by Rawi Hage
So I retraced my steps and I parked in the middle of the street, not quite remembering which house was theirs. It was late but I honked loudly at all the buildings, hoping that a head or a hand would appear, wave to me, ask me to wait, and rush down the stairs with joy and a reward or even some applause.
The woman came out with her blond, exuberant hair and high heels, and she rushed towards my car shouting, You good man! She opened the back door and grabbed the bags. He’ll take care of you, driver. He will. Be generous to the man, Zee, she said to her boyfriend as he came out. Be generous now.
Sure enough, the man walked slowly towards the car and handed me a large bill. But before I could roll up the window, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, Why don’t you work with a generous man like myself?
Where and what, I asked.
Right here. You stay in your car, your office, man, and you drive me around. I sit in the back like before and tell you where to go. A few hours a day and I will take care of you big.
Anything illegal, I asked.
Anything illegal, he repeated. What is legal, my man. What is? Is history legal, was Vietnam legal. What the fuck is legal in this universe? Stars eat each other, wolves eat the pigs, and Grandma fucks over Little Red Riding Hood.
Nothing is legal, I agreed.
No doubt, nothing.
I am in, I said.
Be here Monday night. Right here. At eight. And he surprised me with a big smile followed by a fist pound to his heart.
I left and drove for a while. The streets were wet and the water expanded under the pedestrians’ stomps. Rain swirled like the halos of pebbles on the face of a pond. I drove in circles as the universe spun and exploded and filled itself with dust and liquid, oblivious to whether I turned left or right or whether I gazed at its prehistoric twinkles and its giant stars. I drove but I scooped up no customers in this flooded city of the north. I consoled myself thinking that at this hour, sailors and men must be drinking inside bars, eating chips off counters while clouds of flies, giddy on the scent of roasting animals, swirled above the bald-headed, rug-like dizzy oval heads. Then I felt hunger and I stopped.
I entered a fast food joint and went straight to the bathroom. A policeman was taking a leak into the white fountain on the wall. I washed my hands and sensed him weighing me. So I entered the booth and locked the door, fearing that the state would slap me with a ticket for not washing my face, failing to move out of authority’s way, or using too much soap that foams and grows bubbles that might pop like gunshots and cause panic and alarm.
I waited until he was gone. And then I left the stall with my belt still undone, looking for the hole in the leather. Finally I buckled up and washed my hands again, killing most of the germs. Some must have escaped, no doubt. I went to the counter and ordered a sandwich and a coffee, and then I decided to drive up the mountain and see if the moon was full or empty.
FATHER
THERE IS NO void, said the bearded lady who raised me after my father’s departure and my mother’s death. There is only motion, she added, and she asked me to fill a bucket and clean the caravan’s wheels.
Your father, she said, led a camel when he first appeared from beyond the dunes, and carried a stack of rugs and blue stones to chase away the evil eye. He was a merchant and a lover of flight. As soon as your mother laid eyes on him, she was swept away by his life-saving oasis of a smile. His long eyelashes tickled the backs of her ears; his thick, curved eyebrows sliced through her chest like Indian blades. Your father’s carpets were always floating above the ground, he never laid his head on the floor, and his eyes were always on the stars. He shifted the wind with his turban and steered his flying rug with his whiskers, she said. He flew around the tent poles above the audiences’ exclamation marks and dashes of applause.
My parents met high up on the trapeze, in a joint act that turned into a great success. My mother would fling her rope at his carpet and my father would catch it and shout, Hold on tight, Mariam! (He insisted on changing Mary to the original biblical version of that name.) And she would fly behind him as if gliding on water in space.
But one day, my father met another man with a beard and a long robe. The man, like my father, came from the east. They talked about life, death, and the danger of flight. And then, on a moon-shiny night, my father said that he had become a believer, and that carpets should be pinned to the ground. Carpets are for prayer and not for cunning artists and flying buffoons, the man had said to my father. Carpets are the sacred thin crust that stands between the earth and the heavens. My father put on his old clothing, saddled his camel, rolled up one of his non-flying carpets, and left us. After his departure, none of his carpets would stay on the ground. They swirled around the tents like little hummingbirds, they flew around and sideways and upward in the angles of angels and birds. The only photo of my father was a poster of him sitting on a suspended carpet, legs folded, his moustache curled against a background of clapping monkeys, smiling cats, and painted clowns.
After my father’s departure, my mother took to the ropes, and for days she swung, cried, and wailed at the top of the tent. She wove a large web in the sky and trapped clowns and lion tamers, sword swallowers, and the one and only Alligator Man, and dragged them to our little trailer behind the main circus tent.
She would lock me up in a bed of cobwebs and try to hypnotize me to sleep so she could play, but I would wake in a daze, guessing at the arrival of the Wolf Boy or the Skeleton Man. And I would climb onto one of my father’s carpets, fly below the ceiling and watch, with a bird’s-eye view, my mother tangled in ropes with a fellow trapeze artist, chained beneath the magician’s saw, or roaring like a lion under the long leather boots of the animal keeper. And I, who was flattered that the ringmaster was coming to our house, happy to be in the presence of this carnival of flesh, gasps, and pleasurable groans, would lie still on the carpet and watch my mother’s acts and, imagining my father on his camel crossing the world, I would happily masturbate.
We always wondered whether he had survived his journey back. After all, the bearded lady said, a camel is a highly visible animal. Camels can’t hide, camels are too sluggish to fly, and too patient, too curious, too opinionated, and too stubborn a creature to kneel for robbers, fall to dictators, or flee the cold.
Now when I remember my mother and her collection of bare-assed companions, when I lie back on one of my father’s carpets and float above the world, I journey through those ancient lands of guns, trenches, and blood, the troubled lands of Slavs, Germans, Latins, Assyrians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, and Greeks. In those nations where young men were drafted and women wept and populations were transferred and people starved and burned by the millions, I landed my carpet, I witnessed, I rectified, and I flew again.
BOOKS
HOW ARE YOU, Zainab asked as she appeared, with her books and her combed wet hair, from behind the entrance door.
Long night, I said. The world is a circus and it will always be. By the way, I have a book to show you.
Do you have it on you?
No, it is in my apartment, I said. Why don’t you come up and I’ll make you a cup of coffee before you leave. A coffee will keep you awake and attentive, because listening to God’s words can be confusing, all those contradictions. Personally, I would be afraid to fall into an eternal boredom. Besides, I said, your hair is wet. Maybe you should cover it, or you could wait a bit, have a cup of coffee until it dries, and that way you won’t catch a cold.
So considerate and sweet, she said, but I don’t have time to come in and I am not done with the stack of books you left at my door last week. I am not sure why you think I would be interested in The History of Court Jesters or The History of the Comic Grotesque. Are you trying to tell me something, Fly? My dissertation, may I remind you, is on religion.
But, yes indeed, I think clowns could be an essential addition to your thesis. Is there anythin
g on earth or in heaven more potent than a good dose of mockery and laughter?
Oh, Fly, you take life too seriously, she said, and giggled at her own joke. And don’t worry too much about my hair. It should be okay.
Have you or any members of your family been to the black stone for the pilgrimage? I asked her.
What an odd question for an early morning.
I was thinking of my father, who went in the stone’s direction.
Is that what you call it now? Zainab asked. A stone?
Well, that is what it is.
What about what it represents?
To whom? I asked.
To some of us humans, she replied. Not all, but a substantial number. But who knows, maybe one day it will be all of us.
Submission?
Conversions, she said, frowning at me.
By love or by might?
Love would be nice.
But before I could bite she followed with, How was your night?
I told her about the man’s proposition. She listened and then she asked, But why did you accept?
He said that nothing is legal in this universe and I agreed with him, so I said yes.
There need to be some laws, said Zainab, or everything will go to chaos.
God’s laws?
Man’s laws, she said, or God’s laws, nature’s laws, some guidance by something bigger.
Man’s laws are self-serving, nature’s laws are arbitrary, and God’s laws, I proclaimed, are in need of some serious updates.
Such as?
The forbidding of wine, for instance. Granted, I also hate those pretentious “sophisticated” people and their swirling and sniffing and spitting of wine. Shouldn’t there be an amendment of some sort by these deities, an appendix, a second or third edition with an introduction by the translator, explaining the harm, or indeed the benefit, of wine? And how about an apologetic statement in defence of the text’s irrelevance in this age of great scientific discoveries. Or a treatise on the importance of free love! Definitely, this archaic lot of religious elders needs to take another look at love . . . What’s with your ever-absent patriarchal gods? Their laws are becoming as old as dog’s tricks.
But maybe they are absent only to you.
Heureusement, I said, and acted like a Frenchman with champagne and flowers in hand. It would certainly be traumatizing to meet any of them. Just the sight of the blood on their hands would make me want to cuff them to my bed and slap the shit out of them . . .
She smiled and almost laughed.
You are a joker, she said. I have to go.
BRAZIL
THE NEXT NIGHT I picked up four drunk numbskulls. They were all wearing white suits for some inexplicable reason, and they were rowdy. When they had finished barraging each other with fucks and oh yeah, oh yeahs, one of them, maybe to defuse the inner violence of the group, turned to me, the scapegoat, and asked me where I came from.
I knew perfectly well where that question would lead. I said Brazil, because that would turn the conversation to beaches and thongs and, if I was lucky, football and carnivals. They would find something to agree upon, women on beaches, bikini dances and surfing, and oh yeah would become words of agreement and fuck would regain its literary sense.
But then one of those smartasses looked at my name on the dashboard and started to shout, What kind of Brazilian name is that? You are a fucking towelhead or one of those things there, from the desert and shit, Brazilian my ass, fuck. You are a camel jockey, liar, and I bet you are taking us the long way.
Yeah, one of them shouted, I don’t see our hotel yet, buddy. Are you taking us tourists for a ride? We may be from out of town but we’re still in our own country! You can’t fool us.
I kept quiet while they shouted at me and jeered and became rowdy again.
And one of them, as I pulled up to the hotel, said, Liar, maybe you should go back to BRAZIL, liar. And they all shouted, Brazil my ass! and slammed the door. They didn’t want to pay me. Their alcohol breath said to me: We don’t pay liars and cheats.
I followed them into the hotel, my Philips hiding in my sleeve, because I had once promised myself that everyone pays. I told them that I would get paid or I would turn their white suits into splashes of red, I would hunt them in bars and wait for them all night if I had to. I am capable of swiftly pulling the bedsheets out from under their sleeping heads without waking them up, I could make their prostitutes appear in their girlfriends’ closets, I could substitute their cocaine lines with fishing ropes that sailed up their nostrils and down their brains, or I could simply juggle bowling pins while standing at their Sunday barbecues in the middle of their lawns . . . But they all shouted, Liar, liar, and walked towards the elevator, except a short guy who stayed behind.
He came to me smiling, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and handed it to me. He laughed and said: Brazil, good one. Keep the change, buddy. He clapped me on the shoulder and left.
I went back to my car and tucked my screwdriver away beside me.
That same night, I picked up a man who claimed that he had just run away from the mental hospital. He opened the front door and sat next to me, panting. He had run out through the hospital doors as a stretcher — or was it a wheelchair, he muttered — stood between him and the big nurse who wanted to chain him to his bed, and he laughed for a while and showed me the traces of straps around his wrists. I looked carefully but I didn’t see any marks. He claimed to be able to escape every straitjacket, or any underwater tank for that matter, because he possessed the knowledge.
What knowledge? I asked him.
All men are trapped, he said, until they hear the call.
Then I asked him where he wanted to go, but he didn’t answer. So I pulled over and said, Listen, pal, if you don’t tell me where we are going, you might as well get out, because I am not going any farther. You have to give me some of that knowledge and tell me the way.
He panted and said, Stasis is death.
Fine, but until death arrives we shall be moving. Now where will it be?
To Cyprian’s Supper, he said.
Well, you’re in luck, I know that joint. You are very lucky indeed, because if I didn’t have this knowledge you would be back on the street right now, running from the big nurse.
When I asked him if he had any money, he said that his brother was Cyprian, and that he would pay me.
I drove him to the restaurant.
Listen, I said, as I followed him inside. No offence, but don’t you think it’s a bit of a pretentious name for such a rundown place?
But the man kept on walking as if he hadn’t heard me.
The place was a dive; it was so empty there wasn’t even any smoke or music to describe. The madman disappeared, to the bathroom, I guessed, though I couldn’t see any stairways or doors other than the one we had come in. So I waited at the bar for a while and then finally asked the bartender if he’d seen a man with long hair go by.
The bartender, for once, and contrary to popular images, was not holding a white cloth between his fingers and polishing a glass and lifting it towards the light. He looked at me and then directed his head towards the glass that he was now in fact holding and twisting a piece of cloth inside, and said, If Lucian promised you drinks or money, you are not getting them from me.
Who is paying me, then? I asked.
Back table, the bartender said.
I looked around and wondered which table he was talking about.
That way, he pointed, with his cloth and his twitching eye.
When I walked to the back, I realized that the room was bigger than I’d thought. I saw a pool table first, then smoke, and another table farther back with two men at it. One of the men was well-built and had tattoos all over his arms. The other appeared older and wore a hat.
They both looked my way and looked surpris
ed.
I am looking for Lucian, I said. He owes me the taxi fare.
Come and join us, the older man said. I’ll cover the fare, but first let me get you a drink. What would you like?
A juice, I said.
Juice! He laughed. He is in a bar and the man orders juice. But he waved away the other guy, who went to fetch my drink.
And how is the taxi business?
It gets better once the Carnival starts, I said.
Everyone in this town waits for the Carnival to make their money, but I say that a man should make his own future. Anyway, he continued, I am Cyprian, Lucian’s brother, and I am glad Lucian brought you here, because I was thinking . . . you see, I have a nephew, a kind of . . . how should I say this without insulting my sister . . . he is a bit lost. Not up here, he tapped his head, not like Lucian. My nephew is a good kid, but he can’t take orders.
You mean he can’t deal with authority, I said.
Yeah, you said it. He can’t deal with it. He always ends up making a scene. Once he even beat the shit out of his boss . . . Last year he worked at the Ferris wheel, but then he fought with an old lady who refused to get off after the last round of the day. She told him she could talk to God better up there. My nephew tried to pull her out, but she screamed. So what did he do but start up the wheel and leave her stranded at the top for the whole night. Lucky for my nephew, it didn’t rain and the lady eventually fell asleep praying. But still they fired him. I tried to give him a job at the restaurant but he spent most of his time outside, smoking. He likes the fresh air, what can I say? So I thought he might make a good taxi driver.
Your nephew has to pass the taxi exam first, I said.
I will make him study, Cyprian said.
He has to memorize every road and street name. Or he can simply buy the tests from the Chinese restaurant at the corner and memorize the answers.
Could you write down the name of the restaurant? he asked.