Mustafa Alismail
“ Oh, god...”
She took the roof as her stage and began to perform for the admiring nonexistent audience,“ Mama Noor, ya hayati, your radiance is astounding. What sun and what moon?! They should be ashamed. Oh, speaking of shame, you won’ t believe what your son said today...”“ No, you can’ t keep using your grandmother that way.” A believable puzzled look leapt off her face,“ Why not?” she said following it with a knowing smile.
I dropped my cigarette stump to the ground, to join its many older sisters, and began massaging it with my shoe.“ You’ re definitely going to Hell.”
“ We all are; I’ ll just arrive in the back of a Rolls. Look, let’ s just leave. I’ ll go get Yasser’ s binoculars, you swing by Aamer’ s. We’ ll meet by the creek south of the vineyard, okay?”“ Just make sure you don’ t bring him.”“ I promise I won’ t,” she shouted as she left out the door, almost kicking away poor Sibawayh and locking me up on the roof till the next morning.
I stopped at Aamer’ s little newsagent shop, though he sells more sweets and smokes than newspapers. The shop had space for a fourmeter-long termite-ridden wooden counter which looked like it had an earlier life of being a cheap dinner table. An ice-box sat at the far end of the shop, though most times“ water-box” is more apt. Atop the steps leading to the shop were stacks of newspapers, each with a brick on top; quite a few were from weeks ago. Aamer, the middle-aged and skeletal owner sat behind the counter, a cigar between his scarred lips, a box of various brands of cigarettes to his right, another filled with random sweets to his left. The barely functioning radio always alternated between Abdel Halim and static noise. Behind his sweaty mess of a human hung a frameless picture of Jamal Abdel Nasser, its color faded like the man himself or the ghost of Pan-Arab Nationalism he birthed and whose time has passed, despite the many who still cling to it. Aamer’ s love for Nasser is only rivaled by his enthusiasm for the Nicaraguan cigars he sells, which are housed in a black-and-red-striped cardboard box at his counter labeled“ For the Sandinistas.”
92