Rawi Hage - Carnival

He waited for the red light before he dove.

I stopped the car and watched over him, small and curled, his hand extending over the back of the seat. The car behind me honked and cursed, but a green light should be neglected at times. I dropped my anchor and my boat sat still, and the horns got louder behind me. But I waited until the needle penetrated his vein. I wanted this floating corpse to have his needle land with precision and not be wasted on muscle or bone, and I wanted him to finish and to leave my car and fly, dance, live, and escape for a short while. I don’t judge those who can’t dream, those who need to pierce their arms to create different worlds under their skin, because I am fortunate in the tools of my escapes. I could, at any minute, dock my car under a bridge and, like a comic book hero, have my freedom fighter suit slapped on me in no time, fly above the ruins of men, and let my happiness come right into my hand.

Pick it up, I said to him. Do not leave that junk in my car. Show it to me, I said.

He did, and then he opened the door, got out, and walked to the closest wall to embrace it.

GUNS

THERE ARE CERTAIN kinds of men that a driver has to watch out for: Quiet men whose paths have narrowed. Those who have been taken for long rides and sickening turns. Those who bring vomit, misery, lice, and stupor from the stained mattresses of crack houses and jails.

Last night, I picked up a couple.

The man looked like a mean motherfucker. His girlfriend had bags, many shopping bags. She talked and he kept quiet, barely nodding, looking at me in the mirror, then looking outside, closing his eyes, hanging his head under the weight of his girlfriend’s babbles and complaints.

A full moon, she said. Tonight, baby, let’s go on the roof and look at it.

And then some trivialities about girlfriends and dresses and so forth. The man asked her to shut the fuck up, but that made her shout and shake her index finger in his face. When we arrived, he paid me; he told me to keep the change and I thanked him. He barely acknowledged my thanks. Too cool, too generous, too wealthy, too above women’s bitching and the fare’s leftovers.

I drove away, arranging the cash inside my pockets, splitting off the large bills and sticking them inside the glove compartment, positioning the coins at my side. I hate it when my pockets jingle with money. Its heaviness reminds me that my thighs will be ground into the seat for many hours to come.

A few blocks later, I glanced in the mirror and saw the tip of a handle on the back seat. The lady had left her bags. I pulled over and searched through them. Everything was too shiny or too wide. If my mother were still alive I would have offered her the glittering outfits to wear on the ropes. If Pinky the clown were still around I would have given him the baggy pants, the baggy shirt, and the colourful hats. It is admirable how humans think of friends and family first in times of looting and quick grabs.

So I retraced my steps and I parked in the middle of the street, not quite remembering which house was theirs. It was late but I honked loudly at all the buildings, hoping that a head or a hand would appear, wave to me, ask me to wait, and rush down the stairs with joy and a reward or even some applause.

The woman came out with her blond, exuberant hair and high heels, and she rushed towards my car shouting, You good man! She opened the back door and grabbed the bags. He’ll take care of you, driver. He will. Be generous to the man, Zee, she said to her boyfriend as he came out. Be generous now.

Sure enough, the man walked slowly towards the car and handed me a large bill. But before I could roll up the window, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, Why don’t you work with a generous man like myself?

Where and what, I asked.

Right here. You stay in your car, your office, man, and you drive me around. I sit in the back like before and tell you where to go. A few hours a day and I will take care of you big.

Anything illegal, I asked.

Anything illegal, he repeated. What is legal, my man. What is? Is history legal, was Vietnam legal. What the fuck is legal in this universe? Stars eat each other, wolves eat the pigs, and Grandma fucks over Little Red Riding Hood.

Nothing is legal, I agreed.

No doubt, nothing.

I am in, I said.

Be here Monday night. Right here. At eight. And he surprised me with a big smile followed by a fist pound to his heart.

I left and drove for a while. The streets were wet and the water expanded under the pedestrians’ stomps. Rain swirled like the halos of pebbles on the face of a pond. I drove in circles as the universe spun and exploded and filled itself with dust and liquid, oblivious to whether I turned left or right or whether I gazed at its prehistoric twinkles and its giant stars. I drove but I scooped up no customers in this flooded city of the north. I consoled myself thinking that at this hour, sailors and men must be drinking inside bars, eating chips off counters while clouds of flies, giddy on the scent of roasting animals, swirled above the bald-headed, rug-like dizzy oval heads. Then I felt hunger and I stopped.

I entered a fast food joint and went straight to the bathroom. A policeman was taking a leak into the white fountain on the wall. I washed my hands and sensed him weighing me. So I entered the booth and locked the door, fearing that the state would slap me with a ticket for not washing my face, failing to move out of authority’s way, or using too much soap that foams and grows bubbles that might pop like gunshots and cause panic and alarm.

I waited until he was gone. And then I left the stall with my belt still undone, looking for the hole in the leather. Finally I buckled up and washed my hands again, killing most of the germs. Some must have escaped, no doubt. I went to the counter and ordered a sandwich and a coffee, and then I decided to drive up the mountain and see if the moon was full or empty.

FATHER

THERE IS NO void, said the bearded lady who raised me after my father’s departure and my mother’s death. There is only motion, she added, and she asked me to fill a bucket and clean the caravan’s wheels.

Your father, she said, led a camel when he first appeared from beyond the dunes, and carried a stack of rugs and blue stones to chase away the evil eye. He was a merchant and a lover of flight. As soon as your mother laid eyes on him, she was swept away by his life-saving oasis of a smile. His long eyelashes tickled the backs of her ears; his thick, curved eyebrows sliced through her chest like Indian blades. Your father’s carpets were always floating above the ground, he never laid his head on the floor, and his eyes were always on the stars. He shifted the wind with his turban and steered his flying rug with his whiskers, she said. He flew around the tent poles above the audiences’ exclamation marks and dashes of applause.

My parents met high up on the trapeze, in a joint act that turned into a great success. My mother would fling her rope at his carpet and my father would catch it and shout, Hold on tight, Mariam! (He insisted on changing Mary to the original biblical version of that name.) And she would fly behind him as if gliding on water in space.

But one day, my father met another man with a beard and a long robe. The man, like my father, came from the east. They talked about life, death, and the danger of flight. And then, on a moon-shiny night, my father said that he had become a believer, and that carpets should be pinned to the ground. Carpets are for prayer and not for cunning artists and flying buffoons, the man had said to my father. Carpets are the sacred thin crust that stands between the earth and the heavens. My father put on his old clothing, saddled his camel, rolled up one of his non-flying carpets, and left us. After his departure, none of his carpets would stay on the ground. They swirled around the tents like little hummingbirds, they flew around and sideways and upward in the angles of angels and birds. The only photo of my father was a poster of him sitting on a suspended carpet, legs folded, his moustache curled against a background of clapping monkeys, smiling cats, and painted clowns.