18/02/2023
Mr. Samurai and the Flail.
Once I was walking with an environmentalist friend in my neighborhood along the artisan neighborhood of San Blas in Cusco. When suddenly, two guys start fighting, fighting over some issue that needed to be settled. I must add that this neighborhood is a tourist mecca and that being said there was a bit of drug dealing, mugging, happening all along with the tourist visitation. From what I could see both were good fighters, they knew jiu jitsu, boxing, and some judo. After a while of watching them, one could see that the street bout was tied, none inflicting an injury to the other. When, maybe out of frustration, one of them suddenly ran away in a hurry and came back running and swinging a flail in every direction. Can you imagine this? An iron spiked ball attached to a stick by a chain. Tandapata, the street we were on, was pedestrian and it was full of tourists, street vendors and locals. The man´s angry gaze was fixed on his rival, and his swinging became more forceful. The other, in awe and terror, started yelling: Stop him, somebody stop him. He is going to kill me.
In the heat of this crazy event, as the flail swinging man passed in front of me I followed him swiftly and positioned myself behind him and grabbed his right arm that was holding the flail, and with my left arm held his neck and left shoulder. I pulled him back firmly, unbalanced his body. When I did this I felt this stiffness, tense with anger. With this subtle maneuver, I managed to immobilize him and said: Stop this nonsense, calm down, you are going to get into worse trouble. Just relax! It took him a while; maybe a one minute but for me it felt longer. His body relaxed and I let him take some steps away from me with the flail still in his right arm.
He then turned around and started yelling: If you touch me again I will kill you. I responded calmly: Relax, stop this nonsense, just go home. He looked at me, quietly for some seconds and turned and walked away slowly holding the flail downward. The street that was quiet, became noisy again. Everybody was commenting, yapping and yelling. My friend was shaken, perplexed at how life can change so abruptly. I was serene and happy that it all ended peacefully. I turned my head, and saw how he dropped the flail on a street vendor's place. I turned to a nervous friend while the other man thanked me for helping him. After this we continued our walk up the street to my house
Afterwards I would run into the man that held the flail, he would look at me from afar and nodded. I would do the same for him. We never spoke about the event, or exchanged words. But it seemed that we had a tacit agreement that we would respect each other and that was that. This happened in the neighborhood I lived in just as I could be walking back home at night while neighbors would be drinking beers on the street and say: Good Night Mr. Samurai.