Tooq & Fenta
September Scene Writing Month
“She’s this tall,” Tooq held his brown hand up to his chin, “and she laughs like a goat when you tickle her. And… and she’s all I have left.”
When the bomb detonated beneath the fruit seller’s stand during Tuesday morning’s market, Tooq and his sister had been two stalls down, hunkered in a corner of the wall of the now defunct tannery, nibbling cast-off laffa bread. The concussion had blown the palm-thatch roofs of both the spice and the filigree brass stands over top of the children. Tooq, a boy of ten, and Fenta, a dazzling-eyed child of seven, screamed for each other, but their hearing had temporarily vaporized with the explosion and though they tried, they could not link hands, touch each other’s fingers.
When the boy finally pushed off the debris, he discovered his sister gone. He rummaged frantically through the pile of staves and fronds and pots and brokenness, even ignoring a bundle of turmeric-colored candy thrown from the spice stand. Panic filled his chest as he realized Fenta had vanished in the pandemonium. The remainder of the day he spent stumbling amongst crying widows, mothers, fathers and children, peeking into shadows and under broken lives. That night he huddled in their corner. She’ll find me if I just wait here.
The next day his search began in earnest.
The fruit seller’s son had been away to pick up fresh dates when the terrorist bomb had taken his father and their livelihood. The community would hold his place in the market, but not forever. “I know your sister, but I’m busy. Our business is destroyed and you want me to stop everything and look for her?” D’mique noticed the salty tracks that meandered down the boy’s cheeks. “I will add Fenta to my list of the missing. If she’s here, the market people will find her.”
Unexpectedly, there was now plenty to eat. The merchants salvaged what they could, but a pile grew of damaged and discarded goods. The best remnants disappeared quickly, but Tooq had learned years ago that ugly food was not always unpleasant. He grabbed what he could and returned to their nook at the wall, creating a stash, hidden to most but obvious to a tiny girl with clever fingers and curious eyes.
He wished he’d kept better care of the photos of their family. Many of their possessions had been trampled in a riot months ago. The desert men had come with their reckless trucks and black guns. Tooq and Fenta had scrambled for their lives.
Today, two days after the bomb, he ferreted out a picture from their previous hiding spot. The walls of a collapsed bank held strong beams that propped up the broken floors from above. Within a narrow channel they’d found an alcove. Bigger kids had forced them out, but today he returned and smiled like a cheetah when he found the faded picture.
“How many copies can you make?” he asked the shop clerk that provided internet, fax and copies. Tooq pulled out his savings, “For six-thousand dinar?”
“Five.”
“Five? Can you make ten, please. My sister, this is her picture, she is missing. She is all I have in the world. Please sir, can you make ten? Eight maybe?”
The clerk helped Tooq frame the photo and add words in large Arabic letters directing any who might assist to the corner next to to the tannery wall.
“Did you write that Tooq will be waiting for her?” The boy examined the proof.
“Can’t you read that?”
“Yes, but, my tears…”
“It contains everything you need. I’ve made these, many of these before.” The clerk ran the big white and gray copier that blazed like the sun through the cover with each pass. “Here’s fifteen, that’s plenty.”
Tooq clenched his jaw. “Thank… thank you.”
The clerk selected a nearly spent roll of tape. “You’ll need some of this too.” When Tooq held out his hand, the clerk, a man of thirty who looked fifty, enclosed the boy’s hand in both his own. “Be smart where you place them. You’ll find her, I promise.”
