Kindred

by Michael Earp

  Noah kissed his way up Wafat’s neck, pausing at his chin until Wafat couldn’t wait any more. His blood no longer a hum but a roar, he pressed his mouth against Noah’s. As they were making out, their tongues meeting and retreating, the clatter of broken brick on stone intruded. Wafat spun just in time to see the fluttering end of a pink dress as someone, a woman he guessed, took off. He wanted to run after her but his erection was pressed firmly against his jeans, and Noah hadn’t let up on his kisses, so all he could say was, “Damn!” with horrified helplessness and all Noah could do was agree happily.

  In his bedroom, thinking about this, Wafat had his hand in his pants and was trying desperately not to make a sound. His bedroom was actually Jihad and Ahmad’s room; his cousins’ bunk beds dominated the space, while Wafat had a mattress on the ground that he shared with the youngest, Omar. Thankfully, they were at their dad’s house this week, so he had it all to himself. If he didn’t have this time to indulge his most secret self and inner thoughts, he was sure he would have cracked it long ago. When his cousins were here, Wafat was afraid even to dream, in case he somehow betrayed himself. Even though he was alone, he still didn’t take either bunk bed. The mattress was his home and it stretched from the window almost to the door. He imagined Noah crawling onto it now, the weight of him pressing Wafat into the ground, his lips hot and wet. Wafat’s breath hitched in his throat as his hands blurred. Neck arching up, he looked out the window. In the distance, looming over the houses, he could see the enormous radio tower that had haunted his nights for years; it looked like a segmented insect and was dotted with feral red lights all the way up to the tip. Wafat could feel the malevolent gaze of those devil eyes, as he had all his life. It should have stopped him but it couldn’t, not the way it could before, not now that he knew, really knew, what it felt like to kiss another boy. He thought of Noah and their rooftop fumbling and the thrill of being discovered.

  He was sticky with himself, alone in his family, and full of a fading serenity. Lying between the insectoid nightmare on the horizon and his aunty’s vision of faith in the living room, Wafat thought he finally might be able to understand the concept of submission that so animated both his relatives and his friends to kneel to a God they could not see. He knew the radio tower was just a radio tower but his cousins had been telling him about jinn and devils for years, how the invisible world was real and dangerous, so it would always be more than that to him. He also knew from experience how possible it was to hide a whole inner world from view, as he’d been doing it with his family for years. Like God, he wasn’t sure they wanted him at all, or would want him if they could see him in his entirety. At least with them he had a choice. From the All Knowing he could hide nothing, so he had always turned his back rather than face the rejection he feared.

  Wafat sighed, covering himself. These thoughts were a familiar, tired agony. He should get up and have a shower. He should think about his homework, which unlike every other boy he knew, he loved doing because it meant he had to be left alone. He should definitely not think about his mother, who had abandoned him to be raised by her sister, or his father who had knocked her up and was the first to run, but he inevitably would. Something about showering, the ritual of rinsing the dirt off his skin, always brought them to his mind where they would linger like the congealed upper layer of shoorba, and this night proved no different. He soaped up his hairy armpits with vigour where his stink concentrated, cleaned his hair, then quickly stepped out; once, years ago, he had stood under the cold water for so long he forgot his whole purpose for being there, utterly entranced by the chill, the wet, the numbness that led to the sweetest silence in his mind, until he was more vessel than boy. He came out as stinky as he went in and his aunty had screamed when she smelled him, dragging him by the neck back to the shower.

  “You stink, stink, stink! What were you doing in there?” Her jowls shook with rage. “Ya Allah, why do I have to do everything myself?” She grabbed the loofah he hated, more brick than body scrub, and made him strip. There, in the shadow of her huge angry body, tits heaving under the long jumper she wore, she scoured his body until it glowed red and burned like the sun.

  Since then, Wafat was strictly practical. He was in and out in two minutes. His thoughts never wandered and he never sang badly in the bathroom like his cousins. Whenever he was naked, fear nipped at his heels. As he drip-dried in the small bathroom, at ease after his first hot shower in weeks – being the youngest meant his water was almost always cold or carried only the memory of heat – he felt the first ripple come crashing over him. It was something like shame, but not. It was something like desire, but not. Bumps colonised his skin in the wake of it, tiny towns rising to the surface. Confused, he wiped away the fog on the bathroom mirror. He saw the same big jaw and heavy brows he was used to, the same curling fluff on his chin and long sideburns. A second ripple struck him and he staggered, grabbing the sink to steady his balance, biting back a moan. It was a hunger, he realised. His mouth flooded with saliva, it spilled over his lips so he had to spit and spit again yet still it continued, bringing with it a rancid tang that made him want to gag. As he continued to spit, the flavour changed to a delicious meatiness.

  “Wulah? Shubok?” his aunty called to him through the door.

  Boy? What’s wrong?

  “Ma’shee,” he said, spraying spittle over the sink. Nothing. “Just brushing my teeth.” His voice was almost a growl, and it elicited a startled silence.

  “Eh, la teez el teyta,” his aunty said. On grandmother’s arse, then. His Arabic wasn’t great to begin with and aunty’s curses always confused him. From her tone, he thought she meant something like, “forget I even asked”. He would have to worry about it later. Of far greater concern right now was the hair thickening all over his arms and legs. As he watched, it deepened again, the hairs weaving together, becoming fur. Another ripple hit him and his back arched so hard his feet curved upwards, then pain unlike anything he knew exploded down his spine. He slipped on the wet floor, crashing to the ground. He was there for an unknowable length of time, his body a strangeness, his senses distorted, heightened.

  Soap-scent tickled his nostrils and beneath it fear-sweat tantalised. Gingerly, Wafat grabbed the windowsill with a claw, and lifted himself up. What was happening? Unbidden, he thought of Andy’s dog, not as he had seen it this afternoon, but as it was running away from him last night, squealing. Its throat in his mouth, the ripping, the blood so hot and filling, the dying whine as it gave up everything for him and his need. You’re imagining things, he told himself. Stop it. He shook his snout in angry denial, even as he realised he now took up the entire window frame. His primal self filled the space. Wafat had to duck his head to look up at the sky to what he already knew would be there: a blush of white light behind a bank of clouds. The moon, not yet visible to the naked eye, but radiating still, the moon was singing in his blood with the voice of angels. It was saying, Ramadan has arrived, ya klaab, Ramadan has arrived. The holy month of fasting was here, O children, and Wafat was already starving.

  He had wanted to howl, of course. The next day Wafat was walking up the street with Noah, having instantly decided to leave the house to the adults, and this was the question curled under Wafat’s tongue: a blackness blanketed his mind after his shower. He’d woken up in his bed this morning a normal boy, naked and hard, his room awash with the musty reek of wild animal. Had he bayed at the moon, had he given himself away? But no, his aunty hadn’t said anything during breakfast, which was zaatar and oil grilled on Leb bread in the oven with a cup of tea. He thought she was trying extra hard just to impress Nazeero with it later, he could see her adopting a pious mien to say, “Look what I do for this boy I raise from the goodness of my heart.” It would mean more if Wafat hadn’t heard his uncles talking one night about how they’d all counselled his mum to get an abortion. “We told her to get rid of him and look, she had him anyway and then left him in our hands out of spite. Clever bitch.”

&nbs
p; Noah shoulder-barged him softly. “What are you thinking about, you lost case?” They were heading to Casula Mall, a long, low slab of concrete with a huge Kmart sign on the top, big as the Sphinx’s head in Egypt. Maybe bigger.

  “Coco Pops,” Wafat said. “I wish I’d had some this morning.”

  Noah laughed. “Froot Loops is better.”

  Wafat reacted as if he’d been shot, his arms flailing outwards, jaw dropping open. “What? Froot Loops is just sugary air. At least with Coco Pops it feels like you’re eating something and at the end, it’s like a chocolate milkshake.”

  “It’s all the same, bro.” Noah kicked at a crumpled can, missing and turning it into a pirouette. “Froot Loops has different flavours. Plus, it looks fun.”

  Wafat snorted. It looks gay, he thought. What he said was, “Nobody in history has been more wrong. Your tongue is a bin.” His heart wasn’t in it though. Noah’s little jump had made Wafat focus on his legs, smooth and muscled as a dancer, his khaki cargo shorts tight against his knees. Noah wore a long Chicago Bulls singlet as well, showing off his bronze, the swell of his sharp biceps. Wafat had been trying not to stare, trying to resolutely ignore Noah’s body, but it wasn’t working. He wanted Noah, all of him, with a growing urgency. And it scared the hell out of him.

  Noah’s smirk said he knew exactly what Wafat was thinking. “Joke’s on you, you’re the one who made out with a bin.”

  Before Wafat could respond, a car horn blasted at them and a dusty old white Honda Civic screeched to a halt by the curb. Other cars beeped as they had to swerve around it and someone yelled out “Shithead!” to absolutely no effect. Salim ignored them, leaning over his passenger’s seat from the driver side to stick his blocky head out the window.

  “Hey faggots!” he yelled. “Where yas going?”

  In the passenger seat, Orsun – a thin Turk with a weedy moustache – started thrusting his hips up at Salim’s face shouting, “Headjobber!” then all the boys in the back started laughing. Wafat laughed loudly with them, a hot flush crawling up his neck. “Straight out you guys are a bahadleh,” he said, “get out of here, we’re going to the mall.” He really was embarrassed, not by their antics so much as the accuracy of their homophobia. It had always been easy to hide in it, when he was curious yet unsure, only now it felt like a trap with vicious hooks in his skin. He grabbed Noah’s arm and walked rapidly away, wondering if his voice had been a higher pitch than usual, if his skin was dark enough to hide the heat building under it, if Noah was bothered by his crushing grip. Noah said nothing, wrapped in his own ugly quiet. Salim shot past them, pulling into the mall’s parking lot, where more boys spilled out than should have been possible. It was like a clown car except with brown boys in a motley of knock-off G-Star jeans, trackies and Champion hoodies.

  “In twos, boys, in twos,” Salim said, and they split into pairs as Wafat and Noah joined them. They hadn’t been allowed in the mall all together for years now, not since the security guards told them, “More than two is a gang, youse make people nervous.” It was probably the only reason they kept coming back here; it made them feel hard like the older boys who had long since vanished from the streets, in jail, dead, or locked in their garages, too high and too paranoid to come out just like Moey Amadi, Salim’s weird bald cousin.

  “Meet in the food court for our last feed,” Salim added, and Orsun rolled his baby-blue eyes. He poked Salim’s pudgy middle, “As if you’re even gonna fast tomorrow ya khafir, stop pretending. We all know you’ll be having a bat every morning.” He mimed jerking off, and then Salim had him in a headlock, and they were off bickering, with the others trailing behind. Wafat and Noah waited for a distance to grow between them.

  “They should just screw and get it over with,” Noah said quietly. Noah was only a few months older than Wafat, and though he was in Livo often when they were kids, he lived in some fancy house in the “North Shore” that Wafat couldn’t have located on a map, and spoke with a worldly weariness that Wafat envied. The furthest he had been from the Liverpool area was Lakemba, and that was only to go to the mosque on Eid and pray on the road outside, packed in shoulder to shoulder with gleaming Arabs dressed in their best, the product in their curls shining under the flickering light of the cameras from the news crews, all of them moving together in concert to bow and point their arses in the air. “Then again,” Noah continued, wryly, “maybe they already have.”

  They cut through the Liquorland to get into the mall, away from the boys who were heading to the main entrance. It was dim to the point of darkness in the Liquorland, a place of undrinkable oceans bottled up and canned. Wafat had never had a drink, though he had kissed a tipsy Noah, and his lips remembered that tingle, so he thought he knew something of what it was like to be drunk. By some unspoken agreement, they avoided the food court and went to the Kmart instead, where young mums, hijabi and Anglos alike, roved with angry kids in tow and it felt like they could be the only boys in the world. After casually browsing the men’s clothing, they wound up at the change rooms in the centre of the store. Noah lingered outside the stalls, one section labelled “WOMEN”, the other “MEN”, then he grinned the same wild grin Wafat loved, grabbed Wafat’s hand and ducked into one of the women’s stalls. The curtain was orange and rough, and as he closed it, Wafat couldn’t help but feel a tinge of superstition as if the cloth in his hand might be flame, or become it in a moment.

  When he turned around, he saw Noah had already slipped out of his singlet. His pecs were defined, his belly soft, a trail of downy hair leading to his shorts. He was hunched slightly, like a bow strung with tension, or a boy expecting a blow. Wafat took him into his arms, and kissed him, tongue probing, hands roving. Noah’s skin was warm to the touch, like the coals of a spent barbecue, and he seemed somehow to yield; even though they were standing together, wrapped in each other, something passed between them and for the first time Wafat felt strong. Not weak, not small, not young. He broke their kiss, a wet pop, and then tilted Noah’s head back. He kissed his neck a dozen times, hard enough to bruise, moving down to his nipples: light brown, tiny moons with a raised mount, he sucked them into his mouth. There was a hardness waiting for him, something he wanted to swallow, to take in, to give back what Noah had given him, to yield in turn. He drifted to his knees, kissing Noah’s belly, driven by surging instinct to this, his own opening.

  Then – “Nah bro, Double Impact’s got nothing on Hard Target” – Salim’s braying donkey voice penetrated the veil, and Wafat froze. The boys were in Kmart, and arguing about Van Damme, everyone’s favourite action hero. Wafat scrabbled to his feet, slammed back into his body, into his fear, by the sound of those voices. Noah tried to grab him, and while the thought of continuing as the boys were nearby gave him a buzz, Wafat was slipping away from Noah’s grip before the idea could fully register. Panic throbbed in his gut, a second, uglier heart.

  “They gotta be here somewhere, the homos.”

  Noah sighed, slipped his singlet back on, the bull horns long and angry.

  “They dogged us, Slim, I told ya. Let’s go.”

  Wafat couldn’t breathe. The stall swam in front of him. He rippled with it, melding into the red of the singlet and the orange of the fiery curtain. He was so sick of being afraid. More, he was furious in the way of any angel kept a foot from Heaven but refused entry. “Are you okay, cuz?” His claws raked the wall. “Is anyone in there?” He growled. “Bro, what’s that noise?” He shuddered, his body breaking. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to come out.” All the voices were disembodied, the place vanishing; Wafat could see only the halo of white that had heralded the moon last night, the memory of it pouring back into him. Noah’s smell of sweat, citrus and cigarette smoke – mostly from his mother – clung to the stall, which Wafat now dominated with his huge werewolf body. He exploded out of the stall, crashing through racks of cheap clothes, a massacre of bad taste, and screams followed his revelation. Wafat loped free, the stink of cheap detergent everywhere, leap
ing over the boys cowering on the floor, piss running down their legs. He didn’t know any of these humans and didn’t care, he wanted only to be free, to taste again the wind.

  In moments, he was out, chaos trailing in his wake. He bolted up the hill, his muscles glorious and mighty, king shit of this tiny suffocating suburb; he knew he was feared, and therefore powerful, top of the food chain. Somewhere nearby his first kill called to him, and so he hurtled towards it, only slowing when he came to the alley that lead to his lair. He snuffled along the cement. There was no sign any animal had ever passed there, no carcass, only the fading smell of territorial piss from the local bitches. He whined, turning in circles. Something was bothering him. He tried to remember the dog – Titus, that had been its name – but all that came to mind was Andy. Andy’s pouty lips pressed against his, Andy’s jeans open, the zipper yawning. The musky taste of him, the slippery skin. His hand in Wafat’s hair. The taste starting to sweeten. Then, the gift, the release. It was here, here, here. Wafat threw back his shaggy head and howled, setting all the dogs to barking. Somewhere out there a mate waited for him, and a home that didn’t resent him. He stood up on two legs, shivering all over, and took a step towards it.

  Later, much later, Noah would call him out of the blue one night and they would laugh together in disbelief at the story of a hairy boy streaking nude out of a Kmart in broad daylight, his dick flapping in the breeze, his voice a scream that heralded the beginning of a legend. No matter what they told you on the news, there was an Arab werewolf in Liverpool, and that day was just the beginning of his rampage.