by Dean Hughes
“I’m a good reader,” Malek said. “And I’m even better in mathematics. I got high grades in every subject. I did very well in English, too, and I learned some French. My teachers always told me how smart I was.”
Hadi had gotten used to Malek bragging this way, but he’d realized there was something sad about it—as though Malek clung fast to the idea that his life would get better at some point. He kept saying that someday he would be an engineer like his father. Hadi didn’t think Malek could ever do that, but he sort of liked hearing him talk about it. It was nice to imagine that better times might be ahead for both of them.
“So, why do you want to be an engineer?” Hadi asked.
“My father always talks about it. He says an engineer thinks up ideas, draws them on paper, and then those ideas turn into real things—buildings or cars, or anything. Everything you see, someone had to picture it in his mind first.”
“I guess that’s right,” Hadi said. He even liked the idea. But he was almost certain that it was useless to hope for such possibilities. Maybe Hadi and Malek could get jobs someday—some sort of work the Lebanese didn’t want to do—but how were they supposed to attend a university? And who would hire them if they did?
“I’m going to do it, Hadi. I’m not going to give up, no matter what.”
“Maybe things will change,” Hadi said, and that seemed the best he could offer.
“Sure. Things will probably change before too much longer. The war might end, for one thing. That would help.”
Baba had told Hadi that the war in Syria was nowhere close to ending. But Hadi decided not to say that.
“So, Hadi, what kind of work do you want to do?” Malek asked.
Hadi glanced up the street. Instead of answering, he said, “The cars are stopping.”
So the boys worked the cars again. Malek hadn’t quite given up entirely on trying to make a sales pitch for his tissues. When windows were open, he would still try to smile and say something to the drivers. Hadi heard him say, “I want to go to a university when I’m older. You can help me save for that.”
Hadi looked over to see one of the drivers, a young, rather shabby-looking man, laugh at Malek. He said something Hadi couldn’t hear, but Malek told the man, “I’ll still do it. My mind’s made up.”
The man kept laughing, and he didn’t buy any tissues, but Hadi found himself admiring Malek for admitting to his hope. Maybe it was good to tell these people that they weren’t just stupid street kids, even if it didn’t help to sell tissues.
Hadi made a few more sales that afternoon—and accepted money from two people who didn’t take the gum. He had taken in 9,500 pounds with a couple of hours still to go. If he could pick up a few thousand more, he’d please his father at the end of the day.
Malek, though, was still not doing as well. He didn’t tell Hadi how much he had earned, but Hadi hadn’t seen him sell much of anything.
When the boys were back on their corner later in the day, Malek said, “You never answered me. What kind of work do you want to do when you grow up?”
“I don’t know.”
“There must be something you’ve thought of—something you’ve seen people do. What kind of work did your father do in Syria?”
“He was a truck driver.”
“Truck drivers do quite well, I think. Maybe you could do that.”
“Maybe. I guess that would be all right.”
“You don’t sound excited about it. What would you do if you could get any job you’ve ever heard about?”
Hadi was embarrassed to answer, but he said, “When I was little—back in Syria—I saw this TV show one time. It told all about astronauts—how they flew to the moon and all those things. I told Baba that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to fly to the moon or maybe to another planet, like Mars.” He laughed at himself. He knew the idea was silly. “Baba told me, if that’s what you want to do, you should try. Maybe it could happen.”
“That’s right. Your father gave you good advice. If you keep trying, you may not become an astronaut, but you might be a scientist of some kind. You could study the stars and everything.”
“It’s called an ‘astronomer.’ I remember that. I had a book that my father read to me. It was about traveling into space. My baba brought it home to me after I told him about the show I’d seen on TV. The book had that word in it—astronomer.”
Hadi ached at the memory. It brought back thoughts of his nice apartment before the bombing had become so bad: his living room, Baba sitting next to him on the couch. Good things—a good future—had seemed possible then. Baba was not the same man anymore. He still tried to be kind, but he no longer spoke of days ahead, better or not; everything was about food for the day, rent for the month. He never stopped worrying that the family would end up out on the street or forced to live in tin and cardboard shacks the way many refugees did. Hadi also knew how much it pained Baba that he still hadn’t taken Mama to a dentist.
“You remembered the word ‘astronomer’ after all these years?” Malek asked.
“Yes.” Hadi had been little then. He tried to think how he had felt about everything. It had been like choosing a future that would magically happen. He had looked at that book about stars, and he had put the stars in his head, and for a long time they had stayed. But the bombs had exploded them, and the days on the street had blacked them out.
“I think you’re smart, Hadi. I think we both are. And I think we’ll both be successful.”
Hadi had sat for so many months on those concrete blocks, just trying not to feel anything. It was good to think that something better might come. Malek didn’t understand much about working on the street, about the Lebanese, about things that were simply impossible, but he brought back something to Hadi: that way of thinking that Baba had offered him early in his life. Hadi knew he wasn’t a child, that he had been forced to grow up, but he longed for that time when happiness has seemed the normal way of things.
Clouds had been drifting in, turning dark. Hadi knew there would be rain before the day ended and, most likely, continuing into the morning. Malek had noticed the clouds too, and he had begun to glance at the sky nervously. “The rainy days stop in a month or two,” Hadi told him. “And the weather is nice for a while. People always buy more on nice days.”
Since starting to share the corner with Hadi, Malek had seen mostly rainy, cold days, and Hadi knew that in spite of Malek’s optimism about the distant future, he was actually worried every day about his failure to earn more money. He had had a few good days—maybe one or two—when he had taken in a decent amount of money, but most of his days had been disappointing.
Malek glanced toward Hadi and nodded. He seemed to appreciate the scrap of encouragement. “What about summer?”
“Hot,” Hadi said. “But not hot like Syria. It was much hotter for you in Damascus, I think. Here, it’s not so bad.”
“That’s good.” They nodded again, and then they went back to the cars. Hadi had not wanted to be partners with Malek, but it felt a little that way now. He kept telling himself that he didn’t want any of Malek’s hope. It only led to disappointment. But since Malek had shown up, Hadi really did feel more alive. It was a strange partnership the two were forming, but Hadi felt himself giving in to it.
* * *
Another week went by and Hadi felt encouraged. He and Malek were getting along fine, and Hadi didn’t think he had lost many of his sales by sharing his corner. But one Monday morning in the middle of February, Malek seemed troubled. He wouldn’t look at Hadi, and even though the day was warm and clear, he kept his hood up, tied tight around his chin. “Aren’t you getting hot?” Hadi asked him. Hadi had already taken his jacket off.
Malek took a long look at Hadi, then untied his hood and pushed it back. Hadi saw a deep scratch across Malek’s cheek and a cut on his ear. “What happened?” Hadi asked.
“I need to start bringing home more money,” Malek said. “Kamal came over on Sunday afternoon, and
he started telling my father that I wasn’t working hard enough. He got really mad at me. He swung at me with the back of his hand. His wristwatch caught the side of my head.”
“Who? Kamal?”
Malek hesitated, but then he nodded.
“Doesn’t he know you’ve been out here trying all day, every day?”
Malek drew in some air and looked at the ground. “I found out that Kamal has an assistant—a guy who walks around to watch all the kids who sell for him. On Saturday that guy told Kamal that sometimes you and I stand here and talk after the cars have stopped.”
“We don’t do that!”
“I remember once when we did. We still got out there, but not as fast as we could have.”
“So what’s he saying you have to do?”
“He says you have to leave so that I have the corner to myself. If you don’t, he said to warn you that he’ll come after you. He was really angry. I think he means it.”
Hadi stared at Malek. He was trying to decide whether he had any options.
“But I don’t know,” Malek said. “If I have a few good days, maybe he’ll forget all about it.”
“There are always good days and bad days, Malek. That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“I know. And you’ve taught me some things I needed to know. I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen.”
But Hadi needed his corner.
“I was thinking,” Malek said, “maybe you could cross the street and work over there by the cabstand. You could take the traffic going north, and I would stay here, where cars go west. I don’t know what he can say about that. It’s not the same corner.”
“I’m not leaving, Malek. I told you that the first day you came here. I need to be where people know me. And I don’t want to put up with those cabbies over there.”
“But if I cross the street, he won’t accept that.”
There were no good choices. Hadi felt his chest tighten, his fear come back. For a couple of weeks he had been breathing a little better. “Let’s just see what happens. If you have any really bad days, I could lend you some money and you could pay me back when you have a better day than I do. We could even things out that way.”
Now it was Malek who was staring at Hadi. “You would do that?”
Hadi was surprised at himself that he had made such an offer, but he didn’t dare cross the street. If his income dropped drastically over there, he would be worse off than if he lent some money to Malek from time to time.
“That really might help,” Malek said. “But I can’t believe you would—”
“Okay then, that’s what we’ll do.”
“But there has to be something I could do for you.”
“No, you don’t have to do that. It’s just—”
“I could help you improve your reading. If you could bring something with you—a book or a magazine—I could help you with the words you don’t know. I could teach you a few words every day and you’ll start improving really fast.”
“All right,” Hadi said. “We can try it. But we can’t stand here looking at a book very long—or we’ll be in trouble again.”
“I know. But we could do a new word every now and then, just while we’re standing here at the corner.”
The two boys looked at each other for just a moment, and then they both nodded. They had a deal.
What occurred to Hadi was that he finally had a friend in Lebanon. In Syria, after his school had been demolished, he had felt cut off from his friends. There was a day, now and then, when no bombing raids had come, and he had faced dreary times with nothing to do. He and some other boys had found an open space in their neighborhood where grass was still growing. They had cleared away rubble and had played soccer, sometimes all day long. One boy had a ball, but it wouldn’t hold air very long, so they had used an old bicycle pump to keep it inflated as best they could, and soccer had been the right thing in Hadi’s life at the time. He wasn’t very good at the game, couldn’t run as fast, couldn’t control the ball as well as some of the boys, but no one cared. No one even kept score. They ran hard, used up their energy, and they laughed all they could. Every boy seemed Hadi’s best friend.
But Hadi couldn’t fight back another image he tried never to think about. A little girl named Marwa, only five or so, had come to the soccer games with her brother Mohammad. He told her to watch the boys play, but little Marwa wanted to play too. The older boys had let her play. They had laughed at her efforts, but they liked her happiness. After that, she came whenever the boys played, and everyone liked her. Then one day, after a raid on their neighborhood, Hadi had seen Mohammad sitting in the street with his mother. She was holding a little body, all covered in dust and dirt. The body was twisted, the legs bent wrong. Mohammad was sobbing, holding a little hand and saying, “I love you, Marwa. I love you.” But Hadi could see that Marwa was dead. He turned and ran, hid away in his bedroom so no one would see, and he cried and cried, couldn’t stop. He tried now never to think of that day, but it was always with him.
Hadi pushed the thought aside, and the boys kept working. He was pleased that the better weather seemed to improve the mood of the drivers. By midafternoon Malek said he had taken in more than he ever had in one day, and he made a few more sales after that. Hadi could only think that Kamal would now ease off on his warnings. His breath came a little easier.
4
The daylight was lasting a little longer now, but as the sun was getting low in the sky, Hadi and Malek walked into Bourj Hammoud toward the Dora intersection, where Baba sold his items each day. It was the part of town where Malek lived, a section where only Armenians had lived at one time but was now more mixed.
As they walked together, Malek asked, “How can you and your father afford to take a bus to go home?”
“It costs us each a thousand lira, each way, but there’s no place to sell anything in our neighborhood and it’s too far to walk all the way over here.”
“Where is your neighborhood exactly?”
“It’s called Cola. It’s on the east side of the city.” Hadi didn’t want to admit what a stinking place it was, with crumbling concrete buildings, worn and faded canvas sunshades, and narrow alleys strung with huge bunches of electrical wires that drooped and twisted in all directions. The alleys were thick with people, scooters, and delivery trucks. Garbage was everywhere, the smell of it always in the air. Old men were usually playing cards in front of little cafés—drinking, and sometimes shouting at one another. And children played in the middle of all this, pretending they were soldiers with sticks for guns.
“Do you have a nice place to live?” Malek asked.
“No. It’s just one room,” Hadi said, but he didn’t want to describe his empty, smelly apartment. He was sure that Malek’s family didn’t live in quite such degrading conditions.
“That’s what we have too,” Malek said. “Just one room.”
“For how many?”
Malek thought for a few seconds, as though he needed to count, and then he said, “Eight. The building isn’t too bad, really, but we’re very crowded.”
Hadi hadn’t expected that answer. Maybe things weren’t any better for Malek’s family than they were for Hadi’s. “How did you and your brothers get started with Kamal?” Hadi asked. Malek had told him before that he had two older brothers, and they were all doing the same work.
“Kamal lives in our neighborhood. He talked to my father one day and told him he would supply tissues for us to sell and give us good corners. He promised he would look out for us, make sure no one beat up on us or anything like that.”
“My father and I chose our own corners,” Hadi said. “It costs us four thousand a day to come over here, but we don’t have to pay anyone at the end of the day. And no one’s ever tried to take our places away… until now.”
“Kamal told us he’s taking control of all the intersections around here. He said that no one would dare go against him from now on.”
&n
bsp; When they came to the corner where Malek and Hadi separated each day, Hadi asked, “Do you have rats in your building, or leaking water, and things like that?”
“No. It’s not like that. But Baba is worried. He says that if we don’t bring home more money, we’ll have to look for something cheaper.”
“If he finds a job, can’t you—”
“He won’t find a job, Hadi. It’s just what he always says. I don’t think he even tries anymore. He’s not really an engineer. Not exactly. He worked for an engineer in Syria, and he did the things engineers do. But he didn’t go to college. And even if he had, no one would hire him here in Lebanon. He had a job when we first came here—a labor job—but he had an accident and he can’t do that kind of work anymore.”
The boys were standing in the half-light, cars buzzing past them, a draft of cold air whisking over them. The weather was taking another turn. Malek pulled his hood over his head, and then Hadi did too.
“When we got here last year, my father looked for engineering jobs and a man told him that he didn’t need engineers, but he would hire him to lay concrete blocks on a big building project. He did that for a few months and I was able to go to school. But then a worker dropped a block on my father’s hand and broke some of the bones. His hand is still bad, and no one will hire him to lay blocks now. The man he worked for just said, ‘I need men with two hands. I can’t keep a man on the job who can’t do the work.’ ”
Hadi had heard stories like that before. There was no protection for people who worked for cash. And they couldn’t afford to get good medical care.
“My father’s frustrated, and he takes it out on my brothers and me,” Hadi said. “He’s angry every day no matter how much we bring home. He listens to Kamal, who tells him that we aren’t working hard enough. Especially me. My father curses me. Tells me I’m worthless.” Malek looked down at the sidewalk, and Hadi knew he was trying to get control of his emotions. “I wasn’t going to tell you any of this stuff, but… I guess things are pretty bad for you, too.”
