Читать книгу In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees - Jeff Talarigo - Страница 17

Awake before dawn, he quietly unbolts the door and steps onto School Street. A fog has settled overnight, rendering the willow nearly invisible. The school, fifty yards away, cannot be seen. He walks up the street and turns into the first alley, making his way through the labyrinth of block number four. He knows he mustn’t stay long, but the pull of being alone, of seeing with his own eyes, is too much. The rush throttles him.

In the fog, the voice of the muezzin sounds as though it is being pressed through a sieve. The American stops and listens to the call to prayer, watches as sleepy men leave their houses to answer it. He says good morning to a man with a cane and the man lifts the walking stick in greeting. Years since he has felt so free.

At the end of his first week in Jabaliya, he asks for a razor and Fayez tells him that his uncle is a barber and later that night he would shave him.

It is around seven o’clock and the American is sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, a face full of shaving cream and a straight-edge being lowered to his neck. Neighbors and curious onlookers gather. Several dozen watch the initial slide of the blade plow a path along his neck. No one is talking; the crackle of week-old stubble explodes in the hush. The only light in the large room is a single bulb above the two men. The foreigner has large, dark eyes, appearing even more so against the white of the shaving cream. With these eyes he gives the barber a side glance:

“Do you realize how much I trust you?”

Fayez translates and there is a smatter of laughter.

“Yes,” says the barber, “we understand that.”

Again, the scratch of the blade exposes more of the pale flesh. Everyone watches as the barber wipes the blade on the towel draped over his shoulder. The eyes follow the blade back down and to another sweep of the neck and back to the towel and the neck again. Entranced by the rhythm, they wait for a tiny speck of red to bubble out from beneath the puffy white cloud of shaving cream.

It doesn’t.

The man’s face is clean, younger than most anticipate; a face perhaps, that with a little more sunshine, could be that of a soldier, or a stone thrower.

The crowd of onlookers begins to scatter and head back to their houses where, in a quarter of an hour, they will latch their doors and dim their lights and surrender to the hours of curfew.

Now, most mornings, after the call to prayer and before the morning session of school begins, children gather near the house and sneak beneath the white tarp that hangs there. They huddle outside the red metal door and whisper in chorus the American’s name. Soon, the slide of the bolt clicks and the door opens and, for a short while, he talks to the children.