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By Asem Sharaf

Hot as hell in Vietnam.

It was the sort of warmth that, had it a visible texture, would probably be a slimy green. It was the heat of the jungle, inducing rivers of sweat that began at the nape of his neck and swiveled down around the rippling muscles of his back, pooling in the crevices of his bare elbows that rested on the hot ground, propping up his gun-filled hands. He blinked back the sweat slowly, feeling the warm liquid smear his eyelids as they folded back, and then it ran like tears past the outer corners of his eyes. He glanced down. Green and brown? Once. His uniform was nearly black with sweat.

There were battles, hot and heavy and confusing and sometimes bloodsoaked. There were transports between bases, between forests, between cities. There was waiting. Lots and lots of dull, mind-numbing, restless, mosquito-drone-filled waiting.

He could hear them zipping around his head tonight, like every night. He wondered if he’d miss them if he left ‘Nam and went back to the World, back to Carolina, if he of course survived. Apart from the irritating suddenness of their coming and the whole bloodsucking business—but hell, who was he to condemn others of bloodshed?—they’d actually become a foreign familiarity. He could count on them every night, just as he could count on the regular darkness and the perpetual heat. They droned warnings and salutations and reminders, like little tiny beings half-angel and half-demon. Except he never learned their language.

The grass rustled before him, and his whole body clenched like a long lean fist. A snake raised its head a few meters in front of him, swerved its skull back and forth, and finally decided the gun’s neck was too long to tamper with. It slunk off, perhaps sulky. The mosquitoes cheered in the soldier’s ear.

Hot as hell in Vietnam.

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