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Drunken Jedi Master
This will appear in an upcoming edition of The Chronicle, the Oregon State University Honors College student magazine. There might be some additional minor edits before it’s published but this is where it stands now.
My friend Xiyun and I once made a brief stopover in the small Tunisian town of Thala to change louages (shared long distance taxis) on our journey south to Kasserine. The first louage due to depart only had one seat free. After spending several minutes attempting to persuade the driver and the other passengers to grant both of us passage, a late-coming National Guard soldier wishing to leave immediately decided that we would wait.
Xiyun and I walked to the next louage in the queue for Kasserine. We hopped in the empty vehicle and settled down for a long wait. In smaller towns it can take all day before a louage has enough passengers to leave.
It began to snow. In spite of it being February, the snow struck us as a bit odd. Thala lies only 150km north of the Grand Erg Oriental, part of the Sahara Desert. The men standing around by the louages all wore what can best be described to westerners as Jedi cloaks and Jawa anoraks to blunt the cold. George Lucas, in his infinite wisdom, lifted large portions of Star Wars and the entire planet of Tatooine (a corruption of the town and district of Tataouine) from Tunisia. Everyone had their hoods up, protecting against the inclement weather. Snow piled up in little mounds on top of the Jawas and Jedis. It was a whimsical sight in an otherwise dull town.
As we sat watching the snow fall, I observed a Jedi emerge from a nearby alleyway. This was no ordinary Jedi. He staggered a bit. The man meandered slowly down the street in our general direction. This particular Jedi had approached me earlier asking for money. I rebuffed his then-sober advances and kindly suggested he look elsewhere. Now, fortified with stiff drink, he was back. Our drunken Jedi stopped at the first louage he happened upon. He opened the door, poked his head inside, and asked for spare change. The women inside gave him a Dinar or two. He exited the louage, closed the door, pocketed the change, took a swig from a small bottle concealed in his cloak, and stumbled to the next louage. This repeated several times before he came to us.
The intoxicated man slid the door open and stuck his head inside. Several seconds elapsed before he realized that we were not giving him money, and that Xiyun was not Tunisian, but in fact quite Asian. People with Asiatic features are a rare sight in Tunisia, especially in small, out-of-the-way places like Thala.
First in Arabic, and then French, he asked us for money. Likewise, first in Arabic, and then French, we told him to go away and leave us alone. In general, I don’t like panhandlers but I will say this for him: he was honest. He informed us up-front that any money we gave him would be used to buy more alcohol. In spite of our protests, he plopped down next to me.
His breath reeked. The man brought a little white plastic bottle out and took a sip. He handed it to me for closer inspection. In French it was labeled “Burning Alcohol” which, I can only assume, is similar to American rubbing alcohol. The bottle sported markings indicating the poisonous nature of its contents. After another swig he realized that Xiyun and I both spoke English. He started asking Xiyun what Tokyo was like. Xiyun is not Japanese. She hails from Beijing, not Tokyo. Sadly, the distinction was lost upon our friend.
The conversation plodded along, periodically returning to the issue of money, until our new friend asked Xiyun what it was like being a Ninja. You see, our dear drunken Jedi’s life-long ambition was to become a ninja. Tragically, as he laboriously recounted, “the man” kept him down and he had yet to realize his ninja dreams. Xiyun, always up for a bit of fun and still smarting from the nationality misidentification, began to describe a rather entertaining code of ninja ethics. The driver came by and shooed our ninja-wannabe out of the louage. We thanked him and went back to idly observing the snow.
Wrapped tightly in his cloak, the driver ambled back to a nearby coffee shop. The ninja-crazed town drunk, sensing an opportunity to learn more about the ninja way, rejoined us in the louage. During our brief respite, Xiyun informed me that I was to continue to keep distance between her and our friend. She was rightly concerned that the cigarette she was smoking–a smooth, full flavored Mars Light, the finest of Tunisian brands–might ignite the man’s breath. He came back slightly more intoxicated than before.
After a brief continuance of the ninja-themed conversation, our friend took another nip from the bottle of burning alcohol and promptly lost the ability to speak English. The man now switched into French. Xiyun, far more fluent than me, translated the bits I didn’t understand between stifled fits of laughter. He rambled on and on about his burning desire to join the ninja order and fight “the man.” (Surely he could not have been referring to Ben Ali, beloved president of Tunisia!) I believe this man had seen one too many Jackie Chan films. Another nip from the bottle and his French was lost. I found myself pressed into service translating for the beyond-bemused and now slightly-irritated Xiyun on, of all topics, how to be a ninja. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that my mediocre Arabic would be put to such a weighty task!
With our assistance, the town drunk fully explored the finer points of ninja life that day in Thala. Finally, as the snow let up a bit, a strapping young National Guardsman came to wait in the louage. He politely but forcefully removed our ninja-in-training and sat down to wait with us out of the weather. The drunken Jedi staggered off into the snow having met his first in-the-flesh “Japanese ninja.” He was now ready to follow the ninja way.