Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14

“(When) wealth is hoarded—its owner neither enjoys it during this life nor receives any recompense for it in the Hereafter.” — Ibn al‑Qayyim, Madarij al‑Salikin (Ten Useless Matters)

Ashlan Gardens

Still sitting in his Porsche, Deek called Marco, who answered with, “How did the Moon Walk Motel work out for you?”

“I got ki-” He’d been about to say, I got kidnapped, until he remembered he must not talk about that.

“You got what?”

“I, uh, got killed by that sagging mattress. Are you free? I want to take you to The Purple Heifer for dinner. My treat.”

“Purple Heifer! Did an uncle die and leave you a fortune? Heck yeah, I’m free.”

“Pick you up in an hour.”

Before the Purple Heifer, Deek had another stop to make. He stuffed $100,000 into a Marco Polo envelope, sealed it, and jotted a note on the envelope:

For a true hero. The least I could do.

He didn’t know exactly where Zaid Karim’s office was, and wasn’t about to drive around the East Belmont ghetto carrying a fortune in cash. Instead, he headed for Zaid’s apartment, which was on Ashlan Avenue near the national guard base. Deek and his family had been there for dinner a few times, and he was confident he could find it.

He ended up wandering around the Ashlan Gardens apartment complex for ten minutes until he found an upstairs apartment with a sticker on the door that said, “Laa ilaha il-Allah” in Arabic.

Coriander and Lime

When Safaa answered the door wearing sweat pants, an embroidered Arab shirt, and a loose orange scarf, Deek was momentarily nonplussed. He always forgot how much she looked like Rania. Safaa was taller than Rania and more slender, but their oval-shaped faces and large dark eyes were nearly identical, as were their rich brown complexions.

Thinking of Rania, he was suddenly hit with a pang of longing. What was she doing at this moment? Did she miss him? Was she lonely?

“Deek!” Safaa shook her head at him, smiling. “Why are you giving my cousin a hard time, huh? You even made Zaid go looking for you.”

The scent of Iraqi cooking emanated from the apartment. Deek could identify the distinct smell of caramelizing onions and garlic, the lemony-floral lift of coriander, and the sour-bitter tang of sun-dried lime. Safaa and Rania’s mothers were sisters, and the two of them had no doubt learned to cook all the same dishes. Deek could probably guess exactly what Safaa was cooking, based on the scent.

In the background, he heard the two girls arguing about what ingredients to put on a banana split.

“If you make it all chocolate,” Anna was saying reasonably, “it’s not a banana split. A banana split is supposed to have vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate.”

“You’re not the banana split police,” Hajar countered.

“Zaid’s not here,” Safaa added. “He and Jalal found that missing girl. They’re taking her home.”

Deek had no idea what Safaa was talking about. Zaid had rescued yet another missing girl? Unbelievable! The guy was a hero from a fairy tale.

“Are you going to adopt that one too?”

Safaa laughed. “No, silly. She’s nineteen!”

“Oh, uhh…” Deek held out the envelope. “This is for Zaid.”

Deek held a fervent hope that neither Zaid nor Safaa would be offended by this payment. Zaid had implied that Deek’s money was dirty money. That was unfair. He’d worked hard for this wealth, and he wanted to do something for the man who had put his life on the line for him. How else could he show his gratitude? He wasn’t a sage who could change a person’s life with a word. He wasn’t physically powerful, nor was he the kind of charismatic friend whose companionship everyone yearned for. But Allah had blessed him with wealth. This was what he had to give.

Safaa accepted the envelope, then read the note. “That’s so sweet! Zaid will love it.” She hefted the envelope, lifting it up and down. “Deek… this feels like cash. Is this money?”

Talking to Safaa was so weird. Even her mannerisms resembled Rania’s. Knowing that his own wife, at such a moment, would find something to chastise him for, and fearing that Safaa might do the same, he decided to beat a quick retreat.

“I have to go,” he blurted. “Thanks for everything!” And he was gone.

The Purple Heifer

Deek picked up Marco in front of the SRO. His friend stood amid the riffraff of the neighborhood, holding a trumpet case and looking as carefree as a bird on the breeze.

At about 5’8”, Marco was shorter than Deek, but aside from that, he could have been an actor or model. Even at the age of forty-five, his golden bronze skin – courtesy of his Puerto Rican heritage – was smooth. His black hair was thick, and naturally fell into waves that caressed his ears. He wore old hi-top sneakers, jeans with holes in the knees, and a clean but faded Miami Heat t-shirt. Deek knew that these worn-out clothes were not a deliberate fashion choice but simply the result of poverty, yet Marco managed to make it all look casually stylish.

Marco stuffed his trumpet case behind the passenger seat and climbed in. His hands roamed over the dashboard as he exclaimed, “Dude! What the heck is going on?”

Deek grinned. “I’ll tell you in a bit. Why did you bring the trumpet case?”

“Purple Heifer has a live piano player. I thought I might join in for a number.”

“They’ll let you do that?”

“I’m well known in the Fresno jazz scene.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Marco gave him a wry look. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

The Purple Heifer Steakhouse at the corner of Shaw and Cedar had been a Fresno fixture for decades. It was known for its flame-grilled steaks, wild-caught shrimp, crab cakes, lobster tails, exotic burgers, and more. It wasn’t the most expensive restaurant in town, but to guys like Marco and Deek (or the guy Deek had been last week), it might as well be a millionaire’s resort.

Approaching the restaurant, Deek could smell the cooking beef from half a block away. The popular eatery was huge and dimly lit, which was one of the reasons Deek had chosen it. He asked for a corner booth. The piano player, a sixtyish man in a black suit and top hat, was playing a lively yet smooth song that might have been Brazilian jazz. The restaurant was busy, with a lot of conversations happening at once, but the music managed to float above it all, and Deek found himself tapping his foot to the beat. He was excited for what was about to happen, and couldn’t wait to see his friend’s reaction.

A Gift

Once they’d ordered, Deek set a backpack on the table.

“This is for you.”

Marco poked the backpack with a finger. “Books? I have plenty of books in storage. No space in my room.”

“Not books.”

“Better not be a practical joke like one of those expanding snakes, I’m serious.” Feeling the backpack tentatively, he unzipped it and peered inside, then, miffed, gave Deek a lopsided frown. “So it is a joke! What is this, Monopoly money?”

“It’s as real as the Porsche.” Deek lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s two hundred thousand dollars. It’s yours, as a gift from me for your friendship.”

Marco wobbled in the chair as if he might fall. Deek half rose, reaching for his friend. Why did people keep reacting like this to the sight of money?

Marco gripped the edge of the table with one hand and waved Deek off with the other. “I’m okay,” he said, and the words sounded squeezed. “Where did this come from?”

Briefly, Deek explained what had happened in the last week, though not delineating the full extent of his wealth.

Three Reasons

Marco reached into the backpack and felt around, touching the money. Then he closed the backpack and sat back. Sweat had broken out over his forehead. Finally, he pushed the backpack across the table to Deek, rumpling the tablecloth and nearly knocking over Deek’s water glass.

Marco’s lips were tight. “I can’t accept this.”

“Why not?” Deek’s voice came out louder than he intended, and he lowered it to an intense whisper. “You’re living in an SRO. I want to help you.”

“Three reasons,” Marco spoke slowly but firmly. “One, my friendship is given freely. It requires no payment or gift.”

Deek tried to reply, but Marco held up a hand. “Two, it’s a little insulting, as if you don’t believe that I can create my own better future. Three, make no mistake, there’s a part of me that would be happy to take this cash. But how long would it last? Two or three years? I might buy a car, which brings further expenses, and rent an apartment, buy nice clothes, pay off my student debt, and voila – the money’s gone. Then what? I come to you asking for more? At which point you begin to doubt my sincerity. No, our friendship must be a steady, controlled reaction, not an exothermic burst that blazes with heat, then dies.”

“I would never – “

Again, Marco held up a hand. “Look, Deek. With the money you have now, people are going to swarm around you. They will want to sell you things, borrow from you, make business deals, solicit donations, learn your crypto methods, or pretend to be your friends in order to freeload. You will begin to doubt everyone’s intentions. I won’t be one of those. You will always know I am your true friend, because I will always pay my own way.”

People Help The People

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to squeeze in a song before the food comes.”

As Marco spoke to the piano player, Deek gripped his water glass so tightly that it cracked. He was fed up with people acting like he was the devil trying to corrupt them with a gift of wealth. If Marco were hungry, would he refuse a meal? If he were sick, would he turn away a blood transfusion? Why did people behave so bizarrely when it came to money?

Marco had his trumpet out. The piano player began a slow song, and Marco soon joined in. The song was moderately paced but sad, like a man pleading for forgiveness from a lover he had never meant to harm. At first, the despondency of the song deepened Deek’s bitterness, but Marco’s trumpet rose and fell like a bird riding the currents between land and sea. Deek’s breathing eased, and he sat back in the seat and closed his eyes. The restaurant became hushed as conversations were stilled. When the song was over, applause broke like a crashing wave.

Marco tried to leave, but the audience called for an encore. For the second song, they played a mid-tempo jazzy number, and Marco sang. Deek had heard Marco sing little snatches of tunes before, but never a full-throated number like this. His voice was low and strong, like the running of a river swollen with spring rain. He belted out a song about a man in love with a woman on an October night, and wanting to dance with her beneath the moon.

“I didn’t know you could sing like that,” Deek enthused afterward.

“As I said, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“I would really love to hear you recite the Quran in Arabic one day. It would be amazing to hear it in your voice.”

Marco nodded. “Could happen. I like a challenge.”

The food came, and they ate, but the atmosphere was subdued. Deek sawed away at his steak and potatoes, and Marco picked at a shrimp platter. Later, Deek could not have said what they talked about, or if the food was tasty. When the check came, Marco tried to pay his share. Deek held the check away from him and returned it to the server with a hundred-dollar bill.

“What was that first song?” Marco asked. “The one that was sad at first, then swept up like a tidal wave.”

“People help the people.”

“That’s ironic.”

Marco gave a slight smile – the first Deek had seen since the money reveal.

Shadow In The Lot

It was dark when they exited the restaurant. The parking lot was half full, and a movement in the corner of the lot caught Deek’s eye. That part of the lot was empty except for a small, battered car parked beside a cinderblock wall. A man ducked into the car and closed the door. From this distance, Deek could not be sure, but the man had looked vaguely like Shujaa, the Yemeni youth who had sold him the Porsche.

“Did you see anyone over there?” he whispered, pointing.

Marco leaned forward, squinting into the shadows. “By that car? No.”

Deek’s eyes bored into the darkness. He could walk over there… but it was very dark. The man could have been anyone. He shook it off. “Let’s go.”

When he dropped Marco off at the SRO, his friend punched him gently in the shoulder and said, “I’m happy for you, brother. I will always be here for you.” Marco dropped two twenty-dollar bills onto the dashboard. “For my dinner.”

Before Deek could protest, his talented and handsome friend shut the car door and walked away quickly. Deek considered chasing after him, but there was no way he could leave this car -and all the cash inside it- unattended in this neighborhood.

In fact, looking around at the neighborhood, Deek felt suddenly nervous. A group of young men, pants riding low on their hips, stood in the recessed doorway of a building across the street. Their attention seemed unnaturally focused on Deek and his Porsche. Only a few steps away from the Porsche, a white woman with the lean body and aged, sore-spotted face of a meth addict took a long swig from a wine bottle, then threw the empty bottle into the street, where it shattered with the finality of the very last broken promise. A man in a filthy tweed coat, his bare chest exposed, probed a trash can, looking for the treasure of a recyclable can.

Two girls in black clothing and boots, their hair shorn on one side only, faces bearing so many piercings they could have opened a jewelry shop, strolled through the chaotic scene with no sign of fear.

Starfish

Quickly, Deek locked the doors, then stuffed the backpack full of money deep under the passenger seat. He was about to put the car in drive and take off when his eyes settled on a thin, blond-haired boy who could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old, curled up with a puppy in a recessed doorway. The boy wore old jeans and a gray sweatshirt that was several sizes too large. He was not asleep, but lay looking out at the street. Peering more closely, Deek saw that the boy had a small pocket knife in one hand. His other arm curled protectively around the puppy.

He suddenly felt ashamed. Here he was, walking around with hundreds of thousands of dollars, while there were kids on the street with nothing to eat and no safe place to sleep. But this was the way of the world, wasn’t it? Luxury perched on the back of poverty. And it wasn’t him who had made it like this.

But maybe he could be part of the solution.

He remembered a story he’d heard once about a boy on the beach. Thousands of starfish have washed up onto the beach, where they will die. The boy picks them up one by one and throws them back into the sea, saving their lives. An old man comes along and says, “You can’t save all these thousands. What you’re doing doesn’t matter.” The boy throws another starfish into the sea and says, “It matters to that one.”

People help the people. That was the only way to make sense of this crazy world. He slid his hand into his pocket, intending to take $1,000 out of his wallet to give to the boy. Discreetly, of course.

Ambush

His driver’s side window shattered. He shouted in shock and surprise. Shards of glass rained upon him, and instantly he felt a blinding pain in his left eye. He cried out and put a hand to his eye. With his other eye, he saw a brown arm snake inside the car and unlock the door, and the next thing he knew, he was yanked out of the car.

He fell onto the filthy sidewalk, landing on something wet that crunched beneath him. Leftover soda in a cup, he hoped. He tried to stand and fight in spite of the terrible pain in his eye, but a foot drove into his stomach, forcing the air out of him and making him grunt in pain. He vomited semi-digested steak and potatoes onto the sidewalk. As he was retching, a fist crashed into his cheekbone, then another into his mouth, and another and another, hitting his nose, jaw, ear, and skull. He tasted blood in his mouth, hot and metallic. But apparently that last shot hurt the attacker’s hand, because the man cursed in Arabic.

Deek recognized the voice. It was Shujaa. It had been him after all, back at the restaurant! He should have trusted his gut.

Rage rose inside him like a high tide on a rough sea. “Not again!” he thought. “I will not let this happen again.”

Deek was many things, good and bad, but he was not a coward. The Iraq of his childhood had been a place of hardship and violence. He’d seen bodies in the streets and had witnessed the aftermath of battles and bombings, yet had gone to school, to the store, and played football in the street. The words “surrender” and “give up” did not exist in his vocabulary. His entire personality was based on persistence and determination. When he was kidnapped last week, the only thing that stopped him from fighting back was that his wrists and feet were bound. Otherwise, he would have struggled and fought to the point of death.

As Shujaa pulled back his foot to kick, Deek rolled into the young man’s legs and wrapped them with his arms. Shujaa shouted in surprise and fell. Deek heard a cracking sound as the young man hit the ground, and Shujaa’s body went completely still, half on the sidewalk and half in the street. One arm lay in the dirty gutter, and the knuckles of both hands were bloody.

Come And Try

Pushing off the sidewalk, Deek rose to his knees. Shujaa lay at his feet, unmoving, a small rivulet of blood trickling from the back of his skull. Perhaps he was dead, Deek did not know.

With his good eye, Deek saw that the group of young toughs from across the street had approached. They stood only a few meters away. A twenty-ish and muscular man with a shaved head, dressed in blue basketball wear and a bulky blue coat in spite of the warm weather, stepped forward.

“Y’all put on a show,” the man said. “But we gon’ take that car now.”

Deek held a hand to his agonizing left eye, as if he could isolate and capture the sliver of glass cutting his eye open. His lips were split, and he couldn’t breathe through his nose. His stomach felt like it had been taken out, trampled by a horse, and put back in. His right hip throbbed with pain. Yet not for a moment did he consider stepping aside and letting these gangsters take his car. Casually, he undid the clasp on the knife sheath and drew the long, wicked blade.

Holding the knife down at his right side, but clearly visible, he said, “Come and try then.” He would cut them all down, just like Zaid Karim would do.

Another of the young men, thinner and younger, also dressed in shades of blue and purple, and with braided hair to his shoulders, reached into his coat and drew an automatic pistol. He tilted the weapon sideways and pointed the barrel at Deek’s head. “Ain’t no try. Hasta luego, fool.”
The man was going to kill him. Deek’s eyes widened, and his breathing slowed. How could it end like this? Shot to death over a stupid car?

So be it. La ilaha il-Allah. He raised the knife and took a step forward.

The barrel of the gun flashed, there was a loud bang, and something struck Deek in the face. He stumbled backward yet did not fall. The gangster had shot him. The man had shot him in the face, yet somehow he was still alive.

Trumpet

He had no vision in his left eye, so it caught him completely by surprise when Marco stepped in front of him from the left and swung his trumpet as hard as he could. It struck the side of the gunman’s head with a loud gong, and the gangster fell like a brick, the gun skittering away. The other thugs shouted, but Marco threw the trumpet at them, darted forward to grab the gun, and began firing shots into the air.
The gangsters scattered, comically holding up their pants as they ran.

Marco tucked the gun into his waistband, snatched up the trumpet – which was now dented and bent – and hurried to Deek.

“Get in the car, bro. We have to get out of here. Put your knife away.”

“He shot me.”

Marco gripped Deek’s head and studied the left side of his face. “It’s a graze. Right along your left eyebrow. You’re very lucky.”

Swaying on his feet, Deek peered across the street. Where was the boy? The homeless blond kid? People help the people. He was going to throw a starfish into the sea. It would matter to this one. But the boy was gone, frightened away by the violence of the street. Poor kid.

Once again, the world was telling Deek that his money was no good. But money was what he had to offer, so he and the world would have to come to a compromise. Either that, or they would fight a ten-round heavyweight match, and only one would stay standing at the end. And right now, at this moment, Deek was still standing.

The street was dark and dirty. Someone had lit a tire on fire in an empty lot down the street, maybe to stay warm. Sirens were approaching. The thugs could return at any moment, maybe better armed this time. Shujaa was still bleeding and unconscious on the ground. Deek gestured to him: “Him too. We can’t leave him.”

* * *

[Part 16 will be published next week inshaAllah]

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See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

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