A face like the moon

by Mina Athanassious

  “No girl yet,” I told giddu.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll come soon, God willing.”

  We pulled in through the gates of Moqattam after about twenty minutes. The sun, now awake, peeked its head above the horizon. Several pickups and buggies with garbage pyramids on their backs made their way through the narrow village lanes. Just barely five in the morning, a short round man with a thick curled moustache that could’ve reached his eyes if he stretched it opened up the doors to his coffee shop.

  A crude painting on the side of the man’s door of the Virgin in a blue cloak carrying baby Jesus caught me. She stared at the village streets and the passing crowds, smiling. But she didn’t look happy. Just content. The streets were full and everyone was too busy living to care that they lived in garbage. She held her baby and watched everything move like a well-oiled machine.

  I thanked God my mother managed to get out when she could. When she was twelve, she moved in with her eldest brother who owned a small pawn shop on the outskirts of downtown Cairo where he slept. My mother told me giddu let her leave so she could get an education – he had enough daughters to sort his garbage. One less mouth to feed for giddu. He put that responsibility on his son who made more than enough money for the both of them.

  Giddu rolled on down the dirt road and we passed the short round man and his coffee shop. We stopped in front of giddu’s building, his shisha still standing where he left it, and walked out of the car. I followed giddu to the back of his truck. He climbed up the tailgate, rolled the barrows down the plank, and told me to stay beside them. He tossed the bags of garbage at me. I dodged the first one. I could smell it coming.

  “What are you doing?” giddu roared with a half smile like he was half joking. “Pick it up and throw it in the barrow.”

  I did what he said and I didn’t let any of the other garbage bags drop as he threw them at me, even though they were disgusting and I became disgusting for touching them. Just a few more weeks and I’m home.

  Giddu told me to fill one cart at a time until it filled. He waited for me as I wheeled the barrow into his home and emptied it out on the floor of his living room, separated from the kitchen by absolutely nothing. When I came back a half minute later, he had already finished filling half of the second barrow. I emptied out all our garbage on giddu’s dirty tiled floors in a few minutes.

  “Now for the best part,” giddu said as he made his way off the back of his truck. “The sorting.”

  Sorting? I had awoke at two in the morning, brushed my teeth in the company of roaches in a free man’s prison cell, endured giddu’s victory rant about finding a ring in a bag of garbage, and barrowed my way through a building for a good hour and a half. Asking me to bury my hands in the garbage – I just didn’t have it in me. Not then at least.

  “Can I go for a walk for a bit?” I asked.

  “Do it after,” he said. “We have a lot of garbage to get through.”

  “I’m just gonna do it now,” I said as I waved goodbye and walked away. “So I can watch the sunrise. I’ll be back later to help though.”

  I staggered through the dust as I walked away and wished I didn’t need to lie to giddu to get out from spending time with him. In a way, I admired his simplicity. I’d never met a man so proud of his own dirt. Or maybe it wasn’t pride. Maybe he didn’t understand his position in society. I doubt he’d never heard the jokes, never heard the term zabal, garbage man, as an insult. I thought back to the Virgin, smiling at the people like they were no different from everyone else. I just couldn’t get it.

  Still, I hoped he’d be done when I came back.

  “Suit yourself,” he said shaking his head. “But try to be here before breakfast. I’ve got a special surprise for you.”

  I nodded, though I already knew what the surprise was. Yesterday, my mom told me she’d be back the next morning with breakfast from McDonalds. She told me she never ate at any foreign restaurants when she lived with giddu because there were none in Moqattam when she was young. I doubted there were any now. This could’ve been my grandpa’s first time eating American food.

  I trekked towards the mountains through the sandy streets, kicked through the plastic bags and bottles and tried my way around the compost heaps. I passed a few boys and girls around my age wading through the trash, separating bottles from papers from the rest. An old woman with her hair tied and loosely covered by a black veil sat helping them.

  One of the bigger boys picked up an empty plastic Fanta bottle and tossed it at his younger sister’s head. She shrieked and cursed his hand and ran at him.

  “I was testing your reflexes,” he laughed as he blocked her open palm.

  A little boy, maybe three years old, sitting on a clear plastic bag and naked from the waist down (except for a pair of black socks) cried at the sight. The old woman shook her head and picked the boy up and kissed him on his forehead, his bare bottom facing me, and scolded the older kids. She carried him over to the pile of garbage, sat him on her lap and gave him a bottle to play with. He whipped it back at the pile, laughed, and reached for another. His arms were too small to grab hold of anything, and his mother wouldn’t give him another after that. He spared himself the garbage I thought. He was better off. But still, he cried for that bottle.

  Looking at the child on my side, I didn’t notice the already separated pile of bottles in front of me as I walked into them. The whole heap collapsed. I looked forward, stepped back and watched the bottles roll away from their mound.

  “What are you doing?” a small voice cried from behind the broken pile. I looked down and saw a small brown girl in a little yellow poncho and a beige toque covering her head. It was a cold dawn.

  She looked maybe seven, skinny with a clenched fist the size of an egg. The other held a bottle it couldn’t grasp for long. Not in a hand that small. She had real fat cheeks like a squirrel storing food in its mouth.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see where I was walking.”

  “Yes you did,” she said scratching her head with her closed fist. She threw the bottle in her hand onto the pile. “Look how big the pile is. An elephant could see it.”

  “No I didn’t –”

  “You come on my land and try to steal my garbage fatty?” she stomped her foot like she was trying to scare away a fly.

  “No!” I yelled.

  “I know how you fatties work,” she said as she walked towards me and picked up all the bottles on her way, throwing them back on the pile. “You take all our good garbage and eat all our money like pigs.”

  Pigs?

  Surprisingly, I wasn’t angry. I felt sorry for her if anything. She needed a sandwich.

  “I don’t want your bottles,” I said.

  “Yes you do, you fat.”

  “I don’t want your bottles or any of your money. I walked into your bottles accidentally. I’m sorry.”

  She let go of the bottles on the floor, stood up and straightened her poncho. She examined my face with her wide brown eyes. I examined hers. Her eyes made her way down to my old Reeboks, then back up at my face.

  “You’re a liar,” she said flatly. “A fat liar.”

  She turned away from me and towards her stash, reached down to the floor and picked up her bottles. She took an armful, held them towards her heart like she was carrying a baby, and threw them in a bag beside the load, one by one. She was a tiny transporter, quick and efficient and stopped for nothing. She strode from bottle to plastic bag like a veteran.

  I looked down to her feet. She wasn’t wearing shoes. Her tiny feet looked sooty and dry. I almost wanted them to be clean. I almost wanted to hose them down and watch the dirt wash off her toes and down to the soil where it belonged. But that wasn’t for me to do. Washing a little girl’s feet is a mother’s job.

  “Where’s your mother?” I asked.

  She turned her head around towards me as she tied up her first bag full of bottles.

  “I don’t talk to fatty li
ars,” she said tightening the knot.

  She stared at me, her eyes narrow and heavy, full of something I knew but couldn’t name. Something like hunger, but she didn’t look like she wanted to eat. Although she needed to. She was hungry for something I knew I needed too.

  She picked up another plastic bag and waved it in the light breeze until it was full of air. She held it in her left hand and reached down for a bottle with her right. I picked up a bottle beside me, making sure the girl noticed. I walked towards her.

  “I’m putting it in,” I said.

  She stared at me for a moment, turned towards the bottles, there were so many, and back up on me. She opened the mouth of the bag. I threw the bottle in and reached for another.

  The little girl watched me pick up bottle after bottle and throw it in the bag. After a while, she moved from her spot and followed me around as I picked them up. She had a funny shuffle to her quiet steps, keeping her feet close to the ground as she walked.

  “Mama’s cooking breakfast for baba right now,” she said. “He should be back from his garbage run soon, if he isn’t already.”

  “Oh,” I said nodding. “Do they know you’re out separating bottles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know you’re not wearing any shoes?”

  “I learned this from baba,” she said. “Shoes are uncomfortable in the heat.”

  She was right, though it wasn’t hot just yet. But during the midday, my feet felt hot and moist, like they were being gently poached.

  “I think you need to wash your feet.”

  “I washed them last night. I wash them every night. They just keep getting dirty.”

  “Well why don’t you wear sandals?”

  “This feels nicer,” she smiled wriggling her tiny toes. “The fat one is the boss.”

  “Your little Goliath?” I said. I always thought big toes were too big and useless. They didn’t deserve the power they had over all the smaller guys.

  We were down to the last bottle after a few minutes. I threw it in and she tied it up. She had three garbage bags full of bottles that morning. The little girl looked at them and smiled. A job well done. She took off her toque and hung it from her waistband beneath her poncho. She turned to look at me, then back to the bottles.

  “It was a lot faster with another person,” she said.

  “Yes it was.”

  She nodded. The girl walked over to the bag she’d just tied, untied it, and pulled out a large plastic Miranda Orange bottle. She tied the bag back up.

  “You can have this one.”

  “I don’t want your garbage,” I said, waving no with my hand.

  The girl shuffled towards me and forced the bottle between my arm and side of my stomach.

  “There you go,” she said. “You go now. I’m gonna do the cans myself.”

  “Okay,” I said, a little irritated. I really didn’t want her bottle. “Thank you.”

  I walked away towards giddu. I still didn’t want to help him separate his garbage, but I felt I owed it to him since I helped a little garbage girl I didn’t know and not my own grandpa. I marched slowly, wondering how many times a girl that small could wash her feet in the few years she’d lived.

  A girl as thin as her could compete in Little Miss pageants in Canada if she wasn’t so dirty. And those fat cheeks, like she hid something in her mouth she didn’t want anyone to see. Nobody was around her to see it anyway. Maybe that’s what she was hiding. She was all alone.

  I spotted giddu as I approached him. He wasn’t working, just sitting outside smoking shisha and admiring his Chevy. I waved and he waved back.

  “Oh good news,” he beamed and puffed as I approached.

  I held the bottle the little girl gave me out towards him. He smiled and threw up a hand in victory.

  “Even more good news,” he yelled triumphantly. He grabbed it from me and examined it, turned it widthwise in his hand.

  “The Lord gives,” he said as he set it down beside him.

  I took a seat next to him and watched him smoke.

  “I thought you were supposed to be separating your garbage?” I said.

  “A man can’t rest?” he yelled with a flat palm facing the sky.

  Fair enough. I turned towards his Chevy, now dirty after our short trip to Cairo.

  “I think you like it,” he said as he stared along with me.

  “It’s nice,” I lied.

  “Nice?” he winced. “It’s more beautiful today than the first day I got it. Big and strong, like you. I feel like a boss when I’m driving it.”

  I nodded and thought back to that girl’s fat toe. But unlike her Goliath, I knew his Chevy wasn’t useless. He’d have no money without it.

  “This truck is my America,” he said, shaking his head agreeing with his own words. He looked at me and took a puff of his shisha, blowing the smoke out of his nose like Truckasaurus. It was a lot easier to be a boss when you lived in a community of garbage pickers. He was happy. Maybe if I’d lived here long enough, I would be too.

  “Yeah. So when are we gonna get to work?” Might as well get it over with I thought.

  “In a while my friend. Don’t worry.” He crossed his legs and turned towards the road out of Moqattam. “I’m just waiting for someone right now. I got a big surprise for you coming real soon my friend. Huge.”

  HER NAME IS EGYPT

  In the heat of thousands of marching bodies, under the tinted grey of downtown Cairo’s smoggy sky, Botros rode on his big brother Ramy’s shoulders towards Tahrir. Everyone looked tired to Botros, but no one acted tired.

  Most of the people around Botros were men, clean cut and in their twenties, around Ramy’s age. There were a few girls here and there. Some with their heads covered, some without.

  Botros held his head high above the crowd. He watched them cry “Freedom!” and “Get out!” as they pumped their fists and waved Egyptian flags in the air.

  So this is what they called Revolution. Maybe if everyone yelled loud enough, the President would finally hear them.

  “Silence was our disease,” one man yelled, skinny and bearded with rotting yellow teeth. “We are cured! We are cured!”

  Ramy picked his little brother up off his shoulders and lowered Botros to where he could whisper in his ear.

  “You see that man?” he whispered in Botros’ ear. “That man’s an idiot.”

  Botros nodded and Ramy threw him back up onto his shoulders. Botros watched the yellow toothed man run through the crowd. We are cured! he cried with that sense of stupid hope Botros had only ever seen in Egyptian dramas. Botros didn’t know what the yellow toothed man was there for, but he wished he could talk to him. He wished he could tell him about his sister Mariam. She was nine, two years older than him.

  Wide dark eyes and honey-brown skin, thick black curly locks, she looked almost identical to her baby brother. She wasn’t fat like him though, and she let him know it. She used to tell him he looked like an eggplant from his head to his thighs and laugh and laugh and he’d throw something at her head and she’d bob out of the way and laugh even harder. He didn’t know why she liked hating him so much. It only ever happened when he got any attention.

  One time she caught him listening to Amr Diab in the kitchen with Ramy who he’d asked to teach him to dance. He barely started to shake his hips before a clementine hit him on the side of his head. “Eggplants are only good for cooking,” she smiled, her eyes wanting what she knew was coming. She laughed and Ramy laughed and Amr Diab crooned in the background of the woman he once loved and had gone away. Botros chased her down the short hall and she screamed, though he knew she wasn’t scared of him. He hated running, but she loved being chased. And he never caught her.

  But one day he would, and he’d show her what he needed to show her. The day was coming. She’d started slowing down recently, complaining of headaches every so often. Her mother gave her Tylenol. She usually got better pretty soon. But he’d have his chance.

/>   Two weeks ago, he’d gotten a hat as a gift from his cousins visiting from Canada on their last day in the country. He loved it. It was a black Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap, too big for his small head, but it fit Mariam just fine. He promised his cousins he’d wear it to school every day. He never made it that far. Mariam snatched it off his head every morning and made him chase her to school, a few minutes from their apartment. He knew what was coming. He tried to fight her off in the mornings, holding his hat to his head or hugging it to his chest as he walked beside her. She waited until he relaxed his grip, he always did, and plucked it off him.

  But finally, just a few days before the Revolution, on a hot Sunday morning, Mariam didn’t touch the cap on his head. Botros was so happy, he’d finally get a chance to show all his friends the hat his cousins bought him.

  “Blue Jays,” he’d tell his friends. “It’s a team named after a bird. Mariam used to steal it from me in the morning but I grew too strong for her.”

  He hadn’t grown stronger. Mariam had gotten weaker. She walked him to school that morning, her gaze lowered to the cracks in the pavement. She looked like she was tired, she needed to sit.

  “What’s wrong with you today?” Botros said. “You look stupid like that.”

  “My head hurts,” she said. “Everything’s so loud.” He watched her cover her ears and cringe. Tears rolled down her cheeks. This didn’t seem like her usual headaches. It looked a lot worse.

  “You cry like a girl,” he said. She stopped at a garbage can and held on to its side. She wiped the tears from her eyes and breathed a light breath. Botros tried to hear what she heard. Engines and horns, a light wind, drivers cursing at each other from their open windows – it was no different than any other morning. She probably had just eaten some bad meat. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  Two minutes later, she let go of the rim of the garbage can and walked behind Botros, her head still facing the floor. He told her to hurry. She almost always held his hand and pulled him forward when she wasn’t being chased, she needed him to know who led and who followed, but today she lagged behind. The boy felt freedom well within him, like an island at high tide.