In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [14]
Every day we went to the market with the other Hazara boys, and at lunchtime we pooled our money for a bit of Greek yogurt and chives, a few loaves of naan tandoori, which is a flat, round bread baked in a clay oven, and some fruit or vegetables, if there were any.
That’s how it was.
I kept working at the Liaqat Bazaar because I had nothing better to do—and I would never have gone back to the samavat Qgazi because I’d have lost Sufi and my other friends—but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t like having a shop where people come in and ask you for things, and you just have to be there to welcome them and be nice. No, here you had to go up to them, stand in front of them or next to them while they were doing or thinking about other things, and say, Buy, please buy. You had to bother them like a fly, and obviously that made them angry and they treated you badly.
I didn’t like bothering people. I didn’t like being treated badly. But everyone (including me) is interested in staying alive, and in order to stay alive we’re willing to do things we don’t like.
I had even come up with a few original ideas to force people to buy, and they seemed to work. One was that I would go up to those who had a child in their arms, bite into a snack without opening it, leaving a mark on the wrapper, and while they weren’t looking I would give it to the child, then say to the parents, Look, he took a bite out of this snack. He’s ruined it and now you have to pay for it. Another trick was to give the child a little pinch on the arm, lightly enough not to leave a mark, so that they started crying, then I would hold out a snack and say to their parents, Here’s something that’ll calm your child down.
But all that went against the third thing Mother had told me not to do: don’t cheat.
Apart from that, the big problem was where to sleep. When it got dark the boys and I would hole up in one of the more squalid neighborhoods on the outskirts of Quetta. Abandoned houses about to collapse. Drug addicts behind the cars. Fires. Garbage. I was very dirty, but every morning, even before looking for something to eat, I would go to a mosque to wash myself, and then walk past the same school as before.
I didn’t skip a day. As if I felt I’d be playing truant if I did.
One afternoon I talked to osta sahib, the shopkeeper I’d gone into business with, and told him I wanted to quit and that I’d rather look for other work, because I couldn’t stand sleeping in the street anymore.
Without saying a word, he took a piece of paper and did the accounts. Then he told me how much I’d earned so far. I couldn’t believe it. He took the coins and notes and put them into my hand. It was quite a bit of money. I’d never had so much money in my life.
Then he said, If the problem is where to sleep, come to the shop in the evening, before I close up. I’ll let you sleep here.
In the shop?
In the shop.
I looked around. It was a clean place, with rugs on the floor and cushions propped up against the wall. There was no water and no toilet, but there was a mosque nearby where I could go in the morning.
I accepted. In the evening, I would arrive at the shop before seven, and he would pull down the shutter. He wouldn’t leave me the keys, so I had to stay in there all night until he came to open up the next day, and sometimes he didn’t come until ten or later. Waiting for him to come and let me out, and having nothing else to do, I remember I tried to read the newspapers he left on the counter, but I never managed to learn Urdu well. I’d have to read slowly, so slowly that by the time I got halfway down the page, I couldn’t remember what it had said at the beginning. I was looking for news about Afghanistan.
Why don’t you tell me a bit more about Afghanistan before we go on?
What kind of thing?
Something about your mother, or your friends. Your relatives. Your village.
I don’t want to talk