It was about 5 pm in the afternoon when me and my football buddies had just ended our weekly World Cup event held on the school field just across my family apartment. As we marched out of the field, I noticed a few of the older boys’ friends taking their seats at our gathering place. By the looks of it, they seemed to be looking forward to a picnic day out with their guitar and protable stereo set.
Tired and thirsty, a few of us went straight to the public tap situated near a basketball court which was adjacent to the field. Drenched in sweat and dirt, we strolled towards it in our soiled football boots and jerseys.
We didn’t actually have identical jerseys. It was more of an assortments of jerseys from the club of our allegience. At this point of time I should also point out that the boots I wore were made of canvas, made by an excellent Chinese company called Panda. The other excellent shoe maker in the world back then was Double Happiness. They made stylish if not excellent school shoes. And what made it even better, it was cheap and it was sold in practically every neighborhood corner store.
‘Did you manage to catch the FA Cup Final last night?’ I asked Yazid, this tall, buck-toothed, boy. He was a year older than I was but he was in my class. However, because he had failed his Primary School Leaving Examination, he had to repeat that year.
‘My father didn’t let me,’ he answered.’He wanted me to do some studying and go to sleep early.’
I remembered the only time that happened. When I was eight or nine, my father didn’t let me watch a game on the tele was when they wanted to watch something else. Some meaningless award show. I cried to sleep then. It was my beloved Liverpool playing.
With that said, he did make us stay up at 2 am to watch a World Cup match between Brazil and France a few years before that. So it’s all even I suppose.
Anyway, coming from a football mad culture, his father not letting him watch it said something didn’t it? At least, he was not banned from playing. Otherwise his world might have ended as he knew it.
I turned on the tap and let water slide into my mouth in the litres. He did the same too. After a few minutes of our suicide attempts by drowning, we washed our faces like it was ablution time. Water sure is our life blood.
Feeling refreshed, we walked to the place of gathering where it was strangely subdued. I didn’t think it was the exhaustion. At most, there were some quiet conversation going on. There was not much animation in that one.
However there was music blasting from the stereo. There were weird sounds coming from it. At that point in time in my life, I had heard only music from The Beatles, Karen Carpenter, Earth Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson’s Thriller etc.
This so called new music that I had discovered had plenty of distorted guitar sounds, super fast drums and incomprehensible high pitched vocals and screams. That explained the lack of interaction. Everyone was listening to the sound that was coming out of the music box. And they were all listening to it as if it were a listening comprehension test. There were not much movement either. Sometimes the boys would nod in recognition of something. I had no idea what it was but it was as if they were under a spell or something.
I had listened to music before but we would dance and sing and jump up and down like a monkey on fire. It was a natural reaction. There was something unnatural about this. No one seemed to be reacting to anything. Occasionally, the bloke with the guitar would strum something and played a lick, mimicking the one that was heard on the stereo.
And then it was over.
They all looked at each other and smiled.
‘That was awesome,’ one of the big boys said.
What was awesome? I did not hear anything that was even remotely close to fascinating. It perhaps could not even smell the feet of fascinating if it had limbs. However I could not say anything for these boys were 4 to 7 years older than I was. Hence that meant they had bigger fists, arms, and biceps than me.
‘What are you listening to?’ politely I asked.
‘Iron Maiden,’ the bloke with the guitar said.
‘Let’s listen to the next song,’ the other said.
The noise came to being again. I remember saying this quietly inside my head, ‘what crap music.’
Since I did not want to be under any spell of any shitty sounding music, I headed home. It was getting dark anyway. Nevertheless, little did I know that in a few years time, it was my turn to be besotted into that type of melody and tune. During that time, I would forever be under its spell for an eternity and more.
