Glass Collector

by Anna Perera

  If Lijah came round the corner on the pony and cart right now and said, “That’s it for today,” Aaron would forgive him for this morning; he’s so eager to get away from here and home to Mokattam. But for this to happen, the bag under Aaron’s arm will have to be filled and tied fast, and at this rate the sun will be going down before he gets across the road.

  In the road, cars suddenly stop. One car in front has braked hard to avoid a flea-bitten dog that appears desperate to get killed. The dog wags its tail and wanders off, leaving behind brakes jamming, horns blaring.

  It’s the moment Aaron’s been waiting for. With a quick leap, he grabs a red elastic band from the gutter and slips it on his wrist before diving between the slowing cars. He plunges awkwardly through the sound of horns, cackling radios and yelling drivers. He can see the dog a few paces ahead. Everyone dashes past him now as a man in uniform takes the center of the road, holds up a hand, and nods the traffic to stop.

  Aaron ducks away from the screeching, chaotic cars, but the stench of exhaust fumes follows him when he reaches the dark silence of the alley beside the hotel.

  His eyes take a second to adjust to the blackness and he catches his breath. A foul chemical smell greets him as he scans the piles of rubbish. A smell that suggests detergents have recently been sprayed here to disguise the filth.

  There’s tons of stuff here, more than he’s seen in ages. Glass glints from piles of rotting noodles, chicken carcasses, paper serviettes, plastic containers, newspapers, tea bags, stale bread, and threadbare blue towels.

  There’s twice the usual amount of wine bottles, beer bottles, and broken glasses here, which means there was a big event at the hotel yesterday. Aaron’s heart sinks at the thought of cramming so much stuff into the last bag.

  A sick feeling rises in his throat, as if water that’s gone down the wrong way is coming back up. Aaron blinks the rubbish away and eyes a small blue chair lying on its side. Great. But then he looks again: It has only three legs, the seat’s split, and the side is cracked. It’s no use to him. He rarely finds anything good in this hotel alley. The workers who tip out the rubbish take first pickings.

  There may not be a vision of Mary here to help him but there is a way of touching broken glass, a way of picking up the sharp lids and bottles so you don’t cut yourself, and Aaron’s an expert. There’s a slip of light glancing from a green bottle and for a while he forgets himself. It’s no longer glass, not solid or smooth or real but just a feeling—a tickling feeling, like a feather landing in the palm of his hand.

  He knows stuff about glass that no one else knows and he’s only fifteen. Plus he knows other stuff too; stuff about what happens to light when you hold glass up to the sunshine on the horizon. How you can shape dreams out of red and purple reflections. How a certain shade of blue glass can make you feel peaceful. Yeah, that’s right, peaceful inside and all over, when he … How can he explain? It’s a bit like the feeling he gets when he stares at water—any water—but especially the waters of the Nile, which aren’t even blue in this city anymore.

  Aaron sniffs before unfolding the warm, thick plastic bag, swiftly slapping it on his thigh and shaking it out until it fills with air. Then, despite his aching elbow, and with a deftness that only a glass collector knows, he begins to pluck out green stems, smashed jars, pale curving triangles, wine and soda bottles that glint like giant pearls from within the stinking rice, bread crusts, and plastic spoons.

  With the skill of a master pianist, Aaron waggles his fingers to pluck even the smallest bits of glass from the collapsing rubbish. It’s second nature, this fast, easy scooping, because the glass feels soft as gum and his touch is so light, the sharp edges barely skim his leathery skin.

  Aaron lets go of the wriggling tail of a disappearing rat and steps back to wipe his filthy hands on his filthy jeans. Rats are the worst part of the job and they’re out in force today. Perhaps it’s a good thing he’s no longer hungry, and anyway there aren’t any remains of pastries tempting him to eat. The rats have had the lot. It’s just as well, because many times he’s been ill after eating scraps from this waste pile.

  He’s supposed to clear everything, but there’s so much glass today, he can fill the whole bag with it and leave the rest of the garbage until next time. Yellow rice and red sauce stick fast to his grubby jeans, arms, and rolled-up, faded green shirt as he grabs at the glass. Thinking foul things about Lijah keeps him moving. Then, as if by magic, the moment Aaron tightens gray twine around the rim of the bag, he hears, “Whoa.” The pony responds by neighing weakly and Aaron can just make out Lijah’s shape blocking the light at the end of the alley. With a swift tug, Aaron plants the bag on his back and, shaking himself straight to gather his strength, hobbles out to join his stepbrother.

  The noisy traffic and piercing sunshine hit Aaron with full force as he swings the bag on to the cart, which is already crammed with bursting sacks. The glass tinkles and shatters further as it lands. Lijah doesn’t look around as Aaron tries several times to clamber up to join him. Of course he doesn’t mention what happened this morning. There’s no point in talking to Lijah about anything, but especially not at the end of the working day before he’s had anything to eat. Instead they sit in silence.

  As they perch side by side on the pony and cart, taking the waste home for recycling, a large grin breaks out on Aaron’s handsome face whenever he pictures Lijah dead. He knows it’s wrong to wish that on anyone, but he can’t help himself.

  The cars and taxis stream past, hardly noticing them. On they plod with a soft clip-clop that only they can hear, and inside Aaron’s head is a picture of himself taking a bottle of poison to his own lips and pretending it’s delicious so that Lijah becomes desperate to try it. So desperate that in the end he grabs the bottle and swallows the whole thing in one go, like he did with that carton of chocolate milk Aaron found in the doorway of the leather shop. Only the chocolate was safe to drink. It would be so easy to get hold of poison from one of the medical waste boxes waiting to be sorted at the other side of Mokattam. There are so many bottles of half-finished medicines there, his friend Jacob wouldn’t mind him taking one instead of emptying the dregs down the drain as usual.

  Yes, getting Lijah to drink poison would work nicely. The idea of him finishing himself off through his own stupidity is Aaron’s best yet. What could be easier? Aaron could honestly say he tried to stop him from drinking out of the bottle but Lijah had taken no notice of him. Like always.

  It might just work.

  Another big smile is about to break out on Aaron’s face when the flea-bitten dog he saw earlier jumps in front of a badly dented black-and-white taxi. In slow motion Aaron watches the taxi screech to a halt. The dog’s feeble body crumples from the impact, splaying on his side.

  “NO!” Without a thought, Aaron leaps from the cart, dodging a beaten-up brown car to get to him.

  “Come back, you idiot!” Lijah yells.

  Swiftly, Aaron falls to his knees to cradle the dog’s battered face in his arms. Luckily, he’s not badly hurt. The dog coughs with a gooey tongue and big teeth and wags his tail. Aaron helps him up, rubbing his hands quickly over his skinny, hot body to check for wounds. Then, leaning in to caress a ragged ear with the side of his face, he whispers, “Keep off the road. Stay on the pavement.”

  The dog bounces up, in the same way that Aaron had done this morning, without thinking. With an arm around his damp, hairy neck, Aaron gently guides him to safety while the taxi driver spits with anger.

  “You’re not going to live long if you do stupid things like that,” Lijah crows when Aaron climbs back on the cart.

  “Good,” Aaron says, and today he means it.

  Chapter Three

  Shareen

  The usual sounds of the foundry ring out to tell them they’re almost in Mokattam. The second shift of collectors, who start at midday and return at seven in the evening, left here an hour ago. Different families work different hours, but seven hours a day, ev
ery day of the year, the Zabbaleen are always on the streets of Cairo, picking up trash to recycle.

  Aaron and Lijah are struggling to stay awake as the pony turns toward the rows of glassless, roofless brick tenements that lead to the center of the village. This is Cairo’s dirty secret: a hidden village built into the side of an abandoned limestone quarry at the foot of the Mokattam Mountain.

  The noise of traffic dies away when they reach the oldest part of the village and pass under a high arch with dusty pillars leading to the tunnel of shops and stalls at the entrance to Mokattam. There are no visitors’ cars today. No crackling radios or TVs. The silence is the thing that Aaron likes about Mokattam—that, and the low brick wall beyond the church where he sits to look out at the pigeon coops on the buildings that stretch into the distance.

  The pony slows to a thirsty walk, head down, gray ears flopping forward. Turning into the alley with its overhanging tiles and dark doorways feels like turning into an underground canyon. Bags of garbage are piled high beside crumbling concrete walls and giant wooden doorways with Coptic crosses and faded pictures of Jesus.

  The pony moves slowly past the wooden sign of St. George and more shops—a foundry, shoe mender, greengrocer, barber, all with crosses over the doors. Plodding on past stalls that sell stickers of Mary, statues of the Holy Family, clocks, clay lamps, and candle holders.

  “Praise be to heaven,” a man says, and Aaron glances at the scraggy orange beetle above his head that his friend Jacob spray-painted on the wall last week when everyone was asleep.

  The village doesn’t look too bad, but by the time the pony reaches the end of the first row of shops and stalls, a forest of tumbling plastic bags and rivers of rotting, stinking filth greet them. Alley after alley of desperate hovels stretch out in every direction. This is where the men and boys bring home the day’s garbage and where the women and children shuffle through it for plastic, metal, glass, rags, paper: anything that can be sold for recycling. Some families stack the bags neatly against the walls, to make room for the next pile of rubbish to be sorted. Others haphazardly throw sacks on top of each other anyhow, before sitting on the uncleared remains of chicken bones, potato chip packets, broken toasters, and magazines, which spread from the houses to the street.

  As the pony clops around the last corner, eight-year-old Abe dives out from a dark gully with a gray ball in his hand. His eyes light up when he spots Aaron.

  “I’ve been waiting. Where have you been?”

  “We’re behind. Have to sort this first.” Aaron waves at the bags of garbage bundled high on the cart. “I’ll come when I’m done. Where’s your friend Simon?”

  “He’s not back yet.” Abe smiles. “Hurry up!”

  Lijah doesn’t bother to acknowledge him. Abe is considered weird for knowing everything there is to know about jellyfish. His mother keeps a black potbellied pig called Marris that she takes to church on a piece of string. No man will marry her because she won’t get rid of the pig. Perhaps that’s why she keeps it. Abe’s her only child and they struggle to survive.

  “Think of the bacon they could get from that stupid pig,” Lijah says. “What a waste.”

  The pony comes to an abrupt halt outside a two-story concrete building that’s covered in dirt. The middle of the downstairs room has no fourth wall and is open to the street. Backed up against the walls are the bags that have already been sorted, ready for the merchant Faisal to collect. He comes every thirteen to fifteen days and, with at least four to go until he arrives, the smell’s overwhelming.

  “You’re late!”

  Hosi appears from upstairs, a tin cup smelling of strong coffee in his bony hand. Eyes on the bags, Aaron’s stepfather counts them to check if they’ve done the whole round and not skipped off for an hour somewhere.

  “It’s his fault we’re late.” Lijah punches Aaron on the shoulder.

  “Ow! That hurt!” Aaron twists carefully down from the cart to protect his knee. “I hate you, Lijah!”

  “Yeah?” Lijah snarls, not daring to punch him again while he’s working. That would annoy Hosi, who insists the work’s done quickly and without interference because he wants it over with in the shortest possible time.

  Aaron pulls at bags, hurling them at the three sides of the building as if he’s throwing them at Lijah. The stabbing pain in his elbow isn’t enough to deaden the hatred inside and he continues in a fury until everything’s unloaded. With one bag already full of glass from the alley beside the Imperial Hotel, Aaron’s saved himself some work, but with sixteen bags spread out waiting to be sorted, a hollow feeling rises from the pit of his stomach.

  Lijah leads the pony it to the yard for a much-needed drink. The moment he’s gone, Aaron’s eldest stepbrother, Youssa, appears. He’s a sad creature who smells of beer and loves to sleep. He never goes out on the cart and spends his mornings helping one of the Zabbaleen to brew a local beer that’s sold by the cup to the desperate. With a whittled-down body and dead eyes, he nods at each of the fresh bags as if trying to count them. He usually does the minimom amount of work and then disappears back to his mat upstairs.

  Sometimes he doesn’t even eat the food Hosi prepares for the family. He’s not worth bothering with as far as Aaron’s concerned. Luckily, he’s quite harmless though, drunk or not. “At least it’s not drugs,” Hosi always says.

  As Aaron drags the first bag to the middle of the room and unties the twine, he becomes aware of yelling from the building next door.

  It’s Shareen making a fuss about something. She’s a radioactive force who drives everyone crazy with her need for attention, and her screeching now digs metal spikes into Aaron’s brain. At just sixteen, Shareen reimagines her life as a movie crammed with prize-winning scenes. With luscious, long, curly black hair, little hands and dainty feet, a tiny waist, and a pointy, oval face, she’s small and pretty, but her personality is larger than life. She can scream louder than anyone in Mokattam and even her father runs for the hills when she loses her temper. The only things that Aaron and Shareen have in common is the fact that both their mothers died when they were eleven and that she lives with her aging father in the same two-story, windowless slum as he does.

  Aaron tries hard to ignore the racket but can’t help swearing under his breath as he lugs bags to the middle of the room and empties trash out at their feet. It’s the same routine every day.

  Immediately, as they begin separating the garbage, Lijah gets into a fury. Sorting plastic is his job, and his heart pounds at the thought of the measly fifty piastres Faisal the merchant will pay for a kilo of it. Boiling with anger because the price will be marked up five times that when the merchant sells it to the manufacturer of blankets and other goods.

  Paper and cardboard are Hosi’s job and he goes into a trance when he’s sorting. He is bent over with age and his hands have so many lumps and bumps they look like the paws of a goblin. Metal is Youssa’s, but there’s rarely anything more than tin cans to be found, so his job is just a minor nuisance in a life of nuisances. He moves in slow motion, with a wet mouth that is always half open. Glass is Aaron’s responsibility here and he works hard. With clinks and rustles, sighs, and expert hands, he picks glass from the heap of garbage and flings it into a huge, empty bag behind him. Fierce eyes scan the decreasing pile for the items they want. Everyone bends and reaches, deeper and deeper, elbow-deep in filth and debris that smell like a sewer.

  As the bags are sorted, noodles, tea leaves, soiled nappies, computer cables, and paper fly everywhere, hitting walls, jeans, and arms. The clink of glass, clatter of metal, rustle of paper and plastic ring out like scurrying vermin. Once done, all that’s left is the rotting food, meat carcasses, and rags. Between them, in silence, they gather up the rags for the last bag before kicking the food remains to the center of the floor to send the rats running.

  Being the lowliest member of the family, Aaron has the job of finishing the day’s work by scrambling to pick up the last of the congealed mess—fish skins,
sticky rice, bones, meat, and vegetables—and take it to the pigs at the other end of Mokattam. Sometimes he borrows Shareen’s wheelbarrow. Sometimes they walk to the pig enclosure together if Shareen has nothing else to do. Sometimes, though, Shareen won’t lend the wheelbarrow unless he pays her, so Aaron has to fill more bags and haul them there on his back.

  Though Aaron can reasonably predict what Lijah will do next—Youssa too, and even miserable Hosi—it’s impossible to know how Shareen will react to a request to use her wheelbarrow. The sound of her idly moving a wooden spoon around a tin saucepan tells Aaron this isn’t a good time to ask. But he’s reluctant to wait. He’d rather get the food to the pigs now and eat his own meal later than the other way around, because then he can avoid eating with his stepfamily. Cocking an ear to the sounds coming from next door, Aaron realizes that at least Shareen’s no longer screaming.

  Gazing at her reflection in the mottled mirror on the wall, Shareen grabs a hank of damp, sticky hair from her neck and twists it into a bun before cooling herself by leaning back and letting it go. She pulls aside the cheap patterned green cloth that divides the room in two. On the floor are her mat and a pillowcase printed with a picture of a curvy belly dancer. She glances briefly at a poster of the Cairo International Stadium pinned on a box that serves as a table and, taking a precious tissue from a small packet, wipes her forehead.

  The moment she returns to stir the rice through a mess of steam, her thoughts switch from wondering what it must be like to be cheered by thousands for kicking a ball into the air to her dream of becoming the prettiest bride in the history of Mokattam. Whenever she flashes up a picture of herself dressed in gold shoes, a silk white dress, her luscious hair braided with red ribbons, it’s as if a ten-ton weight has suddenly been lifted from her head.