Born to be fast, loud and on the move

This story was originally published on rantrave.com in 2010 

            Laszlo Zappador was born in a car. Not in a car park, not at the roadside, but in the back seat of a rattling Fiat 126 that was racing at 80 miles per hour from Gyor to Budapest. It was the 19st of May 1989 and Laszlo's mother, who was 17 at the time and single, was hitchhiking to the capital of Hungary when her labour suddenly sped up. It was a kick start that would determine the rest of his life.

            "I think about my mother a lot," says Laszlo, "especially on days like today. I'm turning 21 today and I hope she would have been proud of me. I've got my driving licence, have owned 8 cars in total, have lived in four different countries and I'm still a virgin. I really try to live my life in her honour and make her dreams come true because she didn't have enough time to do so. Don't you think it's sad she never went abroad, not even on a holiday? She hated Hungary, hated it so much... yet she never got to see another country."

            When I ask Laszlo how she died, he picks up a star spanner from the floor and starts polishing off the grease with his t-shirt. For a whole minute, the workshop is quiet except for the sounds of running engines in the back.

            "Nobody knows what really happened," he finally says. "I was six at the time, and all I remember is that one afternoon, she didn't come to pick me up from school. She'd run away from her family when she was expecting me, so at first, I was afraid she was running away from me too. Because she didn't have very honourable jobs in Budapest, she never introduced me to any of her friends either. There was no one I could ring, no one I could go to, so my teacher took me home with him. The next day he found out from the police that she had been ran over by a car with no licence plates. That was the first time I decided to go abroad. I didn't even have a passport; can you imagine what I was up against?"

            He puts the now shiny star spanner in a toolbox and runs his fingers through his greasy hair. "The struggle never ends. Even for an experienced driver like me, it's hard to find cheap car insurance because I'm young and a foreigner. But when I was 14 years old, I had won the national go-kart championship twice and was noticed by a coach. He helped me move to Germany, where I learned to drive on real racing tracks."

            "I was very good. Experts started to compare me to Kimi Raikkonen. But in 2007, I fell ill. Depression, emotional blockage, that sort of thing. I'd never dealt with my mother's disappearance, hadn't even been to her funeral. And all of a sudden, I started dreaming I was driving the car that hit her. I couldn't get in a car anymore without breaking into a sweat. I thought I needed a change of scenery, so I moved to Amsterdam. I joined a community of artists living in a large squat, but soon started to miss cars. Especially the sound of the engine and the wheels on the tarmac. I didn't have my licence yet, so I wasn't allowed to drive outside official tracks but I bought my first car there, anyway. A red Nissan Sunny from 1994."

            "Inspired by the people that surrounded me, I started to see the car as a piece of art. Not a very nice one – she was decrepit and rusty – but she had potential. The first thing I did was replace her wheels with massive, round speakers. I put several microphones in and around the engine, the exhaust, the emergency break and the gearstick. I connected all of these to a switchboard with separate volume control switches and voila: my first sound machine. I performed at several squat parties and sold the Sunny Sound for € 6500, more than six times as much as I paid for it."

            His pale complexion lights up when he shows me the pictures of his first car. "I believe the Dutch lad that bought her still gives the occasional concert. Someone sent me a bootleg recording the other day. Bloody amazing. But Holland was too small for me, and I couldn't get the hang of that silly language. So I spent my money on a ticket and flew to England. I've just managed to sell the Roaring Rover for £60,000 and am now working on a Clamourous Cadillac."

Trapped by Talent

This story was originally published on rantrave.com in 2010.

        "Life has never been easy for alchemists," says Amira Bint Jasmin Jabir, "especially not for women with this gift. In the past, we were hunted down and burned as witches. Nowadays, we are accused of fraud or insanity." Amira is one of the last traditional alchemists of our age, but tries to keep a low profile because of the reactions she gets when she tells people about her true identity.

        "I am the only living descendant of Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan, the 12th century all-round scientist who managed to turn sulphur into gold. He had a very mathematical way of working which, as far as modern day scientists are concerned, is completely off the wall." But don't they want to investigate the gift Amira inherited from her ancestor?

        "It would be interesting, especially with modern day theories about nuclear fusion. But I don't think they would believe me if I told them. I was born in Iraq and made my first gold out of sand when I was a toddler. My nannies were surprised I kept finding odd shaped pieces of jewellery, but my mother knew from the start what was going on because the talent runs in the family. She tried to raise me as normally as possible and told me not to tell anyone about my magical abilities. Not even my father. I fled Iraq in 2003, after both my parents suddenly disappeared. I was only 12 years old at the time, but a teacher sorted me out with a forged passport in exchange for my 'family treasures'. No, I'm not going to tell you my false name because I'm still using it."

        "My mother had spent all my products on a proper education, so when I first got to Great Britain, my English was pretty good already. I had been through so much – losing both my parents, rape, hunger, you name it. Can you blame me I felt the need to tell somebody who I really was? The lady who interviewed me was so kind and understanding that I told her everything. But at the Home Office, they thought I'd lost my marbles and sent me to a mental institution. That's where I learned the importance of my mother's lessons: act normal and hide your true colours. Though I'm not a Muslim, I often feel the need to wear a burqa, simply because it reflects how I feel. I'm working at Waitrose as a shelf stacker, but every Saturday morning I sit down to meditate and turn sulphur tablets into gold."

        I notice she doesn't wear any gold jewellery.

        "I'm not obsessed with gold," she says. "To me, gold is like a smile: it's there when I feel good. I don't mind parting from it when the feeling is gone. I much prefer to get cash for gold that has lost its value for me. I'm not a mathematical person, like Abu Musa. For me, happiness is the key. That's why I couldn't prove that I wasn't hallucinating in the mental institution. By the time I got out, they had almost convinced me I was just an ordinary, traumatised girl. But on my first date with my current boyfriend, I suddenly turned a wine glass into gold. Very embarrassing. He noticed immediately and helped me try to hide it from the restaurant staff by stealing the glass. He still keeps it on his mantle piece, isn't that adorable? I normally find glass a very difficult material to work with, though. Things like that can happen when I'm over the moon, but it's much easier with sulphur."

Desperate dentistry

This story was originally published on rantrave.com in 2010

"If I could undo just one mistake I made in my life, it would have been home dentistry," says Brenda, a 29-year-old single mum from Halifax. 

"It all started when a 'friend' mentioned that my yellow teeth might be the reason why I was having trouble getting beyond the first date. I knew giving up smoking would be good for my complexion, but I was going through a bit of a rough patch in my life, so I didn't manage to. Instead, I decided to bleach my teeth. Unfortunately, whitening treatments at the dentist can cost up to £750. I simply couldn't afford that and didn't have dental insurance. I don't even know whether there are any dental insurance plans that cover such treatments. Either way, I opted for one of these teeth whitening kits."
"It contained ten disposable, individually wrapped, single-dose applications which you're meant to use on a daily basis. Because my teeth were extraordinarily yellow, I decided to buy two kits and prolonged the treatment with three days. The result wasn't so bad." She shows me her bright, white smile. "Except that I've got two crowns on the left side of my mouth, and the whitening didn't do anything for them. But hardly anybody notices, so I was very impressed with my DIY dentistry. I was so confident about my dentistry skills that when Priscilla, my little princess, was starting to lose her first baby teeth, I decided to speed up the process and help her through this difficult phase. As soon as a tooth started to wobble, I would tie a piece of string around it and yank it out with the door. I told her I knew it hurt, but that it would hurt a lot more if she left them in."
"I didn't know that my warnings frightened her so much that she was actually forcing her teeth to wobble sooner in order to speed up the process of getting rid of them. Until, after two months, she told me her upper canine on the left was ready to go again. And so it seemed, except that her upper canine on the left had been the first to go, and it was a permanent tooth that was loose in its socket now."
"Of course I should have taken her to the dentist there and then, but I was embarrassed because at that time, she was almost completely toothless – she couldn't even eat a ham sandwich – and I knew it was my fault. So instead of seeking professional help, I explained to her that from now on she should leave her teeth alone to prevent more pain."
Brenda sniffs and wipes a single tear from the corner of her eye, leaving a black streak of mascara on the side of her face. "How was I supposed to know she'd stop brushing her teeth because she thought that was what I meant and because brushing her toothless gums hurt?" 
"When Priscilla turned eight, most of her permanent teeth had grown in crowded and crooked, and they were all discoloured because of tooth decay. She hated her own face so much she never smiled nor ate in public. This was bad, and I decided to make an appointment with an NHS dentist, but we ended up on a waiting list. And that's when she found my old teeth whitening kit. There were seven single-dose applications left, and she used them all at once. The whitening gel leaked onto her gums, tongue, the insides of her cheeks and she even swallowed some, all of which lead to serious blistering. My poor little princess."
Brenda blows her nose before she continues. "Of course I blame myself. For leaving that bleaching gel out, for extracting her baby teeth too early, for not taking her to a dentist when she obviously needed one, and especially for not having proper dental insurance. If I'd have had dental insurance, none of this would have happened."