Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Just when we’re moving to a bigger apartment and need money, he’s going to get a bad evaluation.

  I have chickpea soup for dinner. We haven’t had it in a while.

  “I’ve been so hot all day,” Alem says. Meaning he doesn’t want hot soup for dinner. But he just sighs and sits down, cross-legged, on the carpet.

  “I don’t want it,” Tariam says.

  “Why not, sweet?” I ask.

  “I don’t like it,” she says.

  “Well, that’s what we have for dinner,” I say, trying to be good. “Have a spoonful?”

  “No,” Tariam says.

  I coax until finally Alem says, “Either feed her something else or let her not eat.”

  Of course, if she doesn’t eat, she’ll be hungry in half an hour, and I’ll be doing this again.

  “I want couscous,” Tariam says.

  “I didn’t make couscous,” I say.

  Tariam starts to cry, and Alem gets up, disgusted, and takes his soup into our room. Nobody notices I cooked this food and haven’t even gotten a chance to eat any of it myself.

  Tariam finally sniffles her way through half a cup of soup, and I eat mine, and then I send her out to play until it gets dark. I go into our room and take Alem’s bowl. He’s lying on our blankets with his coveralls off.

  “I just had a bad day,” he says.

  “You go on out and see your friends,” I suggest. I don’t want him underfoot anyway, it’s like having two children instead of one.

  “I’m too tired,” he says.

  I take the bowl back and clean up the dishes.

  Alem comes out of the bedroom, wearing a djellaba. “I think I will go out, maybe just for an hour or so,” he says.

  The frustration comes up like bile, which isn’t fair, because I told him to go out. But I didn’t want him to.

  * * *

  The harni is waiting at the end of the street again.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “Have you seen Hariba?” he asks.

  I shake my head. I haven’t seen her in four days.

  “Are you going to see her?”

  “I’m shopping for vegetables,” I say. “Do you know what the best thing you could do for Hariba is? Never see her again.”

  “It’s too late for that,” he says.

  “It’s only too late when you’re dead,” I say.

  “I wish that were true.”

  “It’s scripture. You’re blaspheming.”

  He smiles. “You’re like Hariba. Do all the women of the Nekropolis quote scripture?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. He’s infuriating. “I’m moving out of the Nekropolis.”

  “That’s right,” he says. “You have a beautiful flat.”

  I wish he didn’t know where I was going to live. Not that he seems as if he’s going to hurt me. In some ways it’s hard to imagine anyone more harmless. Maybe it’s because I look at him this moment and I wonder if he has a penis like other men. My face heats up. I don’t know why I’m thinking of this, or of Alem’s penis, inflamed and dark with blood. Alem’s testicles like dark leather sacs. The harni doesn’t need testicles. He’s never going to have children. Maybe that’s why he’s so gentle; he’s a gelded bull. Oh, my thoughts!

  “You shouldn’t talk to me,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just worried about Hariba.”

  “Hariba is fine,” I say. “She’s with her family. Leave her alone.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “That’s not the way I’m made,” he says. “Hariba is my…I don’t know how to explain it to you. My superior complement.”

  “Is that why you got her to run away?”

  “I didn’t get her to run away,” he says. “I can’t make Hariba do anything she doesn’t want to. I don’t know anyone who can.”

  That sounds true, but I know it really isn’t. Hariba ran away because of him. Hariba is headstrong, but she has always been dutiful.

  “If you see her, ask her what she wants me to do,” he says.

  “I’m going vegetable shopping,” I say.

  “I’ll try to be here most afternoons,” he says.

  I want to run away from Hariba and her harni . For that matter, I want to run away from Alem, and Tariam, and everything and start over where I wouldn’t feel so mean all the time, and where somebody thinks about me once in a while.

  I shop and then stop by my mother’s. Tariam is playing with her cousins. “Can I stay at Grandmamma’s tonight?” she begs.

  My mother is delighted. “It’s wonderful to have a child in the house.” My mother lives only a couple of blocks from us. So I get some things for Tariam and bring them over. When I leave, the girls are squatting by my brother’s house, building something with strips of plastic, and Tariam is so engrossed she can barely manage to wave goodbye to me.

  I make dinner more spicy than I can when Tariam is eating with us.

  “Where’s baby?” Alem says when he gets home. When he hears that she is at my mother’s, he is pleased. “I like your mother,” Alem says.

  We never see his mother. When Alem was growing up, his parents were always fighting and his mother would go off and stay with her family and it would be just Alem and his brother and sister and their father. Then his mother would come back and everything would be all right for a while until the fighting started again and his mother left. Now she lives kilometers south in Youssoufia. We’ve visited her twice and I like her well enough. I like his father, too. Sometimes people are just oil and water.

  “Alem,” I say while we’re eating, “were you ever in love with me?” It is a stupid question because, even if he answers that he was and is, I’d only believe it if he told me without my asking.

  “Ayesha,” he says, “I love you so much. You know that. You are my wife, the mother of my beautiful daughter.”

  “I know you love me, but are you ‘in love’ with me?”

  “I don’t understand,” he says. “Do you mean do I feel about you the way I did when we first met? People can’t be like that all the time. What we have is true love, not infatuation.”

  I nod as if that answers my question, but of course it doesn’t. Alem’s a good man, and he does love me. He loves me more than my parents ever loved each other. But it’s because of what I do for him and his life. It isn’t love for me.

  We’re quiet a while, both unsettled.

  “Have you seen Hariba?” Alem asks. He’s trying to make conversation.

  “No,” I say. “She’s so difficult to be around. She’s changed so much.”

  “Maybe it’s just because she is sick. Now that she’s getting better, she should be more like the Hariba you know.”

  “Maybe,” I agree.

  “What are they going to do? Her family, I mean?”

  “She’s thinking that maybe she can smuggle out of the country.”

  “Where would she go?” he asks.

  “North, I suppose.”

  “To the E.C.U.?” He’s surprised.

  “That’s what I said. Really, though, where else can she go? But I don’t know how she can get there.”

  “I might be able to find a way she could get there,” Alem says, “but I don’t know why she would want to go.”

  “What do you know about smuggling?” I ask. Alem does the virtual guidance for a couple long-haul lorry drones.

  “Sometimes we ship E.C.U. goods,” he says. Most E.C.U. goods are illegal, but there are a lot of them that nobody cares about, like the cardboard phones. I knew they had to be smuggled in, but that’s not real smuggling, not like getting a criminal out of the country.

  “I thought a lot of that was copies,” I say.

  “Some of it is,” he says, “but the originals have to come from somewhere.”

  “Smuggling entertainments isn’t the same as smuggling a person.”

  “I know,” he says, irritated. “Why is everything I say wrong? I sa
id I might be able to find out.”

  “I don’t want you to get in trouble,” I say. Especially not for Hariba. “If you lost your job or something-”

  “If you don’t want me to ask around, I won’t,” he says. “I just knew you were worried about her.”

  “Hariba got herself into this,” I say. “I don’t want anything to happen. Look what happened to Nabil. And it’s killing her mother, you can just see it. She looks twenty years older.” I just want him to understand that it isn’t worth it, but I feel as if I sound accusatory. What if he got in trouble? Doesn’t he think about that, about Tariam and me?

  I know he thinks I’m such a nag, but sometimes he’s such a little boy.

  “Hey,” he says. “Let’s not waste the evening.”

  I know what he means.

  He leans over and kisses me.

  “Oh, you,” I say. “Is that all you think about?”

  “Yes,” he says. “All day I think about you.” I give him a kiss back. Alem likes me to be forward.

  “You look so handsome, tonight,” I say. He does, he always looks good to me. What I love most is when he puts his hands on me. I like when he’s above me and all his weight is there, against me.

  And afterward we lie together, sweaty and happy, and I feel like hot bread, all soft and airy inside.

  “Why don’t we do this more often?” I say. Like I do every time.

  * * *

  I keep a cardboard phone with my key in it and sometimes Alem calls me at home, so when it chirps, I assume it’s him. But it’s Hariba’s key that shows up. “Ayesha?” she says.

  “It’s me,” I say.

  “I need to talk to you,” she says.

  I want to say that we’re talking now, but I know what she means. I tell her I’ll come over and at least she gets off the phone quick. This one still has most of thirty minutes’ use left on it. Tariam spent the night before at my mother’s, so I feel as if I shouldn’t take her there. “Come on, sweet,” I say. “We’re going to go visit your aunt Hariba.”

  She hates being dressed to go out, hates having her hair covered and is always pulling at her veil, but she likes the idea of going to see Hariba, so she’s patient while I dress her in bright yellow. Maybe seeing Tariam will remind Hariba that I have a life of my own.

  The harni is waiting at the end of the street, but he just nods at me when he sees Tariam, thank merciful Allah. I don’t want her thinking it’s all right to talk to men when she’s unescorted.

  She’s worn out by the time we get to Zehra’s, but delighted to see Zehra and Hariba. “So big!” Zehra says.

  “You’re big!” says Tariam.

  Zehra just laughs.

  Hariba is sitting up, and her face has a bit of flesh. “You look better,” I say politely.

  “I am better,” she says. “Come outside and sit with me.”

  “Me too,” Tariam says.

  “All right,” I say. I don’t want more secrets and I’m willing to use Tariam to keep Hariba from scheming.

  Hariba frowns. “No, baby,” she says. “You stay inside with Aunt Zehra. I want to talk with your mama.”

  “I want to talk with you,” Tariam announces.

  I know Hariba didn’t call me all this way to give in to a child, and Tariam’s presence probably won’t stop her from whatever she wants, but I refuse to make it easier for her. “Come on,” I say and lift Tariam onto my hip. She’s not so small anymore.

  Hariba follows me outside and I glimpse Zehra’s face for a moment-stiff and expressionless. At least Zehra suspects Hariba is up to something.

  “Can we ride the train?” Tariam asks.

  “No,” I say. “The train doesn’t go the way home from here.”

  “I need your help,” Hariba says quietly.

  “For what?” I ask.

  “I need to get out of the country,” she says.

  “Why can’t we ride the train to the new flat?” Tariam whines.

  “Hush, baby,” I say.

  “We could go to the new flat,” Tariam says.

  I put her down and she reaches up for me to pick her back up. “You’re too heavy,” I say.

  “Why don’t you go inside and see if Aunt Zehra has a cookie?” Hariba says sweetly.

  “I don’t want a cookie,” Tariam says. “I’m hot.” She pulls at her veil. I can feel mine hot on my hair.

  “Don’t pull on it,” I say.

  “I’m hot,” she says and starts to cry.

  “Hush, little girl,” I say. “We’ll get some cold water from Zehra.”

  Hariba scowls while Zehra fusses and gives Tariam some cold tea. “Look here,” Zehra says and opens her sewing kit. “Help me match up my buttons.”

  As soon as we’re back outside, Hariba says, “I need you to take a note to someone for me.”

  “Who?” I say.

  “A man Nabil knows. He might be able to help me get out of the country. Nabil can’t go because he’s afraid the police might be watching him.”

  “You’re going to get Nabil put in prison or killed,” I say.

  “What can I do!” she whispers. “Should I just go to the police and say, ‘Arrest me’?”

  Maybe, I think. But that’s just anger talking. “Alem may know someone.”

  “Alem?”

  “Sometimes they ship smuggled goods.” Why am I saying this? Because I’m afraid of this man Nabil knows. Zehra told me about the track and the horse doctor-this is probably just as bad.

  She chews on her thumbnail. Hariba looks frightened and tired, even if she is getting back a little weight. What a stranger she’s become with lines around her mouth and her thin face, like those women begging at the Moussin. She looks like a divorced woman with no family.

  “I told him not to ask,” I say. “You know Alem, he doesn’t have a devious bone in his body. I was afraid he’d get caught.”

  “Would you please take the message?” she says. “If you don’t like it, then maybe ask Alem? I know it’s a lot to ask…”

  How can I say no?

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  * * *

  I want to take Tariam. Hariba is sending me to the new part of town, but a bad part of town, and I’m thinking that maybe people would be nicer to a woman with a child than a woman alone. Of course, I can’t take Tariam there. I don’t really want to. What if something happened? I don’t want to go with Tariam, but I want to go with someone.

  I should ask Alem. I’ve already volunteered him to look for a smuggler for Hariba, so I can’t pretend I’m keeping him uninvolved, but I just can’t tell him. This whole business with Hariba has gotten so complicated. Maybe I won’t have to involve him. Maybe this person I’m meeting can help Hariba. He’s certainly got to be better help than Alem. Alem doesn’t know anything about smuggling, couldn’t smuggle oranges into a restaurant. There’s no sense bringing Alem in on this unless I have to. Things like this sometimes just work out. This man will smuggle Hariba and maybe the harni out of the country, and Alem will never have to be involved. Or maybe if this man doesn’t work out, Nabil will know someone else, or even, Holy One forgive me, the police will find Hariba.

  I don’t want Alem to do me a favor, certainly not a big favor like this. I don’t want to be in his debt.

  I decide the only one I can ask to go with me is the harni .

  He’s there at the end of the street, as dependable as the sunrise.

  “I need you to do something with me,” I say. “It’s for Hariba.”

  Of course he is willing. He has such a soft look about him. “Do you want me to be your escort?” he asks. “Do you want me to pretend to be someone?”

  “Pretend to be my cousin,” I say.

  He falls in step with me, and I can’t help looking around to see if anyone I know sees us. My veil makes it impossible to look without turning all the way around, but luckily there’s no one around. Maybe it’s a sign things are going to be okay.

  “Once,” he says, “Ha
riba and I had to pretend to be characters in the mistress’s bismek game. I was terrified, I didn’t know how to pretend that way. But now pretending is easy. I pretend all the time. I pretend to be human.”

  I don’t want to talk to him, but I feel rude. Although I’m rude to everyone anymore. “Do you like it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I realized that harni pretend all the time.”

  I’ve never heard him say “harni “ before and it sounds ugly when he does. Or maybe I have heard it and never paid attention, I don’t know. “Hariba wants you both to get out of the country, to go across to the E.C.U.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. There aren’t any harni there, are there? But I don’t know that there is any place for me.”

  “Are you lonely?” I ask.

  He nods, thinking of Hariba, I guess. But then he says, “I don’t know why they make us so we need other harni and then send us out to be alone. It’s very cruel.”

  “Don’t you miss Hariba?”

  “Of course,” he says. “But that’s different. She’s human.”

  He sounds human. It’s strange to hear him talk about humans as if we were different. I want to know what’s different about us, but I’m afraid to ask.

  It’s a long train ride west, away from all the parts of town I know. Not south into the desert, but into sprawl. The buildings on the west side of the city are a hodgepodge. Some have blank walls to the outside and courtyard in, and some have shutters on tall windows, but in the new city a lot of them are concrete buildings from the years after colonialism, clean-looking even when they’re old. Some neighborhoods are kept up and the buildings are whitewashed or painted blue. Some of the signs are in French. I can’t read French, but I like the way it looks. It’s too expensive to live out here, and too far from Alem’s work.

  Farther beyond that the buildings are made of trash or foamstone and they all look raw and ugly. We get off the train in a neighborhood where the buildings are all foamstone, the walls tinted desert red or yellow, the doorways, added after, are blue. Cheap colors.

  I give Akhmim the address, and he asks a woman sitting on a dark red foamstone bench in the train station. She looks Berber. She pulls her blue and white veil around her face and points but doesn’t answer. Akhmim looks at me and I shrug. We walk that way. “Maybe we’ll see the street name,” I say.