(trans. Saleh Razzouk, with Scott Minar)

Who are you in your opinion?

He said holding his bag while his jaw was trembling, after ash poured in his eyes. I reached for his hand but he pulled away, and walked on a slightly lame foot.

I yelled at him: I am sorry. I did not mean it.

He said: You’re like your father.

He did not look back.

Since then we have not met.

Today we have. It is another place for sure. But the time was not definite.

He left the train with a small, brown, worn out bag. I recognized him despite the black glasses and the cane he used in his ambiguity like Sophocles.

The rain was pouring on the platform, on the trees, on the buildings, and on the empty rails. Soft rain. Attenuated. Like in a shy teenager’s dream, but the sky was sore and creepy. You cannot rely on it. And there was an alarming smell: old things and a decayed wood-soar aroma.

The cane slipped—I hurried to him before he fell. He said,

I was sure you were waiting for me.

I used to tell him he was not sure of anything, at any time, of anything, but instead I said,

You are too late.

After that evening.

He said,

That was an evening that went behind memory, with little charm, arousing a nice nostalgia, a regret, and a shift in the soul.

It was a runaway evening, I took it out as an old carrier, to scatter it the way water bubbles fly out of a tube in a hand of a child. I am his only shadow, I presume. He gave me a brown worn out ragged little bag, I took it. I touched its softness and smoothness and asked,

What is in it?

He said: My heritage. All of it.

He took out papers to show me, but I didn’t know why he trusted me with his heritage, after his decision to go away and far. For certainly too long period. I said,

We shall meet.

He said, Maybe in another place.

His slack tone confused me, submerged me in sadness.

I look at him in ground-coffee colored eyes. And said, Come, sit and sip a Joe.

He said, I already had two in the cafe.

Then he lit a cigarette and added,

Good, you do not smoke.

I nodded. And said,

Please write me some letters to calm down.

He did not comment. Stretched his hand and shook mine, but I pulled him toward me to embrace and press a kiss on his cheek. I found him very light like a severed, thin shoot.

He said, I remember how I lifted you in the school’s garden.

I said, You swung me around but I didn’t fall.

He said, I saw myself like Adnan Kessy(1).

I said, I used to be thin.

He said, But I lifted you.

I said, Today you decided to lift yourself and fly away.

He said, Without him I might have stayed.

Now, what had made things all of sudden upside down. What made him shake with anger, then go on the evening train without even a goodbye. Is that becasue I mentioned that his father was right. Or because I reminded him of his mother who took her life with her own hand after a crazy weariness? Or because I told him he was on fool’s journey? Or because I told him I would not read his bag papers simply because I knew what was on them. Or else?

The rain is pouring harder—like a horse, his strength tempted him to weep the lands.

The sky is tightening itself up. It is heavy and low, dark and nearly about to fall on its knees.

I said, Come find a shelter, a roof.

He said, Let us walk or are you afraid of rain.

His sarcasm made me unaware of anything. I asked if he came to stay.

We shall go together, he said.

I say, The rest of life is not enough for anybody to travel with.

He says, Here. Here we shall stay. But come along now with me.

I did not understand. I wanted an explanation. He laughed with mixed bitterness and friendship mentioning his old bag, and the papers.

I said, It was my papers. You wanted then to give them back.

He said, But you refused.

I said, You snatched them at last moment.

He commented, What’s the difference.

The darkness surrounded us—with rains, cold, and mud.

I noted, It is night.

He spoke about a voyage from darkness to darkness, from mud to mud. I felt uneasy. I said, He asked you to give you his box.

I tried to find the key. I searched for it in my pockets, but it was not there.

I said, It might have left me out of ignorance.

He said, Do not worry. I know what he hid in it.

I said, He was your father anyway. The box is yours. It is your belonging.

He shook his head stubbornly, on his soft mouth a sarcastic smile. I said, I want us to go back.

He said: we shall go back. In time. Shall go back.

I said: I’ll leave you here to go back alone.

The hiss of wind was mixed with the hiss of rains and the whining of night. He had not said a word perhaps. I left him. Or he left me. I saw myself in my trap alone. I shouted out, Where are you. Come to look for the key.

Nobody replied, I think. He might have not been at all. In my hand his brown little bag that was worn out in spots. And that is his cane. It seemed like he left his cane. Was he prepared to leave without it. Then. Where is the key. I look for it in my pockets again. I may have dropped it. If that was so, how could I find it in this darkness. This mud. And this rain?

Has he taken it from me? Had he taken the key? A key? A key of what? A key to the box. His father box. Yes. That’s what you have said to me. But had his father really left him a box?. Let me remember everything from the very beginning.

I remember the hour I left the train in. In my hand his cane. Yes. The rain was falling softly. I was about to slip, but he supported me. I said, I was certain you’d wait for me.

He kept silent awhile. I sensed he might have thought I was not sure of anything. On any given day, though, he said, you are too late.

I wanted to reply, saying, It is not the right time yet, but I was afraid he would misunderstand me. So I said, After that evening.

Both, I guess, remember that evening.

(1) Adnan Kessy: an Iraqi wrestler.

*Saad Muhammed Rahim: he was an Iraqi thinker, editor and fiction writer. won many fiction prestigious prizes.