Night of Violence

A Night of Violence

According to my history instructor, Adolf Hitler once said that he wanted to sign up ‘’ brutal youths’’ to help him achieve his goals. If Hitler were still alive, he would not have any trouble recruiting the brutal youths he wanted; he could get them here in Algeria. I know, because I was one of them. As a teenager, I ran with a gang. And it took a frightening incident for me to see how violent I had become. The incident was planned one Thursday night when I was with my friends. I was still going to school once in while, but most of my friends were not. We spent our day son the street, talking, showing off, sometimes shoplifting a little or shaking people down for money. My friends and I were close, maybe because life had not been good for any of us. On this night, we were drinking wine and smoking weed on the corner. For some reason, we all felt tense and restless. One of us came up with idea of robbing one of the old people who lived in the high rise close by. We would just knock him over, grab the money, and party with it. The robbery did not go as planned. After about an hour, and after more wine and weed, we spotted an old man. He came out of the glass door of the building and started up the street. Pine Street had a lot of antique stores as well as apartment and buildings. Stuffing our bottles in our pockets, we closed in behind him. Suddenly, the old man whipped out a homemade wooden club from under his jacket and began swinging. The club thudded loudly against karim’s shoulder, making him yelp with pain. When we heard that, we went crazy. We smashed our bottles over the old man’s head. Not content with that, karim kicked him savagely, knocking him to the ground. I kept seeing him sprawled on the ground, blood from our beating trickling into his eyes. karim, the biggest of us, said ‘’we want your money, hand it over’’. So the old man gave up his money as we ran. Later at home, I had a strange reaction