Мазен Мааруф - Jokes for the Gunmen

Yes, that’s what my mother said. She repeatedly said that children who have a disability, such as deafness, blindness, inability to speak or whatever, have a second heart. God takes one sense from them, but in its place He gives them another heart on the right side of their chests, because there isn’t enough room on the left-hand side. When we were little boys, we both had a fever, like any twins. When we got over it, I discovered that the fever had taken his hearing from my brother and given it to me. But I didn’t tell him this. My ability to hear really did double, whereas he could no longer hear at all, and he no longer spoke to me much. He just smiled. That was because he had two hearts, and that’s what I was betting on when I spoke to the gunmen. But I left the matter of the two hearts till the end. For the shock value. Like a shell that hits a bus full of disabled children. I said everything all in a rush.

I went up to the gunman and asked him, ‘Are you organ fans?’ In case he didn’t say, ‘Yes,’ or in case he threw me out, I quickly added, ‘I have a brother, and he wants to sell himself. My brother and I are one. He’s the one who’ll sell himself to you, but I’m the one who’ll get the money. I don’t want to cheat you. He can’t hear and there are two of him – me and him – but my brother does have two hearts.’

The gunman looked at me and said, ‘Two hearts? And you want us to traffic in organs? What do you know about human organs, you piece of shit?’

‘Everything,’ I lied.

‘Everything? Then show me where your phallus is.’

‘It’s inside my body here,’ I said, putting my hand on my hip, to the left of my belly button.

The gunman burst out laughing. In fact, I had long had a feeling that a person’s phallus had something to do with their kidney, but I didn’t know where exactly it would be. No one had told me that a phallus was the willy, as my father called it, that I piss through.

When he stopped laughing and could see how embarrassed I was – my face was as red as a beetroot – he said, ‘Of course. Go and fetch your brother.’

I couldn’t believe what I’d heard, and it didn’t occur to me that the gunman was making fun of me. I walked off, thinking that if the deal went through, I would also get revenge for my father on the gunmen who had beaten him up. With the money I got from them, I would have him fitted with a glass eye that would give them the fright of their lives. Instead of going back home, I waited till it was time for the kids to come out of school. I was very happy and when I went in I found my brother and my mother as usual. He smiled at me. I took him to the bathroom, washed his face and asked him to open his mouth so that I could check his teeth. I also checked his ears and made sure they were clean. I heard my mother praying to God to preserve me. My brother didn’t understand anything. I signed to him to say, ‘We’re off,’ and then, ‘Don’t tell Mother.’ He smiled, in that way that would make you think that he really did have two hearts.

I took my deaf twin brother along to the gunmen. Because he was deaf, my mother wouldn’t let him out of the house, not even to let him play in front of the building. If clashes suddenly broke out, he wouldn’t hear the noise and he would be an easy target for a sniper. ‘I’m going to buy him something from the shop,’ I said to my mother. She was happy, because I hadn’t bought my brother a treat before. When we reached the gunmen’s checkpoint, I said, ‘Here he is!’ and I pushed him forward a little. ‘He looks just like me but he can’t hear and he has two hearts, as I told you,’ I said. But my brother had a feeling that something was up. He turned round and grabbed my shirt pleadingly. I could feel his grip, his fingers clamped tight. I realized he was frightened. He dug his heels into the ground like a little goat and looked at me. ‘This is for Dad’s sake,’ I told him with signs.

‘So you’re here to sell your brother,’ said the gunman.

‘Yes, I’ll sell him to someone else if we can’t agree the terms,’ I answered confidently.

‘Since you’re so serious, come and let’s make a deal upstairs,’ he said, gesturing to my brother to wait. When my brother saw me go into the building with the gunman, he burst into tears, but I waved to reassure him.

THIS WAS THE ONLY TIME I WAS BEATEN UP BY THE gunmen. They weren’t the same gunmen who left their footprints on my father’s shirt, but I found out what it feels like to be trodden underfoot. On the way home, my brother felt sad for my sake. Halfway home he stopped me to touch my cheeks, as I had done with my father – my neck and cheeks had livid bruises. When he touched me, I dropped to the ground and turned my face away, pretending to be asleep. Then I let him help me stand up. When I got home, my mother freaked out as soon as she saw me. She started screaming and asked me what had happened. But I wasn’t paying attention and, instead of going into the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bathtub and drooling, I stood in front of the pepper plant and started to examine it. One of the little peppers had withered and shrivelled up. The sight greatly disheartened me. I told myself that the little pepper must be my little soul, which had been humiliated. The next day I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t pretend to go to school. I spent the day spraying water on the shrivelled pepper and blowing on it to revive it. But my attempts were in vain. In the middle of the day the little pepper dropped off and landed on the soil. My heart began to beat violently, like trampling feet. I didn’t realize that the withered pepper didn’t represent my soul but rather my brother’s. That afternoon my brother’s bus didn’t come back from school. We found out later that a shell had hit it. My brother and all the other children in the bus were incinerated and their bodies fused with each other. They were buried together in a small, remote terraced field near the school.

My brother had been going to a special school for the deaf and dumb and the blind. His bus was something all the kids in the street liked to stare at, because, as far as they were concerned, the passengers were weird. The bus smelt of dough, bananas and milk, and it was my job to wait for it with my brother every morning. I hated that. As soon as my brother got on the bus, some of the kids would start pointing at me in amazement and laughing at the fact that I was an exact copy of him. My brother liked that. He was proud of the close resemblance between us. But I looked away, so that I wouldn’t meet his eyes after he had boarded the bus. Then he would press his face against the windowpane and wave to me with a broad, stupid smile that I felt might become detached from his face and turn into a slimy toad that would jump on my nose.

AFTER MY BROTHER DIED, MY MOTHER STOPPED eating. She started smoking heavily and arguing noisily with my father, who continued to go to work in the laundry and kept getting beaten up by the gunmen. When he came back from work, he went into the bathroom, sat on the rim of the bathtub and drooled, even more than previously, but he never cried. In the meantime I looked at him and gritted my teeth. The reality is that I wasn’t much affected by the loss of my brother, because the idea that there were two of him – him and me – and that only one of them was gone prevented me from feeling the shock. For me it was a half loss, or even a quarter loss, if we take into account the fact that I still had my brother’s sense of hearing. I was still determined to press on with my project – buying a glass eye for my father. But I did resume going to school. My brother’s death had restored my standing among the schoolkids. They stopped making fun of me, because it would have been improper to laugh at a classmate whose deaf brother had been blown up by a shell.