Garage Gerbil

Late in the cold night and early in the warm morning, Nawaz and
Hermat sit upon stools with their backs against the outside wall of the
otherwise bereft Garage Gerbil, a circular plastic table between them
on which two half-filled transparent glasses (one with Boukha and one
with American Coffee) and a recently cleaned ashtray (Nawaz scooped the
dead ends into his hand a little over ten minutes previously,
scattering them upon the dusty floor by his feet without a word - he
knows he will be sweeping the front of the Caf?, a birdlike man with a
bent back and balsa bones, in a little over four hours, hosing and
raking the sand to clear the detritus of the previous day and night
ready for the next day and night - such is his life) rest, waiting to
be useful. The two of them are quiet, enjoying one of their periodic
lulls in conversation (they know each other, these two - Hermat is
married to Nawaz's sister, Fatima, but they were friends long before
that - they met at school many decades earlier, served in the Tunisian
army together, regularly meet and drink and talk), watching the wide
road opposite, the dusty track of sand that stretches from Monastir
through to Hammamet. There is little traffic at this time - even the
lemon growers (who race back and forth in pickups piled high with their
fruit throughout the hours of daylight) - even the lemon growers sleep
right now, beside their wives and below their satellite dishes in the
shacks and lean-to's in the hills up and around Tunis. From time to
time, an anxious coach rocks by, the grunting roar of an engine, the
white faces glimpsed for a minute sleepy and curious, but - the
holidaymakers are infrequent. As Ahmed said earlier in the day, it is
not yet the Season (it is not yet the season, Ahmed said over a
mouthful of yellow smoke, wistful and waiting - in Season, Ahmed
shepherds the tourists about Port El-Kantaoui indicating areas of
interest for a handful of Dinar; out of Season, Ahmed scrubs and
scrimps and scurries like the lowliest insect in the most
weather-threatened hovel for whatever money or food he can lay his
hands on). In Season, the road will be a scorched blister of traffic, a
furious storm of wind and noise and whipped dust and sand, cars and
buses and mopeds and coaches and vans and frantic bicycles endlessly
careering to and fro, with the sun blazing and the smell of Tunisia
(the smell like the skin behind an elephant's ear) catching in your
nostril hairs and the cauldron-bottom heat, all thrown together like a
rudimentary soup - but it is not yet the Season, Ahmed is right about
that. It is not yet the Season.

I say they are quiet, Nawaz and Hermat. They are quiet, but only Hermat
enjoys the silence of their customary lull. Nawaz is shifty and
nervous, sweating beneath his clothes, but he betrays no sign - they
have sat in their seats drinking and smoking alongside one another for
so many years now, maintaining decorum is the least of his worries. As
far as Hermat is concerned, this evening is the same as many others
previously. Not so for Nawaz. He is feeling the cold, clammy in his
shorts and socks, ripe with the symptoms of unease. The only outward
show comes with his periodic shift from right arse cheek to left arse
cheek.

Hermat offers him a cigarette - a Marlborough cigarette, he says
leering with the pride of it (there was a German tourist earlier that
day - earlier that day? the previous day more like, hard to keep track
of time as one day bleeds into another - who dropped an almost full
packet on the pavement besides Hermat and didn't notice, the pack left
and the German receding, Hermat couldn't believe his luck - there he
was, waist deep in a hole, working as part of a crew repaving the
streets of Sousse - Toto at his back thwacking the reset paving stones
with a cartoon mallet; he snatched up the pack and slipped it into a
shirt pocket, working out the rest of the afternoon and the early
evening quivering with the excitement of it, his fingers shaking,
actually shaking, but not touching the pack, leaving it, unsure about
the reality of the box in his shirt, not removing it or glorying over
it, waiting, biding his time until night drew in and he found himself
sat alongside Nawaz in his customary seat). The packet emerges once
more, held at the bottom corner between thumb and index finger. Nawaz
assents and smiles helplessly at the way in which Hermat chooses to
pass across the cigarette (cupped between two palms like an injured
sparrow such as might fall from a nest in the eaves of the Garage
Gerbil). They each lean in and light from a shared match and then
recline (Hermat's hand wagging life from the match, blue smoke wafting
clear of his free arm), eyes closed, for the first exhaustive
drag.

Ahh, says Hermat, the smoke like Heaven. He opens his eyes wide and
brings the ash close to his face, a prospector examining gold dust left
in the pan. Such luck, he says to Nawaz. Such luck I have. What a day
this has been.

Such luck indeed, Nawaz thinks, glumly staring into the dark of the
silhouetted buildings opposite. He replays edited highlights from the
previous afternoon in his mind - the visit from his sister, her news,
the news she was too afraid to reveal herself, the news she couldn't
bare to break to her husband, the plea, could he break the news for
her? they were friends weren't they? He could tell Hermat. It would be
better that way. If the news came from Nawaz, Hermat would have time
for it all to sink in. There wouldn't be a fight. He could digest what
he had learned, see that it wasn't as bad as he might initially
suspect. Fatima loved him. She urged Nawaz to emphasise the point: my
sister loves you. This is what Fatima said, speaking of herself in the
third person: tell him my sister loves you (putting the words in his
mouth, as if they were overlarge pieces of caramel). Nawaz said he
didn't know. It didn't seem right for him, her brother, to intercede. A
man should not step between another man and his wife. It was unseemly.
Unseemly, Fatima said (her lips drawing into the fish scowl she
inherited from their mother), unseemly. And is it unseemly, she
continued, when a man takes a hand to his wife? Nawaz didn't speak
(partly because, if truth were told, he was, even now, afraid of his
younger sister and her sharp tongue, and partly because he thought it
right that a man should take a hand to his wife if there was call) and
the silence mildewed between them (despite the bustle of a busy
lunchtime in the Garage Gerbil) growing sticky and sweet like a
terrible gut wound of the kind Nawaz had himself witnessed in a violent
skirmish that took place during Independence.

Fatima looked at her feet and said quietly: will you help me,
Nawaz?

And Nawaz? What did Nawaz say? What could Nawaz say, in all
honesty?

Yes, my sister, he said defeated. Yes, I will help you.

*

Hermat is talking. Some story. A man Nawaz is distantly aware of Hermat
having mentioned before. A clown. Always getting into trouble. Always
making a hash of what limited finances were available to him. Always
getting some girl into trouble, always facing down some raging father.
Turns out the man is lost at sea, presumed dead, after taking a job on
one of the Galleons. Hermat can hardly bring himself to get words out,
so amused he is.

Did the man take a job on one of the fishing boats, then? Nawaz asked,
more for politeness' sake than anything else.

No, said Hermat. No. It was a tourist ship. They take tourists out to
sea. They show them around. Let them dive. Bring them safely back to
shore. Simple. The man must be the first ever casualty in the history
of -

Nawaz interrupted. Said: Hermat.

Let me finish, Hermat bleated in-between three sharp intakes that drew
the last life from his cigarette. Let me finish.

But Hermat. I have something to say.

Just a moment, my friend - I was going to tell you how the man (Hermat
started to laugh once more, the laughter hissing up by his tongue and
escaping through the ugly gaps in his overbite) - how the man -

But this is important, Nawaz attempted again. What I have to say is
important.

It is thought, Hermat explained - It is thought the man was struck by
lightning.

Hermat is newly beside himself.

Nawaz began to smile, despite himself. He took his glass from the table
and sipped from the cold coffee. Struck by lightning? he said.

So I was told. The sea - there was a storm that came out of nowhere.
One minute the sky was blue and the sea was calm. The next, the sea was
boiling, rain fell from the black sky, lightning cracked, thunder
grumbled. The full works. They got everybody back on board, set a
course for home when - Hermat snorted - disaster struck. Lightning
struck the head of the boat, and our man fell overboard. Whether the
lightning struck him or merely near him, nobody knows but - wherever
the hand of God fell - our friend was not anywhere to be seen when the
smoke cleared.

Hermat slapped both of his hands down upon his knees and hawed like a
donkey, his head and shoulders nodding with unsuppressed delight. Nawaz
was horrified, by the story, and yet - watching Hermat - he too started
to smile and laugh and soon, soon, the two of them were roaring where
they sat, each with a hand upon the seat, facing each other, each with
a hand fluttering between their knee and their chest, hooing and
hawing, screaming with tears running down their faces, bursting
overfilled barrels of hilarity, laughing until neither knew what the
other was laughing at any longer, rocking and snotty with the sight of
the other - two grown men laughing at nothing, laughing at that which
was patently not funny and yet - not being able to stop, not wanting to
stop, laughing into the night as if that was all the night was
for.

Nawaz removed a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose like an
old lady weeping over a trumpet. Hermat snorted three times more and
said ooh and eeh. Nawaz rubbed the handkerchief under his nose from
left to right and then right to left and, finally, left to right again.
After which the two returned to their customary silence, watching the
wind ease as the light gave shape to the world around them.

A dog skittered past them with a dead bird in its mouth.

Nawaz looked sideways across the table at his friend. You should be
home, he said.

I should, I should, said Hermat but did not move.

Nawaz was conflicted. He wanted to help his sister, certainly, but -
they were laughing, the two of them, and what a shame it would be to
wrench the light from laughter to sorrow. He shifted from his right
arse cheek to his left and thought: I should tell him, I should just
tell him, just spit it out, you are his friend, you are a good friend,
just tell him. He shifted from his left arse cheek to his right arse
cheek and thought: let her do her own dirty work, what business is it
of yours, wait until Hermat is gone and call her up, say you couldn't
do it, say you are sorry but no - the job of passing on this news falls
to her. Back and forth he went like a man strapped to a pendulum. He
knew exactly how the dead bird felt in the dog's mouth. He didn't have
a coin he could flip and he wasn't drinking tea so couldn't check the
grounds. As a child, his father had asked the stars (and if the star
blinks, you had an answer - usually the answer you wanted, but even
so). Nawaz didn't know what to do. He wanted the situation taking out
of his hands.

And then it came. He would let Hermat himself decide. It was, after
all, pretty late in the day. Should they have one more drink or part
for the evening?

Hermat, said Nawaz.

Mm, said Hermat.

Can I get you another drink?