We plunged forward into water up to our chests, searching among the kitchen utensils and miscellaneous items that had settled on the bottom, deep in the mud, in complete and utter darkness. We put one foot down as we lifted the other up, feeling our way, bumping into indistinct shapes that were as discombobulated as we were, moving in no particular direction. All we had to guide us was the child’s yelling coming from the destroyed house. We tried to move on in order to get to him, but without success. Torches and candles burned on the roofs above us. Rather than lighting the way, though, they caused the alleyway to sink into an even darker gloom. The flickering yellow light of the lanterns caused thick black shadows to move indifferently across the walls, as if the alley were inhabited by nonhuman beings that had come for the sole purpose of adding their chaos to the general mayhem. I managed to remove some pieces of wood and stone, and some of the furniture that was blocking up the opening, and, as I followed the weak moaning, I squeezed inside. I cut an uncharted path toward a life hanging in the balance. With searching steps, I ventured forward. Then the moaning stopped. I stood still and waited, expecting the moaning to come back to life as if by instinct—life is precious and isn’t blown away with the first gust of wind that comes along. I waited, but no sound came. Small frogs emerged from Kika’s shirt collar and hopped away terrified in every direction—some of them diving into the mud and making a funny sound—blouf blouf blouf. “Do you hear anything, Kika?” I remained standing in the darkness, clinging to the hope that the moaning would start up again. Then I repeated to Kika, “Listen. A faint moan. It came from over there. Do you hear it? It sounds like a person breathing, coming from underneath the dirt.” I turned around but didn’t see Kika behind me. The darkness intensified, as did my fear of going the wrong way. I turned and paused there for a moment as I took stock of my situation—the dark, the night, the water—hoping that life had found its victim, that it had held on tight in its untiring attempt to bring people back from the dead against their will. No, it wasn’t a moaning sound I was hearing. It was just the sound of mosquitoes buzzing. Day or night, these horrible creatures can only be seen by the bumps they leave on your skin. Buzzing rose up everywhere and the parasitic insects swarmed in from every direction; as soon as one flew away, another swooped in like a dive-bomber. These creatures had found the optimal place for their treacherous attacks. Just from their sound, you’d almost swear that they were larger and deadlier than a silly little mosquito. Or maybe they’d had sufficient time during these past two days to grow larger and bulkier, to become such a deadly threat. As for the sound of the child’s voice, it had completely disappeared underneath the rubble.
I rushed outside waving my hands all over the place, trying to shoo away the annoying insects, and then I made my way toward the rushing water. I caught sight of Kika and another person walking upstream carrying a dripping corpse on their shoulders, a person not quite saved from the disaster. Others were making their way behind them carrying other victims, corpses freed from the compulsion to moan or scream. Freed from every desire. And the cemetery? There are no cemeteries on the water’s surface. The dead won’t find their graves tonight, despite the efforts of Kika and the others. I meant to call out to Kika when the waves swept me away. So rather than call out to him, I found myself shouting, without even being aware of it, for my mother, so strong were the waves on this side of the disaster. The waters, rather than receding, continued to surge in from every direction. Luckily, Mother had left. Kika went the other way. He may still have been searching for graves for his dead. The place was unrecognizable. Was I close to the alley where I lived? Nothing indicated that. All signs to that effect had disappeared. The cobbler, the barber, the night watchman and his dog, the line of mopeds, the vendors’ carts, and so on. And Mother and her sewing machine? And my sister Habiba and her husband? I remember them all in a rush of nostalgia, my eyes brimming with tears. All of these lives would have been submerged underwater if not for the mercy of the employee who had saved us in the nick of time. I also thought about Father in his chair, and the crack that had appeared in his ceiling. I was thinking about all of this when I saw the dog coming down the great river that had been formed by the torrents of water. I thought he was playing, but the strength of the water’s flow made me realize that the current was sweeping him away. It was the cemetery dog, no doubt about it. Or his cousin. All dogs look alike. The look in his eyes convinced me even more that he was the cemetery dog. He was looking at me with pleading eyes. Should I rescue him? I grabbed a rope I found lying next to me, but something stopped me just as I was about to throw the rope. Why not leave him to his fate? Why not let the fourth or the tenth office where he worked rescue him? Rather than move forward, I took a step back and let the current drag him away. I followed him with a sense of relief as he bobbed along the water’s surface, his ferocity doing him no good there—neither his sharp teeth nor his disgusting tongue nor his supposed viciousness did him any good—until he disappeared under the water. His limbs continued to flail around in the air for a bit before disappearing as well. My happiness knew no bounds. A joy inside me ignited like a flame. A child hanging out of one of the windows yelled exuberantly, “Hey, hey, the dog was swallowed by the crocodile!” I turned around, but didn’t see any crocodiles. All I saw was water. The child was only joking with me, but picturing the dog’s fate as the crocodile ripped him apart and then swallowed him caused my joy to flare up even more, until for a moment I was embarrassed. And now? Now we were surrounded by water on all sides. Brown water. Black water. Everything around us was water.
34
Kika says he saw Farah, because he doesn’t know that the ocean swallowed her up. “Where?” He doesn’t respond. He’s all mixed up. This is what I keep repeating to myself after I hear him say “Follow me” four days after the flooding. After four exhausting days, he’s mixing up faces. We see that we have made it through the flood safely, despite it all. Even as we set off trudging through the muddy street, I continue to wonder why I am walking at his side, knowing full well how things will turn out. Maybe he had seen her sister, or someone who looked like her. How many times have I heard someone say they saw their father who had died ten years before? Or someone who saw his wife crossing the street with camel feet instead of her own? This can often be attributed to a lack of sleep. Three sleepless nights would be enough to cause Kika to see Farah in the midst of this fever of face confusion. One thing for sure: He hasn’t stopped thinking about her as I thought he had. I didn’t tell him she’d drowned. But he is thinking about her. I leave him to his blindness and walk next to him beneath sunbeams that seem complete, fully formed, and warm for the first time. So much so that the day seems new. Youthful. Washed clean. The shivering that overwhelms me isn’t caused by the cold. Rather, I am shivering because of a forgotten spring that has crept up on me. Spring had started while we were preoccupied with other things. I haven’t seen a day like this for some time.
There’s a procession of several families leaving the neighborhood. The women walk behind squeaky carts, carrying bundles on their heads. The men are eating. Eating their breakfast as they walk to their new apartments. A day or two behind schedule, but despite that, they see—with a sort of misguided or deviant logic—that they’ll be the first to arrive. It’s a long way and Farah’s image is lodged deep in my mind. Is it the same girl Kika is thinking of? It might be her, or it might not be. Most likely it’s someone else—her sister, or someone who looks like her. Farah drowned. The ocean swallowed her up. Maybe she was picked up by a fishing boat or she got up onto the back of a dolphin swimming by. It might be her, or it might not be. I’d like to think that it was her. Little kids climb up onto the carts. They yell and shout joyfully at one another, happy to see the world from so high up. They stand on top of upside-down tables and clap. Then again, people do look a lot like one another when you look at them the right way. Farah. I had erased her from my thoughts, and here she is now, rising up from the forgotten corners of
my mind, laughing as she had that night under the stars. I’m back lying on the beach, watching the bright laughter shine in the darkness before she’s swallowed up by the silence of the night and the crashing of the waves. The entire night I crossed the ocean, the darkness, and the waves, but I didn’t find her. Then I told myself that there’s no girl in the world who looks so much like Farah that you could confuse her with someone else. There is no one else.
The street we’re crossing now is completely deserted. The people who used to live here left early. They slipped away during the night so as not to get caught in traffic along the way. The doors are locked. The walls breathe, relaxed finally, drying to their hearts’ content in the sun. And what am I supposed to do with that night? There, on that night, I watched Farah dive into the water and disappear. I was a witness. That’s right. It happened right under my nose and I was a witness to it. Another part of my mind tells me that, because it was night, I didn’t see her drown at all, and although it might have been her, it might not have been. I’d like to think it was someone else. I’d like to think it was her that Kika saw. I walk behind him counting the collapsed houses so as not to think about her. Seven houses had been destroyed, not to mention the others in varying states of ruin. And Farah? I try to avoid thinking about her, but I can’t not think about her. There are other carts in front of other houses, with furnishings forming small mountains on top of them. People go in empty-handed and come out loaded with possessions. Running in and out. Disappearing underneath their burdens so much that you don’t know where their words are coming from. Armoires, wet mattresses, pots and pans, empty cages, televisions, and children. A chicken hanging upside down by its feet. An old woman sits on the edge of the cart spinning tales of a journey that hasn’t yet begun. The road is long and the houses are far away. Why did they build the affordable housing out in the middle of nowhere, twenty kilometers away or more? A skinny horse is tied to the cart and stomps the muddy earth with its hooves, not because it’s in a hurry to leave, but rather because there are flies biting its legs. The horse is relaxed standing there, unconcerned with the affordable housing, or with anything else. A woman asks her husband where he lost the key as he runs around the cart searching his pockets and socks, then in his belt. Farah disappeared three or more months ago. She left her sandals and her laugh on the beach, along with a lit flame. I lost the sandals. The flame went out. But the laugh? It has come back to ring in my ears like a set of silver bracelets. Its sound is what drives me forward. I walk behind Kika to its rhythm. I’ll find her. I won’t find her, because she disappeared. We go up the last street twice. I won’t find her because Kika said he lost the address. The green door. We go up the street a third time. Kika doesn’t find this green door. There’s no green door on this street like there is on the other ones. Yesterday the door was green. Did it change color overnight? There’s no other street in front of us. The alleys, houses, and doors have all come to an end.
The sound of a stone being tossed on the ground. The sound of a foot scraping the dirt. Numbers being sung: “Un, deux, trois.” A bare foot pushes the stone around inside some rectangles drawn with a piece of charcoal by a small hand. A young girl no more than six years old jumps across the rectangles calling out the numbers drawn inside them. The rectangles are wet because the ground is wet. The other foot is also bare. When the girl jumps, the edges of her short skirt fly up around her. The numbers fly cheerfully all around her because of the soft ring of her voice. There’s a woman sitting on the doorstep of her house. She has put a piece of embroidered cloth on her head. Traditional folk music plays from a small radio next to her. It doesn’t seem like either of them are going anywhere. The woman’s eyes are open, but they aren’t looking at the girl jumping in front of her. They aren’t looking in any particular direction. Rather, it’s as if they are following a bird flying overhead. Kika stands in front of her. Finally, he finds the sign he was looking for. I shivered. This is what happens when you get close to what you’re looking for. A slight shock that causes the breathing to stop for a few seconds. My heart feels like it has shifted. Is this the door that Farah disappeared behind? But it isn’t green. Kika holds his hand over his mouth. He seems unsure as to whether he should walk toward the door. No, he isn’t convinced that this is the right door. The girl stops playing. The woman leans her head slightly to the side. She looks at us with her ears because she’s blind. She gropes around for the radio and places it on her lap. The music’s volume goes down a notch. We walk past the woman. Disappointed, I continue to hear the small foot scraping the ground behind me, and the numbers cheerfully being called out. “Un, deux, trois.” Unaware of us and what we’re looking for. The girl’s legs are skinny, like two cold stalks. Some of the houses on this street are in the sun, and some are in the shade. We walk on the sunny side. I can’t read anything clearly on Kika’s back. As he walks in front of me, his movements remain ambiguous. Then Kika stops in front of one of the doors. Finally. The door is broken and the interior of the shop is destroyed, as if it has been looted by thieves. Kika looks at me. Not like someone who has found what he was looking for. Not like someone preparing to reveal a secret he knows I’m waiting for. Rather, like a horse that has been spooked at the last moment, no longer wanting to move forward or backward. He says he doesn’t remember where he last saw her. No sorrow. No regret. With an indifference that is closer to disregard. After two hours. After all the alleys we have walked through. He says it like someone who knows but doesn’t want to reveal that he knows. His eyes show this, and then some. His eyes contain all the wickedness he has stored up inside him, all of his ill intentions. What I want to do is slap Kika on the back of the neck to make him remember, but he is determined not to remember. We walk back down to the end of the alley. Then we turn around as he counts the houses. He counts them like someone passing the time, distracting himself. He knows that I know that’s what he’s doing. Then he says that he only heard her voice, and that he isn’t even sure that the voice he heard was hers, or whether the alley was the same alley. The alleys have all come to look the same after the flooding. What I want to do is slap Kika on the back of the neck to make him forget about the flood and remember where he saw her or heard her voice. But he doesn’t remember. The alleys are still the same alleys. And besides, we are in the part of the neighborhood that hasn’t suffered much damage. Why would the alleys change? Would they change simply because we were searching for Farah? Kika’s chitchat doesn’t convince me. I walk behind him, wanting to find her more than ever. But the more enthusiastic I get, the less hope I have of finding her. That’s how it goes. But there is still hope, at least as long as Kika remains so stubborn. What does someone like him hold on to? Both of his parents abandoned him, each in their own way. His mother is a whore who went to sell her fruits to the Spanish; does she even still have fruit that the Spanish could want? And his father—if he ever really had a father—was thrown into some prison abroad. But I don’t lose hope. There’s still a thread that ties Kika and me together. I hold tightly to this thread for a moment, then I stop. This whole story seemed suspicious from start to finish. And now? As he stands in front of me, I recognize Kika up close, with all the evil that runs through his veins, as he tells me that he saw her. I doubt absolutely everything he says. It’s too bad for Kika that the visa made its way into his mother’s passport. He no longer has anything else he can boast about. And I don’t care. All I think about is why he’s hated by everyone. I discover this for the first time as well. And Farah? She isn’t there, neither on this street nor any other. She’s at the bottom of the ocean. All of this has afflicted Kika’s sick imagination. Why not? I have to consider the situation in this new light. The end result is that Farah drowned. We’re done. I’m no longer paying any mind to him or what he says. From this point on, I won’t concern myself with what he conceals or what he says out loud. I’m no longer interested in the hostility, bitterness, malice, and negativity that show so clearly in his eyes. Kika is no longer a f
riend, and this is something I won’t go back on. Although I’m fully confident of this, I try to suppress my desire to cry as I watch Kika going back up the street, shrugging, with his hands in his back pockets. I have no desire to catch up with him, to walk next to him, or to follow him for another minute. This, too, is a story that’s done.
A Shimmering Red Fish Page 26