Carnival

by Rawi Hage

  HAIR

  THE NEXT DAY around noon, I received a phone call from the dealer.

  In an hour, same place. You’re taking my woman shopping. Honk and she will come down.

  I picked up a couple of clients and then, at quarter to one, I headed over to the apartment of the dealer. I honked my horn and waited. His woman came rushing towards the car. She had a big leather bag with a substantial amount of fake gold dangling from its sides, very colourful attire, and very high heels. She got in and instructed me to drive straight to the main street. Let’s shop! she said.

  Then, suddenly, I heard her scream and she asked me to stop.

  I asked her if she had forgotten anything.

  Well, yes. The money.

  I circled the block and reached the front of the building again.

  Honk, driver. Honk and he’ll come down.

  So I did until the dealer came out with a mischievous smile on his face. He leaned inside the window and said to his woman, Forgot something?

  Come on, baby, show how generous you are.

  In my side mirror, I saw the man digging into his pocket and pulling out a large stack of cash.

  The whole thing, sweetheart, she said.

  But he gave her about half the bundle.

  The whole thing, Zee! Come on, I’ll do your favourite thing tonight.

  I thought there was a sale on, he said. What happened to the sale?

  Come on, baby, the taxi man is looking at you.

  He gave her two more bills and turned and went back inside the building.

  Cheap motherfucker, she said. Driver, make sure he always pays you. Don’t be fooled and don’t be shy. Always ask for more. What’s your name?

  Fly, I said. And yourself.

  Sheila, but you can call me Baby Jane.

  Jane? I asked.

  No, Baby Jane.

  Right.

  Once we arrived, she asked me to come in with her. Which I did. She held my hand and said, My man hates shopping. You like trying on clothes?

  I am used to it, I said.

  Were you a model?

  No, I said, I worked as a performer.

  Performer, I like that. I was a dancer, until my baby rescued me.

  Ballet dancer?

  No, lap dancer, she said.

  We walked from one store to another. She tried on dresses, shoes, and makeup, and I tried on baggy pants, leather jackets, flashy shirts, shades, and a variety of hats, all on behalf of the dealer.

  After a whole afternoon of walking and carrying bags, I drove her to a salon. While she had her hair done, I sat in a café, had a beer, and picked up my book and read for a while. An hour later, I drove back to the salon to pick up Baby Jane, but she was still under the hair dryer, flipping through a fashion magazine.

  So I waited outside and smoked. I leaned against an electric pole and watched the city people go by. The sky turned grey and it started to rain. The people of the city took shelter at the sides of the road and under the awnings. My shoes got big and wet and the bottoms of my pants got heavy. So I rolled my pants up, buttoned my collar, walked back to my car and reached for my rainbow umbrella, put a smile on my face, and waited for the lady’s hair to roll and turn crispy and dry.

  After our escapade of bags, shoes, and hair, I returned Baby Jane to her door. She retrieved the keys from her purse easily, because her hands where utterly empty and I carried the whole lot of shopping bags. I could tell she liked the service by the way she handed me all the cash that was left in her purse. Good help you are, Fly! Just leave everything at the door. My man will come and take it upstairs.

  So I took the money and went straight to the Bolero, where it was fish and chips day. My favourite day of all.

  DOG

  I CAN ALWAYS tell by the strip of cars and lanterns in front of the Bolero who is inside. Some of the spiders always sit together and eat at the same time; they regulate their lives around the filling of their bellies and the smoking of their cigarettes.

  Then there is us, the flies, who come and go at all hours.

  Sometimes we have to settle for a seat at the counter and endure the wafts of heat that precipitate from the kitchen. And once in a while we have to eat in close proximity to Number 66. He is a fixture in this place. The only words he ever utters are to the owner’s daughter behind the counter: Thank you, dear. He breathes the food vapours and orders nothing but coffee. He is neither a spider nor a fly, but a ghost somewhere in between the living and the dead. He is hardly even seen driving. It is said that when he asked for his lantern number at the taxi office, he requested three sixes, but the office refused. They said it would spook the clients. So he settled for two sixes and sits there waiting for the third six to come.

  I was lucky that night to find a seat at a table and not have to endure the discomfort of the bar stool and the silence of devils. I joined a few of the spiders and listened to their tales. Number 15 got molested by the taxi inspector the other day, Number 101 was saying. Tell the story, tell them, 101 urged 15.

  Number 15 shrugged. I let her do her thing, he said, just like you guys advised me to.

  The taxi inspector likes to molest taxi drivers and everyone knows this. At the red lights, she stops and takes a look at you. If she is planning to see you later, she will smile and leave. And then, somehow, she will trace you by your lantern or your friends or, if you are a spider, she will come to the Bolero and ask the waitress the hour of your feeding and the table of your choice. She will come to your car, flash her badge, and sit next to you, and then she will calmly put her hand on your thigh and close to your groin while she busies herself checking your papers and the cleanliness of your vehicle. And then she leaves.

  If you push her hand away, you will be fucked with a big fine. If you reciprocate, it might lead to a sexual harassment complaint on her part. If you meet her eyes, she will instruct you to keep your eyes on the road, even though your car is parked and not moving. I suspect that she is conducting a survey, trying to find the relationship between machine operators and the length of their parts. She poses her hand somewhere between your crotch and your knee and she waits until your organ gets longer and wider and then she eyeballs it and notes down your name, permit number, and the length of your shift.

  But once, after 66 had finished his coffee and was on his way out of the Bolero, the taxi inspector got in his cab. Two minutes later, she slammed out, her face pale, and she rushed back inside the Bolero, asked for water, and immediately left. It is said that as soon as she got in his car, Number 66 told her the names of her three nieces and nephews and the place where her father was buried. And then he described her childhood village and the coat she wore as a kid when she tortured the neighbour’s cat.

  When the inspector sat next to me, Number 15 told us, I stayed still. And when she finished, I pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and then withdrew a Kleenex and offered it to her. She was furious. She made me get out and she searched my car. She reclined every seat. She had a flashlight, she dived under the seats and she looked everywhere. When I asked her what she was searching for, she said drugs. She made me open the trunk. I had a box of groceries in there that I was taking home to my wife. She gave me a fine. She said that the trunk should be empty and available for clients to stow their luggage during airport rides, for their grocery bags if needed, their dead bodies and their fucking I don’t know what. She was pissed with me and she said that she would find me again to check my trunk and it had better be empty. Sure enough, she stopped me the next day as I was turning onto Horn Street. She opened the trunk and she found two big boxes of Kleenex in there.

  She was furious, Number 15 said, and everyone laughed.

  She wanted to give me another ticket, but I told her that I was on my way to a big delivery and that I could prove it. That she could come with me to the house and see it with her own eyes, and
all the while I kept touching my own thigh, up and down.

  Dog, Number 101 said as he laughed, and everyone was laughing.

  TURKS

  MORNING. I WAITED for Zainab, but she didn’t appear. I went up to my place and lay on the bed, but I couldn’t sleep and I was horny as a Turk.

  So I stretched out on my father’s flying carpet and fancied myself a Turkish soldier in the last days before the Battle of Gallipoli. In Istanbul, I went to the café, smoked, and waited for people I knew to arrive. The backgammon dice and the sound of stones slamming against the wooden tables made me wonder if I would ever play the game again. I could see the minarets of the Blue Mosque. My pious mother had asked me to go and pray, but I preferred to spend what might be my last hours walking the neighbourhood and its streets.

  I had never met an Australian. I did not even know who they were, what their women were like, but soon I’d go to the battlefield to meet those soldiers who had come from far away to conquer our land. My grandfather had been a Janissary and a mighty warrior. As a child he was kidnapped by the Turks from the lands of the Slavs. He was converted to Islam and turned into an elite fighter in the sultan’s army. He was as white-skinned as a Slav might be. And I turned out as blond as him, blue-eyed. Light-skinned, like the Christians are. I regretted that I had not married. Dying young without feeling the body of a woman is a pity. Dying in those awful trenches without experiencing the warmth of a woman even for one night would be my last regret.

  So I, the Turkish soldier, walked to the Blue Mosque to see the Sheikh and ask his advice on the matter. Maybe I could hastily get married to someone he might recommend. He said to me: At the rate our soldiers are dying on the battlefield, it would be irresponsible to leave a young girl behind. But calm down, my friend, I know of a widow who might be willing to marry without delay. The kouttab could be made in a few minutes. I’ll go see her tonight; if she agrees and you can provide a meher for her and her children, all should be well. Come tomorrow.

  The next morning, I went back to see the Sheikh, and sure enough, there was a woman waiting in the back seats of the mosque, in the women’s quarter. We got married and I immediately moved into her house. Her kids were very young; she was still nursing one of them. Her husband had died in battle and now she was in need, she had no one, no family to take care of her. That night she fed me and never looked me in the eyes, but towards the end of the evening, when the kids went to sleep, we both retreated in silence to the bedroom. Her husband’s clothing still hung against the wall. I was nervous. I had never touched a woman before. But here she was all naked under the covers of the bed. I decided to get under the sheets with my clothes on. But she stopped me and started to undress me and touch my chest, looking me straight in the eyes. When my organ got strong, she held it in her hand and directed me slowly. She knew that I didn’t know how. The Sheikh, I thought, must have briefed her. I ejaculated almost as soon as I penetrated her. She pulled me to her side and said, If you come back alive, this is your home and this is where more pleasure will come your way.

  During the battle, I pitied those poor Australians. They threw themselves onto the beaches and under our guns, and we massacred them by the thousands. We were triumphant . . . Long live Ataturk, everyone shouted, the mighty commander who has saved our land!

  As my father’s carpet reached the ceiling, I looked at the shores and I ejaculated in between the two colliding histories and felt fortunate to be alive, lucky to have water and to be able to clean myself after these horrific battles that leave you smeared with mud, blood, wire cuts, and bruises.

  I finally slept. I woke up in the late afternoon. The sun was already starting to weaken and prepare for an early retirement into the sea, or behind a mountain and a cloud or a silhouette of a couple holding hands and cones of ice cream, or bags of peanuts or bananas to feed the monkey urges inside them and make them hop from one palm tree to the next, until they reached the shore and then held hands again and shared more peanuts. I still had a couple of hours before my shift, and I hesitated between leaving the bed and brushing my teeth, extending my arm to the nearby bookshelf to arbitrarily grab a book and read, or completing the fantasy that I’d started and spreading my semen against the sunset and the crooked, wobbly shore. I read. Then I stood up and brushed my teeth and relieved myself from the burden of liquid I’d amassed during my day’s sleep while the kids played and shouted in the neighbourhood’s backyards.

  Around six in the evening, I poured myself a glass of red juice. All was quiet; the large spider had captured a moth. I turned off the light and decided to leave before the spider struck with its fangs and extracted the liquid from its mummified prey. One big meal is enough for one night of feeding, I thought. Too much food will make you fat as doctors, complacent as accomplished writers, sluggish like Roman orgy-goers, round like dictators’ wives, wobbly like elephants, circular like tents, spherical like lanterns, and cylindrical like machine operators.

  But I also left because the books were starting to move and the mice in my place were getting restless in between the covers. Before the characters started to leave the pages for fear of their ears being nibbled on or losing their toes to those rodents’ teeth, I went down to the basement to prepare my ship for the evening sail.

  RAIN

  I DROVE MY car through a night that was still and calm. The light rain wet the asphalt and the roads shone with the grey shades of people in long, slippery shadows. I could see the colour of my car moving above the water beside a floating Jesus and a flight of wild geese. I drove. It was a surprisingly quiet night; usually with the rain come the slugs, worms, and monstrous umbrellas, resuscitated from inside women’s bags, yawning open above men in hats. With the rain, people surface at the edges of the sidewalk, staring into the puddles like hesitant suicides. What has happened tonight, I thought. Where are those seekers of dryness, those god-fearing souls fleeing the apocalyptic floods, where are the wetted carcasses desperate for shelter and ships? I’ve been driving for an hour and not one soul has entered my car.

  I listened to the soft music on the radio. The Carnival is about to start and people must be sticking the last thread and needle into their costumes or practising their dancing steps, or it might simply be that my lantern has gone out. So I stopped and got out and looked at the top of my car, thinking the light bulb was dead or maybe I’d forgotten to secure the lantern. Because once I picked up a woman with whom I had a fight over the fare. She accused me of taking the longest route; she said that I was driving too slowly and taking her through mazes and labyrinths, and she assured me that she always took the same road and that she’d never had to pay that much. So I responded by accusing her of lying, of giving me a hard time, of being suspicious of hard-working men.

  I will pay what I usually pay, she said.

  You’ll never leave my car until you pay the full fare.

  Fine, she said, I’ll pay and I’ll curse you.

  I am already cursed, lady, I said. I am cursed to be a sailor and a wanderer and to be stranded on ships of lunatics and fools down in the London River . . .

  What will it be, the little money or the curse? she asked.

  You pay me, I said, and then you can spell and pour and babble whatever you like, I’ll just scoop it up into my magic box here that is stacked with layers of soft white sheets. In my youth, lady, I also learned a few tricks. I learned how to make assistants, pigeons, and rabbits disappear. I learned that the universe was created in the void of a hat, that it bloomed from the sleeve of a trickster, and that one day it shall disappear again into the blackness of the pigeon’s hole. I know all kinds of tricks, lady. I was once called the Surmise Child, but I am also a thrower of knives, a lover of lions, and an opener of lions’ cages, and I can tell from your weight that you have a moonless heart and that your vision is veiled by a fog of superstition and avarice. Curse away, because this is your last stop, and be careful when you get down from the
car, because you might fall and lose your bag of tricks.

  She took money from her purse and spit on it, she mumbled mumbo-jumbo and she looked at me in the rearview mirror and said: Nothing for you today, nothing for you tonight.

  And she left and I watched her carry bags that swung in her hands like chickens about to be slaughtered.

  That night I drove for hours and, sure enough, not one customer entered my car. So I drove up the mountain for fresh air and I got out and looked to see if the curse had made my car grow horns, fangs, long claws, and beaming eyes, or if it had just become invisible to the world. I walked from wheel to wheel and looked for bones, chicken feet, or blood that might have smeared the fender or the roof. I lit a cigarette, and that is when I noticed that the light bulb of my lantern was off. That was why no customers had waved to me: they all thought that I was occupied, taken, gone for the day, that I had ceased my shift, filled my trunk with people who wouldn’t pay, or that I was dim, gloomy, dead, that my car was drifting with the motions of a lost Portuguese boat around the Horn of Africa and down to the cold abyss of the Antarctic.

  So I drove my car to Robe, the night mechanic. All the taxi drivers go to him. He is the only mechanic in the city who stays open all night. Robe is capable of changing bulbs, headlights, horns, handles, and mirrors. He is the master of wires and floating lamps. He hardly talks, he just listens to your problem and tells you to wait in line. There I often meet other drivers complaining of how they’ve lost their night’s fares waiting for Robe to fix this or that.