One Story by Itto and Mekiya Outini

The Grapes of Vindication

“You want to look sexy?” said Mohamed to Muhammad. “You’re not holding it sexy.”

The cigarette leapt from Muhammad’s mouth, plucked like a flower from the dust by the road, and was restored a moment later, this time at a jauntier angle. Instinctively, Muhammad bit down hard.

“And your hat,” Mohamed went on. “You look like an idiot, wearing it like that.”

Muhammad felt his baseball cap rotating on his skull.

“But the thing that sticks out,” he protested, “it’s supposed to go in front. To keep the rain out of my eyes.”

“What rain?” Mohamed snorted. “What eyes? You’re talking nonsense.”

“But it stings when it gets in them.”

“He thinks it’s raining,” Mohamed soliloquized, his voice bouncing back off the alley wall. “Can’t feel the sun on his face. He’s blinder than I thought.”

“That’s not the sun,” said Muhammad. “That’s your sister walking by. She’s hot for me.”

“Not my sister,” said Mohamed. “Your mother. And that heat you’re feeling, that’s her, down below. That’s a raging infection—”

He fell silent.

Footsteps scraped at the end of the alley.

“Hello?” Muhammad called.

“Would you look at that?” It was Hdou. The fig farmer. His voice was gravellier than his soil, and at the same time oddly shrill, shot through with a sardonic twang. “Blind and crippled, can’t even clean yourselves, but those cigarettes make you smell like roses, no?”

“Hey! I know this voice!” Turning to Mohamed, Muhammad made a show of crinkling up his nose. “Isn’t that Htou? Hdou’s sister?”

Mohamad nearly choked on a chortle.

Hdou said nothing. Hdou didn’t have a sister.

“What’s this he’s brought us?” Mohamed wondered aloud, craning forward, sniffing. “Couscous?”

“Smells like couscous.”

“I wouldn’t eat it if I were you,” said Mohamed. “You never know what his wife did to it, thinking it’s his portion.”

Hdou’s shadow fell over Muhammad.

“And it’s only one plate,” Mohamed went on. “There are two of us here, you know. It’s not just that you’re cross-eyed.”

“Pitiful.” Crouching, Hdou set the couscous on the dusty ground. “Seriously. If you two were capable of anything at all, if you were even capable of understanding, you wouldn’t be laughing.”

“You should come spend a day in our alley,” said Mohamed. “There’s nothing to do but laugh. We’ll teach you how. It’s not so hard.”

“Like animals.” Hdou rolled a gobbet of saliva in his mouth and spat into the dust. “That’s how you two are living. Like animals. I’m telling you, Mohamed, if you had legs, the first thing you’d do is run away from yourself.”

“Hey, now.” Mohamed’s voice dropped, all the sunniness gone. “Hey, now. That’s too much.”

“And you.” Hdou addressed Muhammad. “If you could see yourself in the mirror, you wouldn’t waste your time with that cap and that cigarette. You’d go and blind yourself just so you wouldn’t have to see.”

Muhammad bit through the end of his cigarette.

“Bastard,” snarled Mohamed. “Come here. Let’s settle this right now. That’s right! Let me wrestle you! I’ll show you who’s a man!”

Hdou’s shadow lengthened as he rose. His footsteps crunched away.

“You think you can give me your back?” Mohamed bellowed. “Is that it? You think there’s nothing I can do? I’ll show you!”

“Take it easy.” Muhammad slid out of his chair and, knee-walking, groped his way toward the couscous. “He’s not worth it. Besides, I think we got to him.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“I think what I said about his sister really got him.”

“On your left,” said Mohamed. “And no, we didn’t get him.”

Muhammad found the metal plate, warm from the sun. “At least he brought sadaqah.”

“He might just be right about you,” said Mohamed. “You really do live like an animal. Me, I’m different. I’m a man. I have the right to be taken seriously. To be respected.”

“Do you want to eat or not?”

“Give it here.” Mohamed clapped his hands. “He thinks he can say whatever he wants to us. He thinks we’re animals. I’ll show him.”

“Your problem is that you hold things in your heart. You never let things go.”

“And your problem is you let everything go,” snapped Mohamed. “Even yourself. You’d let him walk all over us. Well, not me.”

“What are you going to do? Steal his figs?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Mohamed. “No, that’s not a bad idea at all. Only figs are too easy.”

“Why?”

“You don’t have to climb,” said Mohamed. “You can pick them from the ground. No, what we need is something really difficult to steal. To show the world what we can do.”

“There are fruits you can’t pick from the ground?” said Muhammad. “Where do you pick them from? The sky?”

“Shut up. You’re making me feel like I live with an animal.”

“Here,” said Muhammad. “Have some couscous.”

“I don’t want any of his stupid couscous.” Mohamed struck the plate away. It clattered on the gravel. “Grapes, Muhammad. That’s what I want. Great, big, fat, wet, juicy grapes. We’re in luck, too. They’re in season.”

“But where are we going to get grapes?”

“There’s a guy who grows them,” Mohamed said. “Hdou’s neighbor.”

“That’s the other side of town.”

“I’ll go on your shoulders.”

“I don’t know the way.”

“You really don’t know how to think, do you,” said Mohamed. “Listen. When I pull your right ear, you go right. When I pull your left year, you go left.”

“And what if the grapes are straight ahead?”

“I’ll pull both your ears at once,” said Mohamed. “I’ll pull them off if you like. Come here. Get down on one knee. That’s right. Here, in front of me. Hold still. Let me climb onboard.”

It took them several tries, but eventually, Mohamed was able to balance himself on Muhammad’s shoulders. Because he couldn’t wrap his legs around Muhammad’s neck, he wrapped his arms around his head. This meant covering his eyes, but that was all right because he wasn’t using them. He pinched Muhammad’s left ear with his right hand, and his right ear with his left hand, and rested his chin on the crown of Muhammad’s head, and together they went like this, out of their alley and into the town.

“Since when did you get so heavy?” asked Muhammad. “Are you holding out on me? Has someone been bringing you extra sadaqah?”

“The problem isn’t my being heavy,” said Mohamed. “It’s your being weak. What good are those legs of yours, anyway? You never use them.”

They emerged onto one of the town’s main roads. Footsteps crunched around them, and murmurs wafted to and fro, and dust raised by the foot traffic tickled Muhammad’s nose. Chair legs scraped on patios. Teaspoons clinked in glasses. Doors creaked open.

“Don’t squeeze,” protested Muhammad. “You’re putting pressure on my eyes.”

“If I don’t squeeze, I’ll fall,” said Mohamed. “Then where will we be?”

“But you’re sweating.”

“So are you.”

“It stings,” complained Muhammad. “It’s salty.”

Children began to congregate around them, pointing, giggling, shouting lewd fragments of song.

“Go on,” said Mohamed. “Kick them. Knee them in their stupid faces.”

“If I try to kick them,” said Muhammad, “we’ll fall. And then where will we be?”

“Whatever. Then bend down and get me some stones.”

Ignoring Mohamed, and the hordes of shrieking children, and the neighbors watching, snickering on their patios, Muhammad forged ahead. Before long, the children began to grow tired. One by one, they lost interest, falling away. Only the adults remained, shielding their eyes and fanning themselves with languid hands. The sun hung directly overhead. The day was very hot and dry. The dust was getting into everybody’s mouths and noses, absorbing all the moisture it could find, but the neighbors clearly thought it worthwhile to take in the spectacle.

After what seemed like hours, Mohamed seized both of Muhammad’s ears and tugged. Muhammad came to a halt, trembling with the effort of standing still. Sweat rolled down his body. His mouth tasted of the road.

“There’s a wall in front of us,” said Mohamed, “and growing on it, there’s a nice, woody grapevine. Get me a little closer, and I’ll grab hold.”

Muhammad made a valiant effort to take another step, but the long walk in the heat had sapped his strength. His legs buckled.

“What are you doing?” asked Mohamed.

“I’m sorry,” wheezed Muhammad, kneeling in the road. “This is as far as I can go.”

“Fine.” Mohamed threw his weight sideways. Muhammad lost his balance. Both of them pitched over onto the gravel. Mohamed pushed off Muhammad’s shoulders and began to crawl. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “The hard part is over. All you have to do is sit here and hold your shirt out so there’s a place for me to drop the grapes. Leave the rest to me.”

Obediently, Muhammad crawled after Mohamed and assumed his position beneath the wall.

“You’re sure this is going to work?” he asked.

“Of course it is.”

“Is anyone watching?”

Flakes of bark sifted down onto Muhammad as Mohamed hauled himself up the vine, hand over hand.

“No,” said Mohamed. “But later they’ll see all our grapes, and they’ll know what we can do.”

It was cool in the shade. Muhammad cranked his cap forward again to keep the bark out of his eyes, then let his head tip back and rest against the stones. Above him, a patch of shadow wriggled against a great expanse. He wished he hadn’t let Mohamed throw away the couscous. He’d used up a lot of energy. The grapes wouldn’t be enough to replenish him, no matter how juicy.

Something landed in his shirt. A bunch of grapes. They were ripe and very large, their skins taut and dusty and warm from the sun. When Muhammad popped one in his mouth, it exploded, its sticky sweetness coating his tongue.

“Good work,” he called.

“Those aren’t even the best ones,” said Mohamed. “There are some really big ones higher up…just let me climb.”

Moments later, two more bunches came tumbling down. The third was larger than the second, the second larger than the first.

“Whoever’s grapes these are,” said Muhammad, “he must be doing witchcraft.”

“The best is yet to come.”

Suddenly, through the buzz of the insects and the distant braying of a donkey, came a third voice: “Mohamed? Is that you up there?”

Hdou.

“Of course it is,” shouted Mohamed. “What do you think, you bastard? Do you think I can’t feed myself? You think I can’t climb?”

“But I just brought you couscous.” Hdou sounded sincerely confused. And also muffled. He was on the other side of the wall. He and Mohamed hadn’t seen each other until Mohamed had gotten to the top.

“You don’t get to decide what I eat,” roared Mohamed. “I wanted grapes! I don’t want your stupid couscous!”

“But was it not enough?”

“Go to hell!”

Yet another bunch of grapes dropped into Muhammad’s lap: the largest yet.

“If these get any bigger,” Muhammad called, “I might just start feeling ashamed of my balls.”

These were his last words before the sky let loose a startled yelp, and then something the size of a boulder and just as heavy crashed into Muhammad’s lap. His body jerked, his ribcage cracking, his lungs expelling air, his head snapping back, his skull hitting the wall. Juice from the first four bunches splattered out onto the stones, and a deluge of dislodged bark came sifting down, along with broken twigs, and torn leaves, and a few loose grapes, bouncing and tumbling.

Like a twisting pillar of smoke, Hdou’s shrill chuckling rose from behind the wall.

“Nice work,” wheezed Muhammad, his voice a good deal higher and thinner than it should’ve been. “One more like this, and we really will show them.”

In response, the weight on his lap emitted only a defeated moan.

END

Itto and Mekiya Outini write about America, Morocco, and all those caught in between. They’ve published in The North American Review, Fourth Genre, Chautauqua, MQR, CommuterLit, Modern Literature, Lunch Ticket, Hobart, New Contrast, Eunoia Review, Gargoyle Magazine, and elsewhere, and their work has received support from the MacDowell Foundation, the Steinbeck Fellowship Program, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the New York Mills Cultural Center, and the Fulbright Program. They’re collaborating on several books, running an author support platform, and co-hosting a podcast about literature and the arts, Let’s Have a Renaissance.