Read Online The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu - Free Book Online

mother, or losing your virginity to a guy who will only sleep with you once, and realizing what you have done just as you are forced to open your eyes. The walls pounded my eyes and head and neck like I was waking up inside a white, shiny boom box. And I never liked music. I would give so much, everything, for sleep, or so I thought. The problem was that every evening I would forget just how much, and I became scared of that bed where tragedy took place every morning. I went to sleep only when I couldn’t help falling asleep.
    If I could I would burn the blue beret on my head. But it was on my head.
    More men. More men. More men.
    I wanted to say that day that there was only one of me and demand to go back to my shabby dreams, but my shift was starting. The gates opened, and the metal rotated, and the men went through the machine that lit up green or red, then they stood across from the cement barricade that protected me and the four other soldiers checking IDs and bags.

    M Y OLDER sister Sarit told me that if I insisted enough, the sorting officer would cave. That all I had to do was say, “I won’t go, I won’t go, I won’t go.” She even specifically warned me that the worst thing that could happen was that they would place me in a military police unit and make me wear a dreadful blue beret. No other soldier would ever want to talk to me, because they would all see my blue beret and fear that I had the authority to write them up and report them for having a red hair tie instead of a black or an olive green one, or for wearing their everyday uniform coat over their official uniform, or for listening to headphones while crossing the road, or whatever stupid shit military police soldiers were responsible for writing other soldiers up for.
    I told her to stop talking. So my sister said anyone that got placed in military police was an idiot. She said there were other army positions to be careful of, and that of course the best was what she was, a paratroopers’ instructor, and I told her to stop talking.
    “They might tell you that they’ll put you in jail. That no one will ever hire you after that. That Mom and Dad will disown you. That you will never find love. That you will become a homeless person. Whatever it is they tell you, just say, ‘I won’t go, I won’t go, I won’t go,’ and eventually they’ll assign you somewhere else, and—”
    “Stop. Talking!” I said.
    In the sorting officer’s office the day I was drafted, the sorting officer spoke before I sat down.
    “Military police,” she told me. Of course that was whatshe said. Naturally. “It is the only boot camp I have open this week.”
    “I won’t go,” I said.
    “Everyone says that,” the officer said, and crossed her arms. She was smiling.
    “I won’t go. I am smart. I got good grades. I can translate things.”
    “I don’t have any intel spots. All I have is the spots they give me, and all I have left is military police. Besides, they are trying to diversify the unit, make it more socioeconomically diverse or something, and you have great grades.”
    “You mean that everyone there can’t read. I won’t go. I am not about to spend two years of my life handing out reports in some bus station to soldiers who are wearing yellow socks,” I said. I was afraid, shy about how confident I was. This was my first day as a soldier. I was eighteen and spiteful. After graduation, when there were no more girls to be bitchy to, I read a lot and followed sophisticated American TV shows:
The West Wing
,
Sex and the City
. It was just my luck that I was randomly drafted last.
    “Look, if you physically resist going, I’ll have to throw you in jail for a few weeks that won’t count toward your mandatory service time, and then when you come out I’ll still place you in military police.”
    “I won’t go. I won’t go.”
    “There is more to military police than the proper-appearance write-ups. It is actually a really important role.