The Complaint Filed by the Man in the Shop Doorway
The complaint had been filed by the man in the shop doorway. His name was Elias Khoury, and he was fifty two years old, and his shop stood directly behind Mariam's crates, its doorway in the shadow of the awning, its window facing the street. He stood in that doorway now, with his arms folded across his chest, watching the officers and Mariam and the watching crowd, and his face was a careful mixture of worry and relief. The worry was real. The relief was real too, and the two feelings sat badly together in his chest, like two men trying to share one chair. He had filed the complaint. He had wanted the officers to come. And now that they had come, he was not sure he wanted what came next.
Elias Khoury had owned the shop for twenty years, and his father had owned it before him, and his father's father before that. The shop sold household goods, pots and pans and brooms and soap and small things that a house needs, and for many years it had done well. But the last two years had been hard. The rent had gone up. The prices had gone up. The customers had less money in their pockets, and they bought less, and they bought it more carefully, and they walked past his window without stopping, on their way to the big stores on the main road, where the prices were lower and the lights were brighter. Elias had watched his shelves grow emptier, week by week, and he had watched Mariam's crates grow no emptier at all, and a small hard thought had taken root in his mind.
The thought was not a kind thought, and Elias knew it was not kind, and he was ashamed of it even as he held it. The thought was that the crates were the problem. The crates stood in front of his shop, and the customers stopped at the crates, and by the time they had bought their potatoes and their tomatoes, they had spent their money and they walked on, and they did not come into his shop at all. If the crates were gone, the customers would see his window. If the crates were gone, the pavement would be clear, and the clear pavement would lead the customers to his door. It was a simple thought, and a wrong thought, and Elias had believed it for a month before he acted on it, turning it over in his mind at night when the shop was dark and the rent was due and the shelves stared back at him, empty and accusing.
His shelves were empty, and that was the truth of it. He had not been able to afford new stock for three months. The pots were the same pots that had sat there since spring. The brooms were dusty. The soap was down to the last few bars, and the bars were cracked at the edges. He had tried to ask the bank for time, and the bank had given him a form and a date and no comfort at all. He had sat in his shop in the evenings, after the shutters were half down, and added up the numbers in a small book, and the numbers never added up to enough. The rent was due on the first. The electricity was due on the tenth. The crates outside his door seemed to mock him with their fullness, their red tomatoes and their green leaves, their customers and their coins.
So he had gone to the station, on a morning when his courage was up and his shame was down, and he had filed the complaint. He had written it in his own hand, on a form the clerk had given him, and he had chosen his words carefully, the way a man chooses words when he knows they will be read aloud by strangers. He wrote that the crates blocked the pavement. He wrote that they blocked his shopfront. He wrote that customers could not pass. None of it was quite true, and all of it was almost true, and that was the worst kind of complaint, the kind that sounds reasonable until you stand on the pavement and look with your own eyes. The clerk had stamped the form and filed it, and Elias had walked home feeling lighter and heavier at the same time, and he had not slept well that night, or any night since.
Now the officers stood in front of the crates, and the street watched, and Elias stood in his doorway with his arms folded, and he felt the weight of what he had done settle onto his shoulders like a coat made of stones. Mariam had not looked at him. She had looked only at the officers, calm and steady, and that was worse than anger would have been. Anger he could have answered. Calm he could only watch. He thought about going out to the officers and telling them to forget the complaint, that he had changed his mind, that the crates could stay. His feet would not move. His pride held him in the doorway like a hand on his chest. He had filed the paper. The paper had brought the officers. The officers would do what officers do. He told himself that, and he did not quite believe it, and he stood and watched, and the watching felt like a punishment he had chosen for himself.
Chapter Six