Weeknd in a Chevrolet
Weekend in a Chevrolet
“Abdul Rahim is taking us to Fujairah this weekend. He’s got a house there. Be ready Thursday,” said Roy, glancing up from his cup of tea, the steam curling like lazy smoke in the stillness of the room.
Denzil nodded. He was used to Roy’s announcements. They came without fuss, like the arrival of desert storms — sudden but not entirely unexpected.
Roy was much older, almost his father’s age. They shared a modest flat in Sharjah where the air conditioners creaked at night and Denzil’s stereo played Santana songs when the mood allowed. Denzil, with his job at the British bank and his quiet evenings with Dirhams and letters from home, often found in Roy something he hadn’t known he needed — a stern voice when he drifted, a companion when loneliness crept in, and, on good days, even a friend and an uncle.
He never argued much with Roy. It wasn’t fear — it was something softer. A kind of trust that grows when two people, thrown together by time and circumstance, learn to rely on each other without saying very much.
And so, after work on Thursday, Denzil packed a small overnight bag — a clean T-shirt, jeans, a towel, a pack of cigarettes and his notebook. He didn’t like to travel heavy; he believed, quite sensibly, that a light bag made for a lighter heart.
By five o’clock, the sound of a long, regal horn echoed through the narrow desert strip outside their flat. Denzil peered out the window and nearly dropped his bag. Parked just outside, shimmering in the late sun like something out of an American film, was a Chevrolet Impala. Long, wide, and polished to a mirror finish, it looked entirely out of place among the sand-stained Toyotas and battered Peugeots of Sharjah.
It was the largest car Denzil had ever been in. The seats were so deep and soft that he felt he might disappear into them. The doors shut with a gentle sigh. Roy, of course, settled into the front passenger seat as though he’d done it all his life. The huge Impala sailed like a ship.
At the wheel was Abdul Rahim, cheerful as ever, his thick moustache twitching with every word. He wore a white dishdasha and a red-checked keffiyeh that flapped slightly with the hum of the vents. His round belly pressed comfortably against the steering wheel, as though the two were old companions. He muttered in broken English — half to Roy, half to the windscreen — grumbling at the Arabic cassette whenever it crackled, giving the dashboard a hearty thump each time the Cadillac bounced over a dip in the road. Both men smoked with easy pleasure, indifferent to the fact that the windows were sealed tight and the air-conditioner was labouring under the weight of the desert heat.
The V8 engine roared to life and turned heads as they pulled away. Palm trees gave way to scrubland, and the desert stretched out on both sides like a faded yellow quilt. The road shimmered in the heat, and somewhere ahead, the mountains rose like ancient grey sentinels.
Denzil leaned back, the wind tousling his hair through the half-lowered window. He lit a Rothmans with a practised flick, careful not to let the ash fall on the seat. He had started smoking to impress others — friends, seniors, and even a girl in Colombo. But the performance had become a habit. Now, smoking allowed him to believe, if only for a moment, that he was no longer the boy who had arrived in this desert land with a suitcase full of dreams and doubts.
Beside him, Roy lit another cigarette and spoke now and then — snatches of thought, a memory of Ceylon’s rains, a joke about someone at work. They weren’t conversations, just small comfort sounds that filled the spaces between men who had little need for words.
They reached Fujairah as the sun slipped behind the hills, leaving the sky brushed with orange. The house — if one could call it that — was an old Arabic villa, low and weathered, with flaking white walls and a wooden door that groaned as it opened. Abdul Rahim said it belonged to his father-in-law and that they were welcome to use it. No one asked for more.
Inside, the villa was simple — bare, but not without its charms. Three small bedrooms with cane beds that creaked when you sat on them, and a long wooden table in the living room, its surface worn smooth by time. The chairs were wobbly, the ceiling fans spun lazily like they needed coaxing, and in the corner sat a small National Panasonic TV, more ornamental than useful. The air carried a faint scent of dry timber and distant sea salt. Outside, the mountains stood silent and unchanging, and inside, that silence wrapped around the house like a soft, familiar shawl. Denzil found the quiet oddly comforting, as though the place understood that people sometimes needed space to think, or simply to be.
He went for a bath while Roy inspected the fuse box with a veteran’s authority. The tap water was lukewarm and salty, but it washed away the sweat of the road and the day.
By the time he was towelling off, Abdul Rahim had returned with dinner — fried fish wrapped in old newspaper, the smell rich and inviting. Two fish each, no larger than a man’s palm, their skins crisped golden, their eyes still staring.
Denzil paused when Abdul Rahim laid the fish straight on the bare table. No plates, no knives, no forks — just fish on warm, scratched wood. It was a first for Denzil, this way of eating, straight off the table. But Abdul Rahim was already pulling at the crisp skin with his fingers, and Roy followed without hesitation. There was no ceremony — only the satisfying silence of two hungry men and one hungry lad having their hastily arranged meal.
Roy handed out cans of Heineken. “Nothing better with fish,” he said.
Denzil took a sip. The cold beer helped ease him into this unfamiliar scene. It softened the strangeness — the oil-stained paper, the fish eaten with fingers on wood, the silence. He ate slowly, listening to the clink of cans, the crunch of bones, and Abdul Rahim’s quiet humming between bites.
The light faded quickly, as it does in the desert. Shadows stretched long and lean across the floor. The air conditioner wheezed in the corner like an old man dozing.
Then, quite suddenly, Abdul Rahim stopped chewing and looked at Denzil. Not unkindly, but curiously, as if studying an old photograph that had changed since it was last seen.
Denzil was standing near the table, wiping his fingers on a newspaper. Abdul Rahim stood and walked over, too close. The air shifted slightly — one of those moments when the room seems to pause.
There was no menace in his expression. Just something unreadable.
Roy, still at the table, said mildly, “Let the boy breathe. It’s his first time eating fish straight off the wood.”
Abdul Rahim laughed — a sharp, barking sound — and stepped back. He slapped Denzil on the back, on his pants, rough but not unkind, and returned to his seat.
The moment passed, melting into the warm, beer-scented evening.
Later, they sat outside under the stars. The night air was cool, with a hint of the mountains in it. Abdul Rahim shifted closer to Denzil, his gestures unspoken but unmistakable. Denzil gently brushed him off, saying nothing, only moving a little farther away into the shadows.
The night remained still, broken only by the soft rustle of dry leaves and, somewhere in the distance, the mournful cry of a camel. No one spoke. The mountains loomed dark and patient against the sky, and the breeze stirred the branches above them like an old lullaby. Denzil kept to himself, quiet and watchful, drawing a small circle of space around him — enough to feel safe, enough to keep the world at bay.
Denzil lit another cigarette and gazed out into the dark. He thought of home, of salt winds and crowded buses, of younger versions of himself that still lingered in the corners of memory. He had travelled far. And yet, in moments like this — in borrowed houses, beside men older and stranger than him — he wasn’t quite sure what kind of man he was becoming.
But for now, under the desert sky, that question could wait.
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