Rawi Hage - Carnival

I had dropped him at a nightclub. He passed the long line of people waiting to go inside. A few bouncers immediately surrounded him and they opened the door wide, ushering him in as if he were the king of the street.

I drove a few metres and a large man stopped me. He had a thick neck and tottered like a wrestler.

Up Main Street, he said, barely fitting through the door.

Right, I said, looking at him in the mirror. I thought, if my neck got caught between his steroid-inflated elbows, I’d hear my pipes crack before the light changed.

By the friction of the wheels against the city’s asphalt, I felt the heaviness in his mind, and so, to make things lighter, I talked about the weather. Damp today, I said.

He nodded.

I asked him if he was a wrestler, and he smiled and said, No, man, all wrestlers are faggots. I am not into grabbing other guys’ asses and sniffing the sweat between their balls. I am no dog.

I interjected with a comment about wrestling and how it still survives in the Persian peninsula to this day. It must have thrived during the Macedonian occupation. Cultural influences, I continued, and traces of the past can well be found in the most everyday things. Alexander the Great, upon his conquest, ordered his army officers to marry Persian women. . but then I looked in my rearview mirror and realized how all this history talk must have sounded pedantic to the muscles in my cab, so I stopped myself and, to bring things back to the present, I asked, What do you do, then?

I work as a bouncer, man.

At the club behind us?

Yeah.

I just dropped a friend there, I said.

The whole world is there tonight, he said, but I’ve got some business to do in the next neighbourhood. Can you get me to Main Street fast, before the waitress I’m meeting goes home?

I’ll do my best. We drove in silence for a while.

Stop here, he said, handing me a hundred-dollar bill. Could you make it quick with the change?

I pulled out a stack of money from under the seat and gave him ninety-two dollars. He left in a hurry without leaving me a tip.

I drove for a few metres, stopped at a red light, and looked at the bill he had given me. It was as fake as Monopoly money. I did a U-turn and went back to where I had left him, but he was gone. I drove around the neighbourhood and said to myself, Think, Fly. The muscleman wasn’t going home. I parked my car and walked. The first thing I did was look for a dive with a waitress inside and also, judging by the neighbourhood, a poker machine, a couple of old-timers behind pints of beer, and a cigarette machine. I found one. The place was empty except for the staff and, sure enough, the muscleman. He was talking to a woman in a very short skirt and flimsy high heels. He saw me and turned away, but I tapped him on the shoulder.

What?

The bill you gave me is no good.

That isn’t my problem anymore.

I think you gave me a counterfeit bill and you should take it back.

I think you should leave, he said. He pointed his finger in my face, but his eyes focused on a point somewhere between my chin and my belly button. I could feel the threat of his biceps.

Does the name Zee mean anything to you? I asked.

The man’s finger wavered. The woman turned and left. Then he stepped back slightly and said, What about Zee?

I am what you would call his private driver. I could call him right now and he could straighten things out between us. Or I could just give you back your hundred and you could give me back the money I gave you, and your next ride would be on the house.

He nodded. Pulled the cash from his pocket and handed it to me.

Could you wait outside for a moment, he said politely. I have to finish some business with the lady here.

After a few minutes he joined me in the car and said, Okay, back to the club. He sat next to me this time, not behind, and he kept looking at me. Finally he said, Don’t I know you?

Don’t know.

Yes, fuck, you are that cabbie who used to wait for the blond every Thursday at the strip bar.

Yes, I said. That is me.

Sure it is, I recognize you. Small world, he said. I quit over there. This place I’m working at now is happening, I’m much better off. I get one of them clubbing bitches every night. They stick their number in my jacket and I bring them to the front of the line. Too bad about your girl, man, what was her name, Sally?

Yes. What about her?

You should know, man.

I should know what? I said.

I thought you were banging her.

No. We were friends. Do tell me what you know.

It seems to me that you were more than friends. Look at you sad and all. Anyway, man, all I know is that one night, she locked herself in the bathroom and she wouldn’t open up or go onstage. She cried and cried and I had to break down the bathroom door. I found her lying on the floor naked, crying in her high heels and bikini. She wouldn’t say anything. She just cried. I called another girl and we brought her clothes. She said that her best friend Maggie, another dancer, had died in a motorcycle accident that night. I gave your friend some water and she took her bag and left. And that was it. Your girlfriend never came back to work.

Do you know where she went?

No, man, those girls come and go. I don’t get involved in their personal lives. But, I tell you, your girl needed help. Whatever she lost must have been hard on her.

Here’s the door, he said. I’ll get out. Drop by one night and I’ll buy you a drink.

And he walked towards a long line of women who stood, half-naked, shivering and waiting in the cold.

I CHECKED MY mailbox and found junk mail, some bills, and a few letters for Otto. Traces from the time he lived with me.

So that evening I decided to look for Otto to give him his mail. I went to the bar where he liked to hang out but couldn’t find him. I asked the bartender, who told me Otto usually showed up a little later. I drove to his apartment, the one he shared with the old lady. He often complained about how she was always smoking and getting drunk on rum and Cokes. Her room was stuffed with empty Coke cans, hundreds of them arranged in rows covering the bedroom walls. The biggest existential question in her case was whether she would die from diabetes or liver failure. Otto thought it would be obesity. Just like the rest of this nation, he said. Communists and Muslims are not the enemies to fear in this land, Fly. It is the food consumption that will eventually blow up in everyone’s face.

But Otto wasn’t home, so I went back to the bar and, this time, I saw him sitting on a stool talking animatedly to a well-dressed man.

I approached them and found myself in the middle of a heated argument. The man had a thick French accent that reminded me of the bearded lady. Otto was telling him that the French empire and its culture were dead, and rightly so.

The man said something about a lasting contribution to world culture.

Otto looked revolted and said, Culture? Let me tell you about culture. I walk through the museums and I look at the monuments, those celebrations of theft and oppression, and all I can think of is the suffering of the slaves and the starving workers who shaped those massive stones and carried them on their backs. You know what culture I believe in? I believe in the slave revolt of Eunus against the savagery of the Roman Empire; I believe in Haiti’s emancipation from the colonial French, and when they gave it to Napoleon the Third up the ass. Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person’s face that anything changes. All empires are hungry cannibals. .