Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

‘Abdulla.’

‘That’s the one. Yallah! Come on. Get up. I’m coming back in five minutes and I’ll expect you to be dressed. It’s depressing this room.’

With Iman gone, Rashid sent a text message, smoked a cigarette, got the reply he wanted, got up, kicked at some of the bags, resolved to get his desk back that day, remembered he was leaving, decided to forget it, found a clean towel outside his door, and got into the shower. Abu Omar’s flat, being on the ground floor, had the one advantage of increased water pressure.

‘Just look at the stitching.’ Abu Faris, the owner of the dry-cleaners, ran his finger along the inside of the jacket, against the red silk lining. His workers, of whom there were far too many, stood in a semicircle behind him. Abu Faris padded over to the cash till to find some half-moon glasses in a tray of pins and paper labels and returned to the suit that was laid out over the counter as carefully as a prepared corpse. ‘Beautiful,’ he breathed, then lifted up the inner neck of the jacket close to his nose to decipher the swirling silver stitch. ‘Paris,’ he said and whistled a low, reverent note just audible over the spurts of steam and chemicals coming from upstairs, his head shaking in wonderment. The human arc agreed dutifully. They hugged up to their employer as he lifted up the label for their benefit. ‘I would recommend the Super Deluxe Clean for this, sir.’ Abu Faris proffered his professional opinion with sincerity. His querulous finger pointed at a number on a handwritten price list that had been covered over with yellow sticky-backed plastic. Rashid was about to take the owner’s recommendation when he saw the price and balked.

‘Just do the cheapest clean you’ve got,’ Rashid said.

Abu Faris stroked the legs of the outfit in sympathy at its neglect. It was Sabri’s wedding suit: wide-striped, shoulder-padded and double-breasted. It was fit for a monkey, Rashid thought, in a bow tie. Rashid was taller and slighter than Sabri had been and the idea of wearing anything that would show so much sock, to Rashid, was just simply vulgar.

‘Tomorrow, after ten, God willing.’ Abu Faris did not look up at Rashid as he departed; the cheap clean was evidently contemptible to him. Rashid left Abu Faris holding up the jacket, showing off the hang of the fabric to his employees, as he twirled it with the grace of a flamenco dancer, a hand on each shoulder.

The shoe repairman, Abu Abdulla, was not there. His window was shuttered up and deserted. The nearest shop sold spices in virulent autumnal colours heaped in plastic tubs. Dried leaves burst out of the top of sacks. The shop’s wares were arranged outside on upturned buckets and fruit boxes and protected by a cluster of parasols. Rashid had to stoop under them to see anyone.

‘Abu Abdulla?’ he asked after greetings had been exchanged with the owner, who had been hiding behind a multi-coloured wall of handheld foil windmills.

‘What of him?’ the man asked.

‘I want to get my shoes done.’

‘Oh. That one. He’s gone.’ The shop owner got up and adjusted his waistband, which was already too high, so that he could look Rashid square in the face. ‘He left to get some materials for his shop from Egypt and wasn’t allowed back. Gone.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ a customer asked.

‘Abu Abdulla.’

‘Oh, he’s gone,’ the customer confirmed.

‘What’s all that on your face?’ the owner enquired peering closely at Rashid.

‘Nothing. I shaved,’ Rashid said touching the raw skin around his jaw. There was at least one cut and several hive-ish rashes that were coming up.

‘Did a terrible job of it, ya zalame . You need a new razor? Come inside and take a look.’ The owner opened his hand towards the dark interior of his shop where a couple of tins sat on each shelf in front of a row of exercise books with upturned corners.

‘No. Thanks.’ Rashid stepped away from the shop backwards, his neck bent, bumping his head into a cluster of tied-up loofahs as he came out from the roof of parasols. The other customer was watching him closely.

‘Vaseline,’ the man advised, ‘before bed. Then warm towels like this.’ He patted his face as a barber would when applying the final cologne.

Ahmed Mahmoudi was not at the agreed meeting place by the children’s playground. Rashid sat on the low wall to wait. The ginger cat he was trying to get to come closer to him scampered away as a message from Khalil bleeped in his pocket. Khalil was at Rashid’s house already . Fifteen minutes, Rashid replied. He persuaded the cat to return and waited for Mahmoudi. It was quiet and there was no one he knew, or even recognised, walking down the street. For a moment, he found himself thinking that he had been in that park before, with Sabri, that Sabri had pushed him on the swings, but that was impossible. Sabri had never been with him at the age when he was being pushed on swings. He was thinking of a mythical older brother, a fantastical childhood.

The discerning personality of the ginger cat made Rashid determined to befriend it. Once he had gained the cat’s trust, the cat came forth with an unbounded amount of affection towards Rashid, ramming its head into his leg, purring like a small motorbike.

On the opposite corner, two men stood by the photography shop under a picture of the laughing baby in a big-eared bear suit. He recognised them; the most immediately identifiable was the fighter with the thick moustache and pockmarked skin from the day of Abu Omar’s arrest. The younger man he was finding it harder to place. The pock-faced one was indicating down the road towards the line of cars with his head, his gun strapped across his back, while the younger boy was nodding and smiling.

He was hardly a man, just a scraggy boy really, enthusiastic but crafty looking, probably no older than sixteen. He was restless, moving from foot to foot, checking out the road, up and down; his head too large, his hair scruffy and matted. He had worn-out tennis shoes on, pumps not trainers, that may once have been red, and Rashid focussed on the shoes as a key to the boy’s identity until finally he got who he was – the carrot boy (but in shoes this time), the phone card peddler from the café. The boy had grown a foot since Rashid had last seen him. He was almost Rashid’s height now.

The Stalin man left and the boy, despite the fact that he had given no prior indication that he had seen Rashid, made his way straight over to him. The radical nature of the cat’s transformation caused Rashid to smile up to the carrot boy as he arrived as though he was party to the new bond that Rashid had formed with the creature. The boy did not seem to see the cat.

‘Mr Mahmoudi asked me to tell you that he is unable to meet you at the present time. He will be free at around four o’clock this afternoon.’

Looking down the deserted road, the boy cleaned out something from the skin curling over the top of his ear.

‘You work with him now? Is that who you are? I remember you. You were the boy—’ Rashid started, about to say, carrot boy .

‘I know. We met. I know. You paid for my breakfast.’ The boy carried on looking down the road at the row of cars, then up at the tops of the buildings as though searching for something on their roofs. ‘What’s in there?’ he asked, nudging at Rashid’s bag with the tip of his foot.

‘Shoes,’ Rashid said.

‘Shoes?’ the boy asked. ‘What type of shoes?’

‘Take a look,’ Rashid said. ‘Feel free.’ The boy surveyed the quiet road one more time before sitting down next to Rashid. That side of the road was sunny and the cat was rubbing the top of its head against Rashid’s leg as though trying to push him from the low wall. It was purring ridiculously.