Rawi Hage - Cockroach

Yesterday these two kids got in the car, Majeed said. They wanted to go to a strip joint on St-Catherine. But they said they wanted to stop at a bank on the way. So I stopped at the bank. I watched them in the rear-view mirror. The girl was maybe sixteen. She had high heels and a very short skirt and only a small jacket. She must have been very cold. The boy was drunk. When they reached the bank, the girl took the boy’s hand and they both started to run. I made a U-turn in the middle of the street and chased them with my car. They went into the back alley beside the bank building. You should have seen the girl running with those high heels and her underwear almost showing. The boy was so drunk she had to hold his hand and pull him. I caught up with them. I made them come back inside the car. She said to me, I was looking for the manager but the bank was closed.

I said: I am getting paid or I will take you to the police.

Then the guy said, Take me to a depanneur.

I said, Okay, but only one of you goes into the store. The other stays in the car.

When I stopped at a depanneur, the girl said, I will get the money. She got out and then she ran, leaving her boyfriend in the car.

I said to the boy, Your friend left and you have to pay me or I will take you to the police.

He was scared. He got out the money and gave me twenty dollars. I said, You are not getting change back. Go now. He left. There are all kinds of stories, my friend. This business is just crazy. Then Majeed asked me: How long have you been here?

Seven years, I said.

Your family is here?

No.

I haven’t seen my parents in twenty years, he said.

Shohreh is your family, I said.

Majeed looked at me, smoked, and kept quiet. Then, for no apparent reason, he said: You know, we come to these countries for refuge and to find better lives, but it is these countries that made us leave our homes in the first place.

What do you mean?

You know, these countries we live in talk about democracy, but they do not want democracy. They want only dictators. It is easier for them to deal with dictators than to have democracy in the countries we come from. I fought for democracy. I was tortured for democracy, by both the Shah and the mullahs, on two separate occasions. Both regimes are the same. And you know what I do now because of democracy? I drive a car for twelve hours a day, he said, and laughed. Do you think if the mullahs go away there will be democracy in my country? No! They will put back somebody else who is a dictator. Maybe not a religious one, but it will be the same. Do you understand?

Yes, I do.

Does that bald man come often to the restaurant?

Maybe you should ask Reza. He has been working there for a long time, I said.

That musician will not tell me anything. He just wants to play. I will not ask him anything. He does not care about anything. He does not want to talk about politics. He belongs to that new, hedonistic generation. So, you had never seen this man before?

No, I said.

Majeed stopped in front of my home. He pulled out a business card, wrote a number on the back, and said to me, Here. This is my number. If that man comes again to the restaurant, could you call me?

What about that man? I asked. Who is he?

Let’s just say he is an old acquaintance of ours.

Who is “us”?

Us! Exiles! He left me on the sidewalk and his car lights trailed away, bouncing off the reflections of neon signs on the wet ground. I watched him disappear.

I pulled off a glove and dug with my hand in my pocket. I felt the bills the restaurant owner had given me and remembered that I had been paid today. I felt a sense of pride, and also a desire for revenge. Revenge for past hunger, cold, and those days when the sun chased me from one room to another, making me sweat and making me blind. I pulled out my house keys and shifted them from one pocket to another. I pulled down my woollen hat over my forehead. Then I turned and walked around the corner.

There was a bar there called Greeny, one of the few rundown bars that had not been given a facelift in my slowly gentrifying neighbourhood. I entered it. Perfect! Dark, just as I liked it. I entered like a panther, and I could hear the wooden floor creaking under my paws. I ordered a mug of beer, some fries, and a large, fat hamburger that came to me in a basket (brought to me by the granddaughter of Québécois villagers who, one hundred years ago, were ordered by the priest to get pregnant and to kneel beside church benches every Sunday). I gave the waitress the wrong change, and asked for her forgiveness, and to reassure her that I was not trying to stiff her out of the money, I threw her a big fat tip. This made her change her tone, and she called me Monsieur as I bit through the bun and the meat. I drank ferociously and looked at her in her apron, nodding as I chewed. I gulped and wiped my mouth with a white disposable napkin.

I have ambivalent feelings about these places. To tell the truth, they kind of repulse me, but I always end up coming back to them. I am drawn to dark places like a suicidal moth to artificial lights. I certainly avoid any contact with the other customers. I keep it simple: I order, I drink, and I eat. I keep to myself. I have no interest in sports or small talk, but I like watching the other men, leaning forward on high stools, gazing through the liquid in their glasses. I also like the reflections of the TV screens that splash over these men’s faces with buckets of light, making them change colours like chameleons. I like the waitresses. I like how strong and assertive they are. They are immune to all pickup lines, and their asses, with time, have developed shields, like those of cartoon heroes. The dirty looks of men bounce off those shields and are splashed back in the villains’ faces with a ZAP! BANG! and TAKE THAT!

But I know, I know how to disarm those shields, and it is not by using kryptonite; it is not through the power of my penguin suit or my flying umbrella or the big tip or the smile. It is done with politeness and also, even more important, gratitude. On my days of pay I am grateful, I am grateful for everything, and it shows. I am grateful for the good food, the warmth, the service, the forgotten ketchup that is relocated from a nearby table by the waitress’s own hand and offered to me. I am grateful for the waitress’s thumbs that grasp the edges of the food plates, and their palms and their wrists that juggle them all my way. And at the first sip of beer, the first fries, I forget and forgive humanity for its stupidity, its foulness, its pride, its avarice and greed, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and anger. I forgive it for its contaminated spit, its valued feces, its rivers of piss, its bombs, all its bad dancing. I forgive it for not taking off its shoes before entering homes, before stepping on the carpets of places of worship. I also forget about the bonny infants with the African flies clustering on their noses, the marching drunk soldiers on their way to whorehouses. I forget about my mother, my father, the lightless nights I spent with my sister playing cards, dressing up toy soldiers, undressing dolls by candlelight, reading comics. And as soon as my eyes become accustomed to the dim light of these places, and just when people start to become more visible, more shiny, their shapes as humans more defined, it is then that I realize how exposed I must look to all these creatures who arrived before me. They must have seen everything. They must have seen my gluttony, my conspicuous tendencies, my aloofness. I feel X-rayed, as if every bite of the fries that went down my stomach was anticipated, watched, analyzed, and bet upon. It is then that I start rushing, frantically waving my skeleton-like index finger at the waitress, and with my clacking jaws insisting on the calculation of the bill, the check, the record of the meal, its price, its nutritional value, the list of ingredients sugar to sulphites, everything that keeps food conserved like Egyptian mummies, and it is then that I demand to see the little squares in the waitress’s book, squares that graded me an average, satisfactory, good, or very good customer.