Rawi Hage - Cockroach

To change the subject, I told her about my conversation with Sehar, and how the restaurant owner’s daughter wanted to meet her. Shohreh said: Arrange it! Arrange it right away. And next time, you must tell me when the bald man arrives. Does he come in on a regular schedule?

No. And I will tell you when I find out what the files say. His name is Shaheed, by the way.

Shaheed, she nodded. Shaheed, and shaheed (martyred) he is. He tortured me and humiliated me and I never knew his name. Shaheed, she said, and laughed and stopped and hesitated and thought and laughed again, and shook her head.

A FEW DAYS LATER, Shohreh took Sehar shopping. I arranged the encounter between the two. Shohreh met Sehar after school. After shopping, she took Sehar home and put up her hair, painted her eyelashes, and powdered her cheeks, and they both tried on dresses and changed their hairstyles.

Sehar came to her father’s restaurant walking like a diva and talking like a diva. When she asked me to bring her food and tea, she did so with sophistication, politeness, and theatricality. She even used the word “fabulous.”

Later she called me over while her father was in the kitchen. She handed me a few dollars and asked me to go across the street and buy her cigarettes. When I told her that I couldn’t leave the restaurant without her father’s permission, she stood up and walked over to her father and told him to order me to go and buy her chewing gum. The man nodded my way and I took off and got her a pack. We met in the basement, where she was waiting for me. She leaned against the wall like a young high-end prostitute and opened the new handbag she had been carrying since her encounter with Shohreh. I dropped the pack inside. She closed her bag, said, Thank you, darling, and slowly danced her hips up the stairs.

NOROUZ IS COMING, Shohreh said to me that night. You know, when we Iranians celebrate the coming of spring. I am thinking of throwing a party. In Iran we stay up all night, eat, and celebrate. So, next week let’s invite people to my home. Here, you roll it.

I am not good at rolling, I said. My fingers shake.

Give it to me. I will do it. Invite Reza and his band. Let him play some traditional tunes.

Yes, okay, I will, I said.

I saw Reza at the end of my shift at the restaurant the next day. I told him about Shohreh’s party. He was reluctant and noncommittal, as usual. He said that he had not been getting along with Shohreh lately. He felt that she was snubbing him.

It might be a good idea to invite Sylvie and her friends to watch you perform in an informal setting, I suggested.

Reza was intrigued by this idea.

It is always good to be around those people and keep up the contact, I reminded him. Besides, it will be good to show your traditions around those rich folk. Shohreh and Farhoud will dance, and you will play. It will be perfect. You should entertain and extract, my friend. You should put some culture to it if you want to live and shit.

Reza promised to call Sylvie.

THE NEXT DAY, I paid my rent with my money from the restaurant and even bought some groceries, bread and cheese. While I ate, I realized how loud the fridge was. I could unplug it, I thought. It is almost empty anyway. But the cheese would go bad. So I decided to eat all the cheese without any bread and then unplug the fridge.

I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I contemplated and strategized. The idea of conspiring with Shohreh intrigued me. I would help her. And I decided that I loved her. I would give her whatever she wanted. Lately I had an even bigger desire than before to be with her.

I napped, then woke up and took the stairs down to the street. I was tempted to just walk somewhere, anywhere, but I hesitated. I felt indecisive and frozen. I am not hungry, I thought, I am not sleepy, I am neither sad nor curious. I just want the time to pass before I see Shohreh again and my plan springs into action. I just need to decide what to do with myself. Luckily, it was cold, and before too long I had no choice but to move on. I contemplated going to the Artista Café, but I felt disgusted with that crowd — especially the professor, who had tolerated that woman of his from the letters. How petty, how spineless of him to tolerate her neglect, her narcissism, her stupid letters. She had obviously used him for her own escapism.

I could smoke, I thought. I could climb up to some roof and watch the neighbourhood from above. But the last time I had tried this, it took two minutes for the police to come and ask me why I was on the roof. Some lady had complained that I was looking into her bedchamber and called them. It was summer and all I had wanted was to hang out on the roof like millions of people on countless planets do in this universe. Billions of farmers, forgers, waitresses, and housewives stand on roofs and look around and smoke, hang laundry, and contemplate. When I told the policemen that I had always done this, all my life, he replied: Well, here people do not look at each other from their roofs.

I will only look at the stars then, I said.

He forbade me from looking at the stars, and threatened me with jail. Where all you would be looking at is walls and men in the shower, he said, and his partner laughed.

So I walked up and down my street, and finally I went to the café. I saw the professor and a few of his friends. When they saw me come over, all puffed up and angry, they stood up and surrounded the professor. One of them even attempted to push me.

I told the man not to touch me. He was bigger than I was, but still I knew that I could take him. The professor tried to calm everyone down. But I wouldn’t back off. I asked the professor for some money that he supposedly owed me. The waiter came over and told us that he would call the police. Take it outside, he said.

Fine, I said, let’s go outside.

We all went towards the door to the back alley, me in the lead. Just before I got to the door, I stopped and looked behind me and called out to the waiter, telling him that I would see him afterwards. As everyone looked back to see the waiter’s reaction, I grabbed an empty coffee mug from a deserted table. As soon as I reached the back alley, I swung around, jumped forward, and hit the big man on his forehead with the mug. He collapsed. Everyone ran to his rescue, and then some of the men came towards me. I put my hand behind my back, pretending I was holding something dangerous. The professor, trembling, stood between me and the others and shouted, waving his hands in the air: Stay away! He has something, maybe a knife. They all stopped in their tracks. I walked away. When I reached the end of the little alley I started to run. Then I stopped. I felt a bit of coffee liquid sticky between my fingers. It smelled like sour milk, and the idea that it had touched some human’s lips repulsed me. I buried my hand in a snowbank and started to clean it. A dog and his owner passed me by. The dog stopped and licked itself. Filthy dog, I thought.

I walked. I walked all evening. I could have picked three more fights. I did not feel the cold anymore. I felt the warmth of violence. I thought: All one has to do is substitute one sensation for another. Changes. Life is all about changes.

THE NIGHT OF THE PARTY, I stood in the hallway outside Shohreh’s apartment and watched Sylvie’s bracelets. Her painted nails grabbed the stair rail, and I heard her laugh ascending towards Shohreh’s door. I leaned over the landing and thought how much I had come to despise that woman. I could not stand her or her friends. I was worried that her friend the politician’s son would breathe processed food in my face. But even more than that, I was worried that the industrialist’s son wouldn’t show up. At last his head came into view, and I was relieved. I saw his straight yellow hair and I went back inside to Shohreh and said to her, They are here.