Chapter 1
The
wooden door is ancient. Dust has piled atop the misshapen roof give
off a stench and slip between the spider’s threads. Its right-hand side
is planted in the ground sloping down towards the narrow hall. The
hall is dismal and gloomy, clung to by the smell of shoes and chicken
excrement.
The boy stood in front of the entrance,
terrified, taking in the ancient iron engravings on the upper half of
the door until the pressure of his father’s hand on his back increased,
forcing him to enter this strange house. He gulped and advanced behind
him with faltering footsteps.
Behind him was the
narrow alley with its ground of dust, filled with passersby, neighbours
who were watching him and father attentively and curiously. The
shadowy hall veiled his father’s piercing eyes and betrayed the ghost
of a long white beard. The old man’s breathing was heavy and
deliberate, and echoed off the crumbling walls from right and left. The
boy followed him quietly, climbing behind him up the steep, narrow
staircase to the third floor. His father stopped at the last apartment,
coughed twice and knocked on the door.
A peevish
female voice rises from inside, ‘Who is it?’ His father gives his name,
with ‘Sheikh’ appended to it as usual. A voluptuous woman opens the
door, with bronze skin and a sweet smile, and she leads them to where
some dilapidated old chairs rest. The two of them become entangled in a
discussion, neither long nor short, as a result of which the Sheikh
reaches into his pocket to take out a certain amount of cash and the
woman takes a key out of her bag. The boy is absorbed in gazing at the
objects around him and isn’t aware of anything until the Sheikh places a
hand on his shoulder and leads him outside. The woman brings the two
of them to a halt to explain the absence in her second apartment, then
she brings out a piece of chocolate from her pocket. She places it in
the boy’s hand, who remains aloof like any respectable child and looks
with secret hope into his father’s face.
‘What’s his name?’ asks the woman.
‘Rushdie.’
The father replies in a deep, husky voice. He smiles slightly,
indicating to the boy to take the small, shiny, colourful square from
her hand.
‘You seem tired,’ the woman says.
‘We came here from the main train station.’
‘Where did you come from?’
The old man fixes his gaze on her face and replies briefly, ‘From the land of God, where we will return.’
Before
the woman replied, the man drew the boy outside. He turned his head at
the last moment to look at her, sitting and smiling.
Chapter 2
He
stood in front of the wall as if nailed to the spot. Sweat consumed
him unhurriedly, and the cold breeze that slunk in from the window
brushed him lightly. He felt the weight of his short galibeyya on his
body and began to shiver, violently at first, then with calm
regularity. Tears glistened in his eyes but they didn’t leave the rims
of his eyes. Outside, his father was still practicing the rituals as
usual, unaware of what was taking place inside. It was difficult for
anything to escape his father, but this is what had happened.
The strange drawings were still on the wall.
The
boy sees a small city, a woman, a young boy like himself. He sees a
house, men, and a small fire. He doesn’t understand what is happening,
but he knows it relates to himself in some way. He cries when he sees a
man die quietly on his bed, a boy and a woman next to him. He revisits
this scene many times, and cries each time he sees it.
His
breathing had quietened completely now. He knows that he will feel
limp after a few moments. His eyelids will become heavy and he’ll feel a
need to sleep. He will sleep and the drawings will return to a new
wall tomorrow, just like it had been in every house he and the old
sheikh had been in. The day will come when he won’t cry or be scared.
He knows this well.
He wrapped himself up in a
blanket, carefully, and suffered the thunderous shock of his skin
touching the wet galibeyya. He heard the sound of the Sheikh’s coughing
and crossed the hall in front of the door to his room. He began to
feel drowsy.
Chapter 3
The
weather is harsh and the wind batters the devastated tree trunks
outside. He looks at the white sky behind the wooden window frame. Birds
are hovering in infinite, intersecting circles. He shifts his gaze
inside the classroom, austere yellow paint dripping from its walls. The
blackboard is covered in black filth and has rusty edges. The teacher
stands next to it, and his strangled, accelerating, nasal voice draws
out the vowels of his speech like Punch. His neighbour, a dirty-clothed,
long-legged student, looks at him disdainfully from time to time. This
boy has annoyed him since he arrived a week ago. He remains silent as
is his habit, casting his eyes far away.
A sudden
feeling of hatred hits him. It rises up from inside him with satanic
violence. He wants to leave this cursed place in as short a time as
possible. He remembers the complaint to his father which went
unregarded, as usual. His hatred turns to frustration burning his eyes.
He clenches his jaw so he won’t cry. His eyes are fixed on an imaginary
point but they don’t see anything.
He hears the
teacher’s strangled voice from far away. An image of the school, a
sombre castle in bygone days, pursues him. Slowly, slowly, its dome
comes to him, a dome covered in branches of ivy. He saw a bird hovering
around it and he trembled, thinking it was a bat. He gripped his
father’s hand, dragged behind him as was the custom.
‘Answer, you animal.’
The
words pierce him, and he found himself in front of the repulsive
teacher. His breath emanated a hateful odour, and his eyes were
knife-like. The boy increased the pressure on his jaw and he saw the
thick cane which had pierced his field of vision. He remained mute, and
the teacher asked him for the last words he said. The filthy student
must be laughing at him by now. He didn’t look to the side.
‘Stand up. Open your hand.’
He
stood. Without intending to, he looked beseechingly at the teacher,
who hit him on his right arm and repeated his instruction to open his
hand. The blow hurt him but he remained silent. He presented his palms,
and the teacher rained four blows upon them as hard as he could. Pain
consumed him and he struggled not to cry. His vision blurred a little.
Chapter 4
He
knocks on the door as befits a polite child. The voluptuous,
bronze-skinned lady opens it. Her sweet smile drowns him, and he extends
his hand to give her a small envelope. She tells him, ‘Wait.’ She
leaves for a moment, then returns with a plate covered with sheets of
newspaper and tells him the traditional holiday greeting. He responds in
a whisper as she laughs because but he hasn’t entered, as usual. He
gives her a pale smile and turns to leave.
She bursts out, ‘Are you having visitors?’ She waves a hand, pointing downstairs.
‘A few.’
‘Could you tell your father I’ll visit you in an hour?’
He nods, yes, he will. She thanks him cheerfully and closes the door, locking it behind her.
He
walks the crooked staircase carefully so he won’t fall; he’s still not
used to it. He carries the plate protectively. It’s a short distance
but the staircase is deceptive.
Silence lingers in
the hall of their small apartment despite the overcrowding. He creeps
quietly through the doorway. He casts his eyes on the people sitting in
fierce silent. Three women and one man. The women were piled on the
couch, which had been green a long time ago, and the man sat on a seat
which groaned underneath him.
Several plates are
crowded on the table opposite them covered in sheets and plastic bags.
He puts the plate next to its brothers. They won’t need to eat for
three days. It’s better this way. He mumbles to himself without
noticing. Only Ahmed, the young man who likes doves, smiles when he
sees him on the rooftop. Ahmed, yes, but not the others. He won’t need
to face this for three days.
It was daytime, but the
hall was always dark. The shadows turn their faces into pools of
expectant cruelty. Statues turning deliberately; motivated, perhaps, by
fear. He takes more and more opportunities, like this one, to be away
from his elderly father for a little while. Slowness transforms into a
panting rush towards the door.
He steps quietly
towards his room. The three women remain on the sofa while the chair
enjoys a temporary respite; the man had sauntered into his father’s
room without any fuss. A bead of sweat fleeing the brow of one of the
women glistens in the meagre light that the window lets in. He slides a
glance to where his father’s room lies, its door silenced on both
sides. He won’t tell him that the woman is coming, and he won’t care.
She will arrive and enter, like her, like the rest of the alley’s
people and their faces. He opens the door to his room and would have
entered had a voice not followed him, quavering: ‘Will the session take a
long time, son?’
It was the last of the women, and
she was looking at him anxiously. The reply left his mouth that he had
learned by heart. ‘It depends on the circumstances, ya Hagga.’
The shattered silence gathers up its parts quickly. His room contains him and he shuts the door behind him.
Chapter 5
Father’s
room always wears an air of watchful stillness. An unbroken circle of
ancient cushions is to be found around the large incense burner, laced
with strange embellishment. Father, of course, retains the place of
precedence, facing the door. His comfortable cushion is a dusty purple
colour, placed slightly higher than its sisters in a genuine declaration
of superiority. The room always closes its shutters on that cheap
concrete balcony overlooking the stink of the alleyway which is too
narrow for its wandering souls. Night and day, this room swims in the
light (which is closer to shadow than light) of a cheap electric lamp.
At the beginning of the rituals on which the Father bestows the years of
his long life, seven candles are lit around the circle. Each candle
carries the same ornamentation as the gigantic cushion.
He doesn’t see this every day, but he knows it to be so.
He
moves slowly, sweeping the floor with the broom. He hunts dust,
settled in provocative calm on top of the furniture. His roams his eyes
over the room. It is an endlessly-repeated copy of the every room that
his Father has ever had. He remembers days not too long ago. Eternal
journeying. More faces than are countable. Dusty streets. Women
immolated with the desire to provide succour. He is scared of dogs, and
his father says they are scared of him as well. In every city there was
a room. In every room, an incense burner, cushions, candles. In every
room there was this idol, a weird idol with a form impossible to define
or describe. He wipes it with a piece of cloth, in fear. His hands
quiver but he regains control of himself. He rests the idol on its table
and continues to sweep slowly and carefully.
He
looks at it. It appears that an eye is looking at him; an eye engraved
onto this idol. He sees an abhorrent radiance resting in the depths of
that eye. That feeling drowned him in hatred. Fear, and hatred.
His father lifted him up to confront the mirror. He smiled and looked at his face, and said, ‘Look.’
‘At what, Dad?’ he whispered.
‘I’m
looking at your eyes. They are my eyes, like brown almonds. I had
coal-black hair like you only yesterday.’ His father smiled at him, he
couldn’t help smiling. ‘The idol is like these, my son.’
His
father said he had inherited it from his father; he must pass it on to
his son. And his son must pass it on to his grandchildren, along with
eyes, hair colour, blood type and intuition. His father smiles.
He doesn’t want this idol. He doesn’t want it.
He
looked into the evil eye again, and imagined that he saw a mouth. The
mouth smiles. Its smile is evil, loathsome. The smile of a wolf before
the attack.
He knows he won’t break it. He won’t
throw it to the ground to be smashed into a thousand pieces. He will
pass it down to a son in hatred, who will preserve it in hatred; he
can’t break it. The mouth smiles. His eyes howl.
Chapter 6
…
silence invades things gently. Tender silence. Silence is a friend
which does not accompany banishment with screaming. Silence sits beside
him and smiles. Rivers of blood melt on the surface of the wall. Crows
are flying, racing over distances far and near. Mountains behind
mountains. Contours dissolve to form a woman’s face. He doesn’t know
these features but he recognises the intimate companionship of silence.
Quiet, regular breathing envelops him tenderly. His bladder consoles
him and bulls watch him, inscribed with a look of anger. There is a man
between the bulls. A man with a black coat and long, soft, coal-like
hair. His shadow comes nearer, on the wall. Dust rises, forming a smile.
He is not scared of the eyes of the bull, but he is scared of the
gleam of that smile. Silence’s fangs and claws overbear him. Silence’s
breathing snaps at him. Whirlpools of dust form a wide smile belonging
to a strange man. Warmth flows over his thighs.
Chapter 7
The
scissor blows rain down as fast as they were able, as delicately as
they were able, and the silver tufts of Father’s hair collapse like
ancient stones abandoning a mountain.
The barber seems
frightened; a submissive fear shows in his eyes. He rubs his nose and
wipes his hands on his trousers, glancing here and there. The boy knows
he is torn between a violent desire to finish his task as quickly as
possible, and a steady, careful madness, calling him to perfect what he
does. A sheep’s complacency is to be found between these poles.
The
old Sheikh closes his eyes, his back turned. His arms lie recumbent on
the arms of the chair, solemn and immovable. His hands are flat,
collapsed beside the arms of the chair. The sound of his quiet breathing
mingles with the scissors’ squeak and the sound of the barber’s
diffident footsteps.
The hair forms a circle of snow
around them; an uninterrupted circle, as if one of them had arranged it
that way. There is a slight, hidden struggle between the sanctity of
the circle and the footsteps of the barber. Austere light pours onto
the Sheikh from the window, left open on shaving days like a holy
tradition; the Sheikh is a well-crafted idol. The Sheikh raises his
hand slowly. The barber understands the signal and finishes the
meticulous combing needed to clip stray hairs on the sheikh’s chin.
Another couple of minutes and the barber is sitting in a corner.
The
old man bends down, ripping the sanctity of the circle with greedy
hands. He gathers the strands rapidly, and those that stray a little are
throttled. The boy knows he is next. He waits until the circle is
history, like usual, then calmly sits on the chair on which the barber
has placed a wooden plank. The old man leaves without saying a word; the
boy ascends the chair. The barber advances with his scissors, whose
sequence of blows resumes. The warmth of fear creeps from the man’s
hands into the boy’s skin; the boy’s fear was cold, drawing in the
barber’s warmth. The scissor crunch echoes in the boy’s ear. He has a
horrible misgiving that these scissors will clip his ear. The Sheikh’s
chanting resounds from within, mixing with smoke that slinks into the
room like a fox. Sweat pours down the barber’s face, and a drop hits the
ground. The boy felt, for a moment, strange refreshment spreading
slowly through his veins.
.............................................................
First seven chapters of my novel The Idol- Published in 2008 by Al 'Ain Publishing.
Translated by Leri Price
