by Rawi Hage
Shohreh laughed and exclaimed, Boyfriend? Boyfriend! And she laughed even louder. Farhoud! she called to the man in black. This guy thinks you are my boyfriend.
Farhoud smirked and walked towards us. He put his arm around my shoulder. Actually, I am looking for a boyfriend myself, he gently whispered, and swung his hips. The drink in his hand took on the shape and the glow of a lollipop. Shohreh laughed and tossed her hair and walked away.
All night I followed Shohreh; I stalked her like a wolf. When she entered the bathroom, I glued my ear to its door, hoping to hear her eleven-percent-alcohol urine plunging free-fall from between her secretive, tender thighs. Oh, how I sighed at the cascading sound of liquid against the porcelain-clear pool of the city waters. Oh, how I marvelled, and imagined all the precious flows that would swirl through warm and vaporous tunnels under this glaciered city. It is the fluid generosity of creatures like Shohreh that keep the ground beneath us warm. I imagined the beauty of the line making its way through the shades of the underground, golden and distinct, straight and flexible, discharged and embraced, revealing all that a body had once invited, kept, transformed, and released, like a child’s kite with a string, like a baby’s umbilical cord. Ah! That day I saw salvation, rebirth, and golden threads of celebration everywhere.
I asked Shohreh for her number. I won’t give it to you, she said, but I don’t mind if you put in an effort and get it on your own. It is more romantic that way, don’t you think? As she danced she looked at me, and sometimes she smiled at me and other times she ignored me. I could tell how flattered she was by my look of despair. She knew perfectly well that I was willing to crawl under her feet like an insect, dance like a chained bear in a street market, applaud like a seal on a stool, nod like a miniature plastic dog on the dashboard of an immigrant cab driver. I wanted so much to be the one to swing her around the dance floor. I wanted to be the one who dipped her and took in the scent of her breasts flooding over her black lace bra.
For days after the party, I begged that asshole Reza to give me Shohreh’s number. He refused. That selfish, shady exile would only say, in his drooling accent, You are not serious about her. You only want to sleep with her. She is not that kind of girl, she is Iranian. She is like a sister, and I have to protect her from dirty Arabs like you.
But, Reza, maestro, I said, sisters also fuck, sisters have needs, too.
This upset him and he cursed, Wa Allah alaazim. I will prevent you from meeting her again!
But I did meet Shohreh again. I got her number from Farhoud, the dancer. One day I saw him walking down the street, bouncing happily, trotting like Bambi. I had a large scarf around my face that day, and I flew across the street and stood in front of him, my hands on my hips like Batman. Farhoud recognized me right away, through my mask and all. He pulled down my scarf and kissed me on the cheeks and laughed like little Robin. Right away I told him that I was in love with Shohreh and needed her number.
I will have to ask her first, he said, and his hands gestured in sync with his fluttering eyelashes. But she is not the in-love type, my love, he added.
Give me her number and I will love you forever, I promised him. I put my arm around his shoulder and gave him a kiss on the forehead.
He laughed. You are so bad! he exclaimed, and pulled a pen with a teddy bear’s head from his purse and wrote out both his and her numbers.
NOW I SEARCHED Reza’s room for money, food, hash, coke — anything I could get from the bastard. I opened his drawers, sniffed under his bed, reached under the dresser and scanned with my finger for the small plastic bags he usually tapes there, upside down. I would have settled for a bus ticket — anything to get back what he owed me. But there was nothing. That impoverished restaurant musician blows everything up his nose.
I shouted to Matild, but she did not answer me. I went to her room. She was lying in bed, half-naked, reading un livre de poche, smoke rising from behind its pages. She felt my heavy breathing and my eyes sliding over her smooth shaved thighs. From behind a scene in the book, she whispered, I thought we agrrrreed that you would not enterrrr herrrre.
Will you call me if you hear from Reza?
Matild puffed and did not answer.
It is important.
D’accord. I will call you. Leave now. Pleeeezzzz.
I walked to the apartment door, opened it and closed it loudly, then snuck back inside to the kitchen and opened the fridge slowly. I grabbed whatever I could — food and sweets — and then I left for good, shuffling home through the high snow.
At home in my kitchen, the cockroaches smelled the loot in my hand and began to salivate like little dogs. I moved to the bedroom, away from their envious eyes, and sat on my bed and made myself a sandwich. Now, I thought, I have to get some money before the end of the month, before I starve to death in this shithole of an apartment, in this cold world, in this city with its case of chronic snow. The windows whistled and freezing air drifted through cracks; it was a shithole of a rundown place I lived in, if you ask me. But what was the difference? Nothing much had changed in my life since the time I was born. At least now I lived alone, not crowded in one small bedroom with a sister, a snoring father, and a neurotic mother who jumped up in the night to ask if you were hungry, thirsty, needed to go to the bathroom (or if you were asleep, for that matter). I was no longer in the same room as a teenage sister coming of age, dreaming of Arabs with guns, ducking her left hand under the quilt, spookily eyeing the void, biting her lip, and rotating her index finger as if it were the spinning reel of a movie projector beaming sexual fantasies on the bedroom wall. And here comes the cheering, like that of the men in the old Cinema Lucy, where clandestine dirty movies quickly appeared and disappeared between clips of the Second World War, Italian soap operas, cowboys and Indians bouncing on wild horses. Cinema Lucy, with its stained chairs glowing and fading with semen, and its agitated men dispersed across the floor in the company of their handkerchiefs, which they held in their arms like Friday-night dates. Like guerrillas at night, these men waited impatiently for the porn clips to appear between the irrelevant worlds of the main features, circuses of jumping mammals and falling buffoons, fantasies of high seas and sunsets that faded and darkened into invading European armies stomping high boots over burned hills and cobbled squares, frozen at the sight of a few saluting generals and their fat-ankled women.
Inside Lucy we sat and waited for flesh to appear on the screen. We were like angels. And then, when the older men became afraid that too much time had passed or was being wasted on the projection of old memories, wars, and aging stars, they shouted and banged on the bottoms of the old chairs: Attcheh (a porn cut) Abou-Khallil! Attcheh, Abou-Khallil! And succumbing to the pressure of the drumming palms, a bosom would swell on the screen, the back of a head would veil a voluptuous thigh, and some of the men would stand up, cheer, and whistle until the swelling in their pants burst their zippers open, and their shoulders tilted forward like the silhouettes of fishermen against crooked horizons scooping fish by the light of a sinking sun, and they blasted their handkerchiefs with the bangs of expelled bullets, wounding their pride, and finally folding up images of past lovers and their own unsatisfied wives.
A joint will warm my bones, I thought, or at least numb my brain just enough so that I won’t feel my misery and the cold. I slipped inside my closet and reached for the secret hole beside the top shelf. I arrange my cupboards precisely: the towels and sheets on the bottom shelf, the untouchables like opium and dreams on the top. I pulled out a plastic film canister and the thin white papers that went with it. Only a small amount of hash was left — a small ball, enough for one thin roll to lift me up like a rope and swing me down into a calm descent. I cut it and tried to roll it, but my fingers were cold and, as usual, shaky. Besides, I had no tobacco to mix with the stuff. Cigarettes are bad for one’s health, I consoled myself.
I lay in bed and let the smoke enter me undiluted. I let it grow me wings and many legs. Soon I stood barefoot, looking
for my six pairs of slippers. I looked in the mirror, and I searched again for my slippers. In the mirror I saw my face, my long jaw, my whiskers slicing through the smoke around me. I saw many naked feet moving. I rushed to close the window and draw the curtains. Then I went back to bed, buried my face in the sheets, and pulled the pillow and covers over my head. I closed my eyes and thought about my dilemma.
My welfare cheque was ten days away. I was out of dope. My kitchen had only rice and leftovers and crawling insects that would outlive me on Doomsday. I was lucky to have that bag of basmati rice and those few vegetarian leftovers from Mary the Buddhist’s party.
Where there is music there is food, I say! A few nights ago around seven, after the sun had left to play, I heard shoeless feet pressing against my ceiling from the floor above me, little toes crawling under the brouhaha of guests and the faint start of a jam session that sounded both menacing and promising. The drums were calling me.
I cracked my door open and I saw feet ascending to my neighbour’s place. Mary? I thought. Yes, that was her name. I remembered once meeting her down in the basement. She complained about the absence of recycling bins. Or was it compost? In any case, she wanted to fill the earth with dust from the refuse of vegetables, and she had a strange kind of theory about reincarnation. One look at her guests and I knew what kind of party it would be — one look at the braids, the drums, the agonized Rasta lumps of hair on bleached heads, the pierced ears and noses that would make any bull owner very proud, and I knew. What to wear, was the question. A bedsheet wrapped around my waist and nothing else? Or my pyjamas? Yes, yes! Everyone in the southern hemisphere fetches the newspaper at daybreak in pyjamas fluttering above flat slippers and vaporous feet, everyone drinks coffee on dusty sidewalks, their wrinkled morning faces staring out from between the fenders of bedridden cars. But I decided not to overdo it. The exotic has to be modified here — not too authentic, not too spicy or too smelly, just enough of it to remind others of a fantasy elsewhere. In the end, I kept my jeans on and took off my shoes and left my socks in my room to air a bit more, and I climbed barefoot through the walls.
Mary was welcoming. A peaceful smile wafted my way. I wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the ever-burning incense in the room or maybe the effect of the hallucinatory fumes that I myself had been pumping through the years, into her walls.
I had helped myself to food at her party while everyone else sat on the floor with folded legs, eating. I could hear their chewing, like an incantation, as they floated on Indian pillows, the humming inside their throats synced to the sound of Mary’s old fridge and the cycles of the world.
I despised how those pale-faced vegans held their little spoons, humbling themselves. Who do they think they are fooling, those bleached Brahmins? We all know that their low-sitting is just another passage in their short lives. In the end, they will get bigger spoons and dig up the earth for their fathers’ and mothers’ inheritances. But it is I! I, and the likes of me, who will be eating nature’s refuse under dying trees. I! I, and the likes of me, who will wait for the wind to shake the branches and drop us fruit. Filth, make-believers, comedians on a Greek stage! Those Buddhists will eventually float down, take off their colourful, exotic costumes, and wear their fathers’ three-piece suits. But I will still recognize them through their strands of greying hair. I will envy them when they are perched like monarchs on chairs, shamelessly having their black shoes shined, high above crouched men with black nails feathering and swinging horsehair brushes across their corporate ankles. At the tap of the shoeshiners, the Brahmins will fold their newspapers, stand up and fix their ties, scoop out their pockets for change, and toss a few coins in the air to the workingmen below. And they will step onto ascending elevators, give firm handshakes, receive pats on their backs, smooth their hair in the tinted glass of high-rises. Their radiant shoes will shine like mirrors and their light steps will echo in company corridors to murmurs of, “See you at the barbecue, and give my regards to your lovely spouse.” No, none of these imposters was chanting to escape incarnation; they all wanted to come back to the same packed kitchens, to the same large houses, the same high beds, the same covers to hide under again and again.
I was out of toilet paper, but who cared? I always washed after defecating. Though I must admit, during the water shortages in wartime in that place where I come from, there were periods when I did not wash for a long time. You could hardly brush your teeth. Oh, how I once gave priority to that which was most visible — I would wash my face, and deprive everything else, with the little water I had. Every drop of water that ran through the drain inspired me to follow it, gather it, and use it again. As a kid, I was fascinated by drains. I’m not sure if it was the smell, or the noises and echoes that were unexpectedly released after the water was gobbled, or if it was simply the possibility of escape to a place where the refuse of stained faces, infamous hands, dirty feet, and deep purple gums gathered in a large pool for slum kids to swim, splash, and play in.
I got up and went to the window and opened the curtains. The burning coal on top of my joint shone, lustrous and silvery, against the backdrop of Mount Royal. There was a large metal cross right on the top of the mountain. I held out the joint vertically, stretched my hand against the window, and aligned the burning fire on the tip of it to the middle of the cross. I watched its plume ascend like burning hair. The smoke reminded me that it was time to escape this permanent whiteness, the eternal humming of the fluorescent light in the hallway, the ticking of the kitchen clock, and my constant breath — yes, my own breath that fogged the glass and blurred the outside world with a coat of sighs and sadness as the vapour from my tears moistened the window. My own breath was obstructing my view of the world!
I reminded myself that I can escape anything. I am a master of escape (unlike those trapped and recurring pink Buddhists). As a kid, I escaped when my mother cried, when my father unbuckled his belt, when my teacher lifted the ruler high above my little palm. I disappeared as the falling blows glowed across my hands like thunder across landscapes of lifelines — long journeys, and travellers’ palms. I watched the teacher’s ruler as if it wasn’t me who was receiving those lashes across fingers extended like noontide red above beaches lit by many suns. I alternated my six cockroach hands and distributed the pain of those blows. And when my palms burned and ached, I fanned my cockroach wings. I let the air cool off my swollen hands as I stood in the corner, my face and a tender belly to the wall.
But I escaped most when I stole sweets, pens, chewing gum, and, later on, cameras and cars. Primitive and uneducated as I was, I instinctively felt trapped in the cruel and insane world saturated with humans. I loathed the grown-ups who were always hovering above me and looking down on me. They, of course, ruled the heights: they could reach the chandelier, the top of the fridge; they could rumple my hair anytime they pleased. But I was the master of the underground. I crawled under beds, camped under tables; I was even the kind of kid who would crawl under the car to retrieve the ball, rescue the stranded cat, find the coins under the fridge.
When I was a teenager I met my mentor Abou-Roro, the neighbourhood thief. He realized I had the capacity to slip through anything. To help me reach the heights, he would fuse together his fingers and I would step on his locked and open palms, and he would lift me up to small windows that only vermin can go through. Once I was inside a house, a church, or a school, I would go straight for the valuables. I stole them all. You name it and I stole it. I crawled through windows and holes and gathered silver sets, crosses, change, watches. I even took my time to nibble leftovers and kitchen-counter crumbs.
The underground, my friend, is a world of its own. Other humans gaze at the sky, but I say unto you, the only way through the world is to pass through the underground.
OVER THE NEXT FEW days I called Reza’s place in vain. I banged on every door at every place I thought he might be, with rhythms that he himself could never replicate — a few tat-a-tats here and there. Once I e
ven experimented with a bouwang! and a bou-doum! But I could not find him. Forty dollars he owed me. Just imagine the soap I could buy, the rice, the yards of toilet paper I could line up, use to sweep the counter, mark territory and divide nations, fly like kites, dry tears, jam in the underground pipes and let everything subterranean rise to the surface. I would share it and cut it and divide it among the nation’s poor, fair and square. You name it, I would do it!
Reza, that charming compulsive liar, was a master charlatan who for years had managed to couch-surf in women’s houses, bewitching his hosts with his exotic tunes and stories of suffering and exile. His best and favourite story was how he almost lost all his fingers performing for the Ayatollah Khomeini. He usually told this story in bars after some fusion gig with an Anglo with an electric guitar or a Caucasian Rasta with a drum. He would tell the women gathered around him at the table how he was afraid and nervous when he was asked by the Iranian Hezbollah, the Guards of God, not to play anything subversive for the holy man, meaning no fast or non-religious tunes. Then, when he was finally pushed behind the door where the great leader of the Iranian revolution was sitting, he was so nervous that he forgot to kiss the great mullah’s hand, and even forgot to bow and murmur Al-salaam alaikum, which made the guards angry. He would relate how he’d sat on the floor tuning his instrument while sweat dripped down his spine, but once he started playing, he was transported (true to his art, to the artist that he was!). He forgot himself and played faster and faster. And here Reza would usually pause to gauge the women’s reactions and keep them in suspense, until one of them would ask: And then what happened? (And the woman who asked this was usually the one who would invite Reza to sleep over that night.)
