05.45: Plaza Guard knocks at the door. ‘Sir, you are done?’
No answer.
‘You take your time, there’s no hurry, sir, there’s no one in the shop yet, no one’s waiting.’
‘I am done, I will be out,’ the man coughs.
‘You want me to bring you any more trousers, any more colours?’
‘No, it’s OK,’ the man says, ‘we are done.’ Then he realizes what he has just said. ‘I am done,’ he corrects.
And in movements he has by now mastered, Father wraps his son in the layers again, puts him in the bag, gets into his own clothes, his socks and his shoes, leaves the two new pairs of trousers on the floor, walks out.
WHEN I came out of the Trial Room, Madam was standing in one corner of the store, arranging a stack of clothes in the women’s section.
‘Nothing you liked?’ Plaza Guard asked.
‘No, it’s good but not the right fit.’
‘We do alterations, Madam has some very good tailors and you can pick it up later in the evening.’
‘No, I’m just looking around, I’m leaving the city today,’ I said.
Why did I say that? There was no need for me to say that.
‘You don’t live here?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m just leaving the city for a few days.’
While talking to Plaza Guard, I saw Madam near the shelf – what she was arranging I wasn’t sure of since everything looked arranged and there had been no customers so far – and then she turned, her eyes caught mine, she smiled: ‘Anything else you wish to see?’
‘No, it’s OK, thank you,’ I said.
‘From next month, we will have an infants’ section,’ she said, moving to stand right next to me.
What did that mean? Had she seen Ithim?
‘That’s great,’ was all I could think to say, trying not to betray any panic or the tension that was tying little knots in my stomach, making my heart race. ‘My wife and I will be here then, thank you.’
As I walked out of the shop, Plaza Guard called to me from behind. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘if you are looking around the mall, there is a new cinema hall upstairs, you can go and spend some time there.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
I walked towards the escalator that would take Ithim and me to the third floor, where the Multiplex was. Yes, why not, why shouldn’t Ithim’s first day out also include his first day at the movies? In a cinema hall, dark, with velvet curtains and a flickering screen. It was only later that I realized this was a mistake, that Ithim’s cover was about to be blown.
I am Window Curtain, I was just three months old, look at the window in the picture of Tariq’s house, the first from the left, next to Main Door, I was the curtain in that window, I was blue in colour, Tariq’s mother got me stitched three months ago from an old bedspread she had which was torn so she could get only two curtains out of it, one was me, for the window, the other for the main door so we never felt we were separated, both of us curtains in the same house, same room, we would talk to each other at night, Main Door Curtain kept complaining how he was always being pushed around more often than me and I told him, well, you are the big one, you have to be the tough one but, to be frank, neither of us, tough or gentle, stood a chance against the fire, although Main Door Curtain lived, he was ripped up, thrown into a heap outside the house, they did that while breaking the door down, they did that to me as well, me, who liked being in the window more than on the bed, the glass pane I faced was broken so I would always get the breeze even on still and hot days, when Tariq’s father was alive he bought his son a toy car, Tariq doesn’t play with it any more, it was kept on my windowsill and because I was longer than the window, at least a couple of inches more, sometimes when the wind blew hard, Tariq would fold my edge and put the car on top of me, on the sill, as a weight so I didn’t flap, he didn’t know that I liked flapping in the breeze but I didn’t mind, the car and I became friends, the car also burnt that night, there was a lot of plastic in it, I can’t help feeling guilty, though, because was the first to catch the fire, I was the one to pass it on, see the charred streaks below my window, these were formed by the flames that began with me, I am now scattered all across the pavement, across the neighbourhood, my ash sticks to people’s shoes and slippers when they walk by and so one day I will be spread across the city and as for Main Door Curtain, I saw someone come at night, take him away, maybe he will go back to being a bedspread in a house that escaped the fire.
17. At The Movies, Good Girl & Nice Boy
WE were carried, Ithim and I, up, up and up, smooth, we were gliding, riding the sparkling metal teeth, black and yellow, of the newly installed escalators, up from the ground floor to the first where the restaurants were, all closed, the chairs still upturned on the tables, too early for lunch. From the first floor to the second, where the beauty salons and the hairdressers and the luggage shops and the music shops and the cellphone shops and the TV shops were, all open, bright and early, waiting for customers. To the third where Ithim and I got off, the floor with seven screens, the Plaza Multiplex.
Of the seven halls, there was only one movie showing at this time of day, due to start in fifteen minutes: an English film called For the Icy Nite, its poster showing several men in combat fatigues, sitting atop a tank, guns blazing all around, their faces grim. Not exactly a movie I would have chosen but it would do.
The Multiplex ticket counter was a glass cubicle in which I saw two young men, in ties, in uniform, each behind a computer flatscreen, both of them framed by a large HBO poster for March 8, International Women’s Day Special, The Power of Womanhood, HBO knows what women want.
In the line were just two people, a young woman and a young man – a couple, in their early twenties, attractive. Maybe college students who had bunked their classes.
Good Girl and Nice Boy.
I waited behind them.
Nice Boy and Good Girl took their tickets and when they turned, Good Girl’s eyes caught mine.
I stepped up to the counter.
‘Fifth row, thirteenth seat, please,’ I said. Miss Glass’s coordinates.
‘The hall is empty, sir,’ Ticket Boy said, ‘you can sit anywhere you want to.’ He handed me the ticket and the change and pointed to the carpeted hallway that led to the entrance of the theatre.
Ticket Boy was very polite, just like Madam.
I was still counting the change he had given me and walking in the direction he had pointed, my eyes lowered, maybe I didn’t look, but I brushed against Good Girl. I didn’t see her, I had no idea she was so close behind me.
‘Mind your step, mister,’ said Nice Boy, ‘can’t you see where you’re going?’
I mumbled a sorry. Yes, it was my mistake.
Good Girl had seen my bag and I don’t know how but she must have caught a glimpse of Ithim. (I had covered him carefully in the Trial Room, so carefully that even Madam, standing right next to me, hadn’t noticed a thing, but maybe when I brushed against Good Girl, the mouth of the bag had opened without my knowing, Ithim’s cover had slipped.)
‘Look, what’s he got inside the bag, look, look,’ Good Girl was shouting, stepping back, ‘it’s some kind of an animal.’
Then she pinched her nose with her fingers, made a face. ‘It stinks,’ she said, ‘and it looks like a monkey.’
Nice Boy laughed, ‘Is he the monkey man?’
Ticket Boy was looking in our direction but hadn’t heard a word through the glass.
‘Tell him, ask him.’ Good Girl was now laughing so hard she was stumbling over her words: ‘Ask him, ask the Monkey Man . . . can he get the monkey to dance, we will pay.’
Although there was nobody else around, I felt heat rising from my feet all the way to my face. Anger, shame, even fear. In a move that must have appeared clumsy and awkward, I pressed the bag closer to my chest and hurried, almost ran, down the hallway, towards the entrance to the movie theatre, desperate to get in, to be in the dark, Good Girl’s la
ughter licking my ears like fire.
‘Don’t hurry, the show hasn’t started yet,’ said Usher, who didn’t even ask me about the bag as I walked in and sat down in E13, fifth row from the screen, thirteenth seat from the corner.
There was no one in the theatre.
I was trembling. Yes, I was angry at Nice Boy and Good Girl, the anger making even my breathing difficult, but more paralysing than that was my sense of helplessness, an impotence that made me burn and freeze at the same time. With everything I had, I’d been trying to protect Ithim ever since they had handed him to me at Holy Angel. I had embarked on this journey at great risk and on a vague promise that he could be set right, and I was not going to let anyone judge him before I had finished the journey. But, then this. This was the outside world’s first view of Ithim and it had been a sneer and a laugh, revulsion and disgust. And I, the father, was the Monkey Man.
‘Ask him if he can get the monkey to dance, we will pay,’ she had said.
Once seated in the theatre, darkness came like a blanket that I let slip over me. There was music playing, the screen was blank, the red velvet curtains still drawn. The solitude helped calm my anger, helped the shiver to pass. I put Ithim in the seat next to mine, adjusted his bag so it couldn’t be seen by anyone else sitting behind us. Thus settled, I closed my eyes and felt the soft chill of the air-conditioning fan my face.
The ads began; I kept my eyes closed right through, ads for motorcycles, for Coke and Pepsi, kept them closed through previews of coming attractions, closed as they demonstrated their Dolby-enhanced system with the surround sound of rain, of water drops travelling from one end of the theatre to another. I kept my eyes closed even as the movie started. I had shut myself off, closed all the doors and windows through which the world could enter.
When my eyes opened, the movie had been playing for a while. I checked on Ithim, reaching into the bag, he was still. When I turned to look around, I saw two people sitting way in the back, several rows behind me, perhaps Good Girl and Nice Boy, both quietly watching.
Good Girl and Nice Boy.
My eyes closed again.
1 AM at My Most Charming Self, gems roll off my tongue, uncut yet sparkling, brightly coloured, catching the light of the shuttered storefronts, their display windows. There’s hardly anyone in Plaza Mall now; it’s well after midnight. The policemen have gone home, the last Multiplex show is over, there is only an old woman sweeping the floor in one corner, her back turned towards us. My gems bounce as they fall from my tongue, making Good Girl and Nice Boy fall to their knees, like little children, scrambling to pick up the jewels as they slide on the freshly scrubbed marble floor.
Let me drive you home, I tell them.
Good Girl giggles. (Nice Boy doesn’t listen, he’s chasing after the gems that have now rolled into the metal teeth of the escalator.)
We will call a taxi, says Good Girl and I say, no, the city is on fire, there will be a curfew so let me drive you home. You are a Good Girl and he’s a Nice Boy. How can I leave you alone?
She runs to Nice Boy, tugs at his arm, tells him to get up, tries to explain to him, like a mother to a child, that he can’t get the gems because they are stuck in the escalator which has been switched off and maybe next morning, when the Plaza maintenance men come, they will get them out for him.
Nice Boy stumbles; I steady him with one arm, avoiding any touch with Good Girl, I am the gentleman, she smiles at me, touches my shoulder, near the strap of Ithim’s bag. (It’s not the cloth bag I stepped out of the house with this morning. It’s a superior bag, far superior, made of fine leather, hide, with soft, warm lining.)
Good Girl, Nice Boy and I get into the car and I drive them home – to my home. It’s a new, luxury car I have bought, automatic transmission, specially imported. I drive it through this burnt-out city, past the bodies fallen from the sky during the day, rolling the windows up so that the smell doesn’t enter. I drive past shops and homes now black, smouldering rectangles, visible in the night only through the smoke that marks them out; these were ugly buildings, illegally erected, more like slums and now the city will clean them up. I drive down dead streets – the city looks so much better when everyone is at home – passing sleeping police vans supposed to be on vigil, driving over the assorted debris, the car’s shock absorbers making sure we don’t feel a thing. I see some people crying by the side of the road, I let them be.
I let them wash the streets with their tears.
Let the wretched do something useful for this city.
Good Girl and Nice Boy find my house unfamiliar yet inviting; they explore while I go put Ithim in his cot in the nursery my wife has set up, under the mobile with flying fish and swimming birds. When I return, they are both standing at a window, pointing to the cement divider on the street, to the people sleeping on the pavement, men, women and children, the bundles in rows and columns, one stacked above the other, the heaps I cannot do anything about. Good Girl and Nice Boy are playing a game, whoever can guess which bundle will move first, gets a point. It’s a silly game but they are just college kids. I watch them play for a while, even join in. (I start winning because I know these bundles better than anybody.)
Then I tell them both to undress.
Good Girl laughs, says I will do no such thing, are you joking, mister.
I want to see a change of heart, I want to tell her, but I don’t say the words, let it come as a surprise.
Nice Boy thinks I am joking, too, because he laughs, his eyes are closing and he seems to be falling asleep. It’s against the law to drink in this city but then maybe he had a bottle with him, maybe he is drunk, although I can’t smell anything. He allows me to tie him to the chair.
What are you doing? asks Good Girl, let my friend go.
I tell her not to worry about her friend, I will take care of him. I have a knife in my hand – I picked it up after putting Ithim in his cot. It’s a kitchen knife and it looks crude, I should have something more sophisticated.
But it will do.
At the knife’s point, I get Good Girl to lie on the bed, where Ithim slept last night. She begins to scream but there is no one awake at this hour to hear. Even if there were, there are too many people screaming across the city tonight for her to be noticed. I tell her to let me tie her up, both her feet and her hands. Then I realize it will be difficult to undress her if she is tied up, difficult to remove her jeans and her shirt and her underwear unless I cut them off which is quite complicated so I tell her to undress first and then I tie her up. Don’t rape me, she says, she thinks I want sex.
Does a father, on his first day with his newborn child, a child that needs all the help he can get, does this father want sex?
She is a college kid, she doesn’t know.
I have never done this before, I have only seen it done at the Ahmed Meat Shop (now burnt down), so I try to remember and I begin with an indiscriminate stab in her stomach. She screams, pointlessly. I don’t want to take any chances so, the knife still in her stomach, I gag her with her shirt and while I am doing that, she begins to jerk her head violently. I feel her hair against my hands, between my fingers, I can feel its soft, smooth rustle. I place one hand on her head (no, it’s quiet, there’s no fluttering like with Ithim). My second stab is harder and although I am not very strong, I see the knife has entered deeper this time which comes as a huge relief. The knife still in place, I put all my weight behind it and drag the blade down to her waist, below her navel, then drag it up again, right to her breasts, the knife blade moving silently, smoothly except for a noisy break where it hits her ribcage.
Nice Boy is fast asleep in the chair. I will wake him up later.
From where I am, I can see the door to Ithim’s room and although I cannot see him – he must be fast asleep in his cot, unaware of what Father is doing – I know that Ithim is my Model Baby, that I have to make an Ithim out of her, as close as possible.
No, he isn’t a monkey, he’s a beautiful little child.<
br />
So covered with Good Girl’s blood, just as I had in the dream last night, I walk to the kitchen, I fetch the pestle my wife sometimes uses for spices – most of the stuff she grinds in an electric mixer but she says some things you need to do by hand, to keep the natural flavours intact – and begin to pound Good Girl’s head and face. Over the gag of her shirt. Once, twice, thrice, four times. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven until I hear the crunch of her teeth, her lips, her nose. Until my fingers hurt along with my hands, and my arms, from wrist to elbow all the way to my shoulders, until the gag is red and even the pestle has begun to drip.
I sit on top of Good Girl, I straddle her, I start working the knife again. This time, I begin peeling her skin off, pink skin, soft skin, smooth skin. For a second, for just a fraction of a second, in fact, a fraction of a fraction of a second, I want to fuck her with each layer of her skin that I peel back, I want to enter her through the slit in her stomach that the knife has just created, I want to move inside her insides but I check myself.
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