Where is Manar? 2: "Sorry, Ma'am — This Body Is Not for Rent"
Chapter Eleven: The Weight of What Remains
---
I stood in the mud, watching them disappear into the gray winter wilderness.
Then I turned to Emma.
Emma was looking at the place where Dajja and Fidda had vanished with the calm of someone watching a sunset.
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't thank me." She didn't look at me. "You still owe me a meal. That's all."
Silence.
"Emma," I said. "The artifact you're looking for."
"I know," she cut me off quietly. "Sami."
"Yes."
"And Sami is your brother."
"Yes."
She finally turned toward me, her black eyes with their blue rings settling on mine.
"Interesting," she said slowly, as if tasting a new puzzle. "A weak creature, no powers, yet he hasn't lost his mind while holding an artifact of the 'Era' level... how?"
I didn't answer. I had no idea what she meant by "Era," or how anyone survives madness they don't even know they're in.
She smiled her pale smile, the one that never reached her eyes. "In the thousands of years I've lived, this kind of human is rare, Maytham... very rare."
Another long silence. I thought about the "honor of the Barbers' Union" and the disasters waiting for us.
A long silence.
"The meal," I said finally. "What do you want?"
She looked at me.
"We'll see," she said. "But first, take me to Sami."
She said it simply, like someone asking for directions.
I stopped.
I didn't think. Didn't calculate. Didn't weigh the situation.
"No."
Emma looked at me calmly. "No?"
"No."
"Maytham." She said it with the patience of thousands of years. "I don't want to hurt him."
"I know," I said. "No."
"The artifact will bring people more dangerous than me to him eventually."
"Maybe," I said. "No."
She paused for a moment. Looked at me the way someone looks at an equation that won't solve.
"You know I could force you."
"Maybe you could," I said. "Still, I won't tell you."
"Even if it costs you your life?"
I looked at her.
"Sami would grieve for two or three days," I said. "Then he'd adjust. That's better than bringing something as dangerous as you to him."
A long silence.
Emma looked at me. I looked at her.
Then something happened that I didn't expect.
She smiled. A different smile this time, smaller and quieter, but it reached her eyes.
"In thousands of years," she said slowly, "no one has said no to me like that."
"Because most of them were afraid."
"And you're not afraid?"
I thought for a second.
"I'm afraid," I said honestly. "But Sami matters more than my fear."
She looked at me for a long time.
Then she looked north, toward Sami, toward the trouble I'd dragged him into.
"Alright, Maytham," she said finally. "I won't ask you that."
"Thank you."
"But." She continued. "The door will open eventually. And when it does, I'll be here."
"And I'll be here too."
She looked at me.
"I know," she said. "That's why you're interesting."
She looked at me in a way I couldn't read. No anger. No insistence. Just a calm, deep look, as if she was writing something in a place inside her that I couldn't see.
Then she turned and began walking slowly through the gray wilderness, her black dress not touching the mud, as if she was walking on a completely different surface.
"Emma." I called.
She didn't stop.
"The meal," I said.
She stopped.
She turned halfway toward me.
"Don't worry," she said. "I won't forget."
Then she kept walking.
I stood in the mud alone.
No phone. No grenades. No bike. I didn't know if I'd passed something or lost something.
I thought to myself:
"Tsk."
"Maytham."
Her voice came from a distance. I turned.
Emma was standing twenty meters away, looking at me calmly.
"Are you going to sit here?"
"In a moment," I said.
I looked at the overturned bike in the mud. The engine had finally died. The back wheel was bent. The frame had cracks that weren't there this morning.
I knelt beside it.
"Old friend," I said quietly. "We've been through a lot together."
She didn't answer. Of course she didn't answer. She was a bike.
"But today," I continued, "I think we're saying goodbye here."
"Maytham." Emma's voice again.
"One second." I raised a finger without looking at her.
I turned back to the bike. "You served me well. The alleys, the mud, Dajja on top of you, all of it. But this relationship has reached its natural end."
I put my hand on the handlebars for the last time.
"Goodbye, old friend. Ending this officially."
I stood up. Brushed the mud off my knees. Turned to Emma.
Emma was looking at me the way an entity that had lived thousands of years looks at something it had never seen before.
"Are you finished?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You were saying goodbye to a bicycle."
"It was a serious relationship." I started walking toward her. "You can't end it without a proper goodbye."
Emma was silent for a moment.
Then, without any introduction, she smiled.
Not her cold smile that didn't reach her eyes. This one reached.
"I was wondering," she said slowly, looking at me. "What makes you interesting, Maytham."
I didn't answer.
"Now I know," she continued.
Then she turned and walked.
And I followed her through the winter mud of Basra, saying goodbye to a bike and chasing an entity that had lived thousands of years, thinking to myself:
If Sami saw this scene, he'd laugh at me until morning.
But Sami would never know.
He'd never know.
---
In all the books Emma had read over thousands of years, she hadn't found a definition for what she saw today.
A weak creature. No powers. No magic. Nothing that would make him worth noticing on paper.
But he said goodbye to a rusty bicycle with complete seriousness, said no to an entity that terrified werewolves, then walked behind her through the mud as if it were an ordinary day.
Maybe true wisdom isn't in power.
Maybe it's in being interesting even when you're losing everything.
---
I stood in the salon. My hand held the remains of the burnt phone. The customer who'd been there had disappeared at some point — I didn't even remember.
I looked at my hand.
I looked at the shattered screen on the floor.
"Well."
I sat in the customer's chair. The mirror in front of me. My face in it looked disturbingly normal, as if its owner hadn't just fought a war with a cursed entity living in his mind.
I started thinking out loud because the salon was empty and this was better than silence.
"Sami," I said to my face in the mirror. "You're a man known for your hospitality."
My face in the mirror didn't object.
"Lonely has lived in your room for months. You never kicked him out. Never asked for rent. Never even asked for ID."
True.
"Donkey eats from your hand every dawn. You never asked for anything in return."
Also true.
"Maytham disappears for days and comes back with a beard and a perforated memory. You open the door for him every time."
True, though this one doesn't deserve it.
"So." I continued. "You're a man with warm hospitality and an open house. A documented fact."
I paused.
"But."
I picked up the shattered screen and placed it on the tool table quietly.
"Since when did the mind become a hotel?"
My face in the mirror didn't answer.
"I mean, Lonely paid his rent with philosophical looks. Donkey paid with companionship. Maytham pays with headaches, but he pays."
I wiped my hands with the towel.
"But a cow. A narcissistic cow. Living in my mind or... my digestive tract? I'm not sure of the exact address. She paid nothing. Didn't knock. Didn't ask permission."
I looked at the mirror again.
"She walked right in."
Silence.
"This isn't hospitality. This is trespassing."
I stood up from the chair and walked toward the salon door. Opened it. The cold winter air of Basra entered, chilly and annoying as always.
"The problem," I said to the empty street, "is that I hosted her."
I paused.
"Meaning she's now a guest. And guests have rights."
I turned toward the inside.
"But a guest who controls your tongue, burns your phone, and speaks with your voice without permission — that's not a guest."
I wiped my face with my hand.
"That's a tenant in violation of property rights."
I closed the salon door.
I sat in the customer's chair again and stared at the mirror.
"Tsk."
My face in the mirror stared back with the same expression.
"The cow doesn't pay rent, Sami."
A long silence.
"And the bigger problem is — you don't know how to evict her."
---
I closed the salon at eleven.
I walked toward home with slow steps. Basra in the evening has a different rhythm — the streets empty slowly, shops close one by one, the light shifts from sharp white to warm yellow.
I was thinking about the cow.
Not in a worried way — in an accounting way. How do you evict something you can't see? Do I go to a sheikh? Is there official procedure? An eviction notice? A court specializing in entities renting without a contract?
"Tsk."
The street lights were on, insects circling them.
I decided to take the bridge today. And because of the son of a single mother who stole the budget, they didn't put stairs on both sides. I had to walk extra distance to climb up.
Then I saw him.
In the middle of the path, among the liquor bottles and garbage, a man lay on the concrete floor. Not fully asleep — his eyes half open, his hand under his cheek like a pillow. Layers of clothes despite the mild cold, and beside him a plastic bag tied carefully.
I stopped.
The man looked at me with one eye.
"Good evening."
"Good evening," I replied.
"Why are you standing there? Tired legs?"
I sat on the ground near him. I didn't know why. Maybe because home was still far and my mind was still accounting for the cow.
"Sleeping here?" I asked.
"Yes," he said with such simplicity it didn't ask for pity.
"Don't you have a home?"
"Home hurts the back."
I paused. "Home hurts the back."
"The high bed. Doesn't suit," he said with the tone of an expert stating scientific fact. "The ground is better. The back rests. The body knows how to adjust itself."
I looked at the asphalt beneath him.
"The asphalt is cold."
"Cold stimulates circulation," he replied confidently.
A short silence.
"I sleep on the ground," I said.
The man lifted his head and looked at me with genuine interest for the first time. "Really?"
"Years now. The bed doesn't suit me."
"Smart," he said with complete seriousness, as if I'd told him a scientific achievement. "People don't understand. They buy beds worth hundreds of dinars and break their backs. The ground is free."
"The ground is free," I repeated.
"And no bedbugs."
"Important point."
We sat in silence for a moment. A car passed slowly, lighting the bridge ceiling for a second, then returning it to quiet yellow.
"What do you do?" he asked.
"Barber."
"Good. Barbers have strong backs — they stand a lot."
"True," I nodded. "But standing a lot affects the knees."
"Knees need walking." He advised with the experience of a man who'd spent his life walking. "Daily walk. No less than an hour."
"I walk to the salon and back."
"That's not walking. That's transport."
I laughed silently.
"Are you a doctor?" I asked.
"No. But I have time to think." He said it simply. "People don't think because they're busy. I have nothing to occupy me, so I think."
"And what have you concluded?"
He looked at the sky above him.
"I concluded that people buy many things to rest, and real rest is free."
I looked at the sky with him.
"Like the ground."
"Like the ground," he agreed.
Another silence. Longer this time. Basra breathing slowly around us.
"You have a problem," he said suddenly. Not a question.
"How did you know?"
"People who don't have problems don't sit with people like me."
I looked at him.
"A cow," I said.
He blinked.
"A cow living in my mind without paying rent."
He looked at me with complete calm. Didn't laugh. Didn't act surprised. He thought for a second, then said:
"Evict her."
"I don't know how. I tried laughter — it worked once. But I can't laugh at the same joke every day."
"Like any tenant," he said simply. "Cut off the electricity."
I paused.
"How do I cut off electricity from a cow in my mind?"
He thought again, with real seriousness.
"Starve her."
"And what's her food?"
"Fear," he said confidently. "Everything that lives without paying rent feeds on fear."
I looked at the street ahead.
I stood up slowly and brushed off my pants.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For the consultation."
"Free," he said simply, putting his head back on his hand. "And walk an hour daily. For the knees."
"I'll remember."
I walked toward home.
Before I moved away, I heard him say in a low voice:
"And the ground is better than the bed."
"I know," I replied without turning.
---
I opened the front door quietly.
I looked at the wall clock. Eleven-thirty. The house was quiet. Lights off. My father and mother were asleep. Alaa asleep. Manar asleep with Professor Charles in dreamland.
I went up to my room.
I opened the door.
I reached toward my pocket automatically.
Nothing.
I stood there for a full second, my fingers feeling the empty inner fabric of my pocket, my stupid brain still expecting that familiar vibration.
"Ah. Right. Exploded."
I sat on the floor. Well, what does a normal human do without a phone at eleven-thirty at night?
I thought seriously. I don't know. This was an existential question I'd never faced before. I'm from the generation that forgot how to spend time before screens were invented. Maybe we stared at walls. Maybe walls in the nineties were more interesting than they are now.
I looked at Lonely.
Lonely in his corner. His eyes stared at me with that usual look.
"Lonely."
He moved his tail.
"Come play Xbox."
Lonely didn't move.
"Come on, man. You sit here all day doing nothing. At least watch."
Lonely stared at me.
"You don't have to play. Just sit and be present. Moral support matters."
Lonely walked one step on the wall, then went back.
"That's a clear and obvious refusal."
I nodded and got up, turning on the Xbox.
The screen lit up. The main menu appeared. I picked up the controller.
I played.
Five minutes.
I reached toward my pocket automatically between rounds.
Nothing.
"Ah. Right."
Ten minutes.
I reached toward my pocket again.
Nothing.
"Sami. The phone exploded. Stop."
After fifteen minutes, I found my hand trying to reach into my pocket for the millionth time. I shut off the device forcefully and sat in front of the black screen.
"I'm an addict."
I said it quietly, like a doctor diagnosing a terminal illness after years of denial.
"I reach for my pocket every five minutes without thinking. This is monkey behavior — press the button, wait for the banana. I reach my hand and wait for a vibration that won't come."
I looked at Lonely again.
"And you judge me with your eyes instead of helping."
Lonely disappeared behind the frame.
"Thanks, Lonely. Your support is priceless."
I lay on the floor. I remembered the wise homeless man — he understood the ground the way Lonely understood the wall.
The ceiling above me. Silence around me. My hand beside me without a phone beneath it.
I reached toward my pocket.
"Tsk."
I closed my eyes.
"Tomorrow I'll buy a phone. Final decision. No debate. The cow and the jinn and all the disasters can wait until after the phone."
Silence.
"Priorities, Sami. Priorities."
---
— End of Chapter Eleven —