As dawn broke and a nascent sunrise pushed the fractured remains of night aside, Xemi got up out of bed, throwing his useless blanket off him. He felt like he hadn't slept a second.
'Have they…after all?' he mumbled in a slight stupor.
He was sitting on the edge looking forlorn, hunched forward, staring at the floor.
'Yes, they did a number on me,' he continued, not daring to use the concepts of 'love' or 'desire' for then he would have to ask what it was that he loved, and what it was that he desired.
He was in turmoil and didn't know how to overcome it. Opening his weary eyes wider, he surveyed his surroundings.
The room had furniture all the colour of brown, everything was wooden; but as the sun grew in power, it moved to a shade of amber. A similar shade came to his memory and he slowly warmed, pleased at his revival.
'I want two things. One is spatial. I have to be there to experience it. The other....do I need to be around love to feel love?'
He still felt the warmth given by memory now almost fully spread through him and Xemi savoured it for a moment.
'No, I don't actually need them. I'll bury them in memory and if I ever feel this cold again like last night, I'll animate them to warm me, like just now; even if I wanted to, how could I stay here ? How ? Can a beggar's life be any life for me ? Waiting for a call to hear some words about a money transfer ? Never !'
Hot indignation raged through him as he battled his emotions and where it would lead him. He wasn't cold anymore. He was boiling and needed distraction. He went to his suitcase and pulled out the picture of Tamara and the Demon.
'Love was her destruction, let it not be mine,' he murmured prayer like; but instead of a nightingale to persuade him otherwise, that love was better than life, Xemi heard the noises of a bazaar just coming into life. He passed from the philosophical to the material and decided to go outside and maybe buy some toothpaste, which he had run out of.
He went to the bathroom and turned the shower on, not to use it, but to experience the visual pleasure of falling water that he had been deprived of for a year and a half. He went to the sink to rinse his mouth and splash water on his face. This bathroom had no mirror.
'Why would a bathroom have a shower, but no mirror?' he mused, but then said no matter because he would soon be in a place where glass was more commonplace than rocks. He was trying to remember what it looked like but couldn't remember anything from when he lived abroad and when he tried to find a memory, a simple memory, like a house he had lived in, he could see nothing but fragments of when he lived in the village, like Safia waving at him with her beads, trying to smile. He saw her clearly. 'Was that supposed to be a smile?' he asked himself, feeling a dreadful emotion rise within him that he tried to suppress. 'I'll show her a smile.'
After putting on a t-shirt and discoloured jeans, both different shades of blue, he locked his room and went downstairs.
It was cool in the corridors and his hairs rose in response. He walked past the concierge, the same from the night before, who was leaning forward on a wooden counter. He was a thin man, with his sleeves always rolled up, showing arms that had muscle but no mass. He regarded Xemi with surprise and a little mistrust that was ever increasing.
'Stretching your legs, brother? Good time for exercise, it's true,' he said hesitantly.
'This man also has trouble smiling at me,' Xemi said to himself in bemusement. 'Why does everyone want to smile at me but seemingly can't do it?'
'I want to find a woman,' Xemi began to the concierge. 'Can you help me please, brother? '
Xemi showed him how to smile.
The concierge straightened himself.
'What did you say?'
'Haha, I'm joking, brother. I heard some noises and this is my last day in this country. I'm going to look around and spend money. But not on a woman though, not today anyway. I need some toothpaste. Was it cold last night?' Xemi suddenly asked him.
The concierge initially was confused but then became imperious. He felt, in the beginning, that he was being mocked by Xemi but the question made Xemi look ridiculous to him. Certainty and knowledge made him confident, as it does with everyone.
'No. It never gets cold in Las Qhoray. It's only ever hot.'
Xemi didn't know why he asked such a foolish question. He knew the answer already.
'I'll be back in a minute,' he advised him as he walked out into a world now sun drenched and lacerating. He gave the world some more shine as his smile would not go away. His braces sparkled, bouncing the rays back to where they came from. This city had less rocks but still no cement on the ground. Next to the hotel was a wooden display with an assortment of merchandise from lighters to razors to mouse traps. Xemi surveyed the stall while a man next to it surveyed him.
He was a large heavy set man wearing a long Arabic dress and a flat white kufi. He had been watching Xemi as he had left the hotel and effaced himself to make the stall more visible. Seeing that his tactic had worked, he now unfolded his small arms and approached Xemi in the most open of body languages, spreading his arms wide, exposing his heart for whoever wanted to pierce it, and addressed him with a smooth, deep bass baratin:
'Good day to you, friend! Tell me what you like, I'll furnish it for you, immediately. I have it all at hand!' waving his curiously small arms over his little stall of treasures. Xemi looked at his new friend. This was the second person now who had not greeted him in the traditional greeting of Salaam Aleikum.
'Why didn't you greet me like a Muslim?' Xemi asked, attempting to be serious while his lips were twitching. 'You don't think I am one?'
The merchant's mouth gaped for a microsecond but then recovered composure and said, almost as if his mouth never gaped but opened expressly for the purpose of speech:
'Forgive me. God knows what I was thinking. Ten percent discount for whatever you want in atonement,' he boomed, availing himself of another sweeping gesture towards the stall, accomplished with majestic flourish. Xemi acknowledged it with a purchase. He turned to go back as his aunt might come looking for him. His anxiety increased in equal measure to his excitement knowing that in a few hours he would be delivered from a place that he wasn't even truly sure that he wanted deliverance from.
