The panic that he had suppressed for so long took over now and he began to run. He dove deeper into the twisting maze of the city, not caring where he went so long as he was moving. Everything was closed, and there were few streetlamps. He heard the sounds of his footfalls echo off the shuttered buildings. A cat jumped out of his way, eyes flashing gold.
After a long time of running he began to slow. “Tiraz!” someone whispered to him from an abandoned building. His heart pounded. He did not look back. Ahead was a lit storefront, a store filled with clutter. The door was open. A pawn shop.
He went in with relief. He cleared a space for himself among the old magazines and rusty baking pans and child’s beads. The man behind the counter watched but made no comment. He took out everything from the two suitcases, sorted out what he needed and repacked it and gave the other suitcase to the man behind the counter. The man went to a small desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a steel box. He counted out some money and offered it to Charles. Charles accepted it wordlessly, not even bothering to count it.
The money bought a meal tasting of sawdust and sesame oil, and a sagging bed in an old hotel. The overhead fan turned all night because Charles could not figure out how to turn it off. A cockroach watched impassively from the corner.
The city looked different in daylight. Women in shawls and silver bracelets, men in clothes fashionable fifty years ago walked past the hotel as Charles looked out in the morning. The sun was shining. His heart rose. This was going to be the day he made it to the airport.
He walked along the streets almost jauntily, ignoring the ache in his arms. His beard itched because last night, in a moment of panic, he had thrown his electric razor into the suitcase to be sold. He shrugged. There were still things he could sell. Today he would find a better pawn shop.
He walked, passing run-down houses and outdoor markets, beggars and children, automobile garages and dim restaurants smelling of frying fish. “Excuse me,” he said to a man leaning against a horse-drawn carriage. “Do you know where I can find a pawn shop?”
The man and horse both looked up. “Ride, yes?” the man said enthusiastically. “Famous monuments. Very cheap.”
“No,” Charles said. “A pawn shop. Do you understand?”
The man shrugged, pulled the horse’s mane. “No speak English,” he said finally.
Another man had come up behind Charles. “Pawn shop?” he said.
Charles turned quickly, relieved. “Yes,” he said. “Do you know—”
“Two blocks down,” the man said. “Turn left, go five blocks. Across the hospital.”
“What street is that?” Charles asked.
“Street?” the man said. He frowned. “Two blocks down and turn left.”
“The name,” Charles said. “The name of the street.”
To Charles’s astonishment the man burst out laughing. The carriage driver laughed too, though he could not have possibly known what they were talking about. “Name?” the man said. “You tourists name your streets as though they were little children, yes?” He laughed again, wiping his eyes, and said something to the carriage-driver in another language, speaking rapidly.
“Thank you,” Charles said. He walked the two blocks, turned left and went five blocks more. There was no hospital where the man had said there would be, and no pawn shop. A man who spoke a little English said something about a great fire, but whether it had been last week or several years ago Charles was unable to find out.
He started back toward the man who had given him directions. In a few minutes he was hopelessly lost. The streets became dingier, and once he saw a rat run from a pile of newspapers. The fire had swept through this part of the city leaving buildings charred and water damaged, open to the passersby like museum exhibits. Two dirty children ran toward him, shouting, “Money, please, sor! Money for food!” He turned down a sidestreet to lose them.
Ahead of him were three young men in grease-stained clothes. One of them hissed something at him, the words rushing by like a fork of lightning. Another held a length of chain which he played back and forth, whispering, between his hands. “I don’t speak—” Charles said, but it was too late. They were on him.
One tore the suitcase from his hand, shouting “El amak! El amak!” Another knocked him down with a punch to his stomach that forced the wind out of him. The third was going through his pockets, taking his wallet and the little folder of traveller’s checks. Charles tried feebly to rise, and the second one thrust him back, hitting him once more in the stomach. The first one yelled something and they ran quickly down the street. Charles lay where they left him, gasping for breath.
The two dirty children passed him, and an old woman balancing a basket of clothes on her head. After a few minutes he rolled over and sat up, leaning against a rusty car up on blocks. His pants were torn, he noticed dully, torn and smeared with oil. And his suitcase with the rest of his clothes was gone.
He would go to the police, go and tell them that his suitcase was gone. He knew the word for suitcase because the young thief had shouted it. Amak. El amak. And suddenly he realized something that knocked the breath out of him as surely as a punch to the stomach. Every word in English, every word that he knew, had a corresponding word in this strange foreign language. Everything you could think of—hand, love, table, hot—was conveyed to these natives by another word, a word not English. Debbie had known that, and that was why she was good at languages. He hadn’t. He had expected everyone he met to drop this ridiculous charade and start speaking like normal people.
He stood up gingerly, breathing shallowly to make the pain in his stomach go away. After a while he began walking again, following the maze of the city in deeper. At last he found a small park and sat on a bench to rest.
A native came up to him almost immediately. “Cards?” the native said. “Look.” He opened his embroidered bag.
Charles sighed. He was too tired to walk away. “I don’t want any cards,” he said. “I don’t have any money.”
“Of course not,” the native said. “Look. They are beautiful, no?” He spread the brightly colored cards on the grass. Charles saw a baseball player, a fortune teller, a student, some designs he didn’t recognize. “Look,” the native said again and turned over the next card. “The tourist.”
Charles had to laugh, looking at the card of the man carrying suitcases. These people had been visited by tourists for so long that the tourist had become an archetype, a part of everyone’s reality like kings and jokers. He looked closer at the card. Those suitcases were familiar. And the tourist—He jerked back as though shocked. It was him.
He stood quickly and began to run, ignoring the pain in his stomach. The native did not follow.
He noticed the card sellers on every corner after that. They called to him even if he crossed the street to avoid them. “Tiraz, tiraz!” they called after him. He knew what it meant now. Tourist.
As the sun set he became ravenously hungry. He walked around a beggarwoman squatting in the street and saw, too late, a card seller waiting on the corner. The card seller held out something to him, some kind of pastry, and Charles took it, too hungry to refuse.
The pastry was filled with meat and very good. As though that were the signal, the other card sellers he passed began to give him things—a skin of wine, a piece of fish wrapped in paper. One of them handed him money, far more money than a deck of cards would cost. It was growing dark. He took a room for the night with the money.
A card seller was waiting for him at the corner the next day. “All right,” Charles said to him. Some of the belligerence had been knocked out of him. “I give up. What the hell’s going on around here?”