Throwing Sparks (7 page)

But now we had to go further north, and northwards from there, in pursuit of the sea that receded from us every day. Every sunset the sea would release our teenage bodies further up the coast. We would pile into Waleed’s car, taking turns drying off with his soggy sarongs. This was how Waleed came by his livelihood. He was able to save up all the money he made transporting us in his decrepit car to the few remaining beaches on the coast that had not been buried under the earthworks.

Waleed was five years older than me and the son of a blind widow who, having lost her husband early, was completely dependent on him. He was resourceful at making money despite leaving school at fifteen.

Transporting us from the neighbourhood to the now remote beaches became a growing source of income since he charged a fee for driving us and for his shabby towels, and also sold water, flavoured drinks and all kinds of food that he had cooked up at noon. Not one to miss a chance, he could always extract another piastre, plying us with a variety of nuts and dried fruit. No sooner did we come upon a good swimming spot than he would be standing before the car peddling his wares and repeating, ‘Everything has its price.’

Waleed’s mission to part us from the little hard-earned money we had meant that we could buy on credit so long as we paid him back the following day.

Issa was the only member of our swimming group who was allowed to buy whatever he wanted, paying back whenever he wished. At the time, we did not understand why Issa had such credit privileges and whenever we asked him, he only responded with a throaty chuckle.

This act of favouritism would become clear two years later, when Waleed married Issa’s maternal aunt and suckling sister, Salwa.

Salwa proved even shrewder than her husband when it came to generating income. She encouraged him to apply for a bank loan to buy four minivans to transport female teachers to their schools. In time, Waleed’s business grew to the extent that we became small fry – a distant memory for him that was as tattered as his towels.

During our childhood we were never absent from the shore for long. Our access was blocked only after the city began drowning in a flood of money, and everyone – individuals and companies alike – scrambled to suck on the udder of pumped-up riches. When plain sucking was no longer enough, those with a good eye scooped up everything in their path, guzzling, mauling and burying along the way.

While all this daylight robbery was taking place, the people of our neighbourhood turned a blind eye and used their pent-up dreams as new ornaments on a shrine. Only a small minority transformed their dreams into reality: one of our schoolmates started a real-estate business, and from there went into leasing and contracting, leaving us far behind.

Even those who made good did, for the most part, what their fathers had done before them, staying put and shuffling around the walls of the old neighbourhood. Blinded by pay increases, they used their spare cash on such petty pleasures as travelling abroad and acquiring what had been beyond their means previously.

In those days, developers were grabbing up vacant lots and abandoned properties everywhere. The more devious ones among them managed to reclaim the sea, thereby acquiring vast tracts of untitled land in what was tantamount to theft.

We were too young to understand what was happening. What infuriated
us
were those walls that blocked our access to the sea and prevented us from floating on the vast expanse of water.

The towering walls sprang up and caught us napping, and when we went looking for that vast expanse we found that not one bit of it remained ours. In its place, palatial villas vied with each other for yet more of the seawater, jostling to be closest to the Palace itself.

This was how, seemingly overnight, as if emerging from a collective sleep, everyone in the neighbourhood was infected with a single, overarching dream: to enter the Palace or, at the very least, to stand before its majestic gateway.

This desire naturally peaked when news started to spread that Issa had found a way into the Palace and that, moreover, he could usher in all of us who wanted, myself included.

*  *  *

To this day, people squat outside the Palace, dreaming of gaining entry; here I am, body and soul submerged in the sea’s embrace yet again, longing for a way out of Paradise!

The alarm went off in the east wing of the Palace, warning of the presence of intruders. I immediately thought that news about the impending New Year’s celebration had leaked, tempting uninvited guests to risk gate-crashing the party.

The extravaganza was planned in the external gardens directly overlooking the waterfront. The spot was chosen because it was cooler and less humid there and also to accommodate the large number of guests and provide sufficient space for the many performers hired for the evening’s entertainment. While male and female celebrities from all across the Arab world had been sent invitations, few were actually aware of the real reason for the party.

New Year’s Eve happened to coincide with Maram’s birthday, and the Master of the Palace had moved heaven and earth to ensure a fabulous event for that occasion. Maram was the Master’s new lover and he was so besotted with her that he had even named his yacht
The Dazzling Beauty
after his endearment for her.

News had spread of the arrival of female performers and dancers, which encouraged uninvited guests to try their luck at the gates. They were further tempted by the fact that the main gates were undergoing renovations. In the wake of a terrorist attack on the US embassy, the whole design was being changed to increase security; the gates would open by retracting below ground and shut by drawing up mechanic­ally to form an impregnable wall. Eventually, the new gates would have the added advantage of being electrified.

The blaring alarm alerted three Filipino guards, who came running with their dogs. They combed the area just across from the front of the Palace, but were having to goad their dogs constantly. Despite being a particularly vicious European breed, the dogs were altogether rather passive – a fact not lost on Hassan Darbeel, who was in charge of the Palace kennels. As their supervisor, he berated the trainers harshly, blaming them for the dogs’ diminished hounding instincts.

‘Haven’t I told you to stop fattening up the dogs?’ Hassan shouted. ‘Look at them – giving up on the job they were brought here for!’ He barked for one of his assistants to fetch the Saluki dogs he himself had trained. ‘No one knows the smell of the locals as well as the local dogs!’

Hassan started to laugh, and then coughed and sputtered since he had just inhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke. He recovered his composure by the time his Salukis came into view, yapping and snarling as they made their way towards the east wing, leaping spryly and gracefully over a railing.

Hassan was no longer coughing and could therefore chime in with his howling dogs as they sniffed the air for intruders.

The snarling Salukis alerted the would-be gate-crashers, who took to their heels before being caught. No one wished to share the fate of the boy from the neighbourhood who was imprisoned for an entire year for climbing the Palace wall.

‘
Akh
,’ Hassan said to himself. ‘A new crop of dreamers.’

His love for the local breed stemmed from childhood. People who knew Hassan had trouble believing his position at the Palace. Before, he had literally been in the rubbish dump, ragged and quarrelsome. Cast there by the vicissitudes of life, he had reached the point of going through refuse and discarded junk for something he could salvage and sell, and to retrieve the rotting remnants of a meal to feed his dogs.

At that time, labourers were beginning work on building the embankments that would surround the Palace, and a corrugated tin fence had been erected that hid the sea from view. Driven from their waters, the fishermen had hauled their boats in and beached them against their houses, waiting for the moment they would be allowed to set sail again. In the meantime, they entertained themselves by spinning yarns and dredging up memories of their seafaring lives.

Saleem Baygheeni was both a fisherman and a maker of fishing nets. His life had turned topsy-turvy and there was nothing he could do about it. He sat in his single room, examining his fishing nets and knotting the ones that needed tightening, even though there were no takers for them any more. He was not interested in trying his hand at another trade, so he remained the maker of nets he had always been and waited for the fishermen to set sail again.

When he realised that the old fishing days were truly dead, he began to pine for the sea with the same anguish as Hamed. But unlike the dead fisherman-poet, who had to be dug up from under a pile of earth, Saleem chose to die in his old fishing grounds at sea.

On his first attempt to set sail, he was forcibly prevented by the guards stationed on the shore since he was contravening a regulation that banned all boats on that stretch. After several unsuccessful attempts, he finally found a way to outwit the guards by making himself invisible. He painted his skiff black, put on black clothes and set out in the dead of night, returning before daybreak. This went on night after night, until one fine morning he was found floating like a piece of regurgitated cork, tossed by the waves against the concrete of the embankments. His bloated corpse was spotted by labourers working on the construction site after it got snared on the metal girders protruding from the concrete. They raised the alarm, fished his remains out and swiftly disposed of him in a grave that was large enough to accommodate the horrific bloating.

Death is not always noteworthy. The death of a dog, a cat or an anonymous person does not cry out for the attention of the living.

The day following Saleem’s death dawned much like the day before it. Busy and exhausted labourers raced against the clock to meet the Master’s deadline for completing the construction project, while neighbourhood residents watched as sand mixes were poured and support columns were raised across from the corrugated tin fence. The din of heavy construction equipment permeated the days, which dragged at a snail’s pace.

At night the drab darkness was infused with a dash of colour: people became familiar and convivial, and laughter rang out among the fishermen, drunks and other revellers. Some people were glued to their televisions while others played dominoes or backgammon, slamming the pieces against wooden boards. Everyone had their own problems and though they were uninterested in predicting the future, they kept their ears open for any morsel of news from which to weave a new yarn and pass the time.

They felt mildly concerned about Saleem’s death, but pushed out of mind its ominous circumstances. They did take note, however, when Hassan remarked that the nightly clamour of the neighbourhood was oddly devoid of barking.

Ordinarily, the nights were filled with dogs roaming in packs through the alleyways and rubbish heaps, yowling and barking at each other or at anyone who came out to drive them away or chase them for sport.

Hassan was the only person who cared about the strays and he tried to train them with compassion. Some people claimed that one of the bitches had nursed him with her pups after his mother gave up on him, exhausted from having nursed ten boys before him. This, they said, explained both his bluntness and his speech peppered with barking and yelping sounds. He only ever liked playing with the strays and, back in those days, it was common to find him wandering the alleyways with a pack of dogs in tow, following his every command.

He would start his days with these dogs. Rounding them up from all over the neighbourhood in the early morning, he would set out with them to the meat and vegetable market where he begged the butchers for scraps or offal that no customer could possibly want, packing whatever they gave him into a large cardboard box. Then, with his suckling brothers taken care of, he would head off to work in a carpentry workshop. He also ended his days with the dogs, devoting every evening to them as he accompanied them on their nightly rounds of the neighbourhood. Moreover, every week, he set aside two days to take them to the beach, where he bathed them with unstinting care and devotion.

No one dared to harm Hassan or make fun of him. He only had to give the signal and a pack of half-starved Salukis would pounce on the offender.

Hassan immediately noticed that there were fewer dogs in the neighbourhood and that their nightly barking had diminished. The loss of his companions dealt him a succession of blows and he was the only one concerned enough to get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearance.

At that time, Issa had not yet left and was still tearing around the neighbourhood frightening the more timid among us. He was accused of using the dogs to break into abandoned houses and old people’s homes. He was even arrested one night and taken to the police station to be charged with stealing an old woman’s jewellery, after she reported the theft and claimed to hear barking dogs. Seconds before the lashes from a policeman’s cane could begin to extract a confession, news came from the old woman that she remembered she had stashed her gold at her niece’s house, precisely to guard against theft.

With that, Issa picked up the undershirt that had just been yanked off him, put it back on and stormed out of the police station fuming and vowing to get even. There were actually two charges: robbery as well as dog-snatching, with intent of larceny. Until the case of the missing Salukis was solved, Issa and Hassan had a series of altercations. They remained sworn enemies until the identity of the dog-snatchers became known and Hassan offered Issa a sweeping apology.