Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It was hard, it was fresh, it was the day I died.

In one of the new middle class suburbs of Cairo a pudgy child was holding a pure smooth white shirt between his butterfly fingers. It seemed such a hard task, for the white of the shirt was taller than his light brown complexion. He was trying hard not to let it drag along the irregular pavement’s squares of stone filled with gritty dust and pools of dark inky mud. In his eyes the whole world depended on the subtle weight of that shirt, suspended in full air on a plastic black hanger of a God at which he looked up with revering eyes. Not a man yet, but everyone called him the laundryman, even you. And when the shirt was delivered in one piece without a wrinkle or a finger stain, he received his 15 Piastres tip and thanked his God that it was a short-sleeved shirt.

When he had slightly grown taller, his hopes grew with him; he was now allowed to ride a bicycle. Even though it was twice his size and his torn open-toed sandals hardly skimmed the pedals, the wind blowing in his face along with the new bell that he kept ringing and the chink of coin tips in his pocket had all created the sole excitement of his childhood. And when a bit of adolescent fuzz had grown on his upper lip and tufts of hair scattered his chin and cheeks, Egypt’s sun-disc took him under its long slanting wings, and the rusty handlebars were loaded with heavy plastic bags swaying on each side of the bicycle. He covered his head with the smooth white shirt, using it as a Bedouin hat against the blazing sun. His feet now reaching beyond the pedals and his wiry frame strong enough to screech the bicycle to a halt with an acrobatic swerve without even
dropping the empty wooden fruit basket carried behind him; yet it had never been a smooth ride.
   

That was me, not so many years ago. A laundryman whose fate and life were dangling between the earth’s muddy pools and the swaying plastic bags hanging on old rusty handlebars. Although I am an illiterate, the words on these plastic bags were plastered inside my head: Dry Cleaning, Steam-Ironing, Teinturerie. They were the Pride of the shop where I worked; they could all simply wipe you out, my humanity too in the process. They were the phases of my life. Instead of carrying human stains through this short life, I was now looking at hands smeared with human blood.
   

There I sat in the afternoon sun, my arms clasped around my knees. I had the Koran in one hand, a gun in the other, yet I never felt virtue within me. Beside me there was a watch that never belonged to me; the bloody finger stain didn’t allow the time, but you could still see the hands moving quietly on. I don’t know how much time I’ve got before I shoot myself, but I knew perfectly well that I was sitting in my favourite spot among all that vast earth. I was huddled against a small lone tree in the middle of a barren sandy plateau, the dappled sunlight flickering across my face, my dark eyes contemplating the present, the past, but never the future.
   

At that sleepiest hour of the afternoon no leaf was stirring, not even a bird awake; no one but my tree and me. In the distance far below I could see the buildings and the apartment complexes, the wide and narrow streets. It was my area, I had known every inch of it, but every day new roads emerged, new buildings blocked my path, and every night the map I had drawn inside my mind would be erased to be replaced by a new one: new apartments, new roads, new hopes, the clank of old rusty handlebars.
   

Construction was swallowing everything in its way, even here where I sat. Someday my tree and me will have a special place of our own. New blocks would invade our barren plateau and we’ll be able to move in as corpses or grains of sand.
   

I looked up at the sky, the passing white mass of clouds promised
nothing. And just when the light around me had turned coppery and the sky reddened over the roofs in the distance, I began to feel a new fear.
   

I pressed my nape against the tree and closed my eyes, the gun slipped from my bloodstained fingers. The bark felt smooth against my skin but the fear wouldn’t leave me alone; without asking, it had become our companion. I opened my eyes and looked at the watch. I would probably have to bury it in my secret pit right behind my tree. My pit, the story of my life.
   

I rose and went behind the tree. I got down on my haunches and
started digging through the sand with one hand only, I held the Koran in the other. The deeper I dug the better I felt.
   

I had never lived in an orphanage, but each day of my life I felt like living in one big foster home where everything is presumably yours when actually it isn’t. But it still felt better, for each handful of sand did reveal the flesh of the earth along with dim memories of my pit. This is where I had hidden my tips away from my parents and my boss; this is where I had hidden the gun. But just now I realized that this is where I had also hidden my hopes, my anger, my frustration from the rest of the world.
   

There we were: a small tree, a small me. I was still a child, a jumble of thoughts and feelings. I was sitting between my brothers and sisters, kneeling before a tiny round table, our hearts quailing at the scrape of our father’s slippers. We would start eating after he had split his loaf of bread in half, the name of Allah always between his words. His widespaced teeth releasing a stream of saliva as he preached us one of his so many wisdoms, ‘One poor, another is rich, but blood remains to him that is generous.’ ‘Do not eat bread while the man beside you is hungry, unless you lay his hand on the same bread.’ This was my father, my ancient Egyptian values, the ones we were taught before we could crawl, times when we had no place for hatred inside.
   

I miss his smile, the slurps from his half-full glass of dark tea while we wolfed the food down before his glowing eyes. He was neither confused nor frustrated like me. He had lived a happy life, the first limping ambulanceman I had ever seen. His brown rosary dangling between his fingers, may God forgive him for the innocent souls he had carried on his tumbling stretcher.
   

My mother had always prayed for me, her begging hands raised against the eternal skies, but the merciless slopes were so steep for me to keep pace with, and had exhausted every breath of my will climbing them. I had grown up, not much had changed. I had the Egyptian will of the Pyramids, but my spirit was old as they were. I had learned a few English words: Bush, Saddam, Sharon, Bin Laden. I had grown a beard and never missed any of my five daily prayers; and while some of my friends preferred a game of backgammon or the sports section in the newspaper, or maybe
the crackling noise of a water pipe, I had taken an interest in guns.
   

Each day the roads became steeper and unfamiliar, the June sun blazed down upon my head. The nights in our poky room on the roof were aching, desperately sighing. The summer crammed it with stifling darkness and acrid-smelling sweat, and everyone shouted at me, ‘Death for America is chalked up in every street corner!’
   

Hatred was my only weapon then, I had confused it with faith. Hatred was my sole existence, my ticket to Heaven out of this hopeless world. Just this morning I had carefully chosen my target before I climbed up to my lone tree and dug the gun out of my secret pit.
   

Fair skin, blue eyes, stringy flaxen hair, I had passed him every morning, jogging in his sweaty blazing tight shorts. These were quite enough reasons to shoot him.
   

He had begged for his life but of course I couldn’t understand the
language he was speaking. He hadn’t understood me either, for he had unfastened his watch and offered it. It’s amazing how human beings suddenly change the second they start talking: the features, the facial curves, the tone of the voice. However, he had mistaken me for a thief, and I had mistaken him for the source of my frustration and the tenacity of my beliefs. A white dot and a brown dot who wanted to blend, and the sole moment at which their paths cross the chaotic labyrinth of their confused minds and beliefs set them quite apart. Out of their bodies no child would ever come.
   

The wind raved furiously in the treetop, electric light had made the
first stars look pale in the night sky. My trembling fingers stopped digging, the grains of sand seemed utterly heavy against my palm. Somehow their weight was as heavy as the pure smooth white shirt. I looked down at the pit and saw nothing; it only mirrored my hollowness.
   

There was a persistent hammering inside my head. I felt very powerful, powerful enough to take people’s lives; but I was swaying very fast, hanging from old rusty handlebars. My thoughts and emotions swirled as though caught in a whirlpool. Everything was slipping away from me, my own identity. Was I Muslim? Was I Egyptian? I belonged nowhere. Even if I did, nothing felt good within me any more.
   

I want my faith reborn right at this very moment, the truth renewed East or West, who gives a damn? Why are they always trying to smother every breath of fresh air I breathe? Why the West is always unfair? Why every beauty is sinful? Why was I always an alien?
   

The light from the moon had become brighter, the gust among the treeleaves harsher. My fear came back to me and shouted, ‘Why did he take you for a thief? What made you think he was American? Why is your foster home becoming smaller each and every day of your life?’
   

A man with a beard had shot a man with blue eyes; the white man had always given me every justification for hiding behind hatred and one day finally let it all out. Both of us had a strange denial of the common pulse of humanity.
   

I could hear the barking of stray dogs in the distance. I still held the Koran in my hand, I didn’t want to smear it with the blood nor did I want it to fall onto the sands of the barren plateau. But I really had no choice, for the gun’s steel was the sole gleaming thing amidst that vast darkness of the soul.
   

The cold hands of the watch stopped. The sky above me and the barren plateau had suddenly melted into one great ugly God and Heaven was nowhere to be seen, only the hell within our minds.
   

My mother’s begging hands were raised high against the eternal skies, the slurps from my father’s half-full glass of dark tea sounded closer in my ears, his brown rosary dangling between his fingers.