Lessons and Recollections Inspired by The Expendables
By: Jasmin El-I
Tags: Childhood, Action Movies, The Expendables, Childhood Memories, Thanksgiving

I was about 6, and my sister was 8 when my mama took us to a mining town to live. My stepfather was a miner, and my mama ran a small shop selling groceries, clothes, jewelry, and other knick-knacks to the other miners’ wives. I remember the village being bone-dry, a tiny community in the middle of nowhere where people spoke a funny-sounding language totally different from what I had first spoken. However, you quickly acquire the dialect when you’re at that age; you naturally become fluent in no time. I remember my sister being my mama’s translator on the rare trips to the municipality center about two hours away from us.

There wasn’t much in the town. There were no parks, malls, movie theaters, or playgrounds. There were no big buildings aside from the bunkhouse where the unmarried miners were housed. Including my mama’s, there were exactly four stores—two of those sold cooked food and alcoholic beverages for the drink-loving miners. On the weekends, those places were full of merry men.

Later in the day or early in the morning, a few of them could be found sleeping under a tree or at the side of the road. On weekdays it was quiet as if the weekend merriment and shenanigans didn’t occur.

I was seven when my mama decided I had to go to school. She thought I was one of those special kids because I rarely spoke. I guess she wanted me to have a normal childhood with my sister and other kids there. And yet, the school was far. My sister, our friends, and I had to walk on unpaved, dusty roads about twenty-five kilometers every day to get to our classes.

Although I was allergic to textbooks and was rarely in class, I recall enjoying those long and yet exciting excursions.

We had so much fun taking the back roads and scaring ourselves with tales of ghosts or murder and mayhem in the village. We would sometimes stop by a cool spot to eat snacks or leftovers from our packed lunches. We were happy gallivanting in the barren hills, the murky rivers, or the lush woods along the way. I never heard anyone in the group complaining about the distance and the lack of transportation.

On non-school days, we were in the forest climbing trees looking for wild berries and passion fruit or running around chasing birds and dragonflies. We also liked climbing up rocky hills to get to the tailings pond and dam, where we would throw rocks to see who could do it the farthest.

We didn’t care about the danger signs all over those places. There was nobody to send us away. Those climbs usually ended in rivers where we swam and messed around in the water until our skins turned purple and wrinkly.

We didn’t fear snakes or leeches, even though the grown-ups warned us of huge pythons and cobras living in the area. We often saw boa constrictors on the way to school. If they weren’t lifeless from being run over by loading-trucks, they were just quietly slithering away.

Sometimes we set out to earn a few dimes. Armed with tweezers, we’d storm the bunkhouse to pluck gray hair from older people’s heads. One of my first friends was a grandpa who had stacks of Free Press and Readers’ Digest in his room. I couldn’t read until I was 10, and even if I could then, I wouldn’t be able to comprehend politics or sociology. Nevertheless, I liked looking at pictures.

While scanning the pages of those magazines, he was patient enough to introduce Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Rwandan Genocide, Martial Law, The Berlin Wall, The Taliban, Dolly the Sheep, Nelson Mandela, and other famous figures and events in the world during those years.

At night time, when the moon shone brightly, illuminating the neighborhood, we’d go out and play hide and seek, Chinese garter, or tag you’re it. Bored from playing those games, we’d hunt down those green slimy, croaking animals. I wonder now why tracking down bullfrogs and imitating their sound was a source of entertainment.

If there was a funeral, my sister and I could be seen selling boiled eggs, cigarettes, mints, or cut-up fruit to the men playing cards and the women singing gospel hymns to comfort the grieving family. I was younger, so I only had to carry some of the merchandise while my older sister took care of the bills and change.

Our pals were there too, running around and getting pinched by their moms or scolded by their dads or other funeral-goers. The kids used to challenge each other’s courage by touching the dead person’s face. The winner could gloat for days. My sister always won, and I was always disinterested in corpses. Ironically, we had some of the most fun moments at times of grief.