying on me to alert him of the problem. My father had a conversation with Frank’s parental units, whether they be humans or demons, and this historic accord marked two important rules of engagement between me and Frank. 1) I was now allowed to stand in his yard to wait for the bus. 2) Frank was now allowed to make me #1 on his list of kids to hate/kill. Needless to say, fear enveloped my world until Frank was expelled 3 months later for punching a teacher.

But my definition of fear is now changing into a total new concept at this very moment. I will later find out that this man giving me a lesson in semantics is named Julio Jimenez, and the fact that this man who promotes so much fear has such an alliterative name will make me laugh briefly, but right now thoughts of humor have fled all reasoning in my head. It is me and Julio, and his gun whom he has probably named Isabella. And Julio is screaming.

I think I told you earlier that this job has provided me with a proficient knowledge of the Spanish language, “proficient” being the operative word. It is another amazing phenomena that as I am threatened with this weapon, I cannot recall a single Spanish noun or verb. Isabella seems louder than Julio, and a lot more dangerous. I write off Julio as crazy, spitting gibberish and showing more signs of panic than even I. But Isabella is the evident leader here, and she holds completely steady, with nerves (and flesh) of steel.

Julio is furious, and all I can spit out of my dry and encrusted mouth is “no comprende”. I don’t know what he wants; God doesn’t know what he wants. But his brow shows signs that he is adamant about his position, and I am helpless to accommodate. The bus driver, Eduardo, a short and stumpy old man with a wild mustache, rushes over to me and wrestles my camera out of my frozen fists. My body takes this as its own separate attack, and it takes all of Eduardo’s 250+ pounds to relinquish the camera, which he immediately hands Julio. It is at this moment that my mind finally catches up to the present and realizes this is a simple heist, and in order to keep my life, I must give up my possessions to the common good: Karl Marx and his socialist philosophies in action! I now know that Julio will leave and I will be spared.

Incorrect. The next few moments might be best described from my point of view through the following seven words: thump, shit!, what?, fuck, ow, shit!, ouch. Yet because this is all a blur to me, riddled with expletives and pain, I steal the scene from Eduardo’s first person. Eduardo sees Julio flip his Isabella in his hand as some perversion to her true worth and purpose, and with all his strength Julio pistol whips me right between the eyes. Eduardo watches as if in slow motion I am thrown by the force of Isabella’s stock to the ground, Eduardo helpless to catch me due to his girth and 40 meter time of 10.2 seconds (and however long it takes him to finish his mid-run siesta). I hit the ground, and in all the confusions that are my thoughts (if you remember, I though all was well when I relinquished my camera), I for a moment believe I am indeed drowning.

Please, step back form this scene and take a look around. See the effervescent Julio sprint away with Isabella in his right hand and my camera over his left shoulder. See Eduardo in all his majesty trying to pick me up off the ground as I expertly perform the breast-stroke. But most importantly, see the eyes of the thirty-some-odd students on a dilapidated Grey Hound, wide eyed and frozen in time. Welcome to Venezuela!

Is there a God? We find out three days later that Venezuela, a democratic nation by reputation, has indeed an underground run by the Sicilian mob under the Cuntrera-Carvana family. They had been exiled form Italy and used Venezuela as a port for their new found cocaine trade, ushering the product from neighboring Columbia through the harbors of Venezuela to its eventual destination in Canada. The local “boss”, if you will, overseeing the local city of San Fernando as though it was his Rome, celebrated his birthday on the day that coincided with my attack. Reporting directly to me and the missions group leader, a representative of the family tells us that Julio had robbed me of my camera in order to offer it as a present to the boss on his birthday. Yet the boss, when learning how Julio had abducted the camera and from whom, was outraged greatly. This representative speaks these words now which I will remember always. “As an apology for your attack, the boss wants you to know that Julio Jimenez has been taken care of.” The representative leaves me , and though his presence is gone, his words still race through my mind. “Has been taken care of.”

Is there a God? If I ask any of the highschoolers they will undoubtedly answer “yes”. Their proof lies in my heartbeat, my breath. Yet is this the kind of God that we must believe in? One who not only saves but acts in retribution? As we sit around the cabin on now our last night in San Fernando de Apure, and as the highschoolers sing Amazing Grace, I take deep, consistent breaths. Maybe this idea of God does not hide from these streets and these people; he just works in different ways.

I do know I have not seen my camera since the attack. But neither have I seen Isabella, and I rejoice in the latter much more.


The Semantics of Fear
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