right between its eyebrows, and carefully squeeze the trigger. I’d nail it!”
He would nail it, and he would enjoy watching the bastard’s skull explode, its brains burst out, and its blood splatter in all directions. After that, he would go over to grab it and throw it on the ground. He would stand over its carcass, kicking it and stomping on it with both feet until its guts squeezed out of its stomach, mouth, ears.
If only... But Luqman’s AK-47 wasn’t within reach, and the bastard’s eyes kept watching him with their sharp blackness. What was it looking at? What gave it such a feeling of superiority? His nakedness, of course! Luqman’s nakedness, his genitals exposed, boxers bunched up around his feet.
“You strip a person naked,” the Albino used to tell him. “You return him to his roots, to the caves. Then you put him in the bathroom and do what you want to him.”
The Albino wasn’t an albino; he wasn’t even blond. He was short and had the face of a boy who would never reach puberty. He was like those kids who came too late, whose parents insisted on bringing them into the world long after the natural time for childbearing. Maybe that was why Luqman had loved him. Maybe that was why Luqman had adopted him.
“I am the Lord’s right hand,” the Albino used to say, “and the wrath of the Lord is great.”
Luqman used to ask him, “But why the water, Albino? Why do you force them to take a shower first?” The Albino would answer with a laugh, “I baptize them so they might be purified of their sins. So they meet their Lord repenting and seeking forgiveness!”
It is the Lord who gives and the Lord who takes away, and it was He who summoned the Albino one evening.
The Albino died. But not in a shelling. He wasn’t assassinated. No mobile roadblock snatched him away, nor did his enemies ambush him. Fate caught him at home one night, after his mother, Lurice, had prepared him supper.
He had gone back to visit her after a long time away. He brought her an assortment of bags and gifts because he was her only child and used to take care of her. Lurice wasn’t aware of the nature of the Albino’s activities. He told her he helped the poor and the needy, distributing food and supplies to them. She believed him, and she prayed for his safety, staying up all night and addressing the picture of the Blessed Virgin.
“My mother is a saint, Luqman. If she found out, she would die on the spot.”
But it was the Albino who had died.
Lurice told us, his friends, “He expired in his bed at night. A heart attack, most likely.” She didn’t weep. She spoke like a doctor giving a diagnosis to strangers. Her head was uncovered, and her hair was completely white, as though it had changed colors in a matter of days. And she didn’t weep.
We, too, his friends, who hadn’t learned the news of his death until days later when we started missing him and came to his mother for news, we did not cry for him.
Maybe we understood something more about him from that visit. We remembered that “the Albino” had only been a nickname, and that he actually bore the name of the saint whose picture we saw displayed prominently in the parlor.
The saint looked more like a fierce warrior than he did a saint. A naked sword was in one hand, and in the other he held, by its hair, the head of a man who lay prostrate at his feet. In his anger, the glowering saint stood ramrod straight like a tornado in the center of a field sown with fire, destruction, and the bodies of the slain: a picture of Saint Elias, the patron saint of our comrade—the Albino—who had died.
--
By the time Luqman finished emptying his bowels, the bastard had disappeared from the bathroom window. Had it gone back to where it came from, or had it used Luqman’s momentary state of distraction to jump inside and crouch in some corner?
Luqman returned to the main room and cast a quick glance around the place. It would be impossible to find it amid such a mess.
He went off to the kitchen and began looking around while spooning coffee and sugar into the water of the coffeepot. There were piles of dirty dishes, food scraps, cigarette butts, and spots of congealed fat. If the bastard took up residence here, it would think it had arrived at a five-star hotel.
No, he ought to visit Salaam as soon as possible. The house could endure no further neglect. He would stop by her place of work, invent excuses for her about some illness, his search for a job, or his embarrassment at being broke and unable to take her out for lunch or dinner.
Luqman extinguished his cigarette in the dregs of his coffee cup. Then he resumed lathering his chin so it wouldn’t dry out. He hung the small mirror on the window latch after opening one of the panes, and he began to shave.
The light here wasn’t any better than in the bathroom. They had shut off his electricity because he hadn’t paid his bills for the past six months. How could he pay after the peace came, when electricity began costing an arm and a leg? Oh, well. Fifteen years of the country being plunged into darkness, and then they turned off his electricity. He’d show them he had the eyes of a mole. That he was used to seeing in the pitch-black even better than he could see in broad daylight.
As the razor pressed its edge against Luqman’s neck, it traced a fine, dark thread that soon leaked blood. Luqman looked around, but he didn’t find anything to help him. He went over to the bed and used an edge of the embroidered sheet, the colors of which would ably perform the task of camouflaging the blood. It occurred to him to light a cigarette, but he remembered that his own pack had been empty for a while. He poured some aftershave in the hollow of his palm, which he splashed onto his face, opening up his lungs. It had been a gift from Marina and was always refreshing, just like her impossibly tall, snowy whiteness.
He lifted the dark suit he kept for such occasions from its hook and spread it gently on the bed. This, too, had been a gift. From Salaam. Its stark color, like a school uniform, resembled her. It was navy, and the shirt was white, according to her taste. This is how Salaam dreamed of seeing him at a wedding. Their wedding.
--
Luqman descended the stairs with a smooth chin and a spring in his step. If it weren’t too embarrassing, he would have whistled a tune.
When he reached the entryway, an odor of uncertain origin filled his nostrils. He stopped and looked over at the doorman’s apartment. What if he went over and started kicking the door violently, shouting, “Open up, bitch! Open up, or I’ll blow you away!”
Luqman smiled a bit sadly. That time had come and gone. There was a time when the earth itself trembled at his footsteps. But the balance of power was no longer in his favor. Now the doorman with the weird accent was backed up by someone stronger than Luqman and Luqman’s clan. The building’s residents all feared this man who never carried out the duties that fell on a doorman’s shoulders. On top of that, the noisy commotion of his kids filled the whole building, day and night.
Luqman opened the front door, and a big rat jumped in front of him. He nearly fell over backwards. He shouted at it, “In the bathroom window and in the doorway, eh, bastard?! Inside the building and outside too!”
Luqman quickly went out before his cries woke the doorman—who never granted him so much as a “good morning”—and gave him an excuse to verbally abuse Luqman in that weird accent of his.
CHAPTER 3
The light hadn’t gotten out of bed again that morning. The were still many clouds, wandering back and forth indecisively. They didn’t move on, nor were they persuaded yet of the need to dump their load of rain.
Luqman went down the street, thinking, “Perfect weather for a storm. Yellow clouds and no wind. Certainly time for a storm. Or maybe an earthquake.”
The shutters of the shops were closed. Where could he get a pack of smokes now? When he got to the festival, if he hadn’t found an open shop, maybe he would ask someone to give him a cigarette.
Here was that vile half-human coming, as always, between the cars! Coming, indeed, on his hands. Half of