A Dog with No Tail by Hamdi Abu Golayyel

Author:Hamdi Abu Golayyel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Plot of Land

Everybody knows where to find the laborers. Their markets are on top of bridges or at the edge of public squares. But we were too proud to sit out in the sun. Our spot was Salim’s café at the beginning of Muniyat al-Seirig Street in the direction of Sheikh Ramadan. I liked it because of Salim. He wasn’t the owner, though he acted the part, and he endeared himself to me because he made it clear he thought manual labor was beneath us. “A great bunch of guys,” he’d call us. “Not the sort that should be scrabbling around in construction.”

Sitting at the café meant no guarantees. Your chances of finding work were roughly equal to your chances of going home and spending the day in bed back in your room. When Matar was going through one of his inactive patches we would take work with anyone, anywhere. Once, I went with an individual who said he was a contractor and we agreed that I’d dig the foundations for a building in Haram. He took me out there in his car and we inspected the site: a plot of land surrounded by a wall. “Work hard,” he said. “A foundation trench is twenty pounds. Payment at the end of the day.” He got into his car and departed. I worked hard. I dug out two trenches. The end of the day arrived and he didn’t come. He must have been held up for some reason. The next day I returned, purely to give him a piece of my mind and take my money for the foundations, yet the moment I crossed into the enclosure I decided that I might as well spend my time digging a trench. When he came I’d ask for sixty rather than forty. By the third day I’d given up. I was digging for nothing. Even so, I couldn’t let go of the idea that my trenches were a strategic reserve. For months afterward, whenever the café let me down, I would return to the foundations with hopes of receiving my just reward, but I never saw a soul.

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