This used to happen on 28 August every year, when the guests could still see Munir in the aquarium. But now they can’t. That’s because Munir ran into a problem. He’s no longer visible. At first we thought it was just a temporary indisposition. If Munir had been a fully grown child, we could definitely have found treatment for him. But because he was just a lump of dried blood, that was difficult. How can you save a lump of dried blood from shrinking? That’s what happened. Munir started to shrink.
It began a few years ago. Every day he lost a bit of himself. A few cells. At first we didn’t notice anything. But we were shocked when one of the children at the party said, ‘Munir was bigger last year,’ and showed us an old picture of Munir on his mobile phone.
Our boy went on like this until there wasn’t a single blood cell left. My wife and I couldn’t do anything. We called in doctors and experts to examine him. But they made it clear that they were helpless. Their answer was always the same: ‘This isn’t a child. This is a lump of clotted blood. Do you really want treatment for a lump of clotted blood?’ So we gave in. All we could do was try psychiatry. We brought a famous psychiatrist to our house and explained the situation to him. ‘Do you really think that psychiatry can treat a frustrated lump of clotted blood?’ he said scornfully, looking at the aquarium in disgust. Then we decided to take Munir out into the wilderness, because we thought that in the aquarium Munir must have acquired animal characteristics.
My wife and I resigned from our jobs. We sold our little flat and the furniture, packed the pots and pans we needed into our car, plus some basic foodstuffs and tinned goods, and hired a pickup truck designed for carrying sheets of glass. The truck carried the aquarium with Munir, who was now invisible. When we arrived, we were exhausted. We put the aquarium in the open in the sunlight and lay down in front of it on a blanket that we spread on the grass.
The weather was beautiful and all we could hear around us were the soft sounds of that well-known conflict between the insects and the birds, to which no one pays any attention. But as we looked at the aquarium in the hope that Munir would start to take shape again, we dozed off. In my sleep I dreamed that wild animals arrived, surrounded the aquarium, and started to drink the formaldehyde in which Munir had spent the recent years of his life. I tried to fend them off by throwing unopened tins of food at them, while my wife started spraying them with water from the bottles we had brought with us. The strange thing was that my wife had the same dream. We discussed the colours and the details and even the sounds that the animals made and we found they were identical. There wasn’t a single difference between the two dreams. ‘It can’t possibly be just a dream,’ she said. ‘It’s a vision.’ Shivers ran down our spines. We tried to pick up the aquarium and move it, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t budge it. How had the aquarium suddenly become so heavy? The only answer we could think of was that Munir didn’t want to move out of the wilderness. That’s what made us stay. For the rest of our lives all we have to look forward to is taking turns to guard the aquarium night and day and protect Munir. We no longer hope that he will grow to become a child one day, but just that he will go back to how we always knew him. We don’t want more than that.
Portion of Jam
DAD COMES HOME HOLDING A LITTLE PLASTIC portion of jam like the ones they give the patients in the hospital where he works. He holds it up in the air and says, ‘See the jam?’
‘No,’ I reply.
He puts his hand a little closer to the only lightbulb in the ceiling. ‘And now?’
‘No, I can’t see anything,’ I say.
‘Maybe the lightbulb’s too weak.’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
With a flourish that one has to admire, he makes the portion of jam roll down from between his fingers and settle in the palm of his hand. His closes his fist so that it looks like an envelope – an old trick he invented at nursing school. Now his hand is an envelope with the little portion of jam inside it. He presses the light switch with the edge of the envelope and the light goes out. Then he presses the switch again and the light comes on.
Dad holds the jam up in the air again. ‘Is this better?’ he asks.
‘No, I can’t see any jam from where I am,’ I say.
‘Come a little closer. You’re in the furthest possible spot in the room.’
He puts his hand closer to the light as if he’s going to do another trick – making the portion of jam go right inside the lightbulb.
I am in fact a long way from Dad. I’m sitting on a chair next to the window. The chair is high and when I sit on it my feet don’t touch the floor.
I get off the chair and move towards my father. ‘Dad, can you put the jam inside the lightbulb?’ I ask. ‘If you put it inside the lightbulb, I could see it.’
He lifts his hand higher but before I reach him the power goes off. The darkness swallows Dad. It swallows his hand and the jam.
‘See what happens when we put jam in the lightbulb?’ he jokes. ‘The packaging explodes, the jam burns and turns the whole room black.’
Transfixed, I say nothing.
Dad says nothing for a while either. Then he says, ‘Go and flip the trip switch.’
‘OK, I’ll go and flip the trip switch,’ I say, repeating his own words to reassure him.
I move forward with heavy steps, as if I have a tortoise clinging to each foot. I poke the darkness with my finger. It’s like an animal that I’ll tickle so that it shows me its stomach. I lift up one foot and bring the tortoise down on the animal’s stomach. I lift up my other foot and bring down the other tortoise, and make my escape.
But then my finger hits Dad. He jumps and drops the portion of jam. ‘Did you hear that? That’s the sound of the jam!’ he says excitedly, disguising his fear. But in fact I can’t hear the sound of the jam, which rolls along the floor until it comes to a stop.
Dad doesn’t move from where he is. He doesn’t want to lose the jam, although our house is small – just one room plus a kitchen and a bathroom. But between our little room and the kitchen and the bathroom, there’s another room, the biggest room in the house. Dad has rented that room to one of his relatives, who we found out was an arms dealer. Dad’s relative brings home loads of weapons and ammunition. Sometimes he stands by the door of his room and, instead of saying ‘good morning’ to Dad, he says, ‘What do you think of this piece? It’s just a sample. It’s a piece that’s easy to use. It’s from Romania. It has excellent sights. Why don’t you borrow it for a day or two? Don’t you have any disputes with anyone?’ Dad has never owned a gun, and the only dispute he has is with this relative of his, who has stopped paying the rent. But Dad doesn’t dare ask him for it. Dad thinks that the relative should not only pay him rent but also take out a mortgage.