by : Saleh Razzouk

The meteorology administration expected a hot air current to sweep the whole land. Razkou undid his shirt's buttons and sniffed with solid despair. The hot stream brought to the skies more castrated mist, and washed away some scattered clouds. The blue sky, then, looked despondent and the trees leaflets utterly frozen.
His woman said: the neighbor asks for you.
He made with hand an ambiguous gesture, wide and thrilling like this summer fogs, and moved out. There in the street, dense hot air blew over him, and he surrendered to children noise and cries. He saw the neighbor in the middle of the street, staring and spitting at ground for nothing.
- what?. Said without agitation, scratching his head as in a response to a sudden impulse.
The other uttered with low voice few words, and said spitting , every now and then, drizzle and foam from his mouth :
- Saado.. vanished.. this's his second day.
Saado the largest drunken in the estate vanished!. He considered thoughtfully, but did not say even a lonely word.
He turned on his heels and headed back home . Saado was not his business any way, although felt sad for his kids.
He said to his wife: Saado vanished.
She did not answer, yet hiccupped.
He might be in a coma in a police station right now, or in a bodega giving away toasts with similar vagrants.
He conversed inwardly with himself: what to do for him? I can do nothing but inform the police.
He walked out again. The dispersed trees in small number were standing still. In the shade of a one he saw little saado’s daughter. There was a shimmering yellowish mucus runs down from nostrils , but dust and dirt were on head.
Though a bitter drift went through his throat like a cold blade, he never ceased to advance, walking absent minded.
He ought to inform the police, only here the thing is considered solved. They would, for sure, find him in a rotten corner or on a deserted pavement, and should be, certainly, screwed as usual, shutting both eyes on stupid dreams, snoring from within with absolute tranquility and calm.
A train of children blared about and stirred dust, what made him swearing at careless mothers, and continued his way to the police station.
Before the last door of the lane, he saw a woman bending her back and leaning downwards in order to fetch her infant from ground . She was in a home dress, her rosy thighs splashed over with harmful, shocking sparks. Women business.
A cold blade like he swallowed, and a great desire brought his heart beats into a halt.
The heart itself, actually, trembled and crumbled like a leaf in the wind; then fell in a state of ecstasy.
Thereafter, some thing of him (?) primed, even his blood rushed under skin.
Sooner, all fell silent to death and plunged in a scabbard.
As though, nothing kept stirring in head but his own fatigues and the shadows of Saado, the big drunken neighbor. Where are you, now, Saado?.
Three days back from now, he saw him about mid night. His noise in the shallow darkness gave a hint of the place he came from. Another bodega of course.
Now, no doubt, he is drinking more of the fatal venom.
My father - god bless him - said once: do not touch it lad, for god sake.
And up to now his lips did not touch a pint, nevertheless, he drank other kinds of poisons : The stupid and fat wife of dumb eyes; waiting every each morning the bus among crowds, the job's desks, files and notebooks; the disgust and bores along narrow lanes; the endless children cries whom were given birth without love.
All this and that dipped claws in his neck without mercy.
Saado, alone, made a way out, but all was by drinks and leaping after prostitutes right to behind their doors.
Said he in one occasion: I swear by God my odor strangles me.. but what then?.. Dear, hear me, do as I did. Throw your dice. do not you miss a beautiful woman?.. do not bother, I fix you one for fifty a piece ; little and bright like a moon.
Heehaw- little and fancy like a moon.. He laughed without a puff of noise, but his mustaches swindled in disgust, and felt the whole estate runs after him..
He heard its bare stained feet with dirt and mud, stroll over boiling asphalt, and sensed her both fists of rocks squeezing on his heart.
He may not have enough strain to escape, and may die in it, buried in all modest grave without a tomb stone nor a name; but his dreams in a sweet woman, clean house and good children would, endlessly, pulse in his chest. A strange but gregarious feelings, of a kind he was not yet inclined to admit , though all were there deep in him.
eeh – what a good lad, rather a man of real heart. I must inform the police at once.
The policeman wrote down in the thick book some words, and said while could not stop yawning: we will investigate.
After he left the station, he figured out how much they were careless.
We’ll investigate. Repeated this over and over again, then yawned like him; and felt sorry for a useless and burnt-out case.
Doubtless, he will be back. Though he inquired: where are you, now, Saado?.
He, then, was overwhelmed with a strong will to sit with him and exchange words about secret sorrows, moreover to open the gates of burdened hearts kept locked under heavy latches for decades.
The alley once more...
It met him with the same noise, same carelessness, yet same dull and stained face with mud , dirt and refuse of naughty boys.
But, he was to come back to his senses and conscious nearby the door of the lethal woman.
She was out sweeping. The short dress showing ever red thighs as were slackened. He felt their bright shine burns inside in him, and quickens the pulse of his broken heart.
As soon as he passed, his blood sank and drowned in shapeless and hard layers of his soul and body. When home wavered from a distance, hazy and fried in the heat, he enquired once more with continuous anger : Where are you, now, dear, poor Saado?