Adam and Eve

A Short Story Collection

 A Work of Art

             One day, an artist who was exploring nature stumbled across a rock, a rough piece with jagged edges and sharp corners.  In this unrefined granite, he saw a wild and natural beauty, so he took it home to create art. For days and weeks and months, he gradually carved his anger, engraved his passion, and imprinted his love. He chiseled his pain, shaped his fear, and grooves his hope. Finally, the rock morphed into a naked man sitting on a pedestal.

             Every time the capricious artist touched the statue, he infused a mélange of emotions into the vague image of himself. And when he gazed at his own creation, his art invoked a fresh blend of sentiments he’d not yet bestowed upon his subject. As many times as the artist strived to reshape the statue, his artwork transformed into a being even more exotic than before, thus less recognizable by his creator.

             The emaciated man with cadaverous eyes slouched on a pedestal was nothing but a plague lurking in his own dust in the eyes of his maker. He was tossed on the ground and cursed by his creator, yet he never broke. His appalling silence further enraged the artist.

             The deranged sculptor once grabbed the hammer to crush the jinx, yet he didn’t have the heart to break himself into pieces. One day, he took the doomed object to a bazaar and secretly left his artwork on the counter of a store packed with replica figurines and hastily fled his crime scene with a heart filled with sorrow.

             A few hours later, a woman who was standing a few steps ahead of her husband noticed the statue and screamed, “Look! This one is not fake, a genuine piece of art.” She picked it out from the pile of replicas, paid the same price for it, and took it home despite her husband’s protest.  In their house, the statue sat on the shelf in peace for only a few days. Every time the couple argued, the little statue became a topic in their array of arguments. The husband was not fond of the new addition and had no regard for his wife’s adulation for art. 

             The more she showed her affection for the naked man, the more her husband despised the carved stone and cursed its inept creator. And the more he detested the statue, the more she grew fond of him. Soon, the statuette became the centerpiece of their constant bickering. Once, in the middle of a heated dispute, she grabbed the effigy and, before her husband’s bewildered eyes, rubbed it all over her body and moaned, “He’s more of a man than you’ve ever been!”  The hatred in her husband’s eyes signaled the end of his sojourn in their house.  

             Later that night, in the course of a new argument, once again the statue came under attack. The raving husband suddenly stormed the artwork to smash it into pieces, and the wife snatched her beloved art just in time to prevent the tragedy. When the enraged husband viciously attacked his wife, she crushed his head with the statue clutched in her fist. The husband collapsed before her feet. Blood gushed all over the floor. The wife was as petrified as the stone in her hand when police arrived. She was taken away, and the statue was confiscated as a murder weapon.

For a long time, the silent statue was paraded in courtrooms before the anxious eyes of a vast audience and members of the jury during her trial. When she was eventually sentenced to life in prison, the statue was condemned to sit on the shelf along with other murder weapons in a dark room in the central police station. The thinker co-habited with daggers, chains, clubs and shotguns for years until he was finally auctioned off for petty change.

             Then he was repeatedly sold in garage sales and flea markets and lived in different homes. At times, he was thrown at stray dogs and hit the nails on the head. Among other services he rendered, he served as a book holder, a paperweight, and a doorstop.  Until one day a man tripped over this amorphous object and fell. He furiously picked up the carved stone and threw it out the window cursing it under his breath.

             The statue hit the ground and shattered. His entire body scattered on the pavement and his head landed under a bush. His nose broke, his lips chipped and his chin scarred. His face cracked, his neck fractured, and his ears marred. He was not recognizable anymore. Once again he’d turned into what he was before, a crude piece of rock with rough edges and sharp corners. He remained there until a torrential rain swept him off into a creek and he traveled a long distance by the water.

             One day, two children found him on the river’s bank. The little boy used him to draw pictures on the ground. The damaged rock managed to draw a horse and a bicycle on the sidewalk for the boy before he was completely deformed. His eyes were filled with dirt and his ears all worn off. 

             The boy tossed the rock on the ground and the little girl picked it up. In this little rock, she saw a face and took it home.  She washed his hair, removed the dirt from his eyes and wiped the scars off his face with her gentle touch. At the dinner table, she placed him next to her plate, caressed his face and kissed him on the cheek. Her mother noticed the rock and her daughter’s affection toward it. 

             “Are you collecting rocks sweetie?“ she asked.

             “No, mommy,” the little girl replied, “this is a face. See!”

She showed the blemished statue head to her parents. They

exchanged a puzzled look and smiled. 

             From that day on, he stayed on the desk by the lamp in her room. His face shone by the nightlight at bedtime when she told him the events of her day. The statue remained her soul mate for years to come. With him she shared all her dreams, her secrets and her hopes. And only once the ruined piece of art shared his life story and she pledged to write his tale.      

  End of a Day

On the last day of the month, when Mr. Mahan woke, he had a bitter taste in his mouth.  After breakfast, he checked his mailbox and found a letter, one with no sender’s address. When he looked at the recipient’s address, he was puzzled; it was written in his own handwriting as it was written today. He freaked out when he noticed the postmark. The letter was mailed over 30 years ago.

He wondered how he could have received a letter after all these years, a letter he’d sent to himself. He held the envelope with two hands before his dazzled eyes and murmured, “In the last thirty years, I’ve moved three or four times. Now I’m supposed to believe that the damn post office has tracked me down after all these years to deliver this letter? A letter I never wrote?”

Puzzled by the letter in his hands, he opened the envelope and warily touched every word of every line with his trembling fingers, and when he was convinced the letter was real, he dared to read it.

It was a chronicle of his life. His most intimate thoughts and ambitions were all written down, every childhood dream and youthful mistake and memories and events he’d never shared with anyone. For a moment, he thought maybe this letter was a result of a hallucination, but this simple explanation was not acceptable to Mr. Mahan. He then methodically folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and put it deep in his coat’s pocket, determined to decipher this mystery later.

Today was the end of the month, the day he went to the retirement affairs office to receive his pension check, his only income. Not a lot of money, but enough to keep his life running, to pay rent for his one-bedroom apartment, put food on the table, and spare change for cigarettes and occasional newspaper.

When he arrived at the office, he faced a long line of retirees already formed. They always arrived an hour or two before time and stood in line. Waiting was their favorite hobby. They shared their life stories with total strangers, complained about their emotionally distant children, the small size of their retirement benefits, and missed golden opportunities in youth. And if the line was long enough, they bragged about their passionate loves, heroism in wars, and political activism.

In the company of his peers, Mr. Mahan always made up outrageous stories to dazzle his audience, and on the way home, he laughed at his sizzling lies and the foolishness of others. Pulling their legs was his favorite pastime. Today he told everyone the story of the letter he’d received but surprisingly, no one was amazed. He even took the letter out of his pocket and paraded it before their eyes and still didn’t receive much reaction from his audience.

When he realized he couldn’t convince them of the bizarre nature of this event, he turned his back and cursed them under his breath, “These idiots don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy. The older they get, the dumber they become.”

Finally, it was his turn to receive his check. He stepped to the desk and stated his name, date of birth, and birth certificate number. The chubby clerk fanned through the checks and asked his name again. The patron made a funny face while spelling his name, “M A H A N”. Once again, the clerk went through the checks, searched the computer list, and informed Mr. Mahan his name was not on the list; therefore, he would no longer receive benefits.

“What do you mean you can’t find my name? My life depends on this check. What do you expect me to do, lay my head down and die?” He shrieked.

The city clerk politely responded, “Your name is not on our payroll. As far as we are concerned, you don’t exist; therefore, you are not qualified to receive monthly benefits. Sorry, but there is nothing I can do. Next, please.”

“Only government work can be this stupid! I’m standing in front of you, and you are telling me I’m dead. I’ll prove how alive I am.” He turned his back to her, shook his butt, “Can a dead man shake his booty like this?” He asked.

Clerk took a deep breath and pleaded, “Don’t waste our time.

People are waiting!”

“I don’t blame you for mistaking me for a corpse. But don’t make a hasty decision based on my appearance. I haven’t shaved today and look a little pale,” Mr. Mahan surreptitiously continued.  He then extended his hand across the desk and pinched her rosy cheek. “Honestly, have you ever seen a dead man this jolly?” he asked.

The clerk lost her temper, leaped out of her chair, and slapped the rude client. Before Mr. Mahan had a chance to explain, two security officers showed up, grabbed him by the arms, and threw him out of the building.

Embarrassed by the humiliating treatment, Mr. Mahan tucked his shirt into his pants, picked up his hat, and whispered to himself, “Maybe I was out of line a little, pinching was out of order. I should’ve had a word with her supervisor instead. This is how the government treats its dedicated employees. After 30 years of service and paying tax, these bastards tell you you’re dead right in your face to cheat you out of your money. This is not the first time, either. Last time they pulled this stunt, news leaked to the papers and created a scandal.”

             He gently tapped on his chest to feel the letter in his pocket thinking of a quiet place to rest for a while, “What a day, first this damn letter and now the fiasco over a lousy retirement check,” he murmured.

The dazed man strode for a while in the labyrinth of bustling streets until he found himself in a calm and serene environment. At first, he thought he’d entered a park, but to his right, he noticed circles of black-clad mourners. 

 “Cemetery or park, they’re both peaceful and green. The only

difference is there are no benches in the cemetery,” he wondered.

He then noticed a tombstone on a fresh plot a few yards away. He walked to the stone and sat down. A shadow covered his head. He took a deep breath, removed the letter from his pocket, and read it once again. Overwhelmed by the letter’s enigma and the day’s bizarre events, he suddenly lost interest in making sense of his day.

As he crushed the letter in his fist to toss it on the ground, he looked down and noticed the epitaph on the tombstone on which he was sitting. He stood up, took a few steps back, and squinted to read the script. He read his first and last name on the first line and his date of birth hyphenated from today’s date on the second.

“What kind of foolish joke is this?” Mr. Mahan murmured.

He then fixed his hat, shook his head in disbelief, walked away and

vanished into the garden of stones.               

 Gypsy                                                                             

             I was born in Ahvaz, a city in southern Iran. My family lived there until I reached 9 years old. Those days, we mocked anyone unlike us, nonMoslems and people who spoke with different accents were our best subjects. We took the most delight in scoffing at those who dressed differently.

             We teased a sweet Jewish family a few doors away. And the Arabs! We referred to them as barefoot Arabs, and they called non-Arabs Ajam, which meant ignorant.  We mocked our own aunts and uncles, although they were our next-door neighbors, and their kids, our best friends. When we exhausted all outlets, we shamelessly laughed at our father’s way of telling his well-worn anecdotes or Uncle Ismael’s loud and frequent burps. The idea was to have fun, and it didn’t matter at whose expense. I blame this outrageous attitude of ours on the lack of entertainment. Television was introduced to our family a few years later. 

             The most popular target of our laughter was the Gypsies. We were told they kidnapped children and drank their blood—we had also heard the same tale about our Jewish neighbors. But the Gypsy stories seemed more credible.  They were mysterious nomads. Although we knew nothing about them, we were convinced they were all thieves and murderers.

                I remembered Gypsy women wandering in our neighborhood from

house to house, selling kitchen gadgets and pots and pans. Under their colorful skirts, they wore more brightly colored puffy pants. They draped themselves in tin bracelets, chokers, charms, and tiny bells—even around their legs. Their babies were strapped onto their backs while older kids followed their mothers silently. As much as I wanted to play with them, I was both forbidden and too scared to do so.  Even at that young age, the Gypsies fascinated me. They were people with no past and no future. I always believed they were wandering ghosts, as I had never known where they came from or where they were going to.

             The only thing we knew for a fact was that Gypsy women were all fortunetellers. One told my mother that everyone has a Birthmate. The Birthmate is everyone’s twin ghost, born at the same time they are. When you meet your Birthmate, you die. So you must prevent your path from crossing that of your Birthmate.  She also told my mother that my brother's Birthmate was in water. This ominous prediction ruined his childhood. From that day on, he was forbidden from ever getting in the water. 

At this time, my father knew the chief of police. Once he invited my father to attend a Gypsy wedding and for some reason, my father decided to take me with him. Since the Chief was a friend of the Gypsy tribe’s leader, he assured us we’d have a safe and enjoyable experience. I was so thrilled yet terrified to see for myself how these colorfully dressed specters lived.  

             Once night, we rode in the police Jeep, with the Chief wearing his uniform and gun and baton on his belt. We bumped along for two hours through rocky terrain until we reached a remote hilly area. In the middle of nowhere and in total darkness, the Jeep stopped. The chief said we’d walk the rest of the way. I don’t remember how far we hiked through the darkness, but suddenly, the sky shone red from hundreds of little fires. These flames arose from drums with holes pierced in their sides. I was dazzled by seeing so many Gypsies at once, but I felt safe with my father and the chief of police by my side.  The Gypsy women were dressed as colorfully as always. All men carried shotguns. They fired sporadic shots into the dark sky in celebration. In my country, citizens are not allowed to carry guns. But Gypsies weren’t exactly citizens. 

             Girls danced to the music played by their fathers; the music was played on simple musical instruments made of gasoline containers with three strings tightly stretched from top to bottom. I witnessed a shooting contest. A rooster was held in place about a hundred yards away, and men aimed at his crown and shot.

             One more thing I remember about that mystic night was that a Gypsy woman read my palm. She told me my birth-mate was in a book. 

*****

20 Years Later America

“As you all know, all graduating seniors must go through a graduation check to see if you have fulfilled all requirements to earn a diploma at the end of this semester. By the end of the final semester, all graduating students must satisfy all requirements. Make sure you do this as soon as possible so you have sufficient time to add courses if necessary to graduate. Believe me, you don’t want to stay in university another semester just to take one course.”  The  Dean of Engineering made this announcement in the first week of the final semester.

During this graduation check, I was informed of a course deficiency. I lacked one course in the humanities department, a three-hour credit course, without which I would not be able to graduate in the spring. 

             In my financial situation, staying in school for one more semester was not an option. However, I had already taken a full load of high-level engineering courses while working several hours daily to support my family. I did not have time to attend another class. I sat with my advisor and shared my dilemma.

“Attending school for another semester just to take a filler course?” I reasoned. 

             He listened compassionately and advised me to go to the Art or English departments to see if there were courses that did not require class attendance.  Desperate to find a way out of this predicament, I talked to a few professors in the English Department. Finally, I came across a softhearted professor who listened to my melodrama.

“Can you write stories?” he asked.

             “I’ll do anything to graduate this semester, sir.”

             “There is an advanced creative writing course that does not require class attendance. You must write a complete story by the end of this semester. It must be original and creative, with a minimum of 1300 words, typed double-spaced with no spelling or grammatical errors.” 

             I registered for the damn class and returned my focus to the timeconsuming engineering courses. I shoved the thought of my writing class to the back of my mind until a few weeks before the end of the semester when I sat down and attempted to write.

               I wrote several “stories” but discarded them all. They were too real.

They were pathetic accounts of my life. They would not have fooled anyone. I could not have called them fictional tales in my right mind. I was too consumed with reality to afford fantasy. 

             To write creatively was one issue; to pay someone to type it for me was a more challenging one.  It would’ve cost $20 just to get the damn paper typed.  The only “creative” idea that crossed my mind was to cheat. So I did—with no remorse. 

One late afternoon, I rushed to the fifth floor of the university library and headed directly to a nearly deserted, half-lit section dedicated to out-of-print books. I was looking for books by unknown writers. I could not jeopardize my future by being sloppy. Hastily, I pored over several books well into the middle of the night, all from obscure writers, in search of a story that could rescue me. 

             I came across a book with no name on the cover, an anthology of fictions by obscure writers. I glanced through the entire book, searching for a fictional story to call my own, and I finally found one. 

To ensure my plagiarism would remain untraceable, I changed all the characters and locations and maliciously adapted the story to my life to fool the readers and make them believe it was mine. I then made copies of those pages and took it to the typist to type my crime.

*****

I graduated that year. Those years seem long gone, and now I feel the burden of guilt for the crime I’ve committed. I don’t remember the original story anymore or recall the characters. I don’t even know how much I altered the plot to serve my purpose. 

             I respectfully urge all readers of this text to see if they have read this story before and if they know who the writer was.   

Hook 

             As I do every night, I took just a sip of water before I went to bed. If I drink more, I wake up in the middle of the night for a trip to the bathroom, and the tormenting insomnia afterward is inevitable. I’ve learned by experience that water at night epitomizes shattered dreams and painful awakening. Then I tucked myself in, and just before closing my eyes, I glanced at the image of myself victoriously parading my prized catch dangling from the fishing line wrapped around my wrist hanging in the frame above my bed.

             That day, I skillfully kept my bait just a tad below the surface and held the pole straight up in the air, making sure the fish didn’t sense its presence. Then I wobbled the pole to bring the bait to life and to lure the fish. From time to time, I sensed a nibbling on my bait, but I didn’t react; I knew better. I was not after the little ones. Patience is the key to success, and sure enough, it paid off handsomely again. In a matter of minutes, an enormous fish as large as its predator opened his mouth wide to snatch its prey, and in one swift tug of the line at the precise moment, I had him hooked.

             Every lasting second of that ecstasy is vividly engraved on my brain and stayed with me throughout the years, and the snapshot of the reward immortalized on my bedroom wall. I even secured the same fishing line tied to the original hook dangling over the picture of the fish’s mouth to give my trophy the bitter taste of the harsh reality. The superimposition of the real hook on the image was a genius idea. The hook in the lifeless creature’s mouth sparkled in my dark room for years to come.

Since then, his opaque black eyes pierced through me as painfully

as the solid bronze hook pierced his blood-crusted mouth.

             That night, I went to sleep, and despite all my precautions, I woke in the middle of the night. As I barely opened my eyes to check the time, I noticed the glowing 3:00 am on the digital clock dancing in the dark. Then I realized I was floating on rising water. My bed was in water, along with everything else in the room. The entire house was flooded. I’d had many bizarre nightmares, but this one was unbelievable because it was not one.

             Every piece of furniture in the house was either submerged or floating. I managed to open the window just in time to witness the entire neighborhood sharing the same destiny.  I swam outside and faced a raging river running where the street was yesterday. People, pets, and furniture were all afloat. The eerie tranquility hovering over this catastrophe was incomprehensible. Everyone was calm. Most people were still asleep in their beds on the river. I saw a man and a woman making love, babies were in sound sleep in their cradles, and I could hear dogs snoring, all on the waves.

             The water was washing everyone away, yet no one was alarmed. I

could go back to sleep and drift away with the flow, but I decided to stay home and welcome my new life. 

             It took me some time, but I finally adapted to my new environment and gradually morphed into an aquatic creature. The only thing water took away from me was my memories of my previous life. Later, I grew scales on my skin and several sets of fins. Then, I developed a new respiratory system that allowed me to immerse myself in water for as long as I wished. I have a tail to provide thrust and acceleration while I swim. My eyesight evolved to adapt to my marine environment, and now I can masterfully dodge the obstacles in my way in the darkness.

               I feed on bugs, worms, flies, gnats, and occasionally a fish or two if

I happen to stumble across one. I freely roam around my natural habitat, but I’m not immune to pain.  I’ve scarred myself numerously when I tried to tunnel through the disintegrating furniture of my house, but I always managed to escape danger throughout my life as a fish.

             One day, when I was so hungry, desperately searching for food, I noticed the shadow of a fish flapping his tail on the water in my bedroom. Hysterically, I rushed to snatch my prey, emerged from water, opened my mouth wide, and swallowed the fish in one swift action, and suddenly a piece of sharp metal ripped my mouth. The more I struggled to free myself, the harder the razor edge barbs on the hook injured my face. Finally, I stopped resisting as I realized how securely the hook was wedged in my flesh. 

             From that day on, my entire body flaps in the water while my head is stuck above the surface with my mouth wide open. I ingest bugs and flies if they accidentally get trapped in my mouth, and that’s how I survive. Every night before I go to sleep, I see the victorious look on the man’s face holding me by the fishing line wrapped around his wrist, parading his prized catch.

Since then, his opaque black eyes pierced through me as painfully

as the solid bronze hook pierced my blood-crusted mouth.      

 Prize     

             After getting home, exhausted from another hectic day at work, I threw myself on the sofa and turned on the television. Once again, I’d fallen into my routine, lying on the couch, flipping through the channels aimlessly. I was not in the mood to do anything, and I just could not bear thinking of the pile of paperwork on my desk waiting for me tomorrow morning.  

As I dozed off, that annoying telephone rang it shattered my serenity.  Ignoring the first ring brought the second one, more irritating than the previous one, and the third, which pierced my head. I stretched my torso just far enough to reach the handset.

“Hello!”

“Good evening, Sir. I’m calling from Happy Ending. You’ve been selected to win a prize.”

Another shrewd telemarketer disturbed my rest to sell me something I didn’t need. Nobody just gives away a prize with no strings attached. I’ve heard my fair share of sales pitches in this country. I did what anyone would do in the same situation, without allowing him to continue, I gave him a piece of my mind.

“Sorry, I’m not interested. Have a good day.”

  I slammed the telephone down, cursing him under my breath.

Nothing is more annoying than listening to a sales pitch. The more reluctant you are, the harder they sell. They wear you down until you give in. Before you know it, you have purchased junk, and there it sits in your living room; you trip over it every night on the way to the sofa. You curse it and the person who sold it to you, and the worst part is you pay for it every month for the rest of your life. This call was no exception. I hung up. Rude? Perhaps. Sorry? Hell no.  

As I turned my attention back to flipping through channels, the ringing came again. This time, I leapt off the sofa and picked up the receiver.

 “Hello.” I snarled a furious greeting.

“Good evening, Sir. I am calling from Happy Ending. You have been selected to win a prize.”

“I said no. When you called me the first time, you were doing your job. Calling me a second time makes you a nuisance. This is an invasion of my privacy, and illegal.”

“Sir, you won a prize, and I am not trying to sell you anything. My job is to ensure winners are properly notified. That’s all.” 

“I don’t care about your prize.  Don’t you understand English, or

maybe it’s my foreign accent, you don’t understand?”  

I took a deep breath and calmly added, “I’m tired and not interested in any prize.  Spare me the sales pitch.  Now, are you a rookie or someone who won’t take no for an answer?”  

“Neither one, Sir. Please forgive me for disturbing you. Have a

wonderful day.”

“But wait.” I said, “I’ve never been lucky in my entire life. my marriage, my horrible job, and two car accidents that nearly took my life are just a few examples. So, what is my prize; what have I won? And it better be good.”  

“You have won a luxurious casket with a choice of satin interior lining, solid Mahogany construction in a polished natural finish with elegantly rounded corners. It comes with brushed bronze handles and a matching pillow. But that’s not all; you will also enjoy a prime site in the Restland cemetery.  Add to all these a marvelous tombstone with up to fifty characters engraved for your epitaph for free.”

Hysteria got the better of me, and I screamed, “Prize? A casket with a satin interior and a chunk of land in a cemetery- you call that a prize? This is why you called me not once but twice? For a casket, do you really think I care about the color of the lining or what I want for an epitaph? I can’t believe this. My life has been unlucky, but I am not dead, not even close.”

The man on the other end of the line was patient as I shrieked at

him.

“Sir,” he said, “The casket and the plot are all yours. I have personally seen this land, and it is breathtaking. It overlooks a lake and the view is stunning. The blue water shines through lush tree leaves. Oh, it’s charming.”  

Why would someone waste his time on a prank like this?  I wondered. Suddenly, my mind clicked, okay, if he wants to play this game, why not. What do I have to lose? This could be fun; there’s nothing on television, and my wife is not due home for at least thirty minutes.

“The issue is that I recently changed my mind about committing suicide. Things are looking up these days. Would you kindly hold the prize and check back with me next year in mid-June, please?”  

“All you have to do is sign the paperwork to legally accept the ownership and we will store the casket and save the plot until you need it, and as I said before, there won’t be any charges involved. This way, when you pass on, your family won’t have to do anything, we will already have it taken care of.”

Although the prize was peculiar, it made sense. I’d heard of the high cost of funeral expenses. For goodness sake, those morticians will rob you blind if you don’t have any prior arrangements. But I felt weird thinking about my own death. How could I possibly sign the papers? it was like signing my own death certificate. It was spooky just thinking about it. What kind of luck is this anyway? Why me? Why couldn’t I just win the lottery? Who wins a casket? It can only happen in America.  

“Is there a cash option?”

“No.”

“Can I swap the casket for a Lay Z Boy recliner?”  

“No, Sir.”

“I cannot possibly be qualified for this contest because I’m not a US citizen yet. Now I see how crucial it is to become an American citizen. You know what? To save your valuable time in the future when you call the next winner, the first thing you should ask is if he is a citizen or not. This country is full of damn foreigners. Please! Don’t waste your resources on illegal aliens. There’re so many of them everywhere nowadays. They live here for free; they live off of our tax money. Don't be fooled by their English accents, either. Whoever speaks fluent English and throws in a few “goddamn” and “shit” in every sentence is not necessarily a pure American. Thank you for the prize, but I’m not qualified.”

I was hoping to get rid of him, but it wasn’t that easy. He patiently

listened to me and assertively responded.

“The truth is that you don’t know when your time is up, do you?

Nobody does. Death can come to you at any time. Let me make a point here. You live near the airport. Just imagine, one night that you’re sitting in your favorite chair watching television, a 747 jumbo jet misses the runway by a few miles and instead of landing on the runway, crashes through your house. It could happen in a stormy night, the control tower makes a fatal mistake.” 

Being a sloppy clerk myself, I could very well relate to making

mistakes at work. 

“I guess so. You have a point there.”  

“In that case, what would be your chance of survival?” 

“Zip my friend,” I replied cheerfully. 

“Now, let’s make it more interesting. Let’s assume that at the time of this tragedy, you and your next-door neighbor’s Latina maid, Isabella, had taken this opportunity to fool around while your wife was out. And since you were in the basement, you both survived the crash, but the explosion left you unconscious. Now your wife comes back, frantically searching through the rubble, and finds you and Isabella embracing each other naked. Do you think you can explain the situation to your wife when you come out of the coma if she lets you come out of the coma? You know you’d better die in the plane crash than face your wife.”  

My knees suddenly buckled, and I collapsed on the sofa with the phone clutched in my trembling fingers. How could he possibly know about Isabella and me? There was nothing between us; it was all a fantasy. A chill shot through my body.  I’d never mentioned her name to anyone. How could he ever know her name and about an affair I had only in my wildest dreams? Who was this guy?  Why was he calling me? What did he want? Oh, my God!

The caller’s voice grew creepier.

“You see! By definition, you cannot predict accidents; that’s why we suggest you prepare for them. The prize is yours; it’s waiting for you to pass on. It won’t cost you anything.”

I wiped the sweat off my forehead.

“Who are you? What do you want from me?  I have not entered any

contest, how could I have possibly won anything?” 

“As long as you live in America, you are qualified. And now, you are one of our lucky winners. Our organization is called Happy Ending, based in New York City.” 

“You must be from Immigration and don’t even try to scare me back to my country with all of this nonsense about death. We are legal residents waiting for our citizenship. We have already sent our pictures, fingerprints, and signed tons of documents not to mention the damn $200.00 application fee,” I shrieked trying to hide the terror in my voice. 

“Next time, do your homework before harassing people.”

“I’m not from Immigration. You were selected because you live in the United States. We do not look at your past; we plan for your future. The prize is yours. You just need to claim it.” 

“I’ve got a better idea. I want you to give my prize to my boss, Mr. John T. Howard.  He is so old that he doesn’t even remember when he was born. This cheap bastard will not turn down anything if it’s free. He is the most shameless man I have ever known in my life. He dresses like a pimp in his tight black leather pants and red silk jacket. You can find him at the seediest strip joint in town. He is the one who needs to drop dead soon.” 

I could hardly breathe as I was thinking of my goddamn luck.  

“Your prize is non-transferable.”

             “Please, please leave me alone! This is a conspiracy. Who else but the FBI knows so much about the private lives of citizens? You don’t scare me a bit. I am a free man, and I will not stop voicing my political opinions and beliefs. I am fully aware of my constitutional rights.”

I was acting like a raving lunatic. The truth was, I had never been interested in political matters. But I didn’t know what to think, what to say, and, worst of all, what to do. I wanted to hang up, but I couldn’t. Deep down, I knew this man was not a government agent, I knew he was for real. He was calling me to tell me my life was over.  I had thought of my death so many times before, but I never thought it would come to me like this. I never thought I would have a prepaid death with a bunch of freebies.  

He did not sound like he had been with this death organization for very long. Maybe he was just a rookie. Maybe they reserve their veterans to kill the actors in Hollywood or politicians in Washington.  Maybe they send their new trainees to kill the foreigners first to build their resumes and work their way up.

The fact that he was a rookie could be a plus for me.  Since I was not religious, I could not expect leniency. So, my only way out of this was to buy him off. Everyone has a price, so why not God? But, I had to do it with outmost finesse. This was the chance of a lifetime.

“Did you say the lining is velvet or satin?  What choices of colors do I have?” I rattled on, “Is the casket waterproof?  I do not want any moisture in my eternal bed. Water damage is the worst.  Didn’t you say my plot is close to the lake?  Please make sure I am not too close. I don’t want the water to rise and my dead body floats around the lake like a fool.”

 “I won’t sign any paperwork until I have it checked out by my

attorney.” I was grasping for anything to prolong the conversation.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. “You must know, though, if you say a word about this to anyone, we will have no choice but to take his life as well; it’s a matter of divine secrecy.” 

“I want a painless death. I do not accept a horrible demise and no

compromise on this issue.”

 “Sir, I don’t have negotiating power. I don’t always agree with the way things happen around here, either. We are trying to change the way things are done, but you can’t change them overnight.”

I was carefully listening to every word he was saying to pitch my

sale and finalize a lucrative transaction.

“Traditionally,” he continued, “We would take your life without any notice, but we have been debating the morality of that practice for some time now. We are trying to modify the severity of death in light of the new millennium. We are asking the Higher Council to add more dignity to death. Take your case for example, you practically hung up on me twice and you are bargaining with me, this is unprecedented. Anyone else in my position would whip your ass in a second and smoke you before you get a chance to put down the phone. But we, the new generation, are trying to work with our clients and improve our image.”

Slowly but surely, I was getting on his softer side.  

“Can I make amends by doing something good before I go?”

“First of all, we are strictly prohibited from getting involved in our clients’ personal lives, and I am tired of you asking all these tricky questions to help you beat the system. You sound like a shrewd salesman to me.  I am a simple messenger who tries to make death a little easier for you.  I have a time limit when I am on the phone with new clients, and all calls are recorded for training purposes and quality control. Please, sir, for my sake and yours, let’s wrap this call up.” His tone of voice suddenly changed.

“I understand your strict rules, but remember, we are on the brink of a new millennium, and you are trying to get out of your ancient practices. Think about it, it really does not matter why I’m doing the good work, as long as I do it. Sure, you tipped me off and bent the rules a little, but you are not doing anything against the divine purpose.” 

“You don’t have much time.  As much as I would like to help you, I

don’t know how.”

Finally, I had him where I wanted him. 

“Let me compensate for being blind all my life. Let me pay for the years of free cable TV. Let me pay for every towel I took from hotel rooms or the headsets and life jackets I walked off with from the airplane…”  

“Oh yeah that would cover your sins!” His sarcasm scared the hell

out of me.

“What about cash?  If I can come up with some cash, would you use your connections to give it to a charity organization on my behalf? That’s least you can do for me. Just give me two weeks to sell everything in the house. Let me sell my car, I will get six or seven thousand dollars for it.  I max out my cash advances on my credit cards, the interest rate is high, but who the hell cares about these loan sharks...”  

I was begging for my salvation, and surprisingly enough, he accepted my offer.

“I don’t make any promises, but this gesture does not hurt your case.”

This entire ordeal was about to be over, but in a short time, I had a

lot of work to do.  For the first time in my life, I felt so pure and unattached to any earthly possessions. I was not thinking of myself but the good for others, the best feeling I had ever experienced.

“I agree to your terms, but you only have one week.  Next Thursday, at seven o’clock in the morning, the Salvation Army donation truck comes to your neighborhood. Put the cash in a donation bag, mark it clearly ‘Old Clothing for Charity’ and put it at the closest pick up point from your home. It will go to a good cause. Then, you will hear from me.” 

I thanked him profusely for his mercy and compassion.  Maybe I was the only man who was blessed to have contact with God or his representative. 

“Remember, you only have time until Thursday, seven a.m.”

The line went dead, and my torment was over.

The first order of business was to send my wife away for a couple of weeks. When she came home, I convinced her to take a break. I managed to send her on a trip the next day to visit her parents out of state without saying a word about my upcoming untimely death to protect her. God knows I’d failed to bring her happiness, so, there was no reason to bring her death now.

As planned, I drew as many cash advances on my credit cards as possible. Then, I sold my car at a bargain price and liquidated everything in the house in a garage sale. I even sold my wedding ring to a pawnshop for an extra four hundred dollars.

By Wednesday afternoon, I had turned my life possessions into cash. I carefully counted all the money, and the total was $48,569.35. Then, I placed the cash in a donation bag and marked it per instruction.

The next morning, I took the bag to the closest cross section from my house and left it with the other donations, but I could not leave it unattended. I had to make sure the truck was picked up and it was not lost or stolen.  So I hid behind some bushes nearby and anxiously waited to witness my salvation in the making.

At 6:57 a.m., an old Chevrolet truck approached the intersection with a young man driving. It suddenly stopped at the pile of donations, and a seductive young Latina emerged and scooped up my bag. I recognized the next-door Latina maid who barely had time to get back into the truck as it sped off.

*****

Two weeks later, the Messenger of Death and his new bride Isabella, sent me a postcard from Acapulco thanking me for the generous wedding gift.     

A Perfect Evening           

Answering the phone before checking the name or number on the caller ID is something I don’t usually do. But I had a good feeling about this and when I heard her voice, my instinct proved right. A call I thought I’d never receive. After a brief greeting, and before letting me say a word, she invited me to dinner at her house. Astounded, I said, “I’d love to come.”  

             “Friday night at eight works for you?” she asked.

             “Certainly, I will bring a fine bottle of Shiraz to enhance the romantic ambiance of our evening together.” 

             “Sure, that would be a nice gesture.”

             I was dead on time when I knocked on the door. A few anxious moments passed with no response. I paused for a few seconds, with conflicting emotions before I knocked a little harder. The rhythmic melody of her footsteps cuddled my ears, and when she opened the door, I was captivated by her lustful eyes.  She embraced me tenderly and her divine scent caressed my entire soul, a sublime aroma bound to stay on my skin until the moment I died. 

             Silently, I followed her lead into the dining room where the dinner table was elegantly set for two with a bouquet of wildflowers in the center and two lit candles. Through her satin blouse, every curve of her body teased my eyes and every contour fueled my desire as she pranced into the kitchen. She slightly opened the oven door and suddenly aroma of roasted beef inundated the air. I wrestled open the wine bottle and poured two glasses and handed her one. 

“This is the darkest full-bodied red wine in the world; its powerful

punch knocks you down.” 

“The darker, the better,” she commented. 

Overwhelmed by the unexpected call, her invitation, and the warm reception, as we sipped the wine, I was looking for chic words to compensate her graciousness and to apologize for my lack of decorum in our abrupt breakup. She sensed my anxiety and tapped my cold fingers with her warm ones to calm me down. I truly didn’t know where to start and she didn’t show any sign indicating I should. I had nothing to say and she said nothing of the past to validate my remorse. Oh, only if all women of my life were as considerate as she was.

             In a matter of minutes, the golden brown roast lurking in sizzling mushrooms, baby carrots, and red potatoes was on the table. She served me salad.

  “This wine is wonderful. The taste perfectly fits our evening. Thank you.”

             I smiled, knowing by experience that sharing a fine bottle of wine with a lady goes a long way and opens many doors.

             “I want us to have a new beginning. I went through a lot to prepare for tonight. You can imagine how difficult it was for me to do so, but I know it in my heart that I’m doing the right thing.”

             I lowered my gaze to the sizzling roast not only to alleviate the burden of remorse but to bask in the reverie of a perfect evening in the making.  Every sip of wine I took was a trickle of fuel added to my burning desire. I was fantasizing her moment of pain entangled in my moments of pleasure, and so determined to perpetuate my sublime climax engraved in her divine surrender. She poured more wine, but the devil in the bottle had already performed its magic. Enchanted by her charm, I was thrown into a state of trance, embracing the delightful moment of submission.

             She gently reached for the carving knife, and I admired her finesse in doing so, She raised the blade tenderly and paused as if she had doubts about cutting the meat. Then she raised the blade to her eye level and twisted her wrist to shift the knife toward me.  I was mesmerized by the two flickering flames, the reflections of two lit candles in her darkest eyes, when she swiftly thrust the razor sharp blade through my throat.

             Steaming blood spewed out of my neck; she must’ve severed the

main artery.  Moments later, though seemed like an eternity, she finally let go of the knife; it was now securely lodged in the thick tissues of my throat. The glass of wine was still clutched between my fingers as my glance was fixated onto her shining eyes. As well as she knew all my quirks, I was sure she sensed my dismay about getting blood in my wine and gently tapped on my lifeless fingers to comfort me. She then gently removed the glass from my grip and placed it on the opposite end of the table as blood was raining down on my plate. We exchanged no words during dinner.

She finally finished her plate as I was gurgling gasping for air before my head sunk to my chest. The entire tablecloth was drenched in blood when she poured the remainder of the wine for each of us and savored hers. I watched her delicately remove a tiny shred of meat from between her teeth with a toothpick, covering her mouth with a napkin. Before she pulled the knife from my throat, she just couldn’t resist downing the remainder of my wine. 

             In a matter of minutes, a rolled up shabby carpet in the corner of the room set aside for this occasion was spread next to my chair and I was gently nudged over and fell right onto the shroud. She got up and straightened my feet and wrapped me up only to learn my head was sticking out. At first she seemed a little irritated to see I was taller than the width of the carpet. She could of course unwrap the sandwich and reposition my body so I would fit lengthwise on the carpet but it would require more work, an additional work she was not willing to bother with especially after such a nice meal. I didn’t blame her for this miscalculation; after all it had been almost four years since we’d last seen each other. She gnawed her wine-stained lips, shrugging her shoulders signifying “So what I thought he was shorter?”

             She disappeared into the kitchen and quickly returned with a coil of heavy duty ropes, expertly looped them around the carpet and tugged me into the hall. She could’ve viciously grabbed my big ears and use them as perfect handles to drag my corpse but she didn’t. She knew how much I hated it when my teachers twisted my ears to punish me in school. They turned red and hot and I felt that shameful heat the entire day.  Instead, she seized the other end of the carpet and pulled me toward the basement until I reached to the first step. 

             She then sat down, positioned her feet on my shoulders and used the wall behind her for support and pushed me down the dark stairs and took a deep breath as I safely thud the ground. My head bumped on every step, fourteen times to be exact. The ground was already dug deep enough ready for my arrival. The dirt was neatly piled up along one side of the grave and a shovel standing up in the dirt anxious to conclude the affair.  She adjusted me in the tomb and began to refill.

             When I was buried in a matter of minutes an antique Persian rug covered the entire basement floor. She then moved the same mahogany table that I had given her as a present, right to the center of the pristine rug to celebrate our great times together.

After tending to me, she went upstairs, cleared the table and fixed up the dining room. She couldn’t sleep soundly if she hadn’t cleaned everything properly. The carving knife, she washed by hand. She would never put such a sharp object in the dishwasher! It was approaching 11 o’clock when she finished cleaning the mess. After taking a scorching hot shower and meticulously brushing her teeth, she tucked herself into bed with a smile on her face, cherishing our perfect evening.           

Abstract

             After debating myself for months, I finally decided to take the art class. I always wished to create art. This dream seemed within my reach after I read the course description in the continuing education catalog of the local community college. It read, 

“Discover the power of a pencil rendering as you explore line, texture, shape, and tone to create three-dimensional images. Emphasis will be on tools, techniques, elements and composition. This is the class to take whether you are new to drawing or experienced.”

             My aspiration was perfectly articulated by this brief description.  I was further convinced to pursue my dream by the supply list.

Spiral sketch book- 8 ½ x 11, #50 white paper, 100 sheets

Sharp automatic pencils – 2 pack, 0.7 mm

American natural wood pencils – box of 10, sharpen prior to class

Sanford Design multi-pack erasers – 3 types

Q-tips, one small box

A few cotton balls

             I already had most of the required tools at home, and no drawing experience was required. I purchased the spiral sketchbook at Hobby Lobby, and although I had many erasers lying around at home, I didn’t take any chances and treated myself to a brand new package of multi-pack erasers as instructed. God knows I didn’t want to screw up this dream like the ones I had before.

             I paid $129 online and enrolled for seven sessions of drawing class to become an artist. When registration was completed and the nonrefundable fee was charged to my credit card, I realized that the first session had been held the week before. I’d already missed the first class. It was too late to change my mind anyway.  If a dream can come true in seven sessions, who says it wouldn’t in six? I thought. 

             The next Monday evening, I drove forty-five minutes across town in freezing rain to get to the high school where the class was held. When I arrived at the destination, I faced a massive dark building hibernating under the razor sharp needles of frozen rain. The ice-covered structure callously had its main entrance locked, perhaps to keep out intruders like myself. The cold wind slapped my face as I walked around the building to find an unlocked door. Finally, I noticed a few cars parked by a glass door with inside lights on. Hastily, I entered with art supplies clutched in my shivering fist and looked around the room.  I was now ten minutes late.

             Anxiously, I paced a maze of long corridors, desperately turning every doorknob, looking for my art class. The faster I walked, the longer and narrower the hallways appeared to be. The walls were tilting toward me, I could hardly breathe. It was getting too late, and there was no sign of art. Maybe I was in the wrong building altogether. Maybe the class was cancelled due to severe weather.  I was losing hope when a shiny spot at the end of darkness captured my attention. I rushed toward the light and saw a woman pushing her cleaning cart out of the restroom. 

             “Excuse me.  Do you know where the art class is?”

              “No, Engles senior,” she smiled.

             I responded to her innocent smile with a salacious one of my own. The moment I departed, the cleaning angel enshrined in the fluorescent light blended in the reek of ammonia. I wondered if maybe learning Spanish had a higher priority than my aspiration for art. Despite the insidious epiphany, I diverted my attention to the task at hand as I realized that, as tempting as it was, this was not the time or the place to entice women. 

             Finally, the search ended as I reached a well-lit room with its door ajar. In the eerie silence of the room, I saw three women and two men, each sitting separately behind a large table, deeply concentrating on the set of five empty bottles posed next to each other. Each aspiring artist was gazing at the subjects from a different perspective. A short and stocky bald man was quietly pacing the room, keenly observing his students’ progress.  I, too sat behind the first available table without saying a word and began staring at the bottles from my unique angle. Either my late presence went unnoticed by everyone in the class or they chose to ignore the new pupil.  

             Every few minutes, the amorphous shadow of our instructor disturbed my concentration and blocked my view. His words, “Observe 70% of the times and draw 30%” were engraved in his ominous shadow.  First, I was feverishly cross-hatching the bottom of a short round bottle of whisky and then imposed the heavy shadow of the tall slender bottle of wine on the one sitting next to it.

             For two long hours, I delved into the sinful cores of the empty bottles posing naked, leaning against one another to create a taunting image. Their malicious curves, immutable symmetry, and wicked intertwined shadows threw me into a vague abyss of quandary. How could I possibly render their mournful emptiness, capture their obscure remorse and seize their long lost delight?  How could I ever portray the haze of intoxication, the mist of madness and the sting of remorse?  

             With great obsession, I explored the tender angles and timid curvatures of my models and meticulously studied their inherent traits latent in the depth of their shadows.  And the more I plunged into their lonely emptiness, the more I was immersed in their abundant history. I’ve selfinflicted a painful wound of observing an ambiguous past entrapped in transparencies of present, doomed to oblivious future. How could I portray the lost elation of a dull reality?  

             The impulsive strikes of my pen drew thousands of untamed lines morphing into peculiar curves separating me from the veracity of my peers in the class. Gradually, I found myself locked inside the dungeon of my own creation, deeply molded into the core of the bottles I was to sketch. I could see the distorted light through the unrefined layers of seemingly transparent glass between others and myself.  The feral contours of the pen rendered the vague outlines of me, an amorphous creature trapped in his rogue imagination.

             I was confined to a milieu so incomprehensible to others. To free myself from this quandary, I ran to every corner of the page to break away from the suffocating lines, forms and shadows I’d drawn. Through the thick glasses, I could recognize the blurry images of others consumed by their assignments, utterly indifferent to my conundrum. I could hear the instructor’s voice ricochet off the glasses insisting on observing the invisible qualities of our subjects. 

             Another hour passed. The class finished, students left and instructor turned off the lights and locked the door. Now, I’m skulking in the eternal web of my own creation in solitude.  In absolute darkness there is no perception of depth, shades are absurd and colors mere fantasy. In this dreadful vacuum of light neither can I create nor can ever art exist.             

  Cultural Relativism     

             “Have you met our new neighbors?” Bob asked his wife, peering out their kitchen window, sipping his cold beer. 

“Not yet. They just moved in a few days ago.” Pork chops were sizzling in the pan. “After they settle in, we should go and meet them.” She responded.

“They look funny. Where are they from?” He was ready to sink his

teeth into a juicy piece of meat, the highlight of his upcoming weekend. 

“They look Middle Eastern to me, but their two girls were probably born here. They speak perfect English. I heard them talking to April the other day. They seemed to be getting along well. They played for two full hours without yelling and screaming.”  

               “That’s a good sign. She can use some neighbor friends,” Bob said. 

“Yah, spending time with her friends always beats watching television.” She nodded. 

Right before they started with dinner, they heard a knock on the door. Bob opened. An old man in a perfectly ironed three-piece suit was standing in the frame. “Hello. My son and his family live next door to you. I’m sorry to bother you, but may I borrow a pot from you just for tonight?” 

“A pot?” Bob was surprised.

“Yes, a cooking pot,” the man explained.

“Well… I guess so. Kate, honey, would you come here for a

second?” Bob called his wife.

She walked to the door. “Hello. You must be our new neighbor. My name is Kate, and this is my husband, Bob. The little girl who was playing with your kids yesterday is our daughter April. We were planning to come and welcome you to the neighborhood.”

“Oh, they are my grandchildren, God bless them; they are so sweet. My name is Mr. Amin.” 

Bob looked over his shoulder and whispered to his wife, “He’s here to borrow a pot from us,” and chuckled.

Mr. Amin continued, “All our kitchen utensils are still packed in boxes in the garage. My son and his wife both work, and they haven’t had a chance to unpack yet. If you let me borrow your pot, I’ll be grateful to you, I’m going to cook for them tonight. Oh, only if my son finds out I’m going to their new neighbor borrowing a cooking pot! he never approves anything I do. He and his wife always say I don’t understand American culture.” 

Kate and Bob exchanged a puzzled look. Bob could hardly hide his sneer. “Can you believe this guy? We don’t even know him, and he’s asking for a favor!” he muttered.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it. That’s fine. He can use one of our pots,” Kate whispered back.  She went to the kitchen and came back with one and gave it to Mr. Amin.

Their elderly neighbor thanked them profusely and promised to bring it back the next day.  After he left, Bob shrieked, “What is he going borrow next? We need to draw the line now, Kate! He really needs a crash course on American Culture 101.”

The next day, in mid-afternoon, Mr. Amin came back dressed as sharply as yesterday with a pot in his hands. He thanked Bob and Kate for their generosity and returned what he’d borrowed. Before he walked away, though, Bob lifted the lid and noticed a little object inside their pot and took it out. It was a hand-crafted miniature pot. 

“What is this? You borrowed one pot from us, how come you’re

returning two?” Bob asked.  

Mr. Amin explained, “The truth is that last night your pot got pregnant in our house and promptly gave birth to this cute baby pot. We don’t know how it happened or who the father is. Nowadays, pot pregnancy is a big issue, but what’s done is done. In all fairness, since this pot belonged to you, so should the baby. Congratulations!”

Bob and Kate were stunned. “Do you like the baby pot, Mr. Bob?”

 Bob was overwhelmed by hearing such wonderful news from their neighbor. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Amin. This baby pot is beautiful. Don’t worry, my friend. It’s our baby, we’ll burp it.” He tried hard to hide his excitement.

When Mr. Amin departed, Bob was practically dancing. He paraded his beautiful miniature pot, snapping his fingers in jubilation, and said, “Did you hear this? Our cooking pot gave birth to a beautiful baby. Is this the same pot we bought from Walmart for $10.99? Oh, these naughty pots. We learned something new today from our dear neighbors. I kind of like him. he seems so wise and kind, let alone respectful.”

             “But he’s an old man. He doesn’t even live here, he’s just a guest. This is a handcrafted ornamental piece, we cannot accept it. Most likely, it’s not even his own. You shouldn’t have accepted it.” Kate complained.

             “No, my dear, according to my friend Mr. Amin, our pot had a baby in their house, and you know how pro-life I am. We’re going to keep the baby. That is only the right thing to do.”  This unexpected pregnancy and the arrival of the little baby pot had exhilarated Bob. “What a cute accent he has. Where is Persia, anyway?  I’m beginning to like this little guy.” Bob made several comments of this sort that night.

             For the next few days, Bob told all his friends and coworkers the sweet story of how they were blessed with a new baby pot. The miniature polished brass pot was shining on their shelf. Bob was so proud of his little baby. He dusted the pot every morning before he went to work with a smile on his face, remembering their simple foreign neighbor. 

As much as they both enjoyed having their new decor, Kate didn’t feel right keeping the little pot as a payback for their favor, and her husband adamantly disagreed. “I could not insult Mr. Amin by rejecting the baby pot. He acted based on his cultural beliefs, and we must respect that. We should learn from other cultures, my love.” Kate had never seen her husband this way before.

             A few days later, they received another visit from their new neighbor. When Bob opened the door, he was pleasantly surprised to see Mr. Amin again. “Hello my friend, come on in.

Come in.” He practically dragged him inside and offered him a cold

beer.’’

 “Oh, no alcohol for me, Mr. Bob. I’m a devoted Muslim.  I don’t want to burn in hell.” Mr. Amin sat down and continued, “I’m terribly sorry to bother you again, but I’m in dire need of a big cooking pot. We have invited our family and friends to see our new home and need to cook for a large crowd.” 

             Bob didn’t even let Mr. Amin finish his sentence. “No problem, my friend. We have a brand new ten-quart Dutch oven pot that has never been used before. You came to the right place. Don’t even think of buying such an expensive pot only to use once for a special occasion like this.”

             Without consulting with his wife, he darted out of the room and returned with a brand new pot still in its original packaging and handed it to Mr. Amin. “Who knows, maybe this chubby girl gets knocked up in your house too.” He winked slyly. “By the way, what does Amin mean in your language?” Bob was eager to know. 

“In Persian, Amin means trustworthy.” Mr. Amin responded.

“How interesting. I’ve heard your foods are delicious. I’d love to try

Persian food. Are there any Iranian restaurants in town?” Bob enthusiastically asked.

“Oh no, Mr. Bob. Don’t try Persian food in restaurants. In our

country, eating in restaurants is only for travelers and foreign tourists. It’s not socially acceptable, either. Besides, restaurant chefs can never duplicate the authentic taste of home-cooked meals. One day, I’ll cook Fesenjoon with duck, so you can truly get a taste of heaven right here on earth.” 

“I’m looking forward to that,” Bob said. Mr. Amin thanked them abundantly and left their house with a big pot in his arms.  

“Are you out of your mind lending our wedding gift to our neighbor? We have never used it before. It costs hundreds of dollars, it’s brand new?” Kate griped.

“Believe me, I know what I’m doing. Mr. Amin is a cute character. And l admit, I’ve been a bigot, thinking we’re better than others. I think we should open our eyes a little more,” Bob commented.

“I never thought I would ever hear such words from you, that’s for Goddamn sure,” Kate said.

Days passed, and they heard nothing from their new neighbor. Bob impatiently waited another week and still was no sign of Mr. Amin or their pot. Finally, one evening, Bob and Kate walked to their neighbor’s house to see what had happened. Mr. Amin himself opened the door. “Long time no see, my friend. Is everything all right?” Bob asked.

Mr. Amin did not seem to be in a good mood tonight. “What

happened to our pot?” Bob inquired.

“The truth is that this pot of yours also became pregnant the first

night we had it.” He continued with a gloomy face,” Mr. Amin said.

“That’s not bad news. We understand pot pregnancies. It’s not your

fault, my friend. Just give us our pot and its baby, and we’ll take care of it. Is the baby chunky?” Bob’s face was glowing.  

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately, your pot died during labor. there must have been some complications,” Mr. Amin sadly informed his friends. 

Bob was shocked. “Come on, Mr. Amin, pots don’t die!” he pleaded. 

“Sure they do, Mr. Bob. Your first pot had an easy pregnancy and delivered a cute baby for you. You believed me when I gave you that news, didn’t you?”

“Well…”

“And this one…Oh, what can I say, my friend? I think the baby

came sideways. I’m so sorry, Mr. Bob.”

Kate burst into laughter, but the sudden death of a $130 Dutch oven

pot at childbirth was too painful for poor Bob.

 “What about the baby, Mr. Amin?” he desperately pleaded.

“Unfortunately, the baby didn’t survive either. The umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck.  Please accept my condolences for your grave losses.”

Bob was paralyzed by the news when Kate winked at Mr. Amin.

             “Would you like to come in for a cup of freshly brewed Persian tea? Our tea is the best.” Mr. Amin kindly offered, but grief-stricken Bob couldn’t even hear him anymore.

The entire night, Bob was perplexed by the chain of events that led to the tragic loss of an expensive cooking pot and how he was tricked by a simple foreigner, and Kate laughed her heart out for the same reason.  

 Soon after these enigmatic cultural interactions, Mr. Amin and Bob forged a unique friendship, and each received a beautiful pot to symbolize this amity, a friendship that transcended cultural, lingual, and generational differences. To Kate’s complete surprise, Mr. Amin was repeatedly invited to Bob’s parties and was gradually introduced to all his friends during his stay in America. 

             During their last meeting, Mr. Amin caught up in the moment and drank a bottle of cold beer with Bob. After committing this unforgivable sin, he burped twice, quickly washed his mouth with soap and water, and humbly asked God to forgive him for his sin. Then he told Bob of his plan to return to Iran in a few days and pulled them aside to ask him a favor.

“I would like to share a secret with you. We still have your dead cooking pot in our home. As much as I'd like to take it back with me as a souvenir, I really can’t. It’s too big and too heavy. Do you think you can give it a proper burial for me?” 

Kate and Mr. Amin exchanged a meaningful look.

             Bob never forgot the Persian cooking pot experience or his friendship with Mr. Amin. 

* Inspired by an Old Persian anecdote       Déjà Vu     

After driving through the crowded morning streets, I circled the block for the second time and victoriously slipped into the ultimate parking spot: the one right across from my office. This unprecedented achievement brightened my morning and put a smile on my face. As I was locking the car door, I noticed a small-framed man standing on the sidewalk looking through the window of an office supply store.

Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a peculiar sentiment, feeling like a school boy again, a lazy pupil with homework full of mistakes, a student waiting for a severe punishment. My palms stung from the soulpiercing pain inflicted by the angry strikes of the ruler. Confused and shaken by this sentiment, I cautiously took a few steps closer to the man who was calmly standing there, utterly unaware of my suffering, gazing at the contents of the stationery shop showcase. I knew what the man was looking at: the ruler with the metallic edges, his favorite, the very kind that inflicted the most pain on my young palm.

In third grade, it was the last day of the New Year holidays, and my family had just returned from a vacation in Shiraz. In the midst of the commotion of packing, I’d forgotten my homework. How do I answer Mr. Azari? I wondered. Will he believe that I actually finished my homework? I wouldn’t blame him; he doesn’t believe a word of mine as I lied to him every opportunity I had.  

The man staring at the window was my third-grade teacher, Mr.

Azari, who frequently slapped me in the face for failing exams and not doing my homework. 

“You are a mule who will never make it! You will end up pulling a carriage!” The jarring words of my early year educator ricocheted in my soul. 

Now the same man, but smaller and slimmer, was wearing a much kinder face before me after over thirty years. The same man who posted my failing grade on the blackboard forced me to stand next to it and ordered all my classmates to shout, “Lazy, stupid, failure. Lazy, stupid, failure.” This humiliation was my daily routine.

I battled through the third grade and passed the final exams, known as Napoleonic, the lowest acceptable grade. After the last exam, to celebrate my victory, I burned my books and performed an Indian dance of joy around the fire. Summer arrived, and I had three months to enjoy life, school-free. More importantly, I was rid of Mr. Azari, the torment was over.

My exhilaration did not last longer than that summer, though. On the first day of the fourth grade, the principal gave us the news.

“I am sorry to inform you that your teacher has passed away. But you will not be without a teacher for a single day. Thanks to Mr. Azari, who has graciously agreed to teach the fourth grade,” he announced.

Normally, the death of a teacher was not bad news to me, but this untimely loss was devastating! My daily routine in the third grade repeated for another year. But I managed to finish the fourth grade, too. Thank God my father was transferred to Tehran that summer. We moved to the capitol for good. I was convinced that if I stayed in that school and went to fifth grade, our new teacher would’ve died, and I’d end up with Mr. Azari again.

After the fourth grade, I never again saw my teacher until today, but the nightmare haunted me for years to come. For many years, I wished to run into Mr. Azari once as I’d devised the most evil schemes; the completion of each one of them would have meant a happy ending to my lifelong torment. Now, it was the perfect time and opportunity to get even.

Mr. Azari wasn’t too old, but his back curved slightly. His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. I stood frozen, contemplating what to do next. I had to do something! I had to write the ending to the most painful chapter of my youth. I cleared my throat and nervously approached him. As I got closer, he sensed my presence, turned around, and squinted in an effort to recognize me. I stared at my newly-polished shoes. My heart was pounding under his intense gaze.

“Hello, Mr. Azari.” 

He warmly returned my greeting.

“Hello, I am terribly sorry, but I don’t recognize you. What is your name?”

 I introduced myself, but he didn’t remember. I spoke eloquently,

like a pupil making a presentation to the class.

“I am one of your old students. One of the worst and the most wicked ones. I am so glad to meet you again after all these years. You don’t teach anymore?”

 “I’ve been retired for many years. I served in the Culture Ministry for 36 years, and I now looking for a job. The teacher’s salary was not enough, now you can imagine how difficult it is with a tiny retirement check I receive with much less health insurance coverage. I can’t afford to put meat on our table every day. To hell with the meat; how do I pay for rent and utilities? Only God can save us now!”

I stood motionless, not knowing how to respond.            

“Please forgive me for talking too much, but my students are like my children. Tell me about yourself. How much education do you have? Oh, is this your car? You must be doing well.  Nothing makes me prouder than seeing my students become successful. Tell me, what do you do?”

“I am an architect. The building on the other side of the street is my company. What a coincidence that you are looking for a job; we are looking for office help. We could use someone like you. If you have time right now, I’ll take care of your hiring right now.”

Mr. Azari followed me to my office as a child runs for candy. I instructed the Human Resources manager to hire him immediately. Mr. Azari thanked me profusely for the opportunity and promised to be at work the next morning.

I went home early, excited yet perplexed by the day’s events. I was hungry but didn’t have an appetite. I went to bed early but couldn’t sleep. I felt as if I had not done my homework; something was amiss, but what I didn’t know. I felt as if I’d done something wrong and must face Mr. Azari in the morning. The sound of his vicious slaps echoed in my ears. My cheeks flushed red and hot. What had I done wrong this time?

  I woke early the next morning after an agonizing bout of insomnia, showered longer than any other day, meticulously clipped my fingernails, put on my best suit, and carefully combed my hair. I wanted to do everything right and face my teacher without fear. I went to work earlier than usual and anxiously waited for his arrival.

Mr. Azari didn’t show. He had never been absent from class, but that day he did not come. He never came. Later, I heard he died that morning.

Baby Bride*

The best day of my life was when mom bought me the Princess Saba costume in her long white dress covered with thousands of colorful tinsels. Her lush blonde hair falling over her chest was so shiny that when I stared at them, it was like staring into the sun. Her eyes were blue, the type that open and close. Every day, I combed her hair and touched her breasts, hoping one day mine would grow like hers. My only wish was to become a bride just like the Princess with blonde hair, blue eyes, red lips, and a white gown.  

Princess Saba always slept in my bed. As soon as she laid her head on the pillow, her eyes closed, and she fell asleep like a Princess as she was. She never woke by the barking stray dogs in the streets or by the roaring thunder. Unlike her, I was scared of both vicious dogs outside and the horrific sound of thunder, and worse than all, I was so terrified of Mohsen, the gigantic boy who lived in our neighborhood two streets behind us. Whenever he caught me alone in the street, he grabbed me tight, groped my entire body, and sneered, “I finally got you,” he always said. And as soon as I burst into tears and screamed, he let go of me and ran away.

One day, that I was really had it with him, I went to my mom sobbing, “This…, this boy…” She didn’t let me finish, slapped me hard in the face, and said, “Don’t you ever play with boys again, do you hear me, you stupid girl?”

But Mohsen would never leave me alone. Every evening that I was doing my chores out of the house buying bread, he was waiting for me in a dark street corner to grab me. He’d never leave me alone, even in my sleep. 

One night, I saw him running after me. I tried to escape, but I couldn’t; my legs were tangled up, and I couldn’t run. He jumped over me, locked me in his arms, and touched me as much as he wanted. I was desperately fighting him off me, but I couldn’t release myself. I screamed and woke in sweat. As soon as my eyes got used to the darkness, in the other end of the bedroom, I saw my mom was locked under my father moaning just like me in my nightmare. Poor mom couldn’t escape either.

 Maybe it wasn’t my dad bothering her; maybe it was Mohsen, who was now touching my mom. I was so scared, but I kept quiet. I wet myself, but I hid under the blanket and didn’t make a move. I was afraid he’d come back to me if he found out I was awake.  

Princess was still calmly sleeping in my arms, unaware of my terror. I opened her eyes a time or two, but they would close again. Oh, I hated that bastard. I wished one day that he came to me, I’d turn into a venomous snake and bite him seven or eight times so he turns blue, his mouth foams, he collapses and die.        

And now a few years have passed from those days. My breasts are growing bigger by the day, and their tips are getting harder. Lady Sakineh, the bathhouse administrator, told my mom that Mrs. Eshrat wanted me for his son. My father hasn’t seen the boy yet, but he agrees. He told my mother the other day, “Our daughter is fifteen now. It’s time for her to go to the husband’s house. This boy is just fine, he’s from a good family.”

My mother told me yesterday, ”God bless you, dear, you’re becoming a bride soon.” 

*In Farsi, Doll means Baby Bride   

  Insomnia                  

             “Don’t. Don’t make a move. Let me crush you right on the spot.  You’ll be punished for invading my privacy in the middle of the night.  I declared his death sentence with a swatter in my hand, but the fly on the wall wasn’t scared at all.  He was mocking me with his repulsive compound eyes the very moment I issued the death warrant. The second I raised my hand, he flew off the wall and crashed into the window glass and circled the room like a maniac.  I patiently waited for the right time. 

             After the maneuver, he landed on the curtain rod, and I took the rare opportunity to jump off the ground to strike him down.  Sure enough, I missed the bastard, embarrassingly so. I sat to contemplate my next move. Why would a little fly make it mission in life to torment me in the middle of the night?  We both knew there was no way out. The door was shut, and the windows closed; one of us had to fall tonight.

As I was fantasizing the creative ways to destroy my enemy, the insect callously opened another front in the war and suddenly flew right into my face. A split second before clocking me in the eye, he changed his path and violently circled around my head. Now, the only way to strike him down was to punch my own face.  This charade had gone on long enough.

He then flew to the top corner of the room where two walls met the ceiling and took a unique position to control the entire war zone, my small room with nothing in it but a few fresh canvases on the floor with a little stool in front, and the easel supporting my freshly painted woman in nude lying on her back seductively posing and now impatiently waiting to see the end of this theater. 

             As I had my eyes fixed on the enemy, I cautiously pulled the stool closer with my toes, lifted one leg, and stepped up. As soon as I managed to stand on the bench, the fly resorted to a vicious tactic to throw me off balance. He generated a head-piercing noise and circled the room too far for me to reach and too close to compound my torment.  Once again, I leaped in the air to strike him down and claim his life.

I fell to the ground, and the buzzing stopped.  The room plunged into an eerie silence; no sign of insect. Anxiously, I scanned every inch of the carpet, searching for a little black spot. He was nowhere to be found. I gazed at every corner of the room, looking for his crushed body, when suddenly I noticed the monster sitting where I could never have expected. It was lurking right in the middle of the long pubic hairs of my beauty. “No, the paint is fresh,” I pleaded in agony.

As easy as it was to strike him now, it was impossible for me to do so. I loved my art more than I hated my enemy. I was petrified, with my hand clamped over my mouth, realizing how much damage he could inflict on my beauty and how easily he could destroy me. The hideous creature was clinging to the most sacred part of her body, waiting for my next move. I had none as he’d already invaded my soul.  

             My only hope was that he wouldn’t make any sudden moves on my freshly painted virgin. I quietly dropped my weapon and kneeled before my art and threw myself at the mercy of my ruthless enemy.

             Moments later, and before my bewildered eyes, the repulsive insect started fondling my woman with his disgusting claws, and she responded to his advances by seductive shifts of her hips.  I could hear her heavy breathing, and I could see the insatiable lust in the rhythmic vibration of her thighs in pleasure. It was so difficult to say if the bug was more satisfied at seeing me in pain or seeing her in pleasure. 

She brushed her body on my canvas and took a more compromising position. My beautiful creation opened her mouth and gasped for air, and I could see the tip of her tongue moisturizing her lower lip. How beautiful her rosy tongue complimented the crimson of her sinful lips. Oh, how painful it was to see my love losing her innocence to a monster in my presence. How cruel could she be? 

With the lustful gyrations of her hips, she further tempted the creature, and moments later, the insect crawled between her thighs and disappeared. She then closed her legs and coiled her body, and her moaning and panting tarnished the serenity of midnight. 

             She was ravaged before my eyes, and the sharp pieces of her pleasure scarred my soul. The vibrancy of her flesh on my canvas revived my imagination in ways I never thought possible. With her every move, she created vivid colors I'd never thought existed, and with her every act, she made an exotic image I’d never dared to paint in my wildest dreams. 

             She was drowning in the colorful ocean of desire, and with every sudden movement of her sinful flesh, she artistically portrayed her pleasure with the colors of my pain. Helplessly, I watched an insect reshape my imagination, redefine my thoughts, and recreate my art.  I was condemned to witness my devastation for moments that seemed as long as an eternity until she was gratified in the climax of ecstasy and exploded in delight. 

             Finally, the dripping insect flew off my canvas, and my love vanished in a palette of fresh paints.   

Jen

             My ominous association with ghosts goes back to my early childhood years. Aunt Sedighe, my father’s youngest sister, lived in

Shoushtar, one of the oldest cities in the world, dating back to the Achaemenian dynasty (400 BC). Shoushtar used to be the winter capital of the Sassanian dynasty and it was built by the Karoun River. The river was channeled to form a trench around the city. A subterranean system called ghanats connected the river to the private reservoirs of houses and buildings, supplying water during times of war when the main gates were closed. The ruins of these ghanats still exist, and one was connected to Aunt Sedeghe’s house, where my cousins and I explored if we dared to.

             We were told that her house was the primary residence of Jens and their immediate families.  I never was a big fan of Jens, especially the ones who lived in my aunt’s house. I did not care for their demeanor as these creatures scared the hell out of me when we visited my aunt in Shoushtar. Although I was forewarned about Jens and their tendency to possess children, I never refused to play in the basement and explore deep inside the ghanat. Yet, the never-ending maze connected to her basement was too narrow, too long, too dark, and too creepy to conquer.

             My eldest sister, however, believed the toilet in her house was more terrifying than its Jens. It was so filthy that she did not go to the bathroom the entire trip.  At times, I ruthlessly mocked this historic city and its Jeninfested basements, entertained my siblings, and offended a large portion of my father’s family as a result. I was convinced it was because of my insensitive commentaries that a few years later, my aunt decided to move to Ahvaz and leave the house to Jens, its original owners. Not going back to my aunt’s house, however, was not the end of my encounter with “Az ma behtaran, the “better than us” creatures, a phrase I heard from my father all the time. From very early years, I had a restrained relationship with Jens, yet I could not avoid them. They appeared in my dreams, frightened me in the darkness, and never left the labyrinth of my imagination.   

             During the first six years of my life in Ahvaz, we had no bath in our house. Each Friday, the only holiday of the week, my father woke me and my two older brothers hours before dawn and took us to the bathhouse, hammam. 

             “Why so early?” We begged every Thursday night and always

received the same response. “We’ll be the first customers, better service and no waiting.” Those facts did not alleviate the torment of trudging drowsily through the empty streets in bitter cold.  No one should have to endure such an ordeal just to be clean.

             In addition to my lack of regard for personal hygiene, I had a more compelling reason to avoid the hammam in the early mornings. The creepy anecdotes my father had told us about the ghosts dwelling in hammams convinced me to remain filthy for life.   He told us the story behind the famous Persian proverb, “Hump over Hump”

“One early morning a hunchback goes to the hammam and faces a large group of Jens in a circle holding hands and stomping their feet in jubilation. Unaware of the nature of the festive crowd, he joins the festivities and starts singing and dancing.  The Jens enjoy his pleasant company and admire his good spirit. As a token of their appreciation, a Jen touches the stranger’s back and removes his hunch.”

             My father continued, “He leaves the hammam, cured. The former hunchback rushes to the bazaar searching for his fellow hunchback to share his blissful encounter. He tells his friend how the Jens enjoyed his human qualities and rewarded him for his jolly spirit, “They adore it when we sing and dance,” he said.

             The hunchback thanks him profusely for giving him a rare glimpse of hope. He obtains the address, and the next morning before dawn, he rushes to the hammam. All the way, he snaps his fingers, sings happy tunes, and dances with delight. As he enters the hammam, he faces a host of mournful Jens sitting with grim faces.  He does not waste any time. Entering the circle of mourners, he sings and dances. The Jens do not appreciate the stranger’s lack of respect for their grief-stricken event. To punish the discourteous hunchback, a Jen places his friend’s hump on top of his and sends him home with two humps.”

I was more terrified by the stories my father told us about his personal experiences with the “better than us” creatures.  

             “One early morning in the hammam, I was the lone customer with a few bathhouse workers. After relaxing in the hot water basin for a few minutes, I came out and lay face down on bedrock. A worker removed the bath towel from my back and meticulously scrubbed my entire body with the lathery loofa.  As he was tending to me, I looked down and noticed he had hooves instead of feet. He was a Jen. As horrified as I was, I acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. After he finished tending to me, I left him an uncharacteristically generous tip. Then, I hastily dipped myself into the rinse basin, swiftly dressed, and raced out of the haunted hammam.

                             As I was rushing out, the administrator, whom I knew for

years, noticed my nervousness, stopped me, and asked if everything was OK. I took a deep breath, approached him, and whispered, ‘Do you know that your worker has hooves- he’s is Jen.’ The administrator calmly nodded, pointed to his hooves, and whispered back, ‘You mean like these?’” 

             Every Friday morning in the hammam, my first order of business was to check people’s feet. Sometimes, I even examined my own father’s feet. Why did he know so much about Jens? How could he know so much? At times, I snuck up on the patrons while they were being washed or when they came out of the rinsing basin wrapped by the layers of towels and stared at their feet. My vigilant curiosity did not go unnoticed by other patrons.  I could sense people eyeing me, whispering to each other, and trying to stay away from me. I was not concerned about how everyone reacted. What bothered me was my strained relationship with a kid about my age whom I met in that hammam.  He was an acquaintance I cherished dearly. Although our friendship was constrained by my weekly one-hour visit and confined to the hammam, I grew fond of him, a friend whose name I never learned.     According to my father, he was an orphan and the adopted son of Khalil, the live-in custodian of the hammam.  We never had a chance to play together or talk much, yet seeing him in that morbid setting every week was bliss. Being around him made me feel safe and forget all about creepy Jens. But my peculiar behavior tarnished our friendship. When he saw me entering the hammam, he found every excuse to avoid me. I wanted to tell him the reasons behind my bizarre behavior, but I couldn’t get him to listen.  On many occasions, when we arrived, he was still asleep. I would go to the room upstairs and wake him. I could see the terror in his face when he suddenly saw me sitting next to him in bed. He ran out to the mezzanine. I would chase him, shouting, “Don’t be scared, little boy. I just want to play with you.”

             Soon after my last Friday visit, the hammam closed. The rumor was that it was possessed, and no client dared return. The deserted building remained intact ever since.  To this day, I wake every Friday before dawn and go to the same hammam, hoping to see my childhood friend. I sit by the basin, wash myself, and think of all my father’s spooky Jen stories.    

 In the Margins

             Rich gringos need their lawns taken care of and we take care of rich gringo yards. We do weekly mowing, trimming, and mulching, repair sprinkler systems, fix broken fences, clean chimneys, and replace blown shingles off the roofs. We’re a full-service company called Green Yard.

I started my business three years ago and worked hard and long hours by myself to get where I am. Now, I run a successful business with two trucks and a total of five employees, four of them cousins, and one is my fourteen-year-old nephew.

             With two of my cousins, I share a mobile home in a trailer park, the cheapest location in this city and closest to nice neighborhoods. The rent is seven hundred and fifty dollars a month plus utilities. The rent is high, but not if it’s divided by three.  I’m the only one in the company who speaks English so I’m the one who answers the customers’ calls.

We manage more than thirty yards a day in summer. Most of my customers are from subdivisions close to where we live, so we don’t have a long drive from one customer to the next; otherwise, with high gas prices, it’d be difficult to keep the business running. In summer, I can clear about two thousand dollars a month and send $500 to my family in Vera Cruse.  But in winter it’s more difficult to make ends meet. Grass does not grow, and cousins in Mexico having fun with senoritas. There are lots of Mexican chicas here too, but they cost too much.  America has spoiled them especially the ones who speak a little English as gringos say they’re high maintenance like some of my yards.  In winter, I do five to six yards a day by myself and pay the full rent. I can’t save money that way, but I manage to pay the bills. My major expense after rent is food. I don’t do my grocery shopping in my own neighborhood; stores here are filled with whites who don’t seem to be happy seeing Mexicans anywhere else but in their yards or on their roofs.

Every other Sunday, I go to the Fiesta grocery store south of downtown to fill my pantry and my refrigerator with beer, of course. In Fiesta, I can get five avocados for one dollar while here in Tom Thumb they sell them for 60 cents each. Onions, tomatoes, and jalapenos are three times more expensive here than in Mexican Mercado.  Although gas is expensive these days, my total grocery savings justifies the high cost of gas. I just can’t afford to be wasteful, especially in this economy.

             Yesterday, I had no yards scheduled to mow, so I woke up late and around ten o’clock and decided to go shopping. I drove twenty-five minutes on the highway to get downtown.  When I reach under the gigantic mix master close to downtown, I normally make a U-turn and take the service road to the Mexican stores, and then I go to the Fiesta.

Vicente Fernandez was singing on the radio, and I must have been daydreaming because I missed the turn into the dedicated U-turn lane, so I drove to the intersection to make the left turn under the bridge and come back to the northbound service road.  Under three layers of highways I stopped at red light and waited for almost five minutes and the damn light didn’t change. I was the only one needlessly waiting for green and monitoring the U-turn lane, ushering cars to the same road I was trying to get to. I felt like this light was programmed to stay red forever to punish me for my negligence. No other car shared my fate, I was alone. I waited another five minutes, and nothing happened; the red light was not going to turn green. Something was wrong with the damn light.

Impatiently, I waited a little longer, checking to see if there were cameras installed on the traffic light poles. There wasn’t any in sight. I didn’t want to break the law, not because I was a good citizen but because I wasn’t one! Undocumented aliens and cops don’t mix well. 

             One night, I was stopped by a cop because I didn’t have the license plate on the front bumper. I never had one and was never pulled over for that reason, but that night, I was. The officer said it was the law, and he was right. After that night, I paid attention to so many cars on the streets without license plates on their front bumpers. There are so many laws on the books that are not enforced, waiting to be imposed on people like me. The smartest thing is to keep a low profile and avoid unnecessary brush with the law. 

             Yesterday under that damn bridge I didn’t know what else to do but to break the law. I could not keep waiting the entire day behind a red light so I turned off the loud radio and cautiously made the left turn, hoping my felony had gone unnoticed.  This traffic violation would’ve cost me a minimum of one hundred and fifty dollars if I was caught. God knows in winter, I can’t even make that kind of money in two days.  

             As soon as the traffic violation was committed, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw no cameras on traffic poles or flashing lights of a police car following me, I sighed in relief; turned the radio back on and made another right turn after a couple of miles to get on the service road. There, I noticed a few police cars blocking the service road. About ten other cars were ahead of me, stopped bumper to bumper, waiting to be ordered to take the alternate route. It took another ten minutes to drive slowly up closer and see what was going on. An SUV was overturned on the road, two police cars blocked the road, and one cop stood in the middle of the road, ordering incoming traffic to turn into the only ramp adjacent to the service road.  A fire truck with its lights flashing was parked on the side of the road, and a few firemen were doing their duties.  One was sweeping the shattered windshield glass off the road, and the other was guiding a huge tow truck to park close to the capsized vehicle.  The accident didn’t seem to be serious though, I didn’t see dead bodies.

             It was now my turn. I had no idea where this detour would lead to, but I had no choice but to obey the officer. So I lowered my gaze to avoid eye contact with the officer in front as my truck was still missing the front bumper license plate and slowly made the turn into the ramp. Then I noticed it was clearly marked for high occupancy vehicles only; a huge diamond was painted on the road.  I was the single occupant of the truck. I’d just broken another traffic rule by obeying the lawman on foot. 

             At least this time, I had a good excuse for breaking the law. But if a cop had stopped me, I had a lot of explaining to do. I knew if I was caught, the cop wouldn’t even listen to my story; he gave me a ticket and advised me to go to court and explain it to the judge. It would’ve meant one day of skipping work and explaining why the violation was not my fault in my broken English to a white judge.

             As I was driving in the HOV lane, I kept looking for a way to get off the freeway and head back to my original destination. The damn lane was completely barricaded for protection and to expedite the traffic flow. I kept looking for an exit lane, with no luck. I ended up driving all the way back to my own neighborhood before I could exit the HOV lane and finally took the exit ramp. I was forced to drive twenty miles back to my home, wasting at least five dollars worth of gas and two hours of my only day off for nothing. I still had to do my grocery shopping.

             As angry as I was about my entire morning, the event of today seemed weirdly funny. I was hungry yet too frustrated to drive back downtown to do my grocery, and it seemed senseless to go back to an empty refrigerator. As I was debating on what to do next while driving in the neighborhood close to my mobile home park, I noticed a Salvation Army store and turned into the parking lot on a whim and parked the truck. Why would they build such a store in this town?  Rich people don’t need salvation; they have money, so it's no wonder the parking lot was empty. I went inside just to browse for a few minutes as I had no money to spend on clothing or furniture I didn’t need. Prices were all high for a store designed to sell used merchandise to low-income customers like myself. I walked out of the store, hungrier than before, wondering what to do next.  

             Before I got to my truck, I saw a man across the street behind a gas station force a little boy into his truck and hurriedly drive off and disappear. I could not believe what I saw.  His truck was the same year and model as mine, an old white Ford F-150. That was not good. What if someone saw him kidnapping the little boy and gave the description of my truck to the police?

The smartest thing was to get away from there before I was arrested for such a serious crime. So I jumped into my truck and rushed back home and forgot all about the damn grocery shopping.

             This morning, I turned on the television and watched the local news.

“The first twenty-four hours after kidnapping is the most crucial time to recover the missing child. Police is urging citizens who have any information about this crime to contact the law enforcement authorities or FBI immediately.” 

             Hum, I hope no one reported the description of my truck to the cops. I can be in a lot of trouble if one of these days cops knock on my door asking questions about the missing boy.                

 Lucky Night

“Congratulations, Mr. Grand! We heard of your success on the stock, the one you purchased a week ago and almost doubled today.” The security guard sneered and held the heavy glass door open for the investor banker. 

Grand called over his shoulder, “Thank you, Roger. Remember, nothing is random. Everything happens for a reason.” He adjusted the lapels on his pricey suit and made his way down the dimly-lit alley to his Mercedes Benz.  He heard a gunshot and dived and took refuge behind his car. He heard another shot fired. 

“My brand-new car is being ruined with bullet holes.”  The thought struck Grand as intolerable. Without thinking, he stuck his head out and waved his arms in the air, “Don’t. Don’t shoot!” 

Another shot pierced the darkness. He looked at the dazzling shine

of his recently detailed car and didn’t have the heart to use it as his shelter. Frantically, he ran toward an approaching cab, ordering it to stop. The cab lurched to a screeching halt with a horrific squeak.

The cab driver stuck his head out the window, “Are you out of your freaking mind sir?” he screamed in a heavy Indian accent. Then he exited his cab, leaving the door open, and rushed toward the millionaire. They heard another shot. The taxi driver rushed to the front of the cab and took refuge with the rich stranger. 

“Why the hell did you stop me? Don’t you see you are being shot

at? Are you looking for a companion in death?” he raved.

“A maniac is shooting this way for no reason.” Grand almost

screamed. “Take off your shirt,” he ordered.

“This is no time for hanky panky, sir! I don’t care about your weird sexual fantasies. We are in the middle of a crisis!”

“I need a white shirt right now, and I’m willing to pay you $100 for

it.” 

“Wonderful, sir, I am flattered. How much will you pay for my pants? I’ve heard a lot about the rich people’s games.” The cabbie smiled knowingly.

“I am not interested in you, God damn it!” The banker peeled a

$100 bill from his money clip as the driver tussled to remove his shirt.

“I am not planning to die tonight. At least not this way,” Mr. Grand

declared. 

The millionaire waved the white shirt in the air and shouted at the

shooter, “What the hell do you want?”

A bullet pierced the white shirt, and it flailed like a wounded bird. A voice echoed in the alley. “Nothing, sir. This is a random shooting; nothing personal.”

“Random shooting?” The banker shrieks. “This is not random. If you were driving and passed me by and shot me willy-nilly, that would qualify as random!”

The shirtless cabbie cautioned, “Sir! I don’t think it’s wise to argue

with a man who has a gun and is shooting your way.”

Grand ignored the immigrant cabbie.

“What do you want? If you don’t have anything against me personally, let’s resolve the issue amicably. Would a crisp $100 bill be satisfactory?” 

Grand snatched the money from the driver’s grip and threw his shirt

back at him. “We have no deal.”

In response, the driver seized the corner of his coat. “My shirt had no bullet holes at the time of transaction. All sales are final. No refunds. You took my shirt, now I’ll take your coat.”

“Are you out of your mind, an $800 cashmere coat for a lousy stinky shirt? Where did you get your business administration degree from; you damn foreigner.”

The two men were fighting over a coat when the shooter’s voice intervened, “What the hell is going on? We’re in the middle of a shoot-out, and you two are fighting over a coat?”

The cabbie called back at the shooter, “It’s all this man’s fault. First, he got me involved in a life and death crisis, and now he’s ripping me off.” By now, the cab driver had the cashmere coat halfway off Mr. Grand.

“Who are you?” The shooter inquired.

“Krishna Swami, at your service. I’m the best driver of the Sunshine Cab Company.”

Grand shrugged off the coat, emerged from the shelter of the cab, and shouted down the alley, “You shot more that ten times and missed me every single time. Do you know why? Because I am not supposed to die this way tonight.”

Mr. Grand then confidently walked to his car. As he approached the middle of the street, a truck suddenly turned into the dark alley and struck him. 

Mr. Grand flung through the air and landed on the pavement, still clutching his hundred-dollar bill. Blood slid from the corner of his mouth. He barely opened his eyes for the last time, gazing into the gentle eyes of Krishna sitting next to him. 

The cab driver covered the millionaire with his cashmere coat.

“You were right, sir. This was not your kismet to die from those

bullets tonight,” the driver said.

He then walked back to his cab and sat in and opened the passenger

door. The shooter emerged from the darkness and sat in the passenger seat.

“It’s amazing how he knew he wasn’t going to die from my

bullets,” the shooter remarked.

”Yes it was. Not many people are lucky enough to know how they go. But he would have been alive if he wasn’t that lucky tonight!” Krishna says.

 The cab with two men vanished into the black alley. 

 Moment

             He left work at 5 pm sharp, preoccupied with the faulty lock on the laundry room door entering the garage. Last week, his wife assigned him an urgent maintenance job.

“The door locked by itself, and I had to use my key to get into the house, make sure to fix it,” she said.

“I’ll have to get a new lock for it,” he replied.

And just to be on the safe side, he hung an extra key on a hook in the garage.  Every minor repair in the house could lead to an argument and a huge headache.

“I was busy this week; I’ll get it done this weekend. In the meantime, if you get locked out, just use the key on the hook high on the wall on the left of the door.”

             He arrived home around 6:30.  As he pulled into the alley and just before he turned into his own driveway, he waved at his neighbor in the house behind theirs. The neighbor waved back with a friendly smile.

             This man was the neighbor who was always working on classic cars and his latest project was rebuilding a red 1965 Ford Mustang in his driveway.  Although seeing a dismantled engine, a fallen muffler, or loose components of a cylinder scattered around on the floor was not a pretty sight, witnessing a gradual reincarnation of extinct species was truly exhilarating.  He’d never developed an interest in working on his car, yet his neighbor’s perseverance and endless patience and expertise in breathing life into a corpse had earned his utmost respect.

             As soon as he parked in the garage and entered the house, he snatched a cold beer from the refrigerator and checked his emails. Then he changed his clothes, putting his cell phone in his tee-shirt pocket, and walked to the kitchen to prepare dinner. His wife once again had taken refuge in her parents’ house for the weekend to stay away from him after an intense argument.  Judging based on the quarrel history and severity of their latest clash, he was certain she wouldn’t be back until Monday and, if he was lucky enough, maybe even Tuesday. He was looking forward to a relaxing weekend all for himself and determined to make the best of it.

He placed his laptop on the kitchen counter where he could watch the UN General Assembly meeting on nuclear proliferation on YouTube while cooking. He was craving chicken curry tonight.  All he needed was chicken breasts, curry paste, garlic, fresh cilantro, onions, and coconut milk. His stomach growled just by fantasizing about the aroma of curry stew that lifted his spirit even before he started cooking. 

             He grabbed the ingredients from the pantry and refrigerator and darted out into the garage to get the chicken breasts from the deep freezer.  As usual, instead of walking inside the garage, he stretched half of his body inside and kept his right foot in the door to keep it open and skillfully managed to reach the freezer and grab two pieces of chicken breasts. As he pivoted to get inside, startled by the ring of his cell phone, he swiftly changed hands and held frozen poultry by the left and fished the phone out of his pocket with the other. The split second before he got a chance to flip it open, and as he was still keeping the door ajar with his torso, both birds slipped and flew out of his hand. To catch them before they hit the dirty garage floor and not lose his phone at the same time, he lost his balance and fell. 

Instinctively, he grabbed the door frame to regain his balance and reached the hinged side of the doorjamb, but lost his balance completely and fell. The heavy spring-loaded door slammed shut on his right hand locked inside.

             For a moment, he felt like he’d been electrocuted. An excruciating pain zapped his entire nervous system and knocked him out. 

When he gained consciousness in throbbing pain, the garage was darker, and his memory of what’d happened to him was lost; he could not at first fathom his situation. Four fingers were crushed inside the jammed shut door, and his dark blue thumb was swollen beyond recognition.  His body had given out, and his brain was not functioning. The incoherent images of the horror flashed through his head, and once again, he passed out.

The next time he woke, his eyes were filled with tears and his mouth dry. His right hand was swollen all the way up to his arm, and the excruciating pain was ravaging his entire being.  His hand was morphed into the door as if it’d been sculpted by a surrealist artist with a bizarre imagination. Witnessing the ominous artwork he had become himself made him realize he would never be able to hold a brush to paint anymore; the mere notion was intolerable, and he sobbed silently into another coma. 

             “Cut the chicken breasts into cubes. Add extra virgin olive oil to a wok, sprinkle a pinch of mustard seeds and cumin, and turn up the heat. In a few minutes, seeds start popping in hot oil, unleashing the heavenly aroma…” the recipe ricocheted in his aching head before the ring of his cell phone jolted his consciousness.

His only hand reached his shirt pocket with a glimpse of hope to grab the phone, but the phone was not in his reach; it was tossed underneath the car, far from his grasp; the fluorescent light of its panel sparkled in the darkness for a few seconds. He stretched his neck and scanned the garage from his vantage point and spotted dozens of tools and gadgets hanging on the walls and resting on the shelves. among them a medical emergency kit and a stylish, oversized red panic button that would call 911 and communicate his exact location with one touch. He saw so many tools and devices mounted on the walls or resting on the bench, available to be used in an emergency, all of which were too far to reach and too close to compound his agony. 

             The very first time he passed by his neighbor’s garage in the alley and as he stretched his hand to push the button on his garage door remote opener, his neighbor thought he was waving at him, so he waved back. This unintentional friendly gesture was repeated several times until he realized he’d inadvertently demonstrated courteous behavior.  Since then, every time he returned home, they waved at one another.  Although they never met one another in person and introduced themselves, they managed to establish a remote acquaintance based on a simple misunderstanding.

             Blood was crusted on the door frame.  As he desperately reached for the doorknob, his wife’s warning pierced his brain, and his gaze was drawn to the extra key on the wall.  The small red dot on his cell phone was blinking. The caller must’ve left a message. But he knew the message was not from his wife; he knew her too well to expect the call.  In a way, he was glad if it wasn’t her call; otherwise, by not answering her call promptly on a Friday night, he would’ve created a whole new issue in their marriage. His swollen hand was now bleeding. 

             “Timing is crucial to cooking. Sauté onions and crushed garlic together but separately from the chicken…” 

             He stretched his neck to see the glowing numbers of the digital clock on the opposite wall. The time now was 1:30 am. Even if he screamed in midnight silence, he could not be heard. His corner lot house was the only one by a vacant house for sale. His anemic body was in the throes of collapse. He extended his entire body in every direction, yet he reached nowhere but a higher threshold of pain.

He cried for help, but his muffled squeal tainted with unnerving pain faded in his solitude. 

“Add chopped cilantro to the sauce and sprinkle some on the plate to garnish…”

Jacob  

Covering his ears with the palms of his hands, he tires after writing for hours, glances at the pile of papers on his desk, throws his pen aside, and walks toward his bed. The roaring wind rattles the window panes. He gets up by supporting his hurting back with two hands, thinking that autumn is not his favorite season. 

A voice echoed in his little room. He peers through the window into the darkness and sees nothing but his reflection. “Is anyone there?” There was no response but the rasping sound of the branches scratching the gutters and window and the loud hissing noise of the storm. He hears the voice again as he steps towards his bed.

“I’m here.” 

“Where?” he asks, wheezing. “I don’t see anyone here.”

“You wrote me, therefore I am. I do sound like a philosopher, don’t I?”

The writer looks at the clock on the wall. It is three hours past midnight. Puzzled, he runs his fingers through his hair. “I must get more sleep.” He chuckles as he sits on the bed.

“You’ve not lost your sanity, It’s me, really me, Jacob.” 

“Who?”

“You know who. You know me better than I know myself.  We’ve kinship, unlike others.”

“Oh, I’m so tired. I need to get some sleep, this is really weird.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know me, and don’t hurt my feelings by

ignoring someone who has done so much for you.”

“What? What have you done for me?”

“How many lives should I take to prove my allegiance to you?”

“What are you talking about?”

 “You fantasize a plot, and I carry it out flawlessly. This is the most

profound and lasting relationship of all. We’re blood buddies.”

“I must be going berserk. Only a lunatic argues with the character

of his book, let alone, with the most demented one of all.” 

“I need your help to escape this time, Something’s not right. You’ve

to do something man.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Get rid of me somehow, forever I mean, I’m worried.”

“Get rid of you, why damn it?”

“Why you ask? I can’t keep doing this, man, I need you this time. Just get rid of me, you’ve got to know how.”

“Your future will be as it was in previous stories. You’ll vanish without a trace. You’ll live. You’ll live in the hearts and minds of my readers, in the darkest labyrinth of their souls.”

“Stop talking shit man? Stop pontificating damn it. I’m not in your book anymore, don’t you see? I used to do it with no fear, no mercy, and no remorse. I had no hate. I did it just for the pleasure of doing it, just the way you imagined me, but something changed in me.”

“You haven’t changed at all.”

“Do you remember the old couple I whacked for less than a hundred dollars I found in their apartment? The money I didn’t even need.

My only satisfaction was to see them suffer, to see them beg for their lives.

But something has changed in me, I can’t explain it. Now my hands shake. This is a bad sign. If I get caught, I won’t have any alibi, any excuse.”

“That’s why you won’t get caught, don’t you see? That’s the beauty

of you. If you kill for a reason, any reason at all, you’ll leave a trace and eventually get caught. The idea is not to have one. That’s how you survive. Be terrified of having fear. Don’t you see? You’re as innocent as your victims. That’s how I created you. That’s the genius of you. No one can ever understand you, but everyone somehow relates to you. That’s who you are, the darker side of everyone else.”

“I’m too real.”

“Yes, you better believe it, you are real and authentic.”

“No one understands; no one knows what I stand for.”

“You stand for nothing, nothing at all, yet people are scared of you because they’re you, and you’re them. That’s the part they don’t understand.  But I do.  You suffer from a pain down deep in our soul. From a disease that more or less everyone has but constantly denies. That's why readers admire you and don’t know why. You’re the uncontrollable urge of all human beings.  If you were normal, you would’ve been caught by now. There must be no pattern in your work, no logic. Your cases and all your gigs are still open in four states because you are unique. But that’s not the end of it yet. You’ll forever. Your future works will mesmerize everyone.”

“I’m losing my touch, I get emotional.  Last time, I was terrified seeing blood on my hands. I’m becoming fucking normal. I am scared; don’t you see?”

“I have to go to sleep now, but don’t you worry, as long as you’re who you are, you’ll do just fine.” 

“I'm not only in your dreams, in your fantasies, what you write

comes true.”

“You’re as real as life itself. I gave you meaning, a purpose, and a mission; that is the art of writing. you are an anti-hero, and you will live. But now, I wish I’d given you a little more common sense. Leave me alone.”

 He collapses on the bed and shuts his eyes.

“Remember Julia? Julia, who was found dead in the woods three years ago? The same innocent waitress who worked in the Red Castle restaurant? Do you remember the day I ordered a hamburger and told her that her innocence would get her in trouble one day? Guess how many cuts she had on her face when they found her? Everything that happened to her was exactly as you wrote it.  Police had no trace of the killer and no clue of his motive, but you and I know exactly what happened,” the voice says.

The writer hides his face in the pillow not hearing Jacob.

“Two months later, you wrote about Carlos. The FBI is still baffled as to why a heavyweight boxing champion did not defend himself.  His hands were free at the time of the murder. No marks of any kind were found on his wrists.  It looked like he had cooperated with the killer! The shocking news of his mysterious murder was in the papers for months all across the country.  His horrific death haunted everyone in New York; no one was safe in the city anymore.  Finally, a year later, it was announced that cops had captured a suspect and as he tried to escape, he was shot dead.  That was the best they could do to put people’s minds at ease. What a big lie. But we know what happened, don’t we?”  

“Why are you telling me all these damn it?” 

“A few weeks later, news of the disappearance of a little girl named Amanda Cane was out. Just one week after that, police picked up a man in a neighborhood who was allegedly trying to lure a little boy into his car. This poor bastard was a repeat offender and was in jail three times for petty theft charges. His criminal record spoke for itself.  And he didn’t have an honest face to help him in the court.  They said they had found the victim’s hair in his car.  And that was that. Who better than a lowlife like him could pay for a crime he didn’t commit? His entire case in the court didn’t last more than a couple of weeks. The jury found him guilty.  Case closed.”

The writer gets up and looks up the newspaper archives on the Internet and discovers that all of the murder plots he wrote were carried out precisely as he depicted them. The details from police and reporters’ investigations exactly matched what he had written in his unpublished stories. The times and places of the crimes were identical. Even the names and addresses of the victims were the same. The only discrepancies between his writings and actual events were speculations and theories of the FBI regarding the killer’s motives and whereabouts, and those details were exactly what he had not written. Two innocent men had been executed for crimes they had not committed, as Jacob said.

Frantically, he rushes to the bookshelf and finds the manuscript of his unpublished works all intact. He rubs his temples with his two index fingers in wonderment and paces his small room back and forth. He then pauses, lights a cigarette, and inhales the smoke. While looking at his hands, he says to Jacob, “Your hands must not shake! This is the secret of your success. This is the only way you survive.” 

Fictional Character

From where I sit behind my computer desk, I can always hear the rumbling of his truck before I turn my head to see him shoving the articles of mail into the mailboxes. The mailman reaches our street every day around eleven. I admire his driving skills, the way he maneuvers his little white truck to fit in between the two parked cars on either side of my mailbox. Once, he affixed a warning on the box, letting me know that my car must be parked far enough from the mailbox to allow easy access.

Sometimes, the moment I see him stop by my mailbox, I storm out in the nick of time to give him a piece of outgoing mail before he drives off. And on occasion, he knocks on my door to deliver a package that requires my signature. Maybe I’m being too cynical, but there’s something about our mailman that bothers me; I just don’t like the way he looks at me. Although he seems to be a very quiet and well-mannered individual, because of his job he knows too much about the personal affairs of others, and that gives me the  creeps. I bet he pays attention to what I receive or send.

How else can he add a little flavor to his boring job? I know I would do the same if I were in his shoes. Snooping into the private lives of others may be morally reprehensible, but is surely an intriguing pastime that postal employees take for granted. In 

general, the main function of the postal service is to bring me junk mail, bills, and bad news, none of which I care for; therefore, I’m not particularly fond of the mail or the man who delivers it. 

A few weeks ago, as I was drifting in my fantasies and feverishly typing my new story on my desktop computer, I noticed the mailman trudging toward my house with a letter in his hand. Before he had a chance to knock, I leaped to open the door and startled him. 

He detached a green slip off the fat envelope, handed it to me, and said,

“Please sign on the first line and print your name on the second.” 

I sensed a wicked smirk on his face. He must’ve read the sender’s

address. It  was from a law firm. 

After he left, I opened the envelope and unfolded the papers to learn I was being sued. Hastily, I glanced through the legal mumbo jumbo to see why. Among the host of venomous words and phrases like justice and attorney’s fees crawling all over the legal document, waiting to bite, the words defamation and slandering caught my attention. I did what I usually

do in similar circumstances. I put down the letter, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath to calm down. Then I paced back and forth in the room, cursed my damn luck, and shouted every phrase in my profane vocabulary. This therapeutic routine did not yield the comfort I expected, as I realized I had to narrow down my cursing targets. Then, I snatched the letter off the coffee table and carefully read it to find out who I’d ticked off this time. I was sued by a character in a short story I wrote a few years ago. I could not stop laughing, 

seeing such a frivolous lawsuit. According to the letter, the personal traits of the villain I’d portrayed in my story exactly matched those of a man who I had never met. The plaintiff claimed that his character had been too accurately portrayed in my fiction to be a simple coincidence in an imaginative creation. 

I was held liable for knowingly slandering an innocent man and damaging his  reputation. 

Who would, in his right mind, take such a preposterous lawsuit seriously? I wondered. Yet the letter seemed real, so I had no choice but to authenticate the lawsuit and defend myself somehow. The next day I flipped through the yellow pages to find an attorney specialized in defamation cases. 

“Is it possible to get sued by an imaginary character?” I was equally infuriated and mystified. 

“You’re not being sued by an imaginary character,” the 

attorney said.

“How could I get sued for what I imagined?” 

“A real person is suing you for defamation. I don’t know this law firm, but if there is any doubt about authenticity, you may contact the law firm representing the plaintiff to validate the lawsuit.” 

“I already did. The law office is real, and the counselor 

whose signature is on the paperwork actually works there.” 

“Then, you’re in a real legal bind.” I sensed a biting 

sarcasm in his response. 

“Are you experienced in litigating defamation cases?” 

“I practiced in this area of law for more than two decades.” 

“Can he prevail in court?” 

“That depends on how accurately you portrayed him. Yes, he  may have a case.” 

“What are my options? What’s the next step?” 

“You need to respond to his allegations. If you wish to acquire my services, I’ll transfer you to my secretary so you can make an appointment for next week. Bring the story in question and any other supporting documents you may have. Did you have any income for writing this story, royalty, or advance payment perhaps?” 

“I’m a morbidly obscure writer. This damn piece was only once published in a magazine, and I received one penny for each word. The grand total earning was a whopping forty-five dollars and sixty-three cents.” 

“Let me ask you this question, and I want you to be straightforward. Is it possible you inadvertently portrayed his character based on a real person in your life, someone you knew perhaps?” 

“I made no conscious effort to portray a real person. I created him based on my perceptions only. That’s not my fault if a real person possesses such repulsive traits. Should I be punished because someone else is corrupt?” 

“Well, this is the essence of this lawsuit. You’re being sued for slander. The jury is interested to see if your characterization was malicious.” 

“I wrote a piece of damn fiction, for crying out loud. The entire premise of the story is imaginary, events are all invented, characters are fictitious, and dialogues are all made up. And I’m a lousy writer; what I write can harm no one. I tell you, sir, on good authority, my writing is weak, incoherent, and utterly ambiguous. There is no way in hell I can realistically  portray anyone, let alone carry out a character assassination. You just present the copy of the crummy check I received for the piece of crap I wrote as evidence in court to slap the plaintiff in the face. What I earned for this piece is the best indication of my incompetence as a writer.” 

“Let me give you a word of advice for free. If this case goes to trial, you should tone down your rhetoric. Judges frown upon emotional outbursts and sarcasm.” 

“You put me on the stand and let me have my moment in court. I’m a very credible, I swear to God. I’m not playing innocent; I am a lousy writer. Let me tell you a dirty secret about this particular story.  I purchased a three-year subscription to the magazine that published this story. I paid them more than they paid me. My net income for this literary affair was negative, and I reported this loss on my tax return. These are all documented. The notion of me profiting from this transaction is simply ludicrous.” 

He paused for a few moments. I could hear him sighing. “I tell you right off the bat, sir, your dry sense of humor and your belligerence will not resonate with the jury of your peers. Frankly speaking, this is going to be an uphill battle in court.” 

“I have no choice but to fight the monster I portrayed in my fiction.

“Would you represent me?” 

“Of course, I will. I charge $250 per hour and require a $7,500 retainer, which gives you thirty hours of my time. And I want you to understand that I cannot guarantee a favorable outcome. After you sign the contract with me, any letter I send out on your behalf, you’ll be billed for.  Any correspondence our office has with the opposing party is billable. Every  time I have a phone conversation with you, I charge you. I charge you when I think of your 

case in bed, in the shower, or even in the toilet; I want you to know that. My time is 

valuable.” 

“Yes, I understand. Please transfer me to your secretary so I can

make necessary arrangements and an appointment.” 

“Of course, just bear with me for a second. We have a new phone system. I don’t know my way around these buttons yet. If we get disconnected, call back please and talk to Jennifer.”

Sure enough, we got disconnected, and I didn’t call back. Now, I had more reasons to protect my interest against the lawyer than the accuser. Oh! I hate to deal with lawyers and used car dealers, not to mention my exwife. 

The truth was that I could not afford to go through a costly legal battle to defend myself against accusations of some crook I’d created in one of my delusional flings. This charlatan was legally blackmailing me, as he was aware of my intricate thought process portrayed in that short fiction and now callously using it against me in real life. The loan shark I crafted in the safest retreat of my imaginary world was now collecting his debt at a high interest rate. How could I possibly be exonerated from the literary travesty I had 

knowingly committed? How could I deny the charges when I’d already confessed to  the crime in writing? 

The best way out of this predicament was to reason with the con artist directly to reach a settlement and end this charade. I searched the plaintiff’s name on the internet and paid an online search company that provided his name, address, phone number, and email address. For two full days, I contemplated how to approach him, and then I called. 

“Hello.” 

It must have been him answering the phone. His voice was so familiar. I introduced myself.

“I know who you are. I expected your call but am not interested in

hearing anything you have to say.” 

“Listen to me, you son of a bitch. I’m not a telemarketer that you

can easily brush off. I need to have a word with you.” 

“Call my attorney to discuss any concern you may have. I was advised not to have any direct contact with you.” 

“Do you have any idea how these parasites operate? Every time I

call your attorney, he’ll charge you,” I said. 

“I’m not worried about that. I hired a legal counsel on a

contingency basis, so in the end, you’re the one who will pay for the chats.” 

“I see how this scheme of yours hatches. A low-life scum joins a white-collar swindler to milk an innocent writer whose main interest is enjoys writing, who writes for the sheer pleasure of creating.” 

“You’re neither innocent nor a writer.” 

“Shut the hell up, you fucking bastard...”  

“Do you want me to pile harassment charges on top of slandering

too?” he calmly responded. 

“The last thing I want is to listen to the literary criticism of a scum

like you.”  

“You know what your problem is?” he asked. 

“Yes, jerks like you.” 

“Exactly. If you’d created decent characters, you wouldn’t be in this

mess.” 

“What I write is my business,” I shrieked. 

 “And now it is mine too.” 

“Why are you doing this to me?” I desperately pleaded. 

“This is how you characterized me as villain; how else do you expect me to behave?  I’m doing this for personal gain, just the way you created me.”

“I’m not rich, you should know that.” 

“You have enough to share.” 

“I can legally fight this.” 

“You know, defending yourself will cost you more than the damages I asked for. Besides, a large portion of the court settlement would be for my attorney’s fees. And I bet you already know that. I know you’ve already examined all your options, and this call was your last resort and the least expensive alternative,” he reasoned. 

“You’re so goddamn twisted,” I said. Yet, I found his wickedness

quite interesting. 

“I’m your best work, cream of the crop.” 

“How did you convince an attorney to take your case on a

contingency basis?” 

“You know how lawyers are, shrewd and greedy but not as smart as they lead you to believe. You can always lure one to represent you if he sees a lucrative opportunity. You just need to play your hand right.” 

“You truly are as evil as I depicted you.” 

“No wonder we understand each other perfectly,” he said. 

“Let’s meet and discuss this,” I offered. 

“That’s not a good idea,” he responded. 

“How much do you know about me?” I asked.

“More than you can imagine.” 

“Let’s settle this between the two of us. Let’s cut out the

middleman; no lawyers involved; what do you say to that?”

“I’m still listening,” he said.

“What figure do you have in mind?” 

“How about 25,000 dollars?” 

“That’s outrageous.” 

“That’s the price.” 

“5,000 dollars. I cannot afford more than that.” 

“Yes, you can.” 

“10,000.” 

“$25,000 if you pay me directly without my attorney knowing about it. You know you’ll end up paying more than that only on attorneys' fees.” 

“You’ll drop the lawsuit?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“What about your lawyer?” 

“I’ll drop him like a bag of dirt.” 

“I don’t think you can get rid of him without paying him. You

cannot settle without his involvement. You must have a contract signed.” 

“In one of your stories, you showed me how to ditch your attorney, too, how to get out of a legal agreement.

” 

I had no leverage in this negotiation. He had me completely figured out. He was more sophisticated and manipulative than the villain I portrayed. What terrified me the most was how much he knew about me and how far he was willing to go to hurt me. I had to get rid of this creep. God knows what he was capable of. I wanted him out of my life for good.

“Alright, let’s do it.” I agreed to pay the ransom.

He gave me a bank account number where I deposited the funds a

few days later. 

Three weeks later, I received a letter from the plaintiff’s attorney indicating the dismissal of the lawsuit.

When I was signing the certified letter, for the first time, my

mailman avoided making eye contact.

Girl Behind the Window

             It’s been a few days since she arrived in the country where her parents were born. One morning, when she peered out the window, she realized how everything was so different from where she grew up. The street below was overrun with the crowd. Tons of young people were gathered in small circles, passionately arguing.  Some held signs, waving them furiously, heads moved back and forth, and hands cut the air like daggers. She’d never seen people that outraged and animated before—what could have made so many people so angry? She wondered.

             She could not read Farsi but recognized the curved letters with dots in their bellies like pregnant women with triplets. Letters with mouths half open, hungry enough to swallow the silent characters sitting quietly next to them and the sharp blades of some like the sickles peasants used to harvest. She’d seen these characters in books her father read. 

             The warning from the National Security Center on television earlier this morning echoed in her head, “Any gathering of three or more persons on streets is prohibited. Perpetrators will be arrested.” She could not estimate the number of buses required to haul all these sudden criminals to jail. If people back in America took to the streets and moved around as passionately as these people, at least obesity wouldn’t be an issue. She grinned at her thought.

             She sipped the hot Darjeeling tea BeeBee, the grandmother she’d only met yesterday, prepared for her. The young woman wasn’t sure if her weakness and spacey head were caused by the jet lag or the crowd of cousins, aunts, and uncles vying for a glimpse of her. On this, first trip to her fatherland, she was overwhelmed by endless platters of delicious Persian cuisine and constant kisses blanketing her cheeks and forehead. Her nostrils were burning from Espand, the scented seed, thrown on the hot charcoal in the grille to keep away evil eye. 

             Suddenly, she was stunned by her mobile phone ringing out the first few bars of “Yankee Doodle”. This was the first time it had rung in the three days since she left America. Surprisingly, she pushed the talk button.

“Hello?”

             “Hello. My name is Peter Burton from Prudential Insurance. I have great news for you, and I promise my call wouldn’t take more than a few minutes of your time. ”

“How interesting. I’m thousands of miles away from home. I can’t

believe I’m receiving calls from the US. What can I do for you?”

             “Yes, it’s amazing how connected we are in the world.”

             Outside, in the street, a uniformed officer snatched the pamphlets from a young man’s hands and threw them in a ditch. His action agitated the crowd around him. 

 “I am calling to offer you the best life insurance at the lowest premium.” 

             A second officer approached the same young man from behind, tackled him violently and pounded him to the ground with the butt of his gun. 

             “All you pay is a few dollars a month, and we insure your life for

$250,000.”

             The young man coiled in agony. An old woman stood a few feet from the scene, watching with trembling hands clamped over her mouth.  “I need to ask you a few simple questions just to fill out the forms.”  

             “Shoot.” 

             A shot cracked the air. The crowd scattered in fear. 

             “Are you between 18 and 25 years of age?”

             A line of soldiers stormed out of a military vehicle and took positions on both sides of the street. Their helmets reflected the sharp rays of light into her eyes. 

             “Yes.”

             As a running woman tripped while escaping the chaos, her scarf fell to the sidewalk. Now she’d broken the law by not wearing her Hijab in public. She knelt to retrieve it, but an explosion convinced her otherwise.  She ran, leaving her scarf and right shoe behind to disappear in the crowd.

             “Are you currently a full-time student?”

“Any demonstration is considered a threat to national security, and

agitators will be severely punished.” The words echoed in her ears.

             “Yes.”

             The armed military personnel surrounded two young demonstrators. As others rushed to their rescue, soldiers shoved them away. A military Jeep approached the circle, and officers wrestled two men and a woman in their early twenties into the vehicle. 

             “You don’t smoke, do you?”

             “No.” She nervously shifted her glance to her sweating palms and wished she had a cigarette now. 

             Another Jeep plowed through the crowd. Soldiers leaped out, taking positions on the sides of the street, their guns aimed at demonstrators.  

             “By not smoking, you have done yourself two favors. First, you haven’t shortened your life. Second, you’ve drastically reduced your premium.”

             She squinted through the window and noticed a soldier on the roof across the street aiming at the crowd. The shots were fired. Down in the street, a young woman, one who looked quite like herself, was wandering around confused, lost in the crowd. She could hear her heart pounding.   More shots echoed across the buildings. People scattered. Some took refuge in a sandwich shop, a few rushed into a bakery. Others ducked behind cars. Apparently, everyone else knew what to do in such a chaotic situation, but the young girls. Neither the girl in the street nor the one behind the window knew what to do or even where she was. They didn’t understand the chaos, strangers lost in the pandemonium.

Another shot was fired. 

             “You are in the prime of your life.”

             She collapsed. Everything turned gray except the growing red spot on the front of her dress. 

 “Congratulations! You are qualified for the lowest cost life insurance.” 

The young girl touched her heart; she was drenched in blood. 

First Crime

             No one has ever been sentenced to a more severe sentence called education as young as I was.

             “I don’t know how to punish him anymore, I ran out of ideas, I tried everything,” my mother said to my father one night as tears were running down her face.

Then my sentence was carried out. I was three years old. The next morning, I was trailing my father with a long face to Mactab. In those days in Ahvaz, housewives who had some education taught neighboring children under school age for a small fee in their homes. The curriculum included learning the alphabet and listening to the teacher reciting the Quran.

             As I was schlepping behind my father, I knew where I was going could not be a good place; my freedom was to be taken away.  For a few hours a day, I was forced to do a mandatory hard labor called learning.

   When we arrived, Mrs. Badami, my home-based teacher, opened the door. 

“I’m not a babysitter. Mactab is a learning institution. I do not tolerate mischievous behavior in the class,” she said to my father.

             “I agree with you one hundred percent. He’s a good boy, I promise you.” My father left me in Mrs. Badami’s custody and hurriedly fled. What a liar my father was. 

She ushered me to their living room, where I met other inmates, four kids my age. I sat down on the floor and quietly listened to our teacher reciting the Quran in Arabic; I could barely speak my language. After one hour of listening to the words of God in a language incomprehensible to me, I politely asked permission to use the lavatory. Permission was granted, and I left the room. Pee was bliss. I enjoyed every second of my break and reluctantly returned to the class to do time and endure the hard labor.

             Mrs. Badami opened a book and eloquently recited from the first page.

 “Father gave water. Mother gave bread.”

I recognized the pictures in the book. They were the same parents who gave water and bread in my older brother’s textbook.  The one he always brought home and loudly recited every night.  My brother was in first grade, and I was only three. Punishment did not fit the crime.

             As unfair as this punishment seemed, honest to God, I tried so hard to stay awake, be a good boy as father promised, and learn, but my eyes were not under my control. They kept rolling up and down and left and right of the little strange room, searching for distraction, anything to divert my attention from hearing the monotonous tone of our teacher. Suddenly, I noticed an unusual item hanging on the wall.

“What is that?”  I asked our teacher, pointing to the object.

             “It is my husband’s coat.” The teacher looked to where I was pointing and replied.

             “Oh! It’s too bulky and heavy, I thought it was a mule’s saddle,” I innocently commented.

             Kids giggled, pointing their fingers at her husband’s coat. Judging by Mrs. Badami’s facial expression, I knew I had done something wrong, as usual- very wrong.  I knew by experience that every time I made others laugh, retribution was bound to follow; why I didn’t know. I was to get punished; how severe remained to be seen. Mrs. Badami took me to their kitchen.

“You’ll stay here all day until your mother picks you up.”

This mild reprimand filled my little soul with gratitude for my very

first educator.

             After a few minutes, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I found myself in a very little space with ceiling and walls blanketed by a thick black layer of smoke generated from the kerosene cooker, a kitchen filled with the tantalizing aroma of simmering vegetable stew. As I sat there in solitary confinement for a period of time that seemed like an eternity, anxiously waiting for my sentence to be over, the delicious scent of stew shattered my resistance to hunger. I was lifted by the aroma of the heavenly cuisine and drawn toward the boiling pot. Carefully, I nudged the pot’s lid aside, burning my hand just to catch a glimpse of the paradise. I inhaled the aromatic moisture and went back to the corner, wondering if my real punishment was to starve in the presence of food. I was now drooling all over my growling stomach.  

             At that moment, before the steaming pot, I solemnly vowed to be a good kid and shut my mouth forever if the torment ended immediately. I cried myself to sleep, and when I woke in sweat, I was even hungrier. My wish did not come true.   I had no idea how long I had been sitting there, but I could not see the light at the end of this dark tunnel. The only way I could survive the famine was to do the wrong thing. This was the first time in my life that I had conscientiously made a difficult decision to do the wrong thing. 

             I lifted the lid, and an enticing piece of meat shone my insatiable eyes. Then, I carefully plucked a delicious piece of marbled lamb from the top and delicately raised it up to the rim to let it cool and to admire its elegance. Then I held my sinful beauty up in the air for a few moments longer and opened my mouth to indulge in ecstasy.           That day, I committed my first and most delicious crime of my life. I gorged the entire piece at once with a great deal of enjoyment and an equal amount of guilt.

Suddenly, the door flung open, and Mrs. Badami appeared in the frame. The green juice of the vegetable stew was still running down my shirt, my fingers were all greasy, and the lid was off the pot.

             She plucked me off the ground like a filthy rat and threw me out of the kitchen, cursing me under her breath. A fuming Mrs. Badami then twisted my ear and dragged me all the way home in that embarrassing condition. I tiptoed the entire way with my right ear clutched in her left hand, the shameful heat in my ear I never forget.

When my mother opened the door and saw me in that condition, I saw death in her eyes. This is how I was expelled from Mactab and how I began hating school.

Missing Man

             If I have a pack at home, there is no way I can control my urge to light one up, although I have quit smoking years ago. Only avid smokers understand this nuisance urge and the ensuing guilty pleasure. My strategy to combat this urge is simply not to buy a pack but to beg for one as needed. As lousy and as pathetic this approach may seem, it works. The last time I purchased a pack of cigarettes was three months ago. Losing self-respect in the process is the tradeoff I settled for.

             To resist my craving and reduce the number of cigarettes I smoke, if I have a pack at home, I hide more than half of the pack in the most unusual spots, hoping to forget where they were only to find them one by one in the time of need.  And in times of desperate need, I go into the search and discovery mode and ransack the house for an hour, cursing myself under my breath until I find one. I get engaged in a weird game of hide and seek to provide a harmful pleasure after an agonizing search shortly.  Purchasing a pack of cigarettes always comes after an intense internal debate.

Last week after poking around my apartment for half hour I ultimately caved in and found myself in the car parked in front of the 7-Eleven and two minutes later I was in line.  Three people were ahead of me with only one attendant on duty that afternoon. The customer ahead of me stepped closer to the counter and asked for a pack of Marlboro light, the brand I smoke. As the customer concluded his transaction, I changed my mind to buy in the nick of time and rushed out of the store after him.

             “Do you mind selling me two of your cigarettes?” I asked the man while holding a dollar bill up in the air.

             “Well, yeah, why not?” The man responded after a pause. 

             “I don’t want to buy a pack.”          

                “I hear you.” He chuckled while removing the cellophane wrapper.

             “You’re my savior,” I said.

             This was not the first time I engaged in such unusual transactions, I found it to be a tad more dignified than bumming a cigarette.

             “Thank you so much. I was this close to cave in.” My index finger almost touched my thumb before his eyes.

             I sat in the car, feeling proud of myself for not giving in to temptation, and drove away. Now, I had two killer reasons to celebrate life. I drove to a nearby park to light the first one and puff away moments of leisure embraced by the serenity of nature; I sat on a bench in the deserted park, gazing at vivacious falling leaves. In a minute, a cigarette was lit, and I was contemplating the mystery of life in the vertigo of burning tobacco.

             As I was scanning across the shivering trees, listening to the sound of water flowing in the creek, I noticed an object on the bench about thirty yards away. At first, I thought it was a bag of some sort, probably filled with empty cups of soda and hamburger wrappers, so I ignored the insignificant object at a distance. Still, the nagging curiosity got the better of me. The moment I finished smoking, I walked to see what it was: a stylish beige corduroy jacket with light brown quilted lining, the very type I really wanted and never got around to purchasing. 

             On several occasions, I’d seen similar jackets in trendy stores in the mall, and as tempted as I was to buy one, the high sticker price always convinced me otherwise.  And now my favorite jacket could be mine at no cost, an unexpected gift I could not pass up. I held it up in the air before my eyes to see if it was the right size; it didn’t seem to be. I decided to try it on, but to do that, I had to take off my zipper-less jacket, and that was not something I would dare to do on a cold, windy autumn day outdoors. I put the jacket back on the bench and hastily gazed around and saw no witness.  Quickly, I grabbed the jacket and ran off to my car, feeling guilty. What if someone was watching? What if the owner showed up and caught me walking off with his jacket? Like a shoplifter, I sprinted off with the merchandise under my arm.  I was hyperventilating when I sat in the car, wondering if the respiratory complication was caused by smoking or by the immoral possession.

             I pulled out of the parking in a hurry and fled the scene back to my apartment. The moment I got in, I took off my jacket and tried the newly found one, and as much as it looked good on me, it was one size too small.

 God damn it, I shrieked as I was pacing back and forth. What do I do know?  

             Desperately, I searched all four pockets, hoping to find money or something valuable to at least make this affair worthwhile; nothing. 

             I sat down on the porch and smoked the second cigarette, wondering what to do next. I could throw the jacket away, but it didn’t seem the right thing to do; it was too nice to end up in the trash. I thought of keeping it and sell it in a garage sale but I never had enough items worth the hassle of putting up signs in the streets and sitting in the garage the entire day to get rid of a few junks besides how much could I get for the damn thing, five, ten bucks?

             I could not go to sleep tonight with the jacket in my apartment. I had to take care of it one way or another, so I decided to go back to the park and put the item where I’d found it, hoping the owner would come back and retrieve it. Damn my luck. Why did you bring it home?     

             With a heavy heart, I drove back to the park, and before I stepped out of the car, I scouted the area, making sure no one was present. The park was as empty as I had left it twenty minutes ago. I grabbed the jacket and climbed the steep mound blanketed in beige dead grass, and as I reached the top where the bench was, I saw a man staring at me with a stack of paper in his hand, taking notes. I walked closer to the bench, avoiding his gaze, not knowing how to react to his ominous presence, and gently put the jacket back on the bench.

             “You took my jacket,” he said.  

             “No. I didn’t take it, my nephew did by mistake. I just brought it back.” I was flustered under his inquisitive gaze. 

             “You brought it back because it was not the right fit.” He was measuring me with his eyes. 

             “As… as I said, my nephew grabbed it by mistake half an hour ago, and when we got home, he realized it was not his. So I brought it back hoping its owner would come back and get it.” 

             “It belongs to a missing person? He was wearing this jacket last he was seen.” He scribbled on his papers.  

             “I just found this jacket half an hour ago, I told you.” I held my hands up in the air.  

             “Didn’t you just say it was your nephew who picked it up?” He pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. 

             “Well…, I…, I didn’t expect…” words were drooling out of my mouth. 

“Write here what happened to the missing man.” He was pointing at

his papers.

             “I told you the truth, not about my nephew, but the rest is true, I swear.”

 “The only thing you told me about this jacket was who found it, which turned out to be a lie.”   He pulled a pen out of his pocket and handed it to me. 

             ”Here, make sure the information on this form is as complete as  possible and sign it.” 

              “Are you out of your mind, I will not fill out the damn form.”

             “Then I turn you in right now.”

 As he started dialing, I picked up a broken branch and hit him on the wrist.

             “I didn’t do anything you son of a bitch,” I shouted. 

             He fell on the ground, and his cell phone flew out of his hand right into the stream of water. For a moment, I decided to get in my car and flee, but then I thought he could see my car and later trace it back to me so I ran away from the maniac into the wooded area as fast as I could and he ran after me holding his injured hand under his left arm.  As I was zigzagging through the trees and jumping over the bushes, I turned back a few times and shouted, “Leave me alone! I just found the jacket.”

             “Just sign the paper and make sure the information is accurate. As a matter of fact, in light of your recent assault, you need to make a statement too,” he yelled back.

             “What assault?” I screamed.

             He waved his bloody hand in the air. ”This,” he shouted, “Explain your side of story. Write from the moment you found the jacket and how we met.   There are enough blank pages.”

             “I’m not going to sign any confessions. I’m running because I don’t know what to do.  If I see no other options, I will turn around and take you down. Do you understand that you lunatic?”

             “By the way, your statement needs to be notarized.”

“Don’t tempt me. God knows I have weak resistance to

temptation.”

             “This entire affair must be documented. sign the form and make the statement. You can get it notarized tomorrow morning in the bank on the corner, with no cost involved.  It only takes a few minutes of your time.”

 “I will certainly not do that,” I was shouting back at the man who was running after me. 

                “Don’t you know that your fingerprints are all over the evidence?” 

             My heart was pounding out of my chest. He was right. As bizarre as the story of the missing man was, after what had happened so far, I had a lot of explaining to do if this incident was reported. With my prior conviction, they would accuse me of stealing and assault of an officer of the law, to say the least. I stopped and hunched over trying to catch a breath and turned back. He was about twenty steps from me, slouching with his bleeding hand raised in the air and pieces of paper clutched in the other. 

 “I told you I had nothing to do with the missing man. You are not missing God damn it. And I didn’t steal your jacket. Please leave me alone, please.”

             “Oh! I’m missing, alright.” His haunting laughter echoed in the woods.

             I staggered toward him, scanning the ground, looking for a sturdy branch to put an end to this charade.

 “You’re leaving me no choice, man. Please leave me alone.” I pleaded. 

             I was now waving a huge club in my hand.

             “There is no turning back now, neither for you nor for me. Let’s put an end to this,” he shrieked.  

             ” For the last time, I’m warning you, please forget all about this. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

 “Make the statement and tell the story as it happened, in your own words.” 

“What is with you and the paperwork?” I shouted as I stepped

closer. I was now within striking distance.

             “Everything must be properly documented, every ...”

             I didn’t let him finish his sentence. He collapsed with the first blow to his head. His rasping voice wallowed in his blood under my feet. His beloved forms and documents danced away in the crisp autumn breeze. I was standing over his bleeding body, watching his cherished papers fly away. The tall trees shed a vivacious shroud of leaves on the fallen bureaucrat, and I waded out of his morbid destiny to rescue myself from the misery he was about to inflict upon me.

             I ran away, holding my aching head between the two palms of my hands, and staggered through the shivering tress until I reached the banks of a silent pond. The face of the dark hibernating water was tainted with large spots of darker algae and ornamented with countless water lilies. A turtle emerged, struggling to climb up a rock as a capricious frog leaped on the flowers of the swamp.  I sat down on a fallen branch. The sun had already set below the horizon, yet its crimson whisper was shining my crime on the twilight of the pond.

             An hour passed, and all I could hear was the songs of crickets woven in the bitter cold lullaby of the autumn.  I circled the large pond in the night to avoid the crime scene and returned to my car. The jacket was blown off the bench and stuck in the thorny bushes. I could not leave the jacket where it was. As the missing man said, it had my fingerprints all over, and I could not leave the body unattended in the woods. 

             I opened the trunk, grabbed the emergency flashlight, walked uphill, and took the jacket off the bush. Darkness was bliss. I had to take care of everything tonight, the daylight was my nemesis. I rushed back into the woods and turned the flashlight on. The beam of light meandered through trees, stumbled over broken branches, and stumped crunchy leaves until I stumbled over the body and fell; it was still warm. 

             “What the hell did you want from me?” I pounded on his lifeless body, sobbing, “What do I do with you now? Tell me how to get rid of you. Do you want me to document your burial too, you piece of shit?” 

             The corpse didn’t respond.

As I dragged his body to a ditch and dropped it in, I noticed a small cave under a huge fallen tree trunk inside the trench. I jumped in the trench, sat down next to the body, and with two feet shoved the bastard inside the hole and covered him with his jacket. With my bare hands, I shoveled dirt on his body and covered the opening with plenty of leaves and twigs and climbed out of the trench.

             As I trudged behind the flashlight, the light shone on a piece of paper on the ground. I was so anxious to find out why this man was so infatuated with these damn papers. I leaned over to pick up the paper, but it escaped in the breeze. Hysterically, I followed the page until the piece of paper finally stopped next to the others. I picked up the pages and fled the cursed woods. When I sat in my car, I noticed my hands and my clothes were all muddy and soaked in dirt and blood. It was time to go home.

             I took an alternate route and drove in less crowded streets back home to avoid traffic and people.  As soon as I walked into my apartment, I threw myself on the couch and sobbed. I was trembling, my thoughts were uncontrollably racing.  I had blood on my hand, it was time to smoke.  As appropriate as the timing was to go out and buy a pack, I could not do so now; I was too transparent in public. Miserably, I ransacked the apartment, smudging blood and dirt everywhere until I found one inside the vase filled with silk flowers on the shelf. I lit the cigarette and took a deep puff. After a few minutes, I managed to pull myself together and took the papers out of my pocket. 

             The pages were numbered, and at the bottom of the page, it read page 1 of 5. On top, it read:  “Missing Person Information”. The long form was meticulously filled out. 

             “The missing person was last seen in a beige corduroy jacket with light brown quilted lining,” the paper read.  The missing person’s name, address, age, and physical characteristics were all typed in the form. The physical description of the victim exactly matched the man I’d killed in the park, and today’s date was the day he was last seen.  

             “Write in your own words how it happened.” His voice was scraping my brain. so I grabbed a pen and wrote the story of the missing man.      

Mr. Biok

When I look back at my childhood, I see a barefoot rowdy rascal running after a ball. My main pastime, just like every other boy in our neighborhood, was to chase a striped plastic ball we’d all chipped in to buy. That’s all we needed to have fun. Our street was full of players of all ages, starting with little ones like myself al the way to those with faces blanketed in mustache and beard; we all shared the same passion.

             At the beginning of each game, we had to go through a painful selection process for two teams. This squabbling started with a half-hour exchange of the most shameless words in our vocabulary and ended by throwing a few punches and kicks! After this ritual, non-selected players would’ve become ticked-off spectators and forced to sit out. They sat on the sidewalks, by the two endlessly parallel gutters filled with black slime that marked our street like every other one in our southern city, and heckled the players. 

             We played football in God’s oven. At noon, the asphalt melted into black chewed gum and stuck to the sole of our bare feet. Not only did we endure the scorching playground, but we risked our very lives by dodging passing cars. Every few minutes, the screeching sound of a car brake reminded us it was time to run. Another driver must have hit the brake to avoid involuntary manslaughter. At this point, the furious driver darted out of his car and chased the same kid who’d just avoided killing to take his life. Only God could save the poor kid if the driver caught him. This daily routine pretty much sums up the fun I had in the first nine years of my life on the streets until we moved to Tehran, the capital. 

             Our new house was located in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, a dead-end alley called Kindness with no filthy gutters and no roaming kids or hostile behavior. All I saw was courteous neighbors greeting one another. Every morning, I woke to a clean street with no beggars, no gypsy women selling kitchen gadgets, and no kids wandering around knocking on the doors looking for playmates. Soon, I realized I could not adjust to that sterile environment; the new neighborhood was to make adjustments to accommodate me.

             “We are now living among educated and cultured people,” my father reminded me while twisting my ear. “Children here must have their parents’ permission to go out and must return home before dark. It’s called discipline,” he continued. 

             Discipline, culture, obedience, and permission were fancy words I had difficulty comprehending, yet I had a hunch they contradicted the very concept of fun. 

             In all fairness, our new neighborhood had a few advantages. I could play with girls without their parents starting bloodshed; that was surely a pleasant change in my lifestyle.  To avoid losing our family's respect in a new neighborhood, my mother didn’t let me go out without shoes anymore. After I was forced to wear shoes on the streets, I realized at age ten that the soles of my feet were not created black by God.

Gradually, I acclimated myself to the new milieu and grew fond of the greeting rituals of the cultured people in our new environment. 

             My investigation revealed that almost every residence in the neighborhood contained some kids. It took a few months, but I managed to gradually lure them out of their nests in the afternoons to play football. By the following summer, we had eight to ten dedicated players every afternoon. 

             The generated noise, however, disturbed the peace in the neighborhood and disturbed the afternoon naps of some neighbors.  Our football games raised concern for an army colonel, a retired judge, an ayatollah, a Persian rug merchant, and our own next-door Jewish neighbor. More than anyone else, we managed to upset Mr. Biok, a high-ranking oil company executive who lived at the end of the alley, a well-dressed and respectable man by all accounts.

I was impressed by the creases of his pants; I swear he could cut a watermelon with those sharp edges. Mr. Biok was also my greeting target practice, for whom I recited a series of “hello”, “good morning”, “good afternoon” and “what a nice day?” all in one sentence regardless of time of the day or the weather condition. I enjoyed making fun of him in the most serious way possible. It was obvious that he was suspicious of my intent in offering insincere greetings, yet he felt obligated to respond to my greeting politely as he had no solid evidence to prove my mendaciousness.

             Concerned neighbors at one time or another spoke to my parents and expressed their dismay with the ongoing chaos, mentioning my name as the instigator. They held me personally responsible for ruining their children’s disciplinary practice and shattering the serenity of the neighborhood.

After the first summer in the neighborhood, Mr. Biok identified me as the agitator and prohibited his two beloved clean-cut sons to come in contact with me. He had quarantined his impressionable children despite the fact that I respectfully greeted him on the street on a daily basis.  

             Playing football became more and more popular despite the widespread opposition of neighbors. As the kids became good friends, the parents became more adamant in opposition to our afternoon fun. Every time our ball was kicked into a neighbor’s house, it was thrown back ripped by a knife to show their hostility. 

             Most often, our footballs landed in Mr. Biok’s yard. Unlike others, however, he didn’t rip our footballs in pieces; he just didn’t return them. His house was rightfully called the ball cemetery.  Kicking a ball into his yard meant the end of the game for the day and the additional financial burden of purchasing a new one the next. Our daily allowances were too small to afford a new ball every day. 

             One day after another tragic loss, we all sat down with gloomy faces by the ball cemetery and grieved the loss of loved ones.  We all realized this was not a sustainable situation. One of the older kids proposed a resolution.

             “Why don’t we ask Mr. Biok to return our balls? He seems to be a reasonable man.  Unlike others, he has never shredded our footballs. Why not ask him?” he reasoned.

             To this day, I don’t know why I volunteered for this task. Maybe because of all those greetings I’d offered to Mr. Biok. Maybe because I felt I was mature enough to communicate with him man to man and resolve our issues like two civilized individuals. At the age of eleven, I was convinced that Mr. Biok would understand our passion for the game and return our footballs, and maybe even let his sons play with us. I was determined to extend a hand of friendship to a neighbor so unknown and so distant to me.   

             With a self-confidence I didn’t know I had, I rang the doorbell not once but twice under the admiring gaze of my friends. A couple of minutes later, the door opened, and I faced our kind and gentle neighbor Mr. Biok.  I was eager to show how well adjusted I’d become and demonstrate my mastery of the art of salutation and proper communications.

             “Hello, Mr. Biok. Good afternoon. How are you today, sir?”

             Mr. Biok stared into my sweaty face and responded, “What do you want?”

             “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but is it possible for you to return our balls? The ones we have kicked into your yard by mistake?  Of course, we are all sorry for the inconvenience, sir. I know it’s your nap time.”

             His eyes sparkled as he took a deep breath and politely responded.

“Wait here,” he said.

             He went back inside, leaving the door ajar. I took the opportunity and glanced inside his yard and witnessed the most beautiful scene I’d ever seen in my life. All of our missing balls were neatly piled in an empty water basin in the center of the yard. Once again, I saw the red balls we’d lost, the yellow ones with blue stripes and the solid ones. And best of all, my own personal leather ball with the inner tube that my sister brought me from India. It was sitting there anxiously waiting for me to kick it around like football legend Pele. God knows how many players I’d dribbled with that ball on a tight corner spot the size of a handkerchief.

             I was so mesmerized by the splendor of the sight that totally forgot Mr. Biok until suddenly I sensed a pleasant draft like a fan blowing at me. For a second I thought our nice neighbor brought me a running fan to cool me off after the game. Then I looked up only to face a fuming beast with a long garden hose twirling over his head.  The vengeful monster frantically stormed toward me, claiming my life in his sweet Turkish accent. I leaped like a scared rabbit and ran for my life and the other kids followed my lead.

Mr. Biok could have easily reached the slower kids running behind me and beat the hell out of them but he was not satisfied by a simple retaliation; he was after blood, mine. He was not interested in innocent victims; he was after the kingpin. Yes, he was determined to clean the entire neighborhood by eradicating the root cause. 

             My only chance of survival was to reach our house in the middle of the alley, but the faster I ran, the longer our street seemed to become, and the farther our house appeared to be.  The twirling garden hose was closing in on me like a roaring helicopter. I could feel the lethal touches of its blades on my back and wondered Why me? Why should I always be the one who pays?

My short life flashed before my eyes as fast as I was running from my immediate death.

             As the tentacles of the demon were touching my back, I feared what if our door was shot and when I reached our house, I found out it was; so I coiled my body into a cannon ball and smashed myself into the locked door desperately hoping that there was a God and he had mercy on my soul. The door miraculously flung open, and I was thrown inside. 

             The raging monster stopped at our door as the neighbors converged, circled around him, and finally convinced him that killing a kid, even it was me, would not eliminate the love of kids for football. The beast calmed down and transformed back into Mr. Biok again. 

             After that horrific event, no one dared to show up in the alley for a few weeks, and the entire neighborhood plunged into an eerie silence.

One gloomy afternoon, as we all lounged outside our homes, a vivacious rainbow of colorful balls showered our neighborhood from the last house of the dead-end alley.        

Adam and Eve                                              

On a peaceful, starry night, Adam was sleeping on his back, loudly snoring. His noise echoed through the cave and kept Eve from falling asleep. Every time she dozed off, Adam's obnoxious noises disturbed her serenity and interrupted her calm. 

“Adam. I’m so damn exhausted. Would you stop?”

“Hmm.” The man huffed.    

She finally got fed up with this charade, rolled over, and gripped his nose shut 'til he couldn't breathe. Adam's chest violently shook; he trembled and jumped awake. 

"Must you lie on your back and snore like beasts? You're generating objectionable noise from every orifice in your body. How can I get some rest like this?" 

Adam scratched his crotch with one hand and wiped his eyes with the other, "How else do you suggest I sleep then? I can't turn on my side, you know. Only God knows how many ribs I’m missing in my chest cavity, all because of you.”

“Here you go again, you and your damn ribs. Don’t you dare throw

that shit in my face? Would I ever see the end of this crap from you?” 

“Well, that’s the truth, isn’t it? You haven't forgotten how Your

Majesty was created, have you? Can I ever make mote sacrifice for you? and this is the appreciation I get?” 

“And now I owe you for the rest of my life? What the hell is wrong

with you? Get it into your thick skull, I didn’t have a say in this crap.”  

“You have such nerve talking to your man like that in the middle of

the night; you’re a real piece of work,” Adam shrieked. 

“How else should I convey this simple concept to you? You don’t

own me, you jerk.”

This was not the first time Adam rubbed the creation thing in Eve's face. Every time they squabbled, he brought up the issue to keep her in line; but this time, she was too pissed to take it.

“Your entire argument is on shaky ground, I tell you. That’s not how I see creation altogether. My understanding is that you were created from the dust of the ground, which means you’re nothing but dirt. Then, to save you from your miserable solitude, I was created from your ribs to keep you company, so the way I see it, I’m your savior, your prized possession, your trophy wife of the sort…” Eve griped.

“I don’t care how you see it, that’s how I see it because that's how it is, I’m the man. You’re here because of me, I was here first; there is a divine logic behind that, a logic you would never understand.”

“Oh! That bunches up my fig leaf.” Eve was furious.

“Blah, blah, blah,” Adam murmured.

“Adam, get the hell up; we need to talk about this seminal issue; we should get this Genisis thing sorted out once and for all.”

“Too late for what? Don’t you see we’re stuck together? What

difference does it make why and how? Get used to the idea; it is what it is.” 

 “Your view of your woman is fundamentally flawed; it’s

philosophically fucked up. ”

“I’m not into philosophy. I just want to get some sleep, for crying

out loud. This woman can't stand seeing me rest!"

             “Enough is enough," she snarled. "Who the Hell do you think you are? I owe you nothing. For your information, if I have any flaws, it’s all because of you, not only because I was created from your ribs but because you know how to push my buttons. This is your last warning; if you talk shit like that or make noise of any kind, any sound from any hole, I'll split."

"Split my ass." Adam farted.

"I am serious, Adam; I will find a place of my own; I've had just

about enough of this crap."

        "You can go to hell for all I care." He turned his back on her while adjusting his nuts, settling down to sleep.

                         Although the phrase ‘go-to-hell’ was excessively used by

the heavenly couple to express their utter discontent and anger towards one another, hell was not a foreign concept to them. Inferno was a tangible milieu, a physical environment, a neighborhood not far away from heaven itself. During the short period of their stay in heaven, Adam and Eve gradually grew fond of hell as it had a vague and ominous appeal to it. It was more than just a place, it was a dark concept, a notion neither one could articulate nor resist to explore. From the inception of humanity, hell was alluring, a tantalizing concept. To them, unlike heaven, hell was unconventional and unassuming; it was exotic. 

Not as a matter of principle, however, but logistically, hell was not a pleasant stay for Eve, not by any stretch of the imagination. She did not care for relentless heat, not to mention the damage the polluted air had on her flawless skin. And worst of all was the prevalence of the repulsive sharp odor, a grim reminder of Adam's farts. That was why, in this short period since her creation, she avoided the area altogether.  Once again, she ground her teeth, reluctantly lay beside him, and furiously started counting sheep. 

    The following morning, Adam sat by a gurgling fountain with a gloomy face, hair unkempt, and an untidy beard. In the past few nights, he had disturbing nightmares. He saw Eve with another man, an unknown creature like himself but pleasant and friendly, a quite sociable individual, the characteristics he never thought existed. He had a gut feeling that his woman was up to something; otherwise, why would she start picking on his demeanor and complaining about his appearance, occasional belching and constant farting? He knew something was amiss, yet he had no clue what to do about it. But there was no one else in heaven to accuse of such offense.

On a few occasions, he had tried to get her to talk by asking tricky questions, but Eve was too bright to spill the beans. Once, he overtly brought up the issue and confronted her. He openly talked about his recurring nightmares, yet she flatly dismissed the baseless allegations of impropriety and blamed the nightmares on his late-night gorging. She went further than that and attributed such irrational accusations to Adam's lack of moral compass and excessive ingestion of red meat.

The disturbing images and troubling intuition had turned his world upside down. Adam knew something was wrong. The flames of jealousy were ruining their lives. He was not in the mood to do anything anymore.

His love-making performance was nothing short of a disaster, another reason he felt like a complete failure.

    For a long time, Adam was plunged into a deep depression. He was nostalgic about the first few short weeks of his life with Eve, the only happy days he had with her. He pined for the days when they woke early in the morning and strolled from the northeast side of the Eden, their neighborhood, to the rim of Hell, where they turned around, walked back to their neighborhood, and jumped into the pond for a swim. This morning routine usually aroused Adam and prompted a quickie and a hearty breakfast afterward. The morning walk was Eve's idea to control Adam's weight. She insisted he cut down on red meat and exercise three times a week to reduce his body fat as he was gaining weight and growing disproportionally to look like a penguin.

Adam was suspicious of every moving creature in heaven, especially those damn monkeys. He had noticed when monkeys thought he was not around, seized the opportunity, jumped all over Eve, groped her, and chuckled wickedly.

As Eve was floating on her back in the pond, tickling water lilies with her fingers, she called up on his man, "Adam, your performance in bed is inadequate, to put it mildly. You need to improve, try harder, and keep it up longer. Is that too much to ask? I want kids you’re not delivering."

    Adam’s gaze was fixated on the sparkly fountain, thinking aloud, "I dreamt we had two kids; one was a nincompoop who couldn't stand up for himself, and another was a scoundrel and a troublemaker. And worst, that they didn't get along. We're better off without them."

Eve stood in the waist-high water, quickly braided her whisps of hair, and screeched, 

"Why do you talk to me like that?”

"Talk to you like what?" Adam shouted back.

"Like my opinion means nothing."

"I told you, woman, I don't want kids."

 "But I want kids," Adam ridiculed her by repeating her words in an animated clownish manner.

Adam's foolish behavior did not sit well with his woman.

"And who the Hell made you the boss? Who are you telling me

what I want?" She yelled.

"I told you what we should do, and that's all there is. I don't want to talk about it anymore!"  

Eve pointed her finger and called upon him in an alarming tone: "You know something? You are not the only one who makes decisions around here. So far, I have lived with you because I had no choice. You were the only man I knew. Ever since I opened my eyes, you were there, but that may not be the case in the future, Mister!"

Adam's eyes suddenly shone with rage as this comment finally

validated his nightmares.

"Come out of that damn water right now!" he ordered.

Eve had never seen her man so furious before. She immediately waded out of the water and gently asked, "Why did you get so upset? Adam, in your physical condition, stress can be fatal; your heart may give in. Calm down, dear."

 "I don't want to calm down. You, you're having an affair."

"What are you talking about? I don't know this word; please explain, as this is a new word in our lexicon."

“Having an affair means to engage in a romantic or intimate relationship with someone other than your partner.”

“I’m confused, my dear. What’s going on with you this morning?”

"Don't act dumb; you know exactly what having an affair means.

Too late to deny it.”

“Affair with whom?”

“Is something going on between you and those damn monkeys? I knew they were not touching you innocently. If I catch one, I'll shove a stick up his ass!"

Eve shook the water off her body, "Do you believe I fool around with those ugly creatures? I'm offended; this accusation is outrageous. This is low even for you."

"Just tell me the truth." Adam was trembling with rage.

             "Come on, cutie. I wouldn't consider such a thing."

Adam violently grabbed Eve's elbows and pulled her to him, "Tell

me everything. Who is he? Who is he? What's his name?"

Eve knew she couldn't hide the truth; she had to come clean. She took a deep breath and slightly separated from the fuming brute standing in front.

"OK, I'll tell you everything. But, Adam, please act rationally."

"Don't tell me how to react." He pointed his trembling index finger

at her.

"His name is Devil. I met him a few weeks ago."

             "Devil? What kind of a foolish name is that?"

"He wants me to call him Devy. He says Devy is sexier."

"Where the hell did you meet this bastard?"

"Interestingly, you mentioned hell because he's actually from that

neighborhood. He was born and raised in that area.”

"Just tell me where I can find this creep, and I'll know what to do

with him."

             "You can go to hell," Eve said.

        "How dare you talk to me like that?"

“I mean, you need to go to hell to find the Devil, literally; that's

where he lives."

"But that's a rough neighborhood, you know what's going on there.

You've seen how terrible living conditions are in Hell. You saw the creatures that shoot fire out of their mouths; Hell is a scary place; who in his right mind wants to go to Hell?"  

"What do you want me to do? You're the one who's insisting on

meeting the Devil."

"Rightly so; I want to find this bustard and teach him a lesson."

"I don't mean to be facetious, Adam, but I repeat, if you dare to meet the Devil, go directly to hell."

Eve was getting a kick out of this situation. She knew her man

wouldn't dare to go to Hell even when his pride was on the line.  

"But you didn't meet him in hell, did you?"

"Of course not."

"I don't care about where he was born and raised; just tell me where

you met the guy."

             "Walk straight until you reach a huge willow tree, then turn left and keep going until you see a misty spring by a cave. It's a cozy spot. The air is filled with scented mist, and stars blink overhead at night..." she droned as she daydreamed.

    "Now, you go on a rendezvous behind my back? Is that how much you respect our relationship? Don't you see what you're destroying?"

    "Adam, you are reading too much into a causal relationship. What we need is a solid foundation. Don't you think we need to build the trust between us and let it grow and flourish?" 

    "What the Hell did he talk about? Tell me everything."  

"Hell is what he always talks about; how difficult it was for him growing up under such adverse conditions. Devy has a lot of stories to tell. But I assure you, Adam, nothing happened between us. Devy is a true gentleman. He is poetic, articulate, witty, and overall a sweetheart! You should see his cute dance moves; it's so charming the way he gyrates his ass. Why don't we both go together next time? I want you to meet him."  

By hearing the affectionate words of his woman for another man, Adam grew even more desperate.

"He's soft-spoken, a good dancer with a great sense of humor, and

you still trust him?" Adam was going berserk.

"Please, Adam, don't be so judgmental…"

             "I'll show this maggot who he's dealing with."  

Adam and Eve planned to visit the Devil the following evening. During this time, Adam was increasingly nervous. Anxiety gave him a severe case of diarrhea, and he spent most of the night behind the bushes contemplating a way out of this predicament. 

He was about to face a man with superior qualities, a man on the verge of stealing his woman. He knew Devil was a good talker, so in the remaining short time, he practiced debating complex issues, and since he lacked the mental faculty and knowledge required to argue sophisticated issues, he kept babbling incoherently while throwing his hands in the air. 

He helplessly used fancy words in his solitary debate, yet due to his limited vocabulary, what came out of his mouth was pretty much the same as what came out of his ass. As a precaution, however, he was planning to carry a big stick to the meeting to serve as a cane to make him look sophisticated and to beat the Hell out of the Devil if worse came to worst.

The next night finally arrived, and the heavenly couple walked hand-in-hand to visit the Devil. Adam timidly followed Eve's lead to face the inevitable. They strolled into the Garden of Eden and finally found themselves in a cozy spot with a tantalizing view of an aromatic hot spring surrounded by lush trees and blinking stars overhead. 

Poor Adam was not enjoying the scenery as his knees were about to buckle; he was about to faint. At this moment, the couple noticed a snake lurking in a tree, watching them. Before they could react, the lurking serpent swiftly released himself from the branch and leaped into the air. It masterfully tossed and turned in midair and landed before them in the shape of a man. Adam, who was stunned by this spectacular performance, desperately gathered all his strength, looked his arch-enemy in the eyes, and introduced himself.

 "Nice to meet you. My name is Adam, the forefather of humanity."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Sir. My name is Devil, Lucifer, the

prince of this world." 

The host warmly greeted them and invited his guests to sit.

"Eve told me a lot about you. You're so lucky to have such a

beautiful companion."  

This devilish remark placed a beautiful smile on Eve's face, which did not go unnoticed by Adam. Complimenting his woman was something he'd never mastered. The Devil had scored a point. 

To neutralize this vicious attack, Adam replied, "You are quite an

expert in seducing women, aren't you?"

"I seduce men as well," the Devil smiled while winking at him. 

The comment with the salacious gesture caught Adam off guard; he

was not prepared to respond. 

After they had chatted about the living conditions in Heaven and Hell and recent rainfall, Satan walked inside the cave and returned with a clay pitcher and three clay chalices. He filled the cups with a blood-red liquid and offered them to his guests. Adam and Eve, who had never seen red water before, took a cautious sip.  Devil noticed the inquisitive looks on their faces.

"This is wine, a fermented product of grapes." 

Wine made Adam a little dizzy, yet the pleasant headache he experienced was different from the ones he always had during his arguments with Eve.

"What do you do, all by yourself?" Eve asked Satan.

By nature, I'm an introvert, which means I get energy from within. I like to have more quiet time to contemplate the depth of issues. To me, quality of life matters, not quantity. I also believe in self-improvement. That's why I learn different things to nourish my inquisitive mind and gratify my inner self.

"Don't you get tired of self-gratification?" Adam asked Satan.

"I'm afraid I don't understand. What do you mean by that?" Satan

asked.

"He means playing with yourself all the time?" Eve clarified Adam's comment.

The more the heavenly couple spoke, the more they revealed their inner selves,  their shallow nature, and their lack of understanding. 

"I don't think you understood what I meant. Maybe we should

change the subject," The devil remarked. 

As the night progressed, Satan ran out of patience with his guests and concluded that Adam and Eve were not the type of creatures he wished to be associated with.

"I am duty-bound to roam in the Garden of Eden and vicinity to

spread evil. The creator has directly authorized me to test your goodness." 

Adam and Eve did not have the slightest idea of what Satan was talking about and showed no interest in engaging in profound and meaningful conversations. They liked the wine.

The truth was that the Devil's demeanor was not adversarial. Adam

found him quite friendly, easygoing, and cool. 

Satan poured a second round and toasted their health and happiness. After the second, Adam asked for the third and the fourth. Eve refrained from binge drinking, but Adam never stopped asking for more. 

             Eve warned her man to stop drinking as he was acting even more foolishly than usual. But Adam was out of control; he drank cup after cup until midnight. 

The Devil noted Eve's awkward situation. 

             "Adam, I think Eve has a point; maybe we had to call it the night.

Adam barely got up and staggered towards the hot spring, holding his chalice high in the air, and slurred this poem:

            "I love to reach the moment; the wine-tender offers me the next round, and I fail to down."

             Then he collapsed into the water. Adam's idiotic behavior mortified Eve. She pulled him out of the water, apologized to their host, and dragged him home by twisting his left ear and cursing him under her breath.                                 

***

This was the dawn of amity between the first humans and Satan, the

root of all evil. 

             After that night, the heavenly couple frequented the Devil regularly, always uninvited. They had an insatiable desire to do evil with no need for inspiration from the Devil. Although, on numerous occasions, the Devil advised them to enjoy life in heaven in moderation, Adam and Eve never cared about his advice and always went too far. They showed a superior aptitude and enthusiasm not only to learn but to enhance evil acts. Their propensity to act evil came as a surprise to Satan himself. They invented their brand of abhorrent deeds unfathomable to Satan. The more Satan knew the heavenly couple, the more he despised them. 

Shortly after this acquaintance, they made better wine than their mentor. Adam showed extreme talent in debating both sides of any issue. He diabolically twisted any argument to his favor and nailed the Devil. After witnessing the way Adam and Eve conducted themselves and understanding the true nature of humans, Satan desperately attempted to offer some decency and moral judgments to humans, and he failed miserably. Soon, the first humans surpassed their mentor in every respect and learned and perfected every one of his tricks. 

    Soon after his acquaintance with Adam and Eve, and when Satan grasped the ramifications of his role in their lives, Satan went through an atonement phase in which he contemplated the meaning of his existence, the true purpose of the creation of humans, and the unintended consequences of his role in this charade.

             Adam and Eve, on the other hand, had a different view of the relationship. They believed life to be only about material possessions, tangible concepts, and pleasure and nothing else, regardless of the consequences. They found Satan to be a naïve and gullible creature from Hell, a lower-class citizen of heaven, an unassimilated poor and deprived refugee of a sort who knew very little about the good life.

They mocked him at every opportunity they had. They loved to play practical jokes on the poor soul. The Devil didn't know how to stay away from them anymore. He took refuge in Hell, where he knew well, where he belonged without reservations, where he could be safe and be himself again without fear of persecution for who he was. Alas, Hell was also the place Adam and Eve grew to like and frequented for entertainment purposes. The tense and fiery environment gave them a rush and complemented their trance, a sinful sensation they could not achieve in the tranquility of heaven.

"Mark our words; we will soon turn heaven into a classy version of Hell. We will raise heaven's temperature to make it feel like Hell,” Adam once commented.  

The Devil usually transformed himself into a snake and hid in holes, but they pulled him out by the tail and teased him ruthlessly. Bullying in heaven caused the Devil to develop nervous ticks and uncontrollable twitching.

More than anything else, Satan was harassed by the unwanted sexual advances of Eve. He felt uncomfortable with her salacious comments and sexual innuendoes and was violated by her inappropriate touches. He had no privacy anymore. Life in Heaven had turned out to be worse than living in Hell for Lucifer. His life was in complete disarray. The devil was so fed up with human beings that he decided to end his tormenting relationship with Adam and Eve.

    One night, he invited the two to his place. After dinner, he confronted them.

"I have a confession to make. The creator gave me a mission to tempt you. I understood that you were pure and innocent, and my job was to corrupt you.

"Didn't we have this conversation before?" Adam sniped.

"You bitched about this subject the first night we met you," Eve said. "You don't fully understand our nature. The issue is not that we don't grasp the concept of good and evil or don't know the difference between right and wrong; get it into your thick skull, we don't care," she continued. "Intellectually, we understand your moral arguments, but we just don't give a damn about your altruism. Would you stop being a crying baby and go with the flow already, for God's sake?" Adam scorned.

             "You, my friends, are two disturbed individuals by nature, and I don't want to be blamed for your corruption; you never needed me for that. Let's call it quits. This friendship is not going anywhere; I want out. The entire paradise is yours, and I'll go to Hell and enjoy my stay as long as I don't see the two of you again. I promise I will never set foot in your neighborhood." Devil's eyes were filled with tears as he uttered these words.

At that precise moment when Devil was most emotionally vulnerable, Eve pinched his ass. "We are not through with you yet, you sexy thing!" and giggled repulsively.

    Satan was devastated by her humiliating treatment. He did not know a nice way of getting rid of them. A few minutes later, without raising suspicion, he excused himself and departed. As soon as he was out of their sight, he ran; he ran for his life. Finally, he entered a cave in the depths of Hell, dropped to his knees, and cried to his creator.

    "Dear God! We need to talk. We should have this conversation now before it's too late. I have carefully studied these two freaks of yours and analyzed their behaviors. How could you create such jerks? What were you thinking? I don't mean to portray a dystopia and come across as a pessimist, but I warn you, if these two idiots procreate, we will be in big trouble. How could these two possibly have decent genes? Their descendants will be worse than they are. They will destroy heaven with ignorance, greed, and crime.

And now I can see what you're up to, my dear Lord. You knew their corrupt nature from the beginning, yet you played this sick, deranged game. You maliciously got me involved to blame me later. You planned everything, didn't you? You cannot be more deceitful than that. I tell you; there is no way I take responsibility for your crap. I refuse to be a victim of your conspiracy. I am not your scapegoat. I am submitting my resignation effective immediately." 

Devil cried like spring showers; then he took a deep breath, mopped his runny nose, and continued, "Let's be practical, my dear Lord. What's done is done, but we must shift into the damage control mode. Pointing fingers is not going to solve our problem. At this juncture, I don't care what your divine purpose is for the future of humanity as long as I'm not a part of it. Just keep these two assholes away from me. Dear God, please do something."

Satan shed tears of sorrow and remorse and sobbed in agony until, despite lack of a history of epilepsy, he had a seizure and started having convulsions. His entire body trembled like the autumn leaves and finally collapsed. As a result, he lost consciousness and went into a catatonic state for an unknown period.

When he finally gained consciousness, he was a different Satan: inspired, rejuvenated, and optimistic.

The Devil strode back into the Garden of Eden. As he approached the same gurgling fountain where he had entertained the two, he noticed Adam and Eve approaching. They were both drunk out of their minds.

Eve called out to him, "You ditched us the other night, you Devil.

Come to Mama, naughty boy, I’m not through with you yet, you sexy thing."

Satan cleared his throat as he walked closer to them.

"Wait, my friends! I am going to show you something new. You

don't know everything about heaven yet."

"And you're the one who is going to teach us? That I like to see." Eve giggled.

"Where did you get your massive ego? We don't need you for anything but to pick on. There's nothing here in heaven we don't know about.

I remember you were rambling about Hell and its harsh living conditions. Well, we took it upon ourselves and explored Hell and what it entails. We've already figured it out. Hell is the future of heaven," Adam remarked.  

 "You're right; I can see you two have already started on the project of turning heaven into a living hell. But there're still things you don't know."

"Then spell it out, Goddamn it," Eve Shrieked impatiently.  

"There is a tree with fruits that make you high; it takes you to a different world. The pleasure of wine is nothing compared to the magical stupor caused by the fruits of this tree. But I have to warn you're prohibited from tasting these fruits."

Satan intentionally promoted the idea of forbidden pleasures per instructions of the Lord himself.  

"Hmm, if tasting this fruit is prohibited, it must be a good shit;

we're all in." Adam and Eve chanted in unison.

"Whatever the hell it is, as long as it gives me pleasure, I'm all for

it," The intoxicated Eve shouted.

"This fruit is perfect for you two pleasure seekers. It's just the right thing for you."

“What the hell are you waiting for? Show us the path to salvation,

damn it.” The heavenly couple chanted in unison.

The Devil guided Adam and Eve to the tree he never knew existed

before he went into the coma. 

The heavenly couple swiftly picked fruits and gorged as if they'd never eaten before.

The moment they swallowed the first bites; they felt an enormously powerful kick to their asses. Before they had a chance to realize what had happened, they were thrown into the sky.

The Devil sighed in relief and waved at them as they got farther and

farther from heaven and joyfully shouted. 

"Now, you are officially going to the fantasy land!"

Christmas Eve 

             “Go talk to your professors, do something. The entire summer you worked for the university, and they paid you nothing,” she wiped her tears.

             “I owe them for the tuition of the last two semesters.” 

             “Talk to the Foreign Students Advisor. Tell her we’ve two small kids, they need food. How could we pay for the formula?”

             “I already talked to her. She said that’s the university policy. If there is a balance, they garnish my income.”

             “They do what to your income?”

             “Garnish, I looked it up in dictionary. It means they decorate my paycheck. She said I wouldn’t graduate if all my debts are not paid in full.”

             “So, why are they holding your paychecks? You’re not skipping town. Where do you go without your diploma? Did you tell her this summer you’ll go to Chicago to drive a cab? Tell her you’ll save two thousand dollars and pay off your debts.” She was carving out the rotten parts of the potatoes.

             “Listen, honey. They don’t care about our problems. We’ll be lucky if they don’t increase the foreign students’ tuition before I graduate. They’re planning to have three different types, In-State, Out-of-State and Out-of- Country tuition.” 

             “I’m not worried about two years from now. How can we survive this winter?” she shrieked. 

             He took a deep breath, “Well, don’t keep your hopes high but maybe I can get a job during this Christmas break,” he restrained his excitement.  

             “Doing what? How much do they pay?” Her eyes shone.

              “The minimum wage is $1.60 per hour. This guy has worked for

two full weeks. He got a contract from the university to clean up the brush and broken trees on campus roads. The heavy snow knocked down so many.

” 

“Oh, that’s perfect. If you work eight hours a day for two weeks,

you’ll make $128.” she was punching numbers on the calculator.

 “Before school starts, I can make enough to pay for the next month’s rent.”

             “We’ll still have $38 left,” she said. “You know that Aida’s birthday is on Christmas day, don’t you?” she added.

             “How can I forget? Everyone in this country celebrates our daughter’s birthday.” he grinned.

             “Who is this guy? I hope he doesn’t change his mind at the last minute like the last guy who wanted to hire you. We need this money. ” Her words blended with the steam coming out of the boiling pot.       

             “He lives here in our complex, in building K. Do you remember the blonde girl you were talking to in the laundry room the other day?”

             “The one who was asking about our kids?” 

             “Yes, that’s his wife. Her husband’s name is Bruce. 

They’re both from Topeka. He said they were High School sweethearts.

Whatever the heck that means. Americans have names for everything,” he said.

             “They got married last year. She would love to have children, but her husband wants them to wait for both to finish school first. She’s just a junior,” she pensively added.

             “When he told me about this job, he once mentioned the work permit. But I don’t think it’s a big deal.”

             “Is he in your class?”

             “Yeah, in my Fluid Mechanics class. He’s graduating next semester, though. I can’t believe this guy. He’s too prudent, always nervous about something. He pays in-state tuition, which is almost half of what I pay per semester, and he receives federal grants and a student loan.  He has no expenses until he graduates, has already had a few job interviews, and has received two job offers so far. He’s still worried about his future.  Life is so easy for American students.” his gaze was fixated on their sleeping children.  “What do we do for a Christmas tree? Kids love to have one

decorated,” she said.

             “Look! Look out the window, woman. Why do you think God has

planted so many trees right in our backyard? Tonight I’ll cut a nice small one,” he said.

             “Didn’t you see the notice in the laundry about the destruction of university properties? There’s a $50 fine if they catch you,” she sighed. 

             “Don’t worry, my dear. The law does not apply to us, we’re not from Kansas. Why do you think I’m paying an out-of-state rate for my education? The penalty for cutting trees is already included in my tuition,” he grinned.

             “Just be careful, please.”

             “Where is the Christmas box full of ornaments we bought from the garage sale in the summer?” he asked.

             “I can’t believe we paid only fifty cents for the whole box. It’s under the bed. I looked inside it the other day. It has everything: lights, candy canes, frosted balls, a chubby Santa figurine and a shiny gold star for the top.” She was excited. 

“The kids will be so surprised in the morning to see the blinking lights on the tree,” she continued.

             “You see. There’s always hope,” he said.

             “We’re running out of milk,” her voice suddenly muffled. 

             “Tomorrow, after the exam, I’ll walk to the Safe-Way to get milk. The car broke again.” 

             “How far is it?” she asked.

             “It should be about five miles to get there and come back. It’s on the other side of campus. The walk is not long but the damn wind is intolerable. Oh, I hate Kansas winters.” 

             “How much does it cost to fix the car?” she wanted to subtract this expense from his paycheck. 

“If I take it to this mechanic shop at five in the morning before his boss shows up, he will do it for $25. The timing belt is out.”

             “It’s leaking oil too,” she said.

             “That’s too expensive to fix.”  

             “But it’s so embarrassing, oil is dripping everywhere in the parking lot.”  

             “Yes, but the mess is covered by fresh snow every day, isn’t it?  God is on our side. You see, usually, drivers pull into a gas station and ask the attendant to fill up the gas tank and check the oil. We just need to say the opposite: ' Please fill up the oil and check the gas.” They burst in laughter. 

             “We don’t have much cheese and cereal either,” she sighed.

             “For cheese, juice, and cereal, we have to wait until the first of the month to get our WIC checks.”

             “Can’t we get Food Stamps?”

             “You wish. That’s for citizens. But I have good news for you. I heard there is a church on the intersection of Yuma and Juliet that gives away a loaf of Cheddar cheese to the WIC recipients, sometimes a sack of flour too,” he said.  

             “I can bake bread.”

 “Bread? Bread is for poor people. We’ll make Pizza with free dough and free cheese. 

             “Pizza needs Mozzarella cheese, dummy.”

 “You’re very particular! Believe me, sharp cheddar would be just fine,” he smiled.

             “I guess so. Kids don’t know the difference. They love pizza.” 

             Two days later, he took the last exams, and the fall semester ended. The entire week before Christmas, he worked on campus roads, removing broken limbs, shoveling snow, and cleaning aisles. And at home, the little Christmas tree never failed to dazzle the kids. The lights blinked red, blue, and green. The chubby Santa on the limb bobbed his head to left and right, and the lucky star sparkled in the dark night. 

             On Christmas Eve, when he finished the work, Bruce was leaning on his truck waiting for him. “I’m sorry man, I can’t pay you, believe me I didn’t know this but I was told foreign students on F-1 visa are not allowed to work for private employers; you can only work for the university. I don’t want to get in trouble by paying you,” he spit the black chewed tobacco out on the snow before getting in the truck.

 Suddenly, the cold wind slapped him, he was numb. Words froze on his tongue. 

             Before driving off, Bruce said, “At the end of January, when I get my paycheck, the university pays you forty-five dollars for this week after 25% deduction for income tax of course. I’m sorry man, but I can’t pay you on my own, that’s against the law.” 

             He walked home on slippery sidewalks in the dusk. The bitter cold pierced through his shabby coat. His head sank to his chest, breathing inside and counting the number of pizzas he had to deliver to make ends meet this month. Where do I get twenty-five dollars to fix the car, and who orders pizza on Christmas Break anyway? The school is closed, and most students leave the town for the holidays.  The bone-chilling thoughts marred his mind. Christmas was tomorrow.

             He entered the Safe-Way Grocery Store preoccupied with his daughter’s second birthday, and wandered aimlessly in the aisles, checking prices. As he darted out of the store, looking down to avoid eye contact, a few moments later, he was frozen in place by a strong hand tapping on his shoulder.

             The huge store manager searched his pockets, and two small

birthday candles and a little tube of cherry flavor cake icing were all he found.     

 Best Buy

                “Do you see that old hag at the end of the aisle?” Israel murmured.

             “Which one?” Jacob whispered back.

             “How many old women do you see at the end of the aisle?”  

 “The one who’s looking at laptop computers with her husband?” Jacob asked.

             “No dummy, the one with the little girl,” Israel responded.

             “Yeah, what about her?”

             “Do you see the big bag she carries?”

              “Yeah, so?”

             “She’s perfect,” Israel said.

             “Perfect for what? What the hell are you talking about, man?”

             “To get us the X-box 360 with 250 GB console.”

             “You’re not making sense, man,” Jacob asked. 

             “An old lady with an innocent face and a huge handbag, the perfect combination to pull off a petty crime.” 

             “What’re you up to now?”

               “We plant the game in her purse, and she’ll carry it out of the store

for us.” 

             “You don’t even play computer games? Why would anyone be interested in stealing one?

             “I’m in it for the rush, my man.”  

             “You must be out of your mind. How do we stick it in her purse?” “I looked at her purse. It’s unzipped and wide open like a hungry mouth to gobble an expensive video game. She’s a natural accomplice.” Israel smirked. 

             “I don’t know, man.” Jacob shook his head. 

              “There’s no risk involved, this scheme works like a charm.” 

             “That’s nuts even by your standards. What if she gets stopped?” 

             “Then she learns her lesson not to steal anymore. I guarantee you nothing will happen. They’d never suspect an old lady like her. Besides, who cares if she gets caught? Do you think they’ll call the cops on her? She must be eighty years old, for crying out loud,” Israel grinned. 

             ”It’s not going to work. The electronic gadget on the package sets off the alarm at the door.”

             “No, it won’t.”

             “How do you know?” Jacob shrieked.

             “Because I already checked, the X-box doesn’t have a security device on it. They don’t install theft prevention devices on large packages. They assume no one would walk out of the store with a large box under his arm? I’ve thought of everything.” 

             “Are you sure?” Jacob asked. 

             “We’ll find out soon enough. Besides, what do we have to lose?”  

             “How do we plant an X-box in her purse?” 

             “Delicately, my friend, with finesse.”

             “I… I can’t do it.” Jacob said.

             “I do it myself.   Just watch and learn, my gullible friend.”  

***

             “Those two punks,” Mr. Collins pointed at Israel and Jacob,” they’re up to something. I can sense it.” The store manager said to his assistant.

             “We don’t want punks like these hanging around here. They hurt our sales, especially around holiday time. I walk by them a few times to let them know we’re on to them.” His assistant, Roger, said.

             “No, no, I like to catch them red-handed. Let’s wait a little. I bet they’re going pull a trick on us.” Mr. Collins said.

             “Most of our items have the buzzer on them.” His assistant said. 

             “No, they’re not that stupid to walk off with merchandise. They know they’ll get caught. You see that old lady on aisle four? I bet they’re going to sneak the merchandise in her purse and let her do their dirty work for them.” Mr. Collins pensively shook his head. 

             “How could we catch them then?” Roger asked.

             “Is the surveillance camera working on aisle four?”

             “Yes.”

             “Are you sure?”

             “Yes, Sir.”

             “Then, don’t scare them away. Let them pull their stunt. I’ll catch them in the parking lot, and with the video footage, we can send them to jail today.”

             “You, Sir have a criminal mind,” Roger said.

             “Twenty-five years in retail sales made me the Devil I am. That’s why I’m the boss.”  Mr. Collins boasted, “Just make sure right after I go out after them you call the police.” 

***

             “Where are we going today, Nana?” The young girl asked. ”Let’s go

to the park.”

             “No, let’s do something different today.  Maybe we can go to stores and browse for a while, and then we’ll have an ice cream, my dear.” “Shopping, shopping where?”

              “I don’t know, wherever you like, but just to browse.”

             “Let’s go to Best Buy?” Katy giggled.

             “What kind of stuff do they sell dear?”        

             “Best Buy is an electronic store. They sell Televisions and computers, Grandma.”

             “I see.” Her grandma smiled.  

             “They have all kinds of cool stuff. There’s a game called X-box 360. I wish I had one.” The young girl said. 

              “Unfortunately, they’re too expensive for my tight budget, my dear.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll get you one of those.” 

             “What’s happening to you today, Grandma? You never go to the store? Why all of a sudden did you decide to go to Best Buy?” 

             “I like to see the cool stuff you always talk about. You can play with computer games while I look around.”

 “What’s up with this huge purse? You don’t have anything to put in it?”  Katy said.

                  “Oh my dear, I wish I had an answer for every question you ask.”  

             “Wait a minute, Nana; let me at least zip your handbag.” She was reaching for the purse under her Grandmother’s arm.

             “No, no. Let it be, sweetie. There is nothing in it fall off anyway.”

             “You’re too unpredictable for a Grandma.” Katy chuckled.

***

             At Best Buy, Katy left her Grandmother to browse and walked to the video game section of the store and sat in a booth, put on the headset, and started driving the digital car at high speed.  Her Grandma, fascinated by the latest electronics, closely examined products in every aisle.  

             Israel swiftly grabbed an X-box off the shelf, quietly walked by the old lady, delicately slipped it in her purse, and rushed off.

             “Let’s get out of here. Operation X-box phase one is complete.” Israel said to Jacob.

             The two young men raced out of the store and walked toward the flower shop next door and waited.

             “Bingo! I told you they were going to do it. I catch these punks when they try to snatch the X-box from the old lady’s bag in the parking lot. You watch, and when you see us all together, call the cops right away.”

             “I already called them, and they spotted an officer close by. He’s right there in the Baskin-Robins, waiting for me to give him the signal.” 

             “Good thinking, Roger.  Make sure you see all of us together before you call the officer and not a minute too soon; otherwise, we can’t prove anything. Remember out of the store, we cannot accuse anyone of shoplifting unless we can prove it.” Mr. Collins said.

             Mrs. Pendleton hurried to the Video game section to fetch Katy.

“let’s go, dear I browsed enough for today.” 

             “What did you get, Nana?”

             “Shush, I’m not sure yet.” She smiled.

              “What do you mean you’re not sure, Nana? Did you find something

interesting?”

             “No, someone else did it for me. it surely feels heavy.”

             “What’re you talking about, Nana? You forgot to take your medications this morning, didn’t you?”

             “Oh my goodness, I don’t remember.” Her Nana said.

Mrs. Pendleton and Katy walked out of the store, followed by the store manager. Katy was pulling her Grandmother’s hand toward where her car was parked.

 “Oh, look, my dear, there’s a Basking Robins here too. Let’s go have an Ice Cream.” 

             They walked in the Baskin Robins. Inside the store, Mrs. Pendleton rushed to a police officer who was sitting behind the counter having a sandwich and said, “Officer I need your help.”

             “What can I do for you, Ma’am?” The officer politely responded.

             “I think we’re being followed,” Mrs. Pendleton said.

             “Are you sure, Ma’am?”

             “Yes officer, I’m scared.” 

             “Don’t worry. Can you point out the person who followed you?“  The officer inquired. 

             “That man followed us out of the store.” She pointed at Mr. Collins, the store manager, who was waiting outside the Ice Cream shop by the lamp post. “he was watching me everywhere I went inside the store.” 

             “Did he say anything? Did he bother you at all?”

             “No but I don’t feel safe walking to my car alone with my granddaughter.”

             “Well, if he didn’t disturb you, he hasn’t broken any law. I can’t confront him but what I can do is to escort you two ladies to your car.”

             “That would be wonderful.”

             “Enjoy your ice cream, and we will all leave together,” the officer said.

“Oh, thank you, officer.”

             Ten minutes later, the police officer escorted Mrs. Pendleton and her granddaughter to their car. She thanked the officer profusely and drove off the parking lot. Mr. Collins, the store manager, Israel, and Jacob were all watching them, flabbergasted.

             While driving on the freeway back home, Mrs. Pendleton touched her purse, glanced inside it in wonderment, and said to her granddaughter, “Thank you for being good company. I have a feeling you’ll get what you wished for today.”              

 Premonition      

             “Would you like another one?” The man sitting at the bar offered a drink to the beautiful woman next to him.

             “Ah. I don’t think so, I’m getting tipsy,” she said.

             “That’s what Friday night is for,” he chuckled.

             “Are you trying to get me drunk?” The stranger beauty says in a seductive tone while playing with the empty glass in her hand.

             “I enjoy your company, and I do anything to prolong its pleasure.” 

              “Hum. Why am I so skeptical of your intentions then?” she sneered.

             “That’s because you’re so cynical. I like that in a woman.” 

             “What else do you like in a woman?”

             “Intelligence is my favorite virtue. It may sound cliché, but it’s true.” He then signaled the bartender and ordered two more of the same drinks.

             “Let me see if I understand it correctly. You’re half-drunk in a bar on a Friday night and interested only in my intelligence? Obviously my damn cleavage is not doing the trick.”

             He grinned.

             “What do you do?” She asked.

             “I’m a businessman.”

 “What else do you do in addition to making money and picking up intelligent women?”  

             “I read sometimes.”

             “Hum. What do you read?”

“True crime stories. I’m fascinated by criminal minds.”  

“How interesting. I write crime stories.” 

             “You write fiction. Obviously you have a criminal mind, which is adorable in a woman, but there is a big difference between true crimes and fictional stories.”

 “But I’m good; I can make readers believe they’re reading true crimes.”  

             “It’s not the same, my dear. Fiction never replicates reality.”

             “Define real,” she carped.

 “What’s happened is reality, and what’s happening is also real.” The man reasoned.

             “My crimes happen in my imagination first, so they’re real. Reality is a matter of perception and not timing.  I visualize how a crime may happen, and victims willingly conspire with me to carry out my plots. At the end, every piece of the puzzle magically falls into place. Past, present, or future tense has no bearing on reality.” She defended her craft,

             “Hum. You really are passionate about writing, aren’t you? ” He whispered his slurred words in her ear. He could almost taste her earlobe.

             “Life without passion is not life.” When she twirled the half-empty glass in her hand, she gently caressed his face with a wisp of her hair.  

             “You inspire me. I feel like writing, too.” Her scent was driving him insane.

             “It must be the alcohol talking.”

             “I can write, I have stories to tell.” 

             “Remember, if you vividly visualize an event, you’ve already made it happen. The line between reality and fiction is murky. The true plot I write is only discovered only if the story is read more than once, this is what art of writing is all about.”

             “Maybe I write a romantic poem or better yet a suicide note, the final words of a man who is hit the rock bottom.” 

“Have you ever thought of killing yourself?” She asked.

 “No, not really. I’m a successful man by any standard, and I don’t have regrets.”

             “Then why would you start from there?”

             “Because death is so final, to me the mystery of death is alluring.”  

             “That’s exactly how I conquer the fear of death, by writing it to death.” She grinned.  

             “And we all have our sorrows in life. A letter of such nature is a venue to express my despair. Don’t you think so?”

             “Write from your heart, and it eventually touches your reader’s heart.” 

             “Would you critique my writing?” 

 “You’re not tricking me into a date, are you?” She was now gazing into his lustful eyes.

 “We’re connecting on an intellectual level?” he raised his glass and toasted.

             “I give you one week to pour your heart on the paper. I’ll be back here next Friday night.” She then grabbed her purse, swirled a half circle, and fixed to leave. “We can go somewhere with a little more privacy to discuss your literary piece,” she suggested.

               “And thank you for the drinks.” She left the dazzled man at the bar. 

             On their next rendezvous, the rain was viciously pouring down.

When she walked to the bar, he was sitting in his parked car waiting for her. She sat in the car, and he drove in soaking dark streets for a while without exchanging words. Then, he entered a deserted parking lot and stopped.

             “I still don’t know your name.” his words were tangled with the wild melody of rain lashing on the hood.

“How was your first writing experience?” she smiled.

“Exotic. I never had the courage to express my true feelings the way I do here.” He showed her the letter.

             “You just didn’t know how.” She tenderly touched his hand.

             “This is a final testament, a desperate attempt to tell a story to ones who never cared to listen. It’s so absurd that sometimes we have to pay such a big price just to receive a little attention.” He confessed. 

             He then opened the glove compartment and pulled out a handgun. “I even have my loaded gun with me tonight to truly capture the mind frame of a desperate man.”

             He gently put the revolver on his temple and said, ”Do you think this is how he would’ve committed suicide?” 

             She placed her finger on top of his, pulled the trigger, and said,

“This is how I write a crime story.”

She then wiped her fingerprints, got out of the car, and fled the crime scene.

Lost

             The taste of tobacco like poison in my mouth made my entire being bitter. Nauseated, I sluggishly stretch my torso, emerge from the layers of bed sheets, and peer out the tarnished window.  The careless rain has soaked every crooked building, scrubbed the dirty asphalt, washed off the filth into the sewage, and now is pouring down the broken gutters. Rain's guilty claws scratched every wall, and its culprit's fingerprints remained all over the town.  

             In the past midnight hours of the street, the traffic light rules like a ruthless tyrant with a mood swing. First, it sprays the vicious red on the wet payment like the spilled blood of his victim. Then his temper sways to a jolly green as if no crime was committed just a few seconds ago; yet its shortlived mania is bound to soon turn into a dull amber as it always does. The capricious rain, this mindless accomplice to the crime of night, splashes the tantalizing colors of neon signs on the ground in concert with the perpetrator to portray the somber emptiness.  A homeless person sleeping in the corner catches my eye. The lackluster mélange of conflicting beams of light is etched in the fiber of the soaking cardboards sheltering the vagabond from the frigid autumn in a hidden corner of the dilapidated street

.

             My room is inundated with a haze of confusion, the air is musty and light scarce.  Mere breathing damages my lungs, and thinking does the same to my mind. I talk to myself, yet my thoughts are stale, my words blank, and my heart is aching by a growing void. I have to escape, that I know, where I don’t, anywhere but here. As the hours pass, I finally manage to stand on my exhausted feet to leave my room's rotten comfort and roam the streets on a whim.

             The cold gust scuffs my skin as I approach the homeless man coiled under the soaking cardboards with his right shoe knocked off his pale feet at a distance. Cautiously, I take a few steps closer to the dark speck on the sidewalk and stand by him, overwhelmed by a bizarre sentiment. I take a glimpse at his face and realize I know this man well. I know this corpse by heart. And if I carefully examine the subject, I can detect his interrupted pulse, caress his frozen love, and perhaps register his long-lost memories.  His ominous soul permeates my entire being just to spread his solemn words through the dark streets of this town.  My diligent attempt to break away from his morbid yoke on my thoughts only furthers the urgency of transcribing his melancholic words. 

             The collapsed drifter on the pavement lived every moment of my

past and I’m destined to live every one of his in the future. There is no exit

on the horizon from this quandary, only an end in sight. With every breath I take, I’m drawn anew by an impulsive stroke of a whimsical brush on the precarious canvas of life. My dim impression is rendered lifeless before me yet I’m manically intoxicated by a mystic aroma that levitates me from mundane anxiety ordained to sketch a vivacious scope against all odds. Like an entranced dervish, I whirl uninhibitedly on the pristine tapestry of distorted lights and drift away from the fallen man on the street engraved in oblivion.  My calling is tainted, my roar stifled yet I’m sentenced to write only the dark shades of the night in the desperate hope that the sun shines tomorrow.      

Conversation in the Park

The entire week, I worried about the chores for Friday, my only day off. Tasks I’d postponed for months. The gutter was falling off the wall, letting rain seep under the foundation, and the other was our lackluster antique dining chairs. I’d already bought sandpaper, a paintbrush, thinner, and varnish to re-varnish them.

Friday came, but I just couldn’t bring myself to get started on any of those chores. First, I debated which was more urgent, the gutter or the chairs. A broken gutter could cost us dearly as the rainy season was approaching and shabby looking chairs were reflection of us. 

Twice to distract myself, I started doing a crossword puzzle, but forgetting the name of Napoleon’s lover crashed my hope of doing so. The entire morning was wasted; all I’d done so far was smoke and monitor the time. A peculiar sentiment was inundating my entire being: an old anxiety, an erratic heartbeat. Whatever it was, it stopped me from doing anything productive.

Later in the afternoon, I put on my coat and hat and left the house for a walk. After I was far enough to return, I realized I’d left my favorite plaid scarf at home. Any other day, I would’ve gone back for it, as the doctor advised me not to expose my chest to cold as it triggered my asthma.  

But today, I kept walking until I entered a park. It seemed more crowded than usual; the main trails were all filled with groups of people sitting cozily on the grass as if they’d been sentenced to waste their Friday afternoon there. A few people played cards; some backgammon, others gobbled sunflower seeds as if competing for a prize. And the circle of friends and family had a samovar in the center boiling and a teapot on top steaming.

On the hedges further down, a flock of black ravens was arguing. A dark raven croaked ominously, and three responded; another one croaked in disagreement, and suddenly, all frantically croaked in unison.

In a quiet, remote, and secluded corner, I finally discovered an empty bench, just the perfect spot to take the load off. The sun was shining right in my eyes; in an hour or two, it would be time to go home, too. I pulled my hat down a little to shield my eyes from its daring gaze.

I don’t know how long it took until I sensed the presence of someone next to me. Politely, I shifted aside to get a better look, and when I recognized the stranger, a feeling of serenity permeated my soul. Calmness replaced the anxiety I’d felt all day. It was Ali, my childhood friend; surely it was him sitting right next to me, indifferent to my presence. He was my next-door neighbor and my classmate; we went to school together every day in childhood, and when we grew up, we exchanged books and passionately debated about our political views and convictions.

But how could that be? How could he be sitting shoulder to shoulder with me after more than 40 years of not having any contact? He looked the same as I always remembered: long nose, bony chin, and now with his sunken eyes staring into the sun, like we used to do together when we were kids, betting on who could stare into the sun longer without blinking. 

He must not have recognized me. Unlike him, I had changed a lot; I’d gained 20 Kilos, lost hair, and now wore glasses.

“Is that you?” I asked in wonderment.

Nodding apathetically, he didn’t say a word. He kept staring at the sun, gazing far from the park and much farther than the bickering ravens on the hedges. He was looking into sky, much higher than the mountains and beyond the horizon.      

             “Don’t you recognize me?” I pried.

His affectionate eyes turned to my face for the first time and gave me the same look he gave me in childhood. But the passage of years had paled his gaze; something was keeping him from warming up to me.

“This is a bizarre coincidence, my friend; I had a hunch something would happen today. I came here for no apparent reason.  I was anxiously waiting for you the entire day without knowing it. I can’t believe after all these years we are meeting again. God knows how many sweet memories we have together. Believe me, my friend; nothing replaces sweet memories, nothing.”

 I kept rambling without letting him respond.

“Do you remember we paid three Rials each and walked a long way to buy a half bologna sandwich? Do you remember the sandwich shop called the Golden Rooster? I could never duplicate that taste. Do you remember how we could only afford to buy one movie ticket and watched the movie in one seat twice in a row? They don’t make movies like that anymore, do they, my friend?”

             “You’ve changed a lot,” he responded in a cold tone of voice.

  “That’s life; after youth, you change so much you can’t recognize yourself anymore.”

“What happened to our old friends?” he asked.

“Do you remember the guy we called the psychologist? He always said if we had a sexual revolution, class struggles would vanish altogether. He abandoned his dreams when he inherited a rug store and now making tons of money; doing what he always hated, following his father’s footsteps. And the rest of the gang, I have no idea what happened to them.”

His mind was wandering elsewhere as if ravens had snatched his attention like they snatch bars of soap from unattended wash buckets. I wished I could repeat the past, all of it, the bad and the good. I wished we could drink so much water after playing football in the summer heat of the south. I desperately wished to relive the taste of hot baked beets we bought from the street vendor in the bitter cold of winter. I wanted to ask him how he studied that made him a better student than me? I had lots of things to say, but he was melting in the sun before my eyes; I was losing his presence.

He showed no interest in the past; he was relentlessly staring into the sun as he did in our childhood. I followed his gaze to go beyond the park hedges, beyond the city limits, and beyond my horizon. I emerged from the smoke-filled city and ascended higher than the snow-capped mountain. The air was no longer polluted, and I felt like a bird soaring in the infinite sky, to eternity and approaching the sun. Just like him, just like our childhood, I was getting closer and closer to the immense fountain of light and about to enter the house of the sun.  After so many years, once again, I was able to take a deep, fresh breath of air and exhale freely to purify myself; now, I was able to stand against all odds and was empowered enough to stop typhoons. Crystals of light inundated my entire being, and rays of fire rushed through my veins. The sun exploded, and its rays illuminated the galaxy, and I was standing in the center of it all, absorbing every crystal of light with every fiber of my being, opening my arms to embrace the world.

Suddenly, I trembled and jolted out of fantasy thinking of my upcoming retirement, my pension plan, and my coin collection. What if the gutter falls off the wall? The dining room chairs are waiting patiently for a varnish.

My eyes burned; my frail body could not tolerate the enormous flow of light. Desperately, I covered my chest with both hands to prevent it from crushing and closed my eyes. Darkness and vacuum crept inside me and purged every piece of shattered light from my being. 

I buttoned my coat to keep the cold out and cautiously opened my eyes to adjust to darkness falling on the park. The sun had already set, and I found myself sitting on the bench alone. 

  Apocalypse      

             On the porch, leaning against the wall with a cup of coffee in my hand, I was wondering if I was qualified to refinance my home mortgage at a lower rate. In the background, the soft voice of the weatherman on television echoed.

“Enjoy your sunny weekend”.

Nothing was out of the ordinary when suddenly the ground beneath my feet trembled. I sensed an eerie force pressing down on earth, a silent roar perhaps, a motionless storm. The long rows of enormous trees on both sides of the street shivered in harmony. Every house shuddered, and every parked car trembled in a symphony of devastation. Before I could react, the next-door house crumbled before my eyes. 

The ground cracked open, and the entire stretch of houses in the neighborhood drifted away. The chasm in the earth widened with a furious blast, and the entire city block was ripped apart. In a matter of minutes, the same calamity occurred as far as the horizon. An invisible dagger viciously slaughtered the planet in my dazed presence. 

             I witnessed the world falling apart. For no apparent reason, the earth shattered into millions of pieces like a porcelain piggy bank fallen off a child’s hand. The immutable law of gravity ceased to exist, and enormous chunks of the planet blasted in every direction and scattered in the universe. 

Shockingly enough, my house was the only structure left completely intact. The Armageddon had only spared me and my possessions. I was blessed to be the lone survivor, or so I thought. The apocalypse didn’t spill my coffee to stain my clean shirt and ruin my day. In a matter of minutes, I found myself standing on the edge of my new world in the shape of a slice of chocolate cake decorated with a house lurking in a green yard peppered with weeds and confined by a wooden fence. My beloved lemon tree curved slightly, supporting its shiny lemons, yet its roots were now all exposed. 

             A little confused by the catastrophe, I dusted off my pajamas and fanned the air before my mouth, and gently put the cup down and held on to the yard’s faucet, cautiously slouched, and looked down to examine the depth of the disaster.

The small piece of the chocolate cake I was standing on was my new world, consisting of an old 2-bedroom house with a high monthly mortgage. My home remained intact, fully furnished with all basic amenities, with the attached garage pregnant with a 1957 Chevy. Yes, my entire world was built on a flat concrete slab. My shock was further compounded to see the crack on the foundation; the one ugly symptom of the structural damage that drastically reduced my home's market value had now miraculously disappeared by the earth movement. I also noticed a few shingles missing on the roof; those I could fix myself. 

             After the initial shock subsided, I contemplated the impact this catastrophe had on my lifestyle. It was impossible not to be affected by such an unprecedented calamity. Yet I welcomed the doomsday as an opportunity to simplify my life. First, I thought of the leaky junk in the garage. Now I was so glad I didn’t pay the high cost of repair. I had no use for transportation in the future. So, the first order of business was to get rid of the clunker before it ruined my garage floor with an oil stain. The garage door was open, so I shifted the gear to neutral and pushed the car back, and it rolled right out of the garage and fell off the edge of my universe; I sighed in relief. The disposal of the old junk out of my life, however, disturbed the balance of my world.

The piece of chocolate cake suddenly tilted, and despite my effort to stay on top, I too lost balance and slipped off the edge of the universe. Before I lost my grip and plunged into an eternal abyss, I grasped the roots of the lemon tree in the yard and survived the never-ending free fall.

             The world teetered a few times and finally regained its balance, but now I was below the surface, clinging to the delicate roots. The clock on the wall had also lost its balance and fallen; it too was hanging to the edge by its flimsy minute hand. The distorted concept of time and I were the only persisting survivors of this apocalyptic event. Neither one of us could reclaim our original state. 

             I managed to survive below the surface under such peculiar circumstances for a long time by digesting worms and grains I found in the dirt underneath my home. At night, I could see the gleaming moon crescent like a ruthless sickle dangling over my lonely tree in the yard. My beloved lemon tree was leaning forward to extend its fragile limbs to help me with a somber gaze, like a mournful mother sobbing for her dying child. As the time deformed, I witnessed my tree wrinkle in the losing battle of life; its lemons gradually lost their zest in grief.

             My prolonged existence in the underworld altered my perspective on life. Physical survival was no longer my main concern, as I realized how absurd it was to relive my life as if nothing had happened. Instead of perpetuating a futile struggle to resurface, I embarked upon an expedition into the depths of the chocolate cake, into which I was engulphed. I had lost everything, yet like an addicted gambler, I took a demented pleasure in the bitter taste of loss. 

             The deeper I descended into the crux of life, the more bizarre the journey became. In the process, I acquired a vision, a vantage point I never thought possible. The mundane linear concept of time disintegrated, and the shattered particles reconstituted to form a perpetual series of expansion and contraction of moments in which I was enshrined.

Hysterically, I was propagating on the vibrating strings of a mystic musical instrument feverishly strummed by the rouge flashes of my memories. I could hear a melancholic melody composed by the filaments of despair and delight emanating into the air by the fibers of my being.

Inundated by a vague mist of memoir, my recollections play a vicious game, a devious trickery on me. At times, a delightful haze of reminiscence caresses me, yet before I can absorb the essence of its charm and savor its nectar, it viciously fades into the blurred corners of my past. I cannot distinguish between the past, the present, and the future, as time has lost its significance forever. Reluctantly, I accept a vague blend of dreams and reality as the present, and every day, I further plunge into the chasm of the future, yet my cloudy tomorrow oddly resembles my murky past.          

Screw

screw, a defective one, that’s what I am. Pay attention! I’m not a nail. Nails are flathead with no character, I say. They’re straightforward, I’m not. They have no twists and turns; I do. They’re easygoing, I’m not.  Just hit a nail on the head, and it obediently does its job, I don’t. You can easily straighten a crooked nail with a hammer, and it works as good as new, but hit me like that, and you’ll see what happens. I get even more crooked. 

The first time I was put into good use, I failed miserably. The carpenter, who randomly picked me out of the box full of screws, couldn’t drive me through the wooden door frame because I was slightly crooked and my head was stripped. His hand slipped, and I made him bleed, so he tossed me on the ground, cursing me under his breath.  That was my first human contact and when I realized who I was. His blood stained my soul forever, and I carried his suffering on my conscience, metaphorically speaking, of course. Remember, screws don’t have consciousness.

I’m all messed up, a loose screw with a stripped head.  And the funny thing is that every time I’m rejected and thrown out, I land right on my head, pondering who I am and why I am, and since I can’t figure that out, I start counting my twists and turns. 

Let’s go back to our story as this is not about morality, it’s about a loose screw.  

Since I always sitting on my head, I can easily get stuck into the sole of a shoe and remain there unnoticed for a long time and do what I do best, damage anything I come in contact with. I’ve scratched so many shiny floors and torn so many more exquisite handmade rugs in my life, all unintentionally, I may add. 

One day, I was sitting alone on the roadside, minding my own business, when a speeding car ran me over. I had no choice but to penetrate its tire and cause a catastrophic accident. Oh! What a disaster. One of the traffic crash investigators, after weeks of analysis, finally discovered me.

“Aha! Here it is. One crooked screw with stripped head. Can you believe it? one insignificant twisted piece of metal created such a horrific tragedy and hurt so many?” The investigator shouted while holding me by the head.

He took several pictures of me from every angle for his report, and once again, it was time for me to be discarded. I had no more use as I’d served my purpose. But instead of throwing me out, the wise investigator put me in his pocket and took me home to show me to his children and teach them a lesson.

That night, after dinner and when he was cozily sitting in his favorite chair, headed after drinking a couple of beers, he pulled me out of his pocket and held me between his forefinger and thumb and paraded me before the anxious eyes of his family members and lectured them on the subject of prudence. After making his point, he pitched me in the wastebasket. Sure enough, he missed the target, and once again, I landed right on my head, inconspicuously engraved in the shaggy carpet of his living room.  An hour later, his little girl stepped on me, and suddenly, blood gushed from her foot and stained the entire carpet. Her parents rushed to help their loved one, but I’d already spread my poison into her gentle soul. The doctor in the hospital removed me from the little girl’s foot and held me close to his eyes as he said to her parents, ”I hope injections prevent the infection. This is one dirty piece of scrap metal.” 

The white robed doctor walked to the trashcan and carefully dropped me in. I was properly discarded, or so he thought. But I survived this chain of events even more crookedly than before, and when my head, stained with an innocent blood hit the bottom of that empty metallic can I created a mesmerizing sound, a divine music reverberated in emptiness.  A melody I wish I could compose every time I was rejected. I sat alone in my steel-barricaded prison, waiting to see what destiny had planned for me next.

That night, the janitor emptied me into the dumpster outside, where I spent a few days. In the course of that sojourn and before the garbage truck came to take the refuse to the landfill, my trance turned into reality as I became aware of an exotic power in me. I was now irresistible to crooked staples, bent nails, broken pins, and thumbtacks. They clung to me as the worshipers do to the shrines. I’d morphed into a porcupine with sharp spines, metallic thorns erected out of my body, a jagged-edged creature I’d become.  As razor-sharp as I was, I managed to tear the plastic trash bag and slipped through the bottom crack of the garbage truck and fell right back into the streets more crooked and more destructive than ever.

I’ve changed so much that I can’t recognize myself anymore. I carry a range of fatal diseases as I’ve lurked in the most contaminated corners of society. When I sting it hurts, but the initial pain is nothing compared to the suffering bound to happen later. I spread the virus into my victim’s entire being. Yes, I pierce their flesh and penetrate their core when they least expect it. And when I do, I become a part of their soul, and I feel their pain, and I suffer with my victims until I’m removed and thrown away.  Maybe I was meant to be this way, armed with so many sharp edges enforced with lethal venom.

Once again, I’m sitting on my head alone, contemplating whom I’m

going to hurt next.          

 Waiting

Once again, the old man is here to visit his son as he does every month. He must be sitting alone in his son’s empty room and gazing through his thick glasses at the tarnished flowers woven into the heart of the wornout Persian rug. 

And once again, I’m standing by the door, watching him in silence.

             Each time he exhales, wheezing, he launches a desperate storm to drive the ship of death from his shore of life. When he speaks, he mocks his destiny by the funny movement of his lips. To stand, he pushes the palms of his hands vigorously on the ground as if he is getting off the chest of his defeated enemy. As audaciously as he defies his fate, his nemesis inflicts lethal wounds on him with every move he makes. Time is on his enemy’s side, and waiting is not the old man’s weapon of choice. 

             Unaware of my presence, the old man attempts to drink his hot tea. His trembling fingers cautiously approach the teacup repeatedly until he finally senses the heat with his fingertips; he lifts the delicate glass to his lips, spilling a few drops despite all precautions, and then he realizes the sugar cube is missing in his mouth. At this stage of the battle, he is not willing to retreat! He holds the hot glass to his lips as the other hand gropes every flower in the worn-out rug for the silver box inconspicuous to his eroded eyesight. His lips burn and his eyes tear as the fingers caress each lackluster flower. The rug lint viciously clings to the deep cracks on his fingers to drag him inside his grave.  

             He finally manages to touch the brass sugar cube container, tapping on its sides to confirm the finding, and cautiously plucks a cube and places it on his tongue and downs the first sip of his hard-earned trophy.  

             I have rented a room in the same house as his son for more than a year. Only once have I witnessed the father and son unite. When the son entered the room, the old man’s eyes shone, and a breath of life blew into his fatigued, aged body. In their eyes, I read a single poem with two interpretations and a love with two translations. Sometimes, I sit on the ledge of the water basin in the middle of the yard and listen to his son when he plunges into his reverie, oblivious to my presence and his own.

He emerges from this world and soars into another so unknown to me.  He speaks of sick and famished children. He swats the flies from their faces, cursing the black pests for snatching scarce nourishment from these little souls. He shivers in earthquakes and aid mothers frantically searching for their babies in the rubble, pounding their faces in agony. He hears the children’s heartbeats when the bombs fall in the war.  And suddenly his face blossoms with a smile and poetically shares with me the aroma of spring when the drunken dew makes love with the wild scarlet flowers in the dawn of the meadows of his village.  

             This young man is born anew in the scent of spring, in the ecstasy of rain, in luscious meadows, and in the vivacious fantasy of rainbow just to die in cold lonely nights, in famine and in war.   He’s a fugitive, an outlaw, and on the run in the big city. That’s why his father came here to visit his son. The old man stays a day or two mostly waiting for his son, and every time, witnessing his agonizing wait takes me with him on a journey into his vague abyss of pain, treacherous moments I share with a stranger for no apparent reason.

Once again, I’m here tonight to reflect his torment on the opaque mirror of my being. The hands of the wall clock are chasing each other as endlessly as of my ordeal. The old man is losing the battle of time and dragging me down with him. We’d already waited for hours.  The old man is on the verge of demise, worrying for his son; his son absorbs the suffering of others, and I am desperately attempting to comprehend the nature of the bizarre nexus amongst us.

             We waited the longest hours of the coldest night in vain. After midnight, I knew his son would never return. He was too delicate, too pure, and too innocent to survive in this swamp. The old man’s eyes morphed into opaque marbles, and his gaze remained forever fixated on the lifeless flowers.       

 Rain            

The sun was not yet up. The street was empty. No roaring automobiles, no cursing mothers dragging their kids around, no noise of blacksmith’s saw; not even the neighborhood beggar. No sign of life yet. The mystical music composed by raindrops striking tin gutters and windowpanes were all. Rain masterfully played any tune ears yearned to hear.

Little roundabouts mark cross-sections like city stamps on either end of the narrow street. The aroma of the lamb restaurant filled the air. Tongue-less lamb heads were elegantly arranged in a large tray on the counter, enticing the hungry passersby. Further down the street was a bakery. The blazing red flames of the brick oven welcomed the end of a cold night. Two bakers worked in concert: one slid the raw dough into the oven, and the other pulled the brown flatbreads out. Their body movements were in perfect harmony with the rhythmic melody of the rain. Four factory workers appeared, buried deep in their overcoats, waiting for the company bus; they stood motionless against the wall as if waiting for a firing squad to shoot. As the bus approached, they stretched their necks like waking turtles. Every day at this hour, the long-handled broom of the street cleaner could be heard, and when he approached, a cloud of dust surrounded him like the aura of the saints. But today, there was no sign of him; the sweeping task was given to the rain.

A young man walked toward the intersection; his hands hidden in his pockets. His splashing steps interrupted the cadence of rain. His toes were freezing as the ice water flooded his shabby shoes; hiding his head in the collar of his coat breathing inside to save his body heat.

As a child, he wove rugs in his village, then he herded sheep, and a few years later, he came to the city to work as a day laborer. And now he was sitting on the banisters waiting for the employers. Whenever a truck stopped, a handful of workers anxiously swarmed toward it and climbed in the bed. The boss got out, and the hiring process started. He meticulously examined the workers and picked seven or eight for the day’s work. The rest had to wait for the next truck. The older, the slender, and the pale ones got off first. The young man wasn’t worried, he always had a job for a day.  

The rain was pouring, and as he slouched on the truck, he was plunged in a reverie, thinking of where he worked for the last two weeks, the house he left his heart behind. A mansion surrounded by towering walls with high ceilings decorated with more mirrors than shrines and windows large enough to swallow all the sunlight at once.

He stood outside one of those massive windows in a pausing moment from work in the yard when he first saw her inside. She was peering out, above him and into the sun as if looking at herself in a mirror, carelessly toying with sunbeams with a wisp of her hair, challenging the beauty of sunshine with her own.

The young woman was unaware of his gaze, as if he was not there at all, standing just a few steps from her. She stood on a pristine rug in a white dress, a tantalizing contrast to the dark crimson flowers of the rug underneath her feet. Perhaps the same rug the young man had knitted as a child in dark sweatshops, the same intricate weaving that took away most of his eyesight. As she pranced across the meadow of the rug, for a moment their gaze locked; the young man found his soul in a casual glimpse and forever lost it in her indifference.

When the frozen needles were striking his face, the young man in

trance was lost in the light, crystal, and mirror.        

Utterance                                                                                         

“Hmm.” That’s all I hear from her. She makes this sound to show me she’s paying attention. When I talk for hours, which happens frequently, she sits silently, stares into my eyes, and listens. I can trace her gentle wheezing blended into my words. I love the way she scratches her right ear. 

I know she is attentively listening; I can see it in her eyes. But she neither comments nor questions; she doesn’t need to because when I pose a question, either I answer it myself or soon realize its absurdity. That’s how well she knows me. Her only response is, “Hmm.” Occasionally, she inhales and exhales louder to display her sympathy. And when she does that, I look at her kind yet mischievous eyes and think how funny she would look wearing glasses.

The therapists have their techniques. The more experienced ones don’t talk as much. You may be talking for an hour, and all he does is listen. When he feels you cannot express your emotions, he asks a simple question to get you back on track, a question you could have asked yourself and didn’t. And then he keeps quiet and listens again. 

But he is not truly sympathetic to you; listening is his job. I bet while you’re expressing your deepest emotions and confessing your darkest secrets, things you’ve never mentioned to a soul, at the precise moment you’re most emotionally vulnerable, he maliciously looks at the clock secretly hidden in the bookshelf behind you and calculates your bill. And a few minutes before your time is up, when the next patient is waiting, he interrupts to inform you these sessions must continue. They love return customers. That’s why I don’t trust them anymore.

But she’s different. For her, money is not an issue. On numerous occasions, I talk for hours, and she just compassionately listens. She never looks at the clock because she doesn’t care about time. She knows how much I need her, how much her friendship means to me. 

To show my appreciation for her understanding, I always give her a

big piece of juicy meat from my plate, and she wags her tail for me. 

Unfinished Story

“Artists are inspired by the events of their lives, by nature, by people around them and by society at large. Like scientists who use physical laws and mathematical equations to explain phenomenon, artists resort to painting, music and poetry to express their feelings, intuitions and to portray their emotions and insights…”

The bell rang, and class ended. The professor was in midsentence when every desk in the room jolted with a squeaky noise. The slamming books gave Mitra the sting of getting slapped in the face.  All students exited the room and left the young girl alone as the professor erased the blackboard. Dust filled the air.  

After class, she strolled back home, and just like every other day, she passed by the bookstores inundated with heaps of books showcased behind windows, books she wished she had time to read, and then turned into a less crowded street much quieter than the main boulevard. Every day when she reached to this point, her mind would pleasantly wander, and she plunged into a reverie rendering her unaware of the long road to home. 

“Artists see the world differently. Their keen senses perceive reality

on a different level, and since they see differently, their intuition springs into action to create their reality. They paint, carve, write, or play their unique visions. They observe the most insignificant of events under the sensitive microscopes of their minds…”

Mitra was lost in her daydream, pondering the words of her professor’s, when a terrifying screech of automobile brakes petrified her in place. She witnessed a young man violently tossed through the air and collapse lifelessly on the pavement.  Her gaze was fixated on the victim’s body. The driver rushed out and kneeled over the victim just to see that the victim was already dead. Paralyzed by what just happened, she took a few steps closer to the scene. The driver looked up at her with terror and sorrow in his eyes. Neither one knew what to do as it was too late to revive the victim.

In a matter of seconds, a large crowd gathered around the scene; a man searched the victim’s pockets for identification and found nothing but a few twenty Toman bills and a wrinkled handkerchief. Soon, an ambulance arrived at the scene, and the medics carefully removed the body. The chattering people drifted away, and the commotion morphed into a morbid emptiness. The street returned to how it looked before the tragedy, as if nothing had occurred minutes before. There was not even a drop of blood on the pavement, reminiscent of the dreadful loss of life.

In the midst of her hazy wonderment, Mitra noticed a little black notebook on the other side of the street, teetering on the edge of the sewer filled with filthy water. She sprinted over and picked it up before it fell into the stream. Her trembling fingers frantically opened the booklet and fanned through pages, but she was too horrified to read anything, and she was not certain if the notes belonged to the dead man in the first place. But if it was, she could find a name, address, or something to identify the victim.

She rushed home as she was fleeing the crime scene, hiding the notebook, her prized possession, under her jacket and keeping her eyes locked on the cracked pavement to avoid the inquisitive gaze of the butcher, the shopkeepers, and neighbors. Upon arrival at home, she gingerly walked into her room and locked the door, pretending not to hear her mother shouting, “Why are you late today, dear?”

Once again, Mitra hastily opened the notebook to the first page and started reading. But she couldn’t comprehend a word of what she read. Frustrated, she thumbed through the pages of the book, desperately looking for clues, and when none was found, she furiously tossed the cursed manuscript on the floor, dropped her face into her hands, and wept in agony.  Minutes later, she gathered her strength and, more determined than before, attempted to read. It looked like a story of a sort written in a sloppy handwriting.

***

“He walked upstairs to his favorite café, sat down in his usual spot, put his notebook on the table, and started reading the newspaper. The cozy coffee shop was filled with the aroma of Amphora pipe tobacco and French coffee. The air was so heavy that the whirling smoke emanating from the next table formed a thick cloud in the air.

“Mr. Bijan, what would you like to drink?

“Black coffee, please.” 

A few minutes later, the coffee mist moistened the lower corner of his newspaper. Bijan grudgingly folded the wet paper and lit a cigarette, took a deep puff, and sent a series of concentric rings of smoke into the heavy air of the cozy cafe.

“One of Fellini’s best films is playing in theaters now,” a man at the

other table said.

He was a man Bijan had met in this café; they had occasionally

engaged in similar chit chats before.

             “The London Philharmonic is also performing next week. We are getting some culture. Then, he scratched his nose and fanned his fingers through his thick black hair.

“Today, something interesting happened to me. As I was walking by the bookstore on the corner, I hit my head on the awning's metal post. It was an awakening moment for me, a sobering incident, I say. This is what we need in our lives, my friend, a drastic event,” Bijan continued.

The other man thoughtfully nodded in agreement.

“I like the cozy ambience of this café; it reminds me of cafes in Paris. He then fished a 20 Toman bill out of his pocket and slapped it on the table.

“See you soon,” he said as he walked downstairs.

***

Here, a few pages were left blank.  Mitra flipped through those pages rapidly and kept reading.

***

Bijan drove home. The sidewalks were inundated with people. A teacup peddler was bashing a cup on his counter to demonstrate that it was unbreakable. Thirst-quenching homemade yogurt drinks were bottled in Coca-Cola bottles, yet they were intentionally made salty enough to make customers thirstier. He glanced at the shoe store. Shoes hung in midair like cutoff feet.

Disgusted with swindlers, he rolled up the windows, turned up the volume on his car stereo, and listened to classical music, immersing his spirit in the soothing melody. After driving a long way to the northern neighborhood of the city, he arrived at home. The gardener opened the massive iron gate for the man of the house, and he rolled up the wide drive and parked in front of the mansion and walked up to his room on the second floor. The lavishly decorated room had an oversize window that opened to the garden yet was completely covered by a thick satin maroon curtain. Bijan flicked on the desk lamp. The spotless white bed sheets seemed like shrouds in a morgue waiting for a corpse to wrap. In the corner was a mahogany bookshelf with a few books carelessly leaning over on each other, and on the top shelf, there was an antique gramophone with several shining black records.

As Bijan settled into the old leather chair facing the hidden window, lighting a cigarette, he heard a gentle knock on the door.

“Son, are you home?” 

“Yes, mother. Come in.”

She came in and sat on the bed, facing her son.

“Would you like something to eat?

“No, I’m fine, thank you.”

“How was your day, my dear?”

“As usual.”

“The colonel was here today,” his mother said.

‘What does this idiot want from us now?”

“Don’t talk about him that way, please; he is family. Besides, he is willing to pay us fairly for the lands in Narmak,” she gently said.

Her son tapped his cigarette on the arm of his chair and nodded.

“So that’s why he was here!”

“I think we should consider his offer. God bless his soul. Your father always said that the real estate we buy today would help us tomorrow,” she said.

Bijan mashed his cigarette into a heavy marble ashtray.

“If you feel like doing this, I have no objections.”

His mother rose slowly from the bed, then paused suddenly.

“Oh! I almost forgot! The gardener said your Nanny Zarin is ill. Do

you remember her? She nursed you when you were a baby.’

“God knows how long has it been since I’ve seen her last.”

“It must be over 30 years,” his mother says.

“Yeah, I remember last time I saw her was when I went with father to collect rent from his tenants in South of Tehran. I love to see her again.”

“She loved you and your brother. The first time we sent you to Europe, it seemed as if we were separating her from her own son. She was asking the gardener about you. Yes, it’s a good idea if you visit her. From what I’ve heard, she is not doing well.”

“I will. I love to see her again.”

The next morning, the gardener wrote her address, and Bijan went to visit his nanny. To reach her home all the way to the southern part of the city, he drove for more than two hours. He must have passed the slaughterhouse because the stench of dead animals saturated the air, and swarms of flies were visible like a thick dark cloud.

On the last stretch of his long commute, he made a few more turns in the maze of secluded alleys and entered a narrow street with sewage running down the middle.  His car filled the width of the alley.  He checked the address and stopped in front of a shabby house, got out, and knocked on the badly rusted metallic door; although it was half-open, he knocked again; since there was no response, he loudly asked for nanny Zarin.

When he became certain no one would come, he entered through a dark and tight hallway into the little yard and noticed a room to his immediate right with a heavy cloth covering the doorway. He nudged the curtain aside.

“Is anyone home?” He squinted his eyes and scanned  the bare room with nothing in it but a charcoal grill in the middle and an opium bong. 

“What do you want?” The emaciated man with dark skin slouching on the floor called upon him with a muffled  Voice. 

“I am looking for Zarin. My name is Bijan. Does she live here?”

“No, she doesn’t anymore.”

“Do you know where she is?”

The man stretched his torso and grabbed the violin from behind a

pillow. 

“Zarin does not greet visitors anymore. She passed away last

week.”

A few moments passed in silence as Bijan processed the sad news.

“Bijan! Hum, it’s been more than 30 years since I saw you.”

“Do you know me?’ Bijan was startled.

The man lurking in solitude propped the old violin on his shoulder

and played a tune.

“The season of flowers, the season of flowers…’

Suddenly, tears of joy stung Bijan’s eyes.

“Is that you, Nader? Do you remember one day you kept repeating those words until Zarin smacked you on the head shouting: “Why do you keep repeating these two words? Season of Flowers is not a song, you idiot.”

The two childhood friends burst in laughter.

“Nader, you have changed a lot. I can’t believe you are the same silly rascal you were as a kid.”

“But you sound exactly the same to me, a polite and well-mannered

boy.”

As Bijan sat down next to his friend, he looked at his face closely just to see his eyes were opaque.

They talked for hours about their sweet memories. Bijan told Nader every detail of his life, his summer trips abroad, and his long stays in Europe. He spoke of his brother’s 

suicide, a topic he’d never discussed with anyone else. Nader told him of his life’s unfortunate circumstances, his opium addiction, incarcerations, the disease that left him blind, and the recent death of his mother Zarin.

From that day forward, Bijan visited Nader at least twice a week.  With him, he felt rejuvenated, and his revived old friendship gave him hope and optimism. With Nader, he was cheerful and uninhibited. There was nothing he wouldn’t tell his friend. One day, Bijan took his childhood friend to his house. On the long commute, he asked about his job.

“I’m a musician. I play the violin at weddings. Sometimes drunkard idiots who have no respect for my art throw orange peel and sunflower seeds at me or make sarcastic comment but I don’t give a damn about them. The fact of the matter is that I always get to eat the wedding gourmet cuisine even before the bride and groom! I can recognize the colors in bright lights in the darkness of the night. They remind me of stars. I usually throw a couple of shots of vodka down my throat, get in my artistic mood, and perform. I’m a talented musician, and to hell with this uncultured nation who does not appreciate art.”

***

A few more pages were blank here. Mitra rubbed her tired eyes, and her head hurt. She wished she could go to bed and sleep, but how could she now? 

***

When they arrived, Bijan helped Nader out of the car and walked him up the stairs to his room. Then, he left him alone to prepare a cup of tea. Nader slowly walked around the room and softly groped the furniture to find his way around. He touched the thick curtain. The air was stuffy. He struggled to open the window while speaking to himself: Bijan, you need to breathe fresh air and enjoy the bright light.

The window finally opened to the lush garden, and a gust of fresh air inundated the room and blew the ghostly bed sheets off the bed. Bright light illuminated the room. Bijan now was standing in the door frame, mesmerized by the rays of hope in his life. He’d never seen the true colors of his furniture in natural light. Through his wide open window, he watched a red bird singing in the tree and admired the hypnotic elegance of the dancing leaves on branches.

Nader, overwhelmed by the gentle breeze caressing his face, swiftly grabbed his violin and played a joyful tune. And his friend, who could not suppress his delight, sang to the music, but the rough and untrained voice of the vocalist did not sit well with the artist. The frustrated musician finally stopped playing.

“You’re a horrible singer. Where the hell did you learn how to sing

so terribly?”

“Please forgive my lack of professionalism, master.”  

They both burst in laughter.

Commuting between the two locations in the South and North of the

town became a cheerful routine in their lives. 

“You know, Nader, I’m writing our story, writing about our childhood, our good memories together, our reunion, and everything in between.  I’m sure there are many out there who can relate to us. And the best of all is that you will be my hero,” Bijan told his friend one day.

***

That was it; the rest of the pages were all blank. It was an unfinished story. Mitra was devastated. Poor Bijan. I wish he’d finished his story. Oh my God! What should I do with this unfinished story? Maybe I can find Nader? But how could I find this blind street violinist in a city this huge?

Nader reminded her of their own maid’s husband, but she’d never seen anyone like Bijan except in movies. She collapsed on the bed, mourning his death the entire night.

The next morning, she locked herself in her room to grieve in solitude. It was the afternoon when she managed to face herself in the mirror. Her hair was knotted in clumps; black mascara was running across her eyelids and down to her cheeks. She looked ridiculous to herself, but she wasn’t in the mood to laugh at her appearance; too exhausted and too miserable to care.

She walked downstairs. As she reached the last step, her mother, who witnessed the clownish appearance of her daughter, screamed in disbelief.

“Oh my God! What the hell is this? Who are you, and what have

you done to my daughter?”

“Leave me alone, mother.”

“What is wrong with you today? You must be sick. Don’t you dare go out looking like clowns? You go to college this way and kiss finding a husband goodbye.”

“No, mama, I have to go to school.”

Mitra didn’t exactly know why she had to go out, but she had a premonition and a tormenting urge to do so. She felt obligated to do something, but what? She had no clue.  She rushed out of the house and walked towards school until she arrived at the same long street. The horrifying traffic accident, the notebook, and now more than anything else, the unfinished story of Bijan and Nader were haunting her. She plunged into an ethereal state, not knowing what was going on.

She approached the accident site. Everything was surreal. The cracks on the walls were widening to suck her inside. People were walking slower than usual. She put the palm of her hand on her forehead, feeling dizzy and burning with fever. I’m about to faint.

A morbid silence filled the street. Everyone was going to an eerie sleep where they stood. She felt as if she was walking in the clouds. She glanced at her watch. It had stopped. The pages of the newspapers froze in the air, fanning in a non-existent breeze. A flung cigarette hovered above the sidewalk. Now everything was frozen. Mitra was the only one capable of moving. She reached the exact location of the accident. Her heart was pounding out of her chest when she realized, “It is yesterday afternoon!”

She frantically gazed around, looking for Bijan, determined to save his life. The morbid silence was shattered by the horrific noise of an approaching car. She feverishly screamed, “Bijan!” and rushed to the middle of the street to save his life.  Her vision was blurred, and she was lightheaded, as everything was happening in a peculiar haze. She heard the familiar screech of car brakes, her knees buckled, and she 

collapsed, slurring the name Bijan.

***

When she regained consciousness and opened her eyes, she was in the middle of the street, circled by a crowd. A young man helped her get off the ground. 

“You fainted in the middle of the road. You’re lucky the driver saw you from a distance and stopped in time. But why were you slurring  my name when you were unconscious?”

Mitra was petrified seeing Bijan and his blind friend Nader leaning

over her.  

“You need to rest for a while. Let’s go to this café,” Bijan said,

pointing to the building across the street.  

He helped Mitra get off the ground and held her by the arm. His blind friend followed the two. They slowly made their way up the stairs of the café.

“Is your favorite table available?” Mitra slyly remarked with a

chuckle.

Bijan looked over his shoulder, puzzled. They sat and ordered

coffee.

“I had a friend who came here often. Yesterday, a car hit him

exactly where you fainted today,” Bijan said, 

He paused to light a cigarette.

“          Unfortunately, he didn’t survive. He was a publisher who was supposed to publish my book after I finished it. My manuscript was with him at the time of his death; it was lost in the pandemonium.”

Mitra smiled, pulled the notebook out of her purse, and gave it back

to its owner.

“Please finish it; it will be an interesting story,” she said.    

We Have Everything

Contrary to my expectations, my ten-year-old nephew was not

surprised to see the slinky I’d brought him as a souvenir from America.

“We have Slinky too. Next time we go to the bazaar, I’ll show it to you amoo jaan or as you Americans say dear uncle. Whatever you find in America, we have it right here in Iran.” 

             And he was right. To my surprise, the next day in the market, he showed me a variety of colorful versions of slinkies sold at much lower prices than the US, all Chinese-made unauthorized reproductions of the genuine article. 

             “So you claim that you can find absolutely everything we have in America right here?” I taunted him at the lunch table that day.

             “Everything, we have everything,” he boasted.  

             “In that case, you will produce one tall blonde woman with a big butt in short pants, tomorrow by noon,” I asked.

 Now, my nephew was sitting in front of me with a gloomy face. I had scored one. 

             He was the nephew I had the most fun with on my first trip to the homeland after seventeen years. I’d never met him before.

             After lunch I was to visit one of my sisters who lived in the same city and not far from my brother’s house. The only issue was that my sister and brother had not talked to one other for years.

             “Take me with you, dear uncle, to aunt Soraya’s house,” Naeem said. 

             “I can’t.” 

 “Please, dear uncle, take me with you. I promise to behave,” he insisted.

             “I know you will, but I really can’t take you with me.” 

I didn’t know how to say no to him. I was not to establish any contact between the two families by taking him with me to their house. It was a nonverbal agreement I’d made with my brother and his wife.

“Maybe another time,” I said.

             “But why, why can’t you take me?”

 How could I explain to him what his mother’s eyebrow gesture meant right after she heard her son’s request to go to my sister’s house? So I lied to Naeem.

“First of all. It’s too hot outside and we have to walk at least fifteen minutes under the scorching sun to get there. It’s not good for your white, velvety skin; heat exhaustion is dangerous.”

             “First of all, dear uncle, unlike you Americans, we are tough. We are not Orange Juice drinking wimps. Besides, you don’t know your way around these alleys; you’ll get lost, and we will be in trouble how to find you.”

             “Your mother gave me the address and showed me the way.” 

             “How does she know how to get there? She’s never been there. Mom and Dad had never set foot into Aunt Soraya’s new home. They don’t even mention her name.  And if their paths cross in the market, they cross the street not to face one another,” he reasoned.

             “And how do you know the address then?” 

             “I go to their neighborhood and play with my cousins.”

             “Do they know you go there and play with their kids?”

 “Oh no. We just don’t tell our parents. As long as they don’t know, everything is fine.” 

             My sister in law yelled from the kitchen.

“Don’t bother your uncle, son. It’s time for your afternoon nap.”

             “Take me with you, please, please. I hate to sleep after lunch.” Now his eyes were moistened with tears as he was losing hope.

             “I wish I could. I’ll find the way myself.” I desperately replied.

             “Dear uncle, you will get lost. I am sure of it. This is not America. Streets are all crooked, and their names change every time someone from the neighborhood dies in the war. For your information, we have so many martyrs, dear uncle. We’re engaged in a long war, so street names keep changing.”

             “Don’t worry, dear, I still speak the language, I can ask if I get lost.”

             “Ask? Ask who?”

Now I was being cornered, I could feel it.

             “People on the street, shopkeepers or pedestrians.”

             “Now that shows how little you know about your city, dear uncle. At one o’clock in the afternoon, you can’t find anyone in the streets. It’s so hot the asphalts get softened like chewing gum in the mouth, dear uncle. Every shop in the bazaar is closed from 12 to 4 in the afternoon. Everyone sleeps after lunch under the air conditioner. So, whom do you ask for directions if you get lost, my dear uncle?”  

             Now, I was on the spot and didn’t know how to respond. As much as I wanted to, I could not ask his mother to grant him permission to accompany me. The two families were not on a talking basis for a long time. I could not get involved. I was just a foreign guest who’d obviously lost touch with the reality of his country after all these years.

 “Oh, dear uncle. You are an American, you don’t know anything,” Naeem continued.

His mother heard this comment.

“Oh, I wish God himself scoops you off the face of the earth, you shameless boy. I’m going to fill your mouth with red-hot Indian peppers so you never talk like that to your uncle. Wait until your dad gets home and hears this,” she shouted.

             Now, my nephew was in trouble. He silently rushed to his room to

get his afternoon nap with tears in his eyes, and I left the house with the address in my hand.

             On the way to my sister’s house, and as I was passing by the closed shops in the empty streets under the blazing sun, I was burning from the taste of red hot Indian peppers in my mouth.

Unfaithful