“No one gets past Tits!” he promised.
There were no goal posts. This was parking-lot football. Six-a-side games. We used bricks, sometimes bags. The goals were small. And Tits kept his word. Teams with fancier footwork ran out of ideas with him in goal. When the winger appeared, Tits spread his arms and legs like a massive deep-sea crab and started howling. If necessary, he would tackle the danger man about to shoot. When Tits crashed into a boy, it was like a slow-moving train hitting a bug. The howling never stopped, but most of the time he didn’t have much to do. I always picked a good team and I played to win.
Once, after a game, Tits sought me out, made a face, then said, “Goalkeeping is a solitary task.”
“Always has been,” I replied.
He then hunched his tall frame, brought his face close to my ear. I held my breath. He always put on too much cologne and then sweated too much. Just like his father. “Fine,” he whispered. “I keep sane by chatting with the men in the sky.” Like that he could make me laugh.
Tits always obsessed about the men in the sky, borrowing the phrase from our English teacher Mr. Raja “Hamlet” Mani, notorious for his love of soliloquy. In Hamlet’s world, the classroom was theater. We were his audience; the city we knew, his muse.
Hamlet was somewhat of a writer. “Three pieces in three different magazines,” he reminded his students every term. Once, he brought his published Reader’s Digest joke to class. “On the first try,” he said. We applauded.
Hamlet often shared the prose he wrote, reading it out loud in class. When he began teaching, his joke days behind him, he only wrote about school life and boyhood angst. “The work chooses itself,” he said when we asked him why. When distributing copies of his prose, given to the best three students in class at the end of the school year, he signed them. Or sometimes, if he was in one of his moods, he chose one of us to read his little essays. My favorite was “Recess.” “Best footballer in class! Who among you is a devil with the ball?” he yelled that day. That’s how I got chosen to read. I still remember some of it. He insisted I shout out the title, coaxed me to stand on my desk and to “feel the language” in my bones. To read as though I only had minutes left to live. I obeyed the man because I hadn’t learned how to say no to someone I liked.
“Picture wildebeests running,” was the first line. “Picture them wearing white shirts and dark blue pants. Picture them running upright now, like hominids, wearing laced black shoes, all school prescribed and mandatory. Picture the sound of feet thumping earth. Picture them mad, joyous, in glasses, sporting braces. Picture pieces of hot sky hurling Earthbound. Picture dust—”
I know it word for word. I still have a copy somewhere, but I don’t read it anymore, or quote from it, after what happened. Back then, home was easier to grasp—navigable.
I don’t know what home looks like anymore. Parents have died and I’ve stopped playing since I tore my ACL. But the men in the sky have remained, I’ve been told.
Even back then, the place was fucking crane country. Tower cranes over a hundred feet tall punctuated the skyline, eyeballing the sun, lifting and lowering pipes or stone. Baffled birds kept their distance.
Hamlet described these cranes for us in class once. Tits, a gifted mimic, and Hamlet’s favorite, memorized the lines, and recited them often in his best British East India Company diction. Especially after games, if he was in a good mood or someone asked. “A crane’s life,” Tits would start, “begins in the bowels of the earth, where reside the precious ores required to build this mechanical beast. Once the steel is made, it is sent where it needs to go, in order to be shaped into a builder of cities. The end result is painted a glorious mustard, then the company logo stuck on, before cargo barons ferry the machine on a transport ship headed for Gulf shores.”
Tits would then close his eyes, pull his pants up to his ster-num, gaze at imaginary gods, and recite the rest, mimicking Hamlet perfectly.
“The next steps are quite straightforward, gentlemen. Find a man you can import. Dress him in blue overalls. Give him a helmet that hugs his head like a barnacle. Have him climb this massive machine near daybreak and enter its cab. This man is now the crane’s brain. And from that height, he will now engage in government-mandated Lego, building this infant city, our fucking city, one bucketful of bricks at a time.”
I can’t recall this gone world without the cranes, without my parents or the old haunts. I then remember football, where I learned the game best, the school grounds, how my body and mind needed the ball so much, and how now I miss it. I then think of Moonseepalty, where football was a religion.
Moonseepalty was what we called the weak coffee-colored buildings housing the city’s municipal offices. Looped by a massive parking lot, where I really got to know Tits. Our team was looking for a fat boy. Tits, willing, just wanted to play.
Fridays, the Moonseepalty parking lot stayed empty, offering tar so fine it provided tennis-court bounce. Priceless footballing terrain. Summertime, only weather kept us at bay. Near noon, you could smell your skin toasting. Your eyeballs boiled. Underarms and pubic hair carried the whiff of Blue Stilton. “Dragons from lore spat fire,” Hamlet used to say. “Here, gentlemen, it is inhaled.” The humidity swallowed you. Sweat leaked into your nose, eyes, ears, ass. Some days, it was as though the asphalt caught fire. But games began at twilight, an hour or two before the muezzin’s call for evening prayers, continuing until nighttime, when the tar became cooler.
By then, the parking lot would have transformed into dozens of makeshift playgrounds, swaths of asphalt claimed by gangs of boys speaking multiple tongues. For a few hours we were all temporary inhabitants of Moonseepalty, an ephemeral, football-mad province of many complex cultural parts powered by nationality or race, where all of us pretended to be footballing warlords, ruling with our feet, manically protecting our tarred kingdoms.
Every now and again, red-and-white patrol cars drove by.
“SHURTHA!” we hissed.
The game would go quiet. If the patrol car stopped, the shurtha demanding the games be stopped, or giving chase, we were prepared. We became lizards. We ran because we were afraid, because that’s what you did. And once they gave up, we returned.
We trusted no one in uniform and were especially watchful if we played cricket, which made your nationality glow in the dark. If we sensed a patrol car slowing down to a halt, we took off. Always.
Buildings trembled when Tits ran. He wasn’t much of a sprinter, but he was well liked. After all, he let us call him Tits. He also contributed greatly to our sexual education, making a killing on pirated porn and football tapes. He was the first person to tell me a woman could perform fellatio on a horse. I called him a gasbag.
But Tits also introduced us to other things—secret football things you couldn’t find on film. The boy could have been a library.
“India won gold at the Asian Games in 1950!”
“In football? Tits, you liar,” I said, the first time he mentioned it.
“Swear by god, behenchod, behenchods played without shoes.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Think. You play without shoes, win without shoes, almost beat France without shoes— you don’t need shoes!”
“But?” I egged him on.
“Some bastard eating rice with a spoon wants to see shoes. Officials make it mandatory. What’s the point in wearing shoes now?”
“Protect those toes?”
“Behenchod! You wear the stupid shoes. Your feet are struggling to breathe, you tie your laces too tight, pretty soon your toes are cramping. Before you’ve figured out how to run again, you’ve lost the game. So, we protest. No shoes!”
“Idiots,” I said, “lost the World Cup because we refused to wear shoes.”
“Madarchod, bare feet builds balls,” Tits said, cupping his. “India was Brazil before Brazil was Brazil!”
“Well, we are shit now. Shit.”
“Fucker, if you had Manna-da’s balls, I’d lick th
em for free.”
“Who?” I said.
“Behenchod, no fucking history! Manna-da! India’s greatest captain!”
*
Manna-da’s balls could have helped us, especially when the shurtha came. As soon as we saw them, we dug into our shorts, picked up our balls and threw them away. Other fuckers didn’t. Arabees certainly didn’t. Arabees had tungsten gonads. I wanted tungsten gonads. Even Arabee kuttis, little Arabees, had tungsten gonads.
One kid, shirtless, in shorts, his glistening, coffee-colored shoulder blades poking from his back like the wings on a dragon. He walked boldly towards the waiting patrol car, like his father owned the world.
It was mid-July, past twilight, humid enough to drench bone.
We watched in hiding—the shurtha had insisted we cease playing—as the kid shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and negotiated in clipped Arabic. They shared a joke. In a few minutes, he walked back to his friends. Yallah, he gestured to his waiting teammates. They could play.
Bug-eyed, we cursed him, his fucking language, and all his fucking ancestors. This was privilege the little fucker had negotiated. Little Fucker played barefoot. He didn’t care if asphalt peeled his heel like fruit. Little Fucker possessed tree-bark soles. Bugger had swagger. Bare feet on asphalt came with swagger. Street cred. Or, like in Manna-da’s case, it earned you respect. On Little Fucker’s team, barely anyone wore shoes. They had all kicked their flip-flops to the side.
Sometimes Arabee boys like Little Fucker and friends asked if we wanted to play against them. We took one look at their sweaty selves, then politely declined, intimidated by bare feet and torsos. Partial nudity simply confirmed that we couldn’t compete. We played fully clothed, hiding our little balls, even when the humidity got so strong we could smell the salt from the sea.
It was Tits’s fault what happened. He had to bring his stupid bike to the game. His father had to buy him that stupid bike for doing well on his exams. If Tits hadn’t tricked out his bike with porn profits, it wouldn’t have looked like a young prince’s golden chariot and he would have kept his wheels. Of course it was going to get stolen!
It had been a gorgeous day. Two Filipina maids in matching housecoats strolled past us as we played. They were plain, but Tits whistled anyway. His awesome whistle halved souls. He then made this “smu-smu-smu” sound, pursing his lips like a hungry carp. An icky sound, it made you feel as though you were being tongued from the inside out. “Pipty peels, do I get cunt for pipty peels?” Tits yelled, transposing the Fs with Ps.
The women picked up their pace, heads bowed. Juicy butts wobbling like custard. I would’ve fucked them if they let me. I would’ve fucked anyone if they let me.
“Dykes!” Tits yelled. “Yeah, dykes,” I confirmed. We laughed, and Tits high-fived me.
“Or maybe,” Tits winked, “you want cock!” The women continued to walk, and I continued to watch. “Yeah, they want cock,” I said.
Then a scream rocketed through the air. “Nooooooooooo!” It was Tits.
He started sprinting toward his bike. Too late. The lock had been cut with heavy-duty pliers, and two bikers—Somalis, I discerned by their skulls and level of blackness—rode side by side, holding the stolen bike in the middle. Members of the gang pedaled behind, sneering. These guys knew what they were doing. Jubilant, like hunters announcing “Kill,” they hooted. Behind them ran a desperate Tits, urging them to stop. Like a fool, I thought. Tits pursued them for almost four hundred meters. The bikers teased him, Arabic unmistakable: “Come, come, take, take, faster, faster.” They even slowed down, letting Tits touch his back wheel.
Tits’s bike was gone.
Out of breath, he dropped to his knees. He coughed, spat phlegm.
We didn’t know what to do. Only Roshan, needing to show off, had joined Tits in giving chase. Most of us didn’t want to get involved. I certainly didn’t. This was Tits’s problem. I watched him run. A seal on land. Pleading, “Bike! Bike!” It was an embarrassment. Some of us laughed. I did too, although part of me hoped the bikers were playing a mean practical joke, and would soon return. I watched Tits crumple, hands on knees, his body heaving, and then watched him return. “Sorry, man,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder, letting it rest.
“I heard you laughing,” he said.
A patrol car pulled up behind us. The shurtha, an assuming sort with a pencil-thin mustache, got out. All of us scurried except Tits, and Roshan, who stayed with him. Tits practically ran towards the man. “It’s gone,” he said, still panting. “Get it back!”
The shurtha did not move. Then he asked Tits what he wanted. In Arabic.
“Bike stolen!” he responded. In English.
“You see, sir—” Roshan started.
“Yoor bike?” said the shurtha, poking Roshan lightly in the chest.
“No, sir, but—”
“Then shut talk,” the man snapped. “Yoor bike?” He looked at Tits.
Tits nodded.
“OK,” the shurtha continued, switching back to Arabic. “Tell me, what’s the problem, kid?”
“Bike,” responded Tits in English. “Getting away, man, probably in Electra by now. They took—go after them, man. What’s the delay?”
The officer adjusted the brim of his hat. Then his tone changed. “Babers?” he said, switching to English.
“Papers?”
“You no understand? Bathaka!”
“Student! Indian School, Indian School!”
“Bathaka? Where batha—”
“Please, I give Father’s number. He works here. I live here. ADNOC Company! You know ADNOC company?”
“Babers,” the officer insisted.
“Father, sponsor. He’s home, call home. You want number?”
The officer poked Tits in the chest with some force. “Why smiling, yahi?”
“No, I—”
“Why shouting, yahi?” The officer grabbed Tits’s right wrist. “You dink dis funny?”
“No. NO! Please, I am sorry. Please, no funny at all.”
“You blay here?” As he asked the question, the officer signaled for assistance. His partner stepped out of the vehicle, leaving the engine running. “Dis not bark, yes? Why blay here? You blay cricket, yes? Why you blay!”
Tits was trembling. “Sorry,” he said again.
“Zorry, habibi? For what, zorry? Sbeek Arabic?”
“No.” Tits’s head was hung.
“Only English. No Arabic? In my country—”
“Please, bike—”
“Why you talk? I ask you talk? But you talk. I ask you talk? TELL ME!”
“No,” Tits mumbled.
“Dis my country. Arabic! Not English. Arabic. OK?”
“Yes.”
“Sbeek Arabic?”
“In school, we learn —”
“Arabic or no?”
“No.”
“Look to me when I sbeek. Show me bathaka. You have?”
“No.”
“NO ID! Come, come,” said the officer, and began to drag Tits, with his partner’s help, towards the patrol car.
“Please sir please I—” and Tits dropped to the ground.
“Why cry, Fat Boy? You girl? Why cry?”
“Please, sir, please...”
“Yoor fada dead, Fat Boy?”
“No,” Tits mumbled, his hands on the officer’s ankles.
“LOOK TO ME! GET UP!”
“Sorry, so sorry. Sorry.” And Tits got up.
“Give fada’s phone. You have fada’s phone?”
The officer took Tits’s elbow and, followed by his partner, led Tits to the patrol car.
They drove around the complex four times, so close, so slow you could hear the tires when they passed, the car’s German engine emitting little noise, before stopping the car near the spot where they picked up Tits. The cabin light was left on and we could make out that the discussion was getting animated. Minutes later, Tits emerged. He bowed awkwardly, like he was learning to curtsy.
/>
“Thank you,” he said. And he said it again. “Thank you.” Switching languages. “Shukran, shukran, thanks very much, sirs, thanks, thank you.” Then he waved, and I wanted to punch him in the face.
He had apologized. Waved! Pussy.
“What a bitch,” I said.
“Hey, cool it,” Roshan said. “You wouldn’t have fared any better.”
“Hey, Tits!” I yelled. “Hey! Did they make you suck their cock? Hey! Tell us, man.”
Tits ignored me.
“We were debating whether to call your father when they released you,” someone lied.
“What they do to you, Tits?” I asked. “What they say?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled.
We didn’t believe him. When the Mercedes pulled away, far enough for us to make out its taillights, Tits flipped them the bird.
“Kus Umak!” he yelled. “Kelb!” he screamed, spittle running down his lips. He then brought his palms to his crotch, cupped his balls, fingering every vein. “Madarchod!” he yelled. “Madarchod!” He cussed them in every language he knew.
Then he ran.
So did we, some of us, even that pussy Roshan, running straight home; it was getting late—dinner time.
Those left—Tits, Jacob, Biju, Vijay, and myself—hid behind the compound walls of the mosque, where we resumed comforting Tits, who was refusing to go home.
“My father’s gonna fuck me up,” he said.
“I can tell your dad what happened, man,” offered Biju. “It wasn’t your fault, man.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tits said. “They called my father, you know?” Then he burst into tears, mumbling “Phone fada phone fada. . . Fucking behenchods.”
“Hey!” Jacob interrupted. “Wanna kick the ball around? Know what? Fuck that. Shawarmas! My treat.”
“Thieves, man, thieves!” Tits continued. “Deport, man, deport. Useless, worthless fuckers.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. Finally, Tits was seeing some sense. “Worthless dogs.” I spat for emphasis.
“Yeah, that one there,” Tits pointed.
A young, barefoot black boy, his back turned, was limping his way home after a game. In his right hand, he gripped a bunched Ajax jersey. He wore dull, hand-me-down trousers rolled up to his knees. Fake Nike boots hung around his neck like a scarf.
Temporary People Page 13