Rawi Hage - Cockroach

I can live in filth and hunger, I assured her. My mother lives far away, and if we ever get married, no one has to clean because I can tolerate filth, cockroaches, and mountains of dishes that would tower above our heads like monumental statues, like trophies, testifying that we value lovemaking and a hedonistic existence, and that all else can wait! And even if you were my sister, I wouldn’t mind hearing your most intimate fantasies.

Shohreh laughed and called me crazy. You are so dirty, she said softly, and suddenly her long, black hair fell away from her face, her thick, arched eyebrows smiled at me and pierced my chest, her laugh escaped her and slapped me in the face, kicked me in the gut, mopped the floor with my hairy chest, dipped me in sweat and squeezed my heart with unbearable happiness. I will sleep with you, said Shohreh, but you have to tell Reza all about it. Reza and his like need to understand, once and for all, that I am not their virgin on hold, not their smothering mother, not their obedient sister. I am not a testament to their male, nationalistic honour.

I will! I will! I shouted, and I mimed Reza’s reaction upon hearing all about it. I stood up and did his baffled eyebrows, his itching armpits, and his squeaky voice like a mouse in a trap. Shohreh laughed again.

I took her home, showed her my tiny place, and we both removed our shoes and hunted cockroaches down the sink, swimming and sliding in mildew, and slapping them with the heels of our shoes, and I told her how, when Jesus comes and kills all us sinners and beams up the faithful towards his immaculate kingdom, only those insects will survive. They shall inherit the earth, I said. The two ladies with the hats assured me of it. This made Shohreh enraged by the unfairness of it all. It reminded her of how her country had also been left to the cockroaches, and this inspired her to pound and kill more of those eternal minuscule beasts as if they were the cause of her lost life, her imprisonment, her executed uncle, her tortured friends, her own exile. These are the filth of the land, she shouted as she pounded away. They should be eradicated!

Then we rolled in dirt and made love in dirt until dirt became our emblem, our flag to pledge allegiance to, and we got drunk and composed new anthems with groans and the heavy exhaling and inhaling of breath. Yes, baby, yes, slap away! escaped our throats, and between every scream Shohreh reminded me to take notes and tell Reza how she welcomed me in her mouth, how she closed her eyes and glutted herself on me with the appetite of a clergyman, how naked we were as we danced. My underwear! I almost forgot! she shouted. Make sure you describe it to that musician: its colours, the sturdy thong that stretches like one of his strings and vibrates with sublime acoustics that resonate inside my chamber. Tell him how I undressed you, and how I sucked on your nipples like grapes, and how warm, gummy drips crept down my thighs like lava. Here, lie down so I can take hold of you and print it all in your psyche so you will remember it for the rest of your life. Let’s rush and do it before those crawling creatures surface again and forbid me from showing my hair, from holding my lover’s arm in public, from singing on the roof a lullaby to my sleeping nephew, from dipping my naked youth in clear rivers, from savouring with my lips my grand-mother’s Shiraz. Do not forget anything, tell him all about it. Maybe I should leave you with a scar. Hand me that knife so I can cut your arm, so I can suck some of your burgundy blood and mix it with wine, so I can stomp on the heart of that melody to the rhythm of villagers stomping in forgotten pools of grapes and tears.

A WEEK LATER, I found Reza at last. He was walking down the street, sniffing left and right for a filling tune or an inspiring meal. I ran towards him and grabbed his hand and pulled on one of his fingers, and before he had a chance to pull it away I said, I am hungry as well, you drooling beast. And one day I will snap your finger and let you pluck those strings with your yellow teeth.

Reza shouted at this, warning me never to touch his fingers again. He lifted them up against the cold and stuck his thumb towards the sky and pointed and shouted at me, If you touch them again, I will take you back to your goat dunes!

Then we walked along the street together and ended up at my place. I made some tea and asked him for my money. He promised and whined and puffed cigarettes and had the gall to ask me for food. And so, filled with revenge and spite, I told him about my tryst with Shohreh.

That made him furious. He accused me of going behind his back. He said that I was not his friend. Then he smiled and charged me with fabricating lies. If you talk like that, he said, you will ruin the girl’s reputation. A good Iranian woman like Shohreh would never do that kind of thing.

I ran to my closet and pulled out her underwear. Smell it, I said. Smell! It is still warm, sizzling. Hot! I added. It smells like her. Here, bring your fat nose closer.

Disgusting liar, Reza shouted, and tossed the underwear out of my hand.

I threw myself onto my bed and flipped the pillow over. Here, I shouted back. That long, black, straight hair could only have come from a Persian princess. Reza turned red with rage and stood up and left, calling me a liar and a looooney.

I STILL HAD NO MONEY, and therefore I had no food. When one is hungry, one should steal. That’s what Abou-Roro the thief, our neighbour back home, used to tell me. He taught me the trade. I am not sure how he became so good at it. He was the son of a shoemaker and his father had a tiny place between two old buildings, just big enough for the metal last, a hammer, a few leather pieces, glue, and the tiny nails he stored in his mouth. As a kid, I looked up to Abou-Roro. I watched him filling his fists with pistachios when the grocer was grinding the coffee. I watched him slip lettuce inside his jacket and cheat little kids on the street out of their marble balls and allowances. I admired him even though I knew he was a coward. He always avoided direct confrontation. During the war, he befriended a few militiamen for protection. He did them favours, washed their cars, cleaned their rifles, fetched them food. The bastard had a square head, flat feet, and googly eyes. He looked like a mini-Frankenstein, but he could detect power and kneel to the powerful. When the port went ablaze during the war, he took me down to the burning warehouses. We crossed under the snipers’ bullets, through the fire. We entered the warehouses and reached for the merchandise, the mountains of boxes and goods waiting to be transported to the Saudis. We shredded through them with our claws and knives. There were boxes of soap, flashlights, perfumes, cloth, boxes of lighters, but we took only the cameras and ran back through whizzing bullets. We sold everything, and Abou-Roro always stiffed me out of my share. He took the biggest piece and threw me the crumbs.

Talking about crumbs, a nice sandwich would do me fine, I thought. Perhaps I could go to a restaurant nearby, enter it, and sweep up the little pieces of bread and other leftovers on the tablecloth, and then follow the trail of crumbs to the counter next to the kitchen and help myself to some of the warmth released from the toaster. But I know how hard it is to steal food in restaurants. Restaurants have many barriers you must cross before reaching the fridge or the salad counter. There is the manager and the maître d’, and then the waiter and the cook and his helpers. And let’s not forget the variety of knives that can be pulled out and waved around to protect the food from the looting of man, to protect the chicken legs and sizzling, juicy stuffed ducks. Just imagine, I laughed, a stuffed duck à l’orange! And I laughed again as I went downstairs and out onto the street and entered the closest available food source.