The Sunglasses Put Away for Good
Omar Khalil had worn his sunglasses on duty for so long that the men at the station could hardly remember his eyes. He put them on in the morning with his vest and his radio, and took them off only when he went home. He believed, without ever saying so, that they made him look like an officer who could not be moved. On the morning of the confrontation he had worn them, and Mariam had seen herself reflected in them, small and dark, and had not been able to see his eyes at all. She had spoken to her own reflection in those lenses, and wondered afterwards whether the man behind them had heard her. For a long time after that morning, Omar wondered the same thing himself.
He was thirty eight, and had been an officer for sixteen years, and had learned early that orders were orders. He had followed the complaint to Mariam's corner because that was his job, and given the order to clear the pavement by noon because that was what the paper said, and told Karim to get on with the job when Karim stopped to smell a tomato. He had done everything correctly, and gone home that night feeling uneasy in a way he could not name. The unease stayed with him through the video and the crowd and the morning the street bought every crate, and through the captain's quiet questions, which were not angry questions but were worse, because they were fair.
Captain Fouad Salim had not shouted. He had played the video twice and asked Omar what he had seen. Omar said he had seen a vendor without a permit. The captain asked what else he had seen. Omar was silent a long time before he said he had seen an old woman holding a bag of greens and asking what law she had broken, and that he had not had a good answer for her. The captain nodded and said that was an honest answer, and honest answers were a place to start. He told Omar to go back to the corner and look with his own eyes, without the paper and without the order. That evening Omar walked the street in his own clothes, without his vest and without his sunglasses, and stood across the road from Mariam's corner, watching her sell, watching neighbors greet her, watching Rami carry the crates and Nour count the change. He saw a whole life, lived in public, with dignity.
It took him a week to decide what to do, because Omar was not a man who hurried into apologies, and an apology, once made, could not be taken back. He practiced the words in his head on patrol and at home over supper, and every version sounded too stiff or too soft. He talked to Karim about it once, in the station yard, and Karim told him to say it plainly, the way Mariam herself would say it, and to look her in the eye. Omar thought about that for another day. Then he went to his locker in the morning, put his sunglasses away in it, closed the door, and went out onto the street without them, blinking a little in the bright sun.
He walked to Mariam's corner in the middle of the morning and stood at the edge of the chalk square until she had finished serving a customer, because he would not interrupt her work. Mariam looked up and saw him without his sunglasses, and saw his eyes for the first time, brown and tired and human, and she set down the bag of greens she was holding and waited. Omar stepped forward and said, plainly, that he was sorry. He had come with an order and a pair of sunglasses, and had seen a problem where he should have seen a person, and had been wrong. He said he meant every word, and stood there waiting for her answer.
Mariam smiled, the slow smile of a woman who has heard many words and learned to tell the true ones from the false. She said she accepted his apology, and had never held anger against him, because anger was a heavy crate to carry and she had enough crates already. She asked if he would like some tomatoes, and he said he would, and she filled a bag herself, choosing the reddest ones. He paid, thanked her, and she told him to come again on Friday, when Karim came. He said he would come, and meant it, and walked away with his bag in his hand, feeling the sun full on his face. It felt like the beginning of something, rather than the end.
After that, Omar never wore the sunglasses on the street again. He kept them in his locker. Sometimes a younger officer asked where they were, and Omar said he had put them away for good, and could see better without them. He looked people in the eye now, and the street grew used to his face the way it had grown used to Karim's Friday tomatoes and Mariam's tin cup. One morning a new officer asked why he had stopped wearing them, and Omar said, simply, that a man cannot apologize properly from behind dark glass. The new officer nodded. Omar went on with his patrol, eyes open to the sun, and Mariam, watching him pass, raised a hand in greeting, and he raised a hand back.
Chapter Thirty Six
The Shopkeeper and the Vendor Who Shared a Customer