I resume sitting across the hotel even though it’s late. Then I wrap myself tightly in the coat and lie down with the canvas bag under my head. I keep my eyes open. But I don’t see anyone doing anything strange.
I must have fallen asleep. I wake to the voice of the muezzin calling people to morning prayers. I go to a stall on the avenue and buy tea and bread. I sit on the sidewalk, lean against the wall, and eat. Then I notice a crowd on the other side of the avenue. They are holding banners but I can’t read the words on them from this distance. Then the crowd begins to shout, “We want the Americans back. We want to help American soldiers, we want death to the criminal Sadaam Hussein.”
If Sadaam is a criminal, I agree it’s good for humanity if he dies. But then I change my mind. If someone wants to live let him.
They shout on, “We want reform, empower the reformists. Too many crimes are committed in the name of religion.”
How right they are. Religion has done harm, misused as it is. I would join that crowd but I don’t count.
Police suddenly arrive and spray water on them. They stop shouting and begin to run in different directions.
I sit in my spot. Who do I see but the man coming into the street. What a shock, he too is wearing a winter coat. He looks heavier than before. Is he hiding something under the coat? A bomb? As soon as he sees me he turns around abruptly and goes back in the direction he came from.
I have two bars of soap now, one blue and one yellow. Three, counting the pink one that I went and got back from the hotel’s basement bathroom. The other two I found, not in a trash can or anything, but on the sidewalk, where they stood next to each other like twins. The color is already gone from the pink soap after one wash. Good thing I didn’t pay for it. I line them up in front of me behind the bronze bowl and I hold the little book in my hand and read a poem.
I become stiff as I see a policeman, different from the one I gave money to, coming towards me. He stands in front of me and asks, “Were you here, in this spot, during the night?”
I nod. I don’t have much money to bribe him.
“Did you see anyone going into the basement from that door?”
I shake my head no.
“Are you sure?”
I shake my head again.
“There’s danger to the hotel.”
“Oh, yes, yes, a man has been prowling around here.”
“Can you identify him, we’ve arrested someone. I have to take you to the police station.”
“Excuse me I must go to the bathroom.” I was telling the truth.
But he said, “We have to go to the station as soon as possible. Get up, don’t make me force you.”
I follow him a block to his car. “Get in,” he orders, opening the back door.
I fall asleep in the car and then wake from a dream. In the dream a row of cats were moving across a wide, lit street. They had long yellow hair and white whiskers. Somewhere in the center of the street they went up a flight of steps and disappeared into a doorway. I looked inside. It led into a hall, beyond which was a garden. I could smell a mixed scent of flowers coming from the garden. I was about to go in when the door shut in my face.
In the station the policeman lets me use the bathroom. Then another policeman takes me into a room and asks me to look at a few photographs. Lo and behold there is the man among them. “That’s him.”
I must have shouted because he says, “Quiet please.”
“That’s him,” I whisper.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He takes out another picture from a drawer. “Who is this?”
“The same man,” I shout again. I can’t keep my voice down.
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