2nd Prize

The Street of New Beginnings 

By D R D Bruton 

   Ahmed’s father took him to the Street of New Beginnings where wise-seeming men wrapped in blankets sat outside, crouched against the wall. The men spoke in whispers, telling the same stories over and over. Stories of the men they could have been if luck had been more kind. 

   Down dark passes between tall buildings, Ahmed and his father hurried the sky a thin blue ribbon far above Ahmed’s head - far above his father’s head. Ahmed had to run to keep up. Skipping sometimes. It was always so. On Saturday mornings when they visited the fish market on the shore, Ahmed was ever a step or more behind his father, holding his nose against the smell and his eyes half shut against the flies. Fish scales under his feet made the path skip-silver-slippy. Or, on their way to the great blue square some Sundays, where chess players sat hunched over their games giving more sage thought to the movement of their rooks and bishops and pawns then they ever did to what their own wives said to them - on those Sundays Ahmed was always short of breath as he followed in the footsteps of his father’s quick shadow. 

   Today, it was just the same, on their way to the Street of New Beginnings, past old men with grey in their beards and silver spiders in their ears. Men leaning on sticks who spoke their toothless words all mashed and spat and making little sense, and laughing at Ahmed and waving to the boy as though he was a friend. Ahmed hurried to keep up with his father, hurried not to be caught by men with claws, hurried not wanting to lose his father on this day of all days. 

   Ahmed did not look to left or right. If he had he would have seen Alisha and her white kitten scooped up into her arms. He did not see grandmother Maraissa scratching at her backside, or Uncle Ali scolding his tail-between-its-legs dog. Ahmed did not see these things for his eyes were fixed on the back of his father in front of him. 

   And at last they were there, on the Street of New Beginnings. The light was different on the street and the sounds, too, sounds of money changing hands and men squatting in small groups making calculations of all that was spent. Ahmed and his father stopped at a shop on the street. Its walls were red as new blood, or red as fire or spice. That is what Ahmed thought. It hurt Ahmed’s eyes to look too long at the wall. There was a hand-painted sign above the door and on it a picture of the owner when he was young. 

   They did not go into the dark of the shop. Instead, Mr Mamoud came to them, as though he had been expecting them. They nodded and bowed to each other, the shop owner and Ahmed’s father. And Mr Mamoud shook Ahmed’s hand and proclaimed Ahmed taller than when he’d last seen the boy. He leaned in close, so close that Ahmed could smell bitter coffee on his breath and the stale scent of tobacco and liquorice. Mr Mamoud inspected Ahmed’s face closely. He ran a hand under the boy’s chin, softly, just as a man might caress a new wife or stroke his camel. 

   ‘He’ll need the kiss of a razor soon,’ Mr Mamoud said, and the men crouched against the wall laughed at his joke. 

   ‘My son needs a turban,’ said Ahmed’s father, and Ahmed thought that he heard something puffed up and grand in the way that he said it. 

   There was some nodding from the men behind and scratching of grey beards and their faces grown serious again, almost scowling. 

   ‘Of course he does. Isn’t that just what I was saying? The boy is, near as spit, a man.’ 

   Mr Mamoud uncoiled a length of red cloth. It smelled of rosewater and patchouli. It trailed on the grey flagstone paving of the street, like something spilled. As red as the walls, Ahmed thought. Red as the turbans of all the men outside the shop. Red as his father’s turban. Mr Mamoud wiped Ahmed’s head with a square of white cloth and pulled the boy onto his knees in front of the shop. The stone hurt Ahmed’s bones. Mr Mamoud offered up a short prayer then, calling on Allah to make of this boy a man and make of the new man something wise and good and lucky. The men behind Ahmed snorted and scoffed. It was a prayer that they had heard before, spoken over their own to-be-turbaned heads. Long years ago now. They had believed it then, the prayer and the great fortune that would come upon them like a blessing if only they were good; they did not believe in such things now. 

   Mr Mamoud cleared his throat and spat into the road. Then he began the slow and careful winding of the red cloth about Ahmed’s head. After every completed circle, the trail of cloth taken back to the point where Mr Mamoud had started, there was a pause and Mr Mamoud mouthed another prayer. That was the way of things. That was how Mr Mamoud turned boys into men, how he had done so for more years than Ahmed had known. Didn’t he once do the same for Ahmed’s father when he was a boy come to the Street of New Beginnings? Maybe that was why there were tears in Ahmed’s father’s eyes and on his cheek. 

   When Mr Mamoud had finished, Ahmed felt different. He felt serious, a weight on his head, on his shoulders. The weight of being a man is what Ahmed supposed he felt. Ahmed wanted to see and Mr Mamoud brought out a barber’s mirror for the purpose. Ahmed could not help smiling. He felt the press of his father’s hand on his shoulder, the warmth passing from his father’s palm through Ahmed’s shirt and into Ahmed. 

   ‘Today is a new day, my son. Now you must put away childish things. Now you are become a man and you must turn your thoughts to being something in the world.’ These were his father’s words as he dripped silver into the cupped palm of Mr Mamoud, and the words his father spoke were not new words to Mr Mamoud or to the men wrapped in blankets and crouched outside the shop. 

   Ahmed’s father and Mr Mamoud exchanged embraces and blessings, after which the Ahmed and his father walked back towards home. Home, where mother was waiting for them, with tears in her eyes, too, and pastries dripping honey on a silver plate and cinnamon flavoured tee poured into small glass cups – all for Ahmed’s new day. 

   They walked side by side, Ahmed and his father, walked taller. And there was no out of breath, or hurrying so that the backs of Ahmed’s legs hurt. That was how it was to be from this day forward, Ahmed thought. He stumbled a little then and suddenly felt the weight of the turban shift and something inside him shifted also. Ahmed saw Alisha on the steps outside her house, pretty as a picture, making her kitten pounce onto trailing string; and grandmother Maraissa called to Ahmed to come see what treasure she had in her purse for him; and Uncle Ali was playing cups and balls with a group of small children some of whom had, before this day, been Ahmed’s friends. Ahmed suddenly wanted to skip and run, wanted to turn cartwheels in the street or chase chickens across the great blue square where young men were bent over chess games in imitation of their Sunday elders. 

   But Ahmed did not run, and he did not skip or turn cartwheels. He was worried that the turban might unravel, and so he walked by his father’s side wearing the same serious face as his father. He was a man now, Ahmed thought, and the day was new and it was the beginning of something – and the end of something, too. 

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Judges Comments: 'The Street of New Beginnings' is a well written story with an authentic feel to the background. D R D Bruton has presented us with some excellent descriptive writing. Congratulations on your second place.