looks taken aback.
‘I teach at the American University. I wondered if you would be willing to come and give a talk to my students. It’s a literature course. I know a number of your books have been translated into English and I’d like my students to become familiar with your work.’
He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
‘It’s something to think about,’ he says, putting his glasses back on again. ‘Although I’m not particularly good at giving talks, you know.’
Then he accompanies me to the front door, opens it and finally smiles as I step out onto the landing.
I turn to shake his hand and repeat my thanks but he has already shut the door behind me. On my way back upstairs, I feel disappointed, as though I have been let down, not so much by the writer but by my own awkwardness.
Once inside my apartment, I open the book. His writing is small, the letters even and clean. From Kamal, it says, To Layla and future friendship.
I arrive at Margo’s and find her rummaging through the bottom drawer of the big dresser in the living room. I clear my throat and she looks up at me.
‘The front door was open, Margo. I knocked but you didn’t hear me.’
‘Come in, sweetheart. I’m just looking for something.’
‘Shall I put the coffee on or would you like some help?’
She sits back on the floor.
‘I thought I had a photograph of John here somewhere. I wanted to show it to you.’
‘Oh?’
‘We were in a café with a group of friends and someone took a picture of us. I was sure it was here.’
I sit down beside her. The contents of the drawer are tangled up together, piles of papers and photographs and notebooks and other bits and pieces.
‘Why don’t I try to sort through all of this for you?’
I look at her and see hesitation in her eyes.
‘But these might be private things,’ I say hurriedly. ‘I’m sorry, Margo.’
‘No, no, it’s alright. I just…It’s all such a mess.’
‘We can do it together. What do you think?’
We begin by taking everything out and making separate piles. Things that look like official documents which I try not to read despite my curiosity, and others such as receipts for electricity and telephone bills which I place in a manila envelope and tell Margo to keep. There are also a number of books which Margo agrees should go on the shelves in her bedroom, and in the far corner of the drawer, a thick wad of money kept together with a rubber band.
‘There are a lot of dollars here, Margo. Are you sure it’s safe to keep them in this drawer?’
She shrugs.
‘It’s for emergencies. Someone might need it one day.’
‘Oh, Margo. You’ve been giving your money away again, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve got plenty of it, sweetheart.’
‘You need to hang on to it for yourself. You may need it one day.’
She gives me one of her sidelong glances.
‘You mean if I want to suddenly up and leave here or become incapacitated and have to go into a home?’
‘No, of course not. I would never let that happen to you.’
‘The only way I’m leaving this place is in a box, Layla. This is the last home I’ll ever have.’
I sit back and shake my head.
‘I hope that won’t be for some time yet, Margo. I need you.’
‘Yes, I know you do, but you won’t be alone always, darling.’
We do not find the photograph of John among those we go through. There are pictures of Margo as a child with her mother and sister and others of her when she was a young woman, either portraits or group shots with friends. She points to a few of the faces and tells me who they are but otherwise says very little and I do not try to push her.
I remember a fisherman when I was a child who spent hours every morning untangling his net after a night’s fishing just offshore. His small boat bobbing up and down in the tiny marina at the end of the Corniche near my home, he sat on a wooden stool puffing on a cigarette that was lodged between his lips as he worked, occasionally taking it out to sip on a cup of coffee placed on the ground by his feet.
He fascinated me, not only because of his tanned, leathery skin, his wild grey hair and the way his small eyes shone like pebbles whenever he looked up from his net, but also because he seemed so nonchalant, so detached from everything around him.
I mustered the courage one morning to go right up to him and, when he did not object, sat down on a rock and watched him at work. He looked at me and grunted but said nothing, turning his attention back to his net, his coffee and cigarette. I allowed myself to look closely at him then, the huge chafed knuckles of his hands and his gnarled feet in plastic slippers, toenails thick and yellow and unevenly cut.
‘Do they hurt?’ I suddenly blurted out.
The fisherman looked up, his eyebrows raised.
‘What?’ he asked with a gruff voice.
I froze with fear.
‘What did you say?’ he repeated.
‘I just wondered if your feet hurt. They…they look funny.’
He frowned hard, looked down at his feet and wiggled his toes.
‘A bit stiff but they’re fine,’ he said.
The butt of his cigarette fell to the ground as he spoke and I hurriedly stepped on it to put it out.
‘You could have started a fire,’ I muttered, shaking my head.
The old man burst out laughing then and I found myself giggling in return.
‘Cheeky thing,’ he said, reaching out to pat me on the head.
We became fast friends after that, though he only ever muttered a greeting when I arrived at the marina to meet him on Saturday mornings, and when we did make conversation it was always brief and to the point. I asked him about his nightly fishing trips on the dark, rolling sea and about what it felt like to be out there on his own and whether he would take me out with him on his excursions. The water at night is as thick and as smooth as blood and anyone who fell into it would be swallowed up in no time, he replied with a mischievous grin. I shuddered at the thought but still did not give up the notion that anything was possible, even for me, if only I were brave enough to attempt it.
It is late afternoon and the Corniche is bathed in soft light.
‘I grew up one street away from here,’ I say, pointing away from the main road. ‘I used to come to the Corniche with my friends to play. There was an old fisherman I made friends with, at that small marina just under the bridge there. I wonder what’s happened to him.’
Margo stops to look in the direction I am pointing, then she makes her way to one of the concrete benches that line the pavement and sits down.
I motion to a vendor on a bicycle to stop and I buy two pieces of kaak from him.
I sit down next to Margo, make a hole in each of the layered pieces of bread and fill them with the thyme and sesame seed mixture that comes with them.
‘Here you go, Margo,’ I say, handing her the kaak.
By dusk parents with strollers are walking leisurely up and down the pavement. Looking around me, I am once again struck by the mix of people, elderly men in fold-out chairs, veiled women alongside others in body-hugging