Glass Collector by Anna Perera

money,” Shareen begs. “Daniel. Daniel. P-please.”
    Now Daniel has what he wants: her undivided attention. Aaron escapes. Their sharp words follow him home, taking up all the space in his head until the thought hits him that Rachel would never behave like that. Never.
    Three minutes later, with heels in the dust and crouched over tin plates piled with rice and pieces of rich-smelling liver, there are satisfied chewing and swallowing sounds coming from Hosi, Youssa, Lijah, and Aaron as they cram food into their mouths. The flies buzzing around them are no competition for the speed of their fingers. Then there are cake and biscuits with marmalade to come.
    It’s almost too much for their stomachs to bear but they manage it, and snake-tongued Lijah gets to lick the remains of white and pink icing from the corners and lid of the cardboard cake box.
    No one notices the odd clink made by the bottles in Aaron’s pockets and, having changed into one of Hosi’s ragged white shirts, the bulges are safely hidden from view. When it’s evening, he’ll hide the bottles in the cavity under the low wall. But first he wants to see Jacob and find out if he’s going to die from the needle that was stuck in his arm or if they’ve taken his kidney without telling him. Aaron wishes he’d had time to see him in the last few days and regrets not looking for him.
    With the sun high above him and the clatter of garbage being sorted nearby, Aaron settles back to read the newspaper. Too soon his eyelids turn heavy from gazing at the pages and, weighed down from eating too much too quickly, he’s tempted to take a nap. Youssa’s snoring beside him, leaning against a bag. Aaron fancies drifting off as well, but what about Lijah? He’s pacing up and down. Uh-oh. Anything can set him off when he’s slapping the wall like that. Jumping up from the warm concrete floor is a mistake, though. The bottles clink suddenly in Aaron’s pocket. Lijah turns and stares, but Aaron’s too quick for him. A hand on the perfumes, he dives past him, jumping over a dead rat and a bent coffee pot, and into the lane.
    Aaron rushes past Shareen, who’s now on her knees doing her best to clip her father’s warped yellow toenails while her friends Constance and Malia pull horrified faces.
    “Keep still. I’m not going to cut you,” Shareen says sharply.
    “You did last time,” her father complains.
    Rather you than me , Aaron thinks, burrowing a dark, slimy passage through heaps of bags and exhausted women. He wonders, as he slips past young kids swiping each other with computer leads, whether Shareen will be expected to cut Daniel’s toenails when she marries him. He’d hate to have to do that. The picture sticks in his mind as he hurries down never-ending alleys to the path which leads to the medical-waste clearers’ area.
    Hot and tired, Aaron arrives at the darkest corner of Mokattam with the sound of cooing pigeons in his ears. There’s no one around apart from an old lady sitting in a doorway. Aaron glances up at the tenements reaching for the sky. At the top are bare concrete floors littered with pigeon coops. When a roof covers a building, taxes have to be paid, so none are ever put on. He remembers being told that Jacob’s was one of the first to go up, twenty years ago, to house the growing Zabbaleen population. It’s a stained, red-brick slum in the sky. Aaron glances at the newer buildings that surround it. Faded, limp clothes hang from washing lines strung between the walls, while inside the rooms rubbish strays from every corner.
    Aaron’s in time to see Jacob coming home from the pigpens with an empty plastic bag under one arm. Even the hospital waste contains food litter: rice, beans, potato peelings, and sometimes burned bread. Always pleased to see him, Jacob gives a huge grin even though he looks a bit spaced out.
    “Still alive, then?”
    “The health-clinic nurse gave me a vaccination just in case.” Jacob rolls his eyes and