Scorpionfish, стр. 27
I worked on my laptop and Rami read a graphic novel I’d brought him, every so often interjecting to ask me the meaning of a word. I watched his face, waiting for him to continue our conversation, but he became immersed in his book, and we stayed in the sunny studio for the afternoon, until three, when Dimitra came for Rami, inviting me for lunch.
We walked back to their place, winding around bags of trash on the sidewalk. Dimitra told me about the students she tutored, a side job. Most of them went to the prep school where Aris had also gone: basically, she said, she wrote their college application essays. There was one student in particular, his parents ran a paper company or were big in shipping, she couldn’t remember—“Does it matter?” she asked—who’d told her he’d only apply to Cornell and Berkeley as “backups,” so sure he was he’d get into Princeton or Yale. “Well,” Dimitra said.
We stopped in the pharmacy because both Leila and Rami had allergies. Rami tried to describe in English what it was that made him sneeze, and he switched to Arabic with Dimitra, who was not exactly fluent but could certainly get by, and at this moment I could feel two men glaring at us. I turned and caught one’s eye—provocation, I know. But I wanted them to see the disgust in my face.
When we exited the pharmacy, the two men—black T-shirts, black jeans, shaved heads—moved and stood in the middle of the sidewalk, already narrowed by a tree whose roots had dislodged several paving stones, which jutted out like teeth. Rami did not notice the men or their stares, or perhaps he did and had grown inured to them; he carefully stepped into the street to avoid them and self-consciously switched back to English.
Dimitra followed Rami off the sidewalk, stepping down from the curb. I refused. I held the eye of the larger man as I neared him, calling their bluff, waiting for them to part. But as I passed, one of them shoved me so hard with his shoulder that I lost my footing and stumbled on the broken cobbles, careening headfirst toward the tree. Attempting to catch myself, hands fumbling, I managed to avoid direct impact, but felt the rough bark of the tree against my cheek as I jerked and twisted my head away, inertia carrying me forward, sprawling me onto the pavement.
At first I was so stunned I could only stare at the ground. I tried to sit up, knees and hands still numb and tingling from the impact but already bleeding. “What the fuck,” I shouted.
I drew my hand to my cheek—it felt as though I’d been punched in the face—and felt the ragged scrape from the bark of the tree. I was lucky I hadn’t been knocked unconscious. My fingers came away with bright blood. I thought Rami was going to cry as Dimitra knelt down to help me up. The men watched, as if daring me. Then they turned and walked slowly away.
The pharmacist had heard me shout, heard Dimitra yell after the men, and she came out of the store. She began to assess my injuries, turning my hands over in hers, bending down to inspect my knees, brushing away some of the larger pieces of gravel.
I looked to Dimitra.
“You’re crazy if you think the police will do anything,” she said to me in English, as if reading my thoughts. “They’re on their side.”
The pharmacist brought us back inside and sat me down on a plastic chair. She carefully cleaned my hands and knees, using a pair of tweezers to pull out small bits of glass and gravel. Once she was done sterilizing the abrasions with Betadine, she applied the bandages. Then she brought out a small kit and began to clean my face. I smelled the sharp tang of rubbing alcohol moments before I felt its burn. The pharmacist was talking with Dimitra, telling her I needed stitches, as if I weren’t there. I wondered if I should go the hospital, but the pharmacist seemed skillful, albeit a bit gruff. I winced as she numbed my cheek, prepared the needle. Rami cringed, unable to watch, and waited at the other end of the pharmacy, anxiously flipping through his drawings.
“You don’t know what it’s like here, in this neighborhood, with all the foreigners,” the pharmacist said. I couldn’t tell if she was offering this as an explanation or rebuke, whether she felt what had happened was an unfortunate accident or I’d brought this on myself.
I tried to turn my head, to protest, telling her how they’d tried to force us into the street.
The pharmacist didn’t answer, told me to keep still.
“You’re Greek?” she finally asked.
“What else would we be,” Dimitra snapped. She instinctively put her arm around Rami, whose curiosity or discomfort had brought him back up to the front of the shop.
The pharmacist wouldn’t look at the boy. “You should be helping other Greeks,” she said. She had heard the Arabic, the English.
“Do you have children?” I asked.
“Three boys,” the pharmacist said, rather proudly. I stared at her thick mascara. But then she realized why I was asking her this, finished off the stitches, and didn’t say another word. I hate this way of relating, the way men empathize with rape victims because they have daughters. As if that’s the only way. But shame can shut people up, and at that moment, I wanted to shut her up. I stared at her large dangly earrings, wanted to rip them out of