by Rawi Hage
Suddenly the snow outside my window looked appealing. I could go up the mountain, I thought, and lick the white snow to soothe my burning tongue. And while I was at it, I could sniff the yellow traces on the white snow from obedient dogs that are always well-fed.
The food was too hot for me, but it was food — I couldn’t throw it away. I left it on the counter, but not even the roaches, with their massive egalitarian appetites, would approach it. Eventually I thought: What if I dilute it with water and make a soup out of it? Now, there’s an idea. I filled a casserole dish with water, let it boil, and splashed the food into it. The mixture boiled for a while. I let it cool down and then tried to eat it. It was better, so long as I didn’t drink the liquid.
Damn it! I had forgotten to put the socks in the bed again. Well, I thought, what if I boiled the socks and made soup? After all, they smell like blue cheese. Ha ha ha! I started to laugh and I could not stop — something came over me and tears sprang to my eyes again, this time from laughter. I should gather them in little spice bottles, I thought, and label them: tears from laughter, tears from spicy food, tears from pain, tears from nostalgic memories, tears from broken hearts, tears from poverty. The ancient Phoenicians did it. They gathered their tears and buried them underground. Their whole kingdom floated above small glasses of tears before their boats hit the seas. I wondered why all cultures demand tears. The industry of tears! Tears must be seen then buried. Even Genevieve wanted my tears! When a young unmarried man dies back home, the people dance around the coffin singing wedding songs, and that always seems to bring on a lot of tears. Rasha, the first woman I knew, flooded me with tears the first time we slept together. At the time I didn’t know what kind of tears those were. I didn’t ask. We met in my building’s shelter. I kissed her and moved my hips with a charged rhythm. She clung to my hair, and sobbed. Now I know that those were love tears. And now I know that when Tony came back and dragged my sister down the street by her hair, and she left a trail of tears, those were pain tears.
Later that day, I took the bowl back to my neighbour downstairs. The man was gone, but his wife opened the door. She giggled and avoided looking me in the eyes. I gave the bowl to her and thanked her, bowing, looking at her all the time, and she giggled and shoved her son behind the door. I hope you like?
Yes, yes, I said, it went down smooth as soup.
ON FRIDAY I WALKED to work, and as usual I stopped at the Artista Café to sniff around and see which of the landed refugees had left a yellow trace at the edge of a seat, on the leg of a table, or at the counter, but none of those welfare dogs was there. Maybe when they smell my scent, they disappear. I’m not sure why I still show up where I’m unwelcome, but it has become a habit of mine to choose unwelcoming places. I find it charming, the refugees’ confusions and complaints. Their overt pride in spite of their destitution amuses me. I find it endearing. Lost mutts! They don’t know what colour they are. They can’t decide what breed they belong to. They sit in their own mess, feeling repulsed by their urine. They sprinkle traces of their lives here and there for no reason except to have the illusion of marking territory and holding on to vanishing places. Miserable dogs! All they can do is howl about the past, and their howls are lost between taxi fumes and their own shrinking cigarettes. Which reminds me: I must pay the professor a visit sometime this week.
I continued walking down St-Laurent. I passed the taxi stand at the corner of Prince-Arthur and St-Laurent, right next to a green bank. There I recognized the man who had been sitting at Shohreh’s table the night I visited the nightclub. He was smoking in the cold with a few other taxi drivers while their cars idled, little streams of exhaust fuming from their tailpipes. The man did not recognize me, but then again, I had my scarf around my mouth like a thief. I went straight towards the men and asked for the time. One of them slowly pulled his wrist out of his sleeve and said it was two-thirty. I still had a little time before I had to show up at work, so I crossed the street to watch Shohreh’s man. After finishing a cigarette, each driver went back to his car. The man’s car was third in the taxi line. I knocked at his window and he slowly opened it. I uncovered my face and said: I know you.
The man did not say a word. He looked hard in my eyes, shook his head, and said, I do not know you. Iranian?
No, I am a friend of Shohreh’s.
Which Shohreh? he asked. I know a couple.
Shohreh Sherazy.
He nodded.
I saw you at the nightclub last week, I said.
Yes, I was there. Still, I do not remember you.
It was a little dark, a little loud.
Yes, very noisy, he laughed.
Are you a relative of Shohreh’s? I asked, blowing breath onto my fingers like a cold God creating the world, rubbing my hands like a happy thief, sticking my neck into my shoulders like a turtle, sniffing like a junkie, shivering like a ghost, inquiring like a Spanish inquisitor dreaming of a flamenco dancer to warm my heart.
Come inside the car if you are cold, the man said.
I hopped into the front seat and introduced myself.
The man nodded his head but did not tell me his name.
Well, I said, I just wanted to meet you, because we did not have the chance to be introduced that night.
He smiled, and said, So, you are a friend of Shohreh’s. What kind of friend?
A close friend.
He smiled, and said, Yes, Shohreh has many friends.
You’ve known her for a long time, I said.
Yes, she was this big. He lowered his hand towards the floor of the car.
In Iran?
Yes. I was a friend of her family. I knew her uncle. We were jailed together.
Mullahs?
No, no, before that. The Shah. The mullahs jailed us afterwards. He laughed. We were tortured by both of them. I survived and . . . He paused.
Her uncle?
Her uncle. He shook his head. Disappeared. What do you do? he asked me.
I am working at a restaurant now. You know how it is, I said.
Oh yes. I was a journalist myself. Now I am a taxi driver. He laughed again.
You can still be a journalist.
No, I do not bother anymore. Now I am a taxi driver. That is what I am. Listen, let me tell you the story of the great Persian poet Farid al-Attar. He was captured by the Mongols. One day someone came and offered to his captors a thousand pieces of silver for Attar. Attar protested and told the Mongol not to sell him for that price since the price was not right. The Mongol was convinced and did not sell him. Later another buyer came along and offered to purchase Attar for a sack of straw. Attar counselled the Mongol to sell him because that is what he was truly worth. The Mongol cut off Attar’s head. What do you do at the restaurant?
Busboy. Which reminds me, I am going to be late, I said. What is your name? I asked.
Majeed.
I gave him my hand to shake. Then I continued my walk to work. The ground was frozen bumps of ice. Slippery glass. Thick and transparent. My fucking shoes, however, were totally flat on the bottom. No grip left on the soles, and in any case the soles were smooth to begin with, which made them even more slippery. Walking over the bumps of glassy ice, I extended my arms like an airplane passing above a circus juggler walking a rope in ballerina shoes while below him elephants worked for peanuts and monkeys clapped.
I passed a woman bundled up all the way to her eyes. Only her eyes were showing. I grabbed her hand. She stopped. I said: I recognize you, shifty green eyes!
The woman looked at me. She was cold and shivering and fog fumed from her throat.
We met a while ago, under unfortunate circumstances, I said to her.
The woman pulled her scarf down and when I saw her lips, I knew for sure that she was the woman at the institution. How unusual to see her so willingly bundled up. She had always been so eager to take off her clothes. She had been chased by nurses through corridors and had always ended up in my room, sitting on my bed, buck-naked, her eye
s shifting with an empty glaze.
She looked hard at me now, but did not recognize me.
I was in that place with you, I said.
Yes, she said, and I saw that she knew what I was talking about.
You sat on my bed. You would always run away and end up on my bed, I said, and my hand squeezed hers.
She looked in my eyes, not saying anything for a moment, and then she smiled and said, Maybe it was because you had these mischievous beautiful eyes.
Maybe it was because I was the quietest, I said.
Or the sweetest. Where are you going? she asked.
Work. You?
Work.
You are better? I asked.
Yes, with six pills a day and consultations three times a month. She laughed. I have to go. Come by sometime. I work in the clothing store at the corner of St-Laurent and Duluth. Come by and see me sometime, and she held my arm and kissed me on the cheek.
I WORKED THROUGH THE evening as usual, and the morning of the next day I passed by the Artista Café again and peered through its large front window. The professor was there, reading the newspaper. Bouncing with happiness and anticipation, I walked past the café and rushed towards his house. I was so excited that I ran through red lights, was cursed by taxi drivers, and rode the batches of slippery snow like a carefree surfer on a beach.
The professor lived in an even smaller place than mine. Basement houses are easy to break into — a stroll, really. Easy prey. The entrance to the professor’s semi-basement apartment was dark and smelly. Inside, his bulky old fridge hummed like a time machine. I did not even need to open it. I know his kind. Even a cow would have stopped and covered her tits if she knew that her most valuable secretions would be forgotten here to stink and grow into a different species. But outside the fridge, everything was perfectly in place. Even the newspapers that the professor usually steals from the café were stacked in chronological order. It was a simple place, with a teapot on the stove of the professor’s pseudo-kitchen, a small closet, his two pairs of summer shoes neatly placed side by side, looking like two missing persons beamed up into a spaceship.
I started laughing, and was soon laughing hysterically. I found it funny that the professor’s place looked like a neat Oxford student’s room. His pencils on his little table were sharpened and aligned. There was no TV. I looked for a radio, and when I found it, I mischievously changed the dial. That would throw off his routine. I imagined him coming home and hanging his coat in his usual place, turning on his radio to hear the news in French, and then mumbling to himself and complaining about the world. But, ha ha! his world was going to change. A new house order, my friend! I chose a hard-rock station and turned on the radio and blasted the volume. His drawers held a bunch of knick-knacks, objects he must have kept from his stay in Paris — a Paris subway map, a few postcards he had received from an old acquaintance, a woman by the name of Lydia, who must have visited Provence and walked through the romantic streets with their old stores, colourful windows, and the wooden doors of French cafés. This must have been the professor’s grand amour. Then I found a wealth of correspondence. A treasure! I stole some of his letters, thinking that later I would sit on my bed and smoke a joint and read his love life and I would get even higher with the smell of ink and the faint scent of her fingers’ residue in every line. In the professor’s closet I found an old green suitcase that provoked in me images of departing trains, trench coats, and a beautiful woman in a head scarf and pointy shoes waiting on a platform. I opened it in no time. The locks, almost rusty, sprang upward like eyes opening from a bad dream. Inside, papers and envelopes were organized in bundles, bound tight with thin strings that joined in bows at the top. Under each knot there was a piece of paper with a label. I chose the one on top: “Immigration” said the label. I untied the bundle. The first manila envelope contained the professor’s Algerian passport, thick and green. In his photo he looked like an intellectual revolutionary, although his long sideburns also made him look like a sixties-era Third World lady-tourist-chaser.
The second envelope had a word written on it: “Torture.” It contained a few X-rays, an official letter of amnesty addressed to the professor, and other documents in Arabic. The other bundles contained photographs and bank documents, and the very last one had newspaper clippings.
I closed the suitcase, put it back on the shelf, and walked into the bedroom. I slipped my hand under his mattress and found a couple of Playboy magazines. I opened these, and found some of the pages stuck together like glue. Masturbator! I shouted, and jerked my head boisterously to the music of the rock band on the radio. I put the magazines back and went straight to the professor’s bathroom, washed my hands, and looked in his cupboard. I beheld yellow plastic single-blade razors, Aspirin, and a few prescriptions. Then I went back to the bedroom and slipped my hand under the bed again, pulled out the magazines, tore out a few of the clean pages of naked women, folded them into my pocket, and slipped back outside. I walked away, my hand seeking warmth and swirling and fumbling what had happened to fall into my pocket.
THAT NIGHT AFTER WORK I slept with the photographs of naked women, photos that I drew from my pocket like a magician who draws birds from his hat to hand to his beautiful assistant, who, no matter how many times the magician tries to saw her inside his magic box, always comes up intact, in one piece, happily smiling on the stage, under the light. Applause, applause! But I, unlike that sloppy professor, made sure that none of the scum that squirted under my quilt touched the glossiness of the pages or those X-rated bodies.
How crazy it was, I thought, that even when the beautiful lady sat on my bed at the hospital, all I wanted to do was to cover her with my quilt and dry her wet hair with the cotton sheets that softened the harsh metal beds. It must have been the deflated neon light that made everything flat and shadowless in that lunatics’ house. And it must be the harsh lights and dramatic shadows in these photographs that make me agitated, make me rattle and shake with images of slimy snakes wrapped in my hand, and then make me repulsed by what splashes and stains the inside of my bed.
I stood up and walked straight to the bathroom and washed. Then I wrapped myself in a purple towel and faced the day. I pulled open the curtains and waited for the harsh theatre light to blind me onstage while I waved and bowed to the cheers and the applause of the ghosts of an audience, but to my surprise, a soft, even light diffused and flattened the mountains in the distance and the grey streets below my window. There was no shadow to be seen in the world today. I thought, It is the perfect day to go and see that woman from the hospital again. I will ask her to come outside and sit on a bench, and to hum if she doesn’t feel like talking, and to sway back and forth if she is cold, and to let her hair get wet from the snow.
The woman smiled when she saw me entering the store. I knew you would come today, she said.
How did you know?
I saw you.
Where?
She pointed at her forehead. And I kind of remembered your bed in the mental hospital. You are the one who thought that you were a bird.
No, I protested, not a bird. I’ve never flown. I’m always walking on the ground. No illusion of flying. I stick to the ground.
I walked around the store. The woman was alone, and well-dressed. She followed me. The store had very little merchandise and all of it was expensive. Everything was hung on a few racks and the store had a feeling of emptiness.
You are surrounded by clothing, I said, laughing.
Yes, she said, and she laughed in turn.
I thought you hated clothes.
I do, she said, and we both laughed again.
Heavy and oppressive, isn’t it? Tissues and rags?
The woman nodded and looked me straight in the eyes, smiling.
Like gravity, like the sun, I said.
She nodded. Then she held my hand and said, Do not swallow, do not take it.
The sun? I asked.
No, those little colourful things that
they will offer you when they come near you wearing white aprons.
The pills?
Yes. Never take them. They will transform you into what you are not. They will make you fat, and sick, and green like vegetables, and yellow like the sun. And if you complain they will just pull something off the rack with a designer’s name on it and give you another size, another colour to try, and that will make you happy and slow, and you will believe that you don’t exist unless you look at yourself in a mirror. You will disappear, and the only thing you will be able to see is your clothes.
I have to go, I said. The underground is waiting for me.
Come back sometime, in any way or as any creature, she said, as I passed through the door and back into the blue city.
THAT EVENING, MY BOSS asked me to clean his car. Clear out all the papers that are inside, and take a cloth and wipe the dashboard, he said to me. He hates to see an employee standing around doing nothing. He is a real pain in the ass. So now, when the restaurant is not busy, I dry the dishes three times, arrange and rearrange them, mop the clean floor, flush the toilet and clean out its bowl, or hold the broom and swing it across the floor, singing Italian tunes in my head. One night there was blowing snow outside and he came over to me and with his low, menacing voice asked me to clean the windows on the outside. I did not see the point really, in the middle of a storm, but I did it. Then two customers showed up and he left me alone.
Usually his teenage daughter showed up and stayed at the place until around six. Then her mother would come by in the family van and pick her up. When it was safe and no one was looking, I rolled my eyes at her, or even winked, and once I wiggled my backside at her. She loved it. She liked the attention. This evening I was in the basement, arranging the napkins and filling sauce bottles, when I saw her coming down the stairs. She went straight to the bathroom and stayed in there for a while. When she came out of the bathroom, the light from the lamp in the corridor illuminated her face and gave her a dramatic shadow, making her look older. I was on the dark side of the corridor where the dim rays of the flickering fluorescent light were blocked by the metal fridge. She did not notice me. I saw her adjusting her pants, and then she slipped her hand quickly below her blouse to her breasts and adjusted her bra. I froze in the corner, curled up and hunched, and watched. She stopped and stepped back, away from the stairs. Then she quickly turned and went back to the bathroom and locked the door.
