Where Is Manar?
Book Two: Sorry, Ma'am — This Body Is Not for Rent
Chapter Six: The Weight of Staying
—
I stared at the ceiling.
The silent fan. The curtain. Lonely's empty corner.
I closed my eyes.
Slept. Woke at ten.
Had breakfast. Went to work.
I reached the salon. Didn't cut anyone's hair. Stood in front of the large mirror with scissors and comb in hand, as usual. The smell of soap and cheap cologne, the noise of the street outside. A normal workday.
Then I felt it.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a sight. It was a feeling crawling under the skin — as if the world's temperature had dropped ten degrees at once without the air moving. As if something had decided to notice me.
I looked at the mirror. My face in it. The salon behind me. Everything normal.
I stepped out to the street.
The street was there. The houses, the cars, the asphalt. But something was different — something I couldn't name. As if colors had faded by one degree. As if sounds came from behind thick glass.
Then the world turned itself off.
Not like a power cut. Not like sunset. As if a giant hand had seized all the light and erased it at once. Total darkness. Complete. No gradation.
I stood in the only illuminated spot in the absolute dark.
I saw nothing. Heard nothing. Felt nothing at all.
Then I heard the bike.
A familiar whine — someone pressing the bell twice in that annoying, show-off way that only one person in Basra uses. Farqad. Who lived next to my salon.
"Farqad?"
The bell whined again from somewhere far.
"Farqad — stop! Don't go!"
He sped past as he always did.
"Deed deed — heey Sami." He waved and kept going.
I ran toward the sound. My feet hit the asphalt but I couldn't see where it was. I ran with my hands stretched out in front of me like a blind man in an unfamiliar room.
"Farqad, you dog — come back!"
The whine faded.
Then the whine died too. The darkness swallowed Farqad.
I stood in total silence. Total darkness.
I turned slowly.
Behind me, at some distant point in the darkness, a single light. Small and warm, flickering slightly. The light of the salon.
I ran toward it.
My feet hit the asphalt. My breath quickened. The light grew slowly. The salon — its glass door, the scissors hanging on the wall, the large mirror. I reached the door and extended my hand toward the handle.
It went out.
The darkness swallowed everything.
—
I woke up.
My room. The ceiling. The silent fan.
I didn't sit up. Didn't move. I stayed on my back with my eyes open to the ceiling.
It was there.
I didn't see it. But it was there.
Not directly behind me. Not beside me. It was in the room, filling it with its presence the way smoke fills a closed room. Something massive and black and silent. Larger than the room could hold, yet it was in it. A wolf — that's what my mind called it automatically. I didn't choose the word. It imposed itself. A wolf the size of the room, the blackness of night, the patience of entities that are never in a hurry.
I didn't look behind me. I didn't dare. I just listened to the breathing.
I looked ahead. At the wall. At the light switch.
A small white square on the beige wall. Six steps away. Maybe seven.
In my head, a simple equation. Stand up. Press it. The light comes on. The wolf disappears. Light banishes darkness and what lives in it. That's an old law — even children know it.
But to do that, I had to pass by.
Beside it. Beside that thing sitting in the darkness of the room, breathing with terrifying calm.
I looked at the light switch.
Felt the wolf's breath behind me.
Looked at the light switch again.
Six steps.
Only six steps.
My legs wouldn't move. As if roots had grown from them in my sleep.
I reached my hand out slowly — not toward the switch. Backward. Toward the darkness. Toward the thing sitting there watching.
"Go ahead."
I said it in a low, perfectly calm voice.
"Take one bite and we'll be done."
I jerked awake.
—
My room. The ceiling. The silent fan.
The white switch on the beige wall.
I stood up. Pressed it.
The light came on.
The room was empty, as it always was.
"Tsk."
I lay back down and closed my eyes.
"Two nights in a row. Looks like nightmares decided to subscribe monthly."
Lonely's corner was empty. Professor Charles snored somewhere near the door — he'd escaped Manar somehow. Three-thirteen.
And in the corner where the fan didn't reach and the light didn't fully fall, the meteor-book sat.
Still. Silent.
Patient.
An eye that does not sleep.
—
I couldn't sleep again.
—
No dream. No paralysis. No sounds. Clean emptiness. Just the Professor with his big belly in the hallway.
I got up from the floor in one motion — before I could think, before I could remember, before I could give my mind the chance to start asking questions I didn't want to answer.
The hallway. The stairs. The kitchen.
I opened the fridge.
Leftovers from lunch in a dish covered with another dish. I lifted it. Meat and potatoes. I took two pieces of meat with my bare hands — no plate, no thinking, no glance at the security monitor in the corner.
I opened the front door.
I went out.
—
He was there.
Of course he was there.
Sitting in the same spot at the end of the alley, like an employee keeping regular hours. He saw me and wagged his tail once — not with the usual overexcited enthusiasm. Once. Quiet. As if saying hey — no fanfare, no performance.
I walked toward him and put the meat in front of him on the asphalt.
I sat beside him on the curb.
The dog ate quietly. Not greedily. Not devouring. He ate with the dignity of a stray who knows the food will come again.
We sat in the silence of dawn.
I didn't smoke this time. I just sat. Watched the empty alley and the sky beginning to shift from black to dark grey at the edges.
The dog finished eating. Wiped his mouth on the asphalt once. Then came and sat beside me — his shoulder touching mine.
I didn't move.
The dog didn't move.
"What's your name?" I asked into the air.
The dog looked at me.
"You should have a name. Dogs with personality get names."
I thought for a moment.
"Donkey."
The dog wagged his tail.
"Tsk... you're okay with that? Fine. Donkey."
We sat again in our silence.
I started laughing suddenly — a quiet laugh that came from somewhere I didn't recognize.
"Listen, Donkey. I have a brother named Maytham — a dog in the literal sense of the word. I have a gecko named Lonely who lives in my room rent-free and judges me with his eyes. And now you."
I looked at the dog.
"Three dogs. Me, Maytham, and you. Lonely refuses to join the organization because he considers himself above such things."
Donkey wagged his tail slowly.
"Yeah. This is my life."
The grey rose in the sky. A car passed on a distant street. Basra sighing and starting to stir slowly — like a person who hates mornings but has no choice.
I put my hand on the dog's head slowly. Left it there.
Donkey didn't move.
"Tsk... three dogs and a philosopher gecko. Any other person would have run from this house."
I looked at the sky.
"But dogs don't run from each other."
—
— End of Chapter Six —