Cockroach (3 page)

Inside Lucy we sat and waited for flesh to appear on the screen. We were
like angels. And then, when the older men became afraid that too much time had passed or
was being wasted on the projection of old memories, wars, and aging stars, they shouted
and banged on the bottoms of the old chairs:
Attcheh
(a porn cut)
Abou-Khallil! Attcheh, Abou-Khallil!
And succumbing to the pressure of the
drumming palms, a bosom would swell on the screen, the back of a head would veil a
voluptuous thigh, and some of the men would stand up, cheer, and whistle until the
swelling in their pants burst their zippers open, and their shoulders tilted forward
like the silhouettes of fishermen against crooked horizons scooping fish by the light of
a sinking sun, and they blasted their handkerchiefs with the bangs of expelled bullets,
wounding their pride, and finally folding up images of past lovers and their own
unsatisfied wives.

A joint will warm my bones, I thought, or at least numb my brain just
enough so that I won't feel my misery and the cold. I
slipped
inside my closet and reached for the secret hole beside the top shelf. I arrange my
cupboards precisely: the towels and sheets on the bottom shelf, the untouchables like
opium and dreams on the top. I pulled out a plastic film canister and the thin white
papers that went with it. Only a small amount of hash was left — a small ball,
enough for one thin roll to lift me up like a rope and swing me down into a calm
descent. I cut it and tried to roll it, but my fingers were cold and, as usual, shaky.
Besides, I had no tobacco to mix with the stuff. Cigarettes are bad for one's
health, I consoled myself.

I lay in bed and let the smoke enter me undiluted. I let it grow me wings
and many legs. Soon I stood barefoot, looking for my six pairs of slippers. I looked in
the mirror, and I searched again for my slippers. In the mirror I saw my face, my long
jaw, my whiskers slicing through the smoke around me. I saw many naked feet moving. I
rushed to close the window and draw the curtains. Then I went back to bed, buried my
face in the sheets, and pulled the pillow and covers over my head. I closed my eyes and
thought about my dilemma.

My welfare cheque was ten days away. I was out of dope. My kitchen had
only rice and leftovers and crawling insects that would outlive me on Doomsday. I was
lucky to have that bag of basmati rice and those few vegetarian leftovers from Mary the
Buddhist's party.

Where there is music there is food, I say! A few nights ago around seven,
after the sun had left to play, I heard shoeless feet pressing against my ceiling from
the floor above me, little toes crawling under the brouhaha of guests and the faint
start
of a jam session that sounded both menacing and promising. The
drums were calling me.

I cracked my door open and I saw feet ascending to my neighbour's
place. Mary? I thought. Yes, that was her name. I remembered once meeting her down in
the basement. She complained about the absence of recycling bins. Or was it compost? In
any case, she wanted to fill the earth with dust from the refuse of vegetables, and she
had a strange kind of theory about reincarnation. One look at her guests and I knew what
kind of party it would be — one look at the braids, the drums, the agonized Rasta
lumps of hair on bleached heads, the pierced ears and noses that would make any bull
owner very proud, and I knew. What to wear, was the question. A bedsheet wrapped around
my waist and nothing else? Or my pyjamas? Yes, yes! Everyone in the southern hemisphere
fetches the newspaper at daybreak in pyjamas fluttering above flat slippers and vaporous
feet, everyone drinks coffee on dusty sidewalks, their wrinkled morning faces staring
out from between the fenders of bedridden cars. But I decided not to overdo it. The
exotic has to be modified here — not too authentic, not too spicy or too smelly,
just enough of it to remind others of a fantasy elsewhere. In the end, I kept my jeans
on and took off my shoes and left my socks in my room to air a bit more, and I climbed
barefoot through the walls.

Mary was welcoming. A peaceful smile wafted my way. I wasn't sure if
it was the effect of the ever-burning incense in the room or maybe the effect of the
hallucinatory fumes that I myself had been pumping through the years, into her
walls.

I had helped myself to food at her party while everyone else
sat on the floor with folded legs, eating. I could hear their
chewing, like an incantation, as they floated on Indian pillows, the humming inside
their throats synced to the sound of Mary's old fridge and the cycles of the
world.

I despised how those pale-faced vegans held their little spoons, humbling
themselves. Who do they think they are fooling, those bleached Brahmins? We all know
that their low-sitting is just another passage in their short lives. In the end, they
will get bigger spoons and dig up the earth for their fathers' and mothers'
inheritances. But it is I! I, and the likes of me, who will be eating nature's
refuse under dying trees. I! I, and the likes of me, who will wait for the wind to shake
the branches and drop us fruit. Filth, make-believers, comedians on a Greek stage! Those
Buddhists will eventually float down, take off their colourful, exotic costumes, and
wear their fathers' three-piece suits. But I will still recognize them through
their strands of greying hair. I will envy them when they are perched like monarchs on
chairs, shamelessly having their black shoes shined, high above crouched men with black
nails feathering and swinging horsehair brushes across their corporate ankles. At the
tap of the shoeshiners, the Brahmins will fold their newspapers, stand up and fix their
ties, scoop out their pockets for change, and toss a few coins in the air to the
workingmen below. And they will step onto ascending elevators, give firm handshakes,
receive pats on their backs, smooth their hair in the tinted glass of high-rises. Their
radiant shoes will shine like mirrors and their light steps will echo in company
corridors to murmurs of, “See you at the barbecue, and give my regards to your
lovely spouse.” No, none of
these imposters was chanting to
escape incarnation; they all wanted to come back to the same packed kitchens, to the
same large houses, the same high beds, the same covers to hide under again and
again.

I was out of toilet paper, but who cared? I always washed after
defecating. Though I must admit, during the water shortages in wartime in that place
where I come from, there were periods when I did not wash for a long time. You could
hardly brush your teeth. Oh, how I once gave priority to that which was most visible
— I would wash my face, and deprive everything else, with the little water I had.
Every drop of water that ran through the drain inspired me to follow it, gather it, and
use it again. As a kid, I was fascinated by drains. I'm not sure if it was the
smell, or the noises and echoes that were unexpectedly released after the water was
gobbled, or if it was simply the possibility of escape to a place where the refuse of
stained faces, infamous hands, dirty feet, and deep purple gums gathered in a large pool
for slum kids to swim, splash, and play in.

I got up and went to the window and opened the curtains. The burning coal
on top of my joint shone, lustrous and silvery, against the backdrop of Mount Royal.
There was a large metal cross right on the top of the mountain. I held out the joint
vertically, stretched my hand against the window, and aligned the burning fire on the
tip of it to the middle of the cross. I watched its plume ascend like burning hair. The
smoke reminded me that it was time to escape this permanent whiteness, the eternal
humming of the fluorescent light in the hallway, the ticking of the kitchen clock, and
my constant breath — yes, my own breath that fogged the glass and
blurred the outside world with a coat of sighs and sadness as the vapour from my
tears moistened the window. My own breath was obstructing my view of the world!

I reminded myself that I can escape anything. I am a master of escape
(unlike those trapped and recurring pink Buddhists). As a kid, I escaped when my mother
cried, when my father unbuckled his belt, when my teacher lifted the ruler high above my
little palm. I disappeared as the falling blows glowed across my hands like thunder
across landscapes of lifelines — long journeys, and travellers' palms. I
watched the teacher's ruler as if it wasn't me who was receiving those
lashes across fingers extended like noontide red above beaches lit by many suns. I
alternated my six cockroach hands and distributed the pain of those blows. And when my
palms burned and ached, I fanned my cockroach wings. I let the air cool off my swollen
hands as I stood in the corner, my face and a tender belly to the wall.

But I escaped most when I stole sweets, pens, chewing gum, and, later on,
cameras and cars. Primitive and uneducated as I was, I instinctively felt trapped in the
cruel and insane world saturated with humans. I loathed the grown-ups who were always
hovering above me and looking down on me. They, of course, ruled the heights: they could
reach the chandelier, the top of the fridge; they could rumple my hair anytime they
pleased. But I was the master of the underground. I crawled under beds, camped under
tables; I was even the kind of kid who would crawl under the car to retrieve the ball,
rescue the stranded cat, find the coins under the fridge.

When I was a teenager I met my mentor Abou-Roro, the
neighbourhood thief. He realized I had the capacity to slip through anything. To
help me reach the heights, he would fuse together his fingers and I would step on his
locked and open palms, and he would lift me up to small windows that only vermin can go
through. Once I was inside a house, a church, or a school, I would go straight for the
valuables. I stole them all. You name it and I stole it. I crawled through windows and
holes and gathered silver sets, crosses, change, watches. I even took my time to nibble
leftovers and kitchen-counter crumbs.

The underground, my friend, is a world of its own. Other humans gaze at
the sky, but I say unto you, the only way through the world is to pass through the
underground.

OVER THE NEXT FEW
days I called Reza's place in vain. I
banged on every door at every place I thought he might be, with rhythms that he himself
could never replicate — a few
tat-a-tat
s here and there. Once I even
experimented with a
bouwang
! and a
bou-doum
! But I could not find him.
Forty dollars he owed me. Just imagine the soap I could buy, the rice, the yards of
toilet paper I could line up, use to sweep the counter, mark territory and divide
nations, fly like kites, dry tears, jam in the underground pipes and let everything
subterranean rise to the surface. I would share it and cut it and divide it among the
nation's poor, fair and square. You name it, I would do it!

Reza, that charming compulsive liar, was a master charlatan who for years
had managed to couch-surf in women's
houses, bewitching his
hosts with his exotic tunes and stories of suffering and exile. His best and favourite
story was how he almost lost all his fingers performing for the Ayatollah Khomeini. He
usually told this story in bars after some fusion gig with an Anglo with an electric
guitar or a Caucasian Rasta with a drum. He would tell the women gathered around him at
the table how he was afraid and nervous when he was asked by the Iranian Hezbollah, the
Guards of God, not to play anything subversive for the holy man, meaning no fast or
non-religious tunes. Then, when he was finally pushed behind the door where the great
leader of the Iranian revolution was sitting, he was so nervous that he forgot to kiss
the great mullah's hand, and even forgot to bow and murmur
Al-salaam
alaikum
, which made the guards angry. He would relate how he'd sat on the
floor tuning his instrument while sweat dripped down his spine, but once he started
playing, he was transported (true to his art, to the artist that he was!). He forgot
himself and played faster and faster. And here Reza would usually pause to gauge the
women's reactions and keep them in suspense, until one of them would ask: And then
what happened? (And the woman who asked this was usually the one who would invite Reza
to sleep over that night.)

Reza would continue his story, telling the women that he started to play
fast and non-religiously and shook his head left and right, because when he plays he
can't help it, until one of the guards ran over to him and broke his instrument
with one stomp of the foot and held Reza's index finger in the air, bending it
backwards, trying to break it, promising that this was the first of many broken bones to
come. And if it hadn't been
for the Ayatollah Khomeini
himself, who gave a slight wave of his hand and liberated Reza from the brute's
clutches, all the musician's fingers would have been broken by now. And then the
Musician of Love would end his story with a question: And you know what the consequences
are for a musician like myself to have broken fingers, right? Gullible heads would nod,
compassionate eyes would open, blankets would be extended on sofas and beds, fridges
would burp leftovers, and if the rooster was lucky, it would all lead to chicken thighs
and wings moistened by a touch of beer or wine, and hot showers seasoned by pizza pies
delivered to the bedroom and gobbled in front of trashy movies on
TV
.

Once, when Reza and I were having an argument, and the topic shifted to
each other's lives and each other's decadent methods of survival, I
confronted him about his schemes and lies. He leaned his long face towards me and said:
Brother, think of me as a wandering Sufi. I spread love and music, and in return I
accept hospitality, peace, and love. Love, my friend — it is always about love. As
he said this, his eyebrows danced and he swayed his musical head, dimmed his eyes, and
smiled. I give something in return, he continued, while you are nothing but a petty
thief with no talent. All you can do is make the fridge light go on and off, and once
the door is closed you're never sure if the light inside has turned to darkness
like your own dim soul.