Jokes for the Gunmen

by Mazen Maarouf

  But this cow wasn’t like those cows that fall off trucks or escape from their farm the night before they are due to be slaughtered and hide in a school classroom with tears in their black eyes and their hearts beating rapidly. It was very different from any cow anyone might ever have heard of. It had belonged to a soldier and he kept looking for her. On the way to the cinema he stopped me and asked me if I had seen a cow in the area. I knew from his uniform that he was one of the soldiers who were the reason we had taken shelter in the cinema. So when he started talking to me, I was frightened and I almost started crying. But he said he wouldn’t harm me if I showed him where the cow was. I told him I hadn’t seen a cow in the area. I felt I was telling the truth, the whole truth, and that I really hadn’t seen a cow anywhere. He also asked me about the teddy bear and I told him it was for food and had wedges of cheese in it. But he wasn’t interested. He didn’t ask me to unzip the teddy to make sure. There was a pistol on his hip.

  The soldier told me he had brought the cow from his home far away and that when they enlisted him he couldn’t possibly part with his cow, so he had brought her along with him. He loved her very much. He said the cow sat with him in the tank. He got it into the tank without the officers knowing. But he had lost it a few days earlier. His tank had been ambushed and his arm was wounded and he lost consciousness. When he came round, he asked about the cow and they thought he was hallucinating. They gave him an injection to make him sleep. He said he spent a week being injected with tranquillizers, whether he asked about the cow or not. Then they sent him back to the army. But how the cow managed to clamber out of the tank, he didn’t know. He was talking and I was listening. He said he had been going up to the flats where people were living. He would knock on a door and when the people opened it, he would ask them, ‘Are there any terrorists here?’ But he wasn’t interested in ‘terrorists’, only in his cow. He didn’t go into the flats, but from the doorway he would take a peek inside to see if she was there or not. He knew the sound of her voice well and could tell it apart from other cows’. His cow couldn’t stand strangers, so she would definitely moo as soon as she saw her soldier friend.

  When the soldier finished speaking, I left. I said, ‘I haven’t seen your cow,’ and walked away. He walked off in another direction, resuming his search for the cow. Before I got back to the cinema, I decided I would kill the cow when I next saw her; if I couldn’t kill her, I would have to hurt her, so that he couldn’t possibly put her back in the tank. I was certain for some reason that she would come through the projection room the next morning, and that’s exactly what happened.

  And I ended up walking after her again.

  The cow followed the same path. This time I was determined to get to the buildings before her. I ran as fast as I could, holding the teddy bear in my hand. It started swinging in the air slowly because its stomach was stuffed with wedges of cheese. I overtook the cow and stopped at the first building. I took out a piece of cheese and filled the cracks in the wall of the building with it. I did the same thing with every building I came to. When the cow’s body rubbed against the buildings, no plants now fell off, and so the cow would die of hunger. I kept up with the cow for three days, reaching the buildings first and filling the cracks with cheese. The cow often changed course and went to other buildings, but I would get there first and I would never give her a chance to rub any plants off the walls. The cow didn’t eat anything for three days straight and then it collapsed on the ground from hunger. Because it was a cow and not a cat, it wouldn’t lick the cheese off the walls as a cat might do.

  The cow was half-dead and I was exhausted too. With a sense of relief I stopped to look at her. I even kicked her. But the kick didn’t hurt her at all. Over the previous few days I’d done a lot – I’d spent most of the time filling the cracks with cheese and I hadn’t eaten a single piece. I hadn’t eaten anything all the days I’d been working, because I needed to use all the wedges. My only rest was when I slept on the cinema seat facing the projection room. I didn’t sit in any other chair, because it was the only seat facing the projection room and from it I could see the cow passing in the morning.

  The cow started mooing as it lay on the ground. I was frightened the soldier might hear it mooing and come and arrest me. Fortunately the mooing was faint because her body was so weak. I had to find some way to torment the cow without the soldier detecting it if he found her.

  Among the rubble I found four footballs. They were all punctured. I gathered them together and went over to the cow. When she saw me approaching with the balls she tried to get up. She was frightened – very frightened. She took a few steps but she soon collapsed on the ground panting. I seized the opportunity and slipped a piece of rubber football into her mouth. The cow rejected it at first, but she was so hungry she started to chew the piece of rubber. Then she swallowed it.

  In the end the cow ate all four footballs. But instead of the cow suffering and having diarrhoea, for example, or stomach cramps, her body fattened up and her health improved. I tried other things: pieces of broken china, old fruit, mouldy bread, a shoe lace, the buckle of a school satchel, a key ring – everything except photographs and cassettes. The cow ate them without complaining. She had put on weight and had recovered her vigour. But her eyes were sad. I avoided looking at her so that I wouldn’t cry. She was now strangely swollen and her coat was standing on end. She looked rather like a giant white hedgehog with black spots. She began looking for anything to eat. The next day I saw her eating some halva, some cake and some pastries full of cream.

  On the final day the cow came as usual in the morning. She walked through the projection room, but slowly. She was bigger than ever before, and she weighed more than her legs could bear. She was also dirty and bruised. Maybe she had stumbled on the way or somebody had fallen on her from the ruined buildings around the cinema, the ones where I had filled the cracks with cheese. Recently flies had started eating the cheese and maybe that had affected the strength of those buildings. I was sitting on the same seat in the cinema, and everything was still around me. There was no one there but me. Neither my mother nor my sister nor the others. The cow’s eyes looked at me through the opening in the projection room, but this time she didn’t go anywhere. She couldn’t leave the projection room. Instead of taking a step forward, she sat down where she was. I got up from my seat in the cinema and went into the projection room. I wanted the cow to leave, to go walking as she did every day. But she just sat there. I aimed a few kicks at her, but she didn’t groan or moo. I tried to push her with both hands but my pushes were very feeble and ineffective. I stepped back a little and looked at her. Then I went back to the auditorium and sat in my seat watching the cow. I knew she wouldn’t leave. Now the cow was blocking the sunlight that usually came into the auditorium in the morning through the hole in the wall of the projection room. Now the auditorium was completely dark, just like it was when all the lights went out. Just like it was when the film was about to begin.

  Biscuits

  MY MOTHER WAS SITTING QUIETLY IN THE BACK seat. I was telling my wife a joke and driving the car. We were on our way to the care home, taking my mother back after her day out with us. My mother stays at the care home six days a week. Alzheimer’s. The car was travelling at fifty miles an hour. This is not just a detail. I never found out whether my wife got the joke or not, since she didn’t have a chance to laugh. Just as I finished telling the joke, we saw an old man crossing the motorway on the other side. When you’re travelling at high speed, sudden death looks like it’s happening in slow motion.

  I stopped the car, of course, like a number of other people, and with my wife’s help I got my mother out of the car and left her to watch the scene from behind the concrete barrier. The old man was truly amazing. He was hopping nimbly between the vehicles, avoiding one car, dodging and weaving, whirling around, spinning like a wheel, doing the splits and throwing feeble punches. I kept my mother and my wife at a safe distance so that the old man
wouldn’t touch us with his boxing gloves and turn us into biscuits. The old man’s gloves grew bigger and bigger whenever he touched the side of a car and turned it into a biscuit. My wife tried to say something to the old man, but I nudged her with my elbow and she realized she should keep silent. As for my mother, her eyes drank in the whole scene, especially when I started describing it to her in precise detail, with the enthusiasm of a sports commentator: ‘He’s touching the side of a car and turning it into a biscuit.’

  The old man didn’t look anxious. He stepped out into the motorway between the speeding cars, then took off his white hat and wrapped it around his fist like a boxing glove. He didn’t want to punch the cars, just to touch them. The speeding cars tried to avoid him, but they didn’t succeed. Every car he touched turned into a giant biscuit. Since they were going so fast, they overturned and crumbled into pieces by the side of the road. The scene was riveting to watch as the first three groups of cars passed. Soon there was a giant pile of biscuit crumbs on the side of the road.

  Later, on the way to the care home, my wife said with a smile that she would have liked to ask the old man just one question. I didn’t comment. We reached the door of the care home. I got my mother out of the car and, as I handed her over to a beautiful nurse, I whispered in her ear, ‘Mum, tell the nice lady the story about the old man.’ And Mother did then launch into a monologue about the biscuits as she went off with the nurse. I heard the latter saying, ‘And what else happened?’ My mother fell silent because she could no longer remember, and the nurse then suggested, ‘How about giving you an injection to help you remember the rest of the story?’

  This is what I usually do with my mother: I present her with a story once a week. Last week we were alone – my wife wasn’t with us. I stopped the car in front of a biscuit seller. He’s a boy who carries on his back an enormous canvas bag full of giant biscuits that he sells by the kilo. They’re the kind of biscuits used for making desserts at home. He targets cars with elderly women, confident they are mothers.

  He came up to the car window, saying to my mother, ‘Madam, would you like some biscuits? Take one and give me whatever you like for it.’ But my mother didn’t answer. She didn’t know for a moment what the boy was talking about. ‘Mum,’ I said. ‘Biscuits – you know what biscuits are, don’t you?’ But she didn’t answer. I asked the boy to get a biscuit out of his bag and show it to her. ‘It’s a massive biscuit, isn’t it, Mum?’ I said. My mother smiled at the sight of the giant biscuit. ‘That one’s half the size of the bonnet of the Renault 5 that I’m driving,’ I said. Then I added that the boy had other biscuits, some of them the size of tiles and some as big as a classroom blackboard.

  Mother could no longer make the delicious desserts she had been so good at making during the war. Baking a cake requires intense concentration and in some cases determination as well. My mother would carry on in the midst of bombing raids and when the neighbours and their children were shouting. She’d tell us to go down to the shelter with Father while she stayed in the kitchen. She’d join us only when her cake was ready, and her cakes always had biscuits as the main ingredient, because it was cheaper than filling them with chocolate, cream or fruit. My father loved cake with biscuits.

  In the care home my mother would sometimes throw a tantrum and tell her doctor that it was me who made up all these stories. The doctor summoned me several times to ask me whether what she said was true. I denied it of course. I’d say that my mother had Alzheimer’s and that’s all there was to it. It was Alzheimer’s that made her confused and led to these accusations. She said, ‘The old man was dead and covered in blood. He’d made a desperate attempt to block the motorway, but a car ran him over. I didn’t see any biscuits.’ But she’d add that she wasn’t certain about this, and then she’d collapse, so they would give her an injection to tranquillize her.

  I know my mother doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. My mother also knows that. And maybe the doctor does too. But I pay the care-home bills regularly, including those for the Alzheimer’s treatment. Not so that my mother will stay in the care home, but to try to make sure she goes on believing in the biscuit story. I visit my mother every Wednesday as well as at the weekend. I stay with her for an hour or an hour and a half. My mother doesn’t say anything when I tell her that the old man that I showed her is still on the motorway. ‘He has his white gloves on and he’s touching the cars. Some of the drivers have tried to crash into him, including a soldier in an army jeep. All of them have ended up as biscuits. So far no one’s been able to get him off the motorway. And the old man is just as you saw him the first time, Mum. He darts between the cars. He hops around on one leg. He spares one car. He dodges and weaves. He spins around. They tried using tranquillizer darts on him, but he dodged them all. Warning shots weren’t any use either. The sight of the old man is now so commonplace that people no longer stop on the side of the road to watch – except for tourists, who take pictures or videos of the old man on their phones. There were three big fire engines on the side of the motorway today. Whenever the old man turns a car into a biscuit, the firemen immediately spray the biscuit with their hoses to soak it and free the people inside.’ Then my mother asked, ‘Don’t you think that the old man who turns cars into biscuits looks like your father?’ My mother is talking about my father, though there has been no trace of him for more than twenty years, ever since he packed his bags at the end of the war, claiming he was going off for some sporting event. My mother still goes to the window every day and curses him out loud, so much so that it’s annoying for the neighbours and embarrassing for me.

  Every weekend my wife and I go past the old man on the motorway. My mother sits in the back of the car. There comes a moment when I watch my mother in the rear-view mirror, whispering, ‘The old man’s coming closer now, to touch our car.’ At that point my wife automatically exclaims, ‘Hey, old man, now are you satisfied?’ My mother is now convinced that whenever the old man hears this, he freezes, which gives us a chance to escape. Sometimes a police patrol car draws alongside us and one of the policemen asks us why we’ve stopped in the middle of the motorway, and my wife and I have an argument. I don’t approve of revealing any details of this story to anyone except my mother, and whenever it’s her day out I do everything I can to make her think we’re going to bake a cake in the kitchen.

  A Joke

  I’M TRYING TO MAKE UP A JOKE, A COMPLETELY new joke. I don’t have ready-made jokes in my head and I don’t remember any details of the few jokes I’ve heard. So I’m trying to sketch out the scenario for a joke in my head. I look around me. There’s nothing I can use in my joke except for my parents. They’re not my real parents. They’re my adoptive parents, and their son has gone out to beg. He might not be their real son – he too might be adopted. Some people say he’s my brother, but I don’t believe it, although there is a resemblance. Sometimes I feel sorry for him, because he has only one arm. But with it he can beg, whereas I can’t.

  He’s the only breadwinner in the household, because my adoptive parents are old. I’m still young, they say. None the less, my health problem prevents me from begging or working. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. It might be simple for you. It might not be worth mentioning. What kind of work can a young man like me do when he has to urinate every quarter of an hour? How does that happen? I don’t know. Although I don’t drink much water, I always need to urinate, even when I’m asleep. For a time, I would wet my bed – the whole bed. Or, if I happened to be sleeping in the courtyard, where there were piles of rubbish, I would soak the paper I was sleeping on. My parents didn’t mind me sleeping there, and I don’t see anything wrong with someone sleeping in their own rubbish; what’s wrong is to sleep in the middle of other people’s rubbish. But I no longer do that, because I’m a year or two older. When you grow up, you think more and you find ways to avoid a particular problem. So now I wear nappies and I can sleep wherever I like.

  Sometimes I sleep on the sofa and imagi
ne that the television is on and that I’m watching all the channels at once. I don’t know how to do that, but there must be a way to see all the channels at the same time. Then my brother comes back from work, takes the bar of soap out of my hand and says, ‘This is not a remote control,’ slowly and in a loud voice, like this: ‘THIS … IS … NOT … A … REMOTE … CONTROL.’ Then he carries me to the bedroom. When I’m asleep, I can only walk with someone else’s legs.

  We share the bedroom, him and me. During the day, we use it as a kitchen, while the old people are asleep in the next room. In the winter I used to sleep in the courtyard, between the piles of rubbish. It was warmer like that. With his one arm my brother makes me a mat out of newspapers. He collects the newspapers during the day from the nearby shops, the hairdressing salons, the coffee shops and the supermarkets. Every day my brother begs in a different street – for the novelty value. A new beggar attracts attention. And every day I try to think of a joke to tell him, because I don’t have any other way to thank him. I say, ‘One day I’m going to make up a long, beautiful joke for you that will make you laugh for two days straight – you won’t stop laughing, even for a minute.’ He shakes his head. I don’t remember seeing my brother laugh. Not since he caught sight of himself in the glass door of a large building and he saw that he had an arm and a half instead of two arms. My parents say he came out of my mother’s belly like that.

  I know my new joke won’t turn my brother into a happy beggar. But I want it to be powerful enough to be included in my CV and to stand the test of time. I want my brother to laugh non-stop for two whole days so that he can’t go to work – like any beggar, he wouldn’t collect a single penny if he stood on the pavement with his one arm stretched out, chuckling with laughter. The food in the house will run out, because we won’t have money to last two days, and, besides, when you laugh a lot you get hungry.