Jaywalking

Jaywalking
(after a photograph by Josef Koudelka)

Military police stand at street corner checkpoints, wary of work-bound civilians who outnumber them, bark for papers in the mixed shadows of traffic lights and infantry patrolling from rooftop vantages, keep an eye on passing tanks that skirt the hulk of one of their kind, a cocktail's victim. Things are quiet for now in this area, early morning early in the week, business almost as usual.

It's different four blocks east, one south, where shadows are vague, the sun obscured by oily smoke, another tank burning, two apartment towers, broken waterfall windows, firemen working hoses. Curses are hurled between partisans and loyalists, bottles and rocks, sporadic shots gouging fresh craters in marred walls and curbs. A residential, working class street, mounds of tires and overturned cars as barricades during revolution.

A woman in wool suit and practical shoes steps from the sidewalk mid-street, leads a girl of six or so who carries a book bag and a doll, her stride determined but paced to the child's as she looks first at one faction, then at the other, defiant as any cub-laden lioness facing jackals. I'm taking her to school, she growls loudly, so cease your damned fire, while the girl calls, Hi, Daddy, love you, to a man behind a sedan who waves and replies, See you both for dinner.