“Do you see it?”
Saied made a great show of searching the floor around his stool. “No, I’m sure it’s not here,” he said at last.
“Then it must be out in the alley. You must’ve lost it the last time you went out to piss.”
Saied slammed the bar with his heavy fist. “And now it’s getting dark, and I must catch the bus.”
“You still have time to search,” said Hisham. He didn’t sound very confident.
The Half-Hajj laughed without humor. “A stone like that, worth four thousand Tunisian dinars, looks like a tiny pebble among a million others. In the twilight I’d never find it. What am I to do?”
The old man chewed his lip and thought for a moment. “You’re determined to leave on the bus, when it passes through?” he asked.
“I must, O my brother. I have urgent business.”
“I’ll help you if I can. Perhaps I can find the stone for you. You must leave your name and address with me; then if I find the diamond, I’ll send it to you.”
“May the blessings of Allah be on you and on your family!” said Saied. “I have little hope that you’ll succeed, but it comforts me to know you will do your best for me. I’m in your debt. We must determine a suitable reward for you.”
Hisham looked at Saied with narrowed eyes. “I ask no reward,” he said slowly.
“No, of course not, but I insist on offering you one.”
“No reward is necessary. I consider it my duty to help you, as a Muslim brother.”
“Still,” Saied went on, “should you find the wretched stone, I’ll give you a thousand Tunisian dinars for the sustenance of your children and the ease of your aged parents.”
“Let it be as you wish,” said Hisham with a small bow.
“Here,” said my friend, “let me write my address for you.” While Saied was scribbling his name on a scrap of paper, I heard the rumbling of the bus as it lurched to a stop outside the building.
“May Allah grant you a good journey,” said the old man.
“And may He grant you prosperity and peace,” said Saied, as he hurried out to the bus.
I waited about three minutes. Now it was my turn. I stood up and staggered a couple of steps. I had a lot of trouble walking in a straight line. I could see the shopkeeper glaring at me in disgust. “The hell do you want, you filthy beggar?” he said.
“Some water,” I said.
“Water! Buy something or get out!”
“Once a man asked the Messenger of God, may Allah’s blessings be on him, what was the noblest thing a man may do. The reply was ‘To give water to he who thirsts.’ I ask this of you.”
“Ask the Prophet. I’m busy.”
I nodded. I didn’t expect to get anything free to drink out of this crud. I leaned against his counter and stared at a wall. I couldn’t seem to make the place stand still.
“Now what do you want? I told you to go away.”
“Trying to remember,” I said peevishly. “I had something to tell you. Ah, yes, I know.” I reached into a pocketof my jeans and brought out a glittering round stone. “Is this what that man was looking for? I found this out there. Is this — ?”
The old man tried to snatch it out of my hand. “Where’d you get that? The alley, right? My alley. Then it’s mine.”
“No, I found it. It’s—”
“He said he wanted me to look for it.” The shopkeeper was already gazing into the distance, spending the reward money.
“He said he’d pay you money for it.”
“That’s right. Listen, I’ve got his address. Stone’s no good to you without the address.”
I thought about that for a second or two. “Yes, O Shaykh.”
“And the address is no good to me without the stone. So here’s my offer: I’ll give you two hundred dinars for it.”
“Two hundred? But he said—”
“He said he’d give me a thousand. Me, you drunken fool. It’s worthless to you. Take the two hundred. When was the last time you had two hundred dinars to spend?”
“A long time.”
“I’ll bet. So?”
“Let me have the money first.”
“Let me have the stone.”
“The money.”
The old man growled something and turned away. He brought a rusty coffee can up from under the counter. There was a thick wad of money in it, and he fished out two hundred dinars in old, worn bills. “Here you are, and damn your mother for a whore.”
I took the money and stuffed it into my pocket. Then I gave the stone to Hisham. “If you hurry,” I said, slurring my words despite the fact that I hadn’t had a drink or any drugs all day, “you’ll catch up with him. The bus hasn’t left yet.”
The man grinned at me. “Let me give you a lesson in shrewd business. The esteemed gentleman offered me a thousand dinars for a four thousand dinar stone. Should I take the reward, or sell the stone for its full value?”
“Selling the stone will bring trouble,” I said.
“Let me worry about that. Now you go to hell. I don’t ever want to see you around here again.”
He needn’t worry about that. As I left the decrepit coffeehouse, I popped out the moddy I was wearing. I don’t know where the Half-Hajj had gotten it; it had a Malaccan label on it, but I didn’t think it was an over-the-counter piece of hardware. It was a dumbing-down moddy; when I chipped it in, it ate about half of my intellect and left me shambling, stupid, and just barely able to carry out my half of the plan. With it out, the world suddenly poured back into my consciousness, and it was like waking from a bleary, drugged sleep. I was always angry for half an hour after I popped that moddy. I hated myself for agreeing to wear it, I hated Saied for conning me into doing it. He wouldn’t wear it, not the Half-Hajj and his precious self-image. So I wore it, even though I’m gifted with twice the intracranial modifications of anybody else around, enough daddy capacity to make me the most talented son of a bitch in creation. And still Saied persuaded me to damp myself out to the point of near vegetability.
On the bus, I sat next to him, but I didn’t want to talk to him or listen to him gloat.
“What’d we get for that chunk of glass?” he wanted to know. He’d already replaced the real diamond in his ring.
I just handed the money to him. It was his game, it was his score. I couldn’t have cared less. I don’t even know why I went along with him, except that he’d said he wouldn’t come to Algeria with me unless I did.
He counted the bills. “Two hundred? That’s all? We got more the last two times. Oh well, what the hell — that’s two hundred dinars more we can blow in Algiers. ‘Come with me to the Kasbah.’ Little do those gazelle-eyed boys know what’s stealing toward them even now, through the lemon-scented night.”
“This stinking bus, that’s what, Saied.”
He looked at me with wide eyes, then laughed. “You got no romance in you, Marid,” he said. “Ever since you had your brain wired, you been no fun at all.”
“How about that.” I didn’t want to talk anymore. I pretended that I was going to sleep. I just closed my eyes and listened to the bus thumping and thudding over the broken pavement, with the unending arguments and laughter of the other passengers all around me. It was crowded and hot on that reeking bus, but it was carrying
me hour by hour nearer to the solution of my own mystery. I had come to a point in my life where I needed to find out who I really was.
The bus stopped in the Barbary town of Annaba, and an old man with a grizzled gray beard came aboard selling apricot nectar. I got some for myself and some for the Half-Hajj. Apricots are the pride of Mauretania, and the juice was the first real sign that I was getting close to home. I closed my eyes and inhaled that delicate apricot aroma, then swallowed a mouthful of juice and savored the thick sweetness. Saied just gulped his down with a grunt and gave me a blunt “Thanks.” The guy’s got all the refinement of a dead bat.
The road angled south, away from the dark, invisible coast toward the city of Constantine. Although it was getting late, almost midnight, I told Saied that I wanted to get off the bus and grab some supper. I hadn’t eaten anything since noon. Constantine is built on a high limestone bluff, the only ancient town in eastern Algeria to survive through centuries of foreign invasions. The only thing I cared about, though, was food. There is a local dish in Constantine called chorba beida bel kefta, a meatball soup made with onions, pepper, chickpeas, almonds, and cinnamon. I hadn’t tasted it in at least fifteen years, and I didn’t care if it meant missing the bus and having to wait until tomorrow for another, I was going to have some. Saied thought I was crazy.