Letter #3: an excerpt from a short story I may or may not finish. Reading time: 5m.
M
My phone is dead. On the dark screen, I can faintly see my reflection. Half-moon nostrils peaking behind a bushy mustache and eyes hidden by misty lenses. I’m indistinguishable from the other men on this bus and quite grateful for it. The idle chat continues around me as my brain adjusts to the relocation. I close my eyes until the inertia of stopping alerts me.
We disembark from the bus and I hurry through arrival procedures. When I pass through the metal detector, it beeps angrily. The exhausted officer lets me through anyway. Outside of the terminal, men in half-sleeve suits of varying shades ask “taxi? taxi?”. I nod at the first one who makes eye contact with me. He nods back and I follow him to a yellow 1980 Toyota Comfort. The man and his car are identically frail. I could’ve pointed it out without his direction.
I slide into the passenger seat and don’t bother looking for a seatbelt. The driver enters the car and immediately reaches up to grab the wires by the rear-view mirror. He joins two naked wires and twists them between his thumb until the light comes on. He uses it to search frustratedly for a cigarette box and a box of matches. Before he lights the cigarette up, he looks at me, surveying for an objection. I don’t give him one.
I tell him the address and he nods. We drive in silence for ten minutes. At the third red light, he fiddles with a detached radio until it works. It plays a re-run of an interview with a ghost-house survivor who was tortured by the previous regime. He’s recounting memories, distant ones according to the cool detachment in his tone. “They’d make fun of the artists especially,” he says. “They’d make them grab coal and draw on the walls.” The driver is listening tensely and frowning. I notice that I’m frowning too.
In an attempt to distract myself, I look out the window. I start to think about cruelty. Eventually, I reach a familiar dead-end in my thinking and give up. There’s a kind of cruelty that you only feed more of you by trying to understand. When I zone back in, I realise that the taxi driver changed the station. Quran is playing now. A closer listen tells me that it’s ElKahf. Fitting. We are four hours into Friday.
By the time we’re on the bridge, the street-lights have been switched off but the minarets are lit. Dozens adorn the sky-line on both sides of the river, grand monuments of devotion springing from between the old homes. When we cross the bridge, the driver parks next to a small masjid and leaves the car. I don’t join him and he doesn’t ask me to. I watch him crouch to cleanse himself before disappearing into the sliver of harsh lighting and green carpet. I sit in the car and watch the fading moon.
I am trying not to think about her, but the dawn reminds me that we’re breathing the same air again. There was a time when I could predict her reactions well enough to orchestrate my own actions accordingly. Now I’m far removed, unsure and uncertain. What I do know is that she’s asleep behind one of these brick walls. She will wake up and pray, hurrying to the lengthy last sujood where she will ask Allah to fulfill her heart’s desires.
I could feel it when she stopped praying for me. I woke up one day and felt slightly more forsaken. I have been forsaken ever since. I tried to love other people, beautiful and vibrant women. Years of searching told me that there is no one like her. No pair quite like us. Whenever I held her, it felt like we had invented something new; an experience no other human had ever experienced before. The dated memory is made vivid by the fact that I’m back here and it makes my heart race. I repeat her name quietly and let the wind carry it. I’m not a praying man but my acts of worship never stopped including her.
When the driver returns, the sun has started to come up. I am uncomfortable by the potential of brightness; it makes my shame more visible. For the rest of the ride, I pretend to be asleep until I actually doze off. The driver wakes me up when we’ve crossed the second bridge and he needs me to direct him. We’re at my neighborhood now. Plots I recall being empty hold buildings now, making it difficult to navigate. I decide that this will be easier to do by foot. I pay the driver, grab my luggage and begin to walk. Eventually, I piece together enough familiarity to make my way to the house.
I recognise it by the metal gates that were once painted black and the clay pot outside. The gates aren’t locked and one door is ajar. This means that the men are still at the masjid. I quietly enter with my right foot, whispering salam to the spirit of the house. In the furthest corner of the yard, I see my mother and sisters asleep. I don’t wake them up. I set my bags aside and lay down on the nearest bed. I can feel every bit of rope through the thin mattress. I close my eyes and surrender to my exhaustion. When the sun is at the middle of the sky, someone shakes me awake. I sit up startled.
I spot the culprit and she smiles at me. She’s leaning over a tea tray, holding a long braid back from the cups with one hand and a white pot with the other.
“Is it still two spoons?” she asks.
“It is still two spoons.” I confirm.