Мазен Мааруф - Jokes for the Gunmen

‘Maybe that’s for the best. Best for both of you.’

MY UNCLE DIED THREE TIMES IN THE SPACE OF one week. He began his death marathon on the Tuesday, right after he came back from the slaughterhouse. ‘I’ve been cheated,’ he said, and lay down on the sofa and died. I wasn’t there when this happened, but Mother told me about it later. My uncle had been wearing his Spanish matador suit and it was spattered with white cow saliva. Apparently they had laughed at him at the slaughterhouse, so he’d taken off the suit and hung it in the wardrobe before lying down on the sofa and dying.

That was the first time my uncle died, and of course we treated him as a corpse. We kept him in the sitting room until it was his turn to be buried. They told us that luckily we would only have to wait two days. The sitting room is the only room in the house with air conditioning. It’s also the smallest room. When you put the air conditioning on full you feel like an ant that’s swallowed a pin and can no longer move.

Personally I like it when we put the air conditioning on, because we only do it on special occasions. Then you’ll see me in my cotton pyjamas with a hood, punching the air as if I’m boxing a giant crane. I got that idea from Rocky in the film. That’s also what I did with my uncle’s body. I started punching it. Just on the soles of his feet, mind you. But apparently the punches pumped the blood from his feet to his heart and he came round. That’s the deepest analysis I’ve managed to make but I haven’t let on to anyone. Would you expect me to tell Mother that I punched my dead uncle’s feet? Even my uncle didn’t know I’d punched him. As soon as he came round, which was on the Thursday morning, he rubbed his foot and removed a thorn. He said the thorn kept hurting his soul and that meant he couldn’t die peacefully. His body hadn’t been washed yet and he hadn’t had his fingernails trimmed. He took a shower and cut his nails.

My uncle had long wanted to be a bullfighter, but he could never afford the airfare to Mexico or Spain. And besides, he had to get a visa. He had tried at both embassies and each time he wrote that his aim was not to immigrate but just to be a matador. But his applications were rejected three times and he was told he no longer had the right to submit visa applications. Someone suggested he buy a bullfighter’s suit. It took him four years to pay off the instalments. The suit had belonged to Luis Miguel Dominguín, the famous Spanish bullfighter. At least, that’s what he was told, but no one other than my uncle believed the story. He would sniff the suit and say, ‘This is definitely Dominguín’s suit. In it I can smell the souls of all the bulls he slew.’ Anyway, my uncle would put on the outfit and practise in the slaughterhouse, picking cows that were on their way to slaughter. He’d leave home at two o’clock in the morning and come back at dawn. The slaughterhouse would be full of traders, butchers and tough guys skilled with knives and cleavers. When their turn to be slaughtered came, the cows would wait in a small courtyard, while the men prepared to tie them in chains and hoist them up. Then my uncle would move in, smartly dressed in his golden suit, his hair, covered in gel, as shiny as his shoes. Then the betting would open.

My uncle would choose the largest cow, pounce on it and strangle it with his bare hands – my uncle had hands as big as those old telephone receivers people used to have at home. As soon as the cow was about to breathe its last, one of the slaughtermen would come forward and finish the job by making a slit in the cow’s throat.

It was no secret that sometimes my uncle got carried away by his own strength and strangled the cow to death. Then the cow would be no good for halal meat and he would have to pay for it. But what people didn’t know was that my uncle arranged in advance with one of the apprentices that the night before the cow was slaughtered the boy would beat its legs with a stick until the legs swelled up. That way it was easy for my uncle to knock the cow to the ground.

My uncle was a cheat. When he was cheated in turn and a cow defeated him, he felt humiliated and died. Of course any matador who’s defeated by a cow is bound to feel very humiliated. But my uncle recovered his self-confidence and his fearlessness after he came back to life. The little thorn that had been stuck in the bottom of his foot was the reason for that. He explained to us that when he was dead he had seen himself on a matadors’ ranch in heaven. He was surrounded by all the champion bullfighters. He had even seen a bullring, he said. But he didn’t understand anything because they were speaking Spanish. But God brought him back to life so that he could remove the thorn from his foot. ‘A matador can’t fight a bull if he has a thorn stuck in his foot,’ God told him. When he pulled it out he was overcome with joy. It was enough that God had accepted him as a matador. My uncle saw it as testimony to his talent for bullfighting, even though he had never fought a bull in his life. As a result my uncle confidently took the matador suit out of the wardrobe to wear again. He said he would never take it off: he would go into the slaughterhouse wearing it and take on the biggest cow there, this time without any cheating. If God had endorsed his dreams, why should he care about the riff-raff at the slaughterhouse? But a surprise lay in wait for him. When my uncle tried on the matador suit again, he found it was too big for him. No one could explain why that should be. It caused consternation at home, by raising the possibility that my uncle was in fact still dead. The suit was baggy, and that was very strange. Dead bodies are meant to inflate, so their clothes should be tighter, not looser. But in my uncle’s case it was the other way round.

My uncle died on the Tuesday and came back to life on the Thursday, only to find that his suit was too baggy, although he hadn’t lost an ounce of weight. He couldn’t wear the suit or go back to the slaughterhouse to tell the ‘rabble’, as he called them, what had happened to him in the matadors’ ranch in heaven. Now he had to eat to put on weight. But our house was poor. He had an argument with Mother. He disconnected the air-conditioning unit and forced her to sell it and spend the money on food. Mother loves my uncle – he’s her brother, one year younger than her, and he’s been the man of the house since Dad died. She never denies him anything. It was then that I found out that I could no longer wear my cotton pyjamas or box with anyone. I ended up objecting to Mother, ‘What if he goes and dies again?’ My uncle was sitting opposite me. He flew into a rage and hit me about the face and neck. I didn’t cry. I stood facing him, defiant as a young bull without horns. A calf. He was half-dead as far as I was concerned. I felt a perverse pleasure in my arms and legs because I had punched my uncle’s feet when he was dead the first time.

Now I wanted to punch him all over. I wanted to hide in the belly of the next big cow he’d choose and as soon as he put his hands on its neck I’d burst out of its throat like a jack-in-the-box and punch him in the face so hard that his nose came off and fell on the floor. But none of that came about.

Mother sold the air-conditioning unit on the Friday and bought two fat chickens, nuts, eggs and various kinds of fruit, vegetables and grains, as well as a large bag of rice and some milk. She spent the whole day in the kitchen, and in the evening she laid out a big meal for my uncle, as if he wouldn’t have any food in heaven.

Usually my uncle only ate a little, like any matador. But that evening he stuffed the food greedily into his mouth, like a bull tasting apples for the first time. The sight of him chewing and swallowing the food disgusted me, so I looked away. Mother kept telling him, ‘Eat up, brother.’ But suddenly my uncle choked on the food, stopped breathing and died. It’s true that I was sitting at the same table but I didn’t turn towards him. I just heard him choking and dying, with my mother saying, ‘Breathe, brother,’ and sobbing. My uncle had turned into a corpse a second time. This time we carried him to the hospital mortuary because there was no air conditioning in the sitting room. We managed to pay for one night in the mortuary with the money left over from selling the air-conditioning unit.