Carnival

by Rawi Hage

  Next, I was offered coffee or water. I chose coffee but it didn’t appear. I waited for another hour. At intervals, the woman came out with faint apologies and requests for my patience. Mr. Patel is a very busy man, she didn’t cease to remind me.

  Finally, Mr. Patel arrived with the woman, his secretary, trailing behind him. I immediately assessed his weight by the heaviness of his steps on the carpeted floor and I knew that the coffee would never come.

  He humbly shook my hand and said: I apologize for the wait, but I have only a few minutes to spare before I leave for the airport. I was informed that you are a taxi driver, and a friend of the driver who took my two sons on a dangerous ride.

  Mr. Patel, I said, I shall be brief. My friend did what he did because he was scared. We taxi drivers are under threat all the time. In our profession, we are vulnerable. I am here to ask you to reconsider and to drop the lawsuit. The truth is, your kids misbehaved, and my friend did what he did to protect himself, out of fear for his life . . .

  The man interrupted me. Your friend broke the law, he said calmly.

  And who doesn’t break the laws? Does your grand enterprise always obey the laws when it ravages these lands from above and below? When it pollutes villages and rivers with poisonous liquids? And how many deformed faces and crippled kids should sue you back? I hissed in his face.

  Without a word he was gone. His secretary ran after him in a panic. Seconds later, the two security men were beside me. They asked me to face the wall.

  When I protested, one of the gorillas put his mouth next to my ear and whispered, I will only ask you once.

  I walked towards the wall. He told me to lift my arms and spread my legs.

  He searched my waist and passed his hand between my thighs, over my torso, and under my armpits, then he asked me to remove my shoes and socks. When they were done searching me, they told me to put my shoes back on, and both men stood very close to me and escorted me to the elevator and down to the lobby and out of the building.

  I went out and cursed everything around me. I walked across the lawn. The stretch of green was wide enough to hold a chopper; long enough to watch enemies approaching, exposed; vast enough to give defenders time to sound the alarm and prepare. Lawns are the most cunning short stretches of land. Behind that innocent, well-maintained, pleasing greenery there are ruthless gates, conniving rulers, extractors of gold, and drivers of slaves. In those glass citadels and towering dungeons, I see meek creatures, hunchbacked servants, and diabolic yes-men conspiring around water coolers, stirring storms in coffee cups, carrying out orders to steal the sugar cane from the land and the water from the underground, a murderous waltz that will never stop until they dig out the last meal from the bellies of the poor.

  I cursed and cursed my way off the lawn and I spat and walked out of those mirages and oases of death to reach the concrete side of things.

  JESUS

  THE NEXT DAY I waited for Zainab at the entrance of the building. She appeared and said, I am starting to think that you time it.

  I never hide the fact that I wait for you, I told her.

  Listen, Fly. I am seeing someone. And I think the person will be coming here more often. So, you know . . .

  Yes, I know . . . is that person from here?

  Yes, from here.

  What is his name?

  None of your business, Fly.

  Circumcised?

  Fly, don’t start with your childish jokes.

  Just asking.

  Stop it, I mean it. Besides, it is none of your business.

  Ah! So you know!

  Leave me alone, it is too early for your offensive obsessions.

  I just want to know and then I will leave you alone, I promise.

  No, not circumcised.

  Ah. I am all for interfaith intercourses. They can only result in a sublime secular experience. What does this intact and complete person do?

  An academic. I have to go.

  Farewell, my dearest Lady Zainab, and do be safe, I said to her as I dropped my cabbie hat with the reverence of a Spanish knight in the presence of an enchanting moor.

  You too, drive safe, Zainab said, with grace and chivalry.

  I slept for a few hours, and then some construction started up outside. I woke up and I thought of Mary. Poor Mary. They married her to Jesus, and Jesus is an asexual circumcised revolutionary. What future is there to be had in that scenario? I wondered.

  I took a shower and combed to the side what was left of my hair. I tucked my shirt under my belly, recalling all the food I had eaten the previous day. Nothing to be proud of, nothing to regret. All the advice that the doctor had given me was forgotten.

  BILL

  THE DEALER CALLED and so I went to pick him up at his place. His woman waved from the window and screamed: I am waiting for you, Zee baby! And she waved at me and said: Good luck to you, good man!

  We drove downtown, made a few straightforward rounds. Are you up for it next week? he asked.

  Yes.

  Good. I’ll call you. Do you know the industrial area?

  Yes, very well, I assured him.

  Good. You want cash or some blow as payment for tonight?

  Cash.

  Right. Fly the cash man. He tapped me on the shoulder and opened the door and I watched him walking away from the car.

  I had dropped him at a nightclub. He passed the long line of people waiting to go inside. A few bouncers immediately surrounded him and they opened the door wide, ushering him in as if he were the king of the street.

  I drove a few metres and a large man stopped me. He had a thick neck and tottered like a wrestler.

  Up Main Street, he said, barely fitting through the door.

  Right, I said, looking at him in the mirror. I thought, if my neck got caught between his steroid-inflated elbows, I’d hear my pipes crack before the light changed.

  By the friction of the wheels against the city’s asphalt, I felt the heaviness in his mind, and so, to make things lighter, I talked about the weather. Damp today, I said.

  He nodded.

  I asked him if he was a wrestler, and he smiled and said, No, man, all wrestlers are faggots. I am not into grabbing other guys’ asses and sniffing the sweat between their balls. I am no dog.

  I interjected with a comment about wrestling and how it still survives in the Persian peninsula to this day. It must have thrived during the Macedonian occupation. Cultural influences, I continued, and traces of the past can well be found in the most everyday things. Alexander the Great, upon his conquest, ordered his army officers to marry Persian women . . . but then I looked in my rearview mirror and realized how all this history talk must have sounded pedantic to the muscles in my cab, so I stopped myself and, to bring things back to the present, I asked, What do you do, then?

  I work as a bouncer, man.

  At the club behind us?

  Yeah.

  I just dropped a friend there, I said.

  The whole world is there tonight, he said, but I’ve got some business to do in the next neighbourhood. Can you get me to Main Street fast, before the waitress I’m meeting goes home?

  I’ll do my best. We drove in silence for a while.

  Stop here, he said, handing me a hundred-dollar bill. Could you make it quick with the change?

  I pulled out a stack of money from under the seat and gave him ninety-two dollars. He left in a hurry without leaving me a tip.

  I drove for a few metres, stopped at a red light, and looked at the bill he had given me. It was as fake as Monopoly money. I did a U-turn and went back to where I had left him, but he was gone. I drove around the neighbourhood and said to myself, Think, Fly. The muscleman wasn’t going home. I parked my car and walked. The first thing I did was look for a dive with a waitress inside and also, judging by the neighbourhood, a
poker machine, a couple of old-timers behind pints of beer, and a cigarette machine. I found one. The place was empty except for the staff and, sure enough, the muscleman. He was talking to a woman in a very short skirt and flimsy high heels. He saw me and turned away, but I tapped him on the shoulder.

  What?

  The bill you gave me is no good.

  That isn’t my problem anymore.

  I think you gave me a counterfeit bill and you should take it back.

  I think you should leave, he said. He pointed his finger in my face, but his eyes focused on a point somewhere between my chin and my belly button. I could feel the threat of his biceps.

  Does the name Zee mean anything to you? I asked.

  The man’s finger wavered. The woman turned and left. Then he stepped back slightly and said, What about Zee?

  I am what you would call his private driver. I could call him right now and he could straighten things out between us. Or I could just give you back your hundred and you could give me back the money I gave you, and your next ride would be on the house.

  He nodded. Pulled the cash from his pocket and handed it to me.

  Could you wait outside for a moment, he said politely. I have to finish some business with the lady here.

  After a few minutes he joined me in the car and said, Okay, back to the club. He sat next to me this time, not behind, and he kept looking at me. Finally he said, Don’t I know you?

  Don’t know.

  Yes, fuck, you are that cabbie who used to wait for the blond every Thursday at the strip bar.

  Yes, I said. That is me.

  Sure it is, I recognize you. Small world, he said. I quit over there. This place I’m working at now is happening, I’m much better off. I get one of them clubbing bitches every night. They stick their number in my jacket and I bring them to the front of the line. Too bad about your girl, man, what was her name, Sally?

  Yes. What about her?

  You should know, man.

  I should know what? I said.

  I thought you were banging her.

  No. We were friends. Do tell me what you know.

  It seems to me that you were more than friends. Look at you sad and all. Anyway, man, all I know is that one night, she locked herself in the bathroom and she wouldn’t open up or go onstage. She cried and cried and I had to break down the bathroom door. I found her lying on the floor naked, crying in her high heels and bikini. She wouldn’t say anything. She just cried. I called another girl and we brought her clothes. She said that her best friend Maggie, another dancer, had died in a motorcycle accident that night. I gave your friend some water and she took her bag and left. And that was it. Your girlfriend never came back to work.

  Do you know where she went?

  No, man, those girls come and go. I don’t get involved in their personal lives. But, I tell you, your girl needed help. Whatever she lost must have been hard on her.

  Here’s the door, he said. I’ll get out. Drop by one night and I’ll buy you a drink.

  And he walked towards a long line of women who stood, half-naked, shivering and waiting in the cold.

  ACT FOUR

  THE KILL

  I CHECKED MY mailbox and found junk mail, some bills, and a few letters for Otto. Traces from the time he lived with me.

  So that evening I decided to look for Otto to give him his mail. I went to the bar where he liked to hang out but couldn’t find him. I asked the bartender, who told me Otto usually showed up a little later. I drove to his apartment, the one he shared with the old lady. He often complained about how she was always smoking and getting drunk on rum and Cokes. Her room was stuffed with empty Coke cans, hundreds of them arranged in rows covering the bedroom walls. The biggest existential question in her case was whether she would die from diabetes or liver failure. Otto thought it would be obesity. Just like the rest of this nation, he said. Communists and Muslims are not the enemies to fear in this land, Fly. It is the food consumption that will eventually blow up in everyone’s face.

  But Otto wasn’t home, so I went back to the bar and, this time, I saw him sitting on a stool talking animatedly to a well-dressed man.

  I approached them and found myself in the middle of a heated argument. The man had a thick French accent that reminded me of the bearded lady. Otto was telling him that the French empire and its culture were dead, and rightly so.

  The man said something about a lasting contribution to world culture.

  Otto looked revolted and said, Culture? Let me tell you about culture. I walk through the museums and I look at the monuments, those celebrations of theft and oppression, and all I can think of is the suffering of the slaves and the starving workers who shaped those massive stones and carried them on their backs. You know what culture I believe in? I believe in the slave revolt of Eunus against the savagery of the Roman Empire; I believe in Haiti’s emancipation from the colonial French, and when they gave it to Napoleon the Third up the ass. Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person’s face that anything changes. All empires are hungry cannibals . . .

  Let’s go for a stroll down to the river, I said.

  No rivers, Fly. The only liquid I need to see right now is in a glass in my hand. You go ahead to your river. How many chances do we get to speak to a journalist and a colonizer?

  I beg your pardon, sir, said the Frenchman. I am not a colonizer.

  Well, let’s talk Algeria then. Let’s talk about your culture and your celebrated writers.

  At this point I told Otto I was leaving. I offered to give him a ride back to his place. But Otto stayed, drinking and talking to the French journalist.

  I drove to the nearest station and filled my car with gas. I picked up a bag of peanuts. I ate it and went looking for work.

  ONCE LINDA DISAPPEARED for days and she left her son alone. She was getting high in a crack house. Luckily, Otto had decided to visit Tammer that week. Aisha was in the hospital and had been asking for him. But when Otto entered the apartment he saw the boy hungry and dirty, his face full of snot and drenched in tears. The neighbour woman, hearing Otto arrive, opened her door and said, That kid has been whimpering like a puppy. He’s been asking for food. The woman stood there frowning. She looked Otto in the eye and said, I was about to call the cops. If the kid’s mother can’t take care of the child, someone should. The city has got to know about this.

  Otto assured her that all was well and immediately closed the door and took Tammer in his arms. He opened a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti that he found on an upper shelf and heated it.

  Soon Tammer was shoving the food inside his mouth and looking at Otto with droopy eyes of disbelief and sadness. Otto called Fredao, shouted, and ordered him to come at once. After Tammer finished eating, Otto took him to the bathroom and gave him a bath, and then he combed his hair, put him into his pyjamas, fixed his bed, told him a story, and tucked him in to sleep. He washed the dishes and tidied the house. He picked up the clothing that was lying all over the floor and lit a cigarette and waited for Fredao.

  When Fredao got there, Otto opened the door and grabbed him by the collar. He pushed him against the wall and said, You fix this mess.

  Fredao pushed Otto away and went over to the neighbour’s apartment. Fredao smiled and introduced himself as the father of the child, saying that the boy’s mother had been in an accident and had been taken to the hospital, and that he had been coming to look after Tammer but got held up in a long traffic jam and his car broke down. He’d had to wait for the tow truck . . . You know, Fredao said, when it rains, it pours.

  The woman didn’t buy a word of it. She looked at Fredao’s flamboyant hat and flashy suit and said, The kid is skinny: he has always been skinny, ever since I’ve known him. He comes here and begs for food. I give him candy, b
ut I ain’t his mother, I shouldn’t be giving him food. I think somebody else should take care of him. You people are not doing a good job.

  Fredao smiled and said, We appreciate your concerns, ma’am. Here is something for your trouble.

  Are you trying to bribe me, mister? The woman filled the hallway with her shouts. This kid is about to starve to death. Do you think I will watch a child suffering and be quiet?

  Well, ma’am, like I said, it is for your trouble. You gave the kid some candy and in return I am giving you something sweet. There are two ways to taste things in life: the sweet way and the bitter way. I didn’t offer you the bitter because I like to start with the sweet, but if people don’t want my sweets I have no choice but to offer the bitter way. Now, what is it going to be, lady, this or that?

  I ain’t calling this time. You can keep your stuff to yourself. And the neighbour slowly and reluctantly closed her door.

  AND NOW, YEARS later, here was Tammer knocking at my door. It was morning and I had just fallen asleep after a long shift. I heard banging, and then a voice calling: It’s Tammer. Open up!

  I let him in. He looked much older and skinnier than I remembered. When I asked him about his mother, he asked me if I had any coffee and doughnuts.

  I can boil some coffee, but no doughnuts, I said. What’s up?

  Otto wants to see you, Tammer said. It’s urgent. He said to bring him some booze, cash, and food.

  Where is he?

  He’s staying with us.

  Your mother’s place?

  No, under the bridge.

  Let’s go, I said.

  When we arrived, I looked at the traces of campfires and the pigeon bones, the empty booze bottles, and the hobo clothing scattered around on the ground. Otto emerged from behind a cement column that was spotted with bird droppings. He looked hungover and cold. I handed him a bag with the food and alcohol, and an envelope with a bit of cash. He broke off a piece of bread and opened the screw-top of the wine and started to gulp it down. Tammer had stayed in the taxi and I could see him fiddling with the radio dial.