Company of Strangers...a short story by Sharif Ali

For those who’re reading this in the morning, good morning, if it’s afternoon good afternoon, if evening, good evening, and those who don’t feel like wasting any more time on this and wanna get a good night’s sleep, good night.

You know, they think I’m weird cos I say all sorts of weird things and think the weirdest of thoughts. I guess they’ve a point.

In any case I’m just an ordinary guy trying to make sense of things.

Or maybe I’m just plain paranoid.

Whatever.

They say the sky is blue and I ask them how they could be so sure. And they say it’s because the sky has the colour of blue and I ask them why they think the colour is blue and they say I give them the creeps. We’re only slaves to the single person who came up with that name for that particular colour. How could we be so naïve? Well, we’re slaves to so many such single persons, right? Blue doesn’t sound bad though. And you know what I think? There’s no such thing as a sky and it’s just an open space and maybe blue is the colour of the universe. So I say the universe is blue.

I like pink (alright, its pink!) but they say it’s feminine but the funny thing is I haven’t met a single girl who likes pink, and most of them like blue and red, and some like black and green. Everybody believes pink is a girls’ colour but nobody knows why and whether it’s true nobody bothers and they just keep saying pink is for girls and blue and red are for boys and not pink. I wonder how many of those baseless superstitions exist in this world.

The other day me and a coupla buddies had nothing to do and were loitering around and Kutti asks what to do to kill the day and Lonjey, the only married fella amongst us, says we’re free people and we can do anything we wish and he comes up with the brightest idea of sitting somewhere and evaluating all the girls that pass by until no more girls come by. And then I ask him how we could be free since everything we say and do is written in the book of fate and we only do and say what’s in it and what’s so free about it? Well, that’s one way of looking at it and that’s how I look at it. And then he tells me I’m talking a load of gobbledygook.

And the next day I’m on my way to office and I meet a friend who asks “heading to office”? It’s 7.30 in the morning and I’m wearing a tie and shirt and trousers and shoes and where does he think I’m heading? To the heavens?

Last year in school the English teacher was giving us meanings of all sorts of words I’ve never come across and would never come cross ever in my life like that of Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis (he says it’s the longest English word and it refers to a lung disease and you can take note of that) demisemiquaver, Quinquagesima and the Almighty knows what else and I ask him the meaning of life. Everyone bursts out laughing and he stands there with a funny look on his face and an odd smile on his lips and a suspicious look in his eyes and then tells me it’s a peculiar question. I say it’s the simplest and the commonest word we’ve heard so far in this class and I’m curious what you think of it. And then he tells me, this aint no philosophy class, dear. Brainless little swine got away with it! He never liked me anyway.

You know, when I ask something nobody has an answer and I end up looking like a dumb butt. Everyone says everything happens in life and everybody around is real. How do they know life is real? I tell them they might wake up the morning to realise today was just a dream, or a nightmare, and that I don’t even exist in reality and they say I’m the weirdest creature that ever set foot in this beautiful world. What do they know about the world?

Here comes a simpler one. I like cheese fruit (ahi) juice and none of my friends like it and says it smells like dirt and I say dirt don’t smell that bad. The funniest part is they’ve never tasted it cos it smells bad. It doesn’t taste that bad you know.

Take my word, my life aint no glass of cheese fruit juice.

I dated this girl who says she has the deepest of feelings for me. I’m sure that’s the last thing she’d have ever said in her blinking life if she had the slightest idea what she was in for. Not to mention I also felt butterflies in my gut whenever I saw her. And our relationship had a single mode to it. Not much talk, not much hugs, not much sobs and shoulders, not much sitting at the sea and telling how beautiful the night is when there’s no moon and no stars and the sea is roaring; not much standing in the middle of the road on a sunny Friday afternoon and telling how hot the day is; not much getting soaked up in the rain together and falling sick the next morning, not much telling how good we look when we both think we look kinda funny and not much expression of warm sentiments which is always a “I wanna get laid” in disguise and the like. It was just one-on-one. And believe me, she’s the hottest thing since mechanisation of fishing boats.

You know, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, goddamn it, and she tells me I’m the most unromantic thing since flying cockroaches. I promise to be a good boy and not to make her meandering life difficult ever again. I learned after a while that she has been bedding with the girl next door, and I ask her how many times and she tells me, big time.

Aah, what nerve she has!

I cry and cry and mama sits beside me on the floor holding my hand and tells me I’m a good boy and be good to people even though they treat you like turd, and she keeps on telling me that papa did the same to her and she starts to cry and cry and I hold her hand and tell her papa won’t do anything of that sort again and she gives me a what-do-you-know-about-papa kinda look and she cuts her waterworks after an hour or so.

Then there was my friend who was boasting the most romantic and the most faithful and honest bloke a girl of age 20-21 could hope to have, and I ask her why she’s so sure he aint sleeping around. And boy was she mad. She says she wanna yell at me all the bad things that come to her mind and that nothing much comes to her mind except I’m the most cynically unbearable prick she has ever known and she says that to me seven or eight times and hangs up. Three and a half years later it was none other than her on the phone to break the news and says she was the only person who didn’t know about it and cries a bucket full of snot and hangs up after a coupla hours.

They say love is the most beautiful thing in the world and it makes you real happy. Well, if beautiful means making love an excuse to getting laid and lying and sleeping around and hurting, yeah, love is darn beautiful.

Sometimes I feel placing faith in humans is the worst blunder humans make. It’s amazing how often you get the most let down by the ones you’ve trusted the most, and how commonly we have to say, I never expected this of you. Yes, you never know. They may be your soul-mates but who knows what they’re thinking. But I dare not mention this to anybody.

The other day a chum of mine with whom I’ve lost touch for some time zooms on his motorbike as if he just got outta jail, and I wave my hand and as soon as he catches sight of me he yells at the bottom of his lungs “Hey, how ya doing” and before I could respond he is way beyond sight. Well, it’s nice to hear somebody ask that but it goes without saying, “Listen, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you’re doing fine but since we’ve bumped into each other after a long while I think it’d be nice to ask how you’re doing, so how’re ya doing?” It’s just a courtesy but I think there’re better things to say if you wanna be courteous rather than asking how somebody is doing while you don’t care. Just a hello will do and if he or she looks as if expecting something more you can simply say, I don’t know what to say first since I’ve so much to tell you and will give you a ring later cos I’m in a hurry and then get the heck outta their sight. Whether you wanna call or not is another matter.

Maybe I should show some respect to human superficiality.

And then there were our neighbours who came over and we had nothing much to offer except for some pudding, and then they raved about the taste. What pretence! Believe me, my mama makes the worst pudding.

They give you a grin from ear to ear and say the sweetest things but deep down they hate your guts and talk behind your backs. But I think it’s best if we acknowledge that superficiality and live life cos if we had a sixth sense to read minds and hearts the chaos we’re up for is beyond imagination. Of course we don’t wanna ruin the existing shallow harmony.

And who knows whether they actually set foot on the moon? You see such stuff in the movies and they can create it in credible fashion; people fly, people survive explosions happening at their feet, reanimate the dead, so why can’t they do it in the news? Technology makes your day! We only believe what they say and what they show. Why should we? Who knows Gulf War actually happened? Maybe it was just created to unite the Western world against Islam, Saddam to be precise. And they ask me how I could possibly not believe it.

For me the world is only an illusion. I think there’re two concepts of reality. Reality and actual reality. It’s hard to draw a distinction between them. What we see is reality, actual reality is a different thing all together. Sometimes I feel it’s all a make-believe and no actual reality exists. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. It won’t get me anywhere cos it’s just the way things are. Maybe it all happens in the best interest of human well-being. Maybe it’s how God wants things to happen. Maybe I should just keep my frigging mouth shut.

(This short story was published in Haveeru Daily, Maldives leading daily newspaper, on 10 Jan 2003)