Omran said he’d kick the door open, if necessary. “Do you have hinges for the repair?” he asked. “Or shall I bring hinges?” Another man saying that could only be telling a joke. Not Omran the builder, the digger, the paver, the oil-changer, the all-stuff-can-be-repaired man who tinkered with old things until they were new again.
* * *
Closing time wasn’t marked by a bell or even a clock, but by the moment the last customer’s oddly pungent body odor had dissipated. Omran’s last day of work was officially in the books. His last pay, too, was in his pocket. It felt like the wrong pocket. The only remedy was a quick trip to the Western Union. “I’m going to the store,” he told Faisal, donning both his coat and his hat. “I’ll come back to collect my things and . . . to say good-bye.”
Faisal was set to leave in the morning on a weeklong vacation with Salman and his family; Omran was set to fly in a tin can over the cold ocean before the week’s end. They’d not discussed what that meant. It was easier to just let it happen.
“God willing,” said Faisal. “Hurry back. I’ll make tea and warm milk on the . . .” He pointed to a portable stove, a relic purchased at a garage sale for, he claimed, $1. He said he’d sooner risk blowing up the garage than heat milk in the microwave.
Omran pushed open the door. Then he followed wet black trees and wet gray pavement for more than a mile only to discover the Western Union he patronized every week—reluctantly, for the clerk always had a crude remark prepared—had closed. Why had it closed so early? The Western Union was just a window embedded in the back wall of a corner store. Omran put his hands through the metal bars and tried to slide open the locked window. “What the . . . ?” he asked the glass, the bars. He shook the bars with all his strength. The employee tending the register on the other side of the store asked him to stop shaking. Not that it was her business. The Western Union was technically an independent establishment.
“You’re making me nervous,” said the employee, slouching in a tall chair behind the register. Scrambled hair sat in complete disarray on her head. “Don’t even think about it!” she said when Omran reached for the bars again. “Shit’s closed. I told you.”
“I have money to send. Right now, I have money. My wife—” Sending money was his only respite from the shame of leaving her. That brief moment when he got to write Dalia’s name on the form and slide the paper through the depression in the counter, under the window, into the hands of the clerk. Who cared what the clerk said about where the money was going or what the money was for?
“Do I have to call the police?” asked the employee of the corner store. “I have no problem calling them. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve called them before.”
Omran wanted to tell the employee to go ahead. Call the police. Report the true crime, that Dalia was trapped in Cairo. Ask the police to do their job. Ask them to prevent the tragedy.
“If you’re not going to leave, then I’m going to have to . . .” The employee put her hand on the phone.
Omran’s gesture—arms out, palms up—asked why. “Please, let me wait here until the clerk comes back. The clerk has to come back. It’s still early. The sign says the Western Union is open for another . . .” He turned to read the sign, but didn’t have time; a faint but frightening dial tone indicated the employee had picked up the phone.
“I’m calling the police in ten seconds if you’re still here.”
Perhaps Omran had been rash to imagine a life where armed men didn’t appear randomly. He hurried out before the employee could threaten to call them a third and probably final time. The bell on the door planted a seed of heartache in his chest. Ring, ring. The only thing to stop that seed from growing wildly was the cold slap of the night’s air. The outdoors, if not the great outdoors—absent was the solitude, the smell of pine—still reminded Omran of the American poets he’d been reading to acquaint himself with the spirit of their country. When he closed his eyes, he saw Robert Frost. The specter said, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” Frost was decidedly less ecstatic than Rumi or Hafez, but considerably more determined. Omran feared he lacked that quality and thus had to borrow it from the poem. He recited the lines again in his head. Then Omran set off in search of another Western Union. He couldn’t walk fast enough. Nor could he run. Not with his leg in such sorry condition. His eye socket was even sorrier; it still ached in the bone and felt odd in the shower, as if hot water seeped into his head. Omran tried not to blame his body for failing to become whole again. Now wasn’t really the time. Not with cash stuffed in his pocket that he needed to send. The money was life, safety, and rest; in a way, it was even an advance on his apology. I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m sorry for taking so long to come back.
Omran had dreamed of his reunion with Dalia so many times it felt destined to pass as he’d imagined it. Dalia would shout or look at him in a painful way when he finally arrived in Cairo. It would be hard to maintain eye contact. The urge to hide the breadth of his scar by turning his head slightly would be almost overpowering. Omran would try to resist. He’d say home wasn’t Baghdad. Not Boston, either. Not even the city in which they now found themselves. “Home isn’t a place,” he’d say like no truth had ever been so evident. “Home is the feeling you get with certain people.” God willing, Dalia would accept Omran’s hand when he offered it. Then a long, silent car ride—hands still grasped, palms still sweating—would take them deep into the maze of the city. West on the raised road; west across the Imbaba Bridge; west still on Al Matar Street until they turned north toward the alleys. Walking into the building and up the stairs would be just as quiet. Upon reaching the apartment, Omran would collapse on the couch. Dalia, with no crippled leg to burden her, would sit more naturally on the cushion next to him. For a few seconds they wouldn’t touch. Then some combination of want and need would compel them to begin undressing. Slowly, cautiously. Like time had changed more than they thought. Their bodies; their opinions of each other. The fear would make it hard to strip beyond their socks. Dalia would hold her zipper; Omran would hold his belt. The infinite moment would feel absent of matter, of light. And very cold. But Dalia, who’d always been the braver one, wouldn’t let the moment persist. She’d close her eyes and finally pull her zipper. Soon their modesties would be reduced to piles of clothes on the floor. Two hearts would beat so hard you could dance to their sound. Omran and Dalia would dance, in their own way, with their hands and later their lips.
The wet black trees lining the street weren’t like the trees Frost must’ve looked upon in the forest. They weren’t so old or nearly so many. Still, a tree was a tree; joy was to be had in its presence. The April snow was supposed to be an anomaly, but somehow it felt right; Omran knocked the powder off branches that were low enough to whack with his hat. There, finally! A Western Union. The yellow letters appeared above a lit window. “Thank God,” said Omran. “May your kindness last a while longer.” He blew hot breath on his hands and rubbed them together vigorously. Then God’s kindness did last. For the time being, at least. The clerk inside didn’t snicker when Omran gave him the money. He didn’t even snicker when Omran read the line on the form indicating the money’s destination: Cairo, Egypt. Totally unlike the clerk in the other window, whose remarks had grown sharper over time. Are you funding terrorists? Are you buying a bride? Omran’s whole body felt lightened now that he’d sent the money, and without a remark to ruin his mood. “Thank you,” he said to the clerk. He put his hand on the glass since it was impossible to shake the clerk’s hand through the depression in the counter, which wasn’t deep enough. Barely a finger would fit. “No problem,” said the clerk, oblivious of the gift he’d bestowed. Even Omran’s feet were affected. His stride was longer than normal as he walked back to the garage. He sped down the sidewalk at an unprecedented speed. Good fortune apparently killed pain. The unintended side effect of such hustle was that Omran arrived too soon. He wasn’t ready to
say good-bye to Faisal. He waited outside while his heart settled. Snow fell on his coat and his hat. The flakes reminded him of a day in January 2008: the first time in living memory that snow fell on Baghdad. Two opposite air flows had kissed in the skies above Iraq. Though snow had barely accumulated, children had played wildly in the streets. He remembered one girl, a child, who made her sled out of cardboard. She’d cried when the sled didn’t fly down the flat sidewalk. It was somehow lonely to remember such a happy day. Knowing that it would never come again. To remember Dalia’s warm hand on his neck before she ran out to comfort the girl. Omran had opened the window to hear what Dalia would say to her. “God willing, my sweet. Let me pull you.” The girl was reluctant at first, but finally allowed it; she held on for dear life as she sailed down the block.
* * *
The garage was Faisal’s only solace besides Salman. It contained both his purpose on Earth and the record of his life so far. That record was mounted above the workbench and ran the width of the garage: antique license plates, old photographs, and bobbleheads collected on a road trip he’d taken with Salman to see each of the world’s largest roadside attractions on the Eastern Seaboard. Their first stop had been the world’s largest clam box in Ipswich, Massachusetts. There were postcards from other places Faisal had been, with and without his son; he’d posted these cards to himself. More postcards were from places Salman had traveled by himself or, more recently, with his wife. These cards were a record in and of themselves: the story of his son growing up.
When Omran pushed open the side door, Faisal poured two cups of hot tea. “Finally. You’re back. An old man was growing impatient.” He put the two cups on the break table. “Come sit. Please, hurry. Before the milk is cold and the tea is lukewarm. Who wants to drink warm tea?”
Omran shook free the snow lodged in the brim of his hat. He watched the snow finish its descent to the ground, where it melted.
“Stop! Come, sit.”
“Stop what?” asked Omran.
“That. What you’re doing. Come, sit.”
“What am I doing? I’m shaking snow off my hat.”
“You’re bowing down to the grief. I know you are. I’m old. I can see everything.”
“I thought you said you were very young.” Every conversation they’d had on the nature of time passing unspooled in Omran’s memory. Faisal arguing that people were the age of their behavior. Faisal arguing that people were the age of their heart. Faisal arguing that he was, according to those rules, between nineteen and twenty.
“Of mind, yes; of body, no. Just look at me.” Faisal slapped his gut like a bongo. “If I died now, my son would say I lived a good life. His mourning would be short. The way it should be, I think. Remember what my mother used to say: ‘Never miss the dead. You will see them again soon enough.’ She invented the saying after her sister, a mourning widow whose husband had just died, drowned by chance in the sea. I can see how my mother would’ve been awash with grief forever if not for the lesson she’d learned from the sequence of tragedies.”
Omran stuffed his hat in his pocket and took his sweet time removing his coat. He knew leaving Faisal would be like excising part of his own body. That part would be lopped off when he sat down to drink tea and, after a long goading, said good-bye.
“Will you sit already? I’m going to fall asleep if you make me wait any longer.”
That wouldn’t be so bad, thought Omran. There were many things he wanted to say without the embarrassment of saying them. How do you tell a grown man that his friendship had meant everything?
“Please,” said Faisal stiffly. “Sit.”
Omran finally sat and drank tea. Though he didn’t drink much. He mostly just breathed the steam swirling above the mug. There was something newly discomforting about swallowing the same black tea he’d been swallowing his whole life. It implied a stability his life had lacked. Who was to blame? The Americans, who cared not for the people displaced by their wars? The Iraqi security forces, who couldn’t protect their own country? The militias, under the guise of God, who committed wickedness beyond understanding? No, Omran couldn’t blame the wretched powers; the powers had always been and would always be wretched. He could only blame himself for not begging Dalia to run away with him to another country when they still had the chance. He’d asked, but he’d not begged. He’d not beseeched God for help in convincing her.
“Tonight let’s listen to . . .” Faisal’s stiffness evaporated as he gazed at his tapes.
“Billie Holiday,” said Omran. “If you don’t mind.”
“You love that tape.”
“I’ve always loved it. I think even before I was born.”
The tapes had been alphabetized, but sloppily; Omran had learned months ago to put Billie Holiday in a specific spot. He fetched the tape and shoved it into the stereo, thumb falling hard on the play button. Right away a woman sang about moving mountains. Her mountains, which ran with history past suffering of all kinds, made other mountains look flat. Omran heard pain in her voice when she sang about moving them.
Was this how they planned to say good-bye? Without talking? Without even looking at each other? Omran hoped so. It would be easier, if less satisfying. He would let the tape speak on his behalf. The lines he wanted Faisal to hear were jammed between lines about a woman loving a man, or losing a man, or leaving a man and thus being rid of him. And lines such as “I get no kick from champagne.” It was an impossible exercise in selective listening and interpretation, but Omran thought Faisal was up to the task. By the time the tape ended, Faisal would know he was loved and would travel with Omran to Egypt as a memory. Faisal would know that memory would be kept safe by being told often as a story. Omran would tell Dalia about the garage, the bobbleheads, the tape collection, even the snobbish customers. He’d tell her about Salman and the wife Faisal had never been able to name. “I think he loves her now even more than before,” Omran would say. “I can’t imagine how much that must hurt. Wishing his love had gone with her body, so that it would stop tormenting him.” Omran would tell Dalia every detail he’d not told her over the phone. The long calls would’ve cost too much. He’d tell her in bed at night when they were kept awake by their worries. Faisal’s modest but nevertheless mirthful ending would present a life they could look forward to.
Things didn’t go according to that admittedly far-fetched plan. By the end of the tape, Faisal had fallen asleep. Thus he couldn’t have an epiphany about what the tape had meant. He looked dead with his mouth open. “You are an old man, after all,” said Omran. “I knew you were.” Omran had been taught to let his elders sleep, and so grabbed a pen and paper with the idea that he’d write a short note conveying what his mouth would’ve blundered. The note spiraled in length over several pages. When the note was finished more than an hour later, Omran rubbed his palms dry on his pants. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said to the unconscious flop in the chair. Omran rolled closer and placed his folded note in Faisal’s shirt pocket, with the corner sticking out so Faisal would notice it. Then Omran sat there for a few agonizing minutes trying to muster the courage to leave.
4
Why had Charlie agreed to pay Naguib a sum he couldn’t afford? The question, to Charlie, was rhetorical; he knew damn well that Naguib wouldn’t have accepted less. Charlie was lucky to get the number down as far as he did. Still, he didn’t have fifty thousand Egyptian pounds the same way he didn’t have a hundred thousand. Even after consolidating his bank accounts—he’d left some money in America, but not much; plus two accounts he’d opened in Egypt, one ostensibly for retirement—he’d come up with a little more than twenty thousand. Would Naguib snub the number and, to seek vengeance, destroy the documents? The image of him shredding paper appeared in Charlie’s nightmares three nights in a row. He told himself these were just stress dreams and not bad omens. His plan, he thought, would work: at the time and place of exchange, Charlie would offer his pittance along with a regrettable but logically sound argument.
Wasn’t it better to have some money than none? It wasn’t an ideal way to conduct business, but it wasn’t as if Charlie had much of a choice. He didn’t have the money and couldn’t get the money without stealing it from the Refugee Relief Project. In a drunken fit one night he told himself that wasn’t such a bad idea. Steal the money from the budget. Pay it back later. Or don’t pay it back. It doesn’t matter. The money is wasted. The endeavor is vain. The appeal of such wickedness lasted only as long as Charlie’s bender. He woke up with a different opinion. The endeavor was still vain, but the budget was not wasted. It kept the office open and that kept his clients alive. How could they live without hope?
The pain of waiting for Naguib to call was compounded by the frustration of being unable to reach Omran. Charlie had tried phoning him about a thousand times from the relative privacy of the office kitchen. He left furtive messages such as “When we last talked, you said you were coming and I said you ought not to, as there were a few plans in the works; those plans are coming to fruition and, well . . . call me back, please. As soon as you get this. It’s urgent. You know my number. Just in case, it’s . . .” Followed by twelve digits. “That’s . . .” Followed by the same twelve digits. As of yet, Charlie hadn’t heard back.
To make the intolerable situation even worse, Michael and Sabah and the interns had been throwing Charlie side-eye, or what he perceived as side-eye, for days. To avoid engaging them in anything more than a short conversation, Charlie kept his head down and his hands busy. He scribbled pointlessly on a legal pad for hours on end. He also went to “lunch” every day with Aos to “discuss the budget.” The constancy of that illusive conversation made Sabah and Michael think they were getting fired. By midweek, Sabah was certain enough to ask Charlie if there was a severance package. Her voice said she didn’t want to ask, but needed to. The embarrassment was symptomatic of her salary, which was symptomatic of what Charlie called “the inherent financial constraints.” Or, when no interns were in earshot, “the fucking budget.” The budget was symptomatic of an irrevocable backwardness in the world. Money funneled where it was needed least. No way was there a severance; no way would there ever be one. Tragedy was avoided only because Charlie wasn’t firing Sabah or anyone else. “I’m not firing you,” said Charlie. “Not now, not ever. I need you, Michael, and the . . .” He gestured to the younger and, in his imagination, shorter people in the room. The display only made Sabah more paranoid. What kind of boss promised never to fire you?
Live from Cairo Page 24