When the Moon Is Low(85)

“I mean, he . . . well, when I woke up he was . . . he was just sitting there watching me.” Saleem rubbed the fog from his eyes. It was difficult to form the words. “And then he touched my leg.”

Abdullah sat up straight. His face tightened with alarm.

“He touched your leg? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Saleem shook his head. He didn’t know why.

“I asked him twice what he wanted and I thought that might wake you up, but then he stood up and I didn’t know what he’d done.” Saleem felt exceptionally filthy this morning. He hated that Saboor was just a few yards away.

Abdullah paused, rubbed his eyes roughly, and lowered his voice.

“There was a young boy here last month. Do you remember him? Just a little school-age kid. He was here with his older brother. Anyway, one day the kid woke up like the djinns had come for him in the night. We woke up in the morning and he was vomiting. When his brother tried to talk to him, the kid started screaming his head off. We had no idea what had happened to him but I happened to notice the boy look over twice in Saboor’s direction. Saboor gave him the iciest look I’ve ever seen. Scared me, really. Two days later, the boy ran into a busy street and got hit by a car. He died right there in the road.”

Abdullah shook his head at the memory.

“It was terrible. His brother was a complete mess after that. The police came and took him away and none of us said much of anything. He wouldn’t have survived long the way he was carrying on.” Abdullah let out a heavy sigh. The memory troubled him. “I don’t know what happened, but since then I’ve wondered if Saboor didn’t have something to do with it. There was something really strange about the way that boy looked at him. And Saboor, it was like he’d silenced the kid from across the square with just a look.”

Saleem felt his throat knot.

Abdullah sat with his bent knees drawn to his chest. His right foot tapped out the urgency of his story.

“It is bad enough to be trapped here, but to be trapped here with him . . . God have mercy on us. I’ll warn Hassan and Jamal at least. If you start telling everyone, you never know what that animal will do. We’ve got to watch out for ourselves, Saleem, and for each other. That’s the only way to survive in a place like this.”

Saleem nodded. He needed a way to protect himself. Now, he realized, he was truly on his own and defenseless. In the months before he’d disappeared, Padar-jan had taken to sleeping with a knife under his mattress. He thought the children didn’t know, but Saleem had seen it and wondered what Padar-jan was afraid of so he could fear it too. But, with the privilege of childhood, Saleem could close his eyes and feel reassured that his father would defend them from whatever it might be. Maybe that was the moment a child became an adult, he thought—the moment your welfare was no longer someone else’s responsibility.

He had to watch out for himself now, as Abdullah said.

He would get a knife, just like Padar-jan. He would find something heavy and deadly, not a trinket.

He could have slept, but he walked instead. He worked his way through the market shops, browsing from windows and wandering into a few stores that looked promising. He found a few kitchen knives, an antique dagger with a decorated metal sheath, and a pocketknife bearing the Greek flag. None of these would do.

In a tiny shop set off in an alley, he found precisely what he was looking for. The shop window was a dense display of goods, heralding the mess inside: a sewing machine, a stool, a stack of books, kitchen utensils, children’s clothing, a pair of work boots, and an old globe. Saleem walked in, a door chime signaling his entrance. Somewhere in this pile of items had to be a reasonable blade. He was right. The shop owner was an older man with wire-framed glasses. He had a miniature screwdriver in his hand and was probing the insides of an antique clock whose pieces had been dissected out and spread on the glass countertop. A row of antique clocks sat behind him in various stages of disrepair. Saleem gave him a nod and began to weave his way through the three narrow aisles.

Bowls on top of pillows, a thermos surrounded by old cassettes, used reading glasses next to a box of lightbulbs—there was no rhyme or reason to this store. Saleem’s eyes scanned until they landed on the bottom shelf. Buried beneath a stack of table runners was a bronze handle. Saleem pulled it out and saw that the handle inserted into a decorated, bronze sheath. He slid the nicked cover off and found a six-inch blade singed with rust. It was old but more beautiful than any knife Saleem had ever before seen.

This was exactly what he wanted. Saleem touched the blade lightly. It felt bold and intimidating against his palm. The tip was still sharp enough to prick the pad of his finger when he pushed against it. He slid the knife back into the sheath and held it up to his waist. It would fit inside his jeans, heavy but he could secure it. Saleem walked it back up to the front, where the man was still fiddling with the clock’s gears.

“I want to buy please. How much?”

The old man looked up, his lenses nearly falling off the tip of his nose. He looked at the dagger and then at Saleem.

“Twenty euro,” he said and returned to his tinkering. Saleem shifted his weight and considered how much he was willing to pay.

“Mister, I give you ten euro. No problem.”

“Twenty euro.”

“Mister, please. Ten euro.” The man looked up again to get a better look at Saleem. He took his glasses off and laid them on the table.