The Rain Attacks

So here I sit, considering. The skies have once again opened, unleashing violent precipitation on Dona Marta, on me. They say it is a wrathful God who rains down on us - trying to wash us all clean, or wash us away. But they have not seen. They do not know. It is not God, but man who floods these streets with vengeance when the heavens open, a battle fought under a weighted, sagging sky.

The rivers of filthy, odorous water are washing in under my door as I write, flowing through cracks in the ground to escape. They fill my room with the stench of a million excretions, life in all its horror and glory coating my consciousness. Horror and glory. That’s how this war will be won. It's clear to me now. These moments of absolute wretchedness are rich and rewarding. They shape my thoughts.

I have seen such things. Desperate families building shelters out of cardboard and plastic, feeble homes built atop feeble homes, atop feeble homes. Ten of them living between four temperamental walls, tucked behind bright coloured doors, makeshift shutters. They tap into the overhead cables for power, construct crude tarpaulin tanks to salvage each downpour, quench their thirst, clean the day of their backs. Their teetering community slowly creeps up the hillside, out towards the beachfront, where it stares the wealth of the city straight in the eye, spitting on the shoes of the well-heeled as they traverse the paved boulevards, heads down.

Their plight compels me. And I am not alone. Shielded by umbrellas or caked in sun block, visitors tour the streets each day, eager to see the residents’ struggle. They’re looking to have their heartstrings pulled by sewage running down the hillside, by young boys playing dustbin lids for spare change. They want to hear the stories about turfwars, drug deals and gang law. They’re on the lookout for the famous Linea del Morte, hoping to catch a shady exchange in an alley as they walk by. And so Dona Marta obliges. Tourists leave with a vetted version of life in the favela to add to their holiday souvenirs; worn about their wrists in Fabio’s street jewellery, lingering on their tongue in Gustavo’s sweetcakes, echoing through their ear canals in the tales they heard while tracing dusty bullet holes with their finger tips.

But there’s more to these streets than sugary treats, brightly coloured beads and the rhythmic rapping of tin. Yesterday’s downpour brought with it revelation. My first experience of the rain attacks.

I’ve heard say it was an arms deal that drew them inside this time, though it could just as easily have been some bottom tier pusher, some mugger running for sanctuary, purse in hand. Representatives from the ninth battalion sat at the bottom of the hill waiting for clouds to form. They tucked themselves discreetly away - behind the scooter boys offering lifts up into the back streets - ready to pounce when the first drops hit the ground. Gustavo tells me that police rarely used to cross the line marking out slum from city. ‘Civil jurisdiction didn’t bother with us and we didn’t bother with it’, he would say bluntly, ‘no point making enemies’. But that was before. Now violent men can seek promotion for ‘bravely protecting the city from outlaws’ the line is crossed all too often, with victims and heroes determined at the twitch of a trigger.

And so it was last night. The fireworks flew at nine, bright explosions in the threatening sky, the scout pounding back, his warning cry rattling each resident into action. Those not already sheltering from the impending downpour fled inside. Through the narrow crack in my window I saw hatches being battened, tarpaulin being tightened, sheets of ply being hastily pushed up in doorways. But the police were too eager, too early. The rain had not even started to fall when the rapid slap of flip flop on foot was drowned out by the spatter of gunfire, clattering booted footsteps echoing down alleyways – a grotesque percussion symphony reverberating round my skull. The indiscriminate firing introduced a new sound into the harmony, piercing cries as shots found targets – adults, children, animals.

The battle raged while I cowered under my table keeping out of any line of vision, my clothes drinking up the damp soak while I wished my walls were thicker, firmer and whiter. And yet all the while my eyes were itching for knowledge – desperate to see what my ears were relaying, to get up close while remaining out of sight.

The whole torrid performance unfolded in minutes, closing notes fading out just moments after the first fireworks had gone off. Silence is always the ultimate victor, the last man standing, the final phrase. Convinced the siege was over I rose from my hiding place and lifted the planks of wood from against my door, my eyes assuming leadership of my senses in search of confirmation, affirmation, gratification.
But to recant the battle, to share with you, reader, the abhorrence of those attacks is not why I write. In isolation, the unjust execution of my neighbours is not cause enough to put pen to paper, it has happened before and rest assured with happen again. No, the slaughter was simply a trigger for a far more significant aftermath.

The rain was still holding residents prisoner when I stepped outside so the street lay deserted, spare me. I stood still in the downpour, and breathed deeply. Blinking fast to prevent the droplets from hampering my vision I took time to revel in my solitude, marvelling at the resulting zoetrope of shifting debris carried away down the street; tumbling oranges, a plastic toy, a flip flop. That’s when I saw him.

Fabio stood not 50 yards away, his back turned to me, staring down at his feet. There was a gentle sway to his pose and his arms were outstretched in front of him giving the impression, from behind, of a child amputee. Occasionally he would arch his neck and look up at the sky or bend his knees and rock forwards, before locking his joints and standing up straight again.

On the ground before him a mass of bloodied skin and bone. Dark hair lay matted across cheekbones and mingled with the dirt where her head had come to rest. A perfectly circular hole punctured her forehead and on the ground I could see a rapidly expanding pool of deep red blood, clotted and claggy, pieces of her diluting in the wet air. Each limb had crumpled at apposed angles when she fell, jutting out inhuman, left and right. Her clothes were drenched with blood and her eyes were glazed over - staring through Fabio’s dirt covered legs, straight in my direction, an open mouth as if ready to speak.

When lowered, Fabio’s head fixed firmly on her body. When raised, his eyes carried him left, right, reeling from the scene around him. His right arm was moving fast too – swinging wide then almost falling to his side, like some religiously symbolic gesture turned shell-shocked reflex. I called out his name but he didn’t turn, I reassured him that it was over and that it was safe to step away, but he would not. In that moment, with people more qualified than I still hiding behind closed doors, I realised that I had the responsibility of releasing this boy from his death trance. He needed me unequivocally to draw him away from the dark thoughts that compelled him, to bring him back to life.

I stepped towards him, gingerly at first, as if he were a somnambulist that should not be shocked into waking for fear of permanent entrapment in his delirium. But as I neared I picked up pace to exude the air of confident paternalism that I knew he would be hankering for.

It was not until I reached his shoulder that I could see the true motive for Fabio’s movements.
A phone, at arm’s length over the young girl’s body, holding on its screen an image of her face capturing the last thought process furrowed into her brow. It’s red light. Flashing. And I just watched him. In this most harrowing of circumstances, where mothers would usually weep and men would bow their heads, where young girls would turn their faces away and young boys’ stomachs would involuntarily wretch, Fabio’s instinct had been to hit record, to lay claim to the moment, to immortalise her.

Right then, right there, he ceased to be a child. He ceased to be a victim. He became voyeur. He became death watcher. I wondered how long he had been standing there.

And the question which thumped in my blood as I stepped silently away from him, the question which still dominates my thoughts now, is how did he know?

Because he was recording for me, huddled under the desk with my itching corneas. For you, reader, as my rhetoric doesn’t deliver the impact that you’re seeking.

Our eyes have quite literally been opened by people like Fabio and there is no turning back. This is the world we live in now. The red light is what we crave.