The time I was attacked by a Middle Eastern radical .

Ok since you didn’t ask me I will tell you. Here is the story of the time I was attacked by a Middle Eastern radical .

Dateline: 1990’s, it was my second tour of living in Minneapolis Minesnowta.

I found myself a job in a pizza joint owned by Kuwaitis masquerading as Italians and a Libyan who liked telling black kids “We are all Africans” and trying to sit with them. This would often make the teens decide against having pizza slices.

Watching the neighborhood react to the owners fighting with each other was very entertaining.

It was also neat seeing very chic, sophisticated Italian dudes saunter through a dining room then once in the kitchen sitting on the floor together around one huge pizza pan full of just the toppings. 

This restaurant served pizza but also had gyros and some pretty good Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes. After a while I got pretty good at cooking real deal Saudi style cuisine. Great food, bad music (for a texican punk rocker anyway).

The dining room music was Sade, the kitchen, Arab techno. 

All of that music was annoying to me but the techno made me giggle. 

Sounded like an old school Atari game set to Casio beats. LOL that was a riot to watch grown men dancing to but I gotta admit, sometimes I miss it.

Once an owner ordered us to attack the other owner.

I had to give the man a little civics lesson about how we don’t do things like that around here (We did but it was the other guys order we would have followed).

My best friend was my co-worker Murat. He is Kurdish, from Turkey.

Rad dude Murat, I liked him a lot. Funny guy in two languages, mild mannered and a real fast learner.

He had a lot to teach me as well. I learned a lot about his people and home town Istanbul.

I got to watch him have an American ride for the books.

He dropped into this country to get away from ethnic persecution, then within a very short time he found himself a job then a roll in a feature movie.

The Movie “Little Big League” was shooting just outside and they hired him. I was bummed that they didn’t hire me too but glad to see my bro get a break.

The great treatment he got never went to his head. He is that kind of rad guy.

After he was done shooting he just went into the back and washed dishes like he had been doing. 

What a rad dude. We started learning more and more of each other’s languages. Our place was often slammed with business so we had to depend on each other as the only two employees.

It was great; until…”the unpleasantness”.

We were closing the pizza shop. Dude was in the back washing dishes and I was up front doing the day’s books.

After hearing a deluge of Sade and other breeder hits, I decided to put a bit of the old Slayer “Reign in blood” on the house system. 

I had to clear my palate before tackling a ton of math. It got to the song “Altar of sacrifice”, I dropped my pen and started head banging Beavis and Butthead style with the fingers in the air. Just as my buddy was walking out he sees me dancing and howling like a wolf the words “Praise hail Satan!” Now Murat had no frikkin Idea that when I head bang a yell “Praise hail Satan!”, what I really mean is “I don’t like Sade’s music very much right now.” I don't subscribe to Christianity; so all the characters and theories I had pounded into my head only exist as expletives in my mind.

Understandably what he thought I was a saying was “Praise hail Satan!”

Thinking I was possessed, he dropped the rack of glasses and tackled me. Hard (for a little guy).

I didn’t know it was him so I bit him and we threw down in the glass. We struggled like our lives depended on it. Life in the big city.

Glass was piercing my back as I was grappling with his ears, uselessly  yelling for him to chill out. It wasn’t fun for Murat but he never looked at me the same again (knowing I could become a werewolf late at night. We talked about it some. He never thought Slayer was any kind of music. I eventually was fired (for smelling bad/not rocking cologne) but we did get to say good by. He is a rad guy, who knows how to attack radically. I hope it turned out for him.

If you wanna see what Murat looks like, he is in that movie in front of a fruit stand during  a crane shot.

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