Mashrabiya, by Ramez Yoakeim

Mama yells at my older brothers to cease the ruckus drowning out the always-on television. They move their horseplay to our shared bedroom, and fling open the wooden shutters to a blast of hot air and an even louder din outside.

Cairo never sleeps and never shuts up.

From every apartment and shop in every building on every street and alleyway, people laugh, wail, sing, holler, fight, cuss, and moan; almost always in pain, rarely in rapture. It's what Mama calls the pulse of life. I call it hell.

I slink out of the apartment, tiptoeing past Mama at her perch on the sofa. Yesterday’s newspapers protect the coffee table’s clear plastic cover from the mound of okra she’s dressing for dinner. She never glances down at the paring knife in her hand, her eyes glued instead to the actor protesting some scripted travesty on screen. I quietly close the front door behind me.

I know where I’m going but feign indecision. How else do I reconcile my trips to the basement with my mother’s exhortations to stay away? Everyone in our block believes the labyrinth is haunted, leaving it anomalously unoccupied in a teeming city overflowing with those desperate for a home, but not desperate enough to chance sleeping in our disused bomb shelter.

Past its heavy door, I plunge into a familiar musty miasma. It’s cool and quiet down here, like a grave, Mama would say. I locate the light switch by touch and the incandescent bulb hanging from a wire by the door buzzes and flares in response, its timid sour haze casts long shadows but leaves the many branching passageways shrouded in gloom.

I feared that inky abyss at first, but no more, for in its depths sits the mashrabiya.

Where the intricate wooden lattice came from or how it reached its unlikely resting place against our building’s stone foundations, I don’t know. Oblique questions I once cast at the older folks in the building elicited concerned looks and gestures to ward off evil, but no answers.

The mashrabiya’s top-hinged center panel responds to my gentle push and swings out, well past where the bedrock ought to have stopped it. Through it, from a first-story vantage point, smokey kerosene lamps from a row of shopfronts illuminate a narrow cobblestone street that terminates in a corner ahwa where the perpetually grinning ahwagy ferries trays of Turkish coffee and inky tea to stool-like metal-topped tables spread on the narrow sidewalk. Bamboo chairs squeak softly under the denizens as they exhale plumes of dense and sweet blue smoke from their shishas, and sway their heads in time to a familiar Umm Kulthum tune playing on the radio, the song’s name tantalizingly beyond my recall.

Free of my agonizing trepidation the first time I made the drop, I swing my legs over the sill of the projecting oriel window, and let go. Waiting to receive me are the raised brown arms and gleaming teeth under thick dark moustaches of my hosts, as eager for my presence as I am for their carefree company. Above me, the mashrabiya recedes rapidly until it becomes a searing point of light that flares briefly then winks out entirely between heartbeats.

I keep on falling, free of the heat, the zeal, and the din.

I come to, splayed on the ground next to the mashrabiya, yet again with no recollection of what happened below or how I made it back. I’m on my feet and reaching for the lattice panel before I realize what I’m doing. My hand on the weathered wood looks like it belongs to another, black lines under my fingernails capping dirty skin. Deep underground, I have no idea whether it’s day or night. Have I been gone minutes or hours, or so long that my family is making ready a virginal shroud? Dregs of once bedrock habits reassert themselves, and I shuffle out of the basement, compelled still by a lifetime of not wanting to trouble my mother.

No one stops me as I slip home, studiously avoiding the gilded console mirror by the front door. My brothers take one look at me and start guffawing. If they knew I’d be scrapping on the streets they’d have had my back. That’s what brothers do. What was the fight about, they probe, and decide on their own that it must have involved a girl. Heat rises to my face, stifling under the caked-on dirt. They notice and misinterpret the cause. Backslaps follow, and an odd gleam of pride in their eyes, as if they’re noticing me for the first time, acknowledging my existence without deeming it regrettable.

I too break with my habits and wish they’d stay with me, hem me in, collar me in headlocks and tousle my hair, poke me, rib me, needle me, tease me; anything at all to keep me there, keep me away from the siren already tugging on the spooled line tethering me to the darkness underground. Instead, they complain about the mustiness of my hair, the greasy streaks my clothes leave on their hands, and make a beeline for the front door, eager to for the city’s many temptations.

***

Through the mashrabiya, the tune playing on the radio remains as elusive as ever, not that my hosts seem to mind. They play their dominoes and backgammon, dice tinkling in spurts between the thuds of discs slamming against the wooden board. They sip their drinks, bob their heads to the quartertone music, eyelids drooping. They pull on their shishas, setting the water gurgling in its belly, and exhale into the breeze.

I know they feed on me when I’m down there, but I don’t mind. The price they extract is one I prefer to that demanded by those prowling aboveground.

Nothing is free, not even belonging. In this netherworld, my hosts only take what they need. When they tell me how much I’m missed, I believe them. Even if their clothes are tattered by age, their teeth gum-less with rot, and their skin brown from decay, not sunshine. I don’t even mind the shrill turn of the radio’s tune, keening in grief for all that’s lost.

My heart flutters as I begin to drop and feel my lifeforce throbbing in my veins. My consciousness ebbs, but I’m happy, at peace, and isn’t that what everyone says they want?

***

I rouse on the basement floor barely able to move, every muscle and joint aching, my breathing ragged. I no longer wonder how long it’s been. A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough. To stop myself from flinging open the impossible lattice and hurling myself again through the mashrabiya, I pick a rock off the debris-strewn ground, and squeeze it in my fist. The jagged edges tear into my palm. I grunt as the pain washes over me, barely muting the compulsion.

Eternity wouldn’t be enough. How can it be? Could you have too much freedom? Surfeit of health? Overdose on joy? Wouldn’t you slurp all you can, and rush back begging for more? Always, more?

The excruciating pain eventually dulls to an enervated ache, and I push myself off the ground onto unsteady feet. Unthinking, I brush the dirt off my clothes, and end up smearing blood all over, which I don’t notice until I’m trudging up the stairs. Instinctively, I turn to a window made reflective by the darkness outside. A jolt courses through me and I screw my eyes just in time.

I ease the apartment door open, and slip inside. It becomes immediately clear I’ve been gone too long. Only the nightlight is on in the living room, even the city’s incessant hum is too soft to fill the acoustic void left by my brothers’ absent ruckus. Which could only mean one thing: my father is home. I shuffle to the bathroom, and set to cleaning up the worst of the filth without turning on the lights. Painstakingly, I ease the tap open a quarter turn, wet the inside of my shirt’s hem under the thin water stream, and dab at the most glaring of dried blood streaks. Yet, no matter how hard I rub, my efforts only make it worse, growing the smears, multiplying the stains, like a contagion loose in an innocent population.

When the bathroom light blinds me, I gasp, eyes squinting, nose flaring, pulse beating like off-rhythm drums in my ears. Mama’s gasp is louder, her eyes showing too much white, her hand flies to her mouth to stifle the unbidden scream. She doesn’t ask where I was, or what caused the state I’m in. Doesn’t mention that my dad’s home, or that she lied to him about where I was to spare me the punishment for breaking the one rule my brothers always obeyed: no one comes home after dad. If you’re out when he returns, you stayed out, perhaps for the night, perhaps for good. Who could tell? It was all down to father’s whim.

Mama’s tears flow, her eyes beg me voicelessly to tell her what’s wrong with me. Tell her what she could do to fix it; to fix me. But she doesn’t put her entreaty into words. Instead, she embraces me. She wraps her arms around my skeletal frame, palm to elbow across the ridges of my back, unheedful of my filth. I inhale her scent, chicken broth and parsley, scratched lime rinds and freshly toasted bread, almonds-topped basbousa and minted tea, laying bare my reek.

I make to untangle myself from her grasp but she won’t let me go, and suddenly my brothers are standing in the partially lit corridor, the same disquietude etched starkly on their faces.

Scorn, roughhousing, putdowns, I can take from them, but not concern. Not empathy. Not love. The sob I try to smother convulses me, like a live wire’s charge coursing through my bones, spasming my neck, locking my jaw. My brothers see me smarting and rush the front door, blocking it. I try to get around them, through them, but they’re taller, wider, stronger. They grapple with me, their surprise at my manic strength slowly turns to fear, but the jolt animating me lasts only so long, and when it abruptly dissipates, I pass out, in their arms.

Days bleed one into another, and I’m never alone. My brothers keep watch in turns, and Mama takes care of the rest. I think I even see my father once, during one of those torturous somewhat lucid spells, his practiced stoicism spoilt by the worry lines around his eyes. But I’m not sure, for I think I see many impossible things between pleading with my family to leave me be, to let me go. I promise I’ll never bother them again. I swear I only want to see the mashrabiya one last time. I threaten and cry and scream and whine and moan, to no avail. Pins and needles travel up and down my limbs. Ironfists grip my innards, squeezing the air from my lungs. I’m hot and cold, parched and drenched, sharply aware inside a haze. I pass out and rouse, again and again. Once, I find my brother slumped over in his chair, endless strong tea at last powerless to keep him awake.

I slip out of bed and ease the bedroom door open. In their place, I would have locked it, but they didn’t. They trust me. My other brother is snoring on the sofa in the living room. Outside the open shutters, the city throbs with a life I’ve come to abhor.

I fly down the stairs, taking them too-many-at-a-time, twisting midair to round the corners, or so I imagine. I’m not certain if I’m awake. Is this a real padlock on the basement’s door or a phantom of feverish dreams? Real or not, it bars my way.

I run out into the street looking for a rock, and find many to choose from. I pick the heaviest and rush back, cradling the rock close to my chest, grunting. They’ll realize soon I’m gone. I have to hurry, make it inside before they reach me or I’ll never see this place again. Even if my hosts take all that’s left of me, consume every fiber yearning for the cooling breeze of that quiet and languid place, I’ll be content.

Shards fly from where rock meets lock, and in between blows I hear a door slamming shut upstairs, footsteps rushing down, toward me. I tighten my grip and heave the weight higher with every strike. The lock, though battered, holds, and the footfalls grow closer, some shod, some not. My brothers never really liked shoes.

I pick up the pace, groaning to drown out the thuds in my ears. I hoist the rock as high above my head as I can, and bring it down with a thump that rattles my bones. The lock shatters, its shackle falls to the ground with an echoing clang that follows me as I run into the deepest chamber of the labyrinthian bomb shelter.

My breath comes faster, shallower, and I make ready to dive head first through the mashrabiya’s window the moment I reach it. I know they’ll be waiting to receive me on the other side, their brown arms raised, their bright teeth gleaming, eager to make up for time lost.

My dash ends in an uncomprehending halt.

Where the mashrabiya once stood, only emptiness and debris remain. Where did it go? Had it been moved? Who moved it? How? It’s too large to carry through the archways separating the chambers, let alone the door. Did they break it apart? Did they reassemble it elsewhere? Where?

A heartbeat later, my brothers surround me, my father a step behind, Mama on his heels. They make to drag me away and I scream. How could they not see that without the mashrabiya I’m dead as surely as a knife plunged into my heart? My knees buckle under me, but my brothers arrest my fall, each taking an arm over their shoulders, and carry me out. Behind us, my father decrees my fate. He’ll send to my uncle to come and take me to our ancestral village, sequester me from the city’s ills. A whimper dies in my mother’s throat. My father’s gait brooks no objections as he overtakes us all and sets to climbing the stairs.

Before my brothers mount the first step, I break free, pausing for a heartbeat to look at my mother’s stricken face before making a dash for the building’s iron-lattice door.

The mashrabiya is still out there somewhere, it has to be, and I have to find it.

Behind me, my brothers give chase, but they’re too mindful of passersby’s censorious glances, of traffic hurtling through the city’s arteries, of open sewer holes and potholes, of trash heaps and caked-on mud, of our neighbors pausing to behold our family’s shame.

I’m mindful of only one thing.

Author’s note

Some of us are born ill-suited for the lives our families and communities expect us to lead, and though for a time masking, folding, and contorting allows us to fit those shapes imposed on us, the lucky ones eventually realize that our reality is the only one that matters.

Ramez Yoakeim

Ramez Yoakeim writes mostly about outsiders finding hope in direful circumstances, including ‘Rise Again’ and ‘More Than Trinkets,’ both selected for Reactor’s Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction. Find more of his stories in anthologies from Flame Tree and Erewhon Books, and zines like Baffling, Heartlines Spec, UtopiaSF, and Kaleidotrope, among others.

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