Part Two: The Pantomime
Previously on Percussions here
Allahu Akhbar!
The pre-dawn call for prayer pierces a twilit Damascus. I stuff my Qatar Airways tickets into my handbag and check the rooms for things I might be forgetting. Any moment now, I will hear a honk and it will be Ahmed’s taxi.
I haven’t heard from Taffy since I met with Jamal. I want to stay and finish my film. (Can’t keep running every time I get hurt. First Paul, now Taffy.) But I won’t. I can’t. I have to leave before Taffy tries to reach me. I don’t want to be part of a plan to capture him—it’s too dangerous. I’m leaving for his sake. And leaving without saying goodbye.
Ahmed arrives at 6:11 am and we set off for the airport. He slips me a black hijab and tells me to wear it. Confused, I obey. He says a Volvo is waiting to take me to ‘Mister Abbas’ and that when he gives me the signal, I should switch cars as quickly as possible and keep my head down in the other car until the coast is clear.
Ahmed. He’s different. He never seemed to me like the type to give anyone instructions. He used to be hesitant, rather diffident; I’ve never heard him speak so firmly. He was the first real friend I made in Syria. I chose a timorous cab driver, as see-through as spring water, to drive me around the city.
The hood of the taxi rattles like the lid of a steaming kettle as it bumps along the desert road. I wish Ahmed would drive slower, not just for the rattling, but for the dust trail that catches up with us and gasses us each time he takes his foot off the pedal. Heck. My coughing doesn’t seem to bother him.
We’re in the city’s suburbs and the huge rocks on top of the hills look like muffins; they have striations on their sides that remind me of muffins the size of small houses, some sitting dangerously on steep edges. In the backdrop of slate-grey mountains with green ‘moulds’, a nomad rides on a camel, a young child snuggles against his chest and an almost linear herd of women, children, and sheep trails him on foot.
We go past a few miles of farmland and turn into a gas station. We pull up behind a tan Volvo. A moving truck filling up at the pump across from us screens us from the road.
“Now,” Ahmed says.
I want to ask, ‘What about my stuff in the trunk?’, but scramble out of the taxi and quick-walk towards the Volvo and almost collide with an Arab woman moving in the opposite direction. She’s wearing the same hijab as me.
I hobble into the Volvo, stretch out in the backseat, and keep my head down. Seconds pass. A minute. The Volvo finally pulls away. It picks up speed and the strong breeze coming through the open windows sweeps up my driver’s keffiyeh. My stomach makes stomach noises. Every impulse reaching my brain is telling me to open the door and jump out before it’s too late. This could be another kidnap or even worse: I could be heading to my own beheading.
It’s a long drive for my anxiety. My driver is silent. There’s nothing for me to do but peer out the window and look for foreigners, Americans like me. But all the women I see are wearing burkas, even the little girls. I believe the woman I saw at the gas station had been my decoy. To complete her disguise, she should’ve worn pants. But she hadn’t. It would have been too infidelic of her, too American. F**k. I’m among strangers. And for all I know, Taffy could be one, too.
The taxi stops at a market, the slaughterhouse district. A cow half-bleats, half-lows in the distance, a grating cry.
Come, the driver gestures.
We weave past beggars who stretch their arms towards us. Some have their fingers missing through amputation. I wonder what happened to them. Were they treated for leprosy? Or is it punishment for stealing? All I know is, I feel sick. The gutters have red in them. Flies perch and pounce around chopping boards, their buzzes getting madder with each meat stall we pass. The air is bad. It teams up with my morning sickness to give me an urge to throw up.
Thwack!
The sound startles me.
Culled from How Hamisu Survived Bad Kidneys and a Bad Son-in-Law
Charles Opara
Charles is an IT programmer, short story writer and speculative fiction novelist who enjoys the flow involved in creating both programs and stories. In 2015, his horror short “It Happened” was shortlisted for the Awele Creative Trust Prize and in 2017, another story ‘Baby-girl’ was long-listed for the Quramo National Prize in his country. His short stories have been published in magazines such as Flash Fiction Press, Zoetic Press, and Ambit Magazine. His collection of short stories, How Hamisu Survived Bad Kidneys and a Bad Son-in-law, is published by Fomite Press.
It’s filled with suspense.
I will follow this tale…
It filled with suspense.
I will follow this tale…
I enjoyed reading The Pantomime.
There’s tuly a flow… sometimes it reminds me of rock music…maybe it’s because of the writer’s choice of words that effectively capture and makes one see the story as if watching a thriller.
I have to read it again.