Manhood

A Story by Aideen Casey

I think descriptions usually ruin stories. Its 2416 words, just to give an idea.

‘Come home’ reads a text from a private number, but I know who it is.

I neatly place a book-mark between the pages of my novel and take one last look around at the dark green hills surrounding me, flowing but still. The sun toasts the trees, stripping them of vibrancy, but glazes the towering electricity masts sloppily placed amidst the hills. The only landforms not affected by the heat are the headstones standing in front of me. Their monotony doesn’t stop the headstone that reads: ‘Akeem Salib’ from glaring up at me. It’s hardly a graveyard, merely a discreet area to make room for extra headstones.

My legs drag me over to the broken wire fence, irritable tufts of grass prickling my brown legs as I do so. I climb over my bike and start down the bumpy hill, a product of the chunky-rubble ground.

After two minutes the decay of gravel into the finer grains of the town road tells me that I’ve entered Jerusalem, the sun-stained buildings confirming it. On the narrow streets I flow with the traffic, riding by a man in a small truck loaded with cucumbers for sale. Passing by the shop windows I see that the dusty wind has tainted my white t-shirt and ruffled my short, jet-black hair. I flicker my attention away from the road and observe the people on the sidewalk and one woman, regardless of her black hijab covering everything but her eyes, stands out to me.

‘Ms. Issa!’ I call, easing the speed of my bike.

Her auburn eyes shift from the pathway to me. Her lower eyelids curl upwards into their own versions of smiles.

‘Sam,’ she replies with her serene voice, barely audible in the town. ‘Ready for class tomorrow?’

‘A little,’ I answer slowly passing her by. ‘I’m almost finished the novel.’

‘I have another one to give to you. See you,’ she says as I disappear around a corner.

I see in the link of houses to my left that my house is drawing nearer and nearer to me as I ride, but that’s not the home that was in question. I drive past it and head for an area outside the town, a place that always seems to be under construction.

In this uncared-for area, the open streets are occupied by no more than one man idly smoking by a ratty, tattered door and the only car is a rusted, hollow Beetle that two children play in. The grey walls have patches of white paint in an attempt to brighten up the place or conceal the graffiti; this jagged wall reads a partially painted over quote translated as: ‘Fight those in disbelief’.

In an even more decrepit area secluded for a number of wrong reasons there is a sandy-coloured but tinted grey building which blends in seamlessly with the other abandoned apartment blocks. I’m watchful not to park my bike on the shards of glass that were once the building windows; one window entirely without glass allows the unusually cold and raw air entrapped in the building to chillingly brush off my skin.

I open the door to cracked walls uncovering old brick layers, explaining the smell of stagnant plaster. I run up four flights of stairs, each step causing waterfalls of powdered dirt from its cases.

I reach an apartment door that transfers fine paint dried by age to my hand when I push it open. I go through a tiny sitting room partnered with a stark hallway before reaching a windowless room that is eerily empty, except for my father and his boss, Jamad.

My father is sitting cross-legged on the floor, while Jamad is upright on a stool in the corner. My father’s rigid expression loses tension as he budges his attention from Jamad to me, whereas Jamad’s face remains motionless as if carved out if stone, the cracks in the stone being his mysterious scars.

‘Samir,’ my father says gesturing me to sit down next to him.

Jamad’s eyes follow me as I walk over and sit on the ground, his other features remaining dead with stillness. My father’s ponytail looks longer than the last time I saw him, now gently touching the tip of his spine. His face looks the same, stiff and grave.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t see you on your birthday last week,’ he says rubbing my shoulder in consolation.

I nod in acknowledgement.

‘You know how every year on your birthday you ask why myself and Jamad...’ he pauses to try and think of less extreme phrasing to describe his extreme actions. ‘... do what we do?’

‘And you always say that I’m a bit too young to fully understand,’ I finish.

My father picks up something beside him that I didn’t notice when I came in.

‘This year Jamad and I believe you’re old enough to understand,’ he says placing something in front of me that I’ve seen my father assemble ever since I was a toddler.

‘What’s this?’ I ask, even though I know well that there is a bomb in front of me.

Jamad frowns at my ignorant innocence.

‘You’re going to bring this to school tomorrow, Samir,’ my father says, fixing his eyes on mine. ‘Then you can finally stop learning from school and learn from us instead.’

‘I don’t want to. I’ll never be old enough to understand.’

‘You’re not a child anymore, Samir. You’re 13. You’ll never understand unless you do it yourself. Akeem could use a gun by the time he was your age.’

‘Akeem is dead because of you and Jamad- because of your group,’ I shout at both my father and Jamad. ‘The group is why you went to jail.’

‘The group is why I escaped, too,’ my father states, trying to sit me down. ‘You can believe the lies you hear from your mother and your teachers but you know well now that what we’re doing is the right way- the only way. I’ve taught you everything. Now you need to do it yourself- for yourself.’

I take a final glance at Jamad’s sour face, terrified of all the thoughts that must be running through his mind, before fleeing the room, sprinting down the stairs and out to the building’s feeble excuse for a back garden.

When catching my breath I stare up at the building, weathered but still standing, reminding me of my father. I slump down against it beside the door, remembering the first time I heard that Akeem was sent into the shopping centre with the group two months ago during their riot. He had an AK-47 in his hands and was shot with blood on them. Jamad was elated either way.

With my face cupped in my hands I notice a lizard emerging from the only bush in the garden. It has forest-green skin embellished with light yellow spots which look like constellations. It’s relatively smooth, besides the line of minute pyramids trailing down his body. He abruptly pauses in front of me, implying that I’m an obstacle in the path to his destination. I can see my reflection in his clear-marble eyes while he inspects me, trying to figure out if I’m a threat. After a short second of visual probing he proceeds to scurry over to his home under a rock, which reminds me that I need to go home before curfew.

* * *

15 minutes before classes begin I peer through the school gates, watching every student outside in the yard in their weekend-washed white shirts. The infants scamper around in their high shorts, unaware that at least one is bound to trip and graze their knees. My class remain in their carefully manufactured groups, the highest order contently conversing under a cooling tree. It’s not colossal, the school, but grand enough to teach 400 students. The morning sun paints it a fresh shade of yellow, its sharpness destined to vanish when the clouds ascend.

I manage to enter the school unseen through the back door. I look up and down the bare hallway before dashing into the closest classroom, fearful that a teacher may catch me intruding.

I’ve never been in this classroom before. I would say third grade, judging by the clay objects perched on a table covered by newspaper. I notice on the smiley-face clock with the sunflower rim that there are 5 minutes left before the bell rings.

With rising adrenaline as a stimulus, I hurry to the small library at the bottom of the classroom, trying but failing not to make noise on the hardwood floors. I kneel down to remove a block of books from the shelves before opening my schoolbag and unleashing the bomb. Sweat now appearing on my hands, I begin to push it to the back of the shelf.

‘Sam?’

Feeling vomit crawl up my throat I turn around- a pointless action, because I know from the deep end of my broken heart who it is.

I look directly into Ms. Issa’s confused eyes, not saying a word in the hope that she’ll understand everything from just my teary ones.

‘The door was slightly open,’ she informs with her delicate voice. ‘What are you doing?’

Incapable of speaking, I collapse into tears and hide my face in my knees on the floor. I can hear her rushing over to me in worry but I don’t look up at her, not wanting to trouble the kindest mind I know. She crouches down right beside me, enabling me to hear her speechlessness as she peeks inside the bookcase. The sound of the school bell breaks the silence.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I blurt out, not feeling worthy to speak to her. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

The silence of the empty corridors quickly fades with the sound of students filling them up.

‘Sam, look at me,’ she tries to sturdily say with her fragile voice. I look up at her and notice her now pink eyes, an agonising sight. ‘Is this going to go off soon?’

I shake my head, averting my eyes from hers again. She puts her hands around my shoulders and helps me up from the ground.

‘We need to go to the intercom to evacuate the school,’ she says gently pushing me alongside her as we briskly walk towards the door.

We open it to a bulging hallway of students, all scrambling to get to class. Not wanting to be prominent, she lets go of my shoulders and tells me to put my head down and stay close to her.

We begin to clamber through the crowd, both discreetly burying our bloodshot eyes. I briefly tilt my head up and see that Ms. Issa is still proceeding ahead, just assuming that I’m following behind. I turn around and make way for the school door instead, my shiny eyes and red nostrils receiving some perplexed looks from students. Ms. Issa surely must have noticed that I’ve lost her by now, but it’s no use trying to find me out of the 400 students crawling the corridors.

I make it out of school and take a deep breath from the fresh air, as if I had been under water. Even though there’s no need any more, my head is kept down as I walk to the school gates. I bring myself to face upwards and reluctantly turn around to see the school; a small school, whose yellow colour has faded as clouds plaster the sky.

I kneel down with my schoolbag and obtain in it a detonator. I stare at it in disbelief - disbelief that I’m really going to do this. I lift my gaze to the school, obtaining a surreal feeling that I’ll never walk its hallways again. I don’t want to do this.

Suddenly I hear a car’s tyres screech along the road and zoom up to the gates.

‘Hurry up, Samir!’ furiously shouts my father from the car window. ‘It’s the only way!’

With my bottom lip quivering I turn to the school, a sight which forms a lump in my throat. I feel like its urging me to stop.

‘C’mon! Hurry!’

I turn the key to the detonator. A lifetime seems to go by as I hear it click.

A blast bursts my eardrums and a wave of air, dust and sound rushes towards me, forcing me backwards off the ground. There is an explosion of light that blinds me, only capable of seeing the gravel leaping 2 metres off the ground in front of me. The incandescence quickly fades to exhibit the explosion’s complete annihilation, it’s eruption of flames pluming into the air.

I feel like I can hear something calling me and with that I feel someone’s hands wrap around my arms and dragging me away from the decimation. I’m flopped into the backseat of a car and blurrily see my father climb in the front speeding away from the school.

‘What was that?!’ my father yells. ‘I told you to stand back, Samir - and why were you taking so long?!’

I raise my head from the seat to look at my father with his elbow on the window and his head in his hand, slowly but heavily breathing in disgust. I notice some blood on my skin as a result of the blast.

I regain full consciousness upon arrival at my father’s home. He drops me off and then leaves to park the car somewhere else, maintaining the illusion of dereliction.

I head for the back garden and slouch on the paved ground next to the door. A bush rustles, shattering the haunting silence. It’s the lizard from yesterday. Repeating the same actions, it zips along the ground until reaching me.

Upon looking up at me, a deafening noise bursts in my ears. I instinctively hunch over, squint my eyes and cover my ears, only hearing my stampeding heart from the bang. I open my eyes and see the lizard lying in a pool of his blood on the ground, a bullet interrupting the patterns on his skin.

I turn around and see Jamad pointing a handgun at the lizard. He lowers the gun and diverts his eyes to mine, expressionless. He bestows the gun on me and departs wordlessly.

Feeling the smooth gun against my skin and listening to my heaving breath, I gaze into the lizard’s dead eyes and see my reflection; my new reflection: me bearing a gun in my bloody hands.