machete man

I grew up with a legend based around The Machete Man. It involves a man walking home around midnight after working a ten-hour guard duty shift who gets assaulted by two men, of whom one is carrying a machete. This could have been a gruesome story, so let me continue. Said man refuses to give over his wallet, which contains his pay packet for the last two weeks. He thinks of his daughter's tuition payments, his son's soccer uniform, his wife's upcoming birthday. He does not think about the deadly consequences of simply saying no. See, the man isn't young, but he's still brash and bold, still full of the remembrances of youth, which gives him courage. This is, after all, the same man who took on an entire soccer team that had threatened to beat the living daylights out of his younger (successfully goalkeeping) brother.

It's Dhaka, 1978, and the law of the land revolves around baksheesh and local goondas. This man is a church-attending Christian living in an all-Muslim neighbourhood. In places like Dhaka, this means much more than it does in Canada. In the 1970's it meant a whole lot more. So what's the man to do? He knows no one will help, even as he sees furtive movements behind bamboo veranda shades and senses doors being locked all around him. With crazy intuition and gut reaction, he reaches for the machete that's been tipped under his ribs, grabbing it blade first. The startled would-be robbers have a one too-long moment of hesitation and the man rips the weapon away from his attacker, not really registering the bite of the blade into his palm. The robbers back away as he turns the tables and proceeds to chase them down the street with their own machete.

For days afterward, he walks home, hand bandaged and very careful. He knows that people like that are cockroaches - you kill one and ten more scurry out of hiding. The machete is in his left hand, ready to be to pulled out if necessary. But nothing happens. Soon, everyone in the neighborhood begins to call him the paagal saab (crazy mister); in our community, the kids just called him Machete Man. I had the honour of calling him uncle, because Uncle Alwyn was my Dad's oldest brother.

I can't say I know much more outside this story - we left over twenty years ago, and everything I remember is surely a healthy mixture of my imagination, stories told to me and the truth. I do remember that he looked like a skinnier version of my dad (though almost ten years older), wore thick coke-bottle reading glasses, had a tooth chipped or missing from the above-mentioned soccer team (you should have seen the other guys) and had a habit of calling me "my girl" instead of by my name. I know he was excellent with his hands, but not nearly as careful with his money or his heart. I know we'll miss him, even it's just the thought of him whistling somewhere, sharpening his hard-won machete, half a world away.

We'll miss you, Uncle.