In the Public Bath

 By Saleh Razzouk (Trans. by the author with Scott Minar)

 (published in Good Works Review. issue 2019).

A missile fell on Abou Dergahm’s house in the Kalasseh neighborhood. His wife and his son had both been injured. Then the woman’s wails and tongues of fire erupted and were seen eating the attic. Just so you know, Abou Dergahm’s house is traditional. Not too many of these remained in the neighborhood. Others had been sold and changed to four- and five--storied brick structures.

When you look at Abou Dergahm’s house you think time is not moving. Even the stable is still there, despite the green motorcycle he bought, one with a sidecar to carry things.

In front of his house, the vehicle looked like a bride on her wedding night.

My wife hurried to help the woman extinguish the fire. After a while, I heard her voice yelling from Abou Dergham’s attic.

I looked through the window. Our flat was on the third floor overlooking their traditional home. From there you can see a tree in the garden resisting isolation and dry weather. And a dried-out pond. You can’t compare these arid days with that golden past when the pond was full to the brim. Yellow fish swimming in it, breathing and flapping with their gills. Those were gentle days. Each fish like a yellow weight. But today the pond looks like an open grave.

After she opened the blinds of the window, my wife said that Om Dergham is bleeding, and she pressed coffer grains on the wound to stop the blood flow. It is time to tell Abou Dergham, she added.

I asked: But who knows where Abou Dergham is now?

Earlier I noticed that his green bike had disappeared and saw the tracks his wheels left in ground. So I knew he’d left for a trip. Otherwise, if he’d gone for a walk in the neighborhood or to smoke hookah in the café, he wouldn’t use the motorcycle at all.

 bou Dergham often helped refugees move their belongings with his bike. Sometimes one family needed two trips or more. Most of the inner neighborhoods’ families had been evacuated to schools and medical centers. But those whom luck did not help, to a part of a classroom or the corner of a corridor built a tent in the park to use as a shelter.

Children of Adam need something above their heads. And maybe that was the wisdom we assume from wearing a black band, a tarbush or a hat. Something protects the head from being naked under an unexpected sky. As if to say, a head is a forbidden organ.

My wife disappeared from sight for a while. Then returned and said: Abou Dergham is in the public bath.

I asked: Which one, the Saddat?

We had an old Turkish bath in the neighborhood we called The Saddat Bath, but he lost his customers after we changed houses for flats, in buildings with stories. The foreign style. Later, it closed and had been changed to a silo or storehouse where they kept clothes, gears for antique cars that start with propellers.

Soon, my wife was disappointed after few shuttles to try and find answers. At last, she looked at the garden space of the house only, and I guess Om Dergham nodded. Accordingly, she said at once: Yes.. The Saddat bath.

• • •

Why does Abou Dergahm bathe now, at this time of day? It was around noon, but public baths are not usually available before evening. Everything had changed. After we thought we’d bid farewell to the past, here it is. Back again. Wooden logs become the thing to cook or to heat with, instead of the rare ration of oil and gas. Thus the Saddat bath opened again. Early on Fridays you can see the building’s chimneys exhale black smoke. Clouds and steam go up in the sky before they melt into one layer covering the eye of the sun. But after the crisis began, the chimneys stood cold. Some were inhabited by birds skittish or resting in their nests.

On the road, I saw Abou Abdo the butcher sharpening his knives, and between his hands a poor lamb awaiting its fate.

It was shaved and the bare skin laid bare to the watching eye. After slaughtering and skinning, no one would buy this thin skin.

I saluted him and continued on my way. I heard the knives clatter from behind. This is our life today. In every corner, we hear the clattering of iron, if not a knife striking another, a gun slipping a bullet into the chamber. Or the treads of a tank plowing the streets scarring it.

The door of the bath was ajar, and clouds of smoke blew through it. In this doomed, cold space, I asked the ticket collector about Abou Dergham. He replied: In the steam room for half an hour.

I asked to give him an urgent message. The man was polite but didn’t want to do it. He said in a cold voice, flapping his eyelashes: I cannot. Master does not allow me to leave the door unguarded. Go in and tell him yourself.

When I started to go through the archway, the collector yelled: Brother, entrance costs fifty pounds.

I had no fifty-pond note with me, so I paid him in five coins, ten pounds each, the Syrian eagle emblazoned with two open wings ready to soar.
He took it saying: The sarong is there.
He pointed at shelves like wooden steps where you find pareus.

• • •

In the warmer rooms, the temperature was fair, sun coming in from a skylight. I took off my clothes and kept them in a locker for ten more pounds. I advanced bare-chested in only my underwear toward the steam bath. There a giant stood before me, a tall man with wide shoulders. He said: Halt. Wear the sarong first.

I looked in his shaved face where a little beard covered his chin with a black halo. And asked: Why?

I considered the underwear enough. It hid the awkward place and covered the organ. And since I am not here to bathe, it means I am not going to let go, keeping the hidden areas clothed.

He said winking: Shame on you, man. Your pants are womanish.

It was a surprise. Am I really wearing my wife’s underwear. I started rolling the sarong around my hips carefully looking at what I was wearing. It is manly. But a new style. Manufactured in the Omayyad market before chaos burned it down along with the old city. A wound in heart. Aleppo has a hole placed in a black tunnel—fires and smoke surround it the same way I rolled the sarong around my lower half now. Nothing remained of those days of Karlik, Bayyada and Asselah. All died like the lamb Abou Abdou, the butcher, is slaughtering at this moment.

If destroying a city thousands of years old was not shameful, is it shame wearing a slip with fish shapes on it. Aleppo’s organ is seen in public. Is mine hidden by shorts with a new design posing a problem?

While I was in the middle of these thoughts, walking carefully over tiles spilled with hot water and trying hard not to fall, lest I go back home with broken bones and fractured feelings, I heard a song Abou Dergham used to sing when riding his bike. They were the lyrics of an old song by Abdel Waha, but with a few changes. He said in it:

I remember who forgets me and buy who sells me.

If his voice was irritating like the noise of a hammer on meat, I had certain doubts that he complained of injustice these days.

In this way, I knew from his voice which chamber he was bathing in. I went there, in a desperate effort to see something of him inside these curtains of steam and hot water. Instead, I saw his hand that wore the washcloth which seemed to me like a glove rubbing what I assumed was one of his shoulders. To draw his attention and prepare him for the bad news I yelled: Abou Dergham, O, Abou Dergham….