Nekropolis (8 page)

“Thank you,” I say.

“From the Mashahana,” he says absently. It’s what Hariba says when you thank her. I’ll remember to say it.

Mourners come and some of them already have flowers, but some of them look at the wreaths. “How much?” they ask and I say, “Five for the large ones and three for the small.” I sell three of the small ones, and then, as the shadows are lengthening over the square, both of the large ones. One of the large ones goes to a man who is pleased with himself. One goes to a woman who is needy.

“It is a beautiful piece,” I say to the woman. “Canna lilies and roses and lemon leaves. My wife makes them. She’s sick.”

She nods. Her veil is white with a stripe of blue. She’s a widow, I think.

“Who is it for?” I ask.

“My son,” she says hoarsely and there’s the sharpness of her pain, a terrible wave of feeling. She’s hollow.

“Is he sad, now?” I ask. That’s a center for her pain, that she isn’t needed anymore, and she cries silently as she hands me the money. She’s empty and anything I do will make her crack. Instead of letting her put the money in my palm, I take her hand, and then cover it with my other hand and she stands there with her eyes closed and the tears running down her face. She’s captured by touch, still as an animal. She stands, shocked and holding it in, and then she breaks; first her knees giving way so she sinks, and then her back bending, curving until she’s on her knees and her forehead slowly, achingly slowly, comes down until it touches my hands clasped around hers, and she sobs. “Sweet boy,” she sobs. “Sweet, sweet boy.”

“Yes,” I whisper, feeling her strange pleasure at her pain.

“Sweet boy.”

* * *

The widow’s name is Myryam and she takes me to a café and buys me a drink of cold orange bitters. She’s hungry to be touched, but doesn’t dare take my hand. It’s hard to be a widow and to go without touch and it’s drying her up inside and out. Her son was twenty-five when he crashed a lorry into a bridge abutment and after weeks and weeks of pain, finally died. She shows me a picture of a plump, smiling boy with well-oiled black hair and a shirt so white it hurts the eyes.

“He’s handsome,” I say.

“He is,” she says. “That was taken when he got his certificate to drive a lorry. He was happy. I was happy for him. His father wanted him to do books, but he wasn’t good at math. He wasn’t interested. He was very smart about something when he was interested, but numbers, he said he didn’t care. He got a certificate to be a lorry driver and then he could be out talking to people. He loved people.”

She rises like bread in a warm kitchen, talking of her son and touching the corners of her eyes with her veil.

“Maybe you can give me some advice?” I ask.

“You’re like my own sweet boy,” she says and we bask in the pleasure of each other’s company.

“My wife makes wreaths, but she’s ill and she can’t make many anymore. I need to find work, but I don’t know where to start.”

Myryam’s thoughtful. “You could be a waiter. You’d be good at it, I think. Let me ask around.” She’s comfortable now. We fit together like key and lock. “You’re someone’s good son,” she says.

The sun is going down and the dry air is cooling. The breeze stirs, swirling the dust in the street, curls and hollows, empty and full. “I have to go,” I explain, “my wife’s alone…” I walk home through the empty streets, thinking of Myryam and things I can do for her. Ask her advice and call on her to see how she’s doing. She’d like that.

The light’s on, but the room feels cool. Hariba’s sitting on the bed, shivering and crying. “Where did you go!”

“I went to the Moussin,” I say. I sit down next to her. Her skin is hot and dry, her hair lank and oily. “I sold all of the wreaths you made but one.”

“I didn’t know where you’d gone!” Hariba says. “You were gone!”

“I’m here now,” I say and hold her and stroke her hair. “Sweet girl, I’m here now.”

“I was scared,” she says. “I thought you’d gone back.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. Oh, I feel bad. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“I thought you’d gone back to Mbarek-salah. I thought you’d left me here to die.”

“Shhh,” I say. “Shhh, you’re not going to die. I’ll take care of you.”

“You’re just a baby here,” she whispered. “I’ve got to take care of things.”

“I met a woman, a widow, at the Moussin. She bought your great big wreath, the one with the canna lilies and the roses and the lemon leaves?”

Hariba looks up at me and nods. I wipe at the tear stains with my thumb.

“Her son was killed in a lorry accident, oh, a year ago, maybe. She bought your wreath for him. She’s going to help me find a job, maybe as a waiter. Do you think I’d be a good waiter?”

“I don’t know,” Hariba says. She rests her head against my chest. “Maybe. You didn’t tell her, did you? You didn’t tell her about us?”

“No, sweetheart. I told her my wife was ill.”

Shyly, Hariba says, “You told her I was your wife?”

I kiss her forehead. Ah, I’ve said the right thing. “Of course. Now you go to sleep so you can feel better.”

“I’m not going to get better,” she says.

“It always feels that way when we’re sick. When we’re sick, we can’t remember what it’s like to feel good. Now lie down.” She’s prickly and unhappy. My poor Hariba.

“Do
harni
get sick?” she asks.

“Of course we do,” I say. “We get sick, we fall down and hurt ourselves. Just like you.”

That’s what she wants. Humans always want us to be human, but we aren’t. I sit and watch her go to sleep.

I share 98 percent of my DNA with Hariba, but so does a chimpanzee, and I know Hariba wouldn’t like to think she had run away with a chimpanzee. I’m not, though, I’m a
harni
. 98 percent is a number, 2 percent is a number, these are numbers I’ve been taught, but they don’t explain differences.

I was born in a crèche. I was the only male in a sibling group of five. More humans want female
harni
than male, so there are eight females to every male. I had four sisters just like myself. We were all one, in the way of
harni,
almost indistinguishable, until we were five years old and we had to start sleeping in separate beds and going to different classes so we would differentiate. We cried. We were cast out of paradise and after that we were never whole again. I learned that my sisters had names-Isna, Sardalas, Dakhla, and Kenitra-and the more they went each to her separate classroom, the more they changed in different directions. Our teachers had trouble telling us apart, but the other
harni
in the crèche didn’t. And because I was a boy, I changed most of all. I learned I had a name. I learned I was alone.

Before we were separate, we didn’t play like humans. After we were separated, we would mimic each other a lot. And sometimes we’d play pretend. We’d play that my sisters had been sold to a human, and because I was the boy, I had to be the rich man who bought them. I’d sit in the chair and order them to do things for me: “Brush my hair,” or “Bring me my shoes.” Then they would go off to their room, which was usually Isna’s bed because it was closest to the wall and farthest from the door, and they would pile on top of each other like mice keeping warm and lie together, happy in the touch and smell of each other. Alone in the chair, I’d feel the air on my skin and the way the edge of the seat cut into my thighs, until I couldn’t stand it. I’d say that I was coming to inspect their quarters and when I pretended to find them, they would take me in and teach me
harni
ways, until I declared I’d never be human again. and then I’d curl up with them on the narrow bed and smell the milky smell of us all together.

Of course, humans can’t be
harni
. They try when they have sex, even if they don’t know what they’re trying for, but they’re always apart and always alone. Once I grew up, I was always alone, too, but the difference is, I remember when it wasn’t that way.

* * *

Hariba says it’s silly to go to the Moussin with only one wreath. Her need tears at me, little hooks tugging while her demand that I be human, be the
man,
and take care of things pushes me away and out.

“Myryam might be there,” I explain. “She’s going to help me find a job to support us.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Hariba murmurs.

“Lie down,” I say, soft. “I’ll sit here until you go to sleep.”

But Hariba can’t sleep. “Am I going to die?” she asks.

“No,” I say, “you’re going to get better.”

Her head aches. She’s miserable.

“Do you want me to get a doctor?” I ask.

“No,” she says fiercely, “no doctor. A doctor would know that I’m jessed and that I ran away.”

“Okay,” I promise. “I won’t call a doctor.”

She’s soothed and she pushes the pillow away and lays her cheek against the sheet. She doesn’t close her eyes. They are vacant and bruised. I rub her back. She’s wearing a cotton shift and it’s damp and transparent-two white chalky tablets have broken her fever for a bit of time, making her perspire. The vertebrae are like the bones of a snake, a ridge under her sand-colored skin. They curl down into the small of her back and curve up over her shoulders to twist where her head is turned and disappear into her hair.

“You go on,” she says absently, far away.

She can’t be made happy. I sit for a while, hopeless and hopeful until she dozes. Finally freed, I pull the sheet over her and kiss her on the temple, and leave her lying there.

Outside on the street the hot dry wind curls the dust into a devil, turning and turning, and I follow it to the souk to buy rice. Maybe Hariba can keep it down. She was worried that I was leaving. I’ll surprise her by coming back early and feed her sweet milky chai, spoonful by spoonful.

A woman without a veil is bargaining with a man about oranges and there is something familiar about her that makes me stop. Then I realize, it isn’t that she’s familiar because I know her, it’s because she’s a
harni
.

I haven’t seen another
harni
since I left the crèche.

She cocks her head and flirts with the stallman while he fills her bag with oranges. He puts an extra in for her.

She turns around and sees me. She’s enough like me to be my sister-although she isn’t my crèche-mate.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“I’m with someone, but she’s sick,” I say. “I want to get her some rice and chai.”

“I know where to buy it,” she says.

I want to touch her and she wants to touch me, to collapse together skin to skin and feel someone else, but we’re here in this human souk, so I follow her between the marketmen. She reaches back with one slim hand and catches my wrist, her skin dry and warm, and takes me behind a stall into a space just wide enough for us and we wrap ourselves around each other. I smell her skin and her hair and her dry, slightly cinnamon smell. She nuzzles the base of my neck, smelling me. Relax. Relax, her scent says to me. We are one.

We stay there only a few moments, and then I follow her out to buy chai and rice.

“I’m in trouble,” I say. “Hariba has run away-she’s jessed-and we don’t have any money.”

“I’ll come back here tomorrow,” the
harni
says in answer. She gives me an orange. I want to embrace her again, to feel safe. I want to take her with me back to Hariba.

She takes me to a stallman who sells fragrant basmati rice, and then we leave the souk and find a tea shop where I can buy chai.

“Do you live near here?” I ask her.

“My owner does,” she says.

“In the Nekropolis?”

She shrugs. “I come shopping at this time most days.”

“Tomorrow?” I ask.

“Tomorrow,” she promises.

She doesn’t wear a veil because she’s a
harni
and therefore not a decent woman. Her hair runs down her back like a hot black tongue, shining in the sun. I remember the touch of her dry hand. The inside of the tea shop is cool and smells of mint and cinnamon. Hariba has to eat.

I have to buy a cup since I didn’t bring one, but they have green tea chai, which Hariba likes better than black tea chai. It’s milky, spiced, and sweet.

“Hariba,” I whisper when I get home.

“Akhmim?” she asks.

“I brought you some chai.”

“Ohhh, Akhmim,” she says, grateful I’ve come back. “I can’t, I can’t drink it, I’ll get sick.”

“Drink a little,” I say. “You have to have something.”

I sit on the bed and coax her with spoonfuls, as if feeding a child. I push her hair back off her face. “Akhmim,” she says, “I’m afraid. What are we going to do?”

“I’m here,” I say. “I’ll take care of you.”

It is the right thing to say, and her little happiness, her relief, softens the room.

* * *

In the late afternoon I go to the Moussin of the White Falcon, but Myryam doesn’t come that evening.

At night I lay down in bed next to Hariba, craving the touch of someone. For a few minutes she lets our skin touch. Her skin is hot and alive. Supple and smooth and faintly damp. I can smell the rich odor of her unwashed hair. I think of the
harni
in the souk and of her touch. I close my eyes. I’m calm. Lonely, but not quite as lonely with Hariba here beside me.

After a few minutes, Hariba shifts, moving a little away. She can’t sleep against me, nor can she stand it if I sleep against her. She can only allow so much touch.

The next morning the souk is full of wind and dust and women wrap their veils around their faces to keep the grit out of their teeth. I wait for my
harni
. Skin of my skin, bone of my bone, where are you?

At last I see her. Her hair is tied up, but pieces have escaped and blow around. She holds her hand up to the side of her face, trying to block the dust.

She beckons me and I follow her back to the tea shop. I’m hoping that we’ll go behind a stall again, but with the wind so bad the cotton cloths snap and bell and there is no sensible place for us to hide. It’s too easy to imagine the shape of our bodies in the full-bellied cloth and the stallman thinking we were human lovers.

The tea shop lets us get out of the wind, at least.