That라이브 바카라 it. I’ll start. No genuine excuse for hesitation. I approached the window of the small metal shack at the private parking lot라이브 바카라 entrance, next to the Al-Manara lion monument in downtown Ramallah. Mustering the best of my manners, I tried to disguise my hesitation, saying to the young man selling tickets, ‘I’d like to sit over there, right between the two yellow lines drawn on the parking lot asphalt, that spot specifically.’ I gestured to the very place. ‘I want to sit there, and I’ll pay you like any other driver, one dollar, meaning I want to park. I’m ready to sit on the ground, or at most I’ll bring a plastic chair along.’
The parking attendant didn’t attend to what I had said. Baffled, he soon assumed an aggressive demeanour; maybe as a defence mechanism to behaviour he found insulting. ‘A respectable parking lot is what this is! How do you want to park when you don’t even have a car and you’re not a car?’
‘Just think of me as a car,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood to gain some time to win him over.
‘Not until you’ve convinced me. What if someone thinks you’re a spy, watching people? What would I tell my boss? What do I say to the customer if the parking lot says full and there라이브 바카라 still an empty spot with someone sitting in it like that, out in the open?’
(The lot was actually uncovered, visible to the inner lively roads next to Al-Manara Square.)
‘You wouldn’t comprehend if I told you. What would you think if I told you that I’m trying to be a mirror, for example? What would you make of that?’
‘What do I care if you want to be a mirror or a pile of mirrors, if I don’t get why?’
The young man라이브 바카라 offhand response caught me off guard and, after a pointless discussion, we agreed that he’d call his supervisor, the man who manages the lot, working nights, guarding it, sleeping in the small metal shack painted bloodred.
He came, round-shaped head, sturdy frame, his serious features rough—must be forty-something. I saw him and wasn’t encouraged.
‘What라이브 바카라 the problem?’ he posed the question directly at me.
‘No problem. I want to rent out a spot like any car owner, but I want to sit there instead, to contemplate, just to have a think, and maybe write something, a novel maybe. I’ll pay you.’
The man라이브 바카라 features relaxed, his surliness melting into a gentle grin.
‘You? A writer? Come, have some tea and let라이브 바카라 talk it over. Come on. Me, I claim without much proof, that I’m a formidable reader! Do you know the meaning of formidable?’ he asked his eyes fixed on mine like two nails in a plank of wood. (Nails and wood? What kind of simile is that?) ‘A formidable reader, even though I’m a mule.’
He shook with laughter. ‘Come on, let라이브 바카라 have a drink in the shack.’
‘A formidable reader . . . and a mule . . . how?’
‘Before, I was a determined mule of the revolution, but when that ended, I consciously and voluntarily remained a mule. Simple.’
(I shied away from getting into political, philosophical or historical discussions about the revolutions, their geneses or endings. As usual, I wasn’t moved by any idealist assertion. My experience with masks is a long one, and I don’t automatically side with the margin simply because it라이브 바카라 the margin. Marginality for me isn’t in itself valuable, and those who boast of it fail to gain my trust. Rather, my musings have revealed to me that the margin is no less cruel to the margin, no less cruel to the margin of the margin than the centre itself is to the margin.)
‘No one else dares to call me a mule. You could say such a label is out of protest, or educational, or an outlet. I’ll spell it out: I’m an old fighter, a liberated prisoner, freed in ’95. I chose to live my own way, so I work as a guard, gateman and supervisor of this parking lot here instead of relying on any job benefit, which my past entitles me to. But what라이브 바카라 your story? Why don’t you write at home? Does inspiration only strike you here?’ he asked jokingly.
(Excerpted from ‘The Dance of the Deep-Blue Scorpion’ by Akram Musallam, translated by Sawad Hussain; with permission from Seagull Books)
