Khaled put a cookie in his mouth and chewed it slowly while talking to Mahdi. The place seemed like a big market full of noise and shouting. The visitors and prisoners were sitting side by side, and they were involved in their own conversations.
In his cell Khaled was reviewing his budget. The amount of money he had was decreasing. It was a dangerous thing in prison because he may lose a lot of privileges. He was lucky he could keep the money that Writer from All Around the World society gave him. His friend Munir changed it to him into Moroccan dirhams. He also saved the amount of money he wanted to spend in the remaining stay days of his visa in Belgium.
Samir’s issue preoccupied him obsessively. He could turn a blind eye for a lot of violations in the prison because most of them enjoyed the mutual consent of the involved people. Drugs, for instance, were smuggled and sold… it was a wrong thing, but the trader and the buyer agreed on it. he knew he was not the savior of the world to change all of that, but Samir’s case way more than a violation. It was a sexual assault. It would shatter the life of a person just because he was unable to defend himself. The level of brutality in the issue and Samir seeking his protection left him no choices to take.
He either had to defend Samir or join the league of deaf satins. Those people who know the right thing yet choose to neutralize themselves. What a bad league it is to join!
Samir went to the restrooms not aware that Masmoom gestured to two of his men to follow Samir, and he later followed them.
The moment that Khaled feared the most has arrived. His heartbeat rate has increased quickly. He is terrified! ‘Where from can movie heroes conjure their courage’, he asked himself.
Khaled follows the group, too. He enters the restrooms to find the sexual assault and harassment has begun verbally.
Khaled hears these sentences when he enters. The three gangsters hear his footsteps, so they turn to him. Masmoom says to him in defiance,
His voice resonated with a tone of tyranny, threat, and insolence. Khaled deeply detested his face and voice.
Suddenly Khaled takes out a sharp piece of metal shaped like a sword and started swinging it as if he is experienced in using it.
The three of them look at him strangely. He knows that they are unarmed.
There were afraid…worried…two minds in the air. He is able to sense their fear. ‘Can they suspect my fright’, he wonders. They look at him like hyenas when a lion comes to chasing them away from a prey. It is the same look he saw in a documentary on animals’ life. Their moment of hesitation seemed to him like a year. They slowly retreated and Masmoom was pointing his finger meaning, ‘you’ve done a grave mistake’.
In the cell, Khaled told Samir about what happened. He used money again for two purposes. First, he obtained the sword and a temporary permit to carry it. Then he practiced swinging it in an experienced criminal way. Second, he bought the strangest thing a human could ever imagine in a prison—a rumor. He really bought the rumor that when he ‘robbed’ the painting, he killed four people in the American museum. The source of the rumor was a reliable source—one of the guards.
Some prisoners believed it, while others did not. However, rumors enjoy an undisputed power. They are like a snowball that rolls, so at the beginning the rumor would be he had killed one person. After that, it would become he killed hundreds of people.
People like to believe such things. It reminded him of an Egyptian movie he watched. It was on a man who looked like a criminal nicknamed ‘The Beast’. All people run away from him and fear him, while he could not understand it. He tried to persuade them that he was a powerless man, but they refuse to believe. They needed a person to fear and make a legend about. So, the man gave up and became a ‘beast’ despite his will at the beginning. He later liked it and became a real beast. People create their own idols then they worship them.
At last, Khaled got what he wanted, and his criminal reputation became considerable. Meanwhile, he was wearing the mask of ‘the cold man who looks safe and confident, yet he can kill a tribe’.
He used that rumor after he followed the Masmoom gang who, apparently, chose safety temporarily at least.
They laugh out loud. Samir was gratified, so he kissed Khaled’s head and went to sleep. Khaled looked at the opposite wall. He was looking in particular at a crack that reminded him of his apartment, and a feeling of longing to his simple life before being imprisoned overwhelmed him.
He felt that devil within him oversizing bigger and bigger. The incident that day proved to him that most tyrants and criminals were actually cowards faking courage. Once they face a real challenge, they would pee in their pants.
He, too, was really afraid, but it seemed he succeeded in concealing his fear. He remembered the moment he held the handle of that primitive sword. He then knew why people commit crimes. The feeling of power and ability that weapons’ handles give is tremendous.
The truth was that he really intended using the sword had they attacked him. In prison, people find themselves before limited choices, he was taking the tough ones, yet they were the correct ones in his point of view at least.