Sleep and the Soul, page 36
Omar said, “I know.”
“Gold coins might work,” Rafiq mused, “if we can be sure they won’t turn into lead.”
Omar had never seen a gold coin in his life, outside a pirate movie. “Will the people with gold coins hire everyone in the country, and pay us all in gold before the food runs out?”
“Probably not. Do you have a better idea?”
“Why can’t we just keep doing all the things we were doing two days ago? It’s not money that makes a crop grow, or keeps a factory running.”
Rafiq said, “So if I go back to the markets, how much food should they give me, for free? How much food should the farmers give the markets? How much fuel should the oil refineries give the farmers?”
“As much as usual,” Omar declared stubbornly.
“What does that mean? No one knows if I have twelve mouths to feed, or just one, so what’s a fair amount of groceries to give me?”
“Why would anyone want more food than they can eat?” Omar protested. “It’s not like they could sell it for money.”
Rafiq said, “The black market would soon work something out.”
“Didn’t you just tell me that bartering doesn’t work?”
“Not in a good way. You want criminals hoarding food, making the shortages worse, using that to build up power over everyone?”
Omar fell silent. If there had been a drought or a plague of locusts, he could have accepted that. But for people to accept that they’d all just have to starve when there was no physical reason for it seemed like a kind of collective masochism, above and beyond the suffering that had already been imposed on them.
When they got home, Rafiq put the car on the charger; the electricity grid still hadn’t failed. The conversation about charity seemed to have pricked his conscience; he packed up a portion of the supplies they’d bought, and they walked three houses down the street.
“Who lived in 71, for you?” Omar asked, as Rafiq knocked on the door.
“Mrs. Bartoli. She was a widow, on her own.”
An elderly woman opened the door, sparing Omar the embarrassment of having to confess that he knew nothing about his own world’s equivalent.
She regarded them with a puzzled smile. “Can I give you these, Ma’am?” Rafiq asked. “I know how hard it is to do the shopping right now.”
She squinted at him, as if she was trying to put a name to his face, but then she gave up and said, “That’s very kind of you.”
She let them in, and they left the food in her kitchen. The house looked well kept, but Omar had no idea what she’d do now that her pension had disappeared into the ether.
“Can we keep coming back?” he asked Rafiq as they headed home.
“We’ll see,” he replied. “If we can’t feed ourselves, we can’t feed a thousand different strangers as well.”
After dinner, they watched TV for a while. Rafiq’s channel hopping yielded no news, and he finally gave up and let an old movie called Cliffhanger run to completion. Omar guessed the TV stations got their movies over the net like everyone else, but they must have had a few days’ worth of content sitting on their hard drives when their connections went down.
“Bedtime,” Rafiq declared, as the credits rolled. Omar was sure he resented the tedious job ahead, but at least they’d each get a chance to escape into their dreams.
He hadn’t been in his room since their trip to the markets; as he entered, he checked the poster to see what it had become. In its place were eight sheets of A4 paper, taped together into one big rectangle. They looked like they’d been printed on his computer, and they were all exactly the same.
Rafiq read the heading: “‘Solidity.’” Omar detached a sheet and placed it on the desk so he could read the whole thing properly. “‘While we wait for the old world to return, we need to hold our nerve and not let things fall apart. We’ve all done this before, one way or another. We all know in our hearts what is right. We will help those who need our help. We will ask, without shame, for our own needs to be met. We will not cheat or deceive, steal or coerce, and nor will we withhold trust for no reason. We will do everything in our power to maintain solidity. If you can, spread the word. If you can, be an example.’”
There was no author named; at the bottom there was just a large S enclosed in a circle.
Rafiq regarded Omar with bemusement. “This sounds like something you might have written.”
“Maybe Adnan wrote it,” Omar replied.
For a moment, Rafiq looked like he was going to crumple. Omar said, “I’m sorry, uncle.”
“It’s all right.” Rafiq recovered his composure. “But whoever it was, they were probably sitting right here an hour ago.”
“Great minds think alike,” Omar joked.
“Not that great, if they can’t spell ‘solidarity.’”
Omar didn’t think it was a mistake, but he didn’t want to argue about that. He said, “Is there anything here you disagree with?”
“It’s a little naïve,” Rafiq said. “But still, better to set your sights high than give up and do the opposite.”
Omar used the scanner on his printer to make thirty copies, before the ink ran out. Then they walked down the street, slipping them under their neighbors’ doors.
When he returned to his room, there was a poster of a Tunisian soccer player that neither he nor Rafiq had ever heard of. Omar took it down, and wrote out eight copies of the Solidity Manifesto by hand, to replace the ones that had vanished.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Rafiq replied. “All we can do is play it by ear.”
4
Omar cut one side off a cardboard box they found in the pantry, and drew the sign Rafiq had asked for. He said, “Once we put this on the front lawn, the words might change.”
“All we can do is check it now and then,” Rafiq decided. “And if anyone comes asking for tailoring services or judo lessons, tell them to walk around the block and try again.”
Omar put the sign up, attaching it to the letterbox. Half an hour later, the first customer knocked on the door.
“Can you repair a washing machine?” the man asked.
Rafiq said, “It depends on what’s broken, but I can try.”
The man introduced himself as Trevor. The three of them went together to the shed to fetch some tools, then they walked to Trevor’s house a few streets away.
Omar was surprised to find a woman inside, sitting in the kitchen as they passed through. Trevor nodded to her as if to acknowledge her presence, but neither of them spoke.
Trevor looked on as Omar handed Rafiq the tools he asked for. Once he had poked around for a while, Rafiq laughed with relief. “There’s a belt that’s come off, that’s all.” But the space around it was tight, and the components blocking the way were held in place with fasteners that needed a special tool to remove. He could pull and prod at the belt with a screwdriver, but whenever he tried to force it over the grooved disk that it was meant to wrap around, it just slipped off the screwdriver’s blade.
“Let me have a go,” Omar offered.
Rafiq said, “Be my guest.”
Lying beside the machine, Omar managed to squeeze his hand through the gap without quite losing the ability to move his fingers. He caught the belt between his forefinger and his middle finger, and succeeded in dragging it into place.
Rafiq plugged the cord in, switched on the power, and tried the motor. The belt stayed where it belonged, and the agitator swung back and forth smoothly.
“Good job,” Trevor said, as Rafiq screwed the back panel on again. “You want some sandwiches?”
Rafiq said, “Thank you.”
There was a different woman in the kitchen, but she did not seem surprised or disconcerted by their presence. As Trevor took a loaf of bread from the cupboard, Omar asked her, “Did you see someone else come here, to fix the washing machine?”
“Of course, love.”
“What were they like?”
She shrugged. “About the same age as you two. Pretty similar, I guess; I wasn’t paying much attention. People come and go in the blink of an eye.”
Omar felt queasy, but he ate the peanut butter sandwiches Trevor handed him, trying to keep everyone in the room in sight as he chewed the stale white bread.
They had three more jobs that afternoon: fixing a burst water pipe, reviving a failing freezer, and helping a couple hot-wire their car. The first customer had nothing to offer them, while the others paid in canned goods.
As dusk fell, Rafiq and Omar dropped in on number 71, and left the current resident, who said her name was Daniella, a tin of pumpkin soup.
“Did anyone bring you food yesterday?” Omar asked.
Daniella smiled. “How did you know? Are you working for the same charity?”
Omar said, “Not exactly.”
As he sat watching TV, Omar felt as if his chest was about to burst open. Could his father have been the ghost repairman who had pulled the freezer away from the wall, helped by his own apprentice, so that when Omar and Rafiq left the room and returned to find different colored melt stains on the side of the cabinet, the appliance they had never laid hands on was nonetheless in exactly the same position as the one they’d dragged across the floor?
He wanted to believe that. Because if it was true, all it would take would be one more round of musical chairs and suddenly he would be beside his father, Rafiq would be reunited with Adnan, his mother would meet up with Rami in Darwin, the internet would start working again, and they’d all get together with Syed over Zoom.
But why would his father have mimicked Rafiq’s actions in such detail? It hadn’t been true throughout their lives; they’d been born in different towns, more than a year apart. Whoever they were, the shadow crew weren’t puppets, any more than he and Rafiq. They all did what they did for their own reasons, and their encounters with shared witnesses like Daniella were just a consequence of their actions coinciding – purely by chance, and only for a while.
5
“That must be a Superman fan who can’t make a triangle,” Rafiq joked as they drove past the house.
“Stop,” Omar begged him. “They’re offering free apples!”
Rafiq stopped the car, but then he hesitated. “Do we really need apples?”
“They’ll go bad if they’re just left there. And we can take a couple to number 71.”
They walked up to the waist-high circle of bricks, mortared together with an S inside it; a few metal wires added extra support. There was no additional, written sign beside the sack of apples, but the invitation was clear. Omar put two in his jacket pockets, where they hung against the sides of his body, delivering enough tactile cues through the material that they were unlikely to morph into cricket balls. Then he tossed one to Rafiq and bit into a fourth himself.
They finished them, standing on the lawn, gnawing the cores down to stems that they placed in the household’s green bin that was sitting on the verge awaiting collection. Omar had been woken by a garbage truck earlier in the day; like the power station workers, and the bus drivers he’d seen, the sanitation workers seemed intent on refusing to let the city sink into squalor.
“We should ask if they need anything,” Rafiq suggested.
“Yeah.” Omar knocked on the door, while Rafiq hung back a little to keep him in view.
A man opened the door, but Omar could see two young girls and a woman gathered behind him.
“Thank you for the apples,” Omar said.
“You’re welcome.”
“We were wondering if we could do anything in return.”
The man hesitated, then one of the girls tugged his hand and interjected, “Ask him!”
The man laughed. “You don’t have a spare DVD player, by any chance?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you not have one at all,” Rafiq asked, “or do you still have a broken one?”
“A broken one. It’s pretty old, though.”
“There’s a chance I can help,” Rafiq said tentatively. “Can you watch us get some tools from the car?”
As the four of them emerged onto the front lawn, Omar saw that they were tied together like mountaineers, with a rope that ran from waist to waist. The woman introduced the family: she was Daisy, the girls were her daughters Nina and Lisa, and their father was Ivan.
Rafiq gathered his screwdrivers, soldering iron and multimeter, and they all filed into the house. Following the family from room to room felt like a strange kind of party game. There were children’s drawings taped to every surface in sight: misshapen people, houses and animals liberally sprinkled with glitter.
The family located the broken DVD player and took it to the living room. Omar looked on as Rafiq opened it up and began probing various points on the circuit-board, while the girls asked Omar questions and their mortified parents tried to hush them. “Why isn’t your mother with you?” “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
Ivan caught his eye. “I’m sorry. They’re too young to get it.”
“It’s okay,” Omar replied. “You’re lucky you were all together.”
“Absolutely.” But from the shadow that crossed Ivan’s face it was clear that he was still mourning other losses.
“How’s that?” Rafiq asked triumphantly; the player’s menu had appeared on the TV screen.
The girls cheered.
“Do you have any DVDs to try?”
Daisy laughed. “Do we ever.”
“How did you watch them before?” Omar wondered, as they all filed out of the room to collect them. The player had looked like it had been gathering dust since before the children were born.
“Through the computer,” Daisy explained. “But we’ve lost the password.”
“I could try to reset it,” Rafiq offered.
“Oh, we’ve done that a couple of times. But it never lasts.”
The first movie they tried worked perfectly. The girls were ecstatic, and Rafiq nodded toward the door, suggesting they slip away.
“Did you make the S yourself?” Omar asked Ivan.
“No. There’s a couple of bricklayers driving around, offering to build them.”
“Cool.”
They excused themselves and left. “We should get our own Solidity symbol,” Omar suggested, as they returned to the car.
Rafiq was dubious. “It would just mean people knocking on the door all the time, expecting food we can’t give them.”
“It’s not about food; it’s about trusting each other.”
“I’d rather earn people’s trust by what we do.”
“But they’ll never meet us again,” Omar protested. “An S in the front yard would mean they can trust whoever lives there.”
Rafiq laughed. “Until it doesn’t. Until everyone who wants to deceive people decides it’s a useful shortcut.”
6
The woman on the doorstep introduced herself as Leanne. “Would you be willing to volunteer to do some food deliveries?” she asked. “Once a week, just in the local area?”
Rafiq regarded her warily. “Food from where?”
Leanne said, “From the supermarkets. A certain amount of stock is still coming to us, from the usual sources. The ordering systems are kaput, but everyone knows what used to go where, so for now they’re just sticking to what they remember.”
“Really?”
“Some gets skimmed along the way,” she admitted, “but most of it’s getting through.”
“So let the supermarkets pass it to their customers,” Rafiq suggested. “If they’re getting it for free, let them hand it out for free.” Omar stayed quiet, but he couldn’t help smiling; he was sure he could recall Rafiq mocking that idea when he’d suggested it himself.
“I’m a supermarket manager,” Leanne replied, “so I can tell you why I don’t want to do that. We get rushed, we get stampedes, we get hoarders. Our workers get hurt – especially if they try to enforce limits.”
“All right, I can believe that,” Rafiq conceded.
“Even if people only take reasonable quantities, our staff can’t police return visits. The only way to get a fair amount to everyone is to subcontract that to local distributors, who can take it right to the door. Your neighbors might look different every time you see them, but you’ll still know what you’ve delivered to each household.”
Rafiq grimaced. “So you want me to pass food on to a few dozen neighbors?”
“Yes.”
“Food that comes to me ... how?”
“Our drivers will bring it to your house.”
“How will they know where to come? Whatever you write down, or put in a computer file—”
Leanne said, “I have a map of the area on the floor of my stockroom. If I put a pebble on it, it doesn’t move; I’ve tested that, it’s always in the same place when I come back.”
“So if I agree, you’ll put a pebble there to mark my house?”
“Yes. The drivers look at the map and memorize the addresses they’ll be going to.”
Rafiq rubbed his temple, clearly struggling to assess the integrity of the system. “What if someone else who lives in this house doesn’t agree?”
“Then they won’t get a delivery, because for them there won’t be a pebble on the map.”
“What if they agree, but then decide to steal the food? And people come blaming me?”
Leanne said, “Anything substantial in a different place will keep you separate from them. We’ve all seen how that works: nothing heavy moves around for no reason.”
“What about my delivery area?” Rafiq pressed her. “You tell me which houses I should cover, but what if another manager allocates things differently?”
“It will all be done with stones on the map,” Leanne replied. “You can come and see the layout for yourself, if you like.”
They went with her to inspect the setup. Rafiq examined the map and spoke with one of the truck drivers.
“Anyone ever try to hijack you?” he asked.
“No,” the driver replied. He nodded toward a crate of pineapples. “What are you going to do with those, that would make it worth the hassle? Unless people are actually starving, they’re not going to bow down to you for a piece of fruit.”
