Salim, Obaid, Prakash, Usman, and I: five tough boys. We rolled our shirt sleeves up to the shoulders, hurled stones at pigeons, bulbuls, air-conditioner compressors. We were invincible, unpredictable. We saved our greatest mischief for the grocer.
It went down this way: we would disperse into the grocery, open the ice cream fridge, then close it; pick up this chocolate bar, then return it to the shelf. When the golden moment arrived—when the grocer stopped watching me, in particular—I’d shove a pack of chewing gum into my underwear.
Two coughs from me and we’d meet at the register, each with a coin and a Pepsi in his hands.
“All right boys,” the grocer would say. He’d check our front and back pockets before letting us go. It was too easy.
One afternoon, under the clotheslines in an alley, we were arguing about an episode of ThunderCats while enjoying a mouthful of gum. That’s when the police came over.
“What are you lot doing?” said an officer from his car. “Go home. It’s dangerous out here.”
We ran off to another alley. It was littered with electrical cables, garbage bags, broken furniture. It had the thinnest walls on earth; they’ve been leaking family arguments onto the street since before I was born.
Earlier that week, two boys had gone missing. The police found their body parts in plastic bags. One was ten, the other eleven. Stories began to circulate among the street boys. This kidnapper hums when he approaches, but no one knows what he looks like. He’s after the young, so boys like the five of us were pretty good targets. Girls would have been in those bags if they’d dared climb down the sewer pipes from their windows like we did. It was no neighborhood for the innocent.
I was small when all this happened. The years have gone by faster than I’d like, but I still remember the summer of ‘88. The police never caught him. He still comes up in the news. A nervous person that speaks every language, lives in every country, embodies all races and colors. A faceless creature capable of shifting between bodies. One that acts when no one is watching.
#
The day after the policeman spoke to us, my dad picked me up after school in his taxicab, as usual. This time, though, he had a man and another boy in the car. Clients, I thought. I sat in the back seat next to the boy and said hi.
Mr. Abdulla and his son Khalid came from overseas, from Oman. They’d rented a place not far from our neighborhood. My father would be driving Mr. Abdulla to attend to certain errands. Khalid and I would play together at his house every day after lunch. How about that? asked my father.
I said nothing. I measured Khalid from the side of my eye: well-combed hair, clean skin, ironed clothes. I didn’t like what I saw. The boy had no muscles. Skin draped on bones. I had to test him. “Cheetara, Tygra, or Lion-O?” I said.
“No ThunderCats.”
I knew it! I couldn’t play with this kid. Was this a joke?
After we dropped them off, my father began. “There’s no more wandering in the streets. You won’t pull your stunts again. After lunch, finish your homework, then I’ll drop you at Khalid’s place.”
It wasn’t in me to argue, but that day was different. I said, “I’m not going!”
“I’ll pick you up after the evening prayer when I drop Mr. Abdulla back home.”
“No!”
“Be good. They’re nice people.”
“This is shit!”
“Language, boy. Maybe if you’d listened and stopped wandering the streets like some homeless person, I’d have left you alone.”
“Shit. Shit. All shit.” And then I gave the back of the passenger seat a few strong kicks. That didn’t get the devil out of my dad. He was tough like that. He drove on peacefully.
“I won’t go to school. I won’t do anything. I’ll escape everything you choose for me.”
“You will do as I say. And you’ll get a scholarship. And do better than Daddy. And go to Khalid’s house and be his friend.”
“Never!”
“I’ll double your allowance.”
#
Khalid was a year younger. Though he lived a few streets away from us, his neighborhood was much cleaner. He went to a different school. His house had a courtyard garden with a mandarin tree. They had floral wallpaper I couldn’t help but touch; I’d never seen wallpaper before. Immediately, I knew why my mother had combed my hair and made me put on my best kandoora. These were quiet, sensitive people. I doubted Khalid’s parents ever argued.
His mother said that we “naughty boys” could only play in the house. When she left us alone, I asked Khalid why he didn’t like the ThunderCats. “Lion-O is just amazing.”
“They bore me.”
“Do you like football then?”
“What?”
I slapped my forehead.
That upset Khalid. He shut the door of his room after him and never opened it.
When I went home, my mum was already working the balance wheel of her ancient sewing machine. I opened a cabinet drawer and closed it again and again. My mother asked if something was wrong with me.
“That boy hates me,” I said. “He doesn’t want me in his room. It’s unfair. I want my real friends.”
“They’re a bad influence.”
“I’m the bad one. They don’t lie. I do. They don’t steal, I—.”
The shock on her face silenced me. I stuck my tongue out and bit it in front of her. But she had a sad-sad look. She sent me off to study. I had no option but to become an astronaut, an architect, a doctor, win the Nobel Prize, be some great athlete—the whole thing.
Days went by. I got better at school. I didn’t shy from asking the teacher questions. After lunch, my parents made me go back to Khalid’s house, but he never opened his bedroom door for me. Sometimes, the whole house lapsed into such absolute silence that the faintest sound would spook me. Until one day, the door creaked open.
“Khalid?”
He snuck out of his room as though he didn’t want to disturb the dust. But I was the swiftest sneaker of all time, the most silent of thieves. To my surprise, Khalid went to the dumpster outside the house. He filled a cardboard box with tin cans and went straight back to his room. When he shut his door, the lock didn’t click.
Several minutes later, I opened his door with the utmost care. I found him sitting on the ground with his back to me. He wielded a knife. Body parts of action figures and shards of tin cans littered the floor. Limbs. Thighs. Heads. A cluster of wires, rubber bits, batteries, wooden rods.
“What the hell?” I gasped.
He shot me a glare from over his shoulder. “Leave!”
I didn’t.
He rushed me out of his room and slammed the door. I heard the lock turn this time. I couldn’t help feeling like an idiot. Here I was on earth doing nothing except counting my dad’s bribes, when all the while this spoiled hermit was on the moon doing strange things in his room?
#
Next day, I came prepared. I knocked on his door until he opened it. “Listen buddy, how about I give you half my allowance, and you let me—”
He slammed the door in my face.
The following day, I tried another strategy. I had an hour’s leeway before dad dropped me at Khalid’s place. I snuck out through the window, down the sewer pipes. I had my school bag with me. At the dumpster under the clothesline, I collected all the broken toys and tin cans I could find.
“Hey, man.”
I turned. It was my friends. “Guys, am I glad to see you!”
None of them reacted. Usman said they’d heard about my new friend from Oman.
“Khalid. He’s a stubborn boy,” I said. “He doesn’t come out much, but he’ll come around.”
“Or maybe we’re not up to your standard anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean!”
“Well, look at yourself,” Obaid said, flicking his hand at me.
We stood in silence. Salim shook a can of spray paint and wrote on the thin walls: “The Four versus the world.” He swaggered toward the grocery, brushing against my shoulder as he went past. Everyone followed him and did the same.
#
No one at home noticed I had been gone. In the car, the radio reported that they had finally caught the kidnapper. The news cheered my dad, but not me. I hated my neatly-ironed kandoora and combed hair.
I knocked on Khalid’s bedroom door. The moment he opened it, I poured the entire contents of my school bag between his legs—all the broken toys, books, pencils, pens, rulers, sharpeners, notebooks. He didn’t seem impressed, but he let me in.
Smashed toys crowded the floor. He enjoyed breaking things, but he had a strange affinity for rearranging the body parts using duct tape, rope, cables, elastic bands. I liked his room. But I was still upset by the cold encounter with my friends. I stuck my hand in my combed hair and messed it up.
Khalid asked if I was okay.
I nodded.
Then he put something in my hand. It was the deformed action figure of the mutant ninja turtle Donatello. Khalid had given him the body of Lion-O.
#
In the weeks that followed, Khalid and I discovered that we were similar in many ways. We loved Kit-Kats, almond-scented soup, and drinking super-cold sodas just to burp. He aspired to become an engineer like Donatello and, well, he thought that I looked like Lion-O because of my messy hair. I didn’t swear as often in his company, and I was careful with my words around his parents. Just like that, we became best friends. One night, during a sleepover, I asked if he wanted to go outside with me.
“My parents won’t allow it.”
“Why? They caught the kidnapper. I’ll take care of you. I’ll talk to them tomorrow.”
“Don’t!” he said, in a tense voice. “They never caught the kidnapper. It was a lie.”
I told him I’d heard the news on the radio.
“They can’t catch him. He’s a shape shifter.”
“If you don’t want to go out because our neighborhood isn’t that nice, I understand. But they caught him all right.”
An awkward silence hung in the room.
“Promise you won’t tell anyone if I tell you my secret?” he said.
“Sure.”
“We left our country because the faceless creature was chasing me.”
“The who?”
“The faceless creature. He lives in people’s bodies and makes them kidnap kids. He does bad things to them. And if they speak up, he kills them. He’s the real kidnapper.”
“Scare someone else, okay?” I spoke from my back, lying on the mattress on the floor.
Khalid’s face appeared over the edge of his bed. “Did you know that when the faceless creature walks the streets, the walls get closer and closer?”
I stared into his serious eyes. Then I laughed loud and hard.
“And when the faceless creature gets near you, he hums.”
The tiny hairs on my shoulders and shins sprang up. No one knew about that humming bit except the boys from our street. At least not people from Oman.
#
I excused myself from the table the next morning while we were eating cereal. I snuck into his room to check the book next to his bed.
Arabic Fairy Tales Told at Night, by Malikat Al Layl.
I thought so. All that faceless creature bullshit came from this place. And all those beheaded action figures must have worked up Khalid’s imagination. The humming was just a coincidence.
Some days later, at dinner, my father said he had bad news. Mr. Abdulla had got a job offer elsewhere. The Abdullas were leaving that week.
I stood up, my hands shaking. The chair fell behind me.
“Hey,” my dad said.
“All you do is separate me from my friends. All you do is lie, hide things, not keep your promises.”
My dad told me to sit down. “You’ll go there tomorrow after school. You’ll spend the day with him.”
I asked whether I would visit Khalid at his new house, but my father said that wouldn’t be possible, for the Abdullas were moving far away.
I stood up again. This time I knocked the chair down on purpose. I took my plate to my room and slammed the door behind me.
#
My dad had to drive Khalid’s parents to buy a few things from the market. The moment Khalid and I were alone, he told me his parents had only broken the news to him last night. He didn’t want to go, but he had no choice. “He found me again today at school,” said Khalid. “He tried to touch me.”
“Who?”
“The faceless creature.”
He hadn’t wanted to tell me what happened, because he knew I never believed him.
Now that got me. “Sure, I do!” I said. You’re my buddy. I’m there for you.”
In truth, I thought his parents were to blame. They treated him like he was made of glass. He led a lonely life. The books they allowed him to read got him all worked up.
He needed outside air, the toughness of the street. Cuts from running barefoot, minor wounds on the knees and shins . . . scars of a brave life.
I asked whether he’d like to come out with me. I’d show him around. “It’s our last day together. It’ll be good.”
“I can’t, he’s after me.”
“He’s not there, trust me. It’s my hood and I know it well. I’ll take care of you. I’ll show you where I got all those broken toys.”
He still hesitated.
“We’ll get soda. Come on.”
He agreed. He grabbed his backpack so he could load it with the stuff we might find. He made me promise to bring him home before dark.
#
Outside, the Four were tossing rocks at broken streetlights. I’d invented the game. Whoever hit the broken bulb first got to watch the rest steal eggs from the neighbors’ chicken coops, then hurl the eggs at random lorries.
But the way they stared hard and long at us made me afraid. I bolted off. I called on Khalid to run faster, and we kept at it until we reached the grocery.
Khalid, unused to running, heaved for breath.
I was glad the Four hadn’t followed us. I apologized and told Khalid we’d go home after we got our sodas. Then I introduced him to the grocer. “This is my new best friend.”
I went to the soda fridge alone, while Khalid waited at the counter. He didn’t want to walk in. He kept looking over his shoulder.
“Pepsi?” I called.
“Coca-Cola!”
He was always different. I had to give him that. And just to change Khalid’s mood, I did my ninja move right when I saw the grocer eyeing Khalid up and down. I stuffed the gum into the crotch of my pants. Khalid was the only one who saw me. He stiffened in place.
I winked at him.
At the register, feeling like a hero, I handed some cash over. The grocer came around the counter and did his thing: he felt our front and back pockets, and also our elbows, shins, shoes. For a moment I felt his fingers were a millimeter away from the gum in my pants, but he put on his usual smile and told us we were clear to go.
During the walk to the alley, Khalid didn’t break his silence. Under the clotheslines, I stuck my hand in my pants and got the gum out. “Good job not panicking there,” I said, laughing. “I’m proud of you.”
“Why did he feel our pockets?”
I said kids stole from that poor man all the time. “He almost caught me today,” I said. “He was a hair’s length away!”
“But I was there in front of him. I didn’t leave his sight. Why did he feel me?”
I told Khalid to relax, have his drink. It happened every day, all the time. He should look at the bright side. We had our sodas and free gum. It was a good day.
That didn’t ease his mind. He didn’t want to drink his Coca-Cola anymore, so I finished it. I forced a burp to lighten the mood and smashed the bottles at the words spray-painted on the wall. But that didn’t calm Khalid, either.
He refused to take a stick of the gum I’d stolen. I chewed a handful of pieces. I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
“Did you hear that?” Khalid said.
I popped the bubble I’d been inflating between my lips. I heard nothing. Did he mean the voices coming through the walls? Just people talking and the noise of TVs.
“Listen,” he said. “It’s him. He’s coming.”
We were in an empty street. I couldn’t see anyone coming. But fear had fixed Khalid to the ground. His backpack fell in the gutter. He shut his eyes, and covered his ears with both hands. “Leave me alone!”
Then I heard it. The hum of an engine. “Look. There’s no one here. It’s just a car.”
His eyes welled up. His whole frame trembled. But when the car pulled over, he relaxed. It was a police car, and the policeman waved us over. We gave him our names. He spoke into the transceiver. Then he turned to us. “All right, fellows. Fun time is over. Your parents are waiting.”
We didn’t say a word in the car. When we arrived, our parents didn’t scold us, but they weren’t happy.
My father asked me to say my goodbyes. I borrowed a pen from him and walked up to Khalid. Although his mother knew our phone number, I wrote it on Khalid’s arm and told him not to be a stranger. He handed me his backpack and told me to hold on to it. I didn’t know why he did that.
#
Many days must have passed before my four friends stood next to me again. We were at the grocery. I had gum stashed in my crotch, and the long fingers of the grocer went out to my pockets, below my waist, down between my legs—
Faces jumped at me from the dark with vacant eye sockets, dark noses, dark mouths—faceless creatures.
I opened my eyes, yanked off my blanket, grabbed my pillow, and ran across the living room to my parents’ bed. “Mum, mum,” I called, as I shook her awake.
I asked if I could sleep in their bed. She hugged me. Dad was already in deep sleep. I convinced her to leave the bathroom light on. After she recited a prayer in a muffled voice, I slept.
It was already the weekend. My mother confirmed that no one had called. I asked if she knew the Abdullas’ new phone number. When she said she didn’t, I was upset. I told her that if Khalid called, I’d be in the backyard.
I fed the bulbuls breadcrumbs, picked the dried leaves under the plumeria tree, took out the trash—I was bored to death.
I went to my mother again. “Is it true that there are evil creatures that possess adults? Who shift between one adult and another while they hunt children?”
Her eyes widened. She held my arm. “Where did you hear that?”
I said I couldn’t remember.
“You can tell me anything.”
“Nothing happened. Don’t worry.”
We were silent for a moment.
“Sweetheart, if there is anything, please tell me.” she said.
I nodded and went back to my room. I stared at my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blanket and ThunderCats pillow, at the Donatello/Lion-O figure Khalid had given me, and Khalid’s backpack.
The thought of him paralyzed in the alleyway visited me. My chest ached. I opened the window and climbed down the sewer pipes.
No one but that creature separated us. I envisioned doing what no one could. I’d stick my fist into its chest and pluck its heart out. I’d tear its skin with my nails, cut its fingers.
“Hello you,” the grocer said.
I didn’t greet him. I couldn’t open my mouth. My heart thumped and thumped. I had to make sure it wasn’t all in my head, so I didn’t go in to fetch anything. I picked one of the candies on the counter and handed him the cash.
“No soda today?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He came around the counter. He stood behind me. He pressed himself against my body and stuck his palms in my front and back pockets. Then he touched my elbow, my thighs, my shins. He took his time. Afterward he walked away with a disgusting smile on his chapped lips.
“I was in front of you!” I shouted through my tears. “I didn’t move. Why did you touch us!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell on you. My father will kill you.”
He scratched his chin. “Don’t be angry with me, we’re friends.” He handed me a pack of gum. “It’s your favorite, no?”
I grabbed it and hurled it at his rotten face. Then I ran out and kept running until I made it to the alley.
I listened to the earth, the leaves, the air-conditioners, the arguments that seeped out through the walls.
A shadowy figure, lean and tall, leered at me from under the clothesline. It kept humming and humming.
My left arm went numb. My legs were stuck in the sand. The hum terrorized me and locked the air in my lungs until I screamed, “I won’t tell on you! I swear. I swear!”
The alleyway narrowed. Flashes of shadow passed in front of me. With every blink, he got closer.
I slammed my ears with my palms, shut my eyes, curled my head into my chest just like Khalid did.
But when I opened my eyes, the person standing in front of me was my father, not the grocer or the creature that possessed him. My father was with my four friends. He hugged me.
“It’s okay, son. It’s okay.”
“Dad, I won’t go out anymore. I want to stay at home like Khalid did.”
He wiped the tears from my cheeks. He didn’t object or argue. We just walked to his taxicab. He thanked the boys for their assistance and said that he’d drop them home, but I could hear them whispering. I don’t remember who exactly got close to my side and asked me what happened. But the moment I wanted to speak, I felt the faceless creature breathing over my shoulder and into my ear, humming, humming, humming.
