A Shimmering Red Fish by Youssef Fadel

Author:Youssef Fadel [Fadel, Youssef]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789774169373
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

24

The King’s Drums

I close my eyes and open them again. I close my eyes and tell myself that it will be there, but when I open them all I see is fog. It also happens that, in a dream, I see that the minaret has disappeared. I’m not sure why that terrifies me and I jump out of bed to see if it is actually gone. The thick ocean fog really has swallowed up quite a bit of it, or else the ocean has washed over it. Some time passes between it disappearing and then reappearing. A lot of time. It might have been an entire morning. After Farah drowned, I went regularly to the mosque and slept in the workshop. Sometimes I slept in the mosque, in the main prayer hall. I noticed that my relationship to it was improving little by little. I spent the morning hours watching the changing colors of the minaret. From here, I don’t see it, even when I close my eyes and open them three times in a row; nor can I see the mosque. Usually the minaret is there to welcome me at this time in the morning, though there are mornings when it refuses to do so. Like this morning. This isn’t at all connected to the weather. It might disappear even when the weather is clear, as if it had just picked up its stonework and gone to the other side of the ocean, but this rarely happens. Right now, it’s obscured by fog and nothing else. I let it take its time. Maybe it has plunged into the ocean’s depths to bathe itself, to shake off the steel that’s still wrapped around it. It will need a lot of time to wash away its worries and reappear looking clean. When this happens it’s always accompanied by the squawking of seagulls. The squawking seagulls drown out all other sounds, including the crashing waves. As long as it remains hidden, the squawking doesn’t stop. From time to time, instead of closing my eyes, I crane my neck to extend my gaze, but I don’t see it. It has completely disappeared. After an hour of looking for it, not a trace of the minaret can be seen. Maybe it’s getting ready to surprise me. And what is Father doing right now? It’s been a while since he visited the mosque. What scheme is he cooking up? The cemetery dog showed up three times in the past few days, but then it disappeared. It didn’t show up after that. Maybe it was another dog. These kinds of dogs all look the same. And they’re there on every street. I’m not that worried. There are many ways to get rid of it should it continue to pose a threat, the most preferable of which is to contact the gang that specializes in snatching dogs, as I said before. Except for the time in the cemetery, and the three times it appeared after that, it has stayed away.

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