Perhaps the world no longer cares about anything except what actually matters to it. In that case, things remain marginalized until they make their way between the lines, casting a star that announces their presence. Perhaps nothing here succeeds in attracting attention and changing the path except waiting, and a lot of waiting until a certain moment, or other times, and more and more dreams that may never reach reality. And who knows? Perhaps any "maybe" is useless in all circumstances except interrupting the flow of life and clinging to a second of time that cannot be saved, and what is necessary here is to stop, stand still, and then take action, anything, merely combining determination and ability without thinking? Or does time flow here and space follows it, even if any awareness of time precedes space at this or any other reference point, with all the linguistic methods that describe reality without embodying it in its literal sense in reality.
Thirty meters from the city center, next to a public park, in a small, insignificant apartment that his uncle had lent him when he graduated from university. Perhaps pity alone was the main motive, and nothing else. Despite his poor health, which was plagued by a number of chronic diseases, such as asthma and anemia, these diseases would not have prevented him from managing his life as he wished, each individually, unless they combined to make it difficult to act according to what logical whispered to him. So a friend of his began to supervise and take care of him here for what he needed, after refusing any visits from his family directly. The condition here was, in fact, illness, a physical illness that took the form of a psychological illness at other times, and a rigidity and shortness of breath in the presence of the majority of people.
He heard a knock on the door, his heart raced, and his chest tightened. Whether it was a bad omen or a sign of good news, it all didn't matter. It was just torture, more like a provocation, playing with his nerves and spoiling his mood. He froze in place and allowed himself to wait, excusing himself from answering. For a second, then for several minutes, the knocker's patience evaporated, and he began to strike the door with his hand, sometimes letting his finger rest on the doorbell for another moment, until he began to pace back and forth, slowing down his steps when he was near the door until he sped up to something like a run when he moved away from it. In this way, he prepared himself, firstly, to vent his anger, and secondly, if the door was finally opened for him, not to delay a single step separating him from knowing who it was and then closing the door again. In that state, he waited for luck to come and fall at his feet, with what trick he could prepare to exploit that luck
The boy finally opened the door and left it as it was, as if he had surrendered, or no longer had the power to confront, question, or expel. Instead, he allowed anyone who might enter to enter, now that he had abandoned the lock, the handle, and anything that held the world back and held it at bay.
The visitor stepped forward through the door and cast his gaze around the narrow, dark room. He banged his hand several times on the wall, intending to turn on the lights, while his patience was running out. He continued on in several long strides and threw a bag of fruit on the floor beside the bed. Then he turned and banged a teapot on the desk, followed by a used paper cup, all with the same roughness.
"It is enough that I have allowed myself to be modest in my eating and deprive myself of nearly half of my appetite so that you can find something to satisfy your hunger, and that I come here and endure the length of the journey, and in all of this I fear for you after I have been entrusted with the task of supervising your mood. But what is this to be met with? Other than a lot of careless and more childish acts on your part. Do you not fear God? And if your life has proceeded as you wish, would you not pity your family if they found you rotting here as you had refused to allow a single bite to enter through the door into your mouth?"
The boy looked sideways without replying.
Dizziness. Anas woke up with a sudden headache, while he was swimming in sweat as if the entire heat of the place had gathered under his covers. He sat on the edge of the bed in the darkness and threw his head between his shoulders as if his spine had been robbed. Some kind of acidity rose to his chest and his face turned yellow. His feet moved until he was standing upright, hiding his face behind his palm. Then his lower body moved mechanically, as if his chest and upper body were devoided of any bones. He headed to the bathroom instinctively, not unconsciously. He stumbled, and his face hit the floor without any sign of pain or looking for explanation to his fall. He tried to stand up again in a limp posture. When he finally arrived, his jaw dropped and his stomach spilled all its contents onto the bathroom floor. Anas looked at all this as if it were foreign to him. He washed his face and used a bucket to collect water to wipe it all up. He returned to his room, as a bit of consciousness returned behind his eyes. He turned on the lights and stopped in his tracks after noticing the appearance of something under his desk. He approached it, knelt down, and stared carefully. They looked like tree roots of some kind, cutting through the ground and resting on the surface. Anas followed their origins to the point where they emerged from the ground under the desk. He tried pulling the desk apart at first until his joints cracked, then gave up and tried moving his bed, which was next to the desk. Anas then noticed something protruding, like some kind of water pipes, behind the wall posters. He hesitated at first, and tried to forget all of this. But as soon as he came to his senses, he tore down the wall posters without hesitation. His feet took him back a few steps back. Several roots had made their way through the wall as if determined to reach his bed. Anas followed his steps and his breath both backwards. He grabbed his coat and keys and left without taking his eyes off the roots for a moment, then the door, then the apartment, then the street, and then only backwards, without knowing exactly what he hoped to see with his gaze in that direction.
Anas continued on his way, thinking of a place other than all these streets. The corners of the alleys blew dust into his eyes and blinded him to the ground he walked on. The sun rose and drew its brilliance across the entire sky until it faded and set while he walked through the streets without a goal he hoped to reach. He bumped into some stopped passersby and stood still for several minutes, until his gaze rested on a chain of iron seats behind him, so he threw his body on them.
Successive drops of mud fell beneath his shoes, and even though he noticed several policemen following each other's tracks, it all made sense in the end. Anas shifted from his seat and cracked a joint in his back, then brushed off some of the yellowing leaves that had rested on his head. He then rolled with almost drunken steps toward the intersection, or something similar, through the thick fog that had swallowed the traffic lights and street signs, and the outlines of the buildings were drowned in the middle of it all. At that moment, a bright ray like a cat's eye approached the horizon, and it kept growing in size and breadth until the fog cleared. A giant truck had cut through the darkness, and as soon as it confronted Anas, the driver jerked from his slumber and swerved the steering wheel sharply. The truck let out a scream that could wake the entire city, and it turned right and left until it flipped onto its back like an insect that had been overtaken by death. Anas moved his head in a lost, mechanical way, searching his field of vision for what had happened in his surroundings. With a blank expression, his body finally decided to move, freeing his feet from the fragile roots that had clung to them. Anas approached the driver's door and wiped the moisture that had covered the truck's window. At that moment, Anas saw small bodies tossing and turning in the driver's seat, tied with his seatbelt. When he tried to open the door, it met him with surprising difficulty, even trying to break it open but then it loosened itself in another moment. Several apples fell and rolled towards his feet from the truck, as that was all that could be seen inside.