Vignettes

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© 2001-2002 R.C. Barajas

e walked right in front of the car. His arms were raised and he strode into the crosswalk, turning his body to stop traffic in both directions of the busy intersection. I had the impression he was commanding us all to wake up. His white beard was trim, his turban neat over his sienna face, the loose clothing looking inadequate against the cold. His deep-set eyes never wavered as he kept his hands raised to all of us, the drivers behind the wheels.

Granted I was fragile and distracted that morning. I'd just learned that George Harrison had died the previous night. Our bombs were falling in a country of which I had only the most cartoonish, 17 square-inch mental picture -- turbans and robes, rocks and caves, US-issued weaponry, muffled snatches of a guttural language that falls harsh and fearsome on western ears. I had Abbey Road turned up loud in the empty car, and had been fighting tears, unsuccessfully, since Here Comes the Sun. So it was through a watery blur, I'd first seen this man with his raised arms and his turban.

Four lanes came to a halt in front of him, nothing stopping us but his very presence, his body between our thousands of pounds of steel and fiberglass and an empty stretch of pavement. Waiting on the curb, looking to the man in the crosswalk for a sign was a lone, redheaded schoolboy clutching the handle of a rolling backpack.

Only when all the cars were fully stopped, and others coming up or down the hill behind and in front of us had slowed to a crawl, did the man signal the boy with a gentle motion of his gnarled hand. Then his bright eyes returned to us, blocking our bumpers with his small, erect body until the boy was half way across. The man then turned his attention on the row of oncoming cars waiting across the broad intersection. He strode to face them, standing now between them and the boy wheeling his backpack. I knew at that moment all of us were watching this man who, with his life, was protecting a young American child who could have belonged to any one of us.

Only when the redheaded boy had stepped onto the curb and hauled his backpack up behind him, did the old man walk back across the street. He signaled with a wave of his arm, first to the oncoming traffic, and then to us -- continue on your way and go back to sleep! I watched the old man reach the far curb, and saw him wait patiently for his next charge to arrive. The traffic moved off, sweeping my car along with it, crisscrossing the intersection, drivers pushing their feet to the floor once again.

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