Cockroach (7 page)

I greeted the Korean grocer at the counter and went straight to the beer
fridge. I picked up a few bottles and put them on the counter. Then I pointed to a
package of cigarettes behind her back and confused the lady by shifting my pointing
finger, telling her left, down, and up all at the same time. As she looked for the
package like a distracted dog, I leaned on the beer bottles, pushing them together to
make loud noises, and simultaneously attacked the chocolate bars below the counter with
my other hand. When she finally laid the package of cigarettes on the counter and
started to ring the cash machine, I asked her if I could pay tomorrow. She stopped,
grabbed the bottles and the cigarettes, and shouted, You pay noweh! You pay noweh!
CASHEH! CASHEH! NOWEH
. I cursed her and left the store with the
chocolate bars in my pocket. I walked around the corner and into a back alley near an
Indian restaurant.

It was freezing cold. But chocolate does taste better when it's
cold. A chocolate connoisseur knows that chocolate at a certain temperature, exposed to
the air to breathe, makes for a refined experience. I peeled the plastic delicately from
the top of the bar. Then I opened it completely, threw away the paper, held the bar with
two delicate fingers, and watched the freezing air do its work. I shifted my two
fingers, making sure that the whole bar was exposed to the cold temperature. I started
nibbling the middle, holding the bar like a harmonica. But one
must
take care to nibble the bar, not blow on it (I let the city wind do that).

When I felt that the temperature was getting too low for the ingredients,
I moved towards the exhaust of air that was coming out of the back of the Indian
restaurant's kitchen. Now the experience would drastically change, not without
some risk, of course. I held the open belly of the bar high up towards the steam, like
an offering, and counted to ten. A chocolate bar masala, I called it. An exquisite
delight direct from the Orient, it was!

No one should suffer in hunger, I thought as I nibbled. Though, to be
frank, I only loved those who suffer. I loved Shohreh because she suffered. She had come
to see me a couple of times now, and on one of the nights she brought a bottle of wine.
She was happy, flirtatious. Short skirt. Low-cut blouse. Pulled-back hair. Red lips. She
wanted to drink. She wanted to dance before I laid my hands on her. She asked me to play
French songs. I turned the dial on the radio looking for songs. Leave that song on, she
ordered me, and pulled my hand, leading me away from the window. Her arms around my
waist, she said to me, Relax. I will lead.

I am not used to happy women. I am not used to slow dancing. When I dance,
I fly and stomp. I go around in circles; my head rises like that of an ancient fighter.
I shake the ground and the underground. In the presence of a sad, slow song I brood and
let my long eyelashes reach to the floor. When my sister used to dance she would wrap a
scarf around her waist, make me sit on the bed and watch her shaking her hips, barefoot.
Once there was a song on the radio that she liked, and
she stormed
into our room and in the little space that was available between the beds she danced.
That was when I realized how grown-up she was, how pretty and how attractive she had
become. It saddened me, but also in my confusion and in her presence I felt an
embarrassing erection. After that day, and I do not know why, we fought over everything:
the bathroom, the water, the radio knob; at night we were quiet, and our fantasies
collided on the bedroom wall.

I have had many lovers in my life. But what man has not? Mine all
suffered, but what woman has not? Frankly, like I said, I do not feel comfortable with
happy women, those who are obsessed with what my shrink calls intimacy. You have an
intimacy problem, Genevieve had said, in one of her rare assessments of me.

Intimacy, I exclaimed. What intimacy? I do not understand you.

Like expressing love.

How? For whom?

Like saying something nice to a woman, or bringing her flowers.

So the day before our next meeting I stole some flowers and brought them
to her.

She did not know how to react. She was uncomfortable. She laid the flowers
on the table, without saying a word.

I stole them, I said.

You stole them?

Yes, I stole them for you.

That is interesting, she said, dismissing the act of theft and changing
the subject: Do you want to tell me more about your
childhood today?
If we do not move forward, if we do not improve, I might have to recommend that you go
back to the institution. Frankly, you do not give me much choice with your silence. I
have a responsibility towards the taxpayers.

Tax prayers? I asked.

No tax
payers
, people who actually pay taxes. Some of us do.

So, I will tell her stories, if that is what she wants. It's better
than going back to the madhouse and watching robotic people move between iron beds,
pacing the floor, lost between the borders of barbed wired on the windows and the hollow
hallways, drooling, laughing, crying, and exchanging life stories with their own private
audience. I would look at those people and see them watching their own little stages.
Some of the performances, I thought, were genuine, spontaneous, and exquisite. Abstract,
even a little esoteric, but nevertheless worth a peek. And frankly, I wouldn't
mind seeing again that beautiful lady with green eyes who came for a few days. God, she
was so pretty, even when she took off her clothes and ran naked through the room,
leaking fluid down to her ankles and through her lovely toes, screaming at the top of
her lungs, Freedom! Freedom! I followed her and then I lost her. Like a trapper, I
tracked the little patches of urine that had gathered, like islands, on the hospital
floor.

What do you want to hear? I asked my shrink.

Let's talk about your mother, she said.

My mother dragged my sister by the hair off our balcony and told her to
stop parading her legs in front of the men down the street. Those low-life men leaned on
parked cars,
smoked, and laughed loudly. They obsessively cleaned
and waxed their cars, and like a horny pack of wild dogs they smelled my sister's
wetness and pointed at her breasts from behind their erect car hoods.

My sister was beautiful. I used to peek through the bathroom window and
watch her in front of the mirror, playing with her wet hair, kissing the towels and
brushing them across her face. She would put her hands under her breasts and twirl
around. Holding her hairbrush to her face, she would sing to a large audience who came
from all over the world to hear her tender voice, oblivious to her topless chest, her
naked shoulders, because she, naturally, enchanted them with her graceful moves, her
sparkling eyes, and her profound, sentimental voice. She was so enchanting that no
clergy cared to object, no man in her presence had indecent thoughts about her, and no
woman in the audience was jealous of her firm breasts, her generous, curly pubic hair,
her long, wavy locks that covered her buttocks, her radish-coloured nipples. Not even my
father cared that his daughter was naked on a stage — he knew that what was
important was that she could sing, that she was respected, that she would never be
preyed upon by some military man who would deflower her, eject sperm into her belly to
inflate her uterus, swell her ankles, fill her bosom with milk.

But one of those men often stood below our balcony, dressed in his
military uniform and boots. He carried a gun, and I could see him looking our way,
smiling at my sister, stepping on the gas to make his sports car roar and fume. In
return, my sister played with her hair, and on her way to the
store
she swung her hips, stopping in the middle of the street to look back in the direction
of our balcony before walking towards the store again. The man with the sports car
followed her. In the store he stood close to her and her timid smile, smelling her soapy
hands and her hair ointment, examining the lines of the blade on her shaved legs. He
pulled some change from his pocket and paid for the bag of goods in her hand. She
hesitated and refused at first, but he insisted, calling her
Madame
. So my
sister accepted his money, and he followed her home, inside our building and up the
stairs, talking to her about beaches and fast cars. He asked her name and offered her a
cigarette. She, beaming like headlights, agreed to meet him again, in secret, below the
stairs, above the roofs, on a moon with little alleys. And eventually, when she ran out
of excuses to go down to the street for fresh air, to meet her girlfriend, to buy sugar,
to chase the cats in heat in the middle of the night, she eloped with the military man.
He picked her up one night and drove straight to the priest. The priest refused to marry
them; the girl is underage, he said. The man pulled out his gun and threatened the
priest, made him sign the paper, and drove my sister back to his mother's house.
There, after he finished his drink, he deflowered her, and when she asked for money to
buy food he beat her.

And how do you feel about that? the shrink interrupted me.

I wanted to kill him, but I was young and he was older and stronger. Once,
my mother sent me to my sister's house with some food. When my sister saw me,
tears fell onto her cheeks, cheeks that, I noticed, had become round and fat like her
belly
that was inflated with a child. Her legs to her ankles looked
straight as cylinders, she walked slowly with her hand against her back, and she did the
dishes as she offered me coffee. Then we sat at the table, and she gazed in my eyes,
caressed my hair, cried, and asked me about my father who did not come to see her, my
mother who was mad at her, and the neighbours who talked behind her back. I stayed late
to scoop her tears and watch her fingers floating towards my face. I closed my eyes and
listened to the child in her belly. I was about to leave when we heard a Jeep stop
outside, and doors slamming shut, and boots ascending the stairs.

My husband is here, my sister said, and she pulled her hand away from my
hair and rolled her eyes. She rushed to set the table, tossing plates like a poker
player tosses cards, throwing forks and knives in the air like a circus magician,
lighting fires like a primitive in a cave, and sweeping onion-tears from her eyes.

The man was welcoming to me. When he saw me, he shouted,
Ahlan be ibn
alaam
(welcome to the brother-in-law). He patted my shoulder and offered me
cigarettes. We ate on the balcony and he poured whisky for both of us, and called my
sister to bring more ice, cucumbers, and fresh almonds. When my sister told him that she
did not have all this, he cursed her. He cursed womankind, and the hour when he had
kidnapped her, and the priest who let him marry her.

How did you react? the shrink asked.

I did not say a thing. I kept silent. I should have said something. But I
did not.

Why?

Because my sister looked at me. I knew that look: she
was telling me not to say a word, not to interfere. I wanted to leave, but the man
grabbed me. He persuaded me to stay. He wanted someone to drink with. He insisted. In
the end, he even ordered me to stay. He cursed God and swore at the angels. We poured
whisky while my sister cooked in the kitchen. Then, after many drinks, he pulled out his
gun and started shooting in the air. None of the neighbours complained or stuck their
heads out their windows or went into the street in their slippers and cotton pyjamas to
look for cadavers or moaning men. There, everyone is used to gunshots. Shooting in the
air is a public statement, a celebration of birth, a farewell to the dead, and private
words with the gods.

Here, my brother-in-law said. Shoot the fucking passing angels. Here. He
changed the gun's magazine and handed it to me. Wait, he said. Let me crank it for
you.

I can crank it myself, I said.

Let the boy do it! he shouted with pride, and hugged my shoulders. Here,
soon you will be an uncle. And he kissed my sister on the cheek and grabbed her hips.
She moved her face away from his whisky breath, his unbalanced feet, his scratchy
moustache, and nicotine-stained teeth.

And we will teach this baby boy how to use a gun, right? He caressed my
sister's belly.

Our time is up, said the shrink. But I want to hear all about it on our
next appointment. How is Thursday for you?

TAXPAYERS, THE SHRINK SAYS
. Ha! I thought
as I finished my chocolate in the alley. Well yes, yes indeed, I should be grateful for
what this nation is giving me. I take more than I give, indeed it is true. But if I had
access to some wealth, I would contribute my share. Maybe I should become a good citizen
and contemplate ways to collect my debts and increase my wealth. That would be a good
start. And who still owes me money but that loud string-plucker with a chicken beak and
the fatherless soul of a musician? And then I remembered that every Friday the
forty-dollar thief by the name of Reza played at an Iranian restaurant on the west side
of the city. He hated it. He thought playing at a restaurant was the worst kind of job
for a talented, respected musician like himself. But now I knew how to track him
down.

On Friday evening I went to the restaurant. It was a fancy restaurant with
all the ornament necessary to transport you to the East. It surrounded you with dunes,
lanterns, and handmade carpets that matched the brown plates flying from the
waiter's hands onto woven tablecloths.

I sat at the bar. The owner came over and asked suspiciously, How can I
help you?

I am waiting for the musician, Reza, I said. Still the owner looked
suspiciously at my clothing that clashed with the fancy surroundings. Reza saw me, but
he ignored my presence and continued playing with the other Iranian musicians. When they
stopped for a break, he came to me, leaned towards my face, and quietly whispered, You
should never come here unless you are going to sit and eat. He said this with
aggravation.