At last I find a coat in a trash can and immediately put it on, on top of my chador.
“Are you so cold? We’re having a warm autumn, don’t you feel it?” a man passing me by asks. Everyone minds every one’s business.
“Bears wear their coats every day,” I respond.
That shuts him up and I turn into another street. I wonder if that was the same man. Could have been. I didn’t really look at him. I walk and walk, looking for soap. I keep thinking if I look in every trash can the odds are I will find a soap, the kind that has a pretty color and a good scent. Five blocks, nothing. Six blocks, seven... Then I become aware that the man, the same man I have been seeing everywhere, is following me. How did he ever find me? As soon as I look in his direction he hides behind a tree. I walk on, not knowing what else to do. His face haunts me. Things are getting more and more connected.
My God, what do I see in a garbage can? A human finger. It has red polish on its nails. My vision becomes blurred, my legs numb. I remember that terrible incident. One night when I was sleeping in the hallway of an abandoned building a man came to me, held a knife to my throat and forced me to undress. When he got what he wanted he left. A man like that could have cut off that finger.
I keep looking for soap in different cans anyway. I don’t want to give up. Then I spot a shop, its window stacked with bars of soap wrapped in paper with pictures of a rose, a bird, a tree branch on them. Another connection. I’m looking for soap and here is a shop full of it. I push the door open and step inside. It is pleasantly fragrant. The pictures and the scent remind me of my dear mother. That man, the one who has a scheme for the hotel, must have a mother too. Or had one. Maybe he lost his mother too. I suddenly feel an affinity with him, though I am terrified of what he might be scheming.
As I stand here among the soaps I remember the blue wall paper with tiny white flowers on it in my childhood room. Then I remember myself in a pink dress and a mother-of-pearl necklace, a pink ribbon in my hair, walking along with my mother to go and visit Uncle Mahmood. I must have been only five or six years old because I wasn’t forced to cover up. I was glowing like a lit candle that day, all dressed up and proud, walking with my dear mother who loved me.
“How did you get in here?” the salesman asks with a stunned look on his face.
“The door was open.”
“Get out of here. Get lost. ”
I continue standing. He rummages through a drawer, takes out a bar of soap and throws it to me. It falls on the floor. I pick it up. It is unwrapped and I can see a rose carved on it. I hold it hard in my hand and leave. He doesn’t know how smart I am, that once I had a home, a mother, that I wanted to become a doctor. Why should I care?”
Finally I am in my spot. Dusk is approaching. I get up and go to the basement from the second door, the one the man came out from. I want to use the bathroom to wash. I latch the bathroom door from the inside, undress, and wash myself with the soap and the water from the sink. I make a mess. But at least I am clean and I don’t have to spend my money going to the public baths. I dry myself with paper towel, put my clothes back on, and start to leave. I hear strange noises from the other side of the basement, furtive footsteps, a door opening and shutting. Someone is running out, it seems. What do I care? Unless... it’s the man, coming here to do something, plant the bomb maybe, and then getting scared when he heard noises, the ones I made.
I must tell Lynn. I go into the lobby but she isn’t there. The man sitting behind the desk looks at me and says, “What are you doing here?”
I’m afraid to tell him I used the bathroom, so I just leave. I don’t see anyone on the street, running or anything. It’s very cold and I’m still a little damp, making it worse. I take out the gloves from the bottom of my bag and put them on. They have a rose smell from the soap that was lying next to them. Oh, I remember I left the soap in the bathroom. I must go and get it. I go to the door but it is locked now. Who locked it? Why?
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