The Boy with the Midas Touch Touched Himself

“I can’t believe it,” Mazen said. The sun appeared from behind low clouds, casting a bit of pink, and suddenly his face was lit like a stage actor’s, his hair given a sacred halo. “How could refugees organize? Many of these people have never owned a computer, but all of a sudden now they’re supposed to be able to create sexual-assault Facebook groups. I can’t see it.”

“I can,” Rasheed said.

“You can?” asked Mazen, more surprised than annoyed at being disagreed with.

“Of course,” Rasheed said. “They’re young men, after all.”

“Come, come,” Mazen said. “Not all young men are rapists. I most certainly wasn’t. I know my son isn’t.”

“Your son is gay,” I said.

“He’s bi,” Mazen said, flipping me the bird. “He went out with a girl once in high school, and he was a gentleman.”

The sun seemed brighter all of a sudden, easing the bluish cold a bit. Half of my now-darker shadow lay on the ground, and the other half fell off the short cliff toward the soccer players.

“The reason not all young men are rapists is that we distract them,” Rasheed said. “Sports, football.” He nodded his head toward the soccer game below us. “Superhero movies, the internet, porn, and so much more. Unless we keep these boys entertained and preoccupied, they’ll keep our world in turmoil for the next half century.”

“That’s an overgeneralization,” Mazen said, “and completely unfair.”

“Maybe,” Rasheed said, “but look at them. Look.”

For a minute or two, the three of us, sipping coffee out of paper cups, watched the delirious soccer game one tier below. Young men having fun, running, jumping, not caring that they had commandeered an area between pup tents where families lived, that all the other refugees had to walk around the claimed field. A prone old man marked one of the field’s sidelines. He slept on his side, with a hand under his cheek, his lips parting and shutting every time the ball whizzed by.

“Look,” Rasheed said, again nodding his head but this time to three young Syrian men on the cement walkway. They sauntered up the hill with shuffling steps, preening and swaggering, as if on a promenade on their properties. Another young man, with narrow eyes and a dark-green overcoat, an Achilles in training, leaned against a wall, seemed to be waiting for something. He sulked, looked like he disapproved of the three boys, of the soccer game, of the camp, of the whole wide world. He loathed the errors and blunders of creation. He, too, inspected his property, and found it wanting.

“We live in a world that promises these young men that they will rule it,” Rasheed said. “What happens when they find out it’s all a lie? If you’re supposed to be the top dog, and suddenly you have to rely on others to throw you scraps?”

“No one promised me I could rule anything,” Mazen said.

“That’s because you’re special, dear,” I said.

“Many young men everywhere feel that the world owes them something,” Rasheed said, “but in our lands it’s double trouble with mothers’ irrational adoration of their sons. These boys grew up believing they were meant for great things. Opportunities were supposed to rain upon them. Do you know what Iranian mothers call their baby boys? Doodool tala. You’re my doodool tala, aren’t you? Come to mama, doodool tala. We don’t have an Arabic equivalent, though we really should. It means golden pee-pee. How can a young man not demand that the world kneel before his gold penis?”