Inside I go to KITCHEN and a woman there hands me a package of food. Then I sit on a bench in the little garden stretching behind KITCHEN and eat-- an apple, a kebab wrapped up in plastic, rice in a container. There are a few other women sitting on another bench but I don’t try to mingle with them. I have nothing to say to them.
After I’m finished eating I leave and walk on the streets around Shemiran Square, the modern part of this vast city, where rich people live, and look in garbage cans, hoping to find a coat. I spend all the money I get on medicine, going to public baths, shoes.
I find a pair of leather gloves, not in a garbage can, but on the sidewalk. They are new and a pretty blue color. Someone must have dropped them. I don’t find a coat or anything else for that matter. It is getting dark and I start walking more speedily to the shelter. I used to sleep in doorways but police always picked me up and took me to their station and questioned me.
The woman sitting behind a desk in the shelter’s lobby gives me my key and I go to the cubicle that’s my room. I don’t like to stay in the common room. The sight of the other unfortunate women like myself only depresses me. I sit on my cot and take an inventory of what I have in my canvas bag. First I take out the pouch and count the money in it. I have earned more than usual today because one of the hotel’s guests put a five dollar bill in the bowl. The pouch was absolutely empty this morning and now there’s plenty of money in it. Lucky, at least for one day. One month’s expenses are covered.
Then I empty out the bag. Out come the blue gloves, and what was there before: four pairs of underpants, bobby pins, a shiny green piece of glass that I like to hold against the light. I put the pouch back in the bag though I do worry about carrying all my money around. But banks can’t be trusted. They are thieves.
I skip breakfast though it is included in the fee I pay for staying in the cubicle rather than the common room, which is free. I have a terrible toothache and I don’t like the dingy dining room here. I make my way to the free Red Crescent clinic. Oh, the terrible toothache. There is a long wait. I have to sit on a bench along with others. No one looks at me. Just as well. A nurse keeps coming out and calling people inside. Everyone except me. I know if I wait long enough I will be called in. So I keep sitting here. But everything is so slow and the medicinal smell, the sight of people taken around in wheelchairs or cots, are unbearable. Finally I can’t bear sitting here any longer. I leave and go to the drug store next to the clinic and straight to the man behind the counter. “Can I have some aspirins.”
The druggist says in a contemptuous voice, “We sell aspirins here.” He turns to another customer.
I interrupt, “Can you spare me a few?” I always try to get my medicine free, if I can. Charity is a cardinal rule of Islam, not that it’s followed all the time even by those claiming they adhere strictly to religion.
Now he looks at me with real disgust. He puts a few aspirins on the counter, even though I have my hand raised before him. “Take it,” he says. “And leave now.” He points to the door.
I leave and pause by the joob. I fill one hand with water, put two aspirins in my mouth, and drink the water. The water is clear today for a change. I see a reflection of myself, my face all puffed up, my hair, what shows of it at the edges of my head scarf, frazzled, my eyes with a stunned expression. I can see all that. I’m not stupid.
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