Dirty Feet by Edem Awumey Page A

of miles from his home, thanks to those cones and pyramids that he fashioned to stay in touch with history. In 1968, when he had arrived in France, the wind of Port Said was still on his face. He wanted to be a teacher. To teach the poetry of Abu Nuwas and the suras in the West. But minds were being seduced by a different music and new words, rock and the poems of Allen Ginsberg. Seducing a generation with long, dirty hair, outraged at the establishment, like those unwashed hippies in a California park wallowing in a disgusting orgy. Preferring dirty love to the violence of military boots in the Vietnam War.
    Monsieur Ali had seen rock music engulf the words of Abu Nuwas. So he became a street vendor. He moved around to avoid sitting in some station where he might catch cold. To keep moving, he sold chestnuts from Gonesse to Boulogne. And Port Said slipped farther and farther away. Port Said and Abu Nuwas. So he made paper pyramids on Boulevard Saint-Michel in order not to forget. Monsieur Ali was a man of few words.

37
    OLIA TOOK THE remote control, turned on the TV, surfed the channels, turned it off, then on again, surfed, turned it off. She was anxious. She had never lost a piece of her work. Sidi’s portraits must surely be somewhere. Still, she began to have doubts, and Askia reminded her that Sidi was a shadow. She sighed, exhausted, laid her head on her friend’s shoulder, shut her eyes.
    â€œYou ought to go up and get some rest,” he advised.
    â€œMy legs are numb. Does it bother you to lend me your shoulder?”
    â€œShoulders aren’t very comfortable.”
    She seemed not to hear him anymore. Maybe she was not pretending but was truly weary, drained. Again he spoke to her but received no response. He gave her a little shake. No response, just a murmur and some purring. Finally he decided to carry her upstairs. He lifted her up. She wrapped her arms around his neck and placed her head on his chest. On the fourth step leading to the mezzanine he almost stumbled. He caught himself, instinctively planting his right foot on the next step in front of him, just barely preventing a fall. Otherwise he would have had to pick up the pieces of her brittle body from the floor.
    She tightened her grip around his neck. They managed to reach the room. He was obliged to clear a path through the framed pictures strewn over the floor. Then he climbed up the wooden stairway leading to the platform on which the bed stood, a metre below the ceiling. He put her on the bed. Next to the pillow was a balled-up blanket, which he spread over her. She looked very small under the blanket. Her lips murmured something, and Askia heard the words within himself: “I looked in my boxes. He wasn’t there. There’s nothing in my boxes, no trace of an event or a face that was . . . There’s nothing in the boxes, Askia. I searched and I started to put new things in them, a few items. Because we can always leave again if the urge comes back.”
    She had spoken with her eyes closed the whole time. Now she was asleep. Askia walked out of the room and went to the bathroom to relieve himself. He looked at the ceiling. Through one of the panes in the skylight he could see a bit of clear, transparent sky, and he wanted to inhale it. He pushed open the skylight. The air chilled his face. He rose up on his tiptoes and contemplated a few roofs pierced by chimneys blowing white smoke into the scene. They were solitary mouths open to the sky, not just to breathe but to swallow, to glean . . . he did not know what exactly. Like the orphaned mouths of the kids in the lanes of his childhood.
    He went back down to the living room. To do the same thing as Olia. Sleep a little.
    But sleep did not come. He felt hot. He went back up to the bathroom to take a proper shower. Then perhaps he would feel better. He stripped off his clothes and dropped them on top of the laundry hamper. The water did him good.