The Radiant City Read Online Free
Author: Lauren B. Davis
what, you free later?”
“Absolutely.”
“Meet me at this bar I know. Called the Bok-Bok.” Jack chuckles. “You’ll like the place. It never closes, and no one forces conversation if you don’t feel sociable, know what I mean?”
“Just give me an address and a time,” Matthew says.
When he gets off the phone Matthew looks at his watch, an then he takes a sleeping pill and strains toward unconsciousness until evening.
Chapter Four
Saida Ferhat wakes up as alert as a fox with the sound of hounds on the wind. It has been this way for a long time, started only weeks after her marriage to Anatole twelve years ago. It does not matter that, since Anatole is gone, she no longer has to worry about dodging an early morning boot thrown at her head. Waking this way has become a difficult habit to break. She waits for her heart to stop pounding, and then slips her legs from beneath the blankets, and pushes her wide, strong feet into the thick socks that serve as slippers. She wraps her dressing gown around her and quickly braids her hair, so that it hangs in an arm-thick rope down to the swell of her buttocks. Once, her hair had been black as the inside of an ebony box, but now there is silver in it. A strand here and there, and there another. Each one witness to a worried night, a wary day. At thirty-six, Saida suspects she will be snow-topped before she becomes craggy-faced.
She pulls the lapel of her robe up to cover the scars on her neck. It looks as though the skin is as malleable as clay there, and a sculptor with no talent for creation has pushed it and pulled it, finally given up and left it unfinished. She flexes and straightens her right hand. The skin over the veins, stretched across the knuckle bones, is unnaturally smooth, and in the morning it is stiff, itches and pulls, no matter that she rubs almond and jojoba oil and aloe in each night.
She goes to the bedroom door and puts her hand against the jam as she opens it, trying to be quiet for her son Joseph who is sixteen and sleeping on the couch in the room that serves as living room, dining room and kitchen. He did not get in until too late last night, and Saida knows she should be angry with the boy, running the streets, hanging out in Barbès, smoking and slouching around like a thug. She looks at him, and in sleep his face is sweet, beautiful almost—his soft lips open, his perfect skin flushed. He looks nothing like his stepfather Anatole, who has thick features and a low hairline. Joseph looks like his father, Habib, buried fifteen years ago in Lebanese soil in a grave beside his Uncle Khalil—his eyes are thick-lashed and his nose is long and fine. Only his lower lip is imperfect. A slight malformation there; at the bottom right it looks perpetually stung and swollen. Saida has told him since he was a toddler that Gabriel, archangel of the cleansing fire, must have kissed him there. It makes him more beautiful, she says.
It is all she can do not to reach out and brush her hand over Joseph’s head, the hair fashionably shaved as though he were a prisoner. Whatever anger there had been evaporates and she lets him sleep.
Saida uses the toilet and washes her face, brushes her teeth. She then leaves the apartment, stepping out into the dingy hall. Someone has ground a cigarette out on the floor and left the butt. A filterless Gitane and so it must be the fat man who lives with his ferret at the end of the hall. A filthy man. A filthy animal. Saida uses a tissue to pick it up. The man would shit in his own bed, she thinks. Two doors down, she lets herself into the apartment where her father and her brother, Ramzi, live. This apartment is also two rooms, with the men sharing a bedroom. The main room is slightly smaller than hers and there is a table with four chairs. There is also a larger arm chair, bought second-hand for her father, covered in gold-and-blue damask, somewhat stained, and
“Absolutely.”
“Meet me at this bar I know. Called the Bok-Bok.” Jack chuckles. “You’ll like the place. It never closes, and no one forces conversation if you don’t feel sociable, know what I mean?”
“Just give me an address and a time,” Matthew says.
When he gets off the phone Matthew looks at his watch, an then he takes a sleeping pill and strains toward unconsciousness until evening.
Chapter Four
Saida Ferhat wakes up as alert as a fox with the sound of hounds on the wind. It has been this way for a long time, started only weeks after her marriage to Anatole twelve years ago. It does not matter that, since Anatole is gone, she no longer has to worry about dodging an early morning boot thrown at her head. Waking this way has become a difficult habit to break. She waits for her heart to stop pounding, and then slips her legs from beneath the blankets, and pushes her wide, strong feet into the thick socks that serve as slippers. She wraps her dressing gown around her and quickly braids her hair, so that it hangs in an arm-thick rope down to the swell of her buttocks. Once, her hair had been black as the inside of an ebony box, but now there is silver in it. A strand here and there, and there another. Each one witness to a worried night, a wary day. At thirty-six, Saida suspects she will be snow-topped before she becomes craggy-faced.
She pulls the lapel of her robe up to cover the scars on her neck. It looks as though the skin is as malleable as clay there, and a sculptor with no talent for creation has pushed it and pulled it, finally given up and left it unfinished. She flexes and straightens her right hand. The skin over the veins, stretched across the knuckle bones, is unnaturally smooth, and in the morning it is stiff, itches and pulls, no matter that she rubs almond and jojoba oil and aloe in each night.
She goes to the bedroom door and puts her hand against the jam as she opens it, trying to be quiet for her son Joseph who is sixteen and sleeping on the couch in the room that serves as living room, dining room and kitchen. He did not get in until too late last night, and Saida knows she should be angry with the boy, running the streets, hanging out in Barbès, smoking and slouching around like a thug. She looks at him, and in sleep his face is sweet, beautiful almost—his soft lips open, his perfect skin flushed. He looks nothing like his stepfather Anatole, who has thick features and a low hairline. Joseph looks like his father, Habib, buried fifteen years ago in Lebanese soil in a grave beside his Uncle Khalil—his eyes are thick-lashed and his nose is long and fine. Only his lower lip is imperfect. A slight malformation there; at the bottom right it looks perpetually stung and swollen. Saida has told him since he was a toddler that Gabriel, archangel of the cleansing fire, must have kissed him there. It makes him more beautiful, she says.
It is all she can do not to reach out and brush her hand over Joseph’s head, the hair fashionably shaved as though he were a prisoner. Whatever anger there had been evaporates and she lets him sleep.
Saida uses the toilet and washes her face, brushes her teeth. She then leaves the apartment, stepping out into the dingy hall. Someone has ground a cigarette out on the floor and left the butt. A filterless Gitane and so it must be the fat man who lives with his ferret at the end of the hall. A filthy man. A filthy animal. Saida uses a tissue to pick it up. The man would shit in his own bed, she thinks. Two doors down, she lets herself into the apartment where her father and her brother, Ramzi, live. This apartment is also two rooms, with the men sharing a bedroom. The main room is slightly smaller than hers and there is a table with four chairs. There is also a larger arm chair, bought second-hand for her father, covered in gold-and-blue damask, somewhat stained, and
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