Glass Collector (3 page)

“Praise be to heaven,” a man says, and Aaron glances at the scraggy orange beetle above his head that his friend Jacob spray-painted on the wall last week when everyone was asleep.

The village doesn’t look too bad, but by the time the pony reaches the end of the first row of shops and stalls, a forest of tumbling plastic bags and rivers of rotting, stinking filth greet them. Alley after alley of desperate hovels stretch out in every direction. This is where the men and boys bring home the day’s garbage and where the women and children shuffle through it for plastic, metal, glass, rags, paper: anything that can be sold for recycling. Some families stack the bags neatly against the walls, to make room for the next pile of rubbish to be sorted. Others haphazardly throw sacks on top of each other anyhow, before sitting on the uncleared remains of chicken bones, potato chip packets, broken toasters, and magazines, which spread from the houses to the street.

As the pony clops around the last corner, eight-year-old Abe dives out from a dark gully with a gray ball in his hand. His eyes light up when he spots Aaron.

“I’ve been waiting. Where have you been?”

“We’re behind. Have to sort this first.” Aaron waves at the bags of garbage bundled high on the cart. “I’ll come when I’m done. Where’s your friend Simon?”

“He’s not back yet.” Abe smiles. “Hurry up!”

Lijah doesn’t bother to acknowledge him. Abe is considered weird for knowing everything there is to know about jellyfish. His mother keeps a black potbellied pig called Marris that she takes to church on a piece of string. No man will marry her because she won’t get rid of the pig. Perhaps that’s why she keeps it. Abe’s her only child and they struggle to survive.

“Think of the bacon they could get from that stupid pig,” Lijah says. “What a waste.”

The pony comes to an abrupt halt outside a two-story concrete building that’s covered in dirt. The middle of the downstairs room has no fourth wall and is open to the street. Backed up against the walls are the bags that have already been sorted, ready for the merchant Faisal to collect. He comes every thirteen to fifteen days and, with at least four to go until he arrives, the smell’s overwhelming.

“You’re late!”

Hosi appears from upstairs, a tin cup smelling of strong coffee in his bony hand. Eyes on the bags, Aaron’s stepfather counts them to check if they’ve done the whole round and not skipped off for an hour somewhere.

“It’s his fault we’re late.” Lijah punches Aaron on the shoulder.

“Ow! That hurt!” Aaron twists carefully down from the cart to protect his knee. “I hate you, Lijah!”

“Yeah?” Lijah snarls, not daring to punch him again while he’s working. That would annoy Hosi, who insists the work’s done quickly and without interference because he wants it over with in the shortest possible time.

Aaron pulls at bags, hurling them at the three sides of the building as if he’s throwing them at Lijah. The stabbing pain in his elbow isn’t enough to deaden the hatred inside and he continues in a fury until everything’s unloaded. With one bag already full of glass from the alley beside the Imperial Hotel, Aaron’s saved himself some work, but with sixteen bags spread out waiting to be sorted, a hollow feeling rises from the pit of his stomach.

Lijah leads the pony it to the yard for a much-needed drink. The moment he’s gone, Aaron’s eldest stepbrother, Youssa, appears. He’s a sad creature who smells of beer and loves to sleep. He never goes out on the cart and spends his mornings helping one of the Zabbaleen to brew a local beer that’s sold by the cup to the desperate. With a whittled-down body and dead eyes, he nods at each of the fresh bags as if trying to count them. He usually does the minimom amount of work and then disappears back to his mat upstairs.

Sometimes he doesn’t even eat the food Hosi prepares for the family. He’s not worth bothering with as far as Aaron’s concerned. Luckily, he’s quite harmless though, drunk or not. “At least it’s not drugs,” Hosi always says.

As Aaron drags the first bag to the middle of the room and unties the twine, he becomes aware of yelling from the building next door.

It’s Shareen making a fuss about something. She’s a radioactive force who drives everyone crazy with her need for attention, and her screeching now digs metal spikes into Aaron’s brain. At just sixteen, Shareen reimagines her life as a movie crammed with prize-winning scenes. With luscious, long, curly black hair, little hands and dainty feet, a tiny waist, and a pointy, oval face, she’s small and pretty, but her personality is larger than life. She can scream louder than anyone in Mokattam and even her father runs for the hills when she loses her temper. The only things that Aaron and Shareen have in common is the fact that both their mothers died when they were eleven and that she lives with her aging father in the same two-story, windowless slum as he does.

Aaron tries hard to ignore the racket but can’t help swearing under his breath as he lugs bags to the middle of the room and empties trash out at their feet. It’s the same routine every day.

Immediately, as they begin separating the garbage, Lijah gets into a fury. Sorting plastic is his job, and his heart pounds at the thought of the measly fifty piastres Faisal the merchant will pay for a kilo of it. Boiling with anger because the price will be marked up five times that when the merchant sells it to the manufacturer of blankets and other goods.

Paper and cardboard are Hosi’s job and he goes into a trance when he’s sorting. He is bent over with age and his hands have so many lumps and bumps they look like the paws of a goblin. Metal is Youssa’s, but there’s rarely anything more than tin cans to be found, so his job is just a minor nuisance in a life of nuisances. He moves in slow motion, with a wet mouth that is always half open. Glass is Aaron’s responsibility here and he works hard. With clinks and rustles, sighs, and expert hands, he picks glass from the heap of garbage and flings it into a huge, empty bag behind him. Fierce eyes scan the decreasing pile for the items they want. Everyone bends and reaches, deeper and deeper, elbow-deep in filth and debris that smell like a sewer.

As the bags are sorted, noodles, tea leaves, soiled nappies, computer cables, and paper fly everywhere, hitting walls, jeans, and arms. The clink of glass, clatter of metal, rustle of paper and plastic ring out like scurrying vermin. Once done, all that’s left is the rotting food, meat carcasses, and rags. Between them, in silence, they gather up the rags for the last bag before kicking the food remains to the center of the floor to send the rats running.

Being the lowliest member of the family, Aaron has the job of finishing the day’s work by scrambling to pick up the last of the congealed mess—fish skins, sticky rice, bones, meat, and vegetables—and take it to the pigs at the other end of Mokattam. Sometimes he borrows Shareen’s wheelbarrow. Sometimes they walk to the pig enclosure together if Shareen has nothing else to do. Sometimes, though, Shareen won’t lend the wheelbarrow unless he pays her, so Aaron has to fill more bags and haul them there on his back.

Though Aaron can reasonably predict what Lijah will do next—Youssa too, and even miserable Hosi—it’s impossible to know how Shareen will react to a request to use her wheelbarrow. The sound of her idly moving a wooden spoon around a tin saucepan tells Aaron this isn’t a good time to ask. But he’s reluctant to wait. He’d rather get the food to the pigs now and eat his own meal later than the other way around, because then he can avoid eating with his stepfamily. Cocking an ear to the sounds coming from next door, Aaron realizes that at least Shareen’s no longer screaming.

Gazing at her reflection in the mottled mirror on the wall, Shareen grabs a hank of damp, sticky hair from her neck and twists it into a bun before cooling herself by leaning back and letting it go. She pulls aside the cheap patterned green cloth that divides the room in two. On the floor are her mat and a pillowcase printed with a picture of a curvy belly dancer. She glances briefly at a poster of the Cairo International Stadium pinned on a box that serves as a table and, taking a precious tissue from a small packet, wipes her forehead.

The moment she returns to stir the rice through a mess of steam, her thoughts switch from wondering what it must be like to be cheered by thousands for kicking a ball into the air to her dream of becoming the prettiest bride in the history of Mokattam. Whenever she flashes up a picture of herself dressed in gold shoes, a silk white dress, her luscious hair braided with red ribbons, it’s as if a ten-ton weight has suddenly been lifted from her head.

“Do you want to burn the potatoes?” Mahir, her father, leans over her, head tilted sideways from the steam.

“What?”

Shareen catches sight of his sticky-out ears and thin neck in the mirror and drops the spoon. Opening the oven, she swiftly picks up black potatoes with her bare hands, flicking them to the lap of her galabeya. Soon the meal of sweet potatoes, rice, and pale lentils from yesterday is served on metal plates.

As always, they take the food from the tiny upstairs cooking and living space down the concrete steps to sit in the doorway and eat while watching garbage being cleared and ferried around by their neighbors.

Next door she can hear Aaron aimlessly scraping the last of the food remains into the center of the open room.

“We have a decision to make,” her father says, biting into the black crusty potato as if it’s an apple and sending fluttering burned flakes over his chin.

Shareen knows what he’s going to say and doesn’t want to hear it ever again. At the same time she’s pleased to see Aaron hovering nearby, trying to guess what mood she’s in. It’s a dance they do every day: The pros and cons of wheelbarrow lending—helping, ignoring, delaying, refusing—go back and forth between them with each sideways look.

“Time’s running out,” Mahir says.

“No, it isn’t. Don’t make things up!” Shareen hits back. “Daughters shouldn’t argue.”

“Fathers shouldn’t whine.” Always one step ahead, Shareen pinches rice into a ball with her fingers and deposits it on her tongue. “You can’t talk about it until you buy me some sandals …”

“Where will I get money for those?” Her father frowns suddenly as the conversation veers away from his intended path. “What am I to do with a daughter like you?”

“Buy her more stuff,” Shareen snaps back immediately. Next door, Aaron turns away to pretend he’s not listening. “What with?” Her father sighs. “If you want things, then marry Daniel like I asked. He makes good money from the walking sticks he carves in the craft center.”

It was all going quite well until that moment, but at the mention of the wizened, toothless Daniel, Shareen bangs her metal plate on the concrete step and jumps up, thrashing her arms about and hurling her long black hair from side to side.

“I WON’T MARRY DANIEL!”

“She’s got the Devil in her again,” Youssa shouts, and thunders downstairs to watch.

Lijah appears from nowhere. The whole street falls silent. That’s Shareen.

Finishing the last mouthful of lentils, Mahir taps his plate on his knee before standing up to stretch his stiff limbs. Without blinking or showing any emotion whatsoever, he calmly wanders off down the lane, plate in hand, to visit Daniel, the man in question. Leaving Shareen to quieten down with everyone watching each stamp of her dainty little foot.

Aaron’s fascinated and annoyed at the same time, until she turns to face him.

“And you …”

“Me?” Aaron raises his eyebrows. “What have I done?”

“You,” she says again.

“Yeah?”

“You can shut up about the wheelbarrow!”

She tilts her head, pointing a finger at his chest. There are people here who can shrink Aaron to the size of a pea just by looking at him, but only Shareen can make him feel smaller than a pinhead.

“I didn’t say anything!” “Well, don’t, then!”

Turning away, Aaron begins calculating how many bags are needed to clear the heap of food in the middle of the floor. Now the drama has finished, Lijah and Youssa disappear. Aaron glances over his shoulder at her. Not that he likes her, though he’s about the only boy who doesn’t. Even Jacob fantasizes that she’s his, apparently.

The sound of rustling breaks out as people return to sorting garbage.

Shifting the food slop is so much easier with the wheelbarrow and now the fact that Shareen won’t lend it means Aaron will have to load more bags and carry them one by one to the other end of Mokattam to the pig enclosure. If Lijah was allowed to leave the pony outside he could use the cart instead, but there are rules to obey here and keeping ponies out of the alleys and away from the cooking pots is an important one.

With a tired heart, Aaron begins scooping cupped handfuls of unrecognizable yellow and brown stinking glob into the plastic bags. He fills two to the brim before the smell overwhelms him and he’s forced to stop for a second. Again he becomes aware of the pain in his elbow, which is now too old and constant to make him wince much, while his throbbing knee is hurting more than ever and distracting him. He tries bending it right back and moans softly.

Trust Shareen to lose it today, when he really needs the wheelbarrow. That’s her all over—nothing but trouble.

Before long Abe is beside him again with the soccer ball under his arm. He seems more anxious than ever for Aaron to come and play.

“What happened to your knee?”

“Lijah pushed me off the cart. I banged it on the road.” Aaron gives him a sad smile as Abe sets the soccer ball in a safe place to one side and starts to help with the food.

“It’s OK,” Abe reassures him. “We can play tomorrow.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Are we taking this swill to the new place?” Abe asks.

“Yeah.”

Aaron frowns at the memory of the Zabbaleen’s problems last month, when government officials ordered the slaughter of all the pigs in Cairo as a precaution against an outbreak of swine flu. A procession of four cars and vans arrived in Mokattam to carry out the order, but they hadn’t reckoned on the importance of the pigs to the community and the resistance they would encounter.