I’ve done crowd control before. You learn to read them fast – where the energy pools, who’s at the edges, which way the mass will move if something tips. This one has that particular heat to it. Religious heat. The worst kind. They’re not angry yet but they could be. One wrong sound and the whole thing shifts.
There’s a man at the center of it. I clock him and move on. It’s never the center you watch – it’s the edges. But they keep pulling me back to him. Not because of anything he does. He does nothing. He just – sits there. While everything around him stirs.
Hosanna, they’re shouting. I know enough of their language to know what that means. Save us. I almost laugh. From what? From Rome? Please. We are the only reason this city doesn’t tear itself apart by Thursday. They couldn’t save themselves from themselves if we handed them the means and wrote the instructions. And yet here they are, screaming salvation at some man on a donkey who looks like he mends things for a living.
More paperwork tonight. Another report. Possible incitement, possible agitator, no incident yet. I’ll file it under: nothing happened, but the air was wrong.
On Easter Sunday you will stand in your form of crowd: among people you have sat beside for years. Between now and then – can you learn one name you don’t yet know?
More about The Soldier: A Journey from Indifference to Witnessing
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