A Shimmering Red Fish

by Youssef Fadel

  2

  A Smooth Green Stone

  I watched the fisherman, telling myself he had to turn around, and when he turned around he’d have to see it, and when he saw it he’d have to give it a hard kick that would return the animal to its senses. For a while now, practically since I left the house, it had insisted on following me through the streets and alleys, and I had no idea why. But the fisherman, even when he did turn toward it, gave it a look I didn’t understand—extremely tolerant, affectionate, and unjustifiably well-mannered—a completely incomprehensible look, as if he knew it! Then he went back to watching his fishing rod. And the animal, what did it do? It sat not too far away, next to the basket, like any friend might do, also watching the fisherman as if there existed an old affection between us. That was what anyone rushing by would have said if they didn’t know what had just passed between us as we ran, overtaking one another like competitors in a long-distance race. I too watched the fisherman and his rod sticking out in front of him as he sat on the rock smoking, paying us no mind. As a distraction, I said to him that fish don’t eat at this time of day. The young fisherman responded that it depends on the type of fish; there are those that don’t stop eating because they never get enough. Then I told him that fish don’t eat during the fall because the water’s too cold this time of year. For its part, the animal also watched the end of the rod for a bit, and then it peered into the fisherman’s basket like someone who understands fishing. Its red eye shone in the middle of an ugly black patch. Maybe it was hungry and searching for food, and the fish in the fisherman’s basket smelled delicious to it.

  I had gone out early looking for the residence of the guy who had made my sister Khadija’s head spin. Just to pass the time, I wondered whether the month would end the same way it began, because of the sun that shone suddenly above my head. I recalled this strange thing—in this cold month, the sun was multiplying in a way that made no sense. There wasn’t just one sun like you’d expect; there were multiple suns. Everyone had his own sun following him. It was waiting at every corner, around every turn. I said to myself—and I don’t like sunny days at all, in fact I despise them—that the month of October had begun extremely badly. It wasn’t a pure, healthy, hot sun like a desert sun, for example. The sun above me now was weak and small, which begged the question what such a weak, small sun was doing above our heads at this time of the year. Not at all hot or useful. But it did have needle-like rays. They penetrated your bones and the very top of your head; a vicious sun aiming its lethal beams at the most sensitive spot on your forehead, piercing it. Always in the same place, as if looking to destroy it with its hidden pickax. Wherever you staggered and meandered, it staggered and meandered with you, turning where you turned. In the end, all you could do was curse it and give in. It fixed itself high up in the sky, at just the right angle so that no matter where you turned, its arrows struck your brain’s most sensitive spot, making you think this was its only function, this was the reason for its existence: to ruin your day. If it didn’t follow you at night into your house, getting into bed with you, even into your dreams, then it would spend the night waiting for you around the corner of the first alley you came to. It had come for no other reason than to destroy your resolve, ruin your spirits. This damned sun only lasted a few days, but it was enough to ruin an entire lifetime. A truly wicked sun. And anyway, generally speaking, sunny days are only good for lizards and those running away from prison. That was how things looked to me on a morning that had begun so oddly. I crossed the street, sadly enumerating my problems to myself: My sister Khadija’s senses had been stolen from her by a man whose face none of us has seen. Also, there was this sun drilling a hole in my skull. Until it disappeared or melted away or disintegrated or set in one or another of the earth’s cardinal directions never to return, until it disappeared entirely, I’d take refuge under the tin roof and look at the fancy storefronts, while casting a glance at the newspapers and magazines displayed on the sidewalk. My eyes caught the large headline in green that still dominated the top of the front page of Le Matin: “Citizens! Contribute to building the mosque.” I wasn’t especially interested in this, despite the resentment that occupied a special place in me every time my eyes fell on this headline, as I remembered my uncle Mustafa, who had refused to pay his share of the cost of building the mosque. He had been forced to carry his rifle to defend himself against the gendarmes, and the result? He came to us with a bullet in his right side. Seeing the headline every day at the top of Le Matin’s front page always reminded me of my uncle. This caused me to feel a deep sadness. It didn’t have the look of a temporary announcement or just any old news item. I looked away from Le Matin as one might do when passing a grocer to whom money is owed, but no matter how much I might run from him, the debt would continue to increase and the higher the bill would get. When I thought the sun had weakened, I left my hiding place. I crossed the first street I came to. Not far away, I heard children shouting. I walked to another street, but the shouting didn’t stop. This time I heard them behind one of the doors yelling, “That’s him! That’s him!” I turned, but saw neither the children nor whatever it was they were yelling at. I walked forward a few more paces on the same street and turned again to satisfy the devilish whims hidden with them behind the door, and then resumed walking. This time, I heard the children right behind me barking—woof, woof, woof! I told myself they were just the rascally neighborhood kids joking around. Finally, I let them be. I was thinking again about my sister Khadija when I saw it—or did I?—playing with a cow’s rib that had a few bits of meat on it. It might have been the kids’ idea to give it the bone, because kids love dogs. I don’t know why, because I don’t like dogs at all, no matter what kind. My interest in it stopped there, with these details. When I turned around again after passing a number of small streets, it seemed to me that it was playing another role. We were in the middle of a rainless season. Despite that, the dog was walking along close to the wall, as if trying not to get its fur wet, or perhaps it was a way of trying to blend in and seem inconspicuous, just like humans sometimes do. Or maybe it was playing with its shadow like I sometimes do when my mind is clear. Nasty sun or not, the time is always right for this sort of clowning around. This ugly, useless sun is what brought us all of these misfortunes, among them this dog. That’s the short version of it.

  A red dog the color of henna-dyed skin approached until he almost came into contact with my shadow. When I turned, he stopped and pretended to be preoccupied with the scenes of everyday life bursting all around. I almost fell for it, but he walked across the same alleyways I crossed, turning where I turned, and stopping when I did. Despite the cautious measures he was taking, I finally realized he was following me. There was no longer any room for doubt over this point. I stopped, wondering whether I could guess his intentions. What did he want? Short legs and a fat head. They’re called pit bulls, some rare breeds of which are for sale. I’ve seen them in the dog section of the Derb Sultan flea market. It’s not a market in the literal sense of the word—more of a wide sidewalk outside the actual market. If it weren’t for the dogs tied to the utility poles or the puppies peering out from cardboard boxes, you wouldn’t know that the people standing around on the sidewalk were dog buyers and sellers. That’s the only market around that sells this kind of ugly dog. A wide mouth with a repulsive tongue hanging out. Thick yellow drool streaming from the sides of his lips. The head was covered by a black patch with a red eye shining in the middle of it, as if seeing with one eye made him look twice as mean. What remained of his fur had taken on the dusty color of dirt. We stopped at a corner. I turned around, and so did he, looking in the same direction I was, as if we were both looking for the same missing person in the passing crowds. In the end, when he had gotten so close to me that I saw his shadow had become one with mine, I said to myself that I wouldn’t find a better place than the mosque’s plaza to hide. There were fewer workers than there had been in previous years. The carpenters were still
there, as were some metalworkers. It was then, as I approached the plaza, that I noticed my walk had become more of a trot. And what did the dog do? It ran along behind me, sometimes getting so close that it almost brushed my legs. I stopped when it became clear that this was becoming ridiculous and futile. With feigned calm, I approached the stone ledge overlooking the ocean and found myself engrossed in an awkward conversation about fish with a fisherman I didn’t know—“Do they eat in the fall or the summertime?”—my gaze not straying from the dog for a moment!

  I felt around in my pocket, knowing I wasn’t going to find a fish to give to the dog. I gave him an apologetic look and felt in my pocket again so he’d see the effort I was making. It was then that I heard him ask whether it was true that our family hadn’t paid its share of the cost of building the mosque, as all the other citizens had. It must have been sunstroke from the morning sun that caused me to hear the dog’s voice in my ears. Didn’t I say it was nasty and that it had only come to ruin my day? First, I avoided looking at him. I continued to watch the end of the fishing rod. To buy time and come up with the proper response, I fixed my gaze far off over the ocean, which had clouded over, and then I heard him say that he had come only to remind me, just as he had done for so many others who had forgotten their obligations. The dog went back to looking into the fisherman’s basket. The fisherman fed him a sardine and the dog devoted his attention to licking it, completely forgetting about the matter at hand until I found myself wondering whether I had really heard the animal’s question, and whether he was the one who had asked it. Or was it the fisherman? I continued looking off into the distance, scratching the top of my head in order to give the impression that I was giving serious thought to the matter, even though I had made up my mind about the mosque and about having to contribute to the cost of building it, ever since I had seen the bullet lodged in the rotting flesh of my uncle’s hip. I don’t know where he is now. He might have died on account of the bullet having rotted inside his bone, and this dog may have contributed to his killing, or at least to his arrest. I looked at him angrily as he continued to lick the sardine. This ugly dog wouldn’t dare broach the subject of contributing to the cost of building the mosque with my friend Kika, who has strangled other dogs like it with his bare hands. As for me, I won’t be able argue with him, saying, for example, that I stood with my uncle. I’ve always been a coward. Whenever someone stops me in the street to ask about an address, the first thing I do is think about what his reaction would be if I don’t know it, so I pretend I do know, making a show of thinking it over for a long time, pointing to a street, then a second one, confused all the while and trying to avoid entering into any conversation during which he might learn that I had never actually heard of that address in the first place, especially if the person asking is elderly and able to detect bad intentions in every face because he had grown up in a thicket of bad intentions. Then, as if I finally realized what the dog was driving at, I said that we were exempt from this tax because my father and I had been working on the mosque since the beginning of the year. “We carve and adorn the wood for its ceilings, you see.” This time, the young fisherman was the one to respond rather than the dog. Did he really respond rather than the dog? The young man, as if to reinforce the pit bull’s words, said, “This isn’t a tax. It’s every citizen’s contribution to building God’s house. Aren’t you citizens? Aren’t you Muslims? Are you unbelievers?” It was enough for the dog to nod his head, malicious and domineering from the outset, as if he had found in the fisherman an unexpected ally. Their words were weighed down with all possible violence and hatred, and for what? The ringing in my head didn’t allow me to find the appropriate response. Apologetically, I said to them, “Soon we’ll finish work on the mosque and we’ll receive our full pay, and then . . .” This is how I do it, and it works when dealing with these types—I apologize and show understanding and enthusiasm, while in my head all I’m doing is mocking them and what they say. This thought granted me some courage. Then the fisherman stuffed his hand into his coat and pulled out a gold frame with a piece of paper in the center of it on which was written in golden ink: “His throne was on the water.” He continued to brandish and study it from every angle before kissing and placing it on a nearby rock, allowing me sufficient time to study it as well. The damned dog studied it too. His eyes glistened with tears as if he was about to cry. Then, with a sad yet optimistic tone, the fisherman said that ever since this certificate had been hanging in his house, he’d felt a calmness he had never felt before. He added, “You’ll see what sort of serenity will settle over your house when your family pays its share and hangs one like it in the house’s courtyard, or over the couch. Everyone has one in their house.” That’s how I found myself apologetically telling the dog and the fisherman that I was going to pay. I cursed myself because I didn’t even dare look him in his ugly eye. Would something like this have happened if I had had a pistol in my belt? What could a dog like that do, no matter how vicious? What could it do in that situation except beg for help? I’d calmly draw the pistol out of my pocket and place it above its ugly red eye. “What do you want? My share? Here it is!” Then I’d fire. Two bullets—one into the dog’s eye, and the other into the temple of the fisherman who had allied himself with him. Two bullets would be enough. I calmed down a bit when I saw the dog stretch his paws out in front of him, lay his head down, and close his eyes, like one whose mission has been accomplished. The fisherman went back to watching his fishing rod. At that moment I began to think seriously about the possibility of forming a relationship with him, if only temporarily—with the dog, I mean—in order to avoid the evils to come should he reappear. As for the fisherman, whatever the extent of his involvement, my knowledge of people assured me that he had already completely forgotten about it. I also knew that were I to ask him about the dog, he’d deny any connection to him. He might even completely deny his existence and, looking me straight in the eye, say he hadn’t seen any dog. Rather than get into a useless debate, I asked him, “And now what about the fish? Have they started to eat?” He didn’t respond.

  Before the incident with this repulsive dog, I generally respected dogs, or at least I used to respect them and continued to respect them as long as there remained a comfortable distance between us. More than once I had thought about buying one of those friendly dogs, not the mean kind. Today I swore—just as I had three months before when I saw the bullet in my uncle’s leg—not to spend a single dirham on this mosque. This time I was completely justified in sticking to my decision, because what concerned me more, what was of the utmost importance to me, was that construction of the mosque be completed so I could get paid, and rather than give it to this or that dog, I’d join my brother Suleiman who, at the beginning of the year, had gone off to work in the Gulf.

  3

  After getting shot in the hip, fourteen days passed before my uncle came to us. He had been hiding in the forest until the pain overwhelmed him. My sister Khadija brought him a glass of milk and then returned her attention to her hair, which was falling out. She was worried it would all fall out before she got married. Abdullah, my sister Habiba’s husband, didn’t notice him come in, or that’s what he wanted it to look like. He was watching television, pretending he didn’t care that my uncle was there. My mother’s eyes didn’t look up from her sewing machine, but they were watching him, watching his movements. The tak tak tak of the sewing machine echoed through the house, but she wasn’t sewing anything, preoccupied as she was with my uncle Mustafa, who came yesterday with a rotting hole in his hip. We examined the hole, and didn’t see the bullet, but it was festering. I went to the toilet so as not to cry in front of him. I noticed that some fuzz had started to sprout around my penis. In the past year, not a single hair had grown, but now some fuzz was sprouting around it, as if my uncle’s arrival had somehow hastened its growth. I wiped my tears and left the toilet. From the moment my uncle arrived with the bullet in his hip, we watched Abdullah. My mother and
I were scared that one of the neighbors had seen my uncle come in. Then we transferred our fear to Abdullah. We don’t trust him because he’s a snitch who would sell anyone out. He might go at any moment to inform the authorities if we were to let down our guard. We take turns watching him, Mother and I—watching for what he might do. My uncle limped in, but it was a slight limp, no need for concern or worry. That’s my uncle. He always loved to joke around. When every standing position he tried was too much for him and he settled into a slight lean to his right, a spot of blood appeared, soaking through the fabric of his djellaba. He satisfied himself by turning to my mother and apologizing because he didn’t want to trouble anyone. My uncle didn’t feel any pain and didn’t want to trouble anyone. Ever since he came, he would say that he had never troubled anyone in his life, and he didn’t want to trouble anyone now. My uncle always loved to chat. He could have avoided the bullet if he had just moved a bit to the side, or had hidden behind this tree instead of that one, but that night! May God curse that night. Everything is fated, no need for worry . . . The baby screamed from Habiba’s room so she offered it one of her large breasts. Abdullah was sitting not far from her listening to the Arabic channel, hoping all the Jews and Christians on the face of the earth would be slaughtered. My uncle limped toward the toilet. The blood spot on his djellaba limped along with him. My mother looked up from the sewing machine. But the limp was slight, no need to worry. The baby’s scream got louder rather than softer. Habiba’s husband asked her to shut it up. Her nipple was large and black like a raisin. She shoved it into the baby’s mouth. The tak tak tak of the sewing machine took advantage of my uncle’s absence from the room and rose up again. The bundle of clothing was ready to go. Mother had spent all week sewing it. Abdullah said that he’d take it to the bazaar. Mother said no. She wasn’t done with her work yet. It sounded like she was compromising, like she was pleading, but her suspicions about what his real intentions were remained in her voice. If Abdullah left he’d stop at the first police station he came to and tell them, because he was a snitch through and through. We worried for the whole day. Afterward, Abdullah said, “Why don’t we take him to the doctor before the wound gets infected?” For the first time Abdullah had taken an interest in and spoken of my uncle, like someone wanting to improve his image, to alter our view of him. We don’t like him. My uncle stood at the door of the toilet smoothing his djellaba. His djellaba had been white, but it wasn’t anymore. It was covered in blood. That’s my uncle. He loves to laugh and chat. Short and fat. His head is large, round, and bald—his head was always funny. My uncle sells music cassette tapes in the markets. He doesn’t need a bullhorn to call out to his customers because he’s got a big mouth, as if his mouth is what chose his profession for him. And if he’s limping now, it’s because of the bullet lodged in his right hip, but no need to worry! And no need to bring a doctor, he said. When the doctor comes, he’ll see the bullet, and all the problems and all the other things that will be dragged in along with it. He’s not completely sure the gendarmes escaped his shots because my uncle was also carrying his rifle, his hunting rifle, and a bullet is always a bullet, and thank God it’s resting someplace in his hipbone with neither gendarme nor doctor having seen it. No need to disturb it, especially when the doctor comes wanting to know the details of what happened. Details only bring problems. May God curse the details! “And what do we tell the gendarmes if they come asking questions?” Abdullah asked. We’ll say, “We don’t know any man named Mustafa. There might have been an uncle here who went by that name, but he’s in the countryside. My uncle was in the countryside the whole time and we’ve forgotten all about him. We don’t remember him or what he looks like, we’ve forgotten him completely.” We’ll wonder, both us and the gendarmes, and we’ll say disapprovingly, “And why didn’t this man (who we don’t know) pay his share of building the mosque like the rest of God’s creatures?” Then we’ll curse him a bit to give the impression that we were on the gendarmes’ side and that we were just like them, in order to make them look the other way. My uncle headed to my room, with the same limping steps as before, the same blood staining his djellaba. Mother sat there scratching her nose, looking where she didn’t want to look. I went to the door for a second to see if there was anyone watching our house. The alley was empty now, but that didn’t mean anything. The authorities always appear when you’re least expecting them. Mother continued to worry that he was going to go to the police to tell them about the bullet. Someone formed from the same clay as Abdullah will always be a snitch.