“Checkpoint” by Andy Young (poetry, ’11)

An excerpt from “Checkpoint” by Andy Young (poetry, ’11), published at Waxwing:

Checkpoint

The South Sinai Police Chief had spotted the beard. We’d been waived right through the military checkpoint — the kids and I on the side of the car closest to the dust-colored outpost. Collectively, the kids and I look American when we are in Egypt, though the kids are half-and-half, or nusaballah,half-donkey, as the family likes to joke. There were far more uniformed men than it seemed there needed to be for the rolling acres of sand that generally required so little from humans. Some stood, some sat, some leaned in the doorway. As we drove through, Khaled was sitting by the window on the other side of the van, the side the police chief happened to drive past at that very moment. He spotted Khaled and yelled over at the younger men in their desert camouflage to stop the van.

The officer, who’d been smoking in the metal folding chair, the smoke streaming around his thick mustache, stood and leaned into the passenger window, peered back at us, and fixated on Khaled. After a nod to the soldiers behind him, the van door gave a rumbling, sliding noise as the officer opened it. […continue reading here]