The Fakir

There were the three of us.

Me, I'm Katima my sister Ria, and my mother Habeeb. If I ever actually called her that, I would still feel the smack well into my grave.

We loved street magicians, performers, fakirs. We traveled from Turkey, all along the Gulf of Aden in search of them, and had seen dozens of great magicians and miracle workers.

A man in Misratah ate fire. Not just a wad of fuel soaked cotton in his mouth for a second, mind you. He would reach into his wood stove and come back with great handfuls of flames. Then he would lick his palms, show us his burning tongue, and chuff out his cheeks for us. Me and my sister thought this was terribly funny, and he would clown a little more for us before swallowing. Then he would spew a great lungful of smoke at us that smell like truck fumes.

There was a woman in As-Karabuk who would make the shore crabs dance. She would wave her hands and sing to them, and they would line up for meters, then do steps and shuffles for us. We would sing and clap along with the woman, and the crabs would wave their claws in time with us. I would pick them up and put them down a few feet away, but they ran back to their places, seeming kind of embarrassed. My mother often selected a few of the big ones for us to cook later on.

There were others, less amusing. A child in Tukrah could produce liquor from her palms, and would gibber like a crazy person the whole time, holding her hands up to the sun. A woman who lived east of Suree caused black motor oil to leak from animals. I still remember a lamb that choked to death on the stuff, dying in front of us while the slime flowed from its ears.

There was also the great guru of Asbeki, who could pick up anything with his penis. It was quite an amazing act, watching him use it like he was using one of his hands. It reminded me of an elephant using his trunk.

Then there was the rope trick.

We had heard about a man in Banghazi who did an amazing act. He only appeared once in a great while, and people would crowd to him when he did. His name, or at least what people called him, was al-Akbar.

I remember that ride along the coast, in the back of a truck hauling chickens. Ria was holding a chick, petting and cooing to it, and Mother was counting her henna needles and vials. I looked out along the beach, watching the sea birds swoop and play. Sometimes, it looked like they came too close to the ground, and turned into people walking along the beach. Maybe there was too much sun.

Bursa was nice, but the bazaar was just like any other. Stall after stall, full of things people didn't really need. Not that we could criticize: My mother sold packets of hand ground henna and did applications on middle class women's palms. Ria and myself would sing pretty songs for a few dinars near her chosen spot, so she could keep an eye on us. I always wanted to wander off, but I also enjoyed the singing... Its one of my favorite memories of Ria.

After we had made a little money, we went looking for al-Akbar after the Dhuhr prayer. Wandering through the rows, we listened for laughing or cheering, or the clink of coins thrown to the ground.

We didn't hear any of these things, and came across him quite by accident. He was a bit out from the main souk, in a field of sickly looking weeds. A crowd was around him, but they were silent. It was creepy, like a dead spot in the world.

Working our way through to the front, we saw him: everyone's idea of a Sufi mystic. He wore standard fakir clothing. A turban, and white, billowy pants. He had an ugly leather bracelet on, with nonsensical script embossed around it. It matched his ugly face well. He had a scraggly beard, with thin lips and a sharp nose. His eyebrows were unkempt, and his eyes looked as if he hadn't slept in years.

The most unusual thing about him was the rope, though. He had a long length of rough rope coiled around his neck, from his chin to the top of his stomach. It looked like a lion's mane, piled up on his shoulders. The two ends dangled at his sides, bouncing in the sea wind from the west.

His eyes wouldn't focus on anything... his face remained blank. I had seen the look before, but not when the fakir was waiting for the crowd. Usually they walked around and talked to the people, joking with the adults and doing small stunts for the children.

But he didn't stay that way for long. Almost as soon as we had arrived, he came to, in a way. Still not looking at any one thing in particular, he started speaking in a rough, hollow voice.

"I will leave soon. Who will join me?"

My uncle smoked eighty American cigarettes a day, and still didn't have a voice like that. It sounded like he had burnt his throat with glass and acid.

The crowd was silent.

"Nobody will come with me? There are beautiful things to see, strange things to do."

Not a sound. I held Ria in front of me, with Mother at our side. None of us wanted to go anywhere. The whole thing was very creepy.

Finally, he snapped his long fingers. I felt my sister jerk a little at this, and he spoke up again: "Nobody?"

Then it happened.

Ria had always been a noisy kid, the kind that screams out whats she thinking and feeling at any time. It had gotten her into trouble at mosque many times, but I think my mother appreciated it in a way. At least, she had never tried very hard to break her of it.

But this time it betrayed her. She made a kind of hurr-ing sound, like a half formed thought. I heard her try to catch herself, but it was too late. Al-Akbar's head turned towards us.

I started dragging her back into the press of the crowd, whispering curses at her foolishness. She backtracked with me, and I could feel her shaking in my arms.

Al-Akbar had started to slowly stride in our direction, his coils of rope bouncing slightly. I stepped farther back, but ran into the front of someone who wouldn't move. I could see him coming at us, splitting the crowd like a knife splits fruit. His eyes seemed to be changing colors, from a normal dark brown to yellow. I started to feel real fear at this.

Suddenly, my mother stepped in front of him.

"My daughter didn't mean anything, she doesn't want to go anywhere."

"But she said she did, dear mother. I heard her," he said, yellow eyes now training on Ria.

My mother spoke slowly, menacingly: "Shes not going anywhere."

The fakir's changing eyes didn't seem to intimidate my mother the way they did me. I could see that they were shifting around now, from yellow to orange to brown and back. I feared they would become red soon and the man would sprout horns and fangs, would become an efreet in front of all of us.

"Dear mother, fear not! Allah will protect us on our journey!"

"Allah doesn't have anything to do with you, or any of your dealings. Leave us alone, and go perform your trick. We're leaving."

And with that, she grabbed my hand and started dragging us back towards the souk. I looked over my shoulder at al-Akbar, and he passed his twisted, dirty hand over the crowd. There was a collective sigh, and then a murmuring. I didn't like the sound of it. Everyone started swaying in step with each other.

I turned back and started shoving out of the crowd, but it had become harder. I felt a hand grab my wrist. I shook it off, now terrified. I could feel Ria's slender hand in mine, but something seemed to be holding her back. I tightened my grip on my mother's rough, patterned hand.

"The girl wishes to accompany me! You all heard her!"

My sister moaned in fear at this.

Her hand slipped from mine. I yelled in protest, and looked back. My mother's hand was gone now. I looked the other way, and saw that half a dozen men with vacant looks on their faces were wrestling her to the ground.

Ria was meanwhile being dragged and surfed back towards al-Akbar. She was kicking and screaming, and I saw her kick a woman's hand from the side. The woman's wrist bent at a funny angle, and I heard a snapping noise, but she didn't seem to notice it.

Hands were holding me back, and one was held over my mouth. I screamed into it, but to little effect.

Al-Akbar bellowed like a crocodile over the crowd, "Allah be with us on our journey!"

The people had brought Ria to him, and as he reached out for her, his fingers seemed to grow even longer. I could see his nails stretching out and becoming black. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and she howled in mindless terror at his touch . The group fell back into the crowd, and swayed to the music only they could hear.

The rope around his neck twitched, and then began uncoiling from his neck. It whipped around like a snake, twirling around the two of them. Soon it was free, spinning around them like a sand twister, not touching them, but more making a shell. Through it, I could see a huge, bloody hole in the hollow of the man's throat, like a gunshot wound.

My mother screamed, and I tried to join her. The crowd was making a mindless humming sound, and continued swaying. Al-Akbar was chanting something in a language I didn't know, and Ria continued twisting in his grasp, kicking at his legs.

The rope seemed to hesitate, then shot into the hole in the fakir's throat. His head rocked back from the initial impact, then tipped up, his mouth open. The rope roared straight up, making a nasty purring noise over his teeth as it went. I could see it feeding into the hole, and coming out slightly stained with his blood into the sky.

At this, I bit into the hand over my mouth, barely tasting the blood. I sunfished in their grasp, and broke free. I raced to them, screaming in protest. I tripped at the last, but managed to grab hold of Ria's ankles.

Al-Akbar looked down at me, and I could see that his eyes really had turned red now, and his teeth had sharpened. Bits of the rope came undone on his fangs as it sped up past his face. He said something, but I couldn't hear it because of his clogged throat and the ripping noises.

I got to my feet and started pulling, trying to get her out of his grasp.

"Demon! Let her go! Let her go!"

The rope was all the way through now, a pole leading up to nowhere. It looked as high as an apartment building, like a thin palm tree with no fronds. He took hold of it with one hand, and kept the other on my sister's shoulder.

He said one last word of his chant, and started laughing horribly. The most sickening feeling overcame me, like the first time I was in an elevator in Istanbul, but much worse. The world lurched, and I felt gravity reverse on us. My sense of right side up was now wrong, and the three of us flipped and started falling up towards the end of the rope. Al-Akbar's hand grabbed at the rope, and we were all hanging with our feet to the sky. He loosened his grip, and we started to slowly slide upwards.

"She's mine now, child. Begone!" he growled, and kicked me in the face. I felt my nose break under his heel, and my hands let go of Ria's ankles. I felt the world lurch again as I lost contact with them, and I fell to the ground. I landed on my back with a thud, and looked up at them. Al-Akbar looked down/ up at me, and laughed like a hyena. They started to shimmer like hot air as they slid up the rope.

I screamed at them, and as they reached the end of the rope, I screamed even louder. The rope shivered, and they were gone. Disappeared, into the sky.

The rope became normal again, falling back to the earth. It piled around my head like a cleaned lamb's intestines.

Everyone started yelling, the spell broken. The woman with the broken wrist held it up to the sky, shrieking in pain. My mother screamed the loudest, the longest.

"Oh God, Katima! Shes gone! Shaitan has taken her and shes gone!"

All I could do was look at the spot in the sky that had swallowed them.

Three weeks later, they found her.

A Tuareg guide found her thirty miles south of Bursa, in the desert. We had begged everyone who would listen to look for her, and showed them the picture we had. Eventually we heard about the girl from the desert, and went to get her.

She took turns of chittering like a bird, and long, deep silences. She wouldn't speak normally, and if we asked her what happened she'd grow quiet again. If we mentioned al-Akbar, she shrieked, sometimes for hours. If we left her to do as she pleased, she would sit in the sun all day, mumbling and chirping to the sky. We had to force her to eat and drink. My mother would sit with her for hours, crying and trying to get her to play or sing as she once did, without hesitation.

The Turkish authorities would do nothing. We couldn't tell if they just didn't believe us, but we could see the looks in some of their eyes when we mentioned al-Akbar. We spent a lot of time in waiting rooms, knowing full well it would lead to nothing.

The doctors and healers could do nothing for her. Expensive prescriptions and tribesmen's rituals just made her break out in rashes or cry in fear.

Al-Akbar never returned again, as far as we knew. Half the people we talked to had never heard of him, and the other half would fork their hands at us with the mention of his name.

On the other hand, we now had our own trick for the souks: for a few dinars, my beautiful, little sister Ria can cry diamonds. She cries and little diamonds fall into the sand, and she grins like a jackal afterwards, a hole appearing in her throat.

Subway transfers

Below is a short story for your reading enjoyment. I blog so that I might advertise for google adsense
, amazon.com Alice paydotcom, as seen on tv, vegas trips, chocolate, kosher.com flowers.com affiliate junction, commission junction,
kontera and yieldbuild, clickbank products, clickbooth, etc....I have to now put this comment in my blog, as the us government demands that anyone advertizing for
companies on the web must do so. So please read up, and click on some advertizing links...thanks hipriestess4u

The train droned on through the thick smog of the New York city skyline, rattling and hissing like some prehistoric beast lumbering across the concrete landscape with its accidental mishmash of passengers riding in its steel belly.

An old haggard looking woman sat in the cool air of the train and surveyed the dull flash of glass on passing buildings, their fading brick and marble façades layered with the omnipresent summertime smog that NYC is famous for. Wavy heat lines rose languidly up from high rise buildings, obscuring everything in the distance and reducing the world to intimate spheres of reality.

She sat slightly bent, huddled against the invasive eyes of humanity, her thin frame hooked over like a life-sized question mark curling back in on itself. Her thinning gray hair hung loosely about her ears and looked greasy adding to her tattered appearance. Her feet, clothed in worn canvas sneakers, were primly together tucked beneath her, her gnarled hands remained neatly on her lap clutching at her overnight bag and transfer ticket, as her eyes watched the endless stream of New York city skyline slide noiselessly by.

She could feel the eyes of riders touching curiously upon her, stares were things that she had grown accustomed to in her 80 some odd years. She knew she was dressed rather strangely today even for her, the hospital gown was an additional embarrassment, the clothes she had worn today were dictated not out of some skewed idea of fashion, but of necessity.
Her overnight bag dangled from her hip, still clutched tightly, it was filled with tattered and bloodied clothing from the night before, clothing rendered by some accident or another and she had not thought to herself even briefly to discard them as she silently walked the streets to the train station.
Her mind was far away as she watched building after building fade into the smog, her thoughts were on the culmination of her existence and death as the final frontier.

The train rumbled to one of its many stops; people shuffled around stampeding on and off and jostling each other in that stereotypical relentless New York city way and presently a sloppily dressed young man with an Elvis do, and his pale girlfriend got on the train and promptly sat down across the row from the old haggardly looking woman.

She didn't notice them, her mind was far away, she was dreaming of younger days, in the afternoon’s hazy cradle, perhaps seeking the answer to the question her body was asking, if it was asking a question at all.

The man with the Elvis do nudged his girl and gestured towards the old woman. He looked at the strange figure of the woman in derision and shared an unkind secret smile with his lady friend, who giggled and twittered along with him.

Led on by her approval, the young man continued in an insulting tone, growing louder and less timid. His voice rose to a clearly audible level over the thrumming and rumbling of the train’s engine. He wanted his voice to carry to the back of the train and capture everyone's attention, he spoke melodiously as if he were giving a speech and he wished for everyone to hear him, he wanted them to hear how funny he was, he wanted them to laugh with him at the odd figure of a woman across from him.

“Who let the dogs out?” He guffawed, looking around to the other train riders for approval. A few vague smiles were evident among the onlookers, a snorted half-chortle came from the back, it was an abundantly fat woman with tightly curled black hair in incredibly matching black polyester pants, her huge thighs spreading out and flopping over the seats as the old haggard woman shrank back into herself in sudden pain and abject humiliation.

She lowered her head and stared at the rubber traction mat on the bottom of the train and thought. She stared at the neat little black drainage lines, so parallel and well-ordered and unlike reality. Echoes of previous shame, imprisonment, and remembered humiliation rang in her ears, tolling louder than anyone on the train could possibly laugh, even the guffawing baboon seated across from her, and she shrank even further into her state of silent reverie and in this state of reverie she wondered why strangers lash out in judgment.

"Escapee from Bellevue!" he chortled, choking on the last word and blatantly pointing at the woman so that everyone, including the old woman, could make no mistake about who he was referring to. His girlfriend was laughing, doubled over and holding her smarting stomach muscles. They were laughing so hard that she was on the brink of tears and they collapsed into each others arms in mirth, reveling in their own vomit.

The old woman's eyes slid wetly to the side to see who else might be laughing and she caught the eyes of an old black woman who was seated a few seatsfrom the rear. Silent compassion shone from the jaundiced brown eyes, lending sudden strength to the hurting woman.

She glanced at another passenger, a businessman who looked confused but didn't turn away from her glance, she looked at the silent group of teenage girls who promptly looked out the windows and shuffled their feet and nervously fingered the pimples on their faces.

She turned to the man with the Elvis do, who was full of both himself and ignorant rage, and stared him full in his speckled face and she watched him laugh uproariously, giving occasional unattractive flashes of his true nature. Five seconds, ten, a full half-minute passed and she met his derisive stare with one of her own, her face blazing hot with shame, mounting outrage and intended revenge.

His girlfriend went suddenly silent as if someone pulled her plug. She looked down at nothing on the floor, and squirmed in mounting discomfort as the absurd man with the Elvis do, next to her went on with his tirade, "What are YOU staring at you freak? Isn’t there a Carnival in Coney Island with you as the main attraction? “

She held her glance, piercing him with her ice blue eyes. The silence of the train was almost eerie in its suddenness, descending like an eclipse, even the motor seemed to work more quietly, as if to eavesdrop on what was transpiring among the humans above.

She stared hard and as she stared, she thought hard. Her eyebrow raised almost imperceptibly, her heart blackened and with all her might she sent her feelings out to the ridiculing man before her, physical, mental and spiritual feelings that were once hers’
alone.

No one could quite tell you what happened then, it happened so quickly. There were 50 different people on that train and if you asked them what had happened you might get 50 different answers. They all saw it happen but then again they didn't. Even if they did see it happen, they couldn't precisely believe it happened, because what happened isn't exactly a normal thing to have happen, even in New York .

She stared and she thought and she sent her age and frail physical form, out to him, although transferred would be a more apt term for what she did, so; as she stared and thought and transferred, a very strange thing happened.

She grew taller, younger looking, she straightened up for the first time that day, her suddenly brown hair overflowing, and the young man shrank back into his seat, his eyes going wide in sudden confusion and terror. She gave to him a reciprocal gift in the very finest sense of the word and the young man collapsed exhausted back in his seat as if he was 100 years old and there he huddled not unlike a question mark, while vivid thoughts of suicide and a remembered rape, and imprisonment and a whole life’s worth of thoughts flooded his mind. He could see the limit of death clearly over his left shoulder. He felt completely
drained and promptly fell asleep.

The train pulled to it’s next stop, the now vivacious woman stood, still grasping her overnight bag tightly, and primly straightening her hospital gown as she rose; she stood as erect now as a West Point Cadette. She turned and glanced back at the trainload of silent passengers, the man with the Elvis do fast asleep. The now young woman gave a small wink and a nod to the old black woman who nodded back her silent approval.

Calmly she climbed down off of the train, and handed the conductor her transfer. The conductor directed her to the next train.

A vivacious smile came to briefly light her suddenly young face, “This is where
I get off.”

(Luna revision)