“Wake up. Come on. Wake up.” He moans and turns away from her. “No, no, you don’t. Up. You have to go to school.”
“No school today. Teachers are on strike,” he mumbles into the back of the sofa.
“You are a liar and a lazy boy,” she says, but her voice is not angry.
Joseph tries to hide a smile. “Donkey boy.”
“Yes, walid himar. Now get up or the donkey will bite your ass.”
“Oh, that’s terrible!” he laughs at the pun and rolls off the couch as his mother goes into the bedroom. “I have to dress and get down to the café. Make sure Ramzi meets the delivery. And listen to me, Joseph,” she calls to him as she pulls a navy blue dress from the closet, “I mean it. You go to school today. All day. And come to the café as soon as you’re finished. I want to see what the homework is.” She hears him in the bathroom. “Do you hear me?”
“I’ve got soccer after school.”
Saida knows this is not true. She wants it to be true, but she knows he does not go to soccer, although it is an excuse he uses often. There are never any soccer clothes to wash. Never a soccer ball in the house. As far as she knows he owns no soccer shoes though he says he keeps them at school.
She does not want to call his bluff and telephone the school. Although she would never say this to her son, she dislikes the teachers at his school almost as much as he does. The tone of voice they use, as if their mouths are full of sour pickles, makes it clear they hold no respect for her—just another Arab woman raising a child alone, and one who bears the taint of her hardscrabble life in the texture of her very skin. The headmistress, Madame Brossard, lumps her into the same stew with Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans. How can she explain who she is to the Parisians, who never go into Barbès, let alone beyond the périphérique, into the housing projects where most of the immigrant population live? Her father once an engineer, her mother once a teacher just like them. Saida speaks three languages, how many do they speak? It’s no use, and she suspects it’s as little use for her son, who doubly condemns himself because he makes his friends among the beurs, those hard-eyed, slouching, baggy-clothed boys who try so hard to look like American rappers and who everyone assumes steal wallets on the subway whether they do or not. And her son does not. Of this she is sure.
She pulls her tights up under her dress. “I will call the school, Joseph; I will find out if you have soccer or not. Don’t make me do that.” He says something she can’t hear over the flushing of the toilet. “What?”
“Call if you want. I have soccer.”
“I will call. Don’t you think I won’t. And if I find out you are lying to me, I will tell your grandfather, I will tell your uncle. And you know what they will do. You’ll be locked in your room for a month.”
“I don’t have a room. Besides, I’m too old for all that. I make my own decisions.”
Saida wraps a scarf around her neck. She says nothing for a moment, letting him think about the consequences of his words. It’s natural he would push the limits. It’s his age.
“You can’t treat me like a child anymore,” Joseph says, standing in the doorway, his hand on his hips. Her beautiful son. Bold and brazen as he should be. Saida smiles at him, then narrows her eyes, purses her lips and shakes her head at him in a parody of his own expression until he laughs.
“Such a mean man you’ll grow up to be.”
“I’m almost grown now.” He shuffles back and forth, afraid to look foolish.
“Almost grown isn’t grown. Be at the café this afternoon. I need you to take your grandfather to the doctor. He has to have his blood pressure checked.” And Joseph sighs deeply so she will know how he suffers, but Saida understands she has won this round at least.
Oh, the men in my life, she thinks. So many men and always everyone needing something. Where is the air left for me to breathe, and when the time for me to breathe it in?
Chapter Five
It is just after nine o’clock when Matthew finds the Bok-Bok, in the mostly Arab neighbourhood known as Belleville, in the 20th arrondissement, where windows full of oriental pastries and shops selling prayer rugs and Korans line the streets. As he walks, he keeps his eye on a group of twenty-something North African men wearing track suits and smoking with practised nonchalance. They joke, slap palms and watch the passers-by. Women keep their eyes downcast as they walk past them. When a blond in a short skirt and high-heeled sandals walks by they toss out insults in Arabic and spit at her. The old women and the ones wearing traditional headscarves are treated with more respect. An old man comes out of his grocery shop and shakes his hands at them, as though they are a trip of goats he means to move along. He says something harsh in Arabic, but the young men take no notice.
Matthew gives them and their tangible disaffection a wide berth. There are young men like this in every city of the world, only the ethnicity is different. He knows that the angry, like the poor, will always be with us. He avoids eye contact and keeps his gait casual.
He is looking for a particular passageway that was part of Jack’s instructions, and when he finds it he edges through a gate into a small discreet courtyard that smells of piss. He crosses to a door on the left, next to a wooden sign with the name of the bar on it and a Harley-Davidson logo sticker. The steps inside are absurdly steep, narrow and dark. He feels along the wall with his hands as he descends. The wall is damp.
When his eyes adjust to the shadows in the dimly lit room below, he sees an attempt has been made to reproduce an in-country Vietnamese hooch. The floor is wooden, the bar is rough-hewn and the tattered remains of an army surplus camouflage net hangs from the ceiling, festooned with small red and green Christmas lights. The faces of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin look down from the walls. There are dusty plastic palms in the corners and the air smells of cigarettes, beer, piss and the sort of centuries-old mould that is endemic to Paris basements.
Matthew waits a few seconds, knowing that eyes are on him, and then walks slowly toward the bar, nods to two men who nod back, but is careful not to stare at any face. He becomes still here, in the pin-drop tension, and he begins to relax for the first time in weeks. He feels as though he has stepped into water the same temperature as his skin. The jitters inside him begin to quiet. Home sweet home.
The bartender, a man wearing a porkpie hat over a scraggle of red hair, jerks his chin at Matthew, who orders a beer, whisky back, and drinks it, facing away from the room.
“You all right then?” asks the bartender.
“Fine, thanks.” The bartender nods and walks to the other end of the bar where he polishes a glass. The room’s low buzz of conversation returns. It is a drone of speech not whispered, not under the men’s breath exactly, but with awareness that not all things are meant to be heard by all people. A pale girl sits a few seats along the bar. She has black hair, which looks like a wig, and wears a high-collared, vaguely Chinese, tight dress. She smokes a cigarette and picks at chipped nail polish. There is a slit in the skirt and a dark bruise on her leg. She notices Matthew looking at her legs and stares at him but does not smile and so neither does he.
A man comes over and stands close to Matthew. He is not as tall as Matthew is but powerfully built, with tattoos of dragons on his arms. He says nothing.
“How you doing?” asks Matthew.
“You
