Dan Green is a teacher and writer originally from the UK. Currently based in Beijing, he writes short stories, travel pieces, and is currently working on a novel. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Fine Lines Journal, and on eastoftheweb.com. Contact at dlgwriting@gmail.com. The White Room |
Malori Frey is currently working on her Junior year at Full Sail University. She wrote “Friendship Made by Elevator Accident” in November of 2020 for one of her classes. However, she can’t take all the credit for this story. She had a wonderful professor, Justin Brozanski, that gave excellent feedback to her, leading her to polishing this story and submitting to Scarlet Leaf. |
Friendship Made by Elevator Accident
“Because I said so. I have to run some errands before night, I’ll see you later.” Jennifer hung up the phone, and threw it on the couch as she walked to her room to get dressed for the day.
A little while later, she started for the elevator. She caught a glimpse of someone walking adjacent in her peripheral vision. Jennifer quickly turns her head to see her.
“Hey Jennifer! How are you today?” Ariel asked, trying to be nice. Jennifer looked at her with a smirk on her face.
“I’m fine, thanks.” She rolled her eyes, pressing the “Main Floor” button on the wall. Waiting for the elevator, the girls stood in silence. “DING,” the elevator sounded off as it opened, this the girls didn’t notice. They both walked inside, continuing the awkward silence. The elevator shifted and shook horrifyingly. As the elevator began to speed down the shaft, the girls held onto each other screaming for help. The lights started to flicker out of nowhere. “BAM,” the elevator crashed.
“Are you okay?” Ariel asked Jennifer about her wellbeing. Jennifer struggled to get up. She grabbed her phone to turn on the flashlight, looked down at her ankle, and noticed that her ankle was broken pretty badly.
“No, I’m definitely not okay. I was supposed to have a party tonight, but instead I’m trapped in this elevator with you,” Jennifer screamed through her tears. Ariel looked down at Jennifer’s ankle. Disregarding her harsh words, Ariel took off her favorite jacket and tore the sleeve off. She, then, kneeled down in front of Jennifer’s broken ankle.
“Do you have something stiff that I could tie to your ankle to help it heal?” Ariel asked gently with an expression of worry across her face. Jennifer started digging through her bag. Letting out a being sigh,
“No, I don’t have anything that would help. Why do you want to help me anyways? Don’t you hate me or something?” Jennifer drug herself close to the wall so she could rest against it. Ariel looked up at Jennifer stunned by this comment.
“Hate you? I barely know you. How could I possibly hate you? From what I know of you, we have a lot in common actually.”
“What exactly are you referring to? I am a private person.”
“Well, I know that you’re very confident in herself. You’re a hard worker. You’re going to college for your Business degree at Mitchell Tucker University.”
“How do you know all of that about me?”
“I know those things because we go to the same school, our lockers are literally two feet apart, we have the same Business-related classes. I sit in the back far left corner alone in each one.” Jennifer’s face turned bright red as a sense of embarrassment washed over her like rain water. She looks up at Ariel, who is still bent down in front of her.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize all of those things. I hated you for so long, barely even knowing you. I always looked at you as some popular rich girl from uptown. Flawless and cold hearted. I was so wrong to think those things of you. None of them are close to being true.” Jennifer started crying hysterically, drawing her able leg up to her chin. Ariel looked closely at Jennifer’s shoes. She pulled the one off from the disabled leg, observing the heel closely. Jennifer asked,
“What are you doing?” Ariel, with a ray of focus upon her face, mentioned,
“In order to save your ankle, I’m going to have no choice but to break this heel off. It’s the perfect length.” Jennifer stared at Ariel as if she had a squirrel on her head.
“Are you serious? Those are limited edition Coach 10’’ stilettos. You cannot break them,” Jennifer yelled. Right then, the elevator started to shift and a high pitch screeching rung through their ears.
“We don’t have a choice. Do you have signal on your phone to call for help? I don’t or else that would have been the first thing I did.” Ariel huffed feeling aggravated. Ariel took the shoe and ripped off the heel.
“No, I don’t have any… Hey!” Ariel pressed the heel hard against Jennifer’s ankle and tied it as tight as possible.
“If we get out of here alive, I’ll buy you a new pair.” At that very moment, the smell of burning wires fled the elevator. Ariel tried her hardest to get the door open, but it was no use. Ariel passed out from the lack of oxygen, while Jennifer screamed for help.
Moments went by, Jennifer fainted. They couldn’t tell, due to their lack of consciousness, but they were being lifted ever so slowly it seemed. A few firemen busted the doors open with crowbars.
“Ladies!” The men shouted, rushing to their sides trying to get them to wake up.
“Dispatch, do you copy,” one called through his radio. A woman’s voice spoke came back through the radio.
“10-4,” the man squatted down beside Jennifer as he reported.
“We need a bus for two young ladies. One has a broken ankle and both are unconscious. They need oxygen now,” the man demanded. The firemen carried the two ladies out of the elevator and took them outside the apartment complex.
On the way to the hospital, Ariel started to wake up. Her vision was very fuzzy, as was her memory. She heard a woman speaking, but she couldn’t quite make out what was being said due to a constant ringing in her ears. She closed her eyes as she let out a deep breath. The heart monitor screeched loudly, alarming the EMTs that Ariels heart had stopped.
Amy Dawn is a published author, singer-songwriter and an English teacher. She lives in London and received her bachelor of arts in Social Anthropology and her master of arts in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS University. Many of her writings reflect her interest in the history of the Gulf region and diasporic identities in Britain. You can listen to her music by following OMAM DAWN and discover more of her writings by visiting her blog: Dawn at Sunset |
The Sky and Two Bridges
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. Enjoy yourself whilst your still in the pink. Hagar spent her first month in Kuwait tuning into foreign TV channels, Nigerian comedies, Chinese folk dancing, American cartoons. This one was British, a music show screened at midnight on New Year’s Eve and that one line of song had remained in her mind. Enjoy yourself. That’s all Hagar desired since her exile from Iraq.
Saddam imprisoned her for it, for believing that her life was anything more than a patriotic flag wave of the state and her body, a pregnable lump of flesh for its reproduction. But she tried to forget that now, the burning fire she felt in her stomach at the student protests, the appetite she once had to eat kubba after a long day of studying, and that one guard, Iraqi like her, who dropped his trousers and perforated the only layer of skin between the character she had created and her country. Bastard.
She switched off the TV, threw the remote on the sofa and walked towards the window. Shards of light beamed into her eyes from the newly built shopping mall below. She opened the window, letting the weight of the summer air sink into the cold-conditioned apartment. Ugly, she thought. Kuwait to Hagar was a city reborn from equal burnings but dampened by modernity. Nothing like the glowing banks of the Tigris.
Hagar closed the curtains and made her way into the bedroom, turning down the air-con as she passed through the hallway.
Enjoy yourself, la la la la la la.
She lay on the unmade bed, body sticky from the heat, stroking the white lines across her light brown belly from under her T-shirt. It was skin that was once so rounded and tight that she could hardly see her feet. Why did Fahad want to marry her with such embodied reminders of her past, she wondered?
Hagar rolled off of the bed and onto the tiled floor. The white cotton sheets crumpled as she moved. On her knees, she reached her hand underneath the mirrored wardrobe that stood opposite the side of the bed that she slept on. Tap, tap, tap, her fingers disturbed the dust. A notebook, wrapped in a cheap purple scarf and wedged into the perfect sized gap between the back of the wardrobe and the wall. Black leather, thick and almost in pieces, but all hers: her words, her memories, the world she once was. She opened it and flicked through.
they beheaded
love’s breath
now I rest a slave
to a dry bed
no drop of oil
sweat impossible
cold little…
Hagar heard the elevator door open outside the apartment. She closed the notebook, wrapped it again, and skidded it with force across the white tiled floor. It disappearing underneath the wardrobe just before Fahad entered.
‘Habibti, hello, why is it so warm in here?’ Fahad was a rich man, a government bureaucrat, a cousin to the ruling Al-Sabah family. He changed his shoes whilst pointedly pressing the blue button on the aircon. ‘I pay for this place you know, you just have to keep it cool.’ He smiled after catching a glimpse of his immediate frustration in the mirror. ‘What are you doing in the bedroom anyway?’
‘I was watching TV and the…’
‘And did you visit Mohammad today, about your papers?’
Hagar stood up from the bed, subtly checking to see whether the notebook was out of sight. ‘I went, but he wasn’t in the office.’
‘Tut that man, a donkey would be more reliable.’ Fahad took off his agal, throwing it onto the bed. ‘And did you cook something, my dear?’
Fahad met Hagar on the Iraqi border, on her second attempt to leave Iraq. At that point he was working as an Army officer, controlling the lower ranks; Bedouins who were given temporary citizenship due to the shortage of nationals who were willing to defend the country. Fahad thought Hagar was one of them, a nomad, the daughter of a Bedouin.
‘I’m Kuwaiti, I was travelling to Basra to visit family.’ Hagar lied when Fahad first stopped her. She was a woman, had perfected her Kuwaiti dialect, she could get away with it.
‘Do you need a lift to the city? I’m returning soldiers in ten minutes,’ Fahad replied, brushing off his uniform. That was another benefit of being a woman, outlawed from driving, free lifts are offered. Hagar accepted the ride and said her thanks.
But during that journey, Hagar’s tongue slipped. One word, quzzurqut, unmistakably Iraqi, spoken in instantaneous reaction after the soldier sitting beside her burped. And it was then that Fahad realised where she was from, began feeling sympathy for her, saw her instead as a victim of his country’s corrupt neighbour.
‘I have a place to stay’, Fahad whispered just before Hagar stepped out of the army truck, ‘and don’t worry, I know you’re Iraqi…’
So of course Hagar had cooked something. Except the rare nights when he felt eager for her, Iraqi recipes were the only thing she could offer Fahad in repayment for helping her gain Kuwaiti status.
‘Usually it takes five years for a woman to get status but I know a person who will help you quicker,’ he once told her.
And a cooked meal was a mutual exchange in Fahad’s eyes too. Besides, he had saved her, given her another chance to enjoy it, making her soon to be the first Iraqi to be granted asylum in his oil-rich homeland. Hagar a refugee for now, certainly, but soon to be married, comfortable and safe as a Kuwaiti and the wife of the Emir’s cousin.
***
‘Quickly, they’ve seen us!’
Bader threw the last of the oranges into the back of the pick-up then jumped in. In a cloud of yellow dust, the truck pulled away and him and his cousin Nassir headed North towards the desert. It was dusk, too late and dark for the police to follow them out of Al-Jahra and besides, the money they’d gain from fining another two fruit sellers was a small sum against their wages.
Bader climbed over from the back and into the passenger seat from the side-window, unknowingly chipping away a flake of white paint from the edge of the truck door.
‘That was close,’ Bader said as Nassir continued to drive.
Nassir looked over to Bader shaking his head as he had done a thousand times before. As the older cousin, it was easy for him to blame Bader for their risky escapes. Nassir then pulled out two cigarettes from the pocket of his dishdasha and passed one to Bader. Bader accepted, without looking. Hardly shaken by the event, Bader remained silent for the rest of the journey.
The truck passed under the two bridges that marked the edge of Al-Jahra. It then pulled off of the road and onto the desert, slowing whilst nearing a spot to park. It was their usual place, the wadi where they had gone to watch stars together since they were children. Nassir then turned off the rattling engine leaving only desert silence looming in the air between them.
‘Nassir, will you ever leave Kuwait?’
Nassir turned, surprised simply by the fact that Bader decided to speak.
‘What?’ But Nassir heard him the first time.
‘Will you ever leave Kuwait?’
‘Stop dreaming, we’re stateless. Anyway, uncle Salman's ill, these thoughts only waste time.’
Bader took a long breath then returned to the silence. Only the sound of the desert winds through the truck window soothed his mind.
‘But aren’t you tired of all this?’ Bader flicked his half-finished cigarette out of the open window leaving embers on the sand beneath.
‘All what?’
‘Being illegal, running away from police for selling a box of fruit?’
‘It’s the life Allah gave us, what are you going to do about it?’
And it was with this question, just as the evening stars above brightened, that Bader burst from silence and into a thousand fractured pieces.
‘God or no God, it’s suffocating Nassir, I mean look at us! We’re young, but have nothing, and I want to work, you know, have a real job, earn money, have choices, this government treats us like shit!’
As though they were still driving, Nassir remained staring ahead. ‘Your anger will conquer you one day brother, you should think slower and act faster.’
‘Sure Nassir, I will.’ Bader then lit another cigarette and stepped out of the truck to urinate. ‘I will.’
***
A month before their wedding, Fahad was working away in Bahrain. Urgent calls for support from the Bahraini government had arisen due to the recent awareness of underground leftist organisations planning to protest. Hagar remained at home, watching television, writing, satisfied with never needing to fling the notebook into the dusty gap beneath the wardrobe. She took out her pen.
turn towards
vacant saviours
of lonely toy towns
war is a whore
and so am I
for lying
Not enough. Scribble out.
‘Words’, she muttered, ‘how can they capture death?’ Hagar couldn’t remember when she first started talking aloud to herself. She never used to as a child. She remembers singing to herself when she was in prison, in the early mornings when the guards would leave for salat and the other women in the cell were asleep. But even then, cold and alone, she knew that someone was listening. An older woman maybe, drifting peacefully through a dream of natural wonders. Or her children who she felt, only hoped, were so close to her, somewhere in the adjacent block. ‘My boys.’ Again, Hagar tugged the hem of her grey T-shirt. ‘Bastards.’ She started again.
orphans falling
amongst ruins
of a home and
myself alone
in toy town
and freedom?
dust filled dreams
to him despondent
war is a whore
and so am I
for lying
Useless, turn page: a blank page, to start over.
war is a whore
despondent saviours
dust-filled dreams
and freedom
orphans falling
amongst ruins
and prayers
let go and quit
bury…
‘Bury?’ Hagar placed down the pen and turned to the first few pages of her notebook. To her first poem.
death to words
death to death
bury everything
that left unsaid
‘None of this was supposed to survive.’ As though a ghost to herself, Hagar suddenly closed the notebook, wrapped it up the purple scarf, and placed it in her bag. She then pinned in place her hijab and then slipped on her leather sandals. She took the remaining money Fahad had left for her on the kitchen side, and the keys, and then quietly left the apartment as though once again, escaping a land that had betrayed her.
***
Ding. Ground floor. Bus 103, evening rush hour, traffic.
Daily life passed so quickly outside of the bus window – fruit sellers on the streets, school children crossing, galabiyahs, gold chains, Philippino, Indian, flat caps, people everywhere, what happened to the pearl divers, the pre-oil fishing port? – so quickly that Hagar almost missed her stop: Fursa coffee shop, Al-Atraf Street.
Ding. Bus doors open.
‘Thanks.’
The bus driver nodded in response.
Hagar wanted to reach the border, the same sands that she had grown from, but Al-Jahra was as far north as the bus would take her. She began walking, tilting her head backwards into the evening air that was cooling and tainted by a pale orange filter. Ethereal, she thought, a colour that reminded her of her younger days, walking to mosque, bags of dates in hand, talking of small things and school lovers with her older sister.
‘Focus Hagar,’ she told herself. She walked under the two bridges, out of Al-Jahra, and onto highway seventy, the road heading towards the border.
The city landscape emptied. Small birds chirped and flitted into the few shrubs that had managed to grow their roots wild enough to grasp onto the fine grains of desert sand. Some birds had feathers that were beige and others, feathers that were grey, the same colour as Hagar’s T-shirt, she realised, and the backing of mirrors. Funny, Hagar thought, such slight variations, such small differences in natural circumstances.
She continued walking north for almost an hour, until the highway faded into a thin line and the two oil towers, only etches on the horizon. She peered back to notice them. They were her only markers of how far she had come, reminders of where she really was: a wild place, forever beyond her control. Her stomach churned. She heard it but ignored it, instead concentrating on the warm air that arose from the day’s sun-drenched sands beneath her feet.
***
The evening sunlight was sinking behind Maliya church. Dusted pigeons cooed on the surrounding rooftops. Bader sat alone on the roadside, watching people of all nationalities enter through the open, oblong doors.
‘Maybe everyone desires what they can’t have.’
Unlike Hagar, Bader remembers the first time when speaking aloud to himself became a normal thing. He was eleven years old, walking home from the park and talking aloud, he realised then, offered him a distraction from wondering why, unlike his other friends, he was unable to attend state school. He assumed it was because of his poor skills in maths, not that he was the son of a Bedouin man, born without citizenship.
Walking alone that time, he planned an entire adventure: an extravagant mission for him and his best friend to secretly escape Al-Jahra and spend a whole day exploring the city centre. First, he said, they’d ‘tell their parents they were going to mosque.’ Second, they’d ‘ask the local shop owner to drive them into the city to collect important medicine for their uncle.’ Then third, well the rest was unplanned: ‘an adventure.’ Maybe they’d walk back or even better, Bader considered, never come back. Maybe he imagined, the two giant gulf balls, the ones that he’d only seen on roadside advertisements, would fall on him and his best friend after a big gust of sea breeze knocked them off the two pointy towers. And then, they’d be forced to spend the rest of their lives in there, trapped inside, like they’d landed on another world… imagine! Or maybe, just maybe, they’d get caught by some familiar family face, before they even got to the city and sent straight back home to... ‘No!’ Bader said aloud, ‘that can’t happen.’ All young Bader knew, and said with confidence was that they would go, him and his best friend, and someday soon, and nothing, nothing, could stop them. And talking about it to himself, aloud, felt good, gave him hope that one day, when he was old enough and after enough planning, he would be able to escape again, but that time further, and maybe, really, forever.
More bodies entered through Maliya church as the evening breeze cooled over Bader’s salted forehead. He watched one woman, Malaysian he guessed, taking a photograph arm in arm with another younger woman, wearing a red dress. Mercy, pray for us was written above them both in gold, on a large plastic banner. Bader wondered whether unlike him, they felt at home in Kuwait, under the house of their God, working, smiling, settled for what they have already, for heaven or else.
‘For heaven or else’, this one Bader liked and made a note of it on the screwed receipt he had in his top pocket. He felt that, just as the fleeting image of those two women, those words may one day help him on his journey.
A white Mercedes pulled up to the roadside, near to where Bader was sitting. A Kuwaiti driver, Bader noticed and could tell by the Armani sunglasses and dishdasha he was wearing. Without greeting the man, Bader opened the side door and got into the back of the car.
‘Assalam alaykum, sloonach?’
The radio was playing loud, so loud that the driver didn’t hear Bader. ‘Rahalta, Rahalta,’ it was a recent Abdullah Al-Rowasheed song. Bader liked it, the lyrics, my journey, my journey: a coincidence, he thought.
‘Ahlan, sloonach?’
This time Bader waved his hand in the reflection of the rear-view mirror. They the driver was still unresponsive and instead continued nodding to the Khaliji rhythm.
‘Ahlan?’ Bader repeated.
Without turning to Bader, the driver opened his hand and gestured with his fingers. Bader, giving up on talk, pulled out the wedge of folded Dinars from his side pocket and passed them to the front. The driver then instantly began counting.
A sudden glance into the rear-view mirror signalled the driver’s approval. ‘Good luck my friend, may God be with you.’ Still without turning, the driver then passed over a white envelope to Bader and put the car into gear.
‘Many thanks brother, take care.’ The Mercedes already began moving as Bader opened the door to leave. He stepped out to return to standing on the roadside.
So quickly, the church crowds had now disappeared through the wooden doors but still Bader double checked that no one was around before opening the sealed envelope. Then finally, there it was, in his hands – a passport, fake but official-looking, and spoiled enough not to appear suspicious to border guards. And the photo inside? Perfect. It captured the most obvious features of Bader’s face: long, high cheek bones and a nose which hooked slightly over his thin moustache. He looked at his new portrait as though a small mirror. Definitely Kuwaiti, he thought, certainly passable.
The sun had finally vanished behind the church steeples. Bader pocketed the envelope close to his chest and began walking home as the cool evening winds awakened him to what lay ahead. When would he leave, he wondered, tomorrow? That didn’t matter. What mattered, he thought, was that for the first time in his life, he had the choice to. That now, all of a sudden, he had the freedom to leave whenever he wanted and to wherever he liked. He looked up, smiling. The moon had appeared, so whole and complete. Bader, louder than he realised, was singing past the small patch of green that his childhood-self once played upon: ‘Rahalta, taraktini shamata, taraktini shamata.’ My journey, you left me gloating.
***
Daylight was defeating Hagar. She had sat for an hour, staring at the hole she had carved into the sand, a chasm deep and significant enough for her words to be lost forever. However, her notebook remained wrapped in the purple scarf and tightly held within her fingers. Dusk had approached and both her and the desert knew that it was now, or never.
‘Ok, one last thing.’ She reached into her bag for her pen.
to breathe the air
of what is dead
chokes the chance
of surviving now
a tongue in exile
buries and bleeds
amongst the fallen
sand of her children
‘Done,’ she said, tearing the back page of the notebook, folding it, then placing it into the side pocket of her bag.
Then, with a few tears clumping together the grains of sand between her legs, she placed the notebook into the hole and with eyes closed, pushed the surrounding sand on top. ‘And breathe, and gone.’ She placed three flattened stones on top, a security that no desert animal would ever dig up the discarded leather. She patted it, right hand, and bade farewells to her words. Although still, she noticed as she began walked away, a familiar emptiness resided in her lower stomach: a void she so wished she could also entomb.
***
Fahad adjusted his agal, ‘sir, you know a good place to eat around here?’
Fahad had only visited Bahrain once, on another government trip and with the city’s absence of ring roads, he found Manama compared to Kuwait difficult to navigate.
‘We’re going to the Golden Tulip, for Japanese food, sushi.’ Bassam’s rounded face was sharpened by the angles of his beard.
‘I’ve never tried. May I join?’
Bassam, the soon-to-be Bahraini Minister of Culture, looked up to Fahad from his phone screen, pushing his sunglasses onto his face as he did so. ‘Welcome!’
Fahad was distant, tired from the early flight. His eyes wondered towards the two Japanese men who, head’s down and in calm composure, were preparing the men’s ordered dishes. Sushi, Fahad wondered, is it warm, spicy?
‘And how’s Kuwait these days, Fahad?’ Bassam asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘It seems your mind is too concerned about food!’ The two other Bahraini’s scoffed in agreement.
‘Good, I mean, progressing. Oil prices have increased since last year.’
‘And Iraq? I heard that Saddam is still in debt to Al-Sabah?’
Fahad again adjusted his agal. He was given strict orders from the Emir to keep Iraqi relations confidential.
‘Sure, but that’s old news, since the day when Britain drew the border between us.’
‘Ahh, a Kuwaiti blaming their problems on Britain, now that’s old news.’ Chuckles circled the table again as the smells of fish from the kitchen intensified.
‘What does that mean?’ Fahad replied, leaning forward.
‘Well I never hear a Kuwaiti blaming Iraq, Saddam is an ass.’ Bassam’s voice lowered, ‘have you seen what he’s doing to Shia’ in the south?’
The waitress began laying the dishes on the table. Conversation paused in order for the four men to decipher whose order belonged to who. Fahad leaned back in his seat, ‘looks good,’ he said, ‘b-il-hana wi-shifa.’ He was hoping the arrival of the food would change conversation to lighter topics.
‘But Saddam could easily enter Kuwait, don’t you think? I mean, he claims it is under American influence anyway.’
Fahad inhaled deeply, obviously. He wished that he had never agreed to sushi. Besides, it was hardly satisfying his hunger.
‘Yeah,’ another man joined in conversation, ‘and Kuwait certainly can’t match against Iraq’s forces. Isn’t Al-Sabah still getting weapons from the West?’
Fahad wiped his hands on his serviette then took a sip of water. ‘Look gentlemen, I worked on the border for three years. I have met Iraqis, Shia’, Sunni, we are all against Saddam.’
‘Are you sure Fahad, you’re not one of Saddam’s faithfuls?’ Sniggers arose again. Luckily Fahad’s ghutrah covered the sweat that ran from his thinning hair. Did the men know about his marriage to Hagar? Her face came to his mind. He wondered what she would say to these men.
‘I hold everything against Saddam and nothing against Iraqis and gentlemen, I suggest you do the same.’ Fahad took a sip of water. ‘Shall we enjoy this food now?’
The table eventually quietened, giving way to the Japanese music.
***
The sun was small and floating, the last of daylight bleeding into the desert sands. The smell of frying onion and garlic thickened the evening air, a sign that Al-Jahra oasis, as dry as it usually was, was still fertile enough for crops to reach the outskirts of the city. It’s a temporary magic, Um Dalal thought as she stood outside of her house for air, falling in perfect amounts like the first sight of rainclouds after a long hot summer.
It was Friday, Iftar. Um Dalal and Bader’s sister, Amina, were preparing Machboos - rice, mutton, almonds, in a spicy tomato sauce – another of Um Dalal’s family favourites. From a covered pot into two small aluminium dishes, she spooned two bigger than normal portions of purple chutney: an Afghani recipe, taught to her ten years ago by a woman she befriended in the local market. It was sweet delight and Um Dalal had made a promise to herself to never to reveal the secret ingredient.
Amina checked the rice and then turned to Um Dalal, ‘will Uncle Salman join tonight?’
‘No, he’s ill, remember? But Abbas and Ilaf will come.’ Um Dalal was standing over the aluminium pots, debating whether to serve four dishes of chutney instead of two.
‘And Bader, where’s he?’
‘God knows,’ Um tutted, ‘that boy’s useless, twenty something and not even married, shame!’
‘Um, it’s because of his short legs and skinny arms.’ Amina laughed, joking as sisters do.
‘Enough Amina, now pass me the lid.’ Um Dalal had finally decided that two dishes of chutney instead of four would be enough.
The yellow ball on the horizon eventually sank and Abbas arrived just after along with two other unexpected family members. It was for this reason that it was the most exciting part of the day for Amina, the only time when anyone could walk into the house, the only time she could imagine strangers, boys and girls her age, wandering through the back gate, asking her half-romantically if they could join her, praise her for helping Um Dalal with her cooking. Amina then heard the corrugated metal shake, the sound of their back-gate opening.
‘Bader, where have you been?’ Amina asked, ‘we are about to pray.’ Bader joined the men as the women separated into the other room. Then, just before they’d finished, Amina laid the dishes onto the carpet of the men’s room.
‘B-il-hana wi-shifa’, Amina said as she placed the last dish of chutney onto the carpet. ‘But not you, donkey,’ she whispered, turning to Bader and playfully hitting him on the shoulder.
‘Sure,’ Bader replied half noticing and still sweating from the walk home. ‘And you enjoy your meal too, sister.’ Amina then shook her head as she left the room, trying to hide her disappointment that Bader, as usual, didn’t feel like having fun.
Before tucking in, Bader checked his pockets for the envelope ensuring it hadn’t fallen out during prayers and moreover, assuring himself that what happened in town had really happened.
‘Lost something?’ Abbas, Bader’s uncle said, sitting next to him.
‘Just cigarettes,’ Bader replied, finally feeling the rectangular outline of the fake passport. ‘Anyway, how are you doing these days,’ he asked, ‘how’s Ilaf and the children?’
‘Everything’s fine, thank God, Ilaf is looking after the children, and you know Ahmed? He lost his job yesterday.’
‘Really, why, I thought he only just started?’ Bader reached for the bread in the centre of the room.
‘KOC are employing cheaper labour, Pakistanis, Indians, it’s the same everywhere, bidun are being treated like the cockroaches of this country.’
‘Bidun? Like bidun jinsayya?’
‘Yes, the withouts, well, that’s what the newspapers call us now.’
Bader dipped his bread into the purple chutney. ‘You know the police chased me and Nasser again last week, I swear it never used to be this bad.’
‘You’re right,’ Abbas replied, ‘when I was younger, the government wanted to give us jobs, I mean look at your father, he was in the Army defending Kuwait. Imagine that now! A stateless police man chasing another stateless man for selling a bunch of bananas!’ Abbas laughed, his madly waving arm shedding crumbs of bread across the carpet.
‘You think it’s the Americans, or British?’ Bader tore another piece of bread, this time pausing for an answer before dipping it into the chutney.
‘Neither!’ Abbas lit a cigarette, then offered Bader one.
Bader shook his head, almost aggressively, ‘who then?’
‘Who you do think?’
‘Al-Sabah?’ Bader replied, mouth full.
‘He shoots, he scores!’
‘Yes?’
‘Exactly, you should have seen the old days. Kuwait was for everyone, pearlers, merchants, even us Bedouin traded inland. You know Safat Al-Safah? That was a Bedouin market, amazing! And the British never really had as much control as Al-Sabah, well at least since the oil days. Anyway, it was only in the seventies when the British left, that Al-Salim brought all the land and moved people out of the city. You know immigration laws only came in the year 1961, after independence?’
‘But they’ve been here so long, right, I mean, the rulers, Al-Sabah? I thought they were good, I mean, destined to rule?’
‘That’s what they want you to believe young chap.’ Abbas flicked his cigarette, missing the metal ashtray. ‘Sometimes men use the word of Allah to excuse them of their greed, remember that one.’
‘I will,’ Bader replied, feeling for the screwed-up receipt in his top pocket. ‘You have a pen?’
Abbas reached for his top pocket. ‘Here, keep it, for when you one day take over the country.’
‘God willing.’
They laughed, Bader pushing the empty dishes in front of him and refolding the tatty receipt.
***
Hagar spoke into the winds that pushed her back towards the desert. ‘Ha-ga-ra, she repeated, ha-ga-ra.’
It was the root of her name – meaning to take flight, abandon, flee – her only strength to continue walking towards Al-Jahra without thinking of what she had left behind. Although soon enough, with the desert winds strengthening and her hijab failing to cover her eyes from the sand, her voice became lost and thoughts of her past arose. She remembered her mother’s wrinkled lips, moving slowly, telling her the story of her name, Hagar, the wife of the prophet Ibrahim, the mother of Isma’il.
‘Allah ordered Ibrahim to take Hagar and Isma’il into Faran desert and leave them there under the only tree in the land. They had only a little water and no food, it was Allah’s test on them and, peace upon them, they accepted.’
‘But wasn’t Hagar scared and didn’t she die without any food?’
‘Habibti, slowly, slowly!’ Hagar’s mother patted Hagar on her head. ‘But you’re right, after all that time in Faran, Hagar did run out of water and baby Isma’il began to cry so much that Hagar worried and became thirsty herself. And so, Hagar left the tree and started to search for water.’
‘And did they die?’ little Hagar asked again, raising her head.
‘Slowly Hagar! But no, they didn’t die. With faith in God, Hagar ran seven times between two hills, Al-Safa and Al-Marwah and then…
‘She ran out of breath and died.’
‘No Hagar, stop now or I won’t finish.’ Hagar apologised, slumping back down against the wall, her head resting on her mother’s shoulder.
‘So, Hagar ran between the two mountains and then on the seventh time Allah sent an angel to Hagar. Then, with a little tap of his heels he created a beeeautiful spring for Hagar and Isma’il and so they did not die Hagar… When our countries fixed and you’re a little older, I will take you there.’
‘To the spring? You mean it’s real?’ Hagar remembered her excitement, how her curly hair flicked up, brushing her mothers’ face.
‘Yes, of course! The Zamzam well, it’s as real as you are my darling.’
Hagar’s dry eyes began watering. The evening sky had darkened and the wind had dropped. She could hear the rumbling of oil tankers on the tarmac ahead, a sure sign that she had almost reached the main road. Hagar looked up hoping somehow, magically, the emptiness of the night sky would soak her tears. ‘Ha-ga-ra’, she repeated once more but again, her mind drifted, this time revealing the faces of her two sons. They were beautiful, as clear to Hagar as her mother’s voice, yet as distant as the stars above.
***
Bader and Nassir were driving from the market to Al-Jahra, the back of their truck rattling with half-filled boxes of fruit.
‘I’m leaving next week.’
‘Ay?’ Nassir turned down the radio, ironically Abdullah Al-Rowasheed’s song was playing, a synchronicity that confirmed to Bader that it was the right moment to suddenly admit his plans.
‘I’m leaving, I bought fake I.D.’
Nassir switched off the radio, ‘you’re joking?’
‘No, I decided to act fast as you said, to travel West.’
Nassir pulled over to the side of the road, the sharp turn almost throwing out a box of oranges from the back. He then turned off the engine.
‘And what about Uncle Salman, your mother?’ Nassir turned to Bader who was looking into the wing mirror, checking to see if the fruit was still there.
‘I’m doing it for them, to earn money, get a proper job.’
‘You think the West has money Bader, how do you think they function their machines? With our oil and anyway, look at us, we’re stateless, not peasants!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Bader finally looked to Nassir whose elbows were locked and hands gripped firmly onto the steering wheel.
‘It means you’re stupid to think that money will save us.’
‘But the pursuit of our freedom might.’
‘Your freedom Bader and anyway, that’s a reason to give up is it, the pursuit of your freedom? You selfish ass.’
‘You’re jealous’ Bader retorted, surprised by the actuality of his own words.
‘Of what, ignorance, not caring for my family?’
‘I care, I just… Nassir, look, a woman…’
‘What?’ Nassir turned to see a woman, tall and slim with a strand of dark hair showing from her hijab, gently knocking on the half-open window of the truck door.
‘Shame on you both!’ Nassir cursed, his hands surrendering to the sight of the darkening road ahead. ‘Look Bader, just go for all I care but don’t expect a welcome back when you realise your happiness was here all along.’ Nassir then rolled down the rest of the window, ‘and what do you want woman?’
‘Is this the direction to Al-Jahra?’, the women asked, pointing ahead.
‘Where are you going?’ Nassir replied, his temper slightly calming in the strangers’ presence.
‘Al-Atraf street, to take the bus.’ The woman noticed the strand of hair falling from her hijab and tucked it within.
‘Get in,’ Nassir ordered, already turning on the engine. The woman thanked him.
Nassir turned on the radio and lit a cigarette, tapping every one of his fingers madly on the steering wheel. Then, trying to forget the conversation with Bader, he glanced into the rear-view mirror.
‘Woman, where you from?’
‘Kuwait,’ the woman replied.
‘Funny, your face looks Iraqi.’ The woman nodded her head and remained silent.
‘You like Abdallah Al-Rowasheed?’ Nassir turned the radio up a little.
‘I prefer traditional songs.’ The women spoke louder so she could be heard yet tried carefully to tame her conversation.
‘Oh, my friend here likes traditional songs too.’ Nassir turned smiling wildly at Bader, ‘isn’t that right travelling man? You especially like patriotic songs about Kuwait, don’t you? Go on, why don’t you entertain us with one of your favourites?’
‘Sure,’ Bader replied, knowing fully well Nassir’s intentions. Then waving his hand in the air and lowing his voice, Bader began recalling the national anthem.
‘Blessed be my country, a homeland for harmony, Kuwait, Kuwait my country, fencing us all fairly, with warm love and verity, Kuwait, Kuwait… How’s that?’ Bader turned to the woman, ‘traditional enough for you?’
With a smirk on her face she nodded, ‘very nice.’
‘Well at least someone likes this country.’ Nassir then glanced again into the rear-view mirror, ‘woman, you’re stateless too?’
‘No, I mean, why?’ The woman was obviously thrown off by the question.
‘I was just wondering what you were doing in the desert so late?’
‘Visiting friends,’ the women replied.
‘Who, the desert rats?’ Bader and Nassir laughed, temporarily forgetting their earlier disagreement.
‘Leave me! I’m tired,’ the women hastily replied, turning her head to face the side window. She noticed the street lights ahead, a sign she was close to town.
Nassir turned up the music again and lit another cigarette, the white truck increasingly submerging into the pools of orange street lights.
‘By the bus stop, right?’ The inside of the truck darkened as it passed underneath the two bridges that connected Al-Atraf street, the road into Al-Jahra with highway seventy, the road heading west to Iraq.
‘Yes Al-Atraf street, here is fine.’, The women then said her thanks and hurried to the bus which was just about to depart.
‘Wait!’ Bader shouted, already opening the truck door. He had noticed something fly from the woman’s bag as she ran towards the bus stop.
‘And you can walk from here too’ Nassir yelled, leaning his head out of the window, ‘it’s preparation for your travels!’
Bader, carelessly waved his hand behind him to Nassir. He then caught the drifting paper and continued running across the road. But the doors had already closed and bus was pulling away. The woman, adjusting herself in the back seat, looked out to see Bader standing the other side of the dusted window, holding onto the very last words she had written.
***
Hagar was certain that she remembered what was on the paper and wrote it down as soon as returned to the flat. She then switched on the TV and using the remote, scrolled through the channels. Sudanese music, a young man playing a tanbour and singing of his lover’s pearly teeth. Click. She then rested her head on the cushion beside her and fell asleep almost instantly.
‘Darling, Hagar, good morning.’ Hagar awoke to see Fahad’s legs in front of her and feel his hand shaking her waist. ‘You slept all night with the TV on and the window open.’
Hagar knew Fahad was returning from Bahrain but didn’t expect him to arrive so early. ‘What time is it?’ She asked, her eyes swollen from the humidity of the room.
‘Close to eleven, what time did you sleep?’ Hagar noticed a sudden sternness in Fahad’s voice.
‘I don’t know,’ Hagar replied, truly uncertain of how long it had taken her to return from Al-Jahra.
‘What do you mean you don’t know? And anyway, what were you doing to make you pass out like that?’
Hagar finally sat up, rubbing her eyes with her hands and then moving them to touch to her abdomen. ‘Lover I’m sorry, it’s the time of month, it’s tiring in this heat.’
‘Yes, and that’s why most people close the window Hagar. What are you going to do when we have children? Are they going to have to wake you up for lunch?’ Fahad threw the keys onto the kitchen side and poured himself a glass of water. Hagar remained silent, sitting on the sofa. They’d spoken about having children two months before but now, with their wedding only a few weeks away, the reality of it suddenly felt inescapable.
‘And what about when you are a Kuwaiti, when we finally start living a normal life and I can carry on with mine instead of dealing with yours?’ Fahad continued after sipping the water, ‘what time are you going to wake up then?’
Hazy and weighted by yesterday’s emotions, Hagar remained irresponsive. Instead she stood up from the sofa and walked over to the window. She hoped to find a sight from below to distract her thoughts.
‘Talk to me Hagar.’ Fahad slammed the fridge door, finishing with the water.
Hagar looked down, outside of the still open window, to see two men outside of the mall talking, waving their arms at each other as they exchanged words. She tried to imagine their conversation.
‘Hagar?’
‘I told you I’m sorry and you know that I love you.’ Then suddenly her stomach tightened, making her lips curl under her teeth. Fingertips dug into the muscles of her shoulders. She closed her eyelids, hoping they would encase her composure as Fahad’s breath cooled the skin of her jawline.
‘Then show me it.’ Fahad jolted his arms, causing Hagar’s spine to stiffen and eyes to open. She was sure Fahad would never hurt her but not enough for her to fully surrender to his presence. He loosened his grip and walked into the bedroom, speaking louder to her as he disappeared. ‘Anyway, I need to visit Mohammed again today, to ask him for your papers, then I’ll be back at maghrib for dinner. It looks like you need to visit the market.’
‘I will,’ Hagar responded, her mind unexpectedly drifting, questioning whether she could really undergo the experience of childbirth again.
‘And you’ll cook?’ Fahad was changing his clothes in the bedroom, getting ready to go out again.
‘Of course.’
‘The bedroom could do with a sweep too,’ Hagar heard Fahad scuff the tiles with his foot.
‘I know.’ Hagar walked to the front door and neatly arranged the four pairs of shoes beside the entrance mat.
***
The market men stood silent – thick, black moustaches, sturdy – behind their stalls looking proud of their arrangements. It was late afternoon and crops were being restocked, piling high in ways which defied natural orders. Aubergines, oranges, pomegranates all tilted upright, upheld by the cardboard boxes and wooden crates beneath them. The stall owners, with enough daily practice, had come to know the exact angle to steady their colourful displays, considering even the most fastidious of their customers.
Hagar passed the fish stalls which were similarly arranged in ways which fascinated her. Fins and tails fanning the edges and fish bodies, slumped over one another forming beds of wet scales. She bought three mackerel from the usual stall, knowing it was Fahad’s favourite.
‘Here you are, Miss.’
‘Many thanks.’
What else, Hagar wondered. The usual, she guessed. She added the fish to her larger shopping bag and walked on towards a fruit and vegetable stalls.
‘Sorry, no coriander.’ She moved ahead, onto the next.
‘Excuse me, you have coriander?’ Thinking through a recipe, Hagar was oblivious to other customers bustling around her. On request, the stall owner pointed her to the greens on the other side of the stall.
‘We meet again!’ Hagar, unaware, continued to count the change in her hand.
‘Hey, lady,’ Hagar finally sensed the presence beside her, ‘I have something of yours.’
Hagar looked up and turned to see the familiar face. His moustache thin, hooked just slightly over upturned edges of his mouth.
‘I added to it, it’s nice writing.’ The man passed her the folded paper and continued smiling.
‘Thanks,’ Hagar responded, still adjusting to the unexpected occurrence. ‘You write too?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said, seeming embarrassed. ‘Well, I make notes.’ They laughed in mutual understanding. ‘And writers also have to eat!’ The man looked towards the stall owner who was stood, hand out, waiting for Hagar to pay.
‘You’re right and greens are good for the mind.’ Hagar smiled then held up the coriander and passed the stall owner the money. ‘You’re shopping too?’
‘Getting fruits from this good man, Asif,’ the man in front of Hagar flicked his head towards the shorter man standing behind the next stall. His hair was greying and the skin around his eyes was thick and creased. ‘He’s a good friend, gives me a good deal, then I sell them in Al-Jahra.’
‘Ahh, that explains the oranges in your truck,’ Hagar replied, again laughing with the man in similar minds. ‘Anyway, thanks for this.’ Hagar flashed the folded paper then tucked it away in her bag.
‘My pleasure and really, it’s beautiful.’
Hagar held eye contact with the man for longer than a woman should in public. His eyes seemed gentle and his words, honest.
‘They’re nothing, only notes. Anyway, nice to meet you.’ Hagar smiled then quickly turned away.
‘One second,’ the man darted around the side to catch her, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Hagar.’
‘Ah, the one that fears.’
‘No,’ Hagar replied, ‘the one that flees.’
‘Well I’m Bader, the full moon.’
‘Well take care Bader, nice to meet you.’
Hagar turned again, leaving Bader hanging in the air between them. ‘And you, stranger.’
***
Mohammad shuffled the files that were on his desk. His teeth were stained yellow by the large quantities of coffee he drank. ‘We’re almost there Fahad, all you need now is something to prove that she’s been living with you for over three months.’
‘And how am I supposed to prove that?’ Fahad was rubbing his hands together, a sure sign of impatience.
‘It’s a tough one,’ Mohammed replied, ‘especially as you are not married yet. How about some sort of letter from the Emir, or your landlord’s recognition?’
‘You know I own the flat Mohammad and I’m trying to keep her origins a secret.’
‘You’ve made your life difficult Fahad!’ Mohammad quietened his laughter as he quickly came to realise that Fahad was not humoured. ‘Ok, what we have already should suffice, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘And make it quick this time, please.’
‘How is she anyway?’ Mohammad asked, trying to soften Fahad’s agitation.
‘Fine, well, things will improve once all this is over.’
‘Yes, that’s what most engaged couples say!’ Again, Mohammad paused, realising Fahad was not in the slightest mood for joking. He changed the topic. ‘Does she ever talk about Iraq?’
‘I’ve found notes she’s written but we’ve never talked about it.’
‘It must weigh.’
‘What?’
Mohammad sipped his coffee and reached for the pot realising that Fahad’s glass was already empty. ‘You want another?’ He asked.
Fahad tutted and shook his head, ‘what weighs?’
‘The past, the dead children, Saddam.’
‘Possibly,’ Fahad replied, suddenly wondering about Hagar and where was at that very moment. Mohammad took another sip from the small glass.
‘And you know, last week, I had another Iraqi woman who was trying to get citizenship. Her case was terrible, she claimed to have been raped by Saddam himself.’
‘And she got status?’
‘Without a Kuwaiti man to help, wouldn’t dream of it. You’re doing a good thing Fahad.’
‘My friend, you’re kind.’ Fahad reclined upon the sofa chair, releasing a breath, ‘I just wish it was easier.’
‘If God permits, another week, it will be done.’
‘God willing.’
***
Nothing, not even a window. Unpolluted, air-conditioned, passionless. No ornament or trinket to mark a special occasion, no photograph to stain the wall or mind. Their bedroom of impersonal love, filled with artificial light, sterile, several pin-pricks of spotlight mounted perfectly into the ceiling and reflecting on the white tiles beneath. A cold and empty laboratory of modernity to research post-oil family life.
Hagar reached her arm underneath the wardrobe. Dust had collected there despite the absence of her notebook and the constantly renewing air of their bedroom. She cupped her hand, sweeping the cloth in curved motions, creating small piles of grey matter and dry brown hair. She wondered just how many times she had reached under the wardrobe, aching to write, insensible to the dust.
‘I added to it,’ she thought, recalling what Bader had said to her earlier that afternoon. What did he mean? She abandoned her grey formations, leaving the yellow cloth crescent shaped under one corner of the wardrobe. She opened her bag and unfolded the letter.
they once sang of he
who permitted greed
and the forgotten who
never ceased trying
Hagar reread it then, inspired, she took the pen from her bag and began to write, adding to his words.
rebuild rebuild higher
they scream her freedom
is so close…
‘Shit!’
Hagar ran to the kitchen, leaving the unfolded paper on the arm of the sofa. The kitchen walls were dirtying with stream as the cooking rice continued to burn. Hagar saved the edible remains, wetted the pan with water, and already began scraping off the blackened layer on the bottom. The damage was retractable, concealable she thought. If only… Her head turned; the door opened.
‘What’s happened?’ Fahad entered the kitchen still wearing his shoes.
‘I was...’
‘And look at the walls!’
‘They will clean, I’ll clean them.’
‘You’re mad, woman.’ Fahad retraced his steps back to the front door and slipped off his shoes. He was too exhausted from the day to show further concern.
‘And how was it, seeing Mohammad?’ Hagar saw it as a chance to quickly change the subject.
‘Useless,’ Fahad replied, taking rest on the sofa, ‘still no papers and he told me he’ll sort it out next week, always next week with that man.’ Fahad picked up the paper resting on the sofa armchair. He recognised Hagar’s hand writing. ‘Did you write this?’
Hagar stopped scrubbing the pan and without drying her hands, walked into the living room and took the paper off Fahad. ‘It’s nothing, just notes.’ Her wet finger marks trailed down the paper, already smudging the pen ink.
‘But did you write it?’
‘Yes, a while ago, really it’s nothing.’ Hagar folded the paper and again tucked it into the side pocket of her handbag. Heart racing, she returned to the pan soaking in the sink.
‘And who else wrote on it, Hagar?’ Fahad stood up, furtively tracking Hagar’s steps and retrieving the paper from her bag.
‘What do you mean?’ Hagar turned to see Fahad again holding up the paper.
‘This,’ Fahad pointed, ‘who wrote this part?’
Hagar stumbled, noticeably showing her lack of confidence.
‘A friend from Iraq, a woman, my friend.’ Hagar’s heart throbbed; she worried Fahad could hear it.
‘And why is it in your bag?’ Hagar kept her head down, eyes on the dish, hoping this would hide her colouring cheeks.
‘It’s old, I just wanted to remember...’
‘Remember the man that raped you? Mercy on you Hagar! Do you know how much I have done for you and how much you are still stuck in your own mind?’ Fahad screwed the paper and threw it into the charcoaled water of the sink. Hagar’s salvaged it instantly, hiding it behind the dishes on the side. She heard Fahad in the bedroom.
‘Selfish whore.’
She then remembered the cloth and the tiny mountains of dust that she had abandoned. Leaving the pan, she walked into the bedroom.
‘Fahad, what are you doing?’
The blue abaya Fahad had brought her, the scarf she wore on her journey from Iraq, her grey T-shirt. Fahad was pulling items of Hagar’s clothing out of the wardrobe.
‘Take it and get out.’ Hagar’s eyes widened.
‘I can’t! What do you mean?’
‘I mean I’ve had enough, get out.’
‘Can we not talk, the letter, really it…’
‘No Hagar, get out.’
‘But I’ve…’
A flash of Fahad’s eyes and a searing sting that marked only an instance of time. Hagar silenced, too stunned to look away from the shining silver pen that was hooked upon the top pocket of Fahad’s dishdasha.
Hagar picked up the plastic bag that Fahad had thrown onto the floor and, on the cold tiles of their bedroom, she began packing away her clothes.
***
Step by step, box by box. Bader hadn’t known any other place better than he knew the market. Since the age of eleven, stacking and re-stacking, he doubted that his hands could be useful for anything else. And he will miss it, he thought, as he turned to see Nassir waving his hand, agreeing with the Bedouin woman who was selling homemade perfumes and jewelry. He’ll miss the chaos of it, the police runs, the awkward mosaics of Kuwait’s newly developed landscapes, layers upon layers of unfinished foreign foundations, architecture that had flattened the mud houses of the old port and the small twisting alleyways beneath. He wanted to see his country grow, as though it was his own child. To witness the disappearance of the very last glimpse of the organic logic of the old city and watch Kuwait become smothered by the alien blueprint of progress. A miracle, he thought, of uncertain change. Although certain, that he would miss it.
Nassir returned with something in his hand, a small item grasped in his fist.
‘For you.’ Nassir passed the item to Bader, ‘for safe travels and protection.’
Two silver scorpions, each enclosing upon a sharply cut black stone, their tails hooking back on themselves and facing the other. Bader pushed the ring over the knuckle of his middle finger. It was a perfect fit, heavy yet in place.
‘Thank you, it means a lot, really.’
Nassir placed his hand onto Bader’s shoulder. ‘I’ll think of you, promise you’ll keep safe?’
In silence Bader nodded, smiled, then returned to loading the last of the fruit into the back of their truck. Nassir turned on the engine whilst Bader closed the truck door, leaving behind more white flakes of paint upon the gritted grounds of the market. They drove home together, windows down, smoking Nassir’s cigarettes, for what they both knew would be the last time.
***
The shoreline was expanding, growing golden as the sun lowered behind the tower blocks. Rising to the east, setting to the west, cyclical, holy. And the colour of the sky was so gently melting into the blues of the ocean. Hagar felt comforted by it, to realize that despite everything, the rivers of the Tigris ran endlessly into the Persian Gulf, the salted water that now softened her feet.
It was unusual to see a woman alone on Mahboula beach but that didn’t matter to Hagar. She was alone, it was a weekday, she imagined that the other women in the suburbs were preparing food, like she too would have been, only in another universe.
She wriggled her toes. Small shells emerged around them as the waves inhaled, cradling her ankles. She was surprised at how sensitive they were, assuming instead that by now, taking her body across the border of her homeland, they would be tougher, stronger or numbed, at least. She splashed them, her feet flicking, sprinkling ripples across what otherwise would have been calm evening waters. She wondered if she could sleep there for the night, on the beach, safe under the stars, in the romance of herself, drifting away to natural sounds, more consolatory than the breathing of a man.
Her stomach rumbled. Could only the sea appease this moment of solace wondering, a moment so raw and tender just as the night she first escaped Iraq? Beyond the shoreline the was a radiance, now shining brighter than the twilight sky. Hagar walked out of the sea lowering, with grace, her skirt and slipping on her sandals. She looked up to notice it, there, glowing wholesomely, the full moon and once again, she felt a bittersweet confidence emerging inside of her.
***
The market was dismantling. The cool evening air was a time to enjoy. Stall owners were stacking away what remained to be sold, placing the carboard boxes beneath the wooden frames. Rhythmically, with clanks and squeaks, the working day was ending.
Bader caught sight of Asif on the corner of his stall. He was crouching over a box, sorting the rotting bananas from the ripe.
‘Asif, my brother.’ Bader surprised him, interrupting his final duties. He stood, pulling the waist of his trousers up with him. His legs were thin and bowed but usually unnoticeable, hidden under his loose fitting izhar.
‘My friend you’re late! I’ve packed away already,’ Asif replied in haste.
‘It’s ok, we have stock,’ Bader replied, ‘I came to say goodbye and thank you for helping me all these years.’
‘In the name of God, don’t mention it.’ Asif crouched back down, turning to continue sorting the bananas. ‘Anyhow, where’s a stateless man like you going?’
Bader looked around then squatted, helping Asif to sort the bananas. ‘I’m going west, Turkey then maybe even the UK. I bought myself a fake passport, I’m going to find a real job.’
‘Mashallah! It’s good to travel, I remember the feeling.’
‘You travelled too?’ Bader stopped sorting the fruit, amazed and almost disappointed by Asif’s lack of surprise.
‘Of course. Before I left Yemen, I tried for Germany. It was exciting, especially in the seventies.’ Asif stood to collect the next box of bananas.
‘And what happened, you didn’t make it?’ Bader shouted to him as he walked away.
‘No, I made it. Anyway, it was easy back then, borders were like garden gates.’
‘So why didn’t you stay?’
‘It wasn’t what I expected, the money wasn’t good and no one believed my story.’
‘That you were Yemeni, you mean?’
‘No, that I was a human, that I did good things and bad, fell in love, got angry! I was becoming what western people wanted me to be, a victim or a thief, and that wasn’t me. Well, not all the time – ha! So I left and now look, I’m sorting rotting bananas and talking to an adventurous young man like you, the dream.’ Asif smiled wildly, displaying the two gaps which over time, had replaced his canine teeth. He looked up, noticing the sudden distance in Bader’s gaze.
‘You think I should leave Asif?’ By now Bader had forgotten about sorting the fruit and was sitting, holding a banana in his hand, eagerly waiting for Asif’s words.
‘That one’s not my story to tell. Anyway, I thought you came here to say goodbye?’ Asif winked then stood up before Bader had time to reply.
Bader grinned, his heart filling, understanding exactly what Asif implied.
‘Words cannot express my thanks, Asif. You’re a good man.’
‘And a bad man too, remember!’ Asif saluted Bader with his right hand as though an army cadet and Bader’s, yet for him to realize, remained wildly grinning.
***
‘Hey, are you driving to Al-Jahra?’
Bader turned, his senses still glowing from Asif’s words.
‘Well peace be upon you too, stranger!’
Hagar knew she’d find him there, at the market. The full moon, everything in alignment, too perfect for the circumstance not to manifest what she needed.
‘Are you, or not?’
Bader was pleased to see her, himself also elated in his own spirit and ready for the world to enter.
‘Well Hagar, stranger, I am taking the bus.’
Hagar laughed, almost rudely. ‘You don’t drive? I knew you were young!’
‘I’m stateless, it’s difficult to get a license.’
Hagar was jarred, less by his words, more by realizing her own abrasiveness. ‘Sorry, I’m in a rush.’
‘To meet the desert rats?’ Bader winked.
‘Very funny.’
Bader, stroked down the thicker hairs on his upper lip.
‘Well ok, let’s take the bus,’ Hagar claimed before Bader had the time to suggest anything else, ‘anyway it won’t…’
‘Wait,’ Bader interrupted, ‘I’ll ask Asif.’
***
‘Just here.’ The truck pulled over on Hagar’s request. Asif saluted Bader for the second time, again flickering a wink. Bader smiled and left the truck, swinging his legs off the leather seat as though a boy leaving the bus at the school gates.
‘What are you doing?’ Hagar turned as she heard the truck door close.
‘Joining you.’
‘No, I need to do this alone.’
But already Asif had pulled away, only a silhouette of his waving hand could be seen now shrinking into the distance. Hagar breathing heavily rubbed her forehead. She then meticulously tucked in the several strands of hair that were again escaping from her hijab and into the eastward winds.
‘No Bader, please leave me.’
Bader kicked the sand underneath his feet, the grains emerging then uniformly falling.
‘Well, at least tell me where you are going.’
Hagar turned and began walking, unwilling to respond to his calls. ‘I can’t, please go now.’
‘Just tell me, then I will go.’
Hagar turned to see Bader’s skin lightened under the moonlight, his eyes were wide and eager. ‘Why do you care, I’m a stranger to you?’
‘Because I feel you are hiding something that will help me one day.’
Hagar closed her eyes, gathering the strength to locate herself amongst the stars. She inhaled the stillness of the desert night.
‘Ok come, but please don’t speak.’
‘Sure I...’ Bader then paused and slid his thumb and forefinger across his lips. He then began following silently in Hagar’s footsteps.
***
The desert muted their tread yet their pace was rhythmically in sync. Right, left, right, left: a metronomic ticking beneath them and beyond their conscious thoughts. Never did Hagar turn to face him and, following his promises, Bader never spoke. Their only quiet company was the moonlight that illuminated the surrounding land and of course, scurrying desert rats: sundevall's jird.
Hagar peered into the distance towards the two oil towers ahead. Sixty degrees to the right of her, she measured. They were close. And the highway? Hagar turned to check. Only a faint sight of the two bridges at the edge of Al-Jahra and the distant sound of oil tankers, rolling across the tarmac of the roads. Bader then noticed her after, head down, scanning the surrounding land.
‘Can I help, have you lost something?’ Bader thought it was an appropriate time to break the silence. Hagar seemingly agreed.
‘I’m looking for three stones, in a triangle shape.’ Hagar responded, still inspecting the sands around.
‘There?’ Bader pointed towards a dark lump on the near horizon.
‘No, too big, they were flat.’
‘Three flat stones, in the desert, in the night,’ Bader laughed, the sound quickly absorbed by the surrounding silence. ‘Are you mad, stranger?’
‘Possibly, but you’re crazier for following.’
‘I’m following the moonlight,’ Bader turned over a stone on the ground. ‘If the moon be with thee, thou needest not care about the stars.’ Bader flipped the stone back over. ‘You know this saying? Its Egyptian I think.’
‘Yes, and who wants a thing is blind to its faults. Yes, I know it but now’s not really a good time for poetry.’ Hagar gestured for them to keep walking north, further from the main road.
‘But I thought you were a writer, what writer doesn’t enjoy poetry?’
‘I do, but not right now.’
‘So, what are you searching for again?’
‘The same thing as you,’ Hagar replied, ‘three flat stones and the right words.’
‘Take my hand.’
‘What?’ Bader knew that Hagar had heard him.
‘Just take it!’
‘No, I’m looking…’
Bader walked in front, pausing Hagar in her tracks. He looked into her eyes. He felt them mirror, everything in his life that had led him to standing there with her, a stranger in the desert, and all it could mean amidst his own journey. He saw before him, the comfort of familiarity, all that had made him yet never belonged to him, or anyone, and the pain of confronting it, letting it go: departure, growth, another soul searching for the place that he too desired.
‘He who fled from death, fell into it. You know that one?’
Hagar’s breath slowed. ‘No, I don’t, Egyptian?’
‘No, my own.’ Bader looked down towards his still open hand in front then back towards Hagar. She placed her hand gently in his, their fingers at once curling tight around each other’s palms.
‘Now let’s keep looking.’
***
The sand had remained warm from the daytime heat yet the night air was cool, enough for their exposed skin to become dry. The three flat stones had been forgotten. Instead Bader and Hagar sat together, crossed legged under the stars, rubbing their fingers through the fine grains in front of them. It made their hands dusty, as though another’s skin.
‘There’s over a hundred thousand people who are stateless in Kuwait,’ Bader told her, ‘young, old, families, children, so many.’ Hagar was unaware of just how many, or in fact any. Bader told her that before these people, like his father, had served in the army and were bought-out like cattle by the ruling family, in times when they needed extra political support against the merchants. ‘But now we’re useless to them,’ he said, ‘they call us illegal, position us between the sky and the earth.’
Hagar too spoke about her life, the stories she admitted she had so recently buried. She told Bader about Saddam, what he had done to the Shi’a, her mother and sisters, in the South. How his guards had imprisoned her, raped her, just because her father had some minor political standing in their village. She told him the pain of giving birth to the twins knowing only minutes after, they would be taken from her, never hers but instead the vessels of the Ba’athist regime. She felt shame, shed tears which her hand immediately wiped away in reticence. Nothing could give her comfort and Bader knew that no words, poetic or not, would suffice.
But Bader listened, so intently, and placed his hand on Hagar’s once her emotions ebbed and the back of her moistened hand eventually rested upon her knee.
‘And what will you do Bader?’ Hagar, caught up in her own stories and the skin on her cheek tightened by tears, almost forgot Bader’s presence. That he too was navigating a life, whole and separate from hers. ‘You think you can continue your life like this?’
‘Actually my plan is to leave Kuwait in a few days.’
‘Really, where will you go?’
‘I’m going West, to start again.’
‘Brave!’ Hagar suddenly noticed a lightness in her words, how they could slip so easily from the mind to tongue. ‘Are you scared?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of forgetting who I was, the people who created me, the face of my mother.’
‘They will travel with you, undoubtedly, your memories. I mean look, even an empty desert didn’t allow me to escape them!’
‘And what will you do if we don’t find it, Hagar, your diary?’
‘Write it all down again, exactly what I just told you. Write it all down.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! And then bury it. In fact, I will spend my entire life doing this. I will start my own business, call myself the mortician of memory, and don’t worry, I won’t be tearful like this. I will feel free and hopefully become rich doing it too.’
‘Paid by the ruling family?’
‘Of course! And I will bury the Al-Sabah’s memory quite happily, wrapped neatly in the flag of Kuwait and you will return just to see it, to sing the national anthem in your best voice…
‘Blessed be my country a homeland for harmony, Kuwait, Kuwait, Kuwait!’
They laughed loudly, knowing only the small desert creatures around them could hear. Just them and the creatures, witnessing their unity at the crossroads of their lives, together, silently, wondering whether these moments really should happen to people like them and whether strangers really do meet for a certain reason, just at the right moment, as though destined by some greater force.
‘How long until the sunrise, do you think Bader?’
Bader jocosely held his fist to his chest and then turned to face the moon that was hanging to the east.
‘Oh full moon my brother, when will the sun brighten your skies?’
Hagar cracked in giggles, seeing a face so kind suddenly pretend an unnatural seriousness.
‘Shh!’ Bader joked, ‘he’s speaking to me, he says… he says three hours! Three hours until the sunrises and he also tells me that, in the morning, you’ll find everything you’re looking for.’ Bader opened his eyes and smiled. ‘If the moon be with thee, thou needest not care about the stars.’
‘Thank you, Bader and thank you for listening.’
‘And thank you Hagar, for letting me join you.’ Bader lay on his back, arms raising behind him then reached for the packet of cigarettes in his top pocket. ‘We’ll continue our search in the morning, right stranger?’
‘I will and you’re welcome to join, stranger.’ Hagar joined Bader laying. She rolled over to face him then kissed him on the cheek as he drew from his cigarette. ‘Goodnight.’
Bader turned to see her, the side of her body adjusting into the sand and curving out from the barren flatness that surrounded them. It appeared too sacred to touch, he realised, a womanly figure, so grounded and whole even without his presence. Bader rolled over again onto his back to face the stars above.
‘Awake to goodness Hagar.’
***
Glinting, was it dawn? The stars were falling from the sky. But really, were they stars? Hagar rubbed her eyes. They moved above, freckles of light, like small flies, hundreds of them buzzing, no, thousands, helicopters. Thousands of helicopters, flying southward, their noise dissecting the inaudible air that blanketed the cityscape ahead, a city of awakening bodies and the humming of more engines in the distance. How many had already passed over their sleeping minds, their fleeting dreams, without them realising? Hagar sat up to see more flecks of light on the horizon. Unholy phosphorescence, she recognised them instinctively: tanks, Iraqi, machined ghosts floating in the distance. She rubbed her eyes again to see them, metallic insects gliding along the highway and underneath the two bridges that marked the entrance to Al-Jahra.
‘Bader,’ Hagar shook him, his sleeping face holding the same gentle demeanor he holds when awake. ‘Bader, wake up, I think it’s a war.’
‘A war, what?’ Bader stretched his body in the sand, the words not yet settling into his still unconscious mind.
‘Look, near the bridges, I think it’s Iraq.’
Bader’s eyes finally opened, squinting into the twilight sky ahead. ‘Are they, tanks?’
‘I think it’s Saddam.’ Hagar stood and at once and began walking North, her black abaya flapping like the wing of a bird with each footstep.
‘Hagar!’
Bader noticed fire ahead, flames arising from the two oil towers in the distance. The smoke from them tainted the glow of morning light. ‘Hagar!’ A jet plane flew overhead, dipping its flight path as it neared the city. Bader ran to her, covering her with his body, causing her to fall onto the sand beneath them. She pushed him away, deafened by the noises of the increasing helicopter rotors above.
‘Leave me, Iraq’s already killed me!’
Hagar walked faultlessly, mission-like, as though she knew exactly the destination she was heading, the very place she had longed to be all along: not the diary, or the stones, or her children, but the place where the fire burned within her stomach, the very feeling that once told her to press pen to paper, to leave Iraq, escape the prison, bury her words, to find Bader at the market on yesterday’s moonful night. And she saw the flames ahead, like Bader did, and the jet planes in the distance that were still coming but still she continued, headstrong and not in spite, only certain, for the first time in her life, that everything that had happened to her, belonged precisely to her. Every decision she had made, suffering felt, smile, all hers. And it was untouchable, indestructible, a sanctity that not even time nor any fire could ever reach.
But then, ‘Hagar!’ She saw deep purples suddenly filtering behind her eyes. She could still hear Bader, faintly in the distance behind her. Was it dawn now, she hoped? Her heart slowing. Bader felt her neck, her arm twitched and her blood was pouring onto the golden sand of morning’s sunrise. The fading of a stranger in front of Bader’s eyes, why, he wondered, not him?
And all because of one distant decision made by a man, once a boy – ‘bastard!’ – who like anyone with enough training could be, was, manipulated by the angst of attack. Fueled with enough armed emotion to react with a neurotic urge to tense his forefinger around the trigger of a gun. ‘No!’ And what’s more, it just happened to be that solider, who in the same day took a cold shower, ate spiced bread and molasses, who unknown to them both, was the friend of the man who had once raped Hagar and in that split moment saw beneath him a moving black moving spec. An enemy, he thought, running wildly with such conviction, yet cowardly escaping his targeted aim.
And still, if only the true voice of that one man’s instinct had not been inebriated by the same chemical that had caused that black speck to birth now orphaned children and flee the country of its birth, it would live, presently in peace as an Iraqi citizen, as a human, just like that soldier so too wished he could. And maybe, with just a second more of thought, or if only on another night, just one afternoon on the banks of the Tigris river, they would have spoken, that black moving spec and the soldier, laughed, even held hands to mark the beauty of event that lead to the unexpected meeting of two strangers, and exchanged their own stories of freedoms and morality, shared the essence of the inevitable suffering that resides within every earthy life.
‘I’m here Hagar.’ Her vision was now fading beyond the outline of Bader’s body ‘I’m still here and I’ll find the stones, your story.’ Bader leant down to her, stroking her forehead and returning the kiss upon her still warm cheek. ‘You know more than anyone that they can’t kill you that easily.’
~
to breathe an air
of what is dead
chokes the chance
of surviving now
a tongue in exile
buries and bleeds
amongst the fallen
sands of her children
they once sang of he
who permitted greed
and the forgotten who
never ceased trying
rebuild rebuild higher
they scream her freedom
was so close to dying.
‘Good morning. As of this hour, Kuwait has been liberated from Iraqi control. Over six hundred people have been recorded dead however Iraqi ambassador to the United States reaffirms that Iraq harbored no special objectives and had only wished to establish neighborly relations. The president today has met with the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to discuss the need to continue the defense of the region.’
It was August and dawn: the only time of day cool enough to travel. With the same fearlessness as the stranger he had met, Bader walked underneath the two bridges heading west. He sung to himself, Rahalta, the words echoing across the walls as the shadow of his body stretched in front of him with the rising of the sun behind. He stopped to turn, to face Al-Jahra for the last time. He had packed Hagar’s diary and his fake passport into his rucksack and he knew, certainly now, that he had found the freedom he was searching for: the courage to leave behind the world where his story had begun.
Note: The two bridges referred to are the two bridges where ‘The Battle of the Bridges’ took place in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion in 1990. The battle took place in the early hours of the morning on the 2nd of August and resulted in an Iraqi victory. It is recorded that four Kuwaitis died and a further twenty were injured, whilst the number of Iraqi deaths is unknown. The area now marks the meeting of the sixth ring road that borders Kuwait City and the start of Highway 70, the road that leads West to the Iraqi border. On another note, it is also true that in Kuwait, there are over 100,000 ethnically Kuwaiti people who are recognized as stateless – ‘bidun jinsiyya’, ‘without nationality’.
Andy Spisak was born in New Jersey and attended Boston University, where he earned a B.A. in history, and The Fletcher School at Tufts University. After working in the fields of public policy and economics, he began a new career in writing. He has previously published short fiction in Adelaide Literary Magazine. He and his family reside in Virginia and Hawai’i. |
Every Little Thing
I hadn’t heard from Natalie for more than twenty years. She wrote to me for several years after she had quit college and set out for the West Coast. Her letters bore postmarks of places such as Nome, Alaska; Forsyth, Montana; and Show Low, Arizona. She designed and crafted jewelry, worked as a nature guide, and taught at a tribal school. She hinted that she was living with someone for a while, but she never disclosed much about him.
As I reread Ted’s email, I weighed calling my wife. Lauren and I met in law school, two years after Natalie had left. The two had never met. Still, Lauren remained wary of her. “Another letter from your girlfriend?” she would remark, when one of Natalie’s sporadic notes arrived.
I wasn’t surprised that Natalie was living in Brazil when she died. Nor would I have been surprised if she’d been living in Ukraine, Morocco, or Vietnam. Though most people seek someone to be with, Natalie sought someplace to be. Natalie had fled her family and others who loved her. “People and places can both disappoint you,” she once said to me, “but only people can betray you.”
###
Ted and I were friends in high school, and the summer after my first year of college, we often got together after work for a game of tennis. I had a job with the county roads department, and Ted was working with his father, Árpád, at the Ford plant in Edison. I stopped by his house one afternoon, and Natalie answered the door. Clutching a spiral-bound sketch pad, she stood at an awkward angle to block her cat from slipping out. Her dark brown hair, which had fallen well below her shoulders in high school, now barely touched them.
“Ted had to work late. He won’t be back until after dinner.”
“OK. Can you let him know I came by?”
“Yeah, he won’t mind waiting to get beat.”
I laughed. “It’s more like the other way around. You can come and see for yourself.”
“You might be sorry you asked,” she said.
She could be right. Ted and I had watched Natalie run middle-distance track in high school. She moved with a dancer’s grace.
Natalie pointed to the cat, who was still trying to squeeze through the gap between the door and the frame. “I think he has the right idea. I need to escape too,” she said, and gestured for me to come inside. I followed her into the living room.
“Wait a minute while I get my things.” She placed her sketch book open to one of her drawings on the coffee table and went upstairs.
Curious to see what she had drawn, I picked up the pad. A woman in her late teens or early twenties modeled a cocktail dress. I skimmed other pages with drawings of women in business attire and casual outfits. One dress featured sharp-angled rhomboid shapes. Nested diamonds receded to an illusion of infinity on another outfit. She had sketched her cat in purple, like Warhol’s Sam, on a T-shirt. I pictured her on a runway, modeling one of her creations. She would dazzle.
Natalie returned in a few minutes with her racket. She had changed out of her jeans and blouse into white shorts and a light blue tee, with her sunglasses hooked over the collar. Feeling a bit embarrassed for glancing at her drawings, I closed the tablet and set it on the table.
“Sorry. I was looking at your sketches.”
“Ah, don’t; they’re not finished!” Natalie plucked the sketch pad off the table. She opened it and frowned at one of her drawings.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” I said.
“I’m applying to some design programs and need to submit a portfolio.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t shown them to anyone outside of art class.”
“No, you’re good. You should have no problem getting in,” I said.
Natalie laughed and waved her racket at me. “Says the noted art critic. Let’s go before you get into more trouble.”
As Natalie and I spent increasing time together that summer, Ted, who had tenaciously protected his sister in high school, showed little concern. He either trusted us, despite our two-year age difference, or assumed that the relationship would fade when I returned to school. I seldom saw Árpád, who busied himself making furniture in his basement workshop. However, her mother, the vigilant Márta, stood watch.
As Natalie and I were about to leave to see a movie one evening, Márta walked out of the kitchen. Her face was flushed and her mouth was pinched. Natalie assured her mother that she would be home before midnight. Márta spoke in an angry tone and said something to Natalie in Hungarian. “No, mama. That’s not me. You know that.”
Natalie turned away from her mother, grabbed her purse off the sofa, and strode to the front door. I followed her out of the house to my car. As I drove to the movie theater, Natalie tilted her head to rest it against the seatback and closed her eyes. “She thinks I’ll screw up and ruin my life,” she said softly, clasping her hands and resting them on her lap.
“With me?”
Natalie turned and leaned toward me. Her eyes were calm and clear. She described her parents’ perilous escape from Hungary after the failed uprising to a refugee camp in Austria and eventually to New Jersey. She shifted in her seat away from me. “Where my mother came from, the wrong choice could…” She flicked her hand forward as if she were tossing away her future. “She’s frightened. But I’m not.”
After the movie, a young couple stood near us in the parking lot, beside their car. They had a little girl with them, about four years old. The child shrieked as a glop of ice cream fell from her cone and slithered down her mint green top.
“How could you leave the keys in?” the woman said.
“Don’t yell at me. I put them on the dash when you handed me the shopping bag.”
“Now what, genius?” She glared at her child, now in the midst of a meltdown. “We need to find a bathroom.”
Natalie nodded in their direction. “That’ll be us some day,” she said. “That’s the part they try to hide.”
Natalie’s cynical comment surprised me. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” I said.
Natalie smiled, as if trying to imagine a sunnier fate. “Maybe it will be different for us,” she said. “For one thing, ours will be a boy.”
Perhaps she suspected that all marriages shatter, sometimes in plain sight. She grasped my hand and guided us away from the discord. “Take me somewhere. Just drive.” Each person chooses a way of dealing with their fears. It would not be the last time Natalie would want to flee hers.
We crossed the river to Lambertville and continued on pitch-dark roads, past sod farms and dairy barns that would be replaced in time by “executive estates” for Princeton professors and Manhattan financiers. We wound up in Princeton at a pool fronting one of the campus buildings. We sat on the pool’s edge near the fountain. It was after midnight, past Natalie’s curfew. We joked that there would be more hell to pay with Márta.
Natalie kicked off her flip-flops and waded into the water. She unbuttoned her blouse, leaned forward, and started splashing me. I jumped in, reached out for her, and pulled her close. Her body relaxed, and her troubled expression disappeared. She surveyed the quiet town, miles from the angry scene earlier in the evening, and kissed me. “You see,” she said, “we’re not like them at all.”
###
I arrived home from work before Lauren, as I usually did. As a partner at the leading tax law firm in the city, she often worked late. I looked forward to our therapeutic dinners at nine or ten. Lauren would recount the day’s annoyances in a way that both unburdened herself and entertained me. It was one of her gifts.
But this evening, she texted that she would be leaving the office early. As I was setting the table, she walked in the front door. The summer humidity had frizzled her dark brown hair, and the workday had curdled her mood. Tonight’s dinner would not entertain.
“Christ, I need a margarita,” she said, as she threw her handbag and briefcase onto a chair. She pulled a bottle of tequila from the cabinet. I threw a handful of fettuccini into a pot of boiling water.
“Hello to you too,” I replied.
“I’m sorry. I’ve had an awful day.” She took a bottle of margarita mix from the refrigerator, then dumped the ingredients and ice into a blender. “The office had a going away lunch for our interns. Jack was supposed to say a few words about how much we enjoyed working with them, blah, blah. He’s about to speak, but he gets a call ordering him to a meeting with one of our big clients. So he tosses the whole thing to me.” She pushed the button, and the blender whirred.
“And you were your usual witty self,” I said over the din.
Lauren turned off the blender and poured the drink into her glass. “I wish. I’d hardly worked with any of them, except Ben. I thought I did pretty well, but then I ran into that cow, Helen, in the ladies’ room. She said her intern, Clarice, was upset because I had referred to her as Claire. She says to me in that patronizing tone of hers, ‘Well, I know how overwhelmed you’ve been the last couple of months. You can’t be expected to keep track of all of the details.’”
I shook my head. “That’s terrible. Try to relax, forget it; I’ll have dinner ready soon.” I considered waiting to tell her about Natalie, who had chosen her footloose life in part to avoid dispiriting days like Lauren’s. But there wouldn’t be a good time to bring it up. I took a bottle of wine from the rack on the kitchen counter and turned to her.
“I’m sorry your day was crappy. Mine wasn’t great either. I got an email from Ted. Do you remember him? Natalie’s brother.” I paused, not sure how to continue, or what to say, before blurting out, “Natalie died.”
Lauren leaned against the edge of the counter; her shoulders slumped. She lifted the glass and swirled her drink. She searched for a response, maybe as a wife, but maybe as a lawyer. “Oh, I’m sorry. What happened?”
“Cancer. Ted didn’t have a lot of details. She was living in Brazil. He and Lynn are having a memorial service next Saturday. Maybe I’ll find out more.”
Lauren shifted her eyes from the drink to me. “Sure. Do you want me to come with you?”
“Of course I would, but...not if it will upset you. Her letters—”
“Yeah, those letters. They were like daggers aimed at our marriage.”
I eased closer to her. “That’s not why she sent them,” I said.
“Why, then?”
“To let me know that she was all right, to convince herself that she was.”
Lauren’s upper lip quivered, and she rubbed a finger against the glass. “You didn’t have to answer them.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“I expected her to show up, ‘Hi, I’m back.’ and blow it all up. Blow us all up."
“She would never do that. She wasn’t a threat.”
“She was to me.” Lauren set her glass hard onto the counter. “You’re right; it is upsetting. Maybe you should go by yourself. I’m exhausted. I need to lie down for a while.” She walked past me and headed upstairs.
Attending the memorial service and listening to the narrative of Natalie’s life would not be easy for Lauren. How could it be? Nevertheless, her sad reaction had soured the evening. The dead can still provoke.
I sat at the table, but I no longer wanted to eat anything. Neighborhood children ran past our house, laughing and calling to one another in high-pitched voices. My phone rang, but I didn’t answer it. I didn’t do a thing, even when it rang a few more times.
###
I woke at six on the morning of the memorial service. Trying not to wake Lauren, I got dressed quietly, but she turned over and asked when I would be back.
“Tonight. I’ll try not to leave too late,” I said. Lauren’s college roommate, Jen, and her husband, Ryan, had invited us to their place on the lake in New Hampshire the following day. Spending time with her friend would ease the weekend’s sting.
Lauren’s frostiness had melted as she came to appreciate the finality that Natalie’s memorial represented. “I can call Jen and cancel if you want to stay over. It’s a long drive for one day,” she said.
I didn’t mind the long drive back from New Jersey. I’ve always enjoyed driving at night, when imagination fills the darkness. “No, I’ll be OK. I like it by the lake. Is Ryan going to make us catch our dinner again?”
Lauren mumbled something into her pillow and pulled the covers over her head.
The drive from Boston to New Jersey took about five hours. I’d taken the trip many times to visit Natalie when I was in school here and she was in her first year at Seton Hall. Near the end of my junior year, I wanted to surprise her and spend the weekend in New York. I arrived at her dorm close to three in the afternoon. I knocked on her door, but no one answered.
I sat on the hallway floor outside Natalie’s room. Under the fluorescent lights, my arms turned the same gray-green color as the cinder block walls. A Grateful Dead song was playing in a room down the hall. From inside Natalie’s room, her cat scratched at the door and meowed. She had found Mirabelle curled up in a window well in January. Students weren’t supposed to keep pets in the dorm, but the RA loved cats and looked the other way.
After several minutes, the outside door opened, and Natalie was walking toward me. She held a pet carrier in one hand and gripped a grocery bag in the other hand. Her eyes brightened, and she set the carrier and bag on the floor. I got up from the floor. We ran toward each other and kissed.
“Steve, I wasn’t expecting—”
“Yeah, I thought we’d go into the city. Take our minds off exams.”
I picked up the carrier and bag, which contained cans of cat food. Natalie opened the door to her room. Mirabelle scurried under the bed. A bulging backpack, with a teal pullover protruding from the top, rested on the floor next to her bed. She had emptied the top two bureau drawers, which jutted out. A few winter clothes hung in the closet, and a textbook lay on the unmade bed.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Natalie walked slowly to the bed and sat down. She gripped the edge for support and inhaled a fortifying breath. “I have to leave,” she said.
Árpád had suffered a minor stroke the previous year; a family emergency was a possibility. “Did something happen at home?”
She shook her head. “No. I have to get away. I woke up a few days ago and started getting ready for class. I went to the closet for something to wear. I stood there. ‘What the hell am I doing?’ Mirabelle came running over and wanted to play. Everything seemed to be touching me.”
“So you decided to leave. Just like that?”
She waved her hand around the room. “I can’t do this. If I stay, I’ll start resenting you, resenting my family, and I don’t want to do that.”
Natalie planned to join her former roommate, Nina, who was driving to Los Angeles to visit her sister. Nina’s parents would take Mirabelle.
The room sweltered in the late afternoon sun. I opened the window and grabbed the desk chair. I straddled the seat with the chair back between me and Natalie. “And you were going to leave without me, without even telling me?” I asked.
“I was going to call…or write.” Natalie exhaled with a resigning murmur.
“So, you’re giving up on us?”
“No, but I can’t give up on myself. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for us,” she said.
I felt light-headed in the sticky air. My stomach clenched. Sleepy-eyed Mirabelle peeked out from under the bed. I got up from the chair, and Natalie rocked forward from the bed and stood up. I didn’t know what to do. Natalie reached out and we hugged. “Maybe someday I’ll be ready…but not now. Try to understand.”
How quickly a day can turn. I walked out of the dorm to my car and set out on the long drive back to Boston.
###
I arrived half an hour before the memorial service was to begin. It was the same church where Ted and Lynn had been married. Ted stood in the nave opposite the first row of pews and fidgeted with his tie as he spoke with the minister. I walked up to them, and Ted surrounded me with a welcoming hug. He introduced me to the minister, a ruddy man nearing sixty who spoke in a soothing cadence common to the calling.
Ted glanced around the church. “I wasn’t sure who would be here after all of these years,” he said.
It was a fair comment. I assumed most of the people there were friends of Ted and Lynn. It was unlikely that Natalie had kept in touch with any of her friends from school. After all, she was a stranger to her family. And me.
“It’s surreal. Your email was a jolt,” I said.
“How is Lauren?”
“She’s fine,” I said, although she was far from it. “We thought it best that I do this solo.” Ted nodded. There was no need for us to rehash, or rewrite, history.
Near one of the windows, Lynn stood facing another woman. Except for her chestnut brown designer frames and a few streaks of gray in her hair, Lynn had changed little since her wedding.
The other woman had long black hair and delicate features. Her fingertips rested on Lynn’s shoulder, while her other hand beat with a gentle motion as she spoke, as if she were conducting a quiet passage of an orchestra piece.
“Who is the woman talking with Lynn?” I asked.
“That’s Gabriela. She runs an animal sanctuary near Rio. Natalie worked with her the last few years. Gabriela helped care for her when she got sick. She didn’t think it was right for Natalie to return home alone.” Ted gestured in their direction. “I’ll introduce you.”
As Ted and I approached the two women, Lynn stepped forward and we hugged. “Steve, it’s good to see you again. This is Natalie’s friend, Gabriela. Gabriela, Steve was Natalie’s boyfriend…many years ago.”
I extended my hand to Gabriela, whose amber eyes fixed onto me. “I’m glad she had someone with her…at the end,” I said.
“Ah, Natalie told me about you. She wondered how your life had turned out.”
On Sunday I would drive with Lauren to visit Jen and Ryan at their lake house. Lauren and Jen would laugh about some embarrassing incident from college. Ryan would grill the rainbow trout he caught and pour the wine throughout the night. Natalie called it “the satisfied life,” a life that she rejected, because it was ordinary, yes, but also because it was a life we were expected to lead.
Gabriela wore a pendant with a light blue stone, aquamarine perhaps, set within a silver ellipse. She reached behind her neck to remove the chain. “Natalie made this a few months ago. Working with her crafts brought her comfort.”
She manipulated the pendant with care, protecting it, and held the ornament out to me. I grasped it and traced the edge of the ellipse. It was smooth and shimmering. I traced it again and again. Gabriela took her hand, the rhythmic hand, and touched my cheek. “It was easy to be with her.”
I placed the pendant in her hand. “Yes, it was.” Perhaps she and Natalie had been lovers. A part of me hoped that they were. After all, we were gathered to celebrate a life.
The minister signaled the beginning of the service. I had no idea if Natalie had ever found religion. We’d never talked about it, and I doubted that Ted and Lynn knew either. Ted, a nominal Catholic, had adopted Lynn’s Episcopalian religion when they married. We sang the Anglican hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” In his eulogy Ted hoped that the cost of Natalie’s unbound life, the sacrifice of family and friendships, was not too great.
Maybe the journey itself was the point. For Natalie, even happy marriages, especially the happy ones, could ensnare. She accepted uncertainty as the price for discovery. It was a price that I wasn’t prepared to pay. She had been right about this all along.
When the service ended, Lynn invited everyone to a reception at the home of their daughter, who was now living in the house where Ted and Natalie had grown up, the house where I last saw Natalie. The night after Ted and Lynn’s wedding, Natalie and I sat and talked in living room. She gathered herself in the corner of the brown damask sofa, drawing her legs close to her. A picture of a peasant scene, a daily reminder to Márta and Árpád of their precarious life before coming to America, hung above the sofa.
“Are you going back to L. A.?” I asked.
“Yeah, I found work in the costume shop of one of the studios. It’s gofer work, not something I’ll want to do forever, but it’s where I belong now.”
“How will you know…where you belong?”
Natalie edged forward and surveyed the room. “Maybe it’s here. Maybe it’s somewhere I haven’t thought of yet.”
We talked past midnight. Later that day, Natalie would fly to Los Angeles, and I would return to school in Boston. But a quantum-like entanglement— what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance"—continued to link us.
I opened the door to leave, and Natalie followed me into the early spring chill and drizzle. As we reached the bottom of the porch stairs, Natalie took off down the street. I ran and caught up with her at the end of the block, under a street light.
“I used to race Ted from the house to here,” she said. “He’d always win, and I’d get mad. I’d tell him one day he’d be chasing me.” She gestured toward the house and smiled. “I’m happy for him and Lynn.”
“That night we wound up in Princeton, you said that we would have a boy,” I said.
“Yeah, look at us,” she said. Natalie’s smile faded, replaced by a resigned expression that I hadn’t seen before. “I tried to convince myself to want that—a family, a house, a career—every little thing. Sometimes, I still feel that way...but what if it’s not enough?”
Rain beaded on Natalie’s hair. She crossed her arms tight to her chest against the cold and said she’d better go inside. It was late, and we both had places we had to be.
CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION
I barged in, and people were gathered with my mother, obviously praying. “Mom, I need to speak with you now!”
“Zainab can you conclude? Ladies, a moment, please. I'm having a parental crisis.” The women chuckled, and she was excused.
“Dende, why did you ignore the prayer in session?”
“Who is my father?”
She levelled a stern look at me, “What did I teach you about shouting and fighting?”
I bowed my head. “But Mum, you have no idea what Sule said.”
She kept staring.
“I'm sorry.”
“It’s alright.” She sighed. “I knew this day would eventually come. You know I was a radio presenter before?”
“Please, you say it every time, I’d have to be new and unrelated not to know” I scoffed.
“Well, it was a great job, and I got to interact with callers including people in this town and they would narrate their woes. After each show, I felt something in me, a feeling stronger than empathy. A call… To do something. It was easier to just talk, and for two years, I wrestled with the idea of quitting my job to move here. I finally made my decision, and I was disowned.”
“Really? Grandma would never do that!”
“They didn’t understand. I had my savings, and I took the first bus here. I must say it felt exciting to be a rebel, but I quickly realized the difficulties. I couldn’t speak the native language and knew nothing of their traditions except what I’d heard on the radio. Outsiders weren’t readily welcome, and I remained unemployed. Eventually, I learned their language and started teaching a native girl in English. Believe me, it was hard not to laugh at her accent. Gradually others came, and the class grew. I made some money, bought a farm and some livestock. Everything was going so well until…”
“Mom?”
Her eyes were teary. “Until my farm was set on fire, I rushed in to see what I could salvage. There was nothing I could do, and soon I ran out, coughing from the smoke. Four men were waiting. And I was violated. When they were through, they threatened to do it again if I didn’t leave and never returned.”
I stood, my fists clenched. “Where are they, Mum?”
“Sit. I'm not done. I returned to my parents’ house momentarily, forgetting I had been disowned. I was soon reminded, though. I was angry. Why did God let it all happen? He sent me! I struggled, with nowhere to sleep and depleted savings. I got a job as a waitress and wasted money testing what I already knew. The doctor confirmed my pregnancy and handed me the flyer of an abortion clinic nearby. I was so unsure. I struggled, thinking of raising a child without a father. I was nearly fired; I lost the enthusiasm to do my job properly. I went to the clinic a number of times. Four? Five ? I can’t count. I became known, and soon bets were placed on whether I would go through with it or not. Eventually, I started showing, and I had to quit. Dende, I would be lying if I didn’t think of suicide.”
“But you are always so strong in church!”
“I’m not, it’s Jesus. Those days are so painful to remember. I didn’t know what to do, where to go and had nothing but a child in my womb. I lost faith. At your delivery, complications arose, and I was advised to undergo surgery. I didn’t have money for that, but somehow you came out alright. No one needed to tell me God was working. Your birth gave me a renewed sense of purpose. I struggled to make ends meet. But I wasn’t giving up.”
“I'm a miracle child, not a mistake, right?”
“Yes, you are. But God wasn’t done. A couple of years later, I met Zainab, one of my students, your Sunday school teacher. She was a university student, and we shared an apartment. She encouraged me to tell my parents about you and even accompanied me. I was sceptical. ‘Which mother won’t be happy to see her grandbaby?’ she said. I went, and the door was slammed in my face.
“Grandma? I didn’t know she was wicked!”
“She isn’t. Doesn’t she visit every year, giving you gifts and money?”
“You know about the money?”
“Your mom is a clergywoman. The Holy Spirit reveals everything to her.” They laughed. “She just had a difficult time adjusting to the circumstances of your birth. I cried when God told me to come back here. I ignored him. It had to be the devil! God wouldn’t do such to his children. The Hebrew boys entered the lion’s den only once. And worse, He was talking about starting a church. But you can’t argue with God forever. I decided to obey but not carry you along. Zainab would take care of you. I would go for short trips, do some crusades and return home. When Zainab graduated, she talked about joining me. There was no turning back.”
She paused and chuckled. “You want to know why we were praying when you entered?”
“Yes!”
“We received an arson threat a few days ago.”
“We receive threats?”
“A lot, I stopped counting when you turned ten. But while praying, I received peace about the situation. I want you to know, things would be tough but remember you have a Father in heaven who loves you and will never leave you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to tell the ladies about this peace.”
I smiled knowing I had a father-the Father-and Sule had nothing on me.
Michael Grotsky is rumored to come from a long line of international agents and globe-trotting magicians. Following the family tradition, he has lived in many places, and travelled extensively for both work and pleasure - though he has still not found the difference between the two. Michael Grotsky currently lives in Montreal where he has completed his first collection of short stories, Spinning the Sensualist. He has written fiction and non-fiction for various literary reviews, including the Berkeley Fiction Review, the Berkeley Poetry Review, Erotic Review Magazine, Griffel, Otoliths, and others. |
White Elephant
Doc’s house was new and faux from the faux marble counters to the faux flamingos on the faux lawn. There were enough Costco appetizers to poison a football team. Doc strutted like a cock around his party – of clients and shills. He tried to hook Morrison and Dolores up with true believers but there were technical problems, they remained invisible, the true believers looking for an opening they couldn’t find. Morrison’s arduous training in Mexico with don Wu was coming in handy. “In some situations the best action is to remain invisible and retain your vital forces,” Wu taught. The mountains of Veracruz had lent themselves well to this psychic camouflaging but now Morrison was going to apply his lessons in the heat of Louisiana. It was still the Gulf; maybe the transition wouldn’t be too great.
Morrison fixed himself a plate of lunch meat and macaroni salad. Dolores found some grapes under the pepperoni. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, filling her glass with cheap California red. “We’re in the wrong place.”
“Soon enough,” replied Morrison. “Try to be invisible. This is a great place to practice.”
The true believers were replaced by shiny, bubbly paper-pushers who were nursing some kind of teal-coloured drinks. “Totally artificial,” one of them laughed. “Like me,” giggled the other. They were all glossy surface and pearl white teeth. They didn’t drink, they worked out, they hiked and recycled. They measured and counted. They consumed. They were never disturbed by introspection, nor were they ever disrobed by thought. The two young ladies looked forward to becoming certified members of the bureaucratic class, one in medical sales, the other specializing in catastrophic insurance. Their world was limited to a town full of cousins bounded by the interstate to the north and the Gulf to the south. Where those arteries ran was of little interest, other than as gossip. The past gave them their identity, Fox gave them the world, the radio gave them preachers and talk-ranters, the chemical plants gave them cancer. These women were the current model, the modernized version. After a few minutes they eased away politely, slightly puzzled at their inability to connect, but in a moment their minds were clear and sparkly again. They had stabilized like those rubber dolls that bounce right back up after you knock them down. Morrison and Dolores hadn’t made any impression at all. “You’re doing great,” Morrison said to Dolores as they slipped outside.
On the back lawn a man was avidly stuffing cocktail wieners in his mouth with furtive gusto. He stuck out his hand, still manoeuvring the dogs around his mouth with his tongue. “Doctor Noh,” he said. “Best proctologist this side of Dallas.”
“Is he wearing alligator cologne?” Irma whispered in Morrison’s ear.
The man had a strange scent and through his energy-scan contact lenses, eyes half-closed, Morrison did indeed perceive the outline of something predatory, something vaguely reptilian. Noh was so full of himself, he was pale with self-desire. Cold, harsh, sharp, void of ethics, as snake as snake ever was. He could see them. Morrison imagined the point of view of night-vision goggles. An infra-red, impersonal gaze. He felt unclothed by the man’s handshake. Dolores caught her breath at his touch. With a rhetorical flourish about his sports car seating just two, Noh ordered them to come see his sculpture garden, so beautiful at sunset. “Resistance is futile,” he said. Morrison grinned and slipped away. Dolores rolled her eyes and became invisible.
The whole show remained a stuttering of wax dummies programmed by the technologists of sales and promotion – a perverse American genius unsurpassed anywhere in the world. Doc’s people were relentless, smiling and selling with each breath. They were weaned in the black arts of marketing, using speed and repetition to distract and overwhelm their victim, a kind of shock and awe of glitz and glitter deployed against those who were already inclined to give in to any persistent command. The air was permeated with the cloying perfume of consumerist conformity.
Doc’s wife, Tessa, approached with a young boy, around twenty, in tow. “This is Trey,” she said, “my stepson. Doc’s boy.” He didn’t appear to be a chip off the old block. His expression was dreamy, his eyes soft focus, unlike his father’s meth-like stare. He grinned sheepishly and nodded a hello.
“Say,” said Tessa, “you guys look great! What’ve y’all been doing?”
Dolores and Morrison shook their heads. They couldn’t think of what to say as mostly they’d been spending their time being invisible. “Well anyway,” resumed Tessa, “let’s all get together and go swimming or something. Doc’s always working but we don’t have to wait for him.”
“What are you up to, Trey?” Morrison asked the boy.
“Uh, well, just hanging out. Going out back, you know, smoke a bowl. Uh, want to join?”
“Sure,” Morrison said, “why not.”
Dolores and Tessa begged out so Trey and Morrison went outside to perform the ritual. The house was on the river and they found a spot by the water under the Live Oaks. Trey proudly brought out his hand-carved pipe and loaded it up. He was very serious. The river teemed with an even greater intensity after they smoked. It was boiling with life. Morrison suddenly wanted to eat the moss that hung in streamers from the trees. This was some kind of dope.
“I grow it over at my place,” Trey said. “I’ve worked out a plant I like best. I bred this variety. I call it No Consequence. Turns on the intuitive. And it’s mellow.”
“Impressive,” Morrison agreed. “Everything is shining with life. Imminent.”
“You should come by my place. I’ll show you the plants. You can swim in the river there. It’s really a trip when you’re high.”
They enjoyed the pulse of the river a while longer, then went back to the party. Doc was very drunk and was loudly effusive, falling all over his clients with a maudlin craven simulacrum of his idea of love. He was gushing with it, probably because he was aware of how much money he had made collectively from the people in the room. When Trey and Morrison came in he had his arm in a vice grip around Dolores’ shoulders. She was smiling bravely but Morrison could tell that she was holding back from biting him. Her elbow was cocked. “I really love you guys!” he was shouting at Dolores, looking at Morrison. “And I’m especially crazy for your husband. He’s one hell of a fucking great guy. I’m going to take him fishing. Out in the boat. Just me, him, and Jack Daniels! Haw Haw Haw!”
Dolores squirmed out of his grasp. “Doc, you’re loaded. Give me some space,” she hissed.
“But, honey,” Doc leered at her, “don’t be like that. I’m feeling so good!”
After that Dolores was intent on leaving. On the drive home Morrison found out that she was mad at him too. She said it was because he’d smoked, a pet peeve of hers that she usually kept to herself. But eventually she admitted that she was pissed because she thought that Tessa had been flirting and that he’d been flirting back.
“But when did this happen?” Morrison asked her.
“It was so obvious, Morrison. You were all over each other!”
“But when?” he asked again.
“When she introduced Trey. She was just staring at you with those big dumb cow eyes. She wouldn’t even look at me.”
“Oh, baby, I just can’t agree with you there. There was no eyeing going on. Or no other thing. We were friendly to each other. The boy was friendly too. Was he flirting?”
“How would I know?” she snorted. “All I saw was Tessa and you looking each other up and down and licking your chops!”
Morrison laughed. It was getting good. He’d seen her do this before. She would wind herself up, starting from a grain of something, truth occasionally, and she’d just keep on winding till a hurricane, a twister filled the room. It was best to unwind her. He laughed some more.
“You’re pissed off because that big oaf got his paws onto you. You should’ve seen your face when he was drooling on you.”
“No fucking help from you, thanks a lot! Where were you when I needed you to keep him off me? Out smoking dope with his kid, that’s where!”
“I thought I was flirting with his wife, not his kid,” Morrison teased. “Anyway, you can handle that guy easy.”
“That’s not the point, goddamn it! I don’t want to have to handle him.
I want you to do that. And besides those people are creepy. That fucking doctor for Chrissakes! Mister Success. No wonder I’m pissed off nauseous. Get me home fast. I need a shower.”
They got home, careful to stop at all the red lights and stop signs (although once or twice Morrison had a little trouble telling red from green), and he laid her down on the soft sheets till she let off some very tasty steam. Then they slept and dreamed their separate dreams till morning.
During the summer Morrison met Trey at his place quite a few times. It was a good chill scene. Fine weed, the summer air, the place in the river to swim. Everything was very sensual and mellow. It was ironic because Dolores was becoming more tense. Looked like cabin fever. They lived out in the sticks at Toledo Bend and the humidity and the bugs were intense. The insect noise was almost unbearable some nights – you really noticed how loud it was when it all suddenly stopped and the whole bloody symphony went silent. A deafening silence. Dolores was feeling the pressure.
“How long can it take to settle this damned estate?” she complained.
“It’s Louisiana, darling. Napoleanic code. Devolution.”
“It’s just a shotgun shack on a sliver of swamp!”
“A shack or a mansion – it’s all the same to the county clerk. Worse for out-of-towners.”
Dolores remained hostile to Doc the Hedgehog. Tessa, she was sure, was her rival. Doc seemed to be nursing some kind of suspicion too. Morrison wondered if he and Dolores weren’t putting out such publicly hostile vibes in order to camouflage a hidden lust.
Still, things went along pretty much alright. Morrison was most relaxed with Trey, just grooving in the garden, the field of easiness, of spirit, of a place that was good to visit. Trey was increasingly fed up with his father.
“The man has no soul. He’s just an empty jug of repressed emotions hiding behind money,” he said as Morrison watched him fly into the water on the rope swing, no concern about the venomous water moccasins in the river.
Hell, Morrison thought, you had to maneuver the streets of everybody’s raw emotions, then you were supposed to stay in those streets and not even visit the garden. Slander, vitriol, poison, misinformation, distortion, manipulation – these were some of the most insidious tools. Sabotage, ultimatums, infiltration, psychological warfare, planting of evidence, destruction of reputation, inhuman bureaucracy and all the ensuing cruelties: violation of human rights, of ethical considerations, of respect for the mother, for the earth, for nature in all its forms including genetic integrity and fertility, of balance among living systems, of natural sense. For these atavistic forces to then pronounce upon the personal, consensual behavior of its citizens makes no sense and has no validity. By the river Morrison could have these thoughts, and then let them float away in harmless thought-bubbles, the river taking it all back down stream.
One muggy day towards the end of August, Trey was home barbecuing with his father. Doc flipped over a bloody burger. “Job’s just waiting for you, boy. A place at the table with your pop.”
“I’m not going into the used car biz,” Trey said.
“You got something better to do? How long you going to sit around and smoke dope with that Yankee? You got a future in that?”
Trey became very frustrated with the block-headedness of his father and made a comment designed to get under Doc’s thick hide.
“Papa Doc,” he said to his father, “Morrison is more my father than you could ever be. And a brother. And a friend. And a teacher. Like you’ve never been and will never be.”
Doc the Hedgehog turned pale. Then very quickly he turned red in the face and began to blow steam out of his nine holy holes. He flipped backwards away from his son in a pin-wheeling arc. He ran out the door. He kept running till he got to Morrison’s house. Unfortunately for Morrison he was home, doing the dishes. Doc busted through the kitchen door unable to speak, he was so angry. Morrison had never seen such an apoplectic face. He didn’t see it long however, as Doc let loose a rain of slaps and curses and punches before Morrison could even react. He knocked him around then jumped on him, feet first. Morrison crashed to the floor and wailed with pain as he landed on his wrists. “I’ll kill you!” lashed Doc. “What have you done to my son! You fucking freak!” After a long while he began to let up. He left Morrison on the floor, moaning about his hands.
Dolores bandaged his wrists, took him for x-rays, then dutifully wiped his ass for the next three months. Dolores could see now that Tessa had been nothing to worry about, and she really didn’t care if he’d been hanging around with some kid. That was no skin off her back. Morrison hadn’t been wrong, but that had nothing to do with it; he hadn’t a clue what was going on when you really looked at it. Still, everything had worked out in a way she couldn’t have predicted. The Hedgehog was gone, Tessa was gone, and Morrison was all hers. Housebound because of his injuries, Morrison and Dolores had become intimate again. They were closer than ever in this god-forsaken place.
El Feo
Hector was studying for his accounting test when Feo nipped at his leg. He batted the dog away and then stared at his textbook. His eyes moved from the book and re-focused on the dog. Feo was inching toward Hector’s leg but was stopped by his owner’s hand.
“Stop it,” Hector said, holding Feo’s mouth shut.
Feo groaned.
“You started it.”
Feo left Hector at the dining-room table and went to paw at the door. He sat and whined, looking at the yard through the glass.
“Ah, shit. I’m sorry, Feo.” He let the dog out. Feo sniffed around then peed on the larger of two trees.
While his name was Spanish for ‘ugly,’ Feo was actually a nice-looking dog, just different. Clara, Hector’s ex-girlfriend, had brought Feo home one day without warning.
“What the hell is that?”
“A dog.”
“I know, but what kind?”
“Some sort of cattle dog, they said.”
“Qué feo.” Hector wanted a Pitbull, or an American Bulldog, at the very least.
He had looked the dog over. Floppy ears that perked up on occasion, familiar Rottweiler black and tan pattern. The dog’s body was white and light grey, with black and dark grey spots. Hector thought the head and body looked like they were from two different dogs. Clara started scratching the dog’s back and it fell to the floor and stuck its legs up. She rubbed his belly.
“Poor guy,” Hector said when he noticed the dog had been neutered. “Well, take him back.”
Clara had cried and cried. Hector eventually gave in, not because he wanted the dog, but because he’d wanted Clara to stop annoying him.
“We’ll name him Feo,” Hector said. Clara agreed, thinking Hector had attached a term of endearment to the dog.
For the next several weeks Feo would sneak off to chew curtains, tear clothes, and knock over trash bins. And then, Clara left Hector on his own to clean up Feo’s messes.
Now, Feo ran laps around the yard after his afternoon pee.
“Come on, I have work to do.”
Feo stopped at the far end of the yard. Hector walked over to get him to go inside. Feo was eating the fruit from a tomato plant. He spit out the green pulp, licking and drooling. He picked it up again, biting into it and spitting it out. He did this until Hector took the slimy golf-ball-sized tomato and threw it to his neighbor’s house, laughing at the possibility that it would land on someone’s porch or that it might even hit some playing children. Feo dug at the foot of the wooden fence.
“Stop that!” Hector took Feo by the scruff of the neck. He was opposed to having Feo wear a collar because he thought it gave the illusion of holding two separate dogs together. Hector had told Clara about a Russian scientist named Demikhov who performed experiments like that – swapping dogs’ heads, keeping severed dog heads alive without a body, grafting two heads onto the body of one dog. Feo used dead weight as his defense and laid himself in the dirt.
Hector looked through the wood slats of the fence and saw his neighbors’ makeshift garden. Void of any rows or organization, there were tomato plants, watermelons, peppers, and maybe some other things, but he couldn’t tell. They probably saved the seeds of what they ate and threw them at the back fence, hoping they grew where they landed. The tomatoes were the only ones thriving enough to spill over into his yard, growing on both sides of the fence.
His neighbor, a hippie-looking woman, came out to water her grass. Hector knelt, putting enough weight on Feo to hold him down but not to hurt him, and looked through the fence. She had locks in her hair, some with multicolored beads. She wore a tan skirt and small t-shirt, one that would have fit her small frame well had she not been pregnant. Her belly was completely showing. She watered her lawn and garden, droplets falling onto her motherly stomach. Hector thought her attractive, pregnant and all. Perhaps more attractive than Clara.
Hector was going to leave, but his neighbor turned to water the plants by their common back fence. As water made it through the wood slats, Hector made effort to stay still and not let the woman see he was eavesdropping. Feo, who was still laying on his back with a knee over him, licked the water off Hector’s arm.
A man appeared behind the woman and reached around her belly. Startled, she spun around and dropped the water hose. The man wore pleated khaki pants, which reminded Hector of his accounting professor, a white dress shirt and loose tie. Her husband? He leaned in to kiss her, but she pulled away.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. “You’re going to make tracks in the house with your shoes. My skirt is wet now. Don’t scare me like that. Move.” She pushed him aside and walked into their home. The man turned off the water and followed her in.
-II-
The bathroom door reminded Hector every morning why Clara had left. Two fist-sized holes looked back at him at eye level. Another, easier to ignore, was located lower, at his knees. In the bathroom, he washed the sleep from his eyes.
As he sat on the toilet, elbows propped on his thighs, Hector lowered his head onto his hands. He thought he might have slept for a moment before Feo licked his face.
“Get out,” Hector said. Feo continued to lick, moving toward Hector’s mouth.
He shoved the dog out of the bathroom and closed the door. Feo stuck his snout into the lower hole on the door, sniffing. Hector took a hand towel and swatted him away. Feo groaned, took a few steps back, circled, and laid himself on the carpet. Hector didn’t know if or for how long he’d been asleep and expected that his shit might have dried. It hadn’t, and he concluded he had only nodded off.
Still sitting, Hector took a bottle of mouthwash from the sink and swished it. He spit it into the gap between his legs and into the toilet. Some of the liquid landed on his legs and genitals. He stepped into the shower.
Hector washed himself. He let the warm soapy water run over the scabs on his knuckles and forearms, seeing if some of them could be brushed away without drawing blood. His ankle was still sore, but his shoes and pants had kept him from getting cut on the wooden shrapnel of the door. His right forearm was scratched from his first punch.
His fist had gone straight through the door with little effort, and his arm had scraped the lip of the hole. There were splinters stuck in him, but by the time he noticed, he had already punched and kicked the door, adding two more holes. Clara had yelled for Hector to stop and said that Feo was scared. Hector insisted it was only the sound that scared the dog, and that Feo would never be scared of him. Once Hector had calmed down, Feo licked the blood off his knuckles. Despite the violence, Clara had cleaned his wounds with peroxide, bandaged them, and gone to sleep.
Shaking out the water from his hair, and the memories of the door incident, Hector now stepped out of the shower, dripping onto the bathmat. Without drying, He put on a pair of basketball shorts and went to the kitchen to pour himself some cereal. He ate his breakfast and Feo began to lick the moisture off Hector’s legs. Feo was about done with Hector’s right leg when the doorbell rang. Feo’s ears perked up, followed by relentless barking and growling and scratching at the front door.
“¡Cállate! Shut up!” He pulled the dog away and looked into the peephole. A cop.
“Ándale, perro.” Hector dragged Feo into the bedroom, the dog’s nails clicking over the tile the whole way.
He opened the front door and greeted the officer. She was a woman. Blonde, her hair in a tight braid. A very feminine face, with nice skin, but a muscular and compact body.
“Hector Benítez?”
“Yes.”
“There’s been a complaint filed against you and your wife.”
“She’s not my wife. And she doesn’t live here anymore.” Hector paused. “A complaint?”
“A neighbor complained about your dog barking.”
Hector could hear Feo barking his lungs out. If Clara were still here, things would have been calmer. She had a knack for keeping things nice between the neighbors. Since she had left, there had been a complaint about his car being too loud, music blaring, and now the dog.
“That’s what dogs do.”
“Could you keep it under control, Mr. Benítez?”
“I’ll do my best, but I have to leave him out while I’m at school.”
He couldn’t help but think of Clara, again. She would watch Feo while Hector went to school. Feo was hardly ever alone. Now he had to spend several hours outside.
“Maybe you could try keeping him inside. Thanks.” The officer looked bored. Tired of the mundane calls and complaints, most likely. As she left, Hector watched her backside and thought about how she might look if she didn’t wear those awful pants up past her belly button. She was almost to her patrol car when Hector shouted.
“Can you tell me which neighbor complained?”
“No, sir.” And she got into the patrol car and drove away.
But Hector knew. There was only one neighbor who didn’t work during the day, and that’s because she couldn’t.
-III-
Hector left Feo outside, despite the formal complaint filed against him. He did so partly because he didn’t believe he did anything wrong, but mostly because he wanted to see the police officer again. He arrived home to see Feo digging at the back fence.
“Quit trying to get those tomatoes Mendigo perro.”
After Hector pulled Feo away and got him to come inside, he opened his accounting textbook. Feo pawed at the door, wanting to be let out.
“No. You were just outside.”
Feo walked over to Hector, bit his leg, sat, and wagged his tail. Hector grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him out.
Feo barked and barked. Half a chapter of reading later, Hector could hear whining at the door. Another half and Feo finally stopped.
“Gracias a dios.” Hector continued reading.
Hector thought about his hippie neighbor and her pleated-pants husband. He couldn’t understand why she had been so rude to the man when he only wanted to hold her and their child inside her. Hector wanted to be held like the hippie woman and to hold like the businessman husband.
He thought of the holes he punched in the door and about Clara leaving him the following morning. She had kissed him goodbye and whispered something like, “I just don’t think you know how to love.” He was still groggy. Hector didn’t realize until that evening, when she didn’t return from work, that it hadn’t been a dream. The following day, while he was at school, Clara picked up her things and moved out. She had left a note that read, “My new apartment doesn’t allow pets. I’ll try and find a home for Feo soon.”
After that, Feo had sniffed Clara’s side of the bed at night. Hector thought about taking the dog to a shelter a few times, but the animal was the only thing she had left behind. Just as he wished the police officer would return, he had wished harder that Clara would come for Feo and so that he could apologize for the yelling and his violent temper. He would have held Clara as if she were pregnant and he were wearing pleated pants.
Now, Feo stopped whining and was out in the yard, silent. Hector attempted more reading, fewer distractions. He was studying derivatives when he heard a shriek. Not a child’s scream, but a scream you would hear at the site of a car wreck or murder scene. He ran outside. The screaming continued.
“Drop it! Fucking dog, drop it!”
Hector ran to the far end of the fence and saw through the wood slats that his neighbor was trying to whip Feo with a water hose. He also saw that she wasn’t pregnant anymore. At Hector’s feet was a hole going through the dirt and tomato plants and into the neighbor’s yard.
“Shit.” Hector jumped up and held himself at the top of the fence. He swung his legs over and landed on the other side, squashing several tiny tomatoes underfoot.
The woman’s husband appeared on their patio, holding a tiny newborn baby with a pink knit cap. The man had ditched his pleated pants for cargo shorts and sneakers. Shirtless, he held the baby and tried to shield its ears from the screaming and growling.
Feo ran laps around their yard with something in his mouth. Hector first thought it to be a flattened football or baseball glove.
“Give it to me!” the woman screamed.
“Feo, come here!” Hector ran after the dog, but Feo was too quick for him. Hector slipped in the garden and smashed more plants and fruits. By now, the woman was crying.
Hector juked and spun around like a football player, trying to get the object from Feo. He finally got a hold of it. It was thick and caked with dirt, more pliable than leather. It smelled like warm garbage.
“What the hell is this?” he managed to say as he struggled with Feo.
“It’s my fucking placenta!” the woman yelled. “Dug up from my garden!”
Hector let go and Feo ran off again.
“Honey, maybe we should go inside,” the husband said, too quietly.
The woman swung the water hose at Feo, striking him in the head. Feo yelped, his tail between his legs.
“Watch it, lady. I’ll get it back.” He reached for the water hose, so she couldn’t hit his dog again. She held onto and a struggle ensued.
“Fuck you and fuck your dog!” The woman spat in Hector’s face and yanked back on the hose at the precise moment that Hector let go of his end. The momentum caused her to fall backward and into the grass. Feo stopped running and his ears perked up.
“Call the police,” she cried. “He just assaulted me.”
“I did not!”
From the backyard Hector could see the woman’s husband calling the police, cell phone in one hand, baby in the other. The woman still cried where she’d fallen. Hector walked slowly up to Feo and was able to take the afterbirth away from him. He found the hole where Feo had dug it up and dropped it in, using his feet to cover it with dirt.
The police showed up. The blonde was not with them. They took statements from everyone. Hector said nothing. Without his collar and tags, the police couldn’t confirm that Feo was indeed Hector’s dog, or that Feo had had his rabies shot. Animal Control arrived. Hector was handcuffed. Feo was caught with the help of a catchpole as he tried to unearth the placenta yet again. They were led out of the neighbors’ backyard while Feo whined and whined.
“I’m sorry,” Hector yelled as a police officer pushed his head into a patrol car and an Animal Control officer put Feo in a cage.
The Preacher and his Companion.
“Go away!” he mutters under his breath, as some thirty minutes later he abruptly becomes aware that the preacher has entered the cafe. He surreptitiously watches the man as he orders a coffee then heads to an adjacent table.
Choosing the seat diagonally opposite Michael the preacher nods and smiles broadly, his perfectly even, very white teeth, flashing below a sharply clipped, fiercely black moustache above a neatly sculpted equally dark goatee beard. "Good morning, wet day, isn’t it?”
Was a reasonable enough day until now, Michael inwardly grumbles as he nods agreement and returns his attention to his morning paper. He becomes uncomfortably aware that the preacher is studying him.
“I think I saw you observing our meeting just now and listening to my sermon.” The preacher pauses. “I am always keen to know what attracts people's interest. Feedback is always welcome."
Feedback from me. The last thing you want, Michael thinks while attempting a faint smile. "I was not particularly interested in what you were saying. I am sorry that I gave that impression."
The preacher seems puzzled. "Forgive me but you certainly seemed to be interested."
Michael slowly inclines his gaze to his newspaper hoping that this will convey his reluctance to engage in conversation, but a moment later surrenders to the impulse to be polite. "I was interested in you rather than in what you were saying." He’s being nudged in my direction, given his chance. Can’t deny him that.
"You really have aroused MY interest now,” the preacher exclaims, still smiling, though beneath the dark eyebrows his grey eyes have widened in astonishment. “I think that you DO owe me a bit of an explanation.”
Well, we’ll see, Michael thinks. He glances around the nearly empty cafe, satisfies himself that any conversation will not be overheard then says quietly: “I was interested because I believe that you are being stalked." Now you're committed! For the moment, no escape.
"Stalked! Who is stalking me?" the preacher exclaims.
Perhaps he’ll think I’m a bit crazy and go away. Michael sighs inwardly hoping that the preacher’s quick departure will allow him to return to his coffee, cake and an easy morning. Ah well, press on. "Actually, not a 'who' but a 'what'."
The preacher sits back in his seat. The smile broadens.
"You DO really need to tell me what you mean."
Michael notes the emphasis the preacher is placing on certain words. A street preacher’s trick or a habit? A bit like hammering nails into wood. He broadens his assessment of the man opposite. Intelligent but savagely blinkered, arrogant, articulate - a forceful personality, persuasively appealing to anyone needing certainty and direction in their lives. A good catch for an entity.
Michael draws breath and determined to keep his tone gentle takes the first step in his usual procedure. "Before I say anything, I need you to accept - and to accept without reservation - that I did not approach you. You approached me. I also need you to accept that I do not ask you to believe me, and...” He pauses and shrugs “...to be brutally frank, I do not care whether you believe me or not.” Not quite true, he thinks. But duty and caring have their limits. “Do you wish me to continue?”
The preacher frowns, seems taken aback by the assertive note in Michael’s voice then in a perfunctory manner nods.
“OK. I said that you are being stalked by an entity.” Michael smiles inwardly. Use the language he understands. “I guess that given your convictions you might prefer to use the term, ‘demon’.” He finds himself taking momentary pleasure from the conflicting emotions playing across the preacher's broad face. At the same time, he senses that the entity now hovering in the street is uneasy. In a class of its own, that one, he thinks. Confident but wary, cunning, patient and very determined.
“WHERE is this demon - this entity - now,” demands the preacher, his expression now beginning to morph into a sneer.
Michael casually extends a finger towards the street. “It’s waiting for you to leave. It won’t approach me.”
The sneer on the preacher’s broad face is developing. “May I ask, why exactly is that?”
“Because of what I am,” Michael answers quietly.
“And what is that?”
Michael smiles. “That’s a very long story. But the short version: I am a threat to its ambitions. I guess I am what in modern parlance is called ‘neurologically divergent’. My wiring is a bit mixed up. I am aware of them - to a certain extent see them - and that is one of several reasons I threaten them. I know what they’re up to.”
The preacher’s even white teeth are again displayed as he grins. “One of the reasons?”
Michael becomes aware of a flash of irritation and lets it fade. Just, give him the talk. After that it’s up to him! “Entities are everywhere. They are a part of the natural order of things. Think of them as leeches feeding on the energy arising from emotion, animal but chiefly human. A few really clever ones, the bolder sort - like the entity that’s taking an interest in you - wait for their big chance to invade and then control their host, use their talents to manipulate thought to generate conflict, division, and above all strong negative emotions - rage, fear, hate, jealousy. They absorb the energy and draw followers to the feast.” And you, with your noble vision of an angry god, are a great target. You and your would-be chum are the perfect match.
“So, you claim to be some sort of seer, an exorcist perhaps?” The preacher’s voice is now oozing with condescension.
“I claim nothing,” Michael answers mildly. “I see what I see. I know what I know. And if you need reminding, I am merely responding to your wish that I should explain my interest in you. You were nudged in my direction, given your chance.”
“Nudged! By other entities? Angels perhaps?" the preacher laughs.
“I really don’t know. Some basic instinct perhaps. All I know is that people who are threatened are nudged, thoughts occur, coincidences seem to happen. They're gently directed, wafted - nudged. Do you want me to continue?”
Smiling in a superior way the preacher signals assent with a small nonchalant flick of a thumb.
"I teach people how to resist.” Michael pauses to satisfy himself that the preacher is still adequately engaged. “Self-awareness - being alert to your feelings, to the currents and strength of your emotions - is the first task in the business of resistance.”
“The first step?” the preacher repeats slowly.
“When people become sufficiently self-aware the warrior within them will awaken and, then if necessary, and if asked, I will stand with them - help them. But all that comes later.”
The preacher is silent for a long moment then seems to come to a decision. He reaches for his briefcase and draws out a bible, one of the bigger versions, Michael notes, black with worn, synthetic leather covers. He flicks it open, points to a passage highlighted in yellow then looks meaningfully at Michael who immediately raises both hands in a firm gesture. “No sermons please,” he says firmly.” Central to your view of yourself is your pride in your preaching skills. You are shackled to your words and to the conviction that they pave a path to salvation. But I am talking about the here and now, about a special challenge, about an inner struggle.” He points at the bible. “I should also say that I know what’s in there much better than you might imagine.”
The preacher is silent for a long moment then replaces the bible in his briefcase. Looking at Michael he shakes his head in an exaggerated attempt to convey pity. “I do not need an exorcist, or a teacher or a seer. I have all the comfort I need from my faith and from the true word." He pauses. "I will pray for you.”
“Remember this,” Michael says quietly as the preacher stands to go. “First seek self-awareness. Then perhaps the warrior within you will awaken. Then you will understand the threat and prepare for the struggle. Then seek me out.”
Michael watches the preacher exit into the rain. He has given the preacher his chance and he is pleased to see him go.
He senses that the entity is also pleased.
Some days later Michael and the preacher pass each other in the street. Beneath the black moustache and above the goatee beard the preacher’s teeth, as grins, seem very white. His grey eyes glitter strangely.
The entity has disappeared!
Isioma Jemimah Awele Okonicha is a born writer, with several published and unpublished books and poems. Some of her published works include: Kegel series, The life I didn’t think existed, Cute when you smile, Dreck, 1oo1 stories of greatness- series, Macabre, Dark blues, A wonderful noisemaker- poetry, Canuri’s enchantment- poetry, Lost love- poetry, Shadows of creativity- poetry, Ding dong on a wall- poetry, among others. Isioma is also the founder of Youthz Npower, and the creator of several online educational and motivational pages, and she is also an entrepreneur, who is born to Nigerian parents, Mr. and Mrs. Peter OKonicha, and has four siblings. She is a visionaire and, she hopes to impact her generation positively. |
DREAMS BIRTHED
Dreams are foundation needed for success. It is not enough to just dream, but we must also work to achieve them. Those great ideas in our heart and minds have to be brought to life through focus, determination, and hard work.
We all want to succeed; but unfortunately, success cannot be achieved by mere wishes. If you’ve had great dreams in the past, but were buried because you lacked the knowledge needed to implement those ideas, don’t worry, a problem known is half solved already. I’ve been there; I know how it feels, and that’s why I’ve written this book to guide us on our way up, and most importantly to help us stay up: No one wants to fall, not after rising.
Dreams birthed teaches us the importance of foresights and how to reach the ultimate goal, which is success. Show me a man that dreams, and I will tell you the heights that he will attain.
Does life have more to offer? What is the route to success?
This book answers all these questions; it is a load of knowledge, but it’s not for everyone, it is only for the brightest of minds, and success oriented people, and for non-dreamers as well, who will also learn to dream because there isn’t hope lost; it’s never too late, you only need to pay attention to details and which will be discussed in full.
I have divided this book into three main parts. The first part, deals with the different kind of dreams that permit success or failure. Successful people do not permit every kind of dream. And there are some strict rules that I’ll be revealing, and which must be adhered to, if success must be achieved.
I hope that this book acts as a guide, and inspires us to want more from life. We must know that we are made for the top, and nothing less. I believe we should all yearn for success. Never give up on dreams; and as long as we are ready to accommodate greatness by pursuing it, we'll surely get to it.
Part 1: Case study
Your dreams, what are they?
This short fictional story that you’re about to read, is titled “Mother hen and her chicks,” and is also what I will be using as my case study, for this great book. Each character signifies a kind of dream, and so I hope you will learn from it.
“It’s about to rain…” Mother Hen announced, as she hurriedly gathered her four chicks into the double roofed house, which she built with their father.
“Debi, Alice, Hebron, and Elion, come closer to me, I need to speak to you quickly before I prepare dinner, your dad will be back soon,” she beckoned them.
“Did you dream yesterday?” Mother hen asked Debi, her oldest child.
“Yes!” He answered with excitement.
“I dreamed that I was flying, and then a flying ball hit me and I fell so hard on a rock,” He said. “And I couldn’t get up,” he added as he switched to a sad tone.
“Oh, that’s not good enough,” Mother hen said, and then she turned to her second child.
“What about you Alice?” she asked her only daughter who didn’t reply.
“Alice, what was your dream?” Mother hen repeated.
“I dreamed that I had a wind ball.” She said softly.
“Alice why do you keep asking for a wind ball, you wouldn’t even be able to carry one of it.” Her mother complained.
“But I want it! I want a wind ball!” Alice yelled, and then she walked off.
“Alice, Alice,” her Mother called.
“Alice wants a wind ball…” Hebron mocked.
“What about you Hebron? What did you dream?” Mother hen asked her third chick.
“I didn’t dream,” he answered nonchalantly.
“You didn’t dream?” His mother asked in a worried tone.
“Yes. I only want to eat enough grains when dad returns.” He said.
“But it shouldn’t stop you from dreaming, there are better things than just grains you know?” his mother told him.
“I don’t care I’m hungry.” he shouted.
“Oh dear, don’t worry, I will prepare something soon.” Mother hen said.
“Mom you haven’t asked me,” Elion, her youngest chick complained.
“Sorry sweetie, I was coming to you, what was your dream?” she asked him with a tender smile.
“Well mom, I had two dreams,” he said. “In the first dream, I had a crusher that I used to crush Mersin.”
“Why would you dream of hurting your friend?” his mother interrupted.
“He’s not my friend.” Elion said angrily.
“Okay, what else did you dream of?”
“In my second dream, I had a battery saver, and when light was out, I used it all alone. And even when Alice begged to share, I refused.”
‘But Alice is your sister.” Mother hen said softly, “you should learn to share with not just her, but everyone that asks for help, do you understand?”
“Yes mom.” he answered in a sad tone.
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly”- Langston Hughes.
Dreams are not just imaginations, if acted upon. An idea that is never born is a loss. We ought to dream; for it is a generator for success. You cannot execute a project without first birthing the idea, which is the most important factor, because it is the bed rock success.
And just like the chicks that had different dreams, it is also the same with humans too. There are different categories of dreamers; some give up easily on their dreams because they do not believe it can be feasible, others have bigger dreams that they can actually implement at the moment, while some do not even dream at all, and others actually have dreams but are backed up with evil intentions, which is the actual goal.
All these limitations are dream defects, which can stop success, and which is the next part that we’ll be discussing.
Part 2: Dreams defect
There are several factors that can be classified as dream defects. Whatever that limits our dream is a defect, and they are both living and nonliving factors.
But we must know that all of these negative elements do not have the power to stop us, if we refuse to be stopped.
These negative elements will be highlighted, as they will be discussed, according to the characters represented in the case study.
Never give up.
“Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying”- W. Clement Stone.
Debi flew in his dream, but was stopped. So was it his fault that he failed, even after he’d picked courage to do the unusual?
The question is how determined are you? Can a flying ball stop you? Are you like Debi that had a good excuse for not staying up?
What hit you so bad, that you fell and vowed never to try again? What challenge did you meet on your way, that scared the life out of you? Were those dreams worth fighting for? Is that opposition big enough to stop you?
How often do we ponder on these questions?
Note this. “It was Debi’s fault, and will always be his fault that he gave up.”
Quitters are scared losers, and they always have good excuses. Successful people do not give excuses.
And even with the rest of us, when we experience an opposition; we give up easily without putting up a fight because of fear, and without remembering why we started. And then we miss out on opportunities, because we refuse to get up after we’d been beaten.
And remember he said a “flying ball” which is only an object, its non-living, of course you already know where I’m headed. In most cases, the problem is not as big as it seem, the issue we have is of the mind. Debi was supposed to walk strictly on land, but he decided to fly instead, which was good, but immediately he saw an opposition, he remembered that he was out of his comfort zone, and then he retired back immediately.
If we must win and stay up, then we must be ready to face oppositions because they’ll always be there to stop us. But as long as we are determined, we will win. Never be afraid of trying again and again, face the challenge, be courageous, give in your best, and then soar like the eagles.
Bigger dream.
“The secret of success is constancy of purpose”- Benjamin Disraeli.
Alice wanted a wind ball that was bigger than her; she wanted it so badly that her mother complained, because she thought it wasn’t right for her.
“You can’t even carry one.” Her mother said. But Alice was adamant, discouragements were not enough to stop her.
It happens to everyone at some point, when our ideas seem too big, that even loved ones begin to discourage us. But nothing should reduce your dreams and visions. No matter how big they might seem and unachievable, the most important thing is to start with whatever is at our disposal, and not wait for a perfect moment.
Do not listen to people that say your dreams are too big; in essence, they mean “Reduce you!” The only person that asks you to quit your job is the one that doesn’t have a job. An individual with dreams and aspirations will never ask you not to dream or to dream small.
But sometimes the easiest way to actualize giant dreams is to “Break them into more feasible fragments.” These are secrets, which a successful individual will reveal.
Also, be sure of what you want, Alice knew exactly what she wanted, she believed in her dream. Do you believe in yours? How important are they to you?
Do you know that bringing your dreams to light is of great value to the world? And whenever you give up on an idea, the world loses. So let success be your goal.
Wants nothing.
“Without dreams and goals, there is no living, only existing and that is not why we are here”- Mark Twain.
It will amaze you to know the number of people that wants nothing more from life, than just the little they have.
Don’t get it wrong, it is not contentment, but merely a “purposeless life.”
God has put in everyone a seed, that you’re expected to make into food. The difference between Debi and Hebron was that Debi knew he could fly with his wings, while Hebron obviously couldn’t see himself in the sky even with his wings. That was the reason he tried to discourage Alice, by mocking her since he didn’t expect anything from himself, so of course, she shouldn’t either.
These categories of people, do not dream at all. They lazy around, they love their convenience. That was why Hebron told his mother that he only wanted the grains that their father was bringing home. Nothing interested him more apart from food, and such people only exist as stumbling blocks to others. I always tell people to keep away from friends without visions because they are detrimental to everyone that loves success. They are simply there to give thousands of reasons why thriving to succeed was a waste of time, and how unrealistic it was.
Wrong notions.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself”- Leo Tolstoy
Even though, Elion dreamed, his intensions weren’t right. So it was as good as he never dreamed because success is supposed to add value to the society, and not become a problem itself.
Elion is already nurturing a negative energy, that if allowed to be put out will do just harm. We must know that we cannot achieve anything of value, or tangible with a wrong notion. His mom obviously understood that in order for him to create, he must dump his intension to destroy. He had a reshaping to do, and that was why she immediately disapproved his dreams.
Dreams are ideas, which should be groomed to add value or impact to our lives, and to everyone around us. But what happens when each of us begin to nurse a desire to destroy?
First you must know that no man is an island, we need each other to achieve goals, the same way I need writing materials made by someone else, to impact you with this knowledge, without which it wouldn't be possible.
You cannot hurt another, and in the process not get burnt.
Part 3: Dreams are true
It took several years for me to discover my passion for writing. It is my unique gift, it is fun to me, and I never get tired or bored when writing. But this wasn’t always the case. Few days before February 2020, if anyone had told me, that the world will be reading my books, I would have screamed, calling you a liar. I was a confused person, I didn’t know that I had a great gift to write, and for several years I struggled with depression, I thought I was good for nothing, while I admired others that I thought were more fortunate than me, I wanted to fly but I couldn’t spread my wings, and even though I dreamed- and kept dreaming, I still felt down casted, and this was all because I didn’t know how to make the ideas that I had, come to life, I felt stuck.
But I’ve learnt a great deal, within this short period of implementing some of my great ideas, one of which is to work with whatever is at my disposal. I stopped waiting for perfect moment, I moved instead because I have discovered that life does not always give what is expected.
Abraham Lincoln, before he succeeded in becoming the sixteenth president of the United States had his own share of life’s interruptions. I bet he had tones of discouragers as well, giving him thousands of reasons why he was never going to win, but he chose to ignore them instead because he knew what he wanted. And that was why he said “we should let no feeling of discouragements prey on us” which is also similar to what Stephen Richards the self-help author, also wrote about in his book: cosmic ordering, when he said “the only time you fail is when you fall down and remain down” which is absolutely correct.
Dreams are true, and so we must continue to stay focused on the goal, which was why we started. First of all, we must believe in our ideas, before we can begin to work with whatever is at our disposal. We cannot afford to waste more time, by waiting for a perfect moment that will never come. So get up and start something, no matter how insignificant it might look, we must know that ideas, when nurtured will grow great.
Greatness begin with an idea, in form of dreams birthed and then acted upon, just the same way a giant tree grew from a tiny seed.
Non-dreamers on the other hand are ignorant of a better life; they are the kind of people that believe that success is meant for a selected few. Non-dreamers who refuse to change their vague mindset will remain servants, since they are comfortable with their present zones.
They do not only fears risks, but they don’t even know that a risk can be taken, which is worse. They are the exact definition of existence without actually living. They come to the world and leave without making any impact, even in their immediate surroundings; they only complain of things not done by people they believe are superior to themselves because in their minds, they're insignificant. But this also can be changed too, if they begin to see life in a different light.
And there are also certain people that we come across, that are natural born influencers. Either good or bad, they influence easily. These kind of people are everywhere, and so for all dreamers and non-dreamers likewise, it is very wise to choose the positive influencers, and to keep away from the negative ones.
How do I know negative or positive influencers?
The simple answer is from the kind of words, spoken by the individual. Negative remarks should suggest to us that we might be dealing with a negative influencer, which is detrimental for success. We do not need people that give many reasons, why we shouldn’t succeed.
Have a good support system, share great ideas with the right people, read books on good living; these are very important information, especially for the non- dreamers, and even for the dreamers as well.
On a final note, we must keep a positive attitude, build a creative mindset, and permit you to succeed. Never think little of yourself, believe that you are the real deal in your own world. Fight for what you believe in, focus on achieving goals, do not allow discouragements, and finally, never give up.
Only scared losers quit, and it is a wrong option.
Letters, a Word
He could see the scene now as he dialed; a narrow school hallway, packed with students going to lunch. A kid in dark blue jeans and a black sweatshirt, a casual friend. He heard himself call out a greeting, a kind word, and watched the friend turn and look, roll his eyes, and walk away. A snub. That was the last time he ever spoke to this individual; he went the rest of his life without encountering him again, aside from an unremembered chance glance across the cafeteria. It’s not that this was a close friend. Now, looking back, he would have categorized him more as an acquaintance. And even in middle school, the snub had done nothing more than confuse him. There was no real pain, no anger. Just a certain awkwardness, and a sense of disconnect.
Perhaps the reason Sarah evoked this memory was because she was the only relative he was still close to, the only one he wasn’t disconnected from. His parents were dead, cousins had moved far away, and his brother—well, that reminded him of what he was doing.
“Sarah? It’s Luke,” he said after she picked up.
“Hey, I got something on the stove, but I can call you back.”
“This will only take a minute. I just want you to call Pat for me.”
“Oh?” This was followed by a long pause. “And what do you want me to tell him?”
“Just tell him to call me. Or unblock my number.”
“Maybe you should meet somewhere. Talk things out face to face.”
Luke couldn’t help but let out an aggravated sigh. “You know how that would go.”
“We’re not kids anymore, Luke. And he’s matured a lot since everything happened.”
“I hope so.” He wondered whether the same could be said for him.
The line was silent a few moments. Perhaps Sarah was turning down the stove. More likely, she was waiting for a deeper response. Eventually she seemed to recognize it was unrealistic to expect one. “Look, I’ll let him know what you said. I need to go now. Cole and the kids are waiting on dinner. We still on for Friday?”
“Yeah, noon.”
“Okay, see you then.” She hung up before he could reply. But he would see her soon enough. Maybe by then he’d hear from Patrick as well. Had it been nine years or was it more?
A thousand drops whispered to him through the open window as they struck the leaves on the ground by his house. Every shingle, every square inch of pavement had something to say, blending into one chorus that Luke called the sound of rain.
He was at the computer, checking the hourly weather forecast, when an odd headline caught his eye: “Accident tears apart family during vacation,” and next to it, the picture of some smiling children on a sunny beach. He didn’t want to read about it; he was certain it would only make him more melancholy than he already was, and part of him was angry that a weather forecasting website would even link to such a tragic story in the first place. Even a headline about a flood wiping out an entire town would seem less terrible—at least the picture underneath would be of high water, and not a group of happy people he knew were no longer smiling.
His head turned toward the window in answer to a crack of thunder, and he peered out. A young man in a raincoat was helping an old woman across the street. Without an umbrella or coat, she was soaked, and the man could do nothing to keep her dry even as he tried to aide her. Luke didn’t know who she was; he hadn’t seen her before, and realized that she might still have a long way to go to get home. Even before she was fully on the curb, the rush of cars began to clatter over the blacktop again, the tires tearing through the shallow skin of water on the street.
He turned back to his computer and noticed a new e-mail.
Patrick. P-a-t-r-i-c-k. Seeing the name in his inbox, situated neatly above of a long line of other senders, simultaneously evoked a sense of anger, sadness, and worry. The concoction of emotions made him feel sick, yet he opened the e-mail immediately.
Sarah asked me to write to you. She said you want to talk to me, but I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I still don’t think you know how much dad’s business meant to me. Whatever you need to say we can take care of over e-mail.
No signature. The name in the address bar was enough. He looked at it again. Sarah asked me to write to you. Their only connection. S-a-r-a-h. Luke had always enjoyed looking at her name, with the two a’s symmetrical from the middle. If her name were folded in half, those two letters would match up. Maybe that was how she acted as a connection between him and his brother. It made sense in his head for half a second, but then fell apart and he couldn’t summon it back again. He hit the reply button and began to type.
It’s not my fault that the business couldn’t be saved. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that we are fmily? We have the same blood, th esame history. We grew up together, and we have a chance now to continue to grow together.
He hit send without proofreading or bothering to sign his name. No small talk. He didn’t bother to ask about his sister-in-law. She seemed further away than Patrick, who would be eternally tied to him by blood whether he liked it or not.
The clock said quarter to noon. Grabbing his car keys, he went to meet Sarah.
The restaurant, something between fast-food and cafe, seemed crowded but was very quiet. Sarah sat by a rain-glazed window that stretched from ceiling to floor with a sandwich—something green between two brown slices of bread. Luke stopped by the counter and ordered soup, and then went to join her, taking the seat across the table.
“Quite a day,” he said, looking out into the gloom.
“Did you hear from Pat?” she asked immediately.
“He sent me an e-mail, but I don’t think we’ll get very far that way.”
Sarah sat thinking for a moment, or perhaps she was just chewing her food. “Have you ever apologized to him?”
“Apologized?”
“I know you were in a rough spot. I mean, both of you were. But in the end it seems you won out. At least you could give him an apology.”
He thought for a moment. Apology. In Greek, its etymological parent, it meant something like defense or justification, and was not necessarily remorseful. Justification, an interesting word. But that wasn’t what Sarah meant. Luke had heard it all before, and at some level he knew she was right. “It’s not like I wanted to sell my share of dad’s business, but I had nothing except debt. I couldn’t simply give my inheritance to Pat just because he wanted it. He could have taken a loan and bought me out if it was so important to him.” He stopped a moment and wondered if he should say the next sentence, but before he decided, he spoke. “I’ve always wanted an apology from him. He put me in a tough situation. Basically he blackmailed me with our relationship. That wasn’t fair.”
Having spent most of their conversation slouched in her chair, Sarah suddenly sat up as she began to talk, settling back down mid-sentence. “No, I agree. I’ve talked to him about that too. It’s been a long time. You’re both hurting yourselves as much as each other now.” There was silence for awhile as someone brought over Luke’s soup, and he began to stir crackers into it. “You two are just so different.”
“Not really. We used to do everything together,” Luke replied.
“Even then, you were always at odds. Maybe you were too close in age.”
“You and I are only a year apart too.”
“But it wasn’t the same with us. I don’t know if it’s because I’m the oldest or just because I’m the only girl. I think with you two, you struggled so hard to define yourselves against each other, that you—I don’t know. You just couldn’t create yourselves without delegitimizing the other. You were inherently rivals.”
Luke would have laughed if she hadn’t sounded so serious. “What have you been reading?” he asked, but didn’t give her time to answer. “You might be right. But what can I do about it now? I’ve always tried to be open. I’m reaching out to him. It seems like you’re the only one who can reach either of us.”
Sarah smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I’ll keep trying. But what you two really need is something to push you together. Something you both care about that you can rally over.” She looked at her watch. “I’d better go. I have to pick up some things at the store for Cole.”
As she was getting up, he reached out and touched her arm. “I really appreciate what you’re doing, Sarah. I don’t want it to be this way. I just want us all to be together again.”
“So do I,” she replied, “and believe it or not, so does Pat.”
There was another e-mail waiting for him at home, one that seemed hastily written and redundant, simply repeating the same old discussion.
Luke, you took the business from me. You could have waited a year until I could afford to buy out your half. There was no reason you had to sell your shares then. It’s gone now and it will always be gone. If family is so important to you, you should have supported the family business.
Luke tried to think of a response, but nothing came to mind, at least nothing he hadn’t already said. The phone ringing interrupted his thoughts. He picked up without looking at the caller ID.
“Luke?”
It sounded like Cole’s voice. But something about it was unusual.
“Yeah?”
“Sarah’s been in an accident.”
Luke wasn’t sure what he should do. A gasp came out naturally, and it was well that it did, because in his indecision to choose between saying either “Oh my God” or “I can’t believe it,” the moment passed. It was disturbingly abstract. In a movie there would have been a bigger reaction, something more dramatic. This somehow didn’t feel real enough for that, but he did know he needed to see her. Maybe that’s what he was waiting for. To see her body covered in tubes and bandages would be more dramatic than hearing her name over a phone. “What hospital is she at? When can I see her?”
The line went cold for a moment.
“Luke, she’s dead.”
The day of the funeral was also rainy. A heavy fog hung over the town, so thick that Luke imagined he could feel his body pushing through it, like walking in a swimming pool. The little gray church seemed solitary on the street corner; no one was waiting outside. The red doors simply hung open, a dark passage in between. When he first entered, it felt as if he was in some sort of mausoleum, but a faint light peered through the edges of the next door to the sanctuary, and he followed the white beams into the room.
It was quiet and empty. Apparently he was the first one to arrive for the viewing, and only the coffin, with half its top open, was there to greet him. The makeup artist had done a good job, Luke thought, at making it seem like his sister was only sleeping. It didn’t seem appropriate that she should look so alive when she was allegedly so dead. That’s what bothered him—the whole thing didn’t seem real yet, even after seeing the body there. He half expected her to sit up and greet him. Standing there by the corpse, he wondered if he should be acting sadder, and if something was wrong with him because he could not.
Turning around, Luke was startled to find her three children, his niece and nephews, there in the front pew. He had walked right past them; they were so short that their heads didn’t reach up beyond the seatback. As he walked down the steps from the altar, he felt like he was sinking lower, and like something was gripping his heart. Their faces, for the first time, made the tears well up inside of him. It was not for his loss, not even for his sister’s loss, but for theirs that his heart began to weep.
They hugged for awhile, crying silently. Words didn’t seem necessary, and what use would they have been? Their father, Cole, somehow mingled himself into the mass, and without them even noticing, he became a part of them, part of one group, feeling without thinking, together and without words.
Luke looked up at the sound of a door and saw Patrick entering quietly and modestly, tears also in his eyes. As he walked down the center aisle, the room dim around him and quiet aside from his footsteps, Luke realized he wanted his brother to join their group, and called out his name before he reached the coffin. Patrick slowed, and came to a stop. He turned and looked at Luke, but in the same way a stranger would, disturbed that someone he didn’t know had made awkward eye contact as they passed in the street. Luke thought Patrick might as well have been a phantom standing there before him; he would have believed that as much as he believed this was his brother, the boy with whom he had climbed the sycamore tree, whose first car he had helped wash, whose wedding party he had stood in, who now looked colder than their dead sister.
Nevertheless, there was a remorse building up in him more sincere than anything he had ever experienced. He knew he needed to reconnect with this person—and not let him just walk away, oblivious to how he felt. “Pat!” he called again. “Patrick, I’m sorry!”
He watched the word float from his mouth towards his brother, the elegant curve of the s led by the oddly shaped y, the hugging r’s and the rolling o. He watched the word brush past his brother’s ear, slowly, losing momentum with every second, a deep blue color, as if painted, glittering slightly. He saw it hit into the wall, each letter jostling into the next, and then watched the entire amalgamation slide down the burgundy wallpaper and onto the floor behind the coffin.
He didn’t bother to shout it again; he knew it would have the same effect. He realized his brother had not understood it, perhaps not heard it, but he found it strange that he evidently had not seen it. It had been quite an odd spectacle.
Solemnly he walked behind the casket—there was plenty of room between it and the wall. He looked down and picked up the word and examined it. Sorry. s-o-r-r-y. SORRY. sorry. What did it mean? He looked at the curving s again and considered what it represented. Maybe if he could figure it out, figure out how this word connected to what he felt, he could bring it to Patrick and explain it, prove it to him, show him. But there was no meaning in it, no sense in the y or the o or either r. And the glue that held the words together was losing hold. Like sand caked together, the letters were brittle, and began to fall apart. The grains were lost in the carpet, worthless. He looked up at Patrick, who looked back at him as if waiting for something. But nothing came
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