A face like the moon

by Mina Athanassious

  “Fish man,” he said with weighted words, as if his talk alone was strong. “What do you have?”

  “It’s your lucky day,” Mr. Marwan said. “I’ve just cut and gutted a few, still fresh.”

  The man examined the prepared fish to Mr. Marwan’s side.

  “No,” he said. “I want from the ones you’ve still never touched. I want three.”

  “What’s wrong with these?”

  The bearded man stared at Mr. Marwan for a moment, his eyes narrow and sharp. His mouth curved down slightly, as if he was upset with the fish man dragging him into a conversation. He had places to be.

  “How do I know where your hands have been?”

  “The hands that cut the fish you don’t want are the same hands that caught the ones you do sir,” Mr. Marwan said.

  “Yeah but these ungutted ones have less fingerprints right? I know you’re a busy man fishing and catching and gutting every day, it’s probably hard to find time to wash I assume. No?”

  “Are you calling me dirty, sir?”

  “No. I’m not God to judge. I just know you’re a busy man. Washing costs time and time costs money. I’m a business man too. I know these things. I can’t blame you for not spending time you don’t have on cleaning yourself. I’ll gut my own fish and save you time. These gutted fish will go to the next man.”

  Mr. Marwan thought for a moment. He gave the bearded man a price.

  “That’s a high price for three catfish.”

  “Yes, but I don’t bargain on my fish. Time costs you know?” Mr. Marwan smiled. “We’re both businessmen here.”

  The man reached for his wallet reluctantly. “You’re lucky I’ve got places to be,” he said, and paid the asking price. Mr. Marwan folded each catfish in old newspaper and put them in a plastic bag.

  “Salam,” he said. The bearded man didn’t respond. He stared at me funny, like I wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “Is that your son?” he asked.

  “This is my future,” Mr. Marwan said. The man nodded and walked away.

  “You think I’m your future?”

  “No. But it’s none of his business who you are.”

  I watched Mr. Marwan sell out all the fish in his basket within the next hour.

  “I’m done,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I’m not giving you any money.”

  “I don’t want money.”

  He stood up and wiped the dirt off his galabeya and picked up his basket and walked away. I said goodbye but he wouldn’t turn around or wave. I waited until he disappeared into the crowds before I stood up and made my way home.

  ~~~

  I walked into my room and closed the door behind me. St. Moses hovered above my mirror and stared down at me.

  “Did you ever feel like you missed the darkness?” I asked him. “After you gave it up?” He stared at me, angry at my question and offering his heart.

  ~~~

  Mama administered my eye drops before I slept that night. She hugged me and kissed me and tucked me in and then I was gone.

  I woke up after a time, maybe a half hour, with a bad headache that came every so often since my eyes started to play tricks. I laid in the dark and blocked my ears with my hands from the street noise. That didn’t work.

  Flying shapes and colours flashed in front of me with every thud against my skull. I held the part of my head where I felt the pounding and rolled side to side on my bed, praying for mercy. I tried to wipe the flying things away from me hoping my headache would go away once they did, but they soaked through my hand. I closed my eyes so they’d stop existing. They didn’t.

  I threw up that night. My gagging woke mama. She ran to the bathroom. When she got there, her eyes wide and bloodshot, she patted me on my back as I hurled with my head above the toilet. I tod her about the flying shapes. She said she was so sorry for what had happened. I told her she didn’t need to be. Mama wiped my chin with toilet paper. I felt a lot better after I threw up. My headache left. She kissed me goodnight and walked me to my bed and tucked me in to sleep again.

  ~~~

  I saw Mr. Marwan the next day. I walked over to where he sat. I sat in the same spot as the day before and turned to the crowd.

  “You’re back,” he said, staring at the intestines of a fish he was cutting.

  “If you’re here, I’m coming.”

  I watched him cut the belly of the fish. He was smooth and true in the lines he carved, his whole motion in his wrist. The fish man worked on a beat like there was a soundtrack in his mind playing to his massacre.

  “What if you couldn’t see?”

  The man turned to me.

  “You mean like if I was blind?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  I wanted to tell him about my eyes but I feared the words themselves – how they’d feel as they came out. I could see them in my mind with their shape and colour.

  I-

  am going-

  Blind.

  The words were too exact, too sharp to spill without cutting me.

  “Just asking.”

  The man finished the fish and set it to a side by itself in his large basket. He rested his back on the wall and sighed and looked to the sky. Maybe he’d thought of this already. He didn’t think he’d need to remember.

  “If I were blind, I would still go down to the river every morning. I’d feel my way onto the boat. I’d paddle to the centre of the water. I’d know I was in the centre because that’s when my arms start to get tired. I’d hook a worm to the hook and draw my line with my eyes open to the blackness all around me. I’d wait for the fish to bite and then reel it in. You don’t need eyes to feel. I’d throw it in a basket beside me. I’d do that again and again until the fish stopped biting. Then I’d row back to shore. I’d take a taxi out to the big city. You don’t need to see taxi drivers. You can smell them. I’d set up shop on the floor where I could feel the heat of the people. I’d hack out the fish’s insides in front of the crowds, just because I could. And I’d spit on the face of any man who asked to help me.”

  “How would your hands know where to go when you’re cutting a fish?”

  “If you do it for long enough, it’s like breathing.” He picked up a fish and closed his eyes.

  “You feel the scales,” he said, running his fingers over the fish’s underbelly. “Cut from the lowest part of its body.” He ran the knife smoothly through the fish’s skin. “And on down until the head. You know the head by the feel of the gills and the eyes and sometimes the whiskers. You feel ahead with your thumb.”

  The man poked inside the fish with a knife and he cut and he scraped and he pulled its insides out. He opened his eyes and looked at the guts in his cupped hand.

  “All the bad stuff,” he said with a glow of pride at the bloody pearl in his palm. “I don’t need eyes to know I did it right.”

  “Can I try?”

  “Not unless you’re gonna buy the fish you cut.”

  “But I-,”

  “No.”

  Mr. Marwan sat there, and for the first time since I’d seen him, he looked satisfied. I wasn’t sure with what. He was the only man I knew who understood something from the inside, with all its blood and guts and everything evil. He didn’t find it disgusting. He worked to cut it out.

  “That’s the world. Skill and blood.” The man turned to me and smiled a child’s smile. “You cut when you need to cut.”

  “Fish man!” a heavy voice carved through our conversation. I looked up, and there stood the bearded man from the day before, today in a grey suit. He held a bag with a cooked catfish in his hand, a piece of flesh from its stomach cut out and exposed to the sun. As he approached, I saw the colony of tiny worms in its belly, alive and festering.

  “You sell me fish with parasites, you dog.”

  “Sir, I didn’t-”

  “Stand up and talk to me,” he growled. “You animal. Get up. Be more than just a dirty street vendor an
d get up and look me in my eye when I talk to you. Like a man.”

  I felt my heart beat jolt, harder and faster with the man’s approaching steps. I saw Mr. Marwan secure a small knife in a hidden side pocket of his galabeya. His face as still and dark and sombre as the moment I’d met him. No fear.

  “Sir, I did not mean to sell you a fish with parasites,” he said with his usual cool.

  “Get up I said.”

  “Why do I need to get up sir?”

  The man threw the bag in the face of Mr. Marwan. He bent down, grabbed Mr. Marwan from underneath each armpit and picked him up to his feet and slammed him against the wall behind him. The bearded man stood several inches taller than Mr. Marwan. On his way up, the little knife Mr. Marwan packed in his pocket fell to the ground. The bearded man looked too angry to notice. I snuck the knife behind his feet and into my own pocket and stood up with them.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said quietly, my mouth open and dumb. People passing the scene looked in and walked slower.

  “You know what the problem with you people is?” the man asked, clasping the fabric of Mr. Marwan’s galabeya in a knot over his chest, a finger pointed to his face with his other hand. “You don’t know you’re dirty. You don’t understand how little you mean to society. How much you don’t matter. They could get any garbage man to do your job. You can be replaced by a child. This child matter of fact,” he motioned his head towards me, “at any time. And then where would you be? On the streets begging? Like a dog. It’s not that far from where you are right now is it?”

  “Sir,” Mr. Marwan started, his face slowly changing. His eyebrows lowered and eyes narrowed. “You chose those fish. If I had gutted them, I could have checked for parasites myself, and threw a bad fish away. But you chose to take the risk.”

  “So, this is my fault then?”

  “You said that.”

  A small crowd grew in a half-circle around us, cut off by the wall behind Mr. Marwan’s back. The bearded man slowly unclenched and let loose the fabric in his fist and turned to the people.

  “What do you people think?” he yelled and presented his palm to the crowds.

  “What’s the problem?” a short lean man said approaching the big man from amongst the growing crowd.

  “I bought three fish from him yesterday. I was in a rush to go home because I was tired and had to wake up early for work, so I paid the high price he asked. I didn’t bargain. And I brought the fish home to my wife, she baked it, and we ate. My wife cut a piece of fish off before she took a bite, and look what I found,” he picked up the bag with the now rotten fish and waved it in the face of the people. “Parasites.”

  Some in the audience laughed. Others gagged at the scene of the decaying worm-ridden fish.

  “So what should I do with this man? This dog.”

  “You chose that fish,” Mr. Marwan said.

  “I know that’s disgusting,” the short man said as he walked slow towards the scene. “I don’t think he meant it.” He stepped between the big man and Mr. Marwan. “The man’s just barely above a beggar. Have mercy on him. It’s not his fault he’s ignorant.”

  “I’ll teach him for his ignorance,” the bearded man said and pushed the short man from between them, dropped the bag, and with his wide, thick open palm held to the sun, he slapped Mr. Marwan. Mr. Marwan fell to the ground with the motion of the man’s open palm and grabbed his cheek. He let go and a dark pink kissed his skin. His eyes were wide and bloodshot and a tear had rolled down his cheek. His stare searched the streets, I imagined for help or compassion or justice.

  “Stop,” I yelled, my eyes glazed. I wanted to grab the bearded man’s hand or push him away. I stood paralyzed in my fear.

  “Shut your son up,” the man yelled.

  The short man tried again to work his way between the two.

  “Basha, I can see you love God and you’re angry. Allah calls for mercy ya basha. He’s just an ignorant fish man. Your gonna kill a stupid man who barely knows his right from his left. Is this what God wants?”

  “Eye for an eye,” the big man said as he shoved the short man out of the way.

  “Sir,” Mr. Marwan said. “Sir I’m sorry, but please stop.”

  “He’s crying,” a man yelled from the crowds. “Beat him!”

  Some of the crowd cheered. Others gasped and yelled at him to stop. The big man in the middle approached Mr. Marwan while he was on the ground and kicked him in his gut.

  “You feed my family parasites you dog? So I will treat you like a dog.”

  Mr. Marwan grabbed his stomach and tried to contain his tears that flowed freely and darkened the broken grey asphalt beneath him to black. The big man opened the plastic bag and held the fish in his hands.

  “I should have known the dog would give me worms,” he said as he shoved the fish in Mr. Marwan’s face. He tried to force Mr. Marwan’s mouth open as he rubbed the fish’s flesh in his face. Mr. Marwan spat out the little that entered his lips. The bearded man threw the fish to the side again.

  “Get up,” he yelled. “Show these people your bravery.” He picked Mr. Marwan up again. Mr. Marwan’s eyes focused on the cool grey ground. The people worked their way closer to the two men. The crowd swallowed me in. I’d become one of them.

  “Look me in my eyes you dog,” the man commanded. “Before I hurt you, look up at me.”

  Mr. Marwan contained his pain as best as he could, still looking to the ground, and watched his tears fall.

  “Look at me!”

  Mr. Marwan freed his hands from his gut. He wiped the tears from his eyes, then wiped them on his galabeya. He took a deep breath.

  “Beat him!” one yelled.

  “Have mercy!” another.

  “Throw the beggar to the wall!”

  The crowd stood close. I was in the front to the big man’s side, now completely unnoticeable.

  The man, with two fingers in his right hand, placed them under Mr. Marwan’s chin and slowly lifted it towards his eyes. Mr. Marwan tilted his head up to look at him.

  His bloodshot eyes worn and forced open. He breathed a heavy breath and licked his lower lip. The rhythm of his breath slowed and hushed.

  “You have,” Mr. Marwan started between infrequent pants, “no honour.”

  The man took off his black leather shoe. He pushed Mr. Marwan from the neck against the wall a second time with his left arm, and raised the shoe above his head with his right. With the face of a rabid dog, he barked.

  “Honour,” the word came out jagged. “I’ll show you honour.”

  His shoe came down fast and strong. Mr. Marwan fell to the floor as the heavy hand of Egyptian justice struck him over and over. Some in the crowd were ecstatic. They waited for blood. The man struck Mr. Marwan on the nose and it bled. His cheek ripped open and the skin around his right eye reddened and swelled.

  A part of the crowd, I’d become a ghost. Nobody noticed me or cared to. They didn’t see when I reached for the small knife in my pocket. I ran my thumb along its sharp end and felt it cut me. I sensed the warmth of my own blood against my skin.

  I pulled it out of my pocket and held it to my side.

  “Stop me God,” I prayed.

  Between the heat of the people and the gorilla that stood to my side, I swiftly ran the tiny blade into the fat of his flank. He roared and reached for the growing black stain on his side. He fell to his knees and stared open mouthed at his torn, bloody suit jacket. I slipped between the crowds, realizing no one had much idea what had happened.

  The evening heat and the smell of the people and their sweat and the blood on my hand, the knife I snuck back into my pocket, still wet, still thirsty, and the streets and the sound of chaos and car horns and jeering and cheering and anger and the stench of violence and the taste of justice crushed me in that moment. Police sirens wailed behind me as I ran home. My stomach heaved and a headache came on slow but true.

  Logic fought my heart that tried to convince me this could all be
an illusion. A horribly vivid dream. Was that not the sharp end of justice poking at me from my jean pocket as I ran? Was that not my own blood dripping from my thumb, mixing with the blood on my knuckles from the gorilla?

  This was real. I heard and I saw and I smelled and felt it.

  “Why did you let me?” I prayed.

  I made it home before my parents got back. From my balcony, I watched the ambulance drive off from the street corner and into the sunset as the crowds dispersed. A few police men stayed to interview onlookers and examine the scene. A wide black puddle slowly dried on the grey cement. I walked back to my room terrified of the old saint’s quiet eyes.

  I sat on my bed with my body towards the icon and my head towards the ground.

  “I’m sorry. I want to look at you but I can’t,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to see my friend suffer like that. I had to save him. He did nothing.”

  St. Moses saved himself in his quiet.

  “I just, I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

  I felt the man stare at me with his tired eyes offering his old black heart. I’d always thought he wanted to give it to me. He didn’t. He wanted me to see what he once was. I wished he’d look somewhere else. I didn’t need to see.

  I wouldn’t look up. He offered but I kept my head in my hands and wished he’d turn around. The world around me was tired. I didn’t want it. I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. It didn’t matter anymore. But his eyes still searched me. The black man of the desert. Lie to me. Tell me it never happened.

  I opened my eyes. Traced my stare across the lifelines on my palms to the dirty floor to the wall and up to the ceiling and I watched the fan spin and lowered my stare back down to the saint’s face, once at peace.

  I saw his anger and felt my ribs fold in. I saw his understanding like he’d known me. As if he lived my life. I saw his hurt having known what I’d done and I saw his sin for the first time because it was my own.

  My mind grew heavy and tired from everything that happened and everything I lived through. I could justify my actions, but my stomach felt like it was gradually eating itself. I rested my head on my mattress and fell asleep.