A Grave For Every Floor (Short Story, part 2 of 3)
Author's Note: This is the second part of my short story about the life of a Dubai migrant worker. Read part 1 here if you haven't already. Thank you for reading!
Thursday. I’m so tired. But I’ve got to stay awake and eat.
I’ll write about some of the guys here:
Tanay, he’s from India. Chennai, I think. He came here with a recruitment fee. Sometimes he calls his family from our room. He always cries when he does.
Malik, he’s Saudi. He’s usually happy, he laughs a lot and doesn’t talk much. But this last week he hasn’t laughed.
Malik also has another distinction: he always twitches when you speak to him from behind his back. Like he’s afraid to get shot or something.
Jaser, he’s from Jordania, I’ve told you that. He talks every day now about how we need to strike. His pupils are black like coal, but behind them you can sense fervor and fire.
Rabi, I don’t know where he’s from. But he is really big and looks crazy when he smiles.
I could write about more guys but a lot of them I don’t know by name. You only keep tabs on the guys who work near you on the site, the one’s you have to carry stuff to or get something from. It’s not worth the effort to get to know everyone, especially when you don’t know if they’ll stick around.
One guy here, I think he’s Saudi, he’s been here four months, but since I didn’t think he would stay because he looked weak I never talked to him even though we worked pretty close to each other on the construction site. And now I really can’t talk to him since it’s been four months. I think he feels the same, because we tend to pass each other on different levels all the time.
Today, I asked the boss man if there was a place higher up. I just wanted to get off the ground, I said. I thought he would yell at me but he didn’t. He’d think about it, he said.
I took a break from writing just now and went to the window. Sometimes you can see the sun set over the western complexes, everything turns orange and things feel okay for a little while.
It’s my turn to cook now. Karim has fallen asleep with a comic over his face.
***
Just a quick note before I eat. A slow week. Karim says sometimes that in Dubai, the days are long and the years are short.
Today, when I went to the bathroom, my urine had turned black. It didn’t hurt but I’m still worried.
I’ve been here seven months now. Soon, summer will come and turn us all into soot.
***
Today, the stench got to me. Rabi had brought a fish that he was gutting in the middle of the kitchen. I told him it was rotten, he had to throw it away. But he wouldn’t. A couple of guys backed me up and told him to get rid of it. He lost it and started yelling that we decide things for him, that we weren’t his boss. He had the half-gutted, reeking fish in his hand and was standing on a chair and shouting.
It turned in to a major brawl where almost everyone was involved. People were yelling at each other for an hour, until the kitchen was empty.
Me and the guys who started it gave up pretty quickly but I had to go outside to avoid throwing up. But even when everyone had left, the kitchen still reeked, so I haven’t eaten tonight.
***
I haven’t written for a week. Some days the words just won’t come out even though I have my pen in hand and try as hard as I can to think of something to put down. But every time I do that, it seems pointless, like I’ve said everything before and just keep repeating my self. All days seem the same, nothing special ever happens.
I know that’s not really true. At least my thoughts are different, and sometimes that helps me write. But some days it’s impossible.
***
I’m not sure why I don’t write anymore. It just doesn’t seem worthwhile I guess. The stench finds a way in to my head no matter what. And the worse the smell, the more Karim speaks, and the less I listen. Just now, he just blurted out in to thin air about some superhero that’s faster than light, I think. I didn’t get it and I don’t really care. Then he asked me something, but I didn’t hear him. I just said: “What?” And he looked at me like I’m some sort of idiot, like it was some kind of life changing question that I needed to consider. When I didn’t answer he just looked down and mumbled to him self for a little while. And then it was our turn to cook.
***
Friday. The bus didn’t come fifteen minutes late. And the heat struck us from the start. Even Karim stopped talking. I tried to make up for the other day, and I also needed something to listen to so I wouldn’t pass out, so I tried to make him tell me about the latest issue of the Incredible Hulk. But he just shook his head. We drank two gallons of water each but my lungs were still plastered with sand and dust.
And then Karim said something: “Why are we here?” He just said it straight out, and I thought he meant “here in Dubai”, or even “here on earth”, like, “what’s the point of it all.” It turned out he meant, why are we on this place on the site, why can’t we be under a roof or in a shaded spot. But then I had already started thinking and a memory was spinning in my head the rest of the day.
I was 14 years old and dad had taken me with him to Colombo. I didn’t know why we were going, but he had spent the entire morning on the porch, just staring blindly in to the stone wall. And then suddenly, he stood up and told me to come. And we went.
He didn’t say anything for the entire trip which was fine by me since I was in a bad mood and just wanted to stay in my own head. We drove through the entire city, and I looked curiously at the tall buildings since I hadn’t been to Colombo a lot. But when we arrived, it wasn’t in the city, but rather close to the beach. It was a little, run down building, and in front of it was a rack of postcards. It was a small convenience store for tourists that sold water and beer and sandwiches that looked pretty unappetizing. We walked up to the manager, and him and dad shaked hands. “Is this your boy?” he asked dad, and pointed to me without looking at me.
He told dad to wait outside, and pulled me behind the counter. “Do you know anything about photography?” he asked me, and opened the door to a really small room, just barely able to fit us both. He closed the door behind us and opened another, and we came in to another, almost pitch-black room.
“This is my dark room”, he said. “This is were I develop pictures for the tourists.”
We stood quiet for a little while, but my eyes didn’t adjust to the darkness.
Since then, I’ve heard that there’s dark room lamps, but he didn’t have one. There was just a tiny opening at the top of the wall, and the light that came from there was supposed to be enough for whoever developed the film.
The heat was terrible and joined with a sweet, chemical scent. Since he had isolated the light away, there was no fresh air.
“If you want to, you can work here”, he said. “That’s why your father brought you.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew that dad was trying to do me a favor, giving me a way to provide for the family without working with my body. But with the sweat and the smell, I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. We went through the passage again, and when we got out to the store, I vomited on the floor.
Dad didn’t say anything on the way home either. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what.
Jaser sounds more and more desperate. He is trying to get a strike going next Monday. I’m silent at his meetings, but I am there. What do I do if I have to decide? I don’t know.