Where Is Manar?
Book Two: Sorry, Ma'am — This Body Is Not for Rent
Chapter Five: The Weight of Waiting
—
Sleep had not been coming easily these days. I would stretch my body on the mattress, my eyes fixed on the ceiling as if waiting for something I didn't know. Turn off the phone. Flip the pillow to the cool side. Count the cars passing in the street by their sound. Then, at some moment I couldn't pinpoint, I would drift off.
Tonight was no different in its beginning.
I sank into heavy sleep, as if someone had pressed a switch at the base of my brain. No dreams. No sounds. Nothing. A comfortable emptiness.
Then everything stopped.
I didn't wake up, but I became conscious. My eyes were open, staring at the ceiling — or so I thought. My room. The familiar cracked ceiling I knew by heart. The silent fan that had stopped a week ago and I hadn't fixed. Everything in its place.
I tried to move my right hand. It didn't move.
I tried my left. It didn't move.
"Tsk." I tried to let out the usual tsk. Nothing came from my throat.
I wasn't afraid at first. I'd read about sleep paralysis before, in some post while waiting for a customer. The body wakes before the mind, or the mind wakes before the body — I didn't remember which. The important thing was that it passes.
I waited a moment...
The fan didn't move. The curtain didn't stir. The room was unnaturally still. Not the usual stillness of night, but the stillness of something holding its breath.
Then I heard it.
One footstep in the hallway.
Thud.
A pause.
Thud.
A pause.
The sound was slow. Deliberate. As if whoever was making it knew they were being heard and didn't care. I tried to turn my head toward the door. It didn't move. I tried to open my mouth to scream. It didn't open.
Thud.
Closer this time.
Inside my skull, I screamed with everything I had — a scream that filled my head but didn't escape. I thought of my mother. Of Manar. Of Alaa. I thought that if I was dreaming, I needed to wake up now, this moment, before that sound reached the door.
Thud.
At the door now.
I heard the handle turning slowly.
—
I sat up in bed, my heart beating so hard the neighbors could probably hear it. The room was dark. The door was closed. The fan was silent. Everything as it was.
I wiped my face with my hands and let out a long breath.
"Tsk... a dream."
I reached for my phone on the floor beside my head. Three forty-seven. I looked at the ceiling. Looked at the closed door.
Then I heard it again.
Thud.
From the hallway.
I didn't move. My hand on the phone. My eyes on the door.
Thud.
The handle began to turn.
Slowly. Very slowly. Not the way anyone turns a handle at three in the morning unless they don't want to be heard — or unless they specifically want to be heard.
I held my breath.
The door opened.
Manar stood in the darkness.
Her curly hair spread around her face. Her eyes were fully open — no sleep in them, no movement. She stared with a stillness no child should have at three in the morning. Not crying. Not moving. Not speaking. Just standing there. Watching.
"M... Manar?"
No answer.
"My flower?"
She didn't blink.
My heart was pounding in my ears. I tried to smile. Tried to say something normal. But those fixed eyes in the darkness were doing something to my mind I couldn't describe.
Then she spoke, in a voice so quiet it was wrong for Manar:
"Thami."
My heart stopped for a second.
"Yes, my cupcake." My voice came out rough.
She extended her small hand toward me slowly. Her finger pointed at something behind me.
I spun around.
Nothing. The wall. The curtain.
I turned back toward the door.
Manar wasn't there.
The door was closed.
I lunged from the mattress in one motion and threw the door open. The hallway was empty. I ran toward the stairs. Manar and Alaa's room — door closed as it always was. I went down the stairs, walked quickly, and opened it quietly.
Manar was asleep in her small pink bed. Professor Charles was a ball of fur curled at her feet, snoring with suspicious contentment.
I stood in the doorway, watching her.
A sleeping child. Curly hair on the pillow. Steady breathing.
I went back to my room. Closed the door. Sat on the mattress on the floor.
"Tsk."
I stared at the air in front of me for a long time.
"Manar. I was scared of Manar. Of a toddler who chases a cat with a soup spoon and calls him Professor."
I put my face in my hands.
"Sami, you son of a — you've really made it."
At that exact moment, something moved on the wall.
Lonely.
The small white gecko that had lived in the corner of the room for months — present like his rent had been paid in advance by someone no one remembered. He emerged from behind the picture frame, walked across the wall with those quiet, slightly nauseating steps, and stopped in the middle of the wall, staring at me with his small, motionless eyes.
Then he moved his tail once. Twice.
"No," I told him.
He moved it again.
"I said no."
Lonely looked at me with that look geckos do so well — a look that holds nothing, yet somehow holds everything.
"Listen, Lonely. I wasn't scared. It was sleep paralysis and an optical illusion caused by exhaustion. That's the scientific explanation."
Lonely didn't move.
"Stop looking at me like that."
Lonely moved his head slowly toward the door, then back toward me.
"I know where her room is. Thank you."
Lonely disappeared behind the frame.
I sat alone in the room. Three-fifty. Phone in my hand. A gecko silently judging me.
"Tsk... even the gecko was braver than me tonight."
—
I went down to the street in my slippers and dirty white undershirt. Didn't care. The air at four in the morning in Basra had a particular taste — humidity and a heavy silence, as if the city was holding its breath before the noise of morning.
I lit my second cigarette.
I stood in the middle of the alley, looking at the empty asphalt. No cars. No sounds. Nothing to prove the world was still running.
Then I saw him.
The masochistic dog.
Sitting at the end of the alley, exactly as if waiting for a specific appointment. Eyes glowing in the darkness with that annoying yellow glint, tongue hanging out with a happiness no one deserved at this hour.
"You too?" I said.
The dog wagged his tail.
"How many hours have you been waiting here?"
More tail wagging.
I walked toward him slowly, taking a drag from the cigarette. Sat on the curb. The dog came immediately and stretched out beside me on the asphalt without asking, as if he owned the place.
"Tsk... don't you have a home?"
The dog didn't answer, obviously. But he put his head on my thigh with a weight that exceeded his size.
We sat together in the silence of the alley.
I blew smoke into the air. The dog snored softly. Dawn was still far.
I thought about Lonely and his look. Thought about Manar standing in the dark doorway — an image I wanted to erase but couldn't. Thought about the paralysis and the footsteps in the hallway and whether they were a dream or not.
"Listen, dog."
The dog raised his ears without lifting his head.
"Have you ever slept without knowing whether you were asleep or awake?"
The dog snored.
"Yeah, I don't recommend it either."
I stubbed the cigarette on the asphalt. Looked at my bandaged hand in the pale predawn light. Looked at the empty alley ahead.
I made a decision in that moment, quietly, without thinking too much.
"Tsk... I'm not going to work today."
The dog wagged his tail as if agreeing.
"You don't get a vote."
More wagging.
"Damn."
—
I woke at ten in the morning to Alaa explaining to Manar a profound theory about why dinosaurs won the ancient wars. I didn't catch the context. I didn't try.
I went downstairs with messy hair and eyes still carrying the remnants of a night I hadn't finished with. Found Mom in the kitchen frying eggs in a silence that suggested she had decided to ignore everything that happened last night — the wisest decision made in this house.
"Morning."
"Morning. Sit."
I sat. Ate. Didn't speak. Eating in the morning doesn't require talking.
Alaa came into the kitchen dragging Manar by the hand as she resisted with all the force her twelve-kilogram body could muster.
"Sami, tell her dinosaurs are extinct."
"Thami — no." Manar's verdict was immediate.
"They're extinct, Manar."
"Noooo."
"Tsk... you're both wrong. Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They just took early retirement."
Alaa looked at me with eyes that said he wouldn't be forgetting that line anytime soon.
I left the house at eleven.
—
The street was noisy in the usual way. Cars honking for no reason. An old man sitting in front of his house watching the world with retired-sage eyes. The smell of bread from the corner bakery filling the air. Basra in the morning has a particular rhythm — an organized chaos understood only by those who've lived in it.
I opened the salon. Ahmed was waiting in front of the door — how long, I didn't know.
"God bless you, Sami. I have an event at two."
"Come in."
We entered. The scissors started. The day began.
—
The hours passed in their usual rhythm. A customer in, a customer out. Talk about football. Talk about prices. Talk about the war between America and Iran, and finally about something not worth remembering. Ahmed photographed next door, occasionally poking his head in to say something before disappearing.
At two, a man came in wanting to dye his hair black.
"How old are you?"
"Sixty-five."
"Tsk... have a seat."
At four, Ayman called to complain about the Ragtag Organization, which had declared two seats in the back row an independent sovereign state. I ended the call before I laughed.
At six, I closed the salon.
—
I got home at seven. Found Dad drinking his second tea in front of the television. Manar asleep on the sofa beside him in a position that would worry any doctor. Professor Charles tucked under her back like a custom-made pillow.
That's your problem, Professor. Don't expect rescue this way.
I had dinner with the family. Potatoes and fried chicken this time, instead of the usual execution. Dad ate in wise silence. Mom talked about the neighbors. Alaa asked for three extra servings as if compensating for war losses.
After dinner I sat in my room. Opened my phone. Closed it. Opened it again. Nothing worth reading.
I looked at the ceiling.
Same ceiling. Same silent fan. Lonely's corner empty — the gecko somewhere I couldn't see.
Ten o'clock.
I stretched out on the mattress.
Flipped the pillow to the cool side.
Turned off the phone.
Stared at the ceiling.
And waited.
—
— End of Chapter Five —