LIFE UNDER SIEGE
Krajick, Kevin
Life Under Siege A Nicaraguan family contends with the numbing routine of war BY KEVIN KRAJICK Each morning around two or three, the roosters in Managua begin to crow. First, you hear just an...
...He sweeps the room with Eduardo's invisible machine gun, making little exploding noises...
...Today, I am in paradise," he says...
...Simona calls it the Carro Fantastico and stays up late to watch it every week...
...it is now populated only by black-shelled turtles—the closest thing to a zoo in this Pennsylvania-sized country of three million people...
...Walter Medrano Lau is hereby called to fulfill his obligation to perform patriotic military service for a term of two years beginning at 2 p.m...
...is tomorrow—seventeen hours from now...
...There's got to be a way out," says Enma, getting more and more worked up...
...says Enma, leaping from her chair...
...A few hours later, chicken soup is served...
...He's a Sandinista...
...That's two years in the mountains," says Simona...
...I don't know how to do it," he moans...
...The water will be turned oif today, as it is every Tuesday and Friday in this part of Managua, to give the obsolescent municipal pipe system a rest...
...Are you crazy...
...people live here...
...First, you hear just an isolated shriek coming from here or there out of a nearby yard, opening then closing a little crack in the cool darkness...
...It says: FOR PEACE-ALL AGAINST THE AGGRESSION...
...So far he has miraculously failed to receive a call-up notice...
...He neatly disposes of them with well-placed punches...
...The Sandinistas are communists, and there is no room for communists in Nicaragua," she says...
...Using her whole tiny body, she twists it around and around as if she were wringing out a pair of the jeans she washes by hand...
...Free fatherland or death...
...she says...
...I'm no Sandinista...
...Sefior Reagan is the one responsible for this...
...He and Robertina exchange a few mundane words while Enma's eyes roam lovingly over her son's frame...
...Some of the other American television staples include decades-old reruns of "My Friend Flicka" and episodes of "Knight Ryder," a more recent series about a computerized talking car and its human master...
...But they don't have any sense when they're young...
...Then Walter walks out the door and through the gate...
...He begins remonstrating with her in a loud voice, pretending to be angry...
...With no paratroopers in sight, month after month the trenches slowly are filling up with loose dirt, discarded plastic bags, and trash...
...Rich salads, stews, and meats abound...
...The constantly reinforced militant atmosphere and warnings of besiegement can become boring and even hazardous in small ways...
...It's too big, I'm afraid of it," says Walter, not joking...
...Then he kisses it...
...If the contras come out with their hands up crying, 'Don't shoot,' it's paa-paa-paa," he says, sweeping the room with an imaginary machine gun...
...It's a war...
...Inside is the tip for a drafting pen...
...Why not spare their lives...
...Across the way are the tombs of several revolutionary heroes, topped with flags and an eternal flame...
...Fell June 6,1979...
...A brief, blurry closeup of Ronald Reagan— on whom government propagandists personally blame the war—is followed by a squad of determined-looking Nicaraguan militiamen with arms at the ready...
...Bronson has just finished dodging a would-be assassin's bullets in a hotel lobby and is casually making a phone call from the reservation desk when a young man and woman, dressed in olive drab pants and white T-shirts, come to the door and ask for Walter...
...He and Robertina make a striking couple, she with her finely carved face, hair cropped short, and slight body weighing no more than eighty-five pounds...
...on the screen, Charles Bronson is being attacked by a gang of thugs who try to throw him down an elevator shaft...
...We don't want them here...
...He pauses dramatically and then comes back: "We repeat: An invasion has not been launched at this time, but it is possible that North American troops could invade at any moment...
...Death, where is your victory...
...It's the best...
...Walter attributes the shortages of such items to the Sandinistas' "biggest mistake"—their decision to shy away from a completely socialist economy...
...He will come back to Nicaragua in two years, when he turns eighteen, says Enma, "but for now, it's better that he concentrate on his studying...
...You're a fanatic, Eduardo...
...On Easter Sunday, Manuel, who lives in a modern suburban house that many Americans probably would be happy to own, throws a party for the whole extended family, about forty people...
...Before going to bed, he stops in the kitchen doorway and waves goodbye to the family members, as if he were standing on the deck of a departing ship...
...Somehow, Enma's house and family survived...
...He thinks he may have gotten off because he is supporting the entire household and holds an important job as technical engineer in a government shop that makes spare parts...
...At a police station, they beat him for five days and then attached him to a wall with metal rings around his fingers, through which they ran electric shocks...
...The huge rooster has occasionally bitten the children on their legs, and its feet look vicious...
...A gigantic scar runs up the side of one leg, and he cannot run well or walk long distances without tiring...
...Although Eduardo, now twenty-seven, is past draft age, he volunteered for eight months of service in 1982 to fight the con-tras in "the mountains," as the inhabitants of low-lying Managua call the rugged northern war zone...
...Shortly, the rooster stops struggling and Walter lays it solemnly on the table...
...The front steps of the cathedral are boarded over with a battleship-gray plywood platform that borders a large parking lot used by the Sandinistas for their major political rallies...
...it's unclear how many people agree...
...Maximo Jerez is.one of several dozen scattered enclaves that surround what was once recognizable as a city but for the last thirteen years has lain pretty much in ruins...
...As Simona picks through the rice, Eduardo calmly recounts how the soldiers beat him with gun butts in the street and then threw him in the back of a hearse with other young men who were not yet dead...
...North American imperialism ruled Nicaragua for 100 years, and the FSLN [the Sandinista party] has thrown it out for good...
...A wispy, pimpled seventeen-year-old, he is certain he will be drafted into the army next year, like almost every other healthy young man his age...
...I'm no communist...
...The paper gives the address of a military center in Managua and is signed by an army officer...
...Walter holds tight to the rest of the rooster and looks away, cringing...
...They just go up there and run out and get shot...
...Suddenly, the sound of flowing water diminishes to a drizzle, and the pipes cough and choke...
...But if you lie in bed and listen for a while, you can hear a growing chorus from faraway neighborhoods, until the sounds gradually coalesce into a continuous, ghostly song—the chorus of a dozen square miles of poultry crooning all over Nicaragua's capital...
...In some of the half-lit chambers behind the main altar, clotheslines are strung and wood fires are burning...
...invasion of Grenada on the theory that Nicaragua was next...
...His "extra insurance," he jokes, is the knee operation he had when he was seventeen...
...It's the law...
...How is he going to go away...
...You want him to go to the mountains where they die like dogs...
...He goes to get more beer for everyone...
...Walter protests that he's never killed anything before...
...It's already dried up though...
...The program opens with a montage of news-clips: National leaders pound podiums as crowds cheer, tractors plow fertile-looking fields, schoolchildren grin for the camera...
...When a young man reaches twenty, then maybe he has the intelligence to join the army...
...It isn't fair...
...I can't do it...
...She says he left to escape the pressure by local committee members to take up a gun early, before he reached the mandatory age of eighteen...
...The family members continue their morning routine, apparently unruffled by this bulletin...
...The army doctors have decided he is unfit for combat and have given him a permanent medical exemption...
...Come Saturday, Walter has been unable to pass off the task, and he tiptoes through the kitchen in clumsy pursuit of the bird...
...Enma is constantly on edge about the possibility that Walter might be drafted...
...On the radio, a newscaster is talking about Big Pine III, the latest U.S...
...We will fight to the last Nicaraguan...
...She gives it to Eduardo...
...He has to go...
...March 27, 1985...
...Are you sure...
...How are the little ones going to eat...
...Walter sits sadly, turning the notice over in his hands without a word...
...he shouts, and a minute later, Walter does appear in the front gate with Marta on his shoulder...
...However, the fighting in the mountains is real, and the numbing routine of war has taken hold...
...Much hunger, much death, in the mountains," he says...
...At the beginning of one week, Robertina announces that the big, ill-tempered rooster in the kitchen is now fat enough and has to die for chicken soup on Saturday...
...Do you want to come to the mountains and fight with me...
...After a few minutes more of this, Rob-ertina, who is standing by silently with a butcher knife, finally grabs the rooster by the neck...
...But he, too, is quiet, with few of his old jokes...
...You have the problem with your knee...
...One day, Enma and Simona, who is sewing a dress, are talking about the conflict...
...If the Guardia saw the blood drops, they would kill everyone in the house...
...Nearby sits a small sunken pool where several small alligators used to laze for the amusement of passers-by...
...Not all of Walter's relatives agree with him, especially not Manuel, Enma's brother, who owns a prosperous trucking business...
...She passes it to Simona, who reads it...
...You must be thinking of someone else...
...At midday, Robertina goes out to the induction center to be with Walter...
...Walter, as the man of the house, must assume his responsibility to kill it, she says...
...They will never be allowed to come back...
...shouts Eduardo, lifting a clenched fist and beginning to giggle again...
...If you are a Nicaraguan, you are a Sandinista," says Eduardo with dignity...
...An invasion has not been Kevin Krajick is a free-lance writer in New York City...
...The house is jubilant...
...Enma seizes the paper and reads it...
...You know they'll send him straight to the front...
...They moved out of the barrio in September...
...When he identifies himself, they hand him an eight-by-five typed slip of paper...
...Alejandro and Marta, his four-year-old sister, peer out from under a table in bright-eyed awe, despite Robertina's order that they are not to watch...
...The sun is up and already it is mercilessly hot outside...
...Enma's family lives in Maximo Jerez, a working-class neighborhood of narrow alleys lined with little houses that butt up against each other in neat rows...
...Oh, yes, he was plenty skinny after the jail," Simona says, nodding grimly and lifting up her cane to point it at Eduardo...
...One evening, the family is sitting around the living room watching television—a Sears Roebuck set bought before the revolution, when there still was a Sears Roebuck, explains Enma...
...We can kill lots of Yankees...
...For instance, near Enma's house, one must be careful not to fall into the grave-like trenches that were hastily shoveled out in empty lots and highway medians right after the U.S...
...Walter only looks at the floor, but Eduardo speaks up...
...Other family members jump in with arguments to support him, but to no avail...
...Finally, Eduardo hugs his opponent and says he will convince her yet...
...It's not right...
...But when asked if he really wants to go fight, he drops his teen-age bravado and admits he is afraid...
...This is Nicaragua's grand center, its Capitol, its Washington Monument, its Reflecting Pool, the ground zero of what U.S...
...launched as of this time, but it is possible that there could be an invasion at any moment...
...he wanders around the house looking for someone else to do it...
...Enma is cooking, and Eduardo, Walter's older brother, has come by for one of his frequent visits...
...Walter, who says he personally supports most of the government's policies, offers this political analysis: 30 per cent of Nicaraguans actively support the government, 20 per cent are more or less opposed, and 50 per cent just want to be left alone by everybody...
...Around 4:30, the big rooster that lives in the concrete-floored kitchen of Enma Lau's house opens up with a startling salvo...
...Yes," says Simona, "it's difficult to remember who's alive and who's dead these days...
...He shouts out the last lines, nearly leaping from his seat...
...These are sandwiched between domestically produced soap operas and game shows where contestants vie at such tasks as dismantling a Soviet AK-47 rifle, to the cheers of the studio audience...
...Born February 26,1961...
...He has to comply...
...Enma worries about him...
...William is just a boy," she says after he's left...
...Isn't that right, Grandma...
...Many nearby street corners and house facades bear reminders of those who did not escape—small bronze plaques or homemade monuments of painted concrete: Here fell Aldo Chavarria Mairena, June 16, 1979...
...Enma begins frying up a breakfast of rice, beans, and eggs, all cooked in dollops of vegetable oil...
...military maneuver in Honduras, just across Nicaragua's northern border...
...And the three children...
...You're a fanatic...
...cries out Enma...
...she shouts at him...
...As the water collects, other members of the nine-person household begin to wander through the kitchen: Enma's twenty-three-year-old son Walter, his wife Rob-ertina, their three small children, and Joa-quina, Simona's elder sister, who has become deaf and speaks mainly in improvised sign language...
...One day, Walter receives a package that Denis mailed from Honduras six weeks before...
...Between them, they begin to reel off the names of neighbors' sons who have come back as corpses...
...After a few minutes more of arguing, Enma collapses in her chair and puts her hand weakly to her bosom...
...One hundred and thirty North American M-60 tanks and approximately 3,000 Yankee troops are poised on our frontier this morning," the announcer says...
...They're all traitors and CIA mercenaries," says Eduardo...
...In a foundering economy, where rolls of toilet paper and ballpoint pens are treasures, protests against shortages and inflation lately have been vying with pro-government demonstrations...
...His bad knee, in fact, has saved him, he explains...
...Look at you...
...Of course," says Eduardo quietly, bowing his head...
...A few minutes later, he comes back at a brisk pace...
...She sits for a moment, panting, and then says painfully, "The one who is to blame for this is Reagan...
...Here and there the see-through hulk of a six- or eight-story building sticks up out of the ground, like a lightning-struck tree in the middle of a pasture...
...When things have calmed down, Robertina sits down alone at the table and eats for the first time since last night...
...She sits pensively and sweats profusely, even though it is no hotter than normal...
...Enma blames the local Sandinista Defense Committee for one of the big holes in her life at present—the absence of her youngest son, Denis, who is temporarily living in Honduras...
...Walter doesn't say much...
...He's a Nicaraguan...
...How can they do this...
...Eduardo's cousin, William, who lives with Enma because he is orphaned, has a back room in the house...
...Enma strokes Walter's head as he tells them the story, and Eduardo stands behind his brother, beaming...
...This, perhaps, is also the reason the draft notices arrive the day before induction...
...March 27, 1985, at 2 p.m...
...On one wall of Enma's house, between two family photographs, is another kind of shrine: a spatter of marble-sized holes where the old National Guard of the Somozas sprayed machine-gun fire during the Sandinista insurrection in the late 1970s...
...Walter sighs from the shower and rubs a towel against his skin...
...asks Enma...
...They've turned it off early this morning," says Simona...
...Every evening, the adults in Enma's family gather around the television set to watch the Sandinista News, which appears simultaneously on the nation's two government-run channels...
...Yes, what can you do...
...Enma is sitting in the living room with Marta leaning on one of her knees, and Robertina is standing with her arms folded...
...aggression...
...Walter has been trying to get one for months, but it isn't available in the poorly supplied Nicaraguan economy...
...Eduardo is the family's most vocal supporter of the revolution, which he champions in impromptu speeches...
...It's his country...
...After mentioning a half dozen or so, Simona adds another one, but Enma corrects her: "No, he's still alive...
...Walter's coming...
...This article is based on a six-week stay with a Nicaraguan family last spring...
...Wo sirve" he replies, meaning, roughly, "Why bother...
...Robertina has not yet returned, and around seven he goes out for a walk...
...Robertina comes in behind him, smiling, and the other two children cling to his legs...
...One quiet Saturday afternoon, Si-mona is sitting at the living-room table, her aluminum cane resting against one knee as she clears small pieces of debris from a pile of rice...
...I was skinny, plenty skinny when I came out of the jail...
...I want my children to have a good education...
...Vast, dusty fields strewn with debris and weeds now stretch across what used to be Managua...
...All that day, Enma has a headache...
...Everyone is silent for a few minutes...
...Eduardo, a pudgy teddy bear of a man who is given to wild teasing, was arrested six years ago by the National Guard for helping the Sandinistas organize resistance in the barrio...
...All American imports have not ended, though...
...Walter takes the delicate tip in both hands, examines it expertly, and raises it up like a communion host...
...That's why you haven't seen him...
...There's practically nothing on the ground," answers Enma, Simona's forty-eight-year-old daughter, from the rear of the small concrete-block and corrugated-tin home...
...Throughout the day, the guests dig drinks out of two fifty-five-gallon drums filled with ice, bottles of Victoria beer, and domestically-bottled Pepsi...
...He's got three children to support...
...But several times when he pauses he begins to laugh because she is angrier than he is...
...You had to be careful to mop up the blood on your floor right away if someone wounded came through," she says...
...They're sending off children to fight a war...
...That evening, Eduardo comes by after work to keep his mother company...
...Robertina stands in the background, looking on numbly...
...It may be the last time he leaves the house, for new recruits generally are whisked off straight from their physical exam to a military camp, apparently to prevent anyone from having second thoughts...
...Why are you talking about him getting out of it...
...The Sandinistas blame the poor economy on U.S...
...He has to defend the country...
...Walter, who has to leave for his job at seven, is taking a shower in the concrete stall next to the kitchen...
...asks Simona...
...The Managua cathedral sits roofless and derelict on the edge of the nation's main square, its ornate clock stopped at 12:33...
...Despite the injury, Walter is a sleekly muscled, powerful man, standing six feet tall and weighing in at close to 230 pounds...
...President Ronald Reagan calls a "dungeon" of "communist totalitarianism" and "an extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States...
...he says to his mother...
...I heard it...
...Of course," says Enma...
...Listen to me," Eduardo shouts...
...The Somocistas too," he says...
...A little while later _ a door creaks, the toilet flushes, and you can hear the voice of Simona, the eighty-three-year-old great-grandmother of the house: "It rained last night...
...The sound of running water filling a plastic tub comes from the kitchen...
...After a few false starts, he manages to catch it by the tail feathers...
...Chester Larios P. (Jorge...
...Enma, hugely fat and robust, recalls that during the fighting, she and other people living on the street would leave their front and back doors open so that the guerrillas—more often than not, fourteen- or fifteen-year-old neighborhood boys—could run through and escape from pursuing soldiers...
...There's a difference between communism and Sandinismo," declares Eduardo...
...Walter comes in, his smooth face freshly splashed with water...
...William jokes with a visitor in the kitchen...
...The next morning, Walter gets ready to leave at his regular hour...
...The festive mood is partially clouded when Eduardo engages in a political argument with one of his relatives, a middle-aged woman from the better-off side of the family...
...A 1972 earthquake killed 30,000 people, leveled most of the central business district, and wrecked much of the country's industry...
...Let the communists go to Russia...
Vol. 49 • December 1985 • No. 12
