Free The Scatter Here Is Too Great by Bilal Tanweer

again. It was really funny, that one. I want to memorize it for my friends.”
    â€œHa-ha, not now,” I said.
    â€œWhat do you mean not now?”
    â€œI mean I don’t feel like it?”
    â€œ Abay you fucked-up? Why not?”
    I looked at him in the eye; I knew he’d be sore if I refused—but I really didn’t want to talk about it, especially because I wasn’t feeling good. The old man was nice to me—I shouldn’t have said all that about him.
    I wanted to refuse, but then I just decided to get it over with quickly. The joke went something like this:
    Once upon a time a fox goes outside a lion’s lair and starts swearing at the lion who is sleeping inside: “Oh fuck you, you cur! If you have any shame, come out and get me! Who’s made you the king, you whore! Hey bastard, come now!” The lion glances at the fox with one eye still closed and turns over and continues sleeping. The fox continues to swear at the lion, and then even goes on to challenge his manhood. The lioness, who is witnessing all this, is outraged: “What kind of a lion are you? Go get this half-breed of a fox, otherwise I’ll have to do something!” When the lion ignores her as well, the lioness roars and runs after the fox. The fox dodges her and leads her into a hole in a tree trunk, through which the fox slips but the lioness gets stuck because of her bigger behind. The fox comes around and does a job on her backside—and disappears happily. When she finally returns to the den, she finds her husband angrily pacing up and down. He bursts out the moment he sees her, “Are you happy now? Why do you think I was so sleepy? I was fucked five times last night!”
    Sadeq laughed hard (“Ha-ha-ha! Five times! Fox! Ha-ha-ha!”). I turned away to look outside the window.

    We are sitting on a footpath, facing the Empress Market-bustle and sharing a glass of lemonade from the pushcart. Before us, the perennial Empress Market traffic jam: cars, rickshaws locked behind buses on the narrow strip of road, and the buses, gurring their engines as they wait for their seats to fill up before taking off.
    My head feels hot and my tears are drying on my face. The slipper on my foot seems a dead, dust-ridden animal with a broken strap and mauled face.
    It happened very quickly: I tripped and fell while trying to keep up with his pace. My slipper got lost under hundreds of feet. He had turned immediately and lifted me up. “Are you okay?” he asked in a worried tone. I told him to find my slipper, which he did. But without realizing, I was crying—my palms and elbows were scratched with blood and dust, the skin grazed and burning.
    Soft drinks are a luxury my father cannot afford, but I am a crying child, so he takes me to the lemonade pushcart. He watches me with a smile while I slurp it up. I ask him, “Baba, aren’t you thirsty?” He shakes his head. I forcefully give him a sip. He takes a sip and returns it to me. He’s a storyteller and he’s looking at the buildings, as if daydreaming what it’s like to be inside. He has receded into his recollection mood. He points me to the blue Konica 1-hour photo board in front of us. “When I was in college, instead of that, there was a horse-riding cap store. This place was the heart of the city, cleanest in all of the city. The most chic crowd came here. That building you see there was a billiard room. Expensive stuff. We couldn’t go there on our student budget. That corner store, which is selling cheap socks, was a cabaret and a bar. But come.” He gets up and we walk.
    He walks the streets with his arms spread wide, his chin cocked up. He walks as if he owns the city. We dodge a few pushcarts and he pauses to let a man complete spitting his phlegm in front of him. He stares at the man, who does not pay any attention to him. I pull him on and we then run to cross the road to reach the sidewalk