Once Upon an Osama bin Laden – Fawzy Zablah

August 19, 2019

You go to Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden.
You get deported back to the U.S.
You sell your story to Hollywood and become famous.
You get addicted to cocaine with your agent Marty Howell while attending D-List celebrity parties.
You fall in love with a porn star named Tiffany Waves.
She breaks your heart and leaves you when your fame ends.
With nothing left to lose, you and your agent go on the hunt for Saddam Hussein with a film crew for hire.
You and this ragtag group of Hollywood has-beens sneak into Iraq on a hot and dry orange August afternoon looking like extras from the movie Dune.
You get lost in a bombed out village and run into a man sitting on a stoop that leads to the skeleton of a hollowed out apartment building. In his dry, coarse hands, he clutches photos of his little family and for one second or two — you eat up that superficial American empathy, but it quickly comes back up like a cat throwing up a hair ball.
The film crew eventually disbands and you end up in a crumbling palace completely alone, snorting what’s left of your cocaine, making plans that never materialize.
You will get the comeback you so rightfully deserve, you say to yourself while confronting a broken bust of Saddam Hussein—it’s coming, you can see it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, but what does it matter, he’s dead and he never met you.