Glass Collector (11 page)

Shareen is clearly crushed by the sudden lack of interest in her and, arms folded, slumps on the ground to watch, anxious for the stupid kicking to stop. At first she thinks Lijah just wants to show off, but the longer the game goes on, the more she sees he’s enjoying himself, even though he says he hates soccer.

The only way that Shareen can cheer herself up is by imagining her forthcoming party. She’ll have her hair in silky-smooth curls that fall over her eyes and earrings. With dainty shoes and a bright red dress, she’ll be the prettiest girl there. The engagement party has given her something to look forward to and, though she doesn’t have a dress or shoes yet, Malia has promised to do her hair and makeup. She’s having a party and that’s all that matters.

By the time Aaron and Jacob reach the open, clean, beautiful lane leading to the limestone carvings and statues surrounding the church, the ponies and carts have all returned from the first trip of the day.

“When I see tons of cartons, newspaper, corrugated boxes and stuff, you know what I think?” Jacob suddenly pipes up.

“What?” Aaron asks.

Jacob blinks wildly. “That it’s stupid. They turn all the paper into tissues and people throw them away and then we pick them up again.”

“I know.”

As Aaron settles on the warm brick wall and looks back through a haze of heat at the buildings, he imagines what Cairo would be like if, overnight, the Zabbaleen didn’t exist. The city would soon drown in garbage crawling with rats and every kind of vermin. Stray dogs and cats would tear into the bags to eat maggoty meat and drag food across the roads. Disease would spread through every home and the tourists would stop coming. The city would soon collapse into ruin without them.

It’s too hot to talk and Aaron doesn’t have the energy to do much but sit here and dream. After imagining the destruction of Cairo, he conjures up a picture of himself working in—or, even better, owning—a perfume shop.

Beside him Jacob prays to find other work—something that doesn’t involve medical waste. He’d be quite happy sorting paper for one of the wealthier Zabbaleen families who don’t like getting their hands dirty by touching the rubbish they’ve collected. Anything would be better than wondering if a terrible disease is eating your insides.

“Someone said there’s a new company in the city taking people on to collect printer trimmings from offices to sell for recycling. Do you think they’d have us?” he asks.

“Nah. Easy jobs like that go quickly.”

Aaron glances at Jacob, who doesn’t usually sit here for long. Naturally restless, he normally jumps up from the wall after a few minutes to wander round Mokattam, eyes down, looking for lost coins or anything else of interest, then returning half an hour later to tell Aaron what he’s found. Right now, Aaron sees he’s calmed down slightly. His eyes are half-closed instead of whizzing everywhere and he’s stopped twitching. Even so, he wishes he’d go.

Aaron’s busy staring at the cracked mounds of earth in the corner where the perfume bottles are hidden and wants to see if there’s room to bury the four in his pockets. He doesn’t dare tell Jacob about them in case he tells the priest they’re stolen. Walls have ears in Mokattam.

Tiny beads of sweat break out on Aaron’s forehead the longer Jacob sits there.

When Michael, the shy artist, nods to them, patting limestone dust from his jeans as he passes by, Jacob calls out to him, “Are you coming to Shareen’s engagement party?” He can’t resist asking, even though he knows Michael never does anything but sculpt figures from halfway up a ladder.

“No. No.” Michael dismisses the question with a tired wave of his hand, as if the party is the last thing on his mind.

Aaron suddenly realizes he doesn’t know anything about Michael. Whether he has a wife. Where he lives. Things he’s never asked. But sometimes not knowing things feels good. Not knowing anything about him makes Michael seem more interesting.

Two minutes later, Jacob’s on his feet, walking in circles. He needs to get moving. He’s been sitting for too long.

“Catch you later,” he says, and runs off.

At last he’s alone. Aaron twists from the wall to the corner in a single movement, letting an arm slip to touch the bumpy ground. He glances at the open space beside the church. There’s no one there. Aaron quickly scoops out the earth until the feel of a deep crevice, then smooth glass tells him the bottles are still there. Peering into the small space, he thinks there might be room for a few more and pushes the first two back to make space for the new ones. Soon he’ll have enough to open his own perfume shop. He’ll be rich like Omar.

A sudden breeze ruffles the flowering bushes nearby. Aaron glances at the empty concrete benches and table, then at the frescoes on the limestone walls to either side of the church. For a moment it feels as if someone’s watching him. Someone who knows he’s a thief. The pale outline of a carving in the wall of Mary, Mother of God, stares back and Aaron shivers at the idea she saw him.

It’s then that he spots Shareen sitting in one of the open-air concrete pews, quietly crying her heart out, dabbing her eyes with a blue sleeve. Has she been here the whole time? He quickly covers the bottles with soil and walks over to the church, where she’s bent forward, leaning on her knees.

“Aren’t you supposed to be happy?” he asks.

“Would you be happy if you were going to your own engagement party in a second-hand dress?” she snarls.

What am I supposed to say to that?

“No, see … You don’t care,” Shareen sobs. “No one cares.”

Aaron silently agrees and, glancing back over his shoulder, guesses she didn’t see him burying the bottles or she would have mentioned it.

“I was sitting on the wall. How long have you been here?”

“I’ve been here since Daniel said that Seham—remember her? She was at school with us and got married last month. Seham wants to sell me her old engagement dress. Have you seen it? It’s
brown
.”

Glaring at him with blotchy eyes, she makes Aaron feel uncomfortable. He fidgets. Shareen’s got nothing better to do than sit around here feeling sorry for herself, while he has to avoid being punched and kicked by Lijah before scavenging the place for food, with no thanks from anyone. If he walks away she’ll accuse him of being mean, but if he stays she’ll find a way to make him even angrier. Whatever he does, he can’t win, and if he’s the tiniest bit shifty she’ll cotton on to the fact that he’s done something he shouldn’t have.

“Jacob had a vaccination after a needle got stuck in his arm,” Aaron says.

“And? And?” Shareen sniffs.

Suddenly it occurs to Aaron that she treats him like a heavy-duty garbage bag: somewhere safe to chuck her rubbish when there’s no one else around.

“Nothing,” he replies flatly. “See ya, then.”

He walks away. Behind him, he can hear the intake of several breaths that prove she’s amazed he’s just ignored her. Then she’s on her feet, following him down the wide walkway.

“My grandfather once had a flour mill,” she calls as Aaron quickens his step.

Ignoring her feels good, like the time he walked away from Lijah in the city center and turned down an alley he’d never been to before and came across a street parade with belly dancers, drums, and fiery torches. It felt as if he’d stumbled into a new world that was just waiting for him to arrive. But the moment the high walls and clean paths leading to the church are left behind, Aaron’s forced to slow down to sidestep the never-ending streams of garbage, and Shareen catches up. She hasn’t finished with him yet and folds her arms tight as she bolts past to stand in his way.

Aaron pauses to look at her. She seems more determined than ever to get his attention. The smell of filth settles between them as she eyes him with a new curiosity. Aaron’s happy about something and it puts her off balance. Immediately, she goes into attack mode.

“Rachel said you killed the pony.”

A few minutes after five in the morning Aaron has persuaded the Mebaj brothers to give him another lift and he’s back on the cart, clopping into town with the sound of the morning call to prayer in his ears. It’s just getting light and the cart’s loaded with empty plastic bags but they’re not Aaron’s. The Mebajs don’t have room for his stepfamily’s garbage so his hands are empty as they rumble along the street, with blue-and-white tourist buses and cars building up on both sides.

Aaron’s mind returns to Shareen and what she said about Rachel. He hadn’t answered her. Hadn’t looked at her. Just walked away as if his body was moving forward on its own, her words circling him like snakes. And later, when he went to the yard, all he saw of Rachel was her disappearing home with a friend.

Not until Aaron’s off the cart and racing along the steaming streets of Cairo does his anger with Shareen start to die away. Hurtling across roads and down long streets leading to the city center, all the while he’s looking for anything out of the ordinary. Those café shutters aren’t fully down. The beggar doesn’t have his dog with him this morning. There’s a new white jacket in the window of the clothing store. On every street there’s a known face with a known past, yet Aaron doubts any of them have ever noticed him.

In his mind’s eye he can see himself rushing past a fountain, a convent, a dye factory, several shops and offices, hurrying to the one place that can make him feel better. Once upon a time they used to throw trash in the Nile. Old TVs, ovens, sacks of building rubble, even swords. It’s against the law to pollute the Nile, but many times Aaron has seen bags being flung there under cover of darkness.

On every corner is a new kiosk selling useless trinkets. It’s garbage that people will soon throw away and Aaron despises the waste. Despises the need for this endless stuff that clutters up every street. Between the buildings, to one side of him, he glimpses the Nile. Arriving at the perfume shop, Aaron breathes in the smell of warm wood from the locked black doors. Hands on the delicate carvings, he presses his nose to the rough door and a faint whiff of paint leaks from the grains of wood. Letting go, he stands back to look at the shelves of bottles glowing from the windows on either side.

“There are at least twelve dimensions,” he once heard

Omar say. “It’s possible to enter another world by feeling your way into it.”

Aaron can easily feel himself into the glass. He’s been doing it for years. He takes a few deep breaths and every cell in his body seems to flow through the glass and across the raised points, nail-thin, the crevices, gentle ridges and achingly round, smooth stoppers. He can feel the pale yellow glass turn white and the pink take on a bluish hue.

All the tiny details—black dots in the middle of the glass petals, ivy on the necks of the bottles—jump out like living plants, prickly, sharp, and soft. His fingers tingle at the shapes on the surface of the glass. At the same time, when he’s focusing hard, what’s real alters. After being part of the glass for a while, he can tell when a bottle has been coated twice with a slightly different shade to make it shimmer. Sometimes the colors, especially the ruby reds, are dense at the base and fade to white at the top of the bottle.

When Aaron is lost in his dreams, everything falls away. The screeching traffic and boom of overhead planes disappear, along with the smell of fumes. He realizes that he felt the same way when he saw the vision of Mary on the doors of the Imperial Hotel and again when he looked into Rachel’s almond eyes.

Love.

Love is all he ever wants to feel.

Perhaps there are people who always feel it. Perhaps Omar, with his deep, calm voice, always feels like this. The possibility stays with Aaron until he slips into the alley beside the shop. The cool darkness rolls over his head like a veil and a smell of dead birds fills the air. Beside the wall is an empty, ripped-apart cardboard box, which makes Aaron think someone’s already been here, searching for rejected bottles. This alley is
his
territory. In a temper he kicks the handle of the side door, which springs open with a sudden click.

Aaron shivers and looks around him. In the block of sunlight at one end of the alley, he can see people passing by on the street, hurrying to work. No one glances his way. Silent and still, he stands watching and waiting, one hand flat on the cool, chalky wall. There’s never anyone at the shop before eight in the morning and it’s just after six. Someone’s forgotten to lock the door.

Aaron’s thoughts come thick and fast. He’s rooted to the spot, but with no sound coming from inside he slowly pushes the door wide open with a fist. Creaking loudly, it sounds and feels like an old church door. A rich red tasseled mat comes into view on the polished tiled floor inside.

Immediately Aaron wonders how much the mat’s worth and reminds himself to take that or another one on the way out. A strong smell of incense greets him, making him feel invincible as he steps inside. The traffic sounds fade to silence. High up on the wall is a painting of Horus, the God of War. Aaron glances at the falcon head for a second, then to the door leading to the back room where he spoke to Omar, before turning from the corridor to the shop floor.

There’s a hissing noise coming from an overhead pipe. Being inside the shop feels strange. Aaron wanders from corner to corner. The plastic bag under his arm makes a small crackling sound when he bends down to touch the red cushions on the benches. Eyeing the expensive rugs and brass lamps, he realizes he could fit quite a lot of stuff in the bag, but he is distracted by hundreds of twinkling bottles lined up beautifully along the shelves. He’s torn between stealing them or the rugs and lamps.

The most expensive perfumes on the middle shelves are in gilt-edged glass. Aaron picks one up and turns it over. There are tiny engraved numbers on the base to identify the glass- blower and his company. Aaron pops the bottle in his pocket, along with two more with gold net wrapped around the rose- colored glass. When his pockets are bulging, he unplugs the brass lamp from the wall and drops it in the bag, then rolls up a silvery-gray rug and stuffs it on top. He’s about to reach for a small brass incense burner when he hears footsteps.