Two Rivers - pt. 6

Alam Zawar
32-A Sarwar Shaheed Rd, Icchra
Lahore, Punjab
Pakistan

5th May 2007

Dear Alam,

As Salam Au Alaykum my brother. If god wills, this letter will find you in good health. It’s been so long since we talked. You’ve been in Lahore for at least a year and a half now, and I hope you still remember the home you have in Swat. I know that you were angry with me when you left, but I hope that god has given you the strength to forgive.

I am writing this letter with the help of Mullah Ibrahim, who has become my mentor over the past months. He has instructed me to find peace with all those I have wronged. I’m sure that Mina has told you that I left our home and spent the last winter in Matiltan. Here, Mullah Ibrahim has opened a new madrasa that is teaching children our age the true word of god and the prophet (peace be upon him). I’m here with many children from the nearby villages and farms. We spend the day in classes and then help with chores afterwards.

Every evening after maghrib prayer, I bring tea and snacks to the main room. Here, Mullah Ibrahim and other enlightened people sit together and listen to a radio show hosted by Mullah Fazlullah. He is a wise man with some ideas on how to improve the state of our country and bring us closer to god. If possible, I recommend that you find a way to listen to his broadcasts and share them with your friends.

Once again, I hope you are in good health.

Jamal.

P.S. Alam, I am so sorry that you had to go to Lahore because of me. I hope you come back soon! I don't think Abu is angry at you anymore. He's angry at me now. Did Mina tell you anything? He was so mad when I left. I asked him if I can spend the winter at the madrasa, but Abu hates Mullah Ibrahim. He yelled at me and beat me with his stick. I ran out of the house and couldn't even take any clothes like you did. It's okay. Like the Mullah says, god sees all.

June 2007  

Raj and I were careful as we made our way through the scrapyard. A dirt path wound between towering piles of rusty metal to either side; you never knew if something had fallen and was waiting to cut your foot. I'd learned that the hard way.

I stopped at a promising spot and started digging with my hands, pulling at any pipe I could find. Most of them didn't budge. They were still connected to bigger parts that were buried deeper in the pile. I didn’t have a saw, so I just left those ones. The others were usually either for cars or had too many holes. But I got lucky occasionally and found one that was useable. They had to be in pretty good condition for us to use. Uncle Masood would tell the customer that they were getting used parts, but the customer still expected them to look good and last long.

I only found two in that spot. Even though the sun would be setting soon, the metal was still hot. So, I held the pipes with a greasy rag and stepped carefully off the pile, making sure that the base of my slippers was the only thing touching the scrap.

A little boy, his hair dirty and his eyes large, was standing on the path as I came down.

“You shouldn’t be here.” I’d seen what the scrapyard owners did to scavengers that braved the fence. He didn’t say a word, and with one finger in his mouth, held out his other hand. He’d found a chain. I was impressed, it was hard to find an entire chain. Then he took his finger out of his mouth and extended a palm – covered in cuts, burns and grease.

“I don’t have any money.” But that didn’t matter. He just stood there with two arms extended. I ignored him and continued down the path. He followed.

By the time maghrib azan sounded in the distance, I had found five pipes and a few guards that were still usable. These had all gone into the bag on my back. I started down the path, it was time to head home. The boy, who had stopped whenever I did and scrounged through the piles next to me, followed. At the entrance to the scrapyard was a large clearing where they kept the mostly intact vehicles. There were piles, literally piles, of cars. A big crane would lift one up and just drop it on top of the others. Whenever we came to the scrapyard, Raj and Naveed spent most of their time taking apart the rickshaws here.

As we approached the clearing, the boy tugged my shirt. I ignored him, but he persisted. “I told you, I don’t have any money!” I knocked away his hand. He pointed with his other, which was still holding the chain. It took me a while to see what he was pointing at but when I did, I gasped and clambered up the metal. He’d found an engine.

Uncle Masood, and other repair shops, had an agreement with the scrapyard owners. We paid them every month to scrounge through the scrap whenever we wanted. We even paid a premium fee which meant we could take apart the rickshaws and cars at the front. But the scrapyard owners were tricky people, and they always took the good parts out as soon as they got the vehicle. Then they would sell them at very high prices. “May as well buy it new.” Raj would say.

It took a while to dig the engine out, but the effort was worth it. It was shiny and pristine! It must’ve been dumped here recently, though I couldn’t figure out who would just throw it away. It was very heavy, which was a good thing – because it meant that the insides hadn’t been taken. And I was sure that it was a for a rickshaw, with just one big rectangular part where the piston would be.

Taking the engine back to the clearing was hard, especially because my bag was already full of heavy guards that stabbed my back. But I managed. And as I crossed, people who had been hurrying to find what they could before dark stopped and stared. I grinned at them. Raj saw me on my way and shouted, “that’s my boy!” He ran to me.

"Hurry, take it before it drops!" My hands were slipping.

“How’d you find this? It looks new!” He hugged it, taking it off my lap and into his.

I turned to show him the boy, but he was gone.

“Oi Naveed, look what Alam found!” Raj said, walking towards a pair of legs underneath a rickshaw.

“Oh mashallah!” Naveed exclaimed as he peeked his head out. He stood up, wiping his hands with a rag. Then him and Raj started fiddling with the engine. “Well done Alam.”

“Masood will be happy eh?”

“Yes, let’s get going. We’re late for maghrib.”

We put all of the things we’d found in the back of Uncle Masood’s jeep, which was covered on all sides with cloths (to stop it from getting greasy). Naveed drove that. Raj and I got on his motorcycle.

The streets were busy as people went to the mosques for prayer. But on the motorcycle, Raj swerved this way and that, driving between cars and carts and cows. I loved the motorcycle. It was so much better than a car, with all its walls. On a motorcycle, you could feel the wind and hear the people. Also, we’d get home a half hour before Naveed.

Raj was right. Uncle Masood was happy. When he saw the engine, he said “well done son” and patted my back. It wasn’t much. But from him it was a lot.

The next day I squatted by the gate wiping yesterday’s pipes with a cloth and some cleaning spray, scrubbing hard to get the rust off. I could hear them chattering and laughing as they marched down the street. So, I turned and faced the wall. When Danish’s friends got to the open gate, they just walked right in and stood in the courtyard being noisy. I could feel their eyes on me, but I ignored them. You would think that they’d be used to seeing me working here, the way they’d come and stare every day of the summer. But it didn’t matter. Every single time, I was something to laugh at as they walked out. They were idiots.

Danish was taking forever so Feroz, his right-hand man, stepped up to the closed door of the house and shouted, “Danish come on!”

“Can’t you give me a minute you idiot?” came the distant response.

Then Danish burst through the door, his mom scrambling behind him with a cricket bat and ball in her hands. He was wearing his Pakistan team clothes – the ones Aunty Asma had got him last year. But he’d grown since then, and you could see his belly and chest jiggling as he jumped down the stairs in front of the house.

“You boys be careful now,” Aunty Asma said as she gave the bat and ball to Feroz, who smiled like an angel.

“Thank you, Aunty!”

Even after she’d left, they stood there talking and laughing for way too long. Only when someone finally said, “let’s go already!” did they slowly start leaving the courtyard.

“Wait.” And they stopped. “We only have nine people.” I hadn’t heard this voice before, so I peeked a look and saw that it belonged to a tall boy with long black hair combed neatly to the right side of his face. He was the kind of person that's hard to look away from.

“Okay, so?” Feroz said.

“It means we’ll have uneven teams…”

“Oh, that doesn’t really matter, we’re just going to hit the ball.”

“Don’t you play matches?”

“Of course we do!” Danish interjected. “We always play matches. Like Pakistan vs India.”

“Okay, so it’ll be unfair if I play. I’ll just watch.”

“No Hamza, you should play! Jamal can watch.”

“Hey! why me?”

“You can be the commentator.”

“I don’t want to be the commentator!”

“Just shut up and do it!”

“Hold on, why don’t we get another person so all of us can play?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s stop by Ali’s house and ask him.”

“Didn’t he say his family is hosting people?”

I heard footsteps walking towards me.

“Wait, is he going to ask your servant?”

“Hamza!”

A shadow fell across me and I looked up to the silhouette of the boy offering his hand. “As Salam Au Alaykum, I’m Hamza. Do you want to play cricket with us?”

“Hamza, he can’t play cricket!”

“He’s a pathan!”

“That’s okay, we can teach him. Have you played cricket before?”

I nodded.

“He’s Danish’s servant!”

“Yeah. My mom and dad won’t let him, he has to work.”

“Oh, I see…Maybe I’ll ask your dad just to make sure. Come on.”

I got up and followed him. And we were followed by everyone else as he crossed the courtyard to where Uncle Masood was talking with Raj.

“As Salam Au Alaykum Uncle.”

“Wa Alaykum As Salam.”

“Uncle, can we borrow – sorry, what’s your name?”

“Alam”

“Uncle, we don’t have enough people to play cricket so we were hoping Alam could take a break from work and come to play with us.”

Uncle Masood looked surprised, but he nodded and said “Sure, have fun.”

“Thank you! Come on, let’s go.”

And just like that, I was following Danish and his friends through the streets. They forgot about me soon enough, and then they were bickering and arguing about who was better at this or that.

There was something about Hamza that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I watched from behind as the other boys took turns talking to him. He was taller than all of them, and much cooler, like there was a certainty in his footsteps. He didn’t talk much, but always seemed to listen. And when he did talk, everyone (even the boys that weren’t near him) listened. He turned around a few times to look at me, but whenever our eyes met I looked away.

We walked through the narrow streets and alleys in the neighbourhood, following Danish and Feroz’s confident lead. I’d never been this way. But it looked just like the streets closer to home. Small, brick houses were clumped together in a jumble of shapes. Electric lines crisscrossed overhead, below a sea of kites as men on the roofs shouted, trying to bring each other down. There were sounds of life behind the walls. The sweeping of a broom, voices of children fighting over toys or of wives yelling at husbands behind glassless windows. Windows covered with a thin cloth that blew in the wind and showed glimpses of walls and peeling paint.

People were on the uneven brick streets too. Some walked calmly, others ran. All of us moved aside whenever a car appeared from an intersection and honked. The canal, a little ditch by the houses with black, stinky water running through it, followed us as we went. It disappeared occasionally, only to reappear as we came onto a new street. We went through a gap between two houses so small that we had to walk in a single line, garbage scrunching beneath our feet. Danish swung his bat at a dog, scaring the beast away. We climbed an old short wall in the middle of the alley. And over it, we came to a wide road with cars speeding by.

Across the road was a large field with patches of grass and weeds spread between patches of dirt. There were several areas that had been flattened in a long rectangle and were obviously made for cricket. A lot of these pitches were occupied with bowlers and batsmen. Their fielders all mingled together and it was impossible to tell who was part of which game. Danish stopped at a small, empty one between two intense matches. At the end of the pitch there was a messy pile of bricks. Feroz squatted down and stacked them into a wicket.

Everyone made a little circle and I stood just outside it.

“Okay, I’m Team Pakistan’s captain!” Danish declared, pulling on his team clothes.

“So, who wants to be captain for Team India?” Feroz asked, and everyone sniggered.

“No one wants to play for Team India!”

“If we make a Team India they’ll lose on purpose!”

“Why don’t we make a Team England?” Hamza suggested.

“Okay, I’ll join if you’re captain!”

“Hamza’s going to be Michael Vaughan!”

“And Danish is going to be Inzamam!”

“No, I want to be BOOM BOOM Afridi.”

“But you look like Inzamam.”

“Shut up Jamal.”

“Okay, so who wants to be on Team England?” Hamza said, and stood a bit to the side.

A couple of boys glanced at Danish before saying “Me!” and joining Hamza.

Hamza looked at me and said, “Alam, why don’t you join my team too?”

Everyone stared. They’d forgotten I was even there. But I nodded and walked towards Hamza’s group, surprised that he’d remembered my name.

“Hamza, he doesn’t know how to play!” One of my teammates whispered.

“That’s okay, we can teach him, right?”

“Fine, and Jamal you join that team.” Danish said.

“But I want to be in Team Pakistan!”

“Just shut up and go, you’re so annoying!”

“Okay…” And then we had our final, reluctant team member.

“Okay, Team Pakistan has won the toss and has elected to bat!” Danish declared, raising his bat in the air.

“You didn’t even do a toss!” One of the boys from our side said.

“So what? It’s my bat I get to choose.”

“I think we should do a toss. It’s more fair.” Hamza said.

Danish scowled. “I don’t have a coin.”

“Oh, that’s okay! Here, pass your bat.” Danish reluctantly gave the bat to Hamza. “Okay, do you want the flat side or the back?”

“Flat.”

“Okay, watch out.” Hamza stepped back and tossed the bat in the air. It span several times before landing flat side down.

My teammates cheered.

“Okay, so Team England has won the toss…What do you guys think we should do?”

“Bat!”

“I want to bat! Let’s bat!”

“Okay, I guess we’ll do that. We’ll be batting.”

Poor Danish looked furious. He was too fat to do anything but bat.

“Fine, but it’ll be five overs per innings.”

“I think five is a bit short. We should let everyone bowl two overs so I think ten overs makes sense.”

“Ten overs sounds good!” Someone shouted.

“We should go up to fifty!” Someone else replied.

“That’ll take too long, idiot!”

“What about Twenty Twenty? We can do twenty overs!”

“Why don’t we do ten first and see how long it takes? We can decide after that?” Hamza said.

“Fine. We’ll get you out before then anyway.” Danish said.

Hamza, Jamal and I stood by the road, outside the field, while our other two teammates went to the center and started tapping the pitch with the bat. They only had one bat and it looked like they got into an argument about who would get to use it first. When they finally started, us three sat on the ground and watched as they continuously swung at the ball, missed and then cried “wide!”

“Hey Hamza, do you like Pokémon?” Jamal asked.

“Pokémon? What’s that?”

“Look, it’s these cards!” Jamal reached in his pocket and pulled out the cards that Danish’s friends were always arguing over. “See, there’s all these different types. This one is grass and this one is electricity - see how it’s yellow? Look, this one is super rare, that’s why it’s shiny. I had to trade three cards to get it!”

Hamza took one of the cards. “What do the numbers mean?”

“That’s their strength. See like that one only does thirty damage, but this one can do eighty.”

“It says something else here…If the defending Pokémon attacks Persian during your opponent's turn…”

“Oh just ignore that. It doesn’t mean anything. See this is their health and then you attack with this number and try to kill them. Like my card can kill yours in one hit.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair.”

“No. But it’s hard to find good cards, right? Like I had to trade a lot of cards to get this one.”

“I see. What do these stars mean?”

“Oh I don’t know. I think it’s just decoration. It’s the same symbol as the energy cards.”

“Energy cards?”

“When you buy cards, they come with energy cards. They’re pretty useless so we usually just trade them. Some people are dumb and will give you a good card for all of your energy cards.”

“Oh no!” Said Hamza, standing up. The batsmen had hit the ball high in the air, and with a bunch of shouting, someone managed to catch it. “Oh, that sucks! Who wants to bat next?”

“I do!” Jamal shouted, and ran onto the field.

“Do you want to go after him, Alam?”

“If you want to me to.”

“Of course. It’s your turn!”

“Oh I guess. To be honest I haven’t played cricket before.”

“Really? But it’s so much fun.”

“My friend Bilal and I used to play it with apples and sticks, but we didn’t have a bat or ball so we couldn’t actually play.” He wouldn't stop looking at me, so I turned to the ground and scratched it with a twig.

“I see.” He said.

Within a minute of the new batsmen starting, everyone on the pitch was shouting and celebrating.

“Oof, he’s out.” Hamza said. “Okay, it’s your turn. Go on.”

I nodded, and walked out to the pitch. Jamal was still there.

“It didn’t hit my bat!”

“It’s an edge dummy, an edge!”

“But it only hit my leg!”

“Are you stupid? How did it get to first slip if it only hit your leg?”

“I swear!”

“Shut up Jamal, you’re out!”

“Fine!” He threw the bat on the ground and stormed off the pitch.

Everyone was staring at me. When I picked up the bat, they started jeering.

“It’s the pathan boy!”

“Do you even know how to play cricket?”

“Does he even know what a bat is?

“Or a ball? Or a wicket?”

“Okay boys! Let’s keep playing our game! We almost have them all out!” Danish shouted, clapping his hands and playing captain.

The bat was heavier and longer than I thought it would be. It was awkward to hold. And when I stood in front of the wicket and smacked it on the ground like I’d seen everyone else do, the boy standing behind me laughed. “He’s not even holding it right!”

I ignored him, and focused on the other boy that was running towards me. When he let go of the ball, it whizzed past way faster than I had expected. The next one did the same. The third time, I felt readier. But after it hit the ground, the ball turned sharply and unexpectedly. And then everyone was shouting. I looked behind me, and saw it sitting in front of the brick wicket.

“Sorry,” I said to Hamza when I met him halfway off the pitch.

“Don’t worry about it.” He smiled and patted my shoulder.

Hamza was really good. He never missed the ball. And he swung the bat like a twig, like it didn't weigh a thing. He would hit the ball over their heads or through their feet, and then shout "one" or "two" before sprinting across the pitch. His partner was pretty good too. Danish's team had been so excited when I got out – they only needed one wicket before it was their turn to bat. But they didn't get it. Hamza and the other boy batted the whole time. And Danish's teammates found themselves chasing the ball all over the place, even into other games.

When the overs finally ran out, Danish and his team looked so relieved I almost laughed. We all met again and made a circle in the middle of the pitch.

“Okay, so we made twenty-seven runs, you guys need twenty-eight to win.” Hamza said.

“Easy.” Danish said. “Come on! Pakistan Zindabad!” He raised his chubby fist in the air, and his team mates shouted the same. Then he went to stand by the wicket and started smacking the ground with his bat. Apart from one who stayed at the other end of the pitch, the rest of his teammates went off to sit at the edge of the field.

“Okay, we have to bowl ten overs. Do you guys want to do two each? They were meant to do that, but they didn’t. I think one of them bowled five.”

“He shouldn’t bowl.” One of the kids said, pointing at me.

“Yeah, he sucks.”

“He probably does the fake action.”

“Hey! He’s our teammate. Alam, do you want to bowl?” Hamza asked.

I shook my head. I knew I couldn’t throw the ball that fast, or properly. Bilal and I would always just chuck apples at each other.

“Are you sure? You can try it for one over.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to.”

“Okay. I guess us four will just split the overs. Who wants to go first?”

“I do!”

“Okay, let’s set the field.”

We all stood where Hamza told us to. I ended up in front of the batsmen, near the bowler. Fielding was much easier than batting. I could run faster than most of these other boys, and I was used to catching and throwing stuff. This field did make it harder though. Sometimes the ball would be rolling towards you, and then it’d hit a bump and fly in the air. Sometimes it rolled onto the pitch of another game, and I had to apologize and make sure I wouldn’t run into one of those players before grabbing it.

After a few overs, we’d gotten two of their batsmen out and Danish hit the ball near me. “Throw it at the wicket!” Someone shouted as I picked it up. I was surprised – Danish didn’t run unless he’d hit the ball far. But there he was, hobbling slowly across the pitch. I almost felt bad as I took aim and threw. It hit the bricks directly, and Danish was only halfway across. My teammates shouted in celebration.

“Nice throw Alam!” Hamza said as he ran over and patted my shoulder.

Danish finally crossed the pitch and shouted, “not out!”

“That was a great throw!” One of my other teammates said.

“Direct hit!”

“Oi, I’m not out you idiots!” Danish cried.

“No, you’re out!”

“I crossed the crease!”

“But the ball hit the wicket first!”

“No, it didn’t! I crossed the crease. My bat was over the crease. I’m not out!”

“That’s not true!”

“I’m not out!”

“Danish you’re definitely out. You were nowhere near the crease.” Hamza said.

The rest of Danish’s team had run to the pitch.

“I’m not out, right guys?” Danish asked.

“Yeah! Your bat was over the crease.”

“Danish, come on. Don’t be a cheater.”

“I’m not cheating! I’m not out!”

“Danish come on…”

“Shut up! This is stupid.” Danish threw his bat on the ground. “You guys are cheating, I’m going home!” He stormed off the pitch. The rest of his team followed him across the field.

“Well I guess we’re done.” Hamza said, and laughed.

I stayed behind the group as my team walked home. They all surrounded Hamza and took turns talking to him. When we reached the road, I realized that Danish had left his bat and ball behind. So, I ran back to get them. By the time I got back to the road, everyone had disappeared.

Then my heart dropped in my chest. Across the road was a maze of houses and streets. And I had no idea how to get home. There was nothing for it. I just had to walk in and try my best to remember. I knew we’d turned right to come onto this street, but was it off the first alleyway? No, that looked too big. The next one? Could be it. But I didn’t remember that house with the green gate, maybe the next one. Everyone else on the uneven brick road was walking with such confidence, even though none of the side roads had any signs. The only reason I knew that Uncle Masood’s house was on Sarwar Shaheed Road was because of Mina’s letters. I’d never seen a sign.

I was just about to ask someone for help when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Hey Alam!” It was Hamza. He’d just appeared from the street I’d passed two alleys back. He ran towards me. “Hey, where are you going?”

“Back home…”

“Oh, you’re going the wrong way. I noticed we’d left you behind and I didn’t know if you knew how to get back. Come on, we should go this way.” I followed him, and we were silent for a while.

“Why are you helping me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Danish’s friends usually ignore me, they call me a Pathan.”

“Oh, are you a Pathan?”

“I guess…I don’t know what that is.”

“Okay, but you’re not from Lahore, right?”

“No.”

“See, I knew you looked different! And you speak kind of funny. Sorry, I don’t mean that in a bad way. I understand you fine - your Punjabi is good. But it’s not like how we speak it.”

“I only started learning it after I came here. My mom and dad don’t speak it.”

“Oh, I see. What do they speak?”

“Pashto.”

“Pashto? So, you are a pathan after all.”

“If you say so.”

“Are you from the Frontier Province?”

“Yeah, from Swat.”

“Oh, my mom’s told me about Swat. You guys don’t play cricket in Swat?”

“We do! Well sort of. I never had a bat and ball, so Bilal and I used to play with sticks and apples.”

“Oh yeah you told me. Apples don’t bounce do they?”

“No, we’d just throw them at each other.”

“No wonder you’re so good at throwing the ball! That was a great throw to get Danish out.”

“Not really, he’s so fat.” Hamza laughed. “He’s so fat I could stop and take aim and there was no rush at all.”

“He is pretty fat isn’t he.”

“He is! You should see how much he eats. You know, his mom packs two lunches. One of them is for me, but he eats both.”

“Wow, don’t you get hungry?”

“No, I’m fine. But he needs to eat. He needs the energy to watch TV all day.”

“Oh yeah, I imagine he watches a lot of TV. What was up with that Pokémon thing those guys kept talking about? Do you know anything about it?”

“No, I think it’s a TV show.”

“I see. Doesn’t he have to do chores and stuff? My mom is always making me do chores.”

“No, he doesn’t do any work.”

“No wonder he’s so spoiled.”

“Why were you hanging out with those guys anyway?”

“Why not? They asked me to play cricket with them, and cricket is always fun.”

“But they suck, they’re so annoying.”

He laughed. “They’re okay I guess. I can see why you don’t like them. They’re pretty mean to you.”

“No, you just haven’t gotten to know them. If you did, I bet you’d never hang out with them again.”

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it. My imam always tells me to keep an open mind to everyone.”

“What do you mean open mind?”

“Oh, like you should give everyone a chance.”

“Okay…My Nano would say the same thing. But I did give them a chance, and they suck.”

“Your Nano is back in Swat? Is all of your family there?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t know, I got in trouble. And my Dad wanted me to study in Lahore.”

“So, he just sent you here alone?”

“Yeah, there was a bus and this guy tried to take all my money and it’s a long story.”

“What happened?”

So, I told him. I told him about Uncle Zubair and how he’d come to our house in Swat and offered to bring me here, but instead tried taking all my money. And I told him of Moin Uncle, who rescued me and brought me to Uncle Masood’s. Then I told him about Swat. About skipping class to climb mountains, about the river, and the glaciers. About what winter was like when it was just us and Bilal’s family locked away from the rest of the world. I told him about our school. About how Mina wanted to come to Lahore instead, and how Jamal had got me in trouble by killing a goat. I told him everything.

The next day, I was inserting spokes into a wheel when Hamza walked right through the open gate.

“As Salam Au Alaykum,” he said.

It startled me. “What’re you doing here?”

“I just thought I’d check up on you, do you need some help?”

“What? No...”

“Are you sure? I don’t have anything else to do.”

“But Uncle Masood is paying me to do this work, so I have to do it alone.”

“Oh, I see. I’ll just sit here then.” He sat against the wall next to me.

“Okay, suit yourself I guess.”

I saw him again every day of the summer.