O P I N I O N

TINY WHITE BOX

By Keith Howard

Rob was almost killed by an elephant. If that’s all you care about, skip ahead seven paragraphs. Want to slog through my ramblings on literature and politics first? You’ve been warned.

Last year, driving through Morocco, I couldn’t stop thinking about George Orwell. Marrakesh is where he spent a winter fighting the lung disease that finally took him out. I don’t know how far he wandered from the city, but I kept the passenger seat of my rental clear. For the ghost of Orwell, of course. Cheering me on to write more like him.

Orwell’s one of my top five. Maybe that’s hard to believe, reading this. But 1984 and Animal Farm? Classics, of course, but that’s not why I’m hooked. Those aren’t what made me fall for him.

I was 19, a military journalist stationed in West Germany, when there WAS a West Germany. A strange trio exists—Al Gore was an Army journalist before me, JD Vance after. I went to England to visit a friend at Cambridge, and there it was: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Four volumes, a doorstop with 2,312 pages. From the first sentence, Orwell grabbed me. Thought like a sniper, wrote like a scalpel. No fat, no fluff—just pure clarity. Chalk and cheese, compared to my mess. But I try.

Orwell’s lens was wide. Mine’s, small. He shot an elephant, literally. Wrote an essay about it. A great essay. I wrote “Shooting a Chickadee.” Smaller stakes, smaller body count. I was a kid, showing off, ended up killing a chickadee to impress big kids. Orwell got elephants; I get chickadees. The only elephant I’ve ever mentioned was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line in a novel from years ago. And Orwell? Pretty sure he never wrote about chickadees. So I’m ahead on that front.

But Orwell didn’t waste time on animals. He was all about humans—how we love nothing more than pushing each other around. Colonialism, fascism, communism, doesn’t matter. People need an “us” and a “them.” Good guys and the others.

And now, here I am, driving through Namibia—this beautiful, brutal landscape—and colonialism’s footprints are everywhere. Black Africans working for white bosses, Europeans at the top of every power structure. Namibia was a German colony until World War I, then the League of Nations handed it over to South Africa. Imagine that—becoming the colony of a colony. Dutch imperialism for 150 years, then British rule for another 150. Now, you can feel it—the scars of three empires stretched across the land.

But Rob? He doesn’t care about my historical musings. To him, it’s all like golf talk—some Par Four dogleg on the Twelfth Hole. What Rob really wants to talk about is the elephant that almost killed him.

Rob, by the way, thinks he looks like a very young Hugh Jackman. Despite his 36 years of hard living, he still sees himself as some strapping young lad. Full of “rizz,” as the kids call it—short for charisma. And even though he’s well into middle age, Rob insists on using slang that barely makes sense, dressing like a knockoff hip-hop mogul.

So we’re on this jeep ride, kicking up dust, looking for desert-adapted elephants. After an hour, we find a small herd. They’re out for a stroll, maybe looking for food, maybe just bored. We stop, snap way too many pictures of the same damn elephants. They ignore us completely, lost in their own world, munching away.

That is, until Rob decides to use his “rizz” on one of them—the youngest, and in his words, the sexiest. He claims their eyes met, and something passed between them. Then, the elephant spins and charges. Broadside, full speed. Rob’s sitting closest, which means he’d be the one flattened by love.

Rob’s version? The elephant got within five feet before we shouted it away. Reality? More like 30 feet. But I let Rob have this one. If a guy thinks he can charm an elephant into a romantic rampage, you’ve got to let him stretch the truth a little.

If Orwell wrote this story, it’d be sharp, clean, concise. It’d be better. But still, I’ve finally managed to write more than a sentence about an elephant. Orwell? Still silent on chickadees. And now, forever will be.

Which means, in the grand scheme of things, I’ll always have chickadees

Rob’s objet de l’amour (shortly before charging)

Keith Howard is a freelance writer living in Manchester. You can read more of his Tiny White Box musings here, or ask him important questions, at keith.howard@gmail.com