by Anna Perera
Aaron’s busy staring at the cracked mounds of earth in the corner where the perfume bottles are hidden and wants to see if there’s room to bury the four in his pockets. He doesn’t dare tell Jacob about them in case he tells the priest they’re stolen. Walls have ears in Mokattam.
Tiny beads of sweat break out on Aaron’s forehead the longer Jacob sits there.
When Michael, the shy artist, nods to them, patting limestone dust from his jeans as he passes by, Jacob calls out to him, “Are you coming to Shareen’s engagement party?” He can’t resist asking, even though he knows Michael never does anything but sculpt figures from halfway up a ladder.
“No. No.” Michael dismisses the question with a tired wave of his hand, as if the party is the last thing on his mind.
Aaron suddenly realizes he doesn’t know anything about Michael. Whether he has a wife. Where he lives. Things he’s never asked. But sometimes not knowing things feels good. Not knowing anything about him makes Michael seem more interesting.
Two minutes later, Jacob’s on his feet, walking in circles. He needs to get moving. He’s been sitting for too long.
“Catch you later,” he says, and runs off.
At last he’s alone. Aaron twists from the wall to the corner in a single movement, letting an arm slip to touch the bumpy ground. He glances at the open space beside the church. There’s no one there. Aaron quickly scoops out the earth until the feel of a deep crevice, then smooth glass tells him the bottles are still there. Peering into the small space, he thinks there might be room for a few more and pushes the first two back to make space for the new ones. Soon he’ll have enough to open his own perfume shop. He’ll be rich like Omar.
A sudden breeze ruffles the flowering bushes nearby. Aaron glances at the empty concrete benches and table, then at the frescoes on the limestone walls to either side of the church. For a moment it feels as if someone’s watching him. Someone who knows he’s a thief. The pale outline of a carving in the wall of Mary, Mother of God, stares back and Aaron shivers at the idea she saw him.
It’s then that he spots Shareen sitting in one of the open-air concrete pews, quietly crying her heart out, dabbing her eyes with a blue sleeve. Has she been here the whole time? He quickly covers the bottles with soil and walks over to the church, where she’s bent forward, leaning on her knees.
“Aren’t you supposed to be happy?” he asks.
“Would you be happy if you were going to your own engagement party in a second-hand dress?” she snarls.
What am I supposed to say to that?
“No, see … You don’t care,” Shareen sobs. “No one cares.”
Aaron silently agrees and, glancing back over his shoulder, guesses she didn’t see him burying the bottles or she would have mentioned it.
“I was sitting on the wall. How long have you been here?”
“I’ve been here since Daniel said that Seham—remember her? She was at school with us and got married last month. Seham wants to sell me her old engagement dress. Have you seen it? It’s brown.”
Glaring at him with blotchy eyes, she makes Aaron feel uncomfortable. He fidgets. Shareen’s got nothing better to do than sit around here feeling sorry for herself, while he has to avoid being punched and kicked by Lijah before scavenging the place for food, with no thanks from anyone. If he walks away she’ll accuse him of being mean, but if he stays she’ll find a way to make him even angrier. Whatever he does, he can’t win, and if he’s the tiniest bit shifty she’ll cotton on to the fact that he’s done something he shouldn’t have.
“Jacob had a vaccination after a needle got stuck in his arm,” Aaron says.
“And? And?” Shareen sniffs.
Suddenly it occurs to Aaron that she treats him like a heavy-duty garbage bag: somewhere safe to chuck her rubbish when there’s no one else around.
“Nothing,” he replies flatly. “See ya, then.”
He walks away. Behind him, he can hear the intake of several breaths that prove she’s amazed he’s just ignored her. Then she’s on her feet, following him down the wide walkway.
“My grandfather once had a flour mill,” she calls as Aaron quickens his step.
Ignoring her feels good, like the time he walked away from Lijah in the city center and turned down an alley he’d never been to before and came across a street parade with belly dancers, drums, and fiery torches. It felt as if he’d stumbled into a new world that was just waiting for him to arrive. But the moment the high walls and clean paths leading to the church are left behind, Aaron’s forced to slow down to sidestep the never-ending streams of garbage, and Shareen catches up. She hasn’t finished with him yet and folds her arms tight as she bolts past to stand in his way.
Aaron pauses to look at her. She seems more determined than ever to get his attention. The smell of filth settles between them as she eyes him with a new curiosity. Aaron’s happy about something and it puts her off balance. Immediately, she goes into attack mode.
“Rachel said you killed the pony.”
Chapter Ten
Hiding Place
A few minutes after five in the morning Aaron has persuaded the Mebaj brothers to give him another lift and he’s back on the cart, clopping into town with the sound of the morning call to prayer in his ears. It’s just getting light and the cart’s loaded with empty plastic bags but they’re not Aaron’s. The Mebajs don’t have room for his stepfamily’s garbage so his hands are empty as they rumble along the street, with blue-and-white tourist buses and cars building up on both sides.
Aaron’s mind returns to Shareen and what she said about Rachel. He hadn’t answered her. Hadn’t looked at her. Just walked away as if his body was moving forward on its own, her words circling him like snakes. And later, when he went to the yard, all he saw of Rachel was her disappearing home with a friend.
Not until Aaron’s off the cart and racing along the steaming streets of Cairo does his anger with Shareen start to die away. Hurtling across roads and down long streets leading to the city center, all the while he’s looking for anything out of the ordinary. Those café shutters aren’t fully down. The beggar doesn’t have his dog with him this morning. There’s a new white jacket in the window of the clothing store. On every street there’s a known face with a known past, yet Aaron doubts any of them have ever noticed him.
In his mind’s eye he can see himself rushing past a fountain, a convent, a dye factory, several shops and offices, hurrying to the one place that can make him feel better. Once upon a time they used to throw trash in the Nile. Old TVs, ovens, sacks of building rubble, even swords. It’s against the law to pollute the Nile, but many times Aaron has seen bags being flung there under cover of darkness.
On every corner is a new kiosk selling useless trinkets. It’s garbage that people will soon throw away and Aaron despises the waste. Despises the need for this endless stuff that clutters up every street. Between the buildings, to one side of him, he glimpses the Nile. Arriving at the perfume shop, Aaron breathes in the smell of warm wood from the locked black doors. Hands on the delicate carvings, he presses his nose to the rough door and a faint whiff of paint leaks from the grains of wood. Letting go, he stands back to look at the shelves of bottles glowing from the windows on either side.
“There are at least twelve dimensions,” he once heard
Omar say. “It’s possible to enter another world by feeling your way into it.”
Aaron can easily feel himself into the glass. He’s been doing it for years. He takes a few deep breaths and every cell in his body seems to flow through the glass and across the raised points, nail-thin, the crevices, gentle ridges and achingly round, smooth stoppers. He can feel the pale yellow glass turn white and the pink take on a bluish hue.
All the tiny details—black dots in the middle of the glass petals, ivy on the necks of the bottles—jump out like living plants, prickly, sharp, and soft. His fingers tingle at the shapes on the surface of the glass. At the same time, when he’s focusing hard
, what’s real alters. After being part of the glass for a while, he can tell when a bottle has been coated twice with a slightly different shade to make it shimmer. Sometimes the colors, especially the ruby reds, are dense at the base and fade to white at the top of the bottle.
When Aaron is lost in his dreams, everything falls away. The screeching traffic and boom of overhead planes disappear, along with the smell of fumes. He realizes that he felt the same way when he saw the vision of Mary on the doors of the Imperial Hotel and again when he looked into Rachel’s almond eyes.
Love.
Love is all he ever wants to feel.
Perhaps there are people who always feel it. Perhaps Omar, with his deep, calm voice, always feels like this. The possibility stays with Aaron until he slips into the alley beside the shop. The cool darkness rolls over his head like a veil and a smell of dead birds fills the air. Beside the wall is an empty, ripped-apart cardboard box, which makes Aaron think someone’s already been here, searching for rejected bottles. This alley is his territory. In a temper he kicks the handle of the side door, which springs open with a sudden click.
Aaron shivers and looks around him. In the block of sunlight at one end of the alley, he can see people passing by on the street, hurrying to work. No one glances his way. Silent and still, he stands watching and waiting, one hand flat on the cool, chalky wall. There’s never anyone at the shop before eight in the morning and it’s just after six. Someone’s forgotten to lock the door.
Aaron’s thoughts come thick and fast. He’s rooted to the spot, but with no sound coming from inside he slowly pushes the door wide open with a fist. Creaking loudly, it sounds and feels like an old church door. A rich red tasseled mat comes into view on the polished tiled floor inside.
Immediately Aaron wonders how much the mat’s worth and reminds himself to take that or another one on the way out. A strong smell of incense greets him, making him feel invincible as he steps inside. The traffic sounds fade to silence. High up on the wall is a painting of Horus, the God of War. Aaron glances at the falcon head for a second, then to the door leading to the back room where he spoke to Omar, before turning from the corridor to the shop floor.
There’s a hissing noise coming from an overhead pipe. Being inside the shop feels strange. Aaron wanders from corner to corner. The plastic bag under his arm makes a small crackling sound when he bends down to touch the red cushions on the benches. Eyeing the expensive rugs and brass lamps, he realizes he could fit quite a lot of stuff in the bag, but he is distracted by hundreds of twinkling bottles lined up beautifully along the shelves. He’s torn between stealing them or the rugs and lamps.
The most expensive perfumes on the middle shelves are in gilt-edged glass. Aaron picks one up and turns it over. There are tiny engraved numbers on the base to identify the glass- blower and his company. Aaron pops the bottle in his pocket, along with two more with gold net wrapped around the rose- colored glass. When his pockets are bulging, he unplugs the brass lamp from the wall and drops it in the bag, then rolls up a silvery-gray rug and stuffs it on top. He’s about to reach for a small brass incense burner when he hears footsteps.
“Did you leave the side door open?” someone says in a sharp, loud voice.
Aaron races for the wooden door. It’s locked tight. In a panic, he swings the bag over his shoulder and, heart thumping, flies into the corridor, where two men in builders’ overalls flinch in shock. Startled out of their wits, they press tight against the walls as he thunders past and out of the door.
“He’s just a kid,” one of them says.
With bottles clanking in his pockets and the brass lamp rattling in the bag like a door knocker, Aaron breaks out in sweat all over and soon the spot on his back where the rug heats his skin through the plastic is sopping wet. Taxis and brown bendy buses stream past carrying workers. Coffee and shisha bars are opening their doors and people are flinging last night’s rubbish in the street. Having stolen so much, Aaron keeps on running until he reaches Tahrir Square, the home of the Egyptian Museum. The gates are locked. The wooden box on the right where the tourists queue for tour guides is shuttered tight. The courtyard is empty.
Aaron pauses at the locked gates. He’s been in the museum three times. Twice with the Mokattam school when he was very young, and once when a tourist took pity on him and bought him a ticket. Each time he stepped inside he was shocked by the amount of stuff there and by the fact that there was a man in every room just watching the visitors to make sure they didn’t touch anything. Aaron shakes his head at the idea of such a lucky, easy job as he hurries past the high black railings and down a side road toward a shop that sells things he hopes the owner will want to buy from him.
Aaron drops his bag outside the shop window, which is crammed with racks of cartouches, silver ankhs, turquoise scarabs, rings, old books, framed prints, and bright scarves. A smell of coriander drifts from the restaurant next door as Aaron peers through layers of souvenirs at rugs dangling from the ceiling and pierced brass lamps with white tickets stuck to their sides. Try as he might, he can’t make out the prices and is about to give up when the owner arrives in a smart black suit, swinging a bunch of rattling keys.
“Don’t beg outside my shop,” he says firmly but with a kind smile.
“I wasn’t.” Aaron’s pleased to see him. “I’ve got things you’ll want to buy.”
Ripping open the plastic bag, Aaron drags out the silvery-gray rug and the brass lamp with its tangled lead.
“Where did you get them from?” The owner nods. “And don’t lie. I can see who you are by the quarry dust on your skin.”
The dust always gives him away.
“My grandmother needs to sell them,” he lies.
Omar’s words flood into his mind as he speaks: “Think about what you’re doing and whether you’re adding or taking away from your own soul when you steal my glass.” Leaning into the shadow of the doorway, out of nowhere, the thought comes to Aaron that he’d now rather take these things back than sell them to this man.
The bottles feel heavier than life itself in his pockets and all the energy drains from him, as if someone’s pulled a plug from his spine. He doesn’t want to be this greedy, desperate person who steals, lies, and begs. The person he is isn’t someone he wants to be. Aaron can see his own reflection in the man’s eyes. What he’s missing is a feeling that rugs, lamps, houses, cars, gold, and diamonds can’t make up for.
Rachel wouldn’t want him if she knew what he was really like. With the glare of the rising sun blasting his face like bullets from a gun, Aaron admits, “I stole them,” and swings the bag onto his shoulder.
“OK, so I’ll give you a hundred and fifty piastres.”
It’s not a great fortune. It’s not to be sniffed at either, but Aaron isn’t moved by the thought of that amount of money. “Nah. No thanks.”
Aaron turns away from the shadowy doorway. For the first time in his life, he knows what to do and it eclipses the need to make money from selling stolen goods. Walking back toward the museum, his steps are lighter, even though he’s sure God’s laughing in his ear. But the truth of that doesn’t bother him as he crosses the road and heads back to the perfume shop. Something deep inside him lifts and the thought racing around his head is that now—yes, now—Rachel has a reason to be proud of him. Omar will be pleased too that he’s going to give back the stolen stuff.
There’s nobody inside the shop except the tall, thin assistant, who’s shuffling papers beside the cash register. Going a ghostly shade of white, he stares at Aaron, scared he’s going to get clobbered with the bag. As he moves a step back, his round glasses slide down his nose. It takes a second for Aaron to drop the awkward-shaped bag and empty it on the polished tiles.
“Get out! Get out!” the assistant cries, springing to life. He grabs Aaron by the scruff of the neck and tosses him out of the shop. “Don’t come back or I’ll call the police.”
Aaron has no choice but to run for it as a small crowd gather
s to see what’s going on. A woman pushing a sick man in a wheelchair gives him a filthy look as he charges past, with the sound of bottles clinking away in his pockets. The perfumes … He didn’t get the chance to give the perfumes back.
Schoolkids in navy uniforms swiftly cross the road in front of him as he weaves through their polite stares toward the safety of the alleys on Sadat Street. Their neat clothes and shiny skin bring a sudden freshness to the dirty street as Aaron puffs to a stop beside a souvenir stand. A rack of stuffed cloth camels greets him. Chewing on a piece of flatbread, the suspicious owner pokes his head between them and narrows his eyes.
“Do you want to buy some perfume?” Aaron takes one of the gold-netted rose bottles from his pocket and offers it to him.
The man takes the bottle and sniffs the stopper. “My wife has many perfumes.”
“And your girlfriend?” Aaron has seen this man chatting up every woman in Cairo. “What about her?”
“Ha-ha.” He can’t stop laughing, but the flattery has worked and he digs in his pocket for a couple of notes.
“It’s worth more.” Aaron reaches for the bottle.
“OK. OK.” The man’s face collapses as he hands him another note.
Now there’s enough money for Aaron to fill his face with a shawarma kebab and buy some for the family.
He heads for a pavement café. With the smell of roasting meat, onions, spices, peppers, and lemons drifting from the ovens, Aaron leans against the wall to eat his kebab. A plastic bag of meat-filled pitas sits at his feet. Yes, he thinks, he should have given the perfumes back too, but then he wouldn’t be eating this delicious kebab, would he? And he was going to give them to the shop assistant, but he didn’t let him, so his conscience is clear, which makes the kebab taste even better … for a moment. Despite Aaron’s best efforts, though, there’s a nagging feeling inside that he shouldn’t have five bottles of expensive oils in his pockets. Where’s he going to hide them? There’s no room left in the hole in the corner beside the wall. Perhaps he should try to sell them to passersby?
