EGGS OVER TRIPOLI

by Andrew Flohr-Spence

O ver easy, hash browns and toast. That’s all he wanted.

Nodding to the waiter, nodding to Ajay and Ziyad
(ignoring their stupid looks), he picked up his fork and
knife and hesitated...savoring the sight on the table
before him. He intended to lose himself in those crispy
potatoes, soak up the runny yolks; languish over the
lightly buttered white bread with a layer of grape jelly.
He would escape this gray world into the nostalgic memory
of breakfast.
“Ajay...Ziyad,” he said, looking sideways at the small
Indian man on his left, and then up at the big Jordanian,
towering above the table on his right. “I am not going
to let another one of your deranged political debates ruin
this moment…my first decent breakfast in over five
years...neither of you understands what this means.”
The two looked at one another. Ajay smiled and shook
his head. Ziyad shrugged.
“I’m serious you assholes...just shut the hell up and
enjoy a real American breakfast,” he said, beckoning to

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their plates. They peered distrustfully at the food before
them. Ziyad pushed his plate to the side.
“Oh yes, the American needs his fancy eggs,” said Ajay.
“Fancy?” asked Ziyad.
The two enjoyed themselves with that.
“I should’ve known a curry-choking cow-worshipper and
some camel jockey wouldn’t know real food,” the American
said, perhaps a bit coarse. Ziyad refusing his eggs was
rude. This was not how the breakfast was supposed to go.
Typisch Amerikanischer ‘Diner’—Breakfast, Burgers,
Sandwiches und Milkshakes, the ad read, and of course he’d
been skeptical. Not in five years had he found over easy
and hash browns. Fried eggs? Sure. Fried potatoes?
Everywhere. But putting them together with a piece of
toast? “Haben wir nicht.” Nope. And naturally, there’s no
questioning German waiters.
But the ad did not lie. Only a short subway ride from
his apartment, hidden behind a drab façade and with only a
small sign over the door that read ‘American Breakfast,” he
stepped into a familiar world—all red-boothed, chrome-edged
and checker-floored—a genuine-looking diner. Like in the US
—a TV on each wall and all.
Ajay and Ziyad did not share his enthusiasm. Jokes
since they walked in the door. Cheeseburger this and
Freedom Fries that. He’d ignored the stupid jokes and
ordered for them. Jokes he could handle. He thought the
eggs would win them over.
He smiled at the two, raising knife and fork.
“Anyways...gentleman enjoy.”
“Ooh, Ajay, I think we anger the Imperialist swine,”
Ziyad said, sitting back with a grin. Ajay smiled and
leaned in.

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 “You must understand … we Indians and Arabs are not
against using spices in food, as obviously are you
Americans,” he clarified. Ajay’s proper Oxford-Indian-
English was lethal. Ziyad heaved forward laughing.
“You guys are just hilarious,” was the American’s
response, but neither was listening. He picked up a slice
of the thin, warm bread, dug a jelly marked ‘Grape’ from
the basket, and began spreading pensively.
“America gave the world the tomato,” he boasted when
they recovered. What tomatoes had to do with spice, he
didn’t know, but the two nodded anyway.
“You should try some in your breakfast,” said Ajay,
and off they went again.
Better not mention catsup. The American looked down to
his plate, searching for something...anything to back him
up, only to find a pair of quizzical eggs gazing back.
Shaking salt and then pepper over the steaming plate to
cover its slight breath of old oil and soaked-over-night
potatoes, he took his knife and stabbed a yoke, blinding
one eye.
Dammit. He had destroyed the plate’s symmetry: the
perfect picture of breakfast. The world was already
conspiring to rush his long-awaited meal.
He stared into the one good yolk and tried for a
second to ignore the two hecklers. He should’ve known they
wouldn’t appreciate it—would probably mock him about the
food—but he had invited them because they were his best
friends in Berlin (his only friends, really). They’d shared
with him food from their countries (pretty much all he ate
now), and he wanted to share part of his culture with them.
How touching. How sensitive. Quick, somebody write a poem.

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 Fuck tomatoes and fuck politics. He wasn’t
responsible. He couldn’t change how the world worked. The
best he could do was try and enjoy his life. He had earned
this. Worked hard. He intended to relish this occasion.
Site of a massacre or no.
He came here searching for an escape from politics,
reality; his life. Every single day—no matter if he brought
up the subject or tried to avoid it—the war came up.
“Why besiege United States Iraq?” Herr Muller asked
this morning.
“Besiege? Oh, yes...you mean why is the United States
besieging…present progressive for something happening now,
remember,” he’d corrected.
“But Saddam Hussein had not some weapons...”
“Didn’t have any weapons, the helping verb, Herr
Muller.”
“Yes, you attacked them, but there were not some mass
exterminating weapons.” Herr Muller, the merciless
businessman, wanted answers.
“You mean weapons of mass destruction...WMDs, for
short. There were not any WMDs, they’ve found yet...
remember: not any. Any always goes with the negative. Herr
Muller, we’ve gone over this...”
Herr Muller frowning. The German knew he was avoiding
the questions.
Part of being a language trainer meant being an
ambassador for the culture; he knew that...that was not the
problem. He wasn’t madly patriotic, but did have a certain
pride in talking about life in the United States. And
everyone was fascinated with the idea of the New World,
Wild West, Cowboys and Indians; Freedom.
Politics rarely came up, then.

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 With the invasion it changed. As soon as the US
announced its plans for attack if Saddam didn’t give
himself up—“get out of dodge” or whatever cowboy phrasing
was used—war was suddenly all the students talked about.
Everyone. Housewives, financial consultants, cement factory
workers, welfare recipients, high school students (Fucking
high-school students.) And not only the students. Every
single person he talked to in the last three years.
Germans, opposed to war, giving him a hard time about the
militancy of his country. Germans.
The issue became very real to him the night he and his
coworker, another American, narrowly escaped getting mobbed
by a gang of angry Turkish youth who overheard them
‘speaking American’ (fucking Jimmie’s loud Texanese).
Politics wasn’t talk anymore. It was life threatening.
It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t control what countries his
country invaded. No one talked to him before they launched
an attack, any more than they consulted him about the
design of American breakfast...anyway, he was sick of the
issue, and sure as hell not eager to get gang-stomped by a
pack of hormone-rabid kids over it. It was enough now.
When he’d seen the ad for the diner some days after
the altercation, he wanted so much to believe. After three
years abroad he had found a little oasis of memories from
back home, a refuge from reality. Finally, a couple eggs
over easy and a side of peace and quiet. At least…he’d
thought that. Hoped that.
But politics followed him to the diner. The moment
they walked in, too. Ziyad knew the waiter from somewhere
and the two began chattering away in Arabic.
“This is La Bella Discotheque,” Ziyad said when he
joined the two at the table.

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 At first he thought Ziyad meant the restaurant was
beautiful.
“What...the disco Gaddafi bombed the American G.I.s?”
Ajay burst his bubble.
No, not a beautiful restaurant. Behind the chrome and
linoleum were the charred walls of a room where terrorists
set off a bomb, killing several US soldiers and a civilian
woman, injuring more than 200. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya
as a response. He remembered watching the bombers take off
on the nightly news...at home on his parents couch when he
was 13 or 14. The jets were cool.
Ziyad bowed his head and then recounted the waiter’s
story. The bomb had gutted the disco and it stayed boarded
up for many years, until the waiter’s father bought the
building after the family emigrated from Lebanon. Ziyad
knew them from Beirut.
“Stains are still on the floor when they renovate,”
Ziyad said with a wild look in his eye. “The walls are
black.”
The father with the help of his sons had renovated
several times, trying over the years several themed
restaurants in the space. None had been successful. The
father thought this concept might bring in the tourists,
but so far, not so well. Too early to say, the father told
his sons. Ziyad smirked at this, winking at Ajay. The
Indian’s grin.
Finishing his sentence, Ziyad seemed to have something
else to say, but the waiter arrived to take their order.
And not a second too soon. He had heard enough.
Despotic chance had it that the one diner he’d seen in
three years was a fucking museum of death. His hoped-for
refuge haunted by ghosts, ground zero in another, earlier

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war on terror. It was almost funny. A poetic absurdity. He
had to find humor somewhere.
Ajay and Ziyad. He didn’t know why he spent his time
with them. They were about his age and the only people he
really got along with in the house inhabited mostly by
young students, but because of their differing upbringings;
different geography, culture, food, music, religion, and
really everything except MTV and Coca Cola; the three of
them together constantly misunderstood each other, always
challenging the other’s way of thinking. It sounded like a
joke: A Hindi, a Muslim and a Christian walk into a
diner....
Ajay, actually, despite what a person assumed with
India, had grown up much like he had: lower-middle class,
school, college; now a semi-professional. A competitive,
short little fucker, the Indian was, but something about
his bushy eyebrows and his arrogant smile was likable.
Ziyad was the odd one.
Usually, Ziyad kept his mouth shut and played the
silent, dumb type. It’s what he had thought even months
after moving into the communal-kitchen, apartment house,
into a room next to the giant Jordanian, had hung out with
him for hours nearly every night after dinner and assumed
he knew the guy. They watched soccer together, bitched
about Germans together. He’d taken Ziyad for a gentle (if
slightly dumb) momma’s boy.
“Why you every time say, ‘paradise,” Ziyad?” the two
girls from upstairs were teasing him over and over one
evening at the table outside in the garden. The German pre-
med students, a bit more frazzled with each round of
Ziyad’s water pipe, could not understand how anyone could
call Germany paradise. “I do not know that it rains so much

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in paradise,” said one in her best English. “And not enough
virgins,” said the other. The American thought it was
funny, too. Ziyad always said it at the perfect moment. But
the Germans would not let it rest.
Ziyad started the story flippantly, trying to match
the silly mood of the table, yet from one moment to the
next, the usually jovial giant, became visibly nervous and
insecure, like a teenager. Sweat shining off his brow from
the street lamp above.
“Germany is peaceful,” he said. “My home is not.” The
table then nervous, too.
The twelfth child of a hard-as-nails father, as if
cursed, had grown to 6-foot by the time he was 12. By the
time he was 14 and 6-foot-6, his patriotic father began
renting the boy out as a bodyguard. At first, they were
family friends, local fat cats who wanted a thug to stand
behind them. But word of the towering teen got around. Soon
he was protecting big-time leaders in the Middle East, but
mostly hiding underground, huddled in bunkers with dozens
of other bodyguards. The next ten years were a blur of
explosions, gunshots and dust, of running, diving and
dodging.
When Ziyad could take no more, he ran away. Ran north
as far as he could. Tried to make it to Europe. Ziyad had
heard they give refuge to political refugees; asylum
seekers. But halfway through Turkey, after walking or
hitchhiking for thousands of miles, he was caught. His
name was on a list of wanted criminals. The Jordanian spent
the next four years at the bottom of a damp hole, fed only
a small piece of stale bread and a cupful of lentil mash
each day. Eventually, he was released. From a lean and
muscular 230 pounds, he had dropped to a sickly 150.

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 But Ziyad made it.
“When I arrive in Germany I think it’s paradise,” he
said.
And that was the end of that pleasant, evening.
No… he didn’t want to hear what else Ziyad had to say.
Not today.
Already the diner’s chrome was losing its luster. The
idea of eating eggs in the room where people had lost their
lives violently, been maimed and injured was a bit weird,
to put it mildly. At least the glitter imbedded ‘50s
tabletop still made him smile. If he focused his strength,
he could still enjoy the breakfast.
The American looked lovingly down at the eggs...he
wanted this...it had been so long...but now, a commotion.
Something had Ziyad and Ajay’s attention and their eyes
were wide, staring away.
He looked up and saw the headlines.
“BREAKING NEWS: SADDAM EXECUTED” bold at the top and
running across the bottom. In every direction a TV on the
wall and a clip filmed on a cell-phone, shaky and barely
distinguishable; a room full of men hanging Saddam. Saddam
saying something and the hood is put on. Down he goes. The
reporter reads something and then it plays again. And
again. Looped indefinitely.
He knew now. It was apparent. He was supposed to pay
attention. His only hope was to hide in his breakfast. He
had to fight it.
Focus on the eggs…but Ajay and Ziyad relentless.
Bringing it all back up. Shock and Awe. Mission
Accomplished. Abu Ghraib. Blackwater. Falluja. Unknown
Unknowns. His head unclear, confused, paranoid. Ajay had
called him “the American.” Everyone knew who he was. They

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were looking in his direction—their eyes demanding answers.
People he didn’t even know would attack him with questions
in bad grammar: “Why invade America? Why destroy you Iraq?”
So he was trying for a distraction...one of those
tactful change of topics actors pull-off so well in the
movies. It was the last chance to change the subject. He
asked Ziyad a question. A selfish meaningless question.
About his untouched eggs.
Ziyad, trying to act his jovial self, but with that
hesitation, that look to the side.
Even eggs led back to reality.
“Fucking Asshole Gaddafi,” Ziyad said, like it was
funny, like we’d relate.
If he hadn’t asked about the stupid eggs...
The Amercians sailed ships into Libyan waters. The
Libyans challenged back. The United States shot down
several fighters and blew up numerous radar installations.
Then came the La Bella bombing, the US said was
retaliation, which in turn prompted opening a can of
American whuppass, a can of whuppass that killed mostly
Libyan civilians.
“Wait…you worked for Gaddafi, too?” he tried to
confirm, but Ziyad was looking at Ajay and a noise from the
kitchen masked the question.
“Four years in tents we move around the desert. Every
day move here, move there, fool the Americans. But what we
eat? Gaddafi say “chickens live any place, we take
chickens.” Not enough tents for men, but for chickens, a
tent. I fucking hate chickens.” Point taken.
The bombers he watched take off on the nightly news,
Ziyad watched live. Ziyad with Gaddafi camped on a hill
overlooking Tripoli, a tent twittering behind them,

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watching from a safe distance the sprouting lines of anti-
aircraft tracers rise in the night sky and the bright,
fiery flowers of the bombs exploding. Ziyad only two years
older than him. “The sky is beautiful.”
The bombs hit more of Gaddafi’s new Soviet-purchased
equipment, killed an adopted daughter and injured two of
his sons, but mostly, they missed.
“After the bombs Libyans think Gaddafi hero...he fight
against the Americans and survive,” Ziyad said, shrugging
with a smile. “And America now forgive Gaddafi.”
Dammit. He dropped his toast and looked down at the
plate. A shifty eye gazed back at him with its beard of
half-raw home fries and a hat of soggy white bread, smeared
purple. Yolk from the other eye pooled up to the side,
crusty at the edges.
Now that he had them, the eggs weren’t so appetizing.

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